Worst case of this: Timothy Dalton (as James Bond) plants a bomb aboard a Soviet cargo plane in The Living Daylights. After the usual mayhem, there is a scene of him frantically searching for it through all the scattered cargo as he listens to it beeping. If those beeps are loud enough to be heard over the four engines of the plane, how could you possibly use such a device covertly?
They are trying to establish some mysterious background for Digger. He is familiar with weapons and sneaking about, for instance.
That said, John Doe is really starting to suck. The sign language isn’t very well done. Diamond mines in Arkansas are moved across the state and changed from a park to a commercial concern.
Using Direct TV to find the dog using GPS satellites.
I think they make it all up as they go along.
And she’s obviously never played You Don’t Know Jack before. You have to expect to be insulted by the host. (and it’s funny)
Only this weekend did I realise how they get away with this stuff. I think a LOT of people have NO idea about computers, I mean at all. I visited with some thirtysomething relatives, and they asked me to take a look at their computer. They can go to websites, and check their email, which was apparantly set up for them by somone else. They do not know of the existance of search engines. They did not know that the colours were out of whack on their monitor (overdose of red, white is bright pink, and all other colours similarly distorted, the windows logo looks insane), they did not know that they could download files that were sent to them via email, but logged on with their dial-up to show me the pictures they had recieved in their mail. They themselves were in the dark as to how one might attach files. It was completely insane. In a related incedent, mrsIteki was happily showing my flashy little laptop to the family, and each and every one of them, held it by the screen (you know that feeling when your belly flips so that you almost vomit? I had that). They really just didn’t know that that is not what you do.
Now that is weird.
Nice strong grip, thumbs placed firmly on the delicate LCD at either side, and give the whole thing a good wiggle to experice the hinged effect of a laptop. This is including the people who actually own their own laptops, or have laptops through work.
Did I mention we were eating cream buns? dies a little
[/hijack]
[continue hijack]
Hey, what ARE “cream buns”?
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On the original question:
a) Most people know nothing about how computers work, even people who work with them.
b) Most people don’t pay that much attention to the plot of TV shows–they’re watching for “mindless” entertainment.
c) Why would the writers care that the details don’t make sense?
In support of a) I submit the following:
When I was working in tech support, our product crashed on a customer computer and left a core file. I asked the customer to send me the file so our developers could analyze it and discover what happened. He didn’t know how to attach the file to email, so used “cat” to get the file on screen, then printed it and faxed it to me. (Non-Unix folks: this guy printed a binary file and faxed it to me. Worthless.)
I don’t want to start a “well here’s how dumb my customer was” thread (I’m sure it’s out there in many places), but this is just one example of how little people know about the tools they use.
Don’t expect a “make computers in movies realistic” movement to gain momentum any time soon.
NoCoolUserName sweet sticky buns with whipped cream in them. In this case also including a mix of marzipan and cream. So, marzipan, cream, whipped cream, icing sugar. Yummy for me, not for my laptop.
My problem is with shows that seem to know better, and get things almost but not quite correct.
An example is CSI… they manage to make things look real enough when someone uses a computer (Windows-style login boxes, etc), but the thing beeps incessantly as they type. Uh, what? Does the beeping add something to the show?
Of course, the other side to CSI and computers is the mysterious nature of the computer interfaces… for example, a login box might look kind of like an NT/2000 login screen, but it’s clear they created one from scratch to mimic it. Is there a copyright thing going on that prevents them from just filming the screen of a common workstation? I see this a lot on various shows, but it happens repeatedly on CSI.
Some other observations I have made about computers on TV or in the movies:
The screen is incredibly bright! It’s bright enough to project the image onto the user’s face. This would be bright enough to blind a person.
On older shows computer monitors sometimes used that “computer” font (kind of like the MICR numbers used on checks). I have never seen a computer that, by default, uses this kind of font on the screen.
Any time a password is typed in and it’s wrong the screen will flash *** ACCESS DENIED *** and it will beep loudly and incessantly. What kind of operating system are they using? I swear Hollywood has its own made-up OS for use in movies since I have never seen such user interfaces IRL.
Nobody ever properly powers down a computer (except in Office Space, and perhaps for Peter’s situation there he should have just shut the damn machine off.)
As a side note, has anyone noticed in The Ring how the “URL” on the computer screen towards the beginning of the movie is just referencing a local file that was made on that machine? It says “C:\WIN98\Desktop…” (IMDB reference).
I used to say ‘why do people accept someone hacking a secure computer remotely in 5 min when they would balk if someone started flying?’
But people don’t always balk. Occasionally you’re watching a show, and half way through, you find someone’s psychic, or they meet a mermaid or something. WHY??
Although how she knew this is another story…
I think that True Lies had a reasonably good instace of computor break in. I mean, it happened way too fast, but it looked like they kew the pasword already, so its not atrociously bad.
Of course, Denis Nedry designed a security system of his own.
“Uh, uh, uh! You didn’t say the magic words!”
My God, man! You can’t say “BigMac”. You’d get sued. You have to make up a name like “Wally Burger” or something.
Car chases are good. Or stuff getting blowed up.
That one cracks me up. They used it because they thought it looked “futuristic”, when it was actually developed to make it easier for scanners to read the numbers on checks. It would serve no purpose as a monitor font.
I think that’s just an example of the larger trend of never finishing anything because it would seem monotonous. Like:
Nobody ever rinses the shaving cream off their face after shaving
Nobody locks the front door when they leave the house
Nobody sets the parking brake when they park the car
People constantly pour drinks but don’t drink them
When making phone calls, nobody ever has to wait for the person on the other end to pick up the phone