35 interesting things you learn about computers in movies

[the_short1]

Thought this was Funny. To note, watch mission imposible one and two.. very high use of these...lol.. like there high-speed dialup on a train! lol!

Courtesy Of: Source...

And on another note, that website has other programming related information and articles im tempted to write in to him about the benifits of teaching Turing as an introductionary language...


35 interesting things that you learn about computers in the movies...

1. High tech equipment is often driven by a computer with a DOS prompt. (re: RoboCop)
2. High tech companies don't do offsite backups of the data (re: Terminator 2)

3. All media devices are readily available - ie If someone hands you a DAT tape with important data on it your PC will have a DAT drive.

4. No matter what you ask a computer to do it will respond with a percentage complete bargraph - especially when searching for data it can accurately give you the time remaining until it finds that data.

5. Data searching will always involve displaying all the searched data on the screen until a match is found - this is true of text and graphics such as fingerprints.

6. Telephone calls can be easily redirected through places all over the world, and upon a tracea globe will be displayed complete with lines travelling between each place.

7. Deleting of data always takes just a little less time than it takes the bad guys to knock down the door.

8. Alltechnology is plug and play - every computer can have any piece of technology attached.

9. High tech graphical interfaces are often driven by hundreds of keystrokes which do not appear anywhere on the screen.

10. IP addresses automatically supply the feds with the physical address (ie log on and they know where you are!)

11. Word processors never display a cursor.

12. You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences. Just keep hitting the keys without stopping

13. All monitors display 2 inch high letters.

14. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical >interfaces.

15. Those that don't will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.

16. Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard.

17. Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS." Viruses cause temperatures in computers, > >just like they do in humans. After a while, smoke billows out of disk >drives and monitors.

18. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off.

19. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.

20. All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backward. (See #7, above)

21. People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.

22. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.

23. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

24. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.

25. When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

26. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a >backup file -- and there are no undelete utilities.

27. If a disk has encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.

28. No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by >any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all >computer platforms.

29. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled.

30. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.

31. Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY-MP.

32. Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.

33. Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress.

34. Programs are fiendishly perfect and never have bugs that slow down users.

35. Any photograph can have minute details pulled out of it. You can zoom into any picture as far as you want to.

[Cervantes]

Your first link doesn't work, and I'm reasonably sure, to within an acceptable margin of error, that you listed 35 things.

[the_short1]

Cervantes wrote:

Your first link doesn't work, and I'm reasonably sure, to within an acceptable margin of error, that you listed 35 things.

The article was titled 25 things. .. lol.. ill change it to 35.. and link fixed.. thx

[Dan]

Quote:

1. High tech equipment is often driven by a computer with a DOS prompt. (re: RoboCop)

Most servers aucatly do not have a GUI installed or at least do not run the GUI all the time as it uses up memroy and some cpu time that should be put eletes where. I whould say alot of them uses unix shells, witch at least looks like a DOS prompt if you no litte about computers.

Also with most high tech/protype equipment you whould probly not be wasting time on making GUIs for it well you could be paying peoleop to make the software/hardware work better.

Quote:

6. Telephone calls can be easily redirected through places all over the world, and upon a tracea globe will be displayed complete with lines travelling between each place.

Telephone and internet conections can be redirected througth placesa all over the world. This is not hard to do with internet conections but is hard to do with phone calls unless you use VOIP. However a trace could only go back to the last node used (the first dot on the map, tho there noramly is no map).

[md]

It actually used to be quite easy to route your phone calls over long-distance phone lines, back in the days when the phone switches were controlled by tones instead of over a daa network. Now-a-days you'd need to hack int othe phone company's network and know how to use their software to make the network do what you want.

Quote:

13. All monitors display 2 inch high letters.

All monitors *can* display 2 inch tall letters, assuming they are at least 2 inches. They don't nessessarily do so however.

Quote:

22. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.

Umm... this one has/might still be true. Read "The Cuckoo's Egg" for a non-fiction example of this.

[bugzpodder]

CTU has a priporietory blowfish decryption algorithm O.o;
And Chloe O'Brian is the most talented hacker in the world. She can hack into virtually every system.

[Clayton]

36. The home row supplies the typist with every available key on the keyboard

[Dan]

Cornflake wrote:

It actually used to be quite easy to route your phone calls over long-distance phone lines, back in the days when the phone switches were controlled by tones instead of over a daa network. Now-a-days you'd need to hack int othe phone company's network and know how to use their software to make the network do what you want.

There are still some tricks around today, most invading cell phone cloneing. Tho you could allways go the each location and set up some phone routing hardware. Whould cost a hell of alot and take forever.....