10 Terrible Portrayals of Technology in Film

Luke Hachmeister writes to mention a light piece at GideonTech on some of the truly terrible portrayals of technology in film. From Hackers to AntiTrust, Hollywoood just can't stick to reality. From the article: "Harrison Ford plays a security expert at a bank. He falls prey to a scheme to steal money for a gang that has taken hostage of his family. The film tried very hard to keep it a rollercoaster ride of thrills. From the beginning, you have Harrison Ford typing furiously to stop a hacker by writing new firewall rules. At least this time, these rules didn't float around in a rainbow of colors ala Hackers. What really puts Firewall at the top of the list, is the dumbest and non-believable use of an iPod to date. This is 2006, not 1995, you can't just make stuff up like this anymore. In the middle of the film, Harrison Ford happens to not only be a security expert, but an Apple hardware developer too."

Bah

Our jobs are BORING. Admit it. If the true essence of our profession was placed on film, people would walk out of the theatre.

Unless, that is, it was encapsulated in a vehicle like "Office Space" ... ;-)

Re:Bah

You know the scene in Hackers where Joey logs into that one computer, and rainbows of stars and other shit come streaming across the screen?

Somehow, I think the audience would have gotten the point if we just got a zoom-in of "Login successful. Welcome to Cyberdyne systems model 101." Especially if he started doing the victory dance.

I don't know about you, but if the "Login successful" screen did the stars shit every time *I* logged into a computer, I would drag the developer into a dark alley and beat him with a crowbar for a couple of hours.

Of course, that wouldn't excuse the other egregious hackery that comprised much of the dialog. You gotta love a line like "Run Antivirus!"

Re:Bah

Yesterday, my dental hygenist attempted to create an analogy of "not brushing my teeth" as being the same as "not updating my antivirus on the machines at work".

She didn't get my point when I said they run "Linux".

Too bad my mouth doesn't, though. Heheh :)

Re:I guess that makes Linux equivalent to supertee

Superteeth! Repelling Plaque at every turn, by virtue of being completely incompatible with it!

Re:Bah

Linux is kinda like flossing. It keeps everything clean, but it's uncomfortable and no one really likes it.

Re:Bah

We already have that simple text login successful movie. It was called wargames. It was a really interesting movie, because it showed how hacking was actually done. Calling the operator and asking for numbers, then trying every number until a modem picks up. Then trying every password you can think of until you actually get into the system.

Re:Bah

I have mixed feelings about War Games. Some of it was good and realistic, the text logins and the war-dialling, like you say, but some of it was pushing things a little, like computers are alive and one them has been put in charge of the nuclear button.

And some of it was just complete fantasy-land, like the cute girl wanted to hang out with the class nerd while he played a computer game in his bedroom. I ask you.

Re:Bah

Some of it was good and realistic, the text logins and the war-dialling, like you say, but some of it was pushing things a little, like computers are alive and one them has been put in charge of the nuclear button.


With people who think that computers can decide who you voted for by themselves, of course there is a risk of someone giving nuclear command to a computer, that is realistic, even if it didn't happen yet.

About computers being alive, they don't need to be alive, they just need to act like they were. You just need a good AI, not a lot more advanced that what there is now. An easy example, Google seems to understand your needs, giving you content and ads tailored to you, something that didn't seem that easy before, that is some of the AI you need for a computer to _seem_ alive.

Re:Bah

You know the scene in Hackers where Joey logs into that one computer, and rainbows of stars and other shit come streaming across the screen?

I know that scene, and I found it to be very realistic.

It reminded me of my days dialing into local BBS'es run by 16-year-olds, where every successful login was accompanied by a three-page-long piece of blinking eight-color ANSI art.

Later I would log into more mature systems, where the login message was instead a single-page long fortune, usually an excerpt from a Monty Python script.

Re:Bah

Our jobs are BORING. Admit it. If the true essence of our profession was placed on film, people would walk out of the theatre.

Absolutely.

My wife is a pediatrician, and despite the fact that she deals with disease and injury every day, she cannot help but watch every medical show -- fiction or reality -- that comes on TV. One day I wondered aloud why she would want to subject herself to tv that is essentially work to her, and why no one makes TV shows about my chosen profession.

She replied that
a) the fictional TV shows generally get as much wrong with their medicine as movies with tech themes get technology wrong and
b) no one wants to watch a show consisting of a bunch of web geeks sitting in front of their computers all day.

I had to concede that she was right, but that didn't make me feel any better....

Re:Bah

Already been done [wikipedia.org] (sort of).

Re:Link does not work:Who is the admin

What a terrible portrayal of a working web server.

I think the all time classic is........

Independance Day.

Upload Virus.......

Enough said!

Re:I think the all time classic is........

Agreed. There's no way in hell an advanced intelligence would be Windows compatible.

Re:I think the all time classic is........

If memory serves, Goldblum used a Mac :P

Re:I think the all time classic is........

So, it's safe to conclude the only Mac virus that ever existed saved the world from an alien invasion. ;-)

Re:I think the all time classic is........

the Alien AI would be adaptive and self-healing, and would totally block out Windows, leaving Mac as the only option

They have been watching us for years and protected themselves from the known operating systems of the world... thus, they completely missed seeing mac as noone had any :) well other than jeff goldbloom.

Re:I think the all time classic is........

No, that was just a typo. To get what everyone else has, you need to get to adulthood without ever reading a book.

Re:I think the all time classic is........

Don't you know that in US English, you can substitute any vowel for any other ?

Re:I think the all time classic is........

Maybe that's feasible, but on the screen it shows the machine establishing a TCP/IP connection to the mothership.

And "Vint Cerf" sounds like a name actual human beings would give their offspring?

Re:I think the all time classic is........

TCP/IP, wireless LAN, both invented after the alien spaceship crashed at Roswell. Where do you think we got the ideas from....?

Bonjour

Standards compliance is a wonderful thing.

Re:I think the all time classic is........

If the Aliens had used Windows..they wudn't have taken off their planet in the first place

Or perhaps we now know why they crash landed in Roswell. . .

Hell yeah. Worst list ever

This is really a bad list. Basically they seemed to have made a point of picking movies that naturally involve a lot of technology. They totally ignore things like Independence Day where their little virus takes out an entire alien attack fleet because, persumably, they didn't even try.

Wargames does not deserve to be on this list. He uses an acoustic coupled modem to dial in. He hacks using realistic approaches to it, trying to guess the password. He doesn't magically use a cracking program or have little 3D graphics fly all over his screen trying to crack it. Instead he studies the biography of Professor Falken and after much trial and error actually gets it.

Their biggest nitpick is that computer voice. The "voice" from the computer is clearly just a text to voice synthesizer which, may be a little high end but remember TI had voice synthesizers for their computers around 1980. They didn't want the audience to have to read what the computer was saying the whole damn movie. The computer AI for Joshua is seemingly quite primitive even though it's supposed to be a big defense department computer.

As for Firewall, I think they did a pretty good job of being realistic. The scanner IPod thing was a stretch, but when they do computer security in the movie it looks like an actual computer. We see actual firewall rules and such that look like what I'd see on my actual computer. Given that it was a hollywood movie built around a very technical subject, I was pretty impressed with the realism level.

If you really want to get picky, how about the fact that every time a computer shows up in a movie it has an Apple logo on it :)

Re:Hell yeah. Worst list ever

Well, it was a dystopia.

Re:Hell yeah. Worst list ever

Wargames: *I* was a cracker, hacker, and Phreak at that time. The acoustic coupler was part of the art at the time. Acoustic couplers at 110/300 baud were common. Hayes modems w/direct jacks were just on the scene for a year, maybe two at that point.

You also have to remember that about the early 80's was the time that RJ-12 jacks and the ability to wire your own home for phone service started. Yep youngin's, time was when you got charged by Ma Bell for EACH phone in your house, and those phones came from Ma Bell. Phones were hardwired to the jack. (nb: If you disconnected the ringer bell inside the phone, and left just one on there, then you only got charged for one phone... no matter how many you had).

The voice wasn't that far off from that which I had on my Apple ][ at the time - a "SuperTalker". Did a pretty damn good job too - quite understandable, even if it was a bit 'cyberish'.

And how he hacked in was also 'state of the art' at the time. Anyone remember a Demon Dialer program? Nothing too tremendous - I wrote tons of them in BASIC. Essentially:

Open modem port
Begin for loop with all local prefixes step 1
Begin for loop from 0000 to 9999 step 1
If police station - skip number
dial number
wait for response string
If modem - open printer port, print number out
next
next

You'd fire it off at night before going to bed, wake up in the morning and review the list of numbers. Then you'd call back and see what you could hack into... Sometimes the idiot thing didn't even ask for a un/pw. Sometimes it did, but in the MOTD there was enough info to get you started...

Sometimes you'd stumble on an entire network to explore (Telenet anyone?). VAXen, VMS, CP/M, and SCADA systems connected to phone lines....

The only problem with the sequential dialers was the phone co got lots of complaints from everyone who you woke up, and they'd go digging for records of sequential calls every min or so... Then you'd get a nastygram from Bell Security or a call from the cops...

The next gen Demon Dialers spiced things up a bit... Create a multi-dimensional array loaded with the prefixes and numbers. Have a bit to know if you dialed it or not, and a bit to know if it was a modem or not. Randomly pick a prefix and number to dial and check... Wait a random amount of time between 1 sec and 30 sec between dialing the next number...

But as for the rest of the movie technology usage *yawn* it's not even close... The thing that really gets me are the schmucks who pick a lock with just a pick... WHERE'S THE DAMN TENSION WRENCH?>!?!?!?!!?!?! (oh yeah, I'm also a locksmith and a tunnel rat)...

Re:Hell yeah. Worst list ever

Heh - I had a hayes direct connect - darn, remember what those things COST!! A 1200baud Hayes cost more than a computer costs now. I had a 300 baud at home, and a 1200 at the lab. Remember having to order data grade lines?

I remember when modens came DOWN to the 200 dollar or so price mark - what a breakthrough - and remember - if you were GOOD, you could actually speedread a 300 baud text data stream - without X-on X-off

Yeah folks - there are some OLD geeks here - I actually worked with punch cards (still have a couple of boxes of them - use them as note paper when feeling geeky) Gettting a terminal was COOL - even a 75 baud teletype. If you had a DEC Flexwriter, you were BIG time..

Sigh

I'll bet that I've offically been a programmer (aka getting paid for it) longer than MOST people on /. are alive (anyway by the last poll I saw)

Gahhh - can't believe I said that - man I'm feeling like an old fart today. Ran into a YL yesterday who recognized me - and she said "hi" and offerered me her cheek - took me a few seconds to realize it was a friend's daughter who I have not seen in 2 years. I remember holding her while she was in diapers.

Re:Hell yeah. Worst list ever

You had modems?

Young'un. Spoiled brats with their newfangled tech. IN MY DAY, WE SPEEDREAD ACOUSTIC PHONE SIGNALS DIRECTLY INTO THE DAMN RECEIVER. KZZZCHHHHZKKKKZHHHTTTTKKKCHZZZZZZZZBLEEEEEEP. Hoarse for days, I tell you. And all that clicking on connect? That's an obscure Bantu dialect of Swahili. I tell you. When you said you learned a new language, it was a real language, not that that object-oriented fiddlesticks you have today. Internet? We'd just SHOUT PACKET CONTENTS at each other REAL LOUD.

That is, when we weren't busy touching live wires together to program in binary. There's a reason why a lot of 1970s hackers had huge frizzy hair. I tell you. Computing got a lot more interesting after electricity was invented.

Man, I'm an old fart too, but I so hate old-school technology downmanship :-)

Re:Hell yeah. Worst list ever

This is really a bad list. . . . They totally ignore things like Independence Day

Yeah, that could be something to do with the bit at the top of the article where they said they were deliberately excluding all science fiction movies.

Re:I think the all time classic is........

Yes, ideed. This was still the time when the idea of malware did not pentrate society to a deep level. I only asked myself: WTF the extraterrestrians build starships as big as cities but they do not protect theyr system at all (they did not even talk about skipping an protection).

Maybe they send a mail like this:

Dear Extraterresrtian friend,

you have not heard of me up to now but i am sure i can trust you. I am the son of the late ruler of this planet and twenty others. However, rihgt now i can not access my power, since enemies of my family have grounded our operations. I now come with a offer to you which i make to you only because i heard of your good morale. If offer you a significant share of my imperium if you can help me to regain power on earth....

Jurassic Park

"This is UNIX. I know this."
 
The file viewer in Jurassic Park really does exist.
 
http://fsv.sourceforge.net/

Re:Jurassic Park

The line is delivered with such egotism and authority that she can't NOT know unix! In fact, *only* Unix admins can be that cock-sure and arrogant.

(Sidenote: I am a Unix admin, at times.)

Re:Jurassic Park

Hey, after a day of being effectively dropped off of a cliff in a car, chased by dinosuars, snotted on by a dinosuar, almost being run over by a "flock" of dinosuars, seeing your little brother get electrocuted, and come close to being eaten by dinosuars a couple of times, I have to say that, personally speaking, *I* might come off as a bit cocky if finally faced with something that I know I've got nailed. =]

Re:Jurassic Park

It's quite disturbing, that kids a few years ago knew DOS and BASIC etc, because that's what their computers had...
Nowadays, most kids are barely able to click an icon.

I have a cousin who showed me how to program on a C64 many years ago, now after years of being stuck with windows, she can't do anything outside of the gui and even then gets stuck if any errors crop up.

Um....

Today, we're going to list the Top 10 worst violators. Here is the criteria:

1. Has to be a movie that you can rent on DVD.
2. Wide release, no limited release obscure films.
3. The movie can not be science fiction based.

Yet the number 2 movie:

2) Jurassic Park - 1993

Re:Um....

Michael Crichton is to science fiction what intelligent design is to science.

Re:James Bond (The World Is Not Enough)

Maybe you could render it useless by installing WinCE on the nuke itself.

HACKERS WAS THE GREATEST FILE EVAR!!

If you can't appreciate the pure joy that was hackers, you fail as a human being.

Hackers is great *because* it is nonsense. It is great *because* it is a total departure from reality. It expresses not how things are, but how we *want* them to be. It's called fiction.

Funny as hell