KDE on the NBC Show "Heroes"

Vesuv writes "The pilot episode of NBC's flagship drama for the 2006 fall season proudly features a laptop showing a KDE desktop and KDE applications such as Kopete and KMix running on Mandriva Linux. " The show itself looks to have potential for essentially an x-men knockoff. I mean, it ain't written by Sorkin (all hail jesus) so I'll give it a few more episodes to decide if all the angst is gonna kill me or not.

The show is totally unrealistic

Don't get me wrong... teleportation, flight, invulnerability, etc... all okay. But a hot girl using linux on the desktop? Yeah, right!

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

Allow me to be the first to say:
This thread is worthless without pictures

http://www.eikehein.com.nyud.net:8090/kde/heroes/k de-on-heroes3-hd.png [nyud.net]
http://www.eikehein.com.nyud.net:8090/kde/heroes/k de-on-heroes6-hd.png [nyud.net]

Now that i've provided pics of KDE, you provide pics of your wife ;o)

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

Nice. However, I didn't notice the monitor in the first picture, and it was clearly in the way in the second. :-)

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

the real question is, does she have a lower slashdot id# than you?

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

But a hot girl using linux on the desktop? Yeah, right!

Because they all know that it isn't ready for the desktop yet! OTOH, most of them use BSD on the server side.

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

You have to think in the context of the story, this was not some random product placement. She has a dark mysterious past, she's on the run with almost no money. She can't afford to buy a new license of Windows after updating her system to give internet peep shows.

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

But a hot girl using linux on the desktop?

As long as the girl, doesn't say "This is GNU/Linux. I KNOW GNU/Linux!" That would ruin the fantasy for me.

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

I'm glad the girl on the screen didn't say "FSCK ME"

Re:The show is totally unrealistic

"Don't get me wrong... teleportation, flight, invulnerability, etc... all okay. But a hot girl using linux on the desktop? Yeah, right!"

*fap fap fap*

oo! And there's a hot chick using it!

*FAP FAP FAP*

Another X-Men Ripoff?

Do we really need another X-Men ripoff? Wasn't Mutant X already enough?

Re:Another X-Men Ripoff?

If you want to go back, X-men "ripped it off" from Darwin.

Yup, because Darwin was all about random mutations resulting in awesome super powers.

What is a "rip-off"?

I've always wondered about all the terminology that we have for derivative creative work. I doubt that anyone could come up with a coherent definition of "rip-off" that didn't rely on subjective evaluation of quality and/or a subjective evaluation of sameness.

Ask yourself this, is it possible to have a story about a group of super-powered students that won't be considered an "x-men rip-off"? Is that really fair to the authors who actually do come up with interesting and creative ideas of their own?

I'm not saying Heroes is a unique and beautiful flower. I haven't seen it, and maybe all it does have going for it is its x-menness, but I refuse to evaluate fiction on the sole basis that it is "like" something else. IMHO, it stands on its own merits, or it falls on its own flaws. Anything else just seems like being dishonest and unfair to the creative folks that put the fiction together.

seems logical,

It does make sense that in TV and films people would use free and open software on computers, they need it to look like people think a computer should look (and KDE does that) and they need to have the right to use it without worrying about being sued because it's proprietry and they like to not have to give thousands of dollars and coppies of the script over to people so the whole show doesn't get pulled for creating a negative image of software.

The only thing that amazes me is that more people aren't doing this

Ow, my virgin eyes!

BITCH!

You can't show that on the internet!

Based on a Graphic Novel?

I think the show is based on a graphic novel by the same name. (if not, it sure is inspired by it.) Mutants start to realize what they are, and the normal population has trouble coming to terms with them. All this before the mutants become "superheros."

So?

This is even remotely interesting because?

Important point to note:

The scene in question with the KDE stuff involves a hot chick getting naked online.

And you notice the windowing system and applications on her laptop.

Slashdot, you never cease to amaze me :)

Re:Important point to note:

Ah, but that's the difference between a nerd and a regular pervert. The pervert's focus will be on "the porn" while the nerd's focus will be on "how is this person getting it so I can get more of it!" Teach a man to fish...

Another sighting!

And if you squint really hard you can see Elvis in the background.

Xmen

Superpowers != Xmen.

I watched the pilot. It was interesting enough that I'll probably watch a few more episodes to see what the hell is going on.

Say it isn't so!

It used to be that Apple was the darling of the TV/Movie business. Of course that was usually on the hardware side. Ordinarily the "screen shots" were graphic-artist nonsense that photographed well (and of course, there is always a beep or click when each character appears on the screen). Maybe now we'll see Apple hardware, and then the screen shots will be Linux. That would be a bit incongruous, but very likely something Hollywood would do.

It has been done

Not really big news.
TV has been doing that for a while. It might not have been KDE. But I can't count the times I have seen alternate OS's.

Mac OS has been shown all the time, even advertising software or websites that do not even work on a Mac (Or is not needed for a Mac like virus scanners). (Movies follow the general trend. Heros use Macs, while Villains or Dark Heros use Windows)

Unix and Linux (because they often look the same on TV) with various windows managers. CDE is often popular. This is often used in the Big Data Centers, or when people are doing some real hacking.

Now they probably used KDE because they didn't need to pay royalty to any company to show it. Plus it looked high-tech enough for the show. But in the grand scheme of things most people don't care what the hero's computer is running. It wont bring packs of people to install linux because they saw linux on their favorite TV Show. Just like in Jurassic Park you didn't see a migration back to Unix because the park ran it, or a huge migration away because the park failed because of it.

KDE

Because if they had used Windows:

1. They probably would have to pay Microsoft for product placement
2. Fill out tons of forms just to use the product on-air
3. Using something that wasn't Windows (and therefore unfamilliar with most people) looks "techier", or
4. KDE/Linux is free; why spend any more money than you have to? :)

Re:KDE - Another reason ..

Because if they had used Windows: 1. They probably would have to pay Microsoft for product placement 2. Fill out tons of forms just to use the product on-air 3. Using something that wasn't Windows (and therefore unfamilliar with most people) looks "techier", or 4. KDE/Linux is free; why spend any more money than you have to? :)

Point no.3 is very valid. By making it look "techy", it gets featured on Slashdot! Seriously,it has helped spread the show.

A note on "Heroes"

OK, so the show is trying a little too hard to be "Lost" (Look - we've got all these connections between people - there are no coincidences on the Island - I mean, the Earth!)

But what gets me is how the writers could actually have a conversation like this one:

Politician: Hey, little brother.
Good hearted guy: Hey, I think I can fly!
Politician: Great - that's *exactly* something someone would say in a crowded room full of people.
Good hearted guy: No, really - I'm going to be like superman!

I nearly turned it off at that point, but my wife wanted to watch the rest. Overall, maybe a 7/10 so far - but the next episode looks to kick things into gear.

Grrr...

I am so man I missed the first episode. It looked interesting. Clearly a rip-off of the XMen idea, but I would love to see how they make it their own.

There goes the poor server...

... I hope you're glad! Madmen! MADMEN!

Noticed something from last season of Deadwood

Did you notice that Hearst's abacus was running an early build of Slackware?

Noticed. Was another example too.

I watched Heroes the night it was on and loved it (I missed the Linux part; as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, there were better things to be looking at in the scene).

I didn't delete it from TiVo because my wife missed it. Last night she was watching it, and I sat down right as the camera was pointing at the desktop, and my eyes noticed the blue in the window's title bar and I laughed and said "they're using Linux".

Later on when they showed the Japanese guy's friend screwing around on his computer at work, I noticed his desktop was also not Windows or Mac, but didn't recognize the theme (and no, I wasn't going to pause and try to figure it out :)) The site above did not mention/post about his desktop, but I'm sure someone can get a capture of it.

And in several months...

... we'll see the news:

"Last night's episode of NBC's drama 'Heroes' scored surprisingly high in the Hopeless Geeks demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research."

Kill me now

What a miserably written and horribly acted show. I found myself wishing Nissan hadn't ponied up to bring it to us with limited commercial breaks.

So sad...

It's a sad reflection on my life that I care about this... but I do.

Misfits of Science

Its not an X-Men ripoff - Its a ripoff of Misfits of Science, which was the best television show ever.

Making a logic board

Wait, isn't this the same show where some 10 year old kid was soldering his computer because it was broken? Now, I know they were trying to illustrate that he was a smart kid and all, but you can't fix a computer that was made any time after 1982 with a soldering iron. I really think they should hire consultants to read through the script before they put in stupid things like that.

I know some geek is going to respond saying he soldered his computer and made it work, but realistically, it's not something that you can do. Some script writer thought it would sound good...

Product placement...

I'm guessing it's on because nobody paid to have it on there - or Mandrake did. Would I like my software promoted in big show on NBC? Hell yeah. I'm guessing the message is "If you don't pay, we don't give you any air time." Next time around, they'll know the threat is credible - they can use something other than PC/Mac. And then I'm sure they'll get some petty cash and put the iMac back in.

Studio 60

You should turn on your television during this show just so you don't miss "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."

I missed the Linux shot though, probably because I was too busy playing WoW, in Wine. Gnome though . . .

Hey, what's with the Aaron Sorkin hate?

I always thought Sports Night and West Wing were pretty well-written.

Review of Heroes

This is about the only time this blog will be on-topic, so here goes:

No, she didn't like it. [chicagotribune.com]

Camera scene

The real news here is that someone got a USB camera working with KDE.

In case you haven't seen it...

The entire episode is on NBC's site [nbc.com] for free. You will have to put up with a pretty bad Flash video interface and ads everywhere. I had a problem with it in Firefox, but there was no problem in IE. Yeah... one of those sites :(

KMix?!!

Woooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!! Look everyone, I can control the volume on my sound card!! :)

(Disclaimer - I've been using KDE as my preferred desktop for over 5 years...

Violations; This show won't last

They need to provide the source of the show since they are using GPL'd products (original commercial free edited, uncut video?).

I predict Stallman getting the whole thing shut down shortly.

It makes sense, it shields them against popups.

Try to imagine this; you're on a stage, you're doing the third take of a scene at the end of a long day. Your prop guy (Andy) chose MS Windows XP, he did set it up in a hurry the same day (everything's behind schedule on a set), your actors are finally in the proper mood for the scene, you're in the middle of filming it and bang, MS Update warns you there is an update available for you and that you should update it now...

"CUT!, Andy, next time get me a real OS, will you?."

KDE on network TV is nice, but not as uber as...

...rebuilding a "logic board". Such as the little kid was doing right before his mom took him away before the goon squad showed up.

There are two ways of looking at this IMHO:

1, the kid is actually a super-uber-genius and was actually rebuilding a real "logic board" with a soldering iron and spare parts, or:

2, it was simply dumbed-down techno-speak for the masses. I'm inclined to believe this scenario, and it kind grated on me afterwards.

That having been said, I have actually resurected a dead mobo by "hot-swapping" the bios chip--we were able to recover from a corrupted bios flash by using an identical board. I was pretty stoked that it worked as well as it did and that I didn't fry both motherboards in the process :)

This is just sad

Wow, someone is running KDE on national TV!

Can you say "Marketing Opportunity"? I thought you could. If the show takes off, prepare to have OS X or Vista on that puppy.

kde on "Criminal Minds" last night as well..

Kde was the desktop used on the computer in the chat room company last night as well (the one about the Child being Auctioned off - P911)

Clearly

It is clear that the director and set designers support Linux. Now if more tv shows, movies and commercials use it more often then we might have something.

Also, Heroes is not a ripoff of Xmen or MutantX. X-Men is based on the comics. Heroes is a drama series that revolves the lives of 'special' people. And Heroes is actually an offtake from The 4400. NBC Universal also owns The 4400 series. Has anyone seen The 4400?

A new trend to differentiate good guy and bad guy?

Is this a sign for a new trend in hollywood's movie? Good guys use Unix( Linux and Mac ), bad guys use Windows?

Tech reference on "Kidnapped" as well

I was watching "Kidnapped" last night (I don't recall which network it's on) and they were looking at someone's computer and "31337" was on the screen. The lead character went on to say that this meant "elite" in the hacker community. This didn't impress me much, but he went on to say, "Also, 31337 is the UDP port that the hacker group Cult of the Dead Cow uses to access Windows 95 PCs using Back Orafice."

A little dated, but I thought that was a pretty impressive reference for a television show to make.

Dejavu

The only time I ever see MacOS and Windows alternatives being used by the average person is in the movies.

Well duh.....

If you watched the show, you'd know that she doesn't have a lot of money and on top of that owes a lot to the Mob...she can't afford a Windows or Apple laptop....so of course she had to resort to Linux on an old laptop she had lying around.

Maybe they just used what was on set.

Many TV and Movie crews use Linux for digital editing and the like. They like linux because it is cheap and versitle. They very well could have just grabbed a laptop on the set and used it.

Right to use objects in movies...

I see a lot of people here saying that there is no way to stop someone using something in a movie. Like I would be free to use whatever furniture I like or whatever. But I'm sure this isn't true.

I'm sure I read something a couple of years back about a movie being delayed because they used a chair that the designer of the chair objected to.

Re:This is just the beginning...

Wouldn't it be GINUSA: GINUSA Is Not the USA?

Re:This is just the beginning...

I predict that by 2020, Richard Stallman will be successful in changing our country's name to the United States of GNUmerica. You heard it here first!

That's not a recursive acronym, and to be GNU it must have a recursive acronym!

How about: USG States of GNUmerica?

I doubt it

Stallman's point is that "Linux" is largely GNU software running on a non-GNU kernel. I doubt the US will be running largely GNU software on a non-GNU kernel by 2020, so Stallman will probably not make any effort to have the name changed.

Blasphemer!

Open Source is GOD! He sent his son Linux to save you! GNU to guide you! OSS, Linux and GNU in one, the almighty! Worship and praise or be condemned to the slavery of Microsoft or Apple forever!!! REPENT SINNER!