TechnoLust's Journal: Rant about nerd moviegoers & MojoPac info (PC on iPod?)

I was reading something yesterday about the movie Firewall and how Hollywood made something very far fetched, but it wasn't as bad as the swirling formulae in Hackers. Well these same people gave Transporter 2 rave reviews, even though he does shit like jumping his car from parking garages and fitting through tiny openings in adjacent garages to escape capture, and doing mid-air barrel rolls to remove bombs planted on the undrecarriage of the car. So when it comes to shit that's completely off the wall WRT cars, it's not a big deal, but when it's the least bit embellished for computers, the fucking internet goes apeshit. Let me get out the clue by four. IT'S A FUCKING MOVIE! IT IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE A REFLECTION OF REAL LIFE! Here's the movie that would result from Hollywood listening to these whackjobs: A guy goes into work. Someone is trying to hack their system. He writes a firewall rule that will keep them out, but he can't put it in because of Sarbanes-Oxley procedures. He has to put them in version management software and submit a request for testing to QA. They will reply the next day with questions that have nothing to do with anything, and refuse to test until he answers them. He will answer them and they will test it and get back to him a couple of days later. Then he will send a request to the implementation team and they reply that they will include it in the monthly update next weekend. He replies that it is urgent, and they respond they can do it after hours this evening. In the mean time, the hacker has already sold all the company secrets and the poor schmuck gets fired. The End. How's that for realistic? It's pretty close to some of the places I've worked. Would you watch it? I sure as hell wouldn't. I watch movies to take a break from reality. To see pretend people in pretend situation doing pretend things on pretend computers. It's FUN! Get the bug out of your ass and ENJOY THE FUCKING FANTASY! </rant>

http://www.mojopac.com/ Looks like you can install stuff to any USB or FireWire device and then go to any PC and run the program from the device and it will look like the same PC no matter where you are. Interesting concept. I have downloaded the program but haven't had time to test it yet.

Split the difference, yo

[banky]

There is a difference between, "insane attention to reality", in which case our "evil" hacker would be a disinterested teenager, and "Firewall", wherein Han Solo is an Apple hardware engineer.

In a world where everything is possible, then obviously, nothing is forbidden. It's like Singularity fiction: I'm an immortal, godlike entity with multiple redundant backups, clones, and instant FTL communication with myselves.

And the risk is... ?? What? Why bother with the story at all, NOTHING will happen to me, unti

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[FortKnox]

Its really all about the suspension of disbelief. Its easy to 'suspend' that a pro-getaway driver can get lucky and score some wildly insane jumps to get away... its easy to 'suspend' that James Bond, a professional superspy, can avoid bullet shots and get the badguy AND the girl. Its difficult to 'suspend' that a corporate IT security guy can turn an ipod into something significantly different than the hardware requires it to do in a matter of seconds by just plopping a scanner onto it.

Physics weren't

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[Captain Splendid]

It's a combo between what you and TS said: Yes the Bond movies get a little more slack, because it's fantasy. But, taking Hackers as an example, my wife (technically illiterate), loves that movie, whereas I'm done the minute they say "hacking the Gibson" for the first time. For me, that's a deal-breaker, takes me out of the story immediately, but for my wife, all it means is that some serious shit is going down.

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[red5]

Physics weren't defiled in transporter 2.

Were you taking a piss break when he jumped out of a two story building through a plate glass window and broke his fall on the roof of a car, then got up like he does this shit every other day? He would have died. That was physically impossible.

Personally, I interpreted Transporter 2 as comedy

[Degrees]

Because yes, physics were defiled. Often. Without remorse. After one of the crashes / jumps / maneuvers the car barreled out onto the road without a single scratch. If that isn't the director giving a wink, wink, I don't know what is.

Well, it could be a huge flub - but then I'd have to take the film seriously.

The flying air barrel roll to remove the bomb was pretty funny too.

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[subgeek]

it's difficult for people in this community to suspend disbelief that the ipod could be hacked in such a way. does anyone think that this somehow represents the average movie goer? what percentage of the movie going public could describe the components necessary to make an ipod function? how many even know that a CPU is a chip and not that big box that attaches to the monitor? in a community of stunt drivers without much knowledge of digital doo-dads, it would be a lot easier to suspend their disbelief

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[TechnoLust]

Yeah, that's part of the point I'm trying to make. Technology is magical to people who don't know how it works. I studied physics extensively in college and I don't get my knickers in a knot when someone flys back 10 feet from a shotgun blast.

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[Xaoswolf]

I think that the real problem with the suspension of disbelief and realism has to do with the type of movie.

Lets look at James Bond, he's a super hero. He's Batman wihtout the mask. It's got supervillians, superscience, fast cars, giants with metal teeth, midgets with metal hats, and fricken sharks with fricken lasers on their heads.

They you have firewall, it's more of a drama than superhero action adventure. It's more true to life, so when someone does something completely untrue to life, people notice.

Check your Brain

[Shadow Wrought]

I have not seen Firewall, so I can't comment that much much, but in any movie in which there is a break in its own internal logic than that is bad. There are many films (Charlie's Angels comes readily to mind) in which it is fun and you buy your brain a nice bowl of popcorn so it can munch on something while it sits in the sit next to you. If the movie is trying to be serious, however, than the need for higher levels of reality are indeed called for.

The answer always comes down to writing. Often times

Movies, Music

[sielwolf]

Movies are different than music. I'm probably one of the last defenders of the LP in music: everyone wants to just shuffle stuff, pull off their favorites and ignore the rest. Of course you can't do that with movies. Would anyone be happy owning the middle hour of Shawshank? The last ten minutes of The Unforgiven? No. Movies are atomic at the movie level.

The problem is that too many Movies seem like they where just randomly smashed together subatomic elements. The logic changes at the convenience of

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[TechnoLust]

Actually Stabbing Westward's Wither Blister Burn & Peel is reason enough for me to believe that some albums shouldn't be broken into tracks. I have some playlists on my iPods that are albums that should never be split into tracks. Or rather, I did before I upgrade to the new version of iTunes and it replaced my playlists with stupid shit like Music Videos (thanks asshats, I don't have a video iPod.) and 90s music.

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[subgeek]

two things:

first, i almost always listen to music by album. you're not alone there.

second, ultraviolet is terrible.* kurt wimmer got all excited about the style he wanted to present and forgot to give any of the film any sort of cohesion. he also seemed to assume that anyone wanting to see ultraviolet had already seen equilibrium, as he included every idea from that earlier effort without any explanation that should have accompanied it. then he tried to make up for that by using the same story, just swi

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[TechnoLust]

I'm not married so you can imagine what my milla crush is like. ;-)

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[sielwolf]

One thing that made the movie unwatchable was their decision to do a matte Photoshop over Milla's face so it looked all flat and washed out. Like someone just ran a blur filter on it (like what they do on pictures to deacne/pock them). So her face looked like a fuzzy blob. I have no idea why they did that (maybe to fit in with all the overuse of CGI on it?) Just looked bad.

Clearcase, CCB and RRB

[jeepliberty]

Well if you had said that the QA needed the code checked into Clearquest so that the Change Control Board could review it at its next scheduled bimonthly meeting and if it was that important I could submit an item to the Risk Review Board which meets on alternating Tuesday's, I might think that the movie was written by a co-worker named Dilbert.

I do not plan to see a movie that resembles my office space. Although Office Space was a parody which made it okay.