Computers in movies.
I was watching Alien 1 yesterday, and I noticed that computers are always dealt with in the same way in many movies. I have prepared a small list of these cliches for you:
Whenever there is an "Access Denied" message there is an "Override" button.
"I'm sorry, I cannot let you see these files because they are top secret and only the Prime Minister of Greece can look at them, but if you ask me again I will be happy to oblige". Seriously, how gay is that? Why would anyone do that? Are they expecting the character to say "Oooh, access is denied, I'd better not tire myself with pressing an extra button and go along doing my business!". Or in Demolition Man, where the dude was so highly trained while being an ice cube that he could make "Override" buttons magically appear on "Access Denied" windows.
Whenever someone looks at a screen, the letters are projected on their face.
"Hey, look, his face is a screen, cool!". This increases readability immensely, I suppose, since everyone can see on your face what you are seeing. That wouldn't be so useful if the character was watching porn instead of saving planet X, would it?
Hackers always run away from the police in great big car-chases.
"Let's run from the police now that we have defaced this website! That will surely make the police forget our names and addresses and we can live happily ever after." No, sorry, in reality you just get a paper telling you to come to court, and you're screwed. You don't even need a fancy car for that.
Good hackers can guess the password that consists of one letter in a few tries. Security agencies cannot.
"Hey, I will just use my birthday year as the password. Surely noone will guess that!" Tough luck, because the mindpower of the trained hacker is immense, and he can look right through your powerful encryption scheme immediately. Setting passwords like egr#RGerg&*97GE3qg9jh23s is more secure, but let's face it, your company secrets aren't worth that much anyway.
Whenever text is output to the screen it comes on letter by letter and the really advanced computers can make a sound, too.
"Wow, this is great! No more instant display, now the computer can display the text at this stupidly slow rate so that I cannot read it as easily!" Our technology has not yet reached the point of making text appear gradually, and it will be a giant leap for mankind when it does.
The more acronyms the computer's parts' names have, the better they are.
"I have a RISC processor with OMFG architecture and a WOM chip interfaced by a USB cable on the LAN peripheral through PCI-ISA interface. Needless to say, I have a TB of RAM and a SB of WTF MB w/9000 GFX card." Names that ordinary people can understand mean that the computer sucks. Hackers know all the acronyms by heart, and that is the mark of the good hacker.
If you are a Hollywood movie director (Earth to Poromenos, wake up Poromenos), read this list and please make a movie about computers that does not suck. Also, hire me as a creative consultant at $6000/mo. Cheap, no?
Whenever there is an "Access Denied" message there is an "Override" button.
"I'm sorry, I cannot let you see these files because they are top secret and only the Prime Minister of Greece can look at them, but if you ask me again I will be happy to oblige". Seriously, how gay is that? Why would anyone do that? Are they expecting the character to say "Oooh, access is denied, I'd better not tire myself with pressing an extra button and go along doing my business!". Or in Demolition Man, where the dude was so highly trained while being an ice cube that he could make "Override" buttons magically appear on "Access Denied" windows.
Whenever someone looks at a screen, the letters are projected on their face.
"Hey, look, his face is a screen, cool!". This increases readability immensely, I suppose, since everyone can see on your face what you are seeing. That wouldn't be so useful if the character was watching porn instead of saving planet X, would it?
Hackers always run away from the police in great big car-chases.
"Let's run from the police now that we have defaced this website! That will surely make the police forget our names and addresses and we can live happily ever after." No, sorry, in reality you just get a paper telling you to come to court, and you're screwed. You don't even need a fancy car for that.
Good hackers can guess the password that consists of one letter in a few tries. Security agencies cannot.
"Hey, I will just use my birthday year as the password. Surely noone will guess that!" Tough luck, because the mindpower of the trained hacker is immense, and he can look right through your powerful encryption scheme immediately. Setting passwords like egr#RGerg&*97GE3qg9jh23s is more secure, but let's face it, your company secrets aren't worth that much anyway.
Whenever text is output to the screen it comes on letter by letter and the really advanced computers can make a sound, too.
"Wow, this is great! No more instant display, now the computer can display the text at this stupidly slow rate so that I cannot read it as easily!" Our technology has not yet reached the point of making text appear gradually, and it will be a giant leap for mankind when it does.
The more acronyms the computer's parts' names have, the better they are.
"I have a RISC processor with OMFG architecture and a WOM chip interfaced by a USB cable on the LAN peripheral through PCI-ISA interface. Needless to say, I have a TB of RAM and a SB of WTF MB w/9000 GFX card." Names that ordinary people can understand mean that the computer sucks. Hackers know all the acronyms by heart, and that is the mark of the good hacker.
If you are a Hollywood movie director (Earth to Poromenos, wake up Poromenos), read this list and please make a movie about computers that does not suck. Also, hire me as a creative consultant at $6000/mo. Cheap, no?
posted by Poromenos at 11:13 PM
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