# I hate computer hacking in movies... **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [August 20, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515 "2006-08-20T23:59:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Surbey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@Surbey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Surbey)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2006, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/1 "2006-08-20T23:59:40Z")
I was watching Swordfish this morning and I wanted to gauge my own eyes out with a spoon. This guy was writing a computer virus to drain the bank of its money. Ok, I can see that being logical. But while I watched this man, hammer away at a computer, he is flying through what looks to be Tron in realtime. I swear to god. Why does hollywood think that everything that has to do with computers needs to be in virtual reality?? This isn’t the only movie too. Ever seen Hackers? Jurrasic Park? The Net? That movie just pissed me off. Arg! Why does it always have to be that way? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/2 "2006-08-21T00:15:40Z")
Because a realistic depiction of hackers at work would be boring as fuck. ---
**Author:** ![Monstre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e274bd/32.png) [@Monstre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monstre)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 12:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/3 "2006-08-21T00:21:39Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Because a realistic depiction of hackers at work would be boring as fuck. Let’s see… why am I getting this stupid compile error? Oh, here it is, I left out a semi-colon. Okay, edit… save… re-build… Ah! Finally. Okay, run… fuck! Segmentation fault! No, no no no no no! I just want to steal some fucking money from the bank. I don’t need this seg fault shit. _takes a break, orders a pizza_ ---
**Author:** ![BabaBooey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/dfb087/32.png) [@BabaBooey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BabaBooey)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/4 "2006-08-21T00:32:16Z")
You mean yall don’t do your hacking with VR 3-D glasses and a Powerglove? ---
**Author:** ![Wolfian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/7ea924/32.png) [@Wolfian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolfian)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/5 "2006-08-21T00:32:59Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Because a realistic depiction of hackers at work would be boring as fuck. I’d rather watch the kinda hackers who spit a lot. -Crow T. Robot ---
**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/6 "2006-08-21T01:12:05Z")
INT. HACKER’S LAIR – DAY STEWEY NERFDINGER, 14, AKA “Nurfbawlz” sits in front of his six-year-old Dell with a tiny CRT and types furiously in an Emacs window. ``` STEWEY Oh my God. This is so fucking elite. I'm gonna kill those bitches. ``` He saves his program and smashes the Enter key. All excitement fades from his face when he sees the screen. The compiler errors race up his terminal window, seemingly never-ending and filling his entire pubescent body with rage. ``` STEWEY Fuck! God dammit! What now?! ``` Stewey switches virtual desktops and pulls up his X-chat window, already connected to EFnet. He types like a bat of of hell. We observe his highly technical conversation Nurfbawls: OMFG. What does it mean when gcc says ‘invalid lvalue in assignment’?! ReverandCowbell: it means yr a fuckin tard b1tMapz: haha doofus18584: compiLOLer error! Nurfbawlz: FUCK YOU GUYS Stewy switches desktops again and pulls up his GAIM window. He sees that p1x3lz42, a 49-year-old programmer and mentor, who has an unusual fascination with 14-year-old boys, is online. He opens a chat window. Nurfbawls: hey man u around p1x3lz42: hello Stewey Nurfbawls: I got that book you recommended. C Programming for Douchebags, but I got stuck. p1x3lz42: no problem, i can help. Nurfbawls: It says ‘invalid lvalue in assignment’ p1x3lz42: oh, you probably mixed up an = and == somewhere Stewey sees the light and scans over his short program code. He changes an = to an == and compiles it again. It compiles cleanly with no errors! Nurfbawls: omg it works! yr elite! p1x3lz42: so, you want to meet for a pizza sometime? I’ll show you a new laptop I have in my van. Nurfbawls: my mom says i’m not allowed to meet ppl from the internet anymore. INT. MIDDLE SCHOOL SCIENCE CLASSROOM – DAY REX BANNER, 15, the school bully, sneaks up behind Stewey in the hallway and shoves him into a locker. ``` STEWEY Hey! REX Up yours, dork! STEWEY Don't fucking mess with me. I'm an elite hacker now. I'll change all your grades to F and steal your parents' bank accounts! REX Oh yeah, prove it! STEWEY Fine, I will! ``` Rex follows Stewey to the school computer lab and Stewey removes a USB thumb-drive from his coat pocket. ``` STEWEY This USB drive contains a program I wrote last night that will break into the whole school's security system! ``` Stewy sticks the thumb drive in a nearby keyboard and opens up a terminal window. He changes to the appropriate directory and compiles his program: make But disaster strikes! /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lgtk ``` STEWEY Fuck! What does this shit mean? REX It means that box doesn't have the DSO's for GTK installed, loser! And why the fuck does an elite hacking program need a graphics library? ``` Rex smashes Stewey’s head through the computer monitor. ``` STEWEY Damn you, Rex Banner! Damn you! ``` ---
**Author:** ![Terrifel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c68b51/32.png) [@Terrifel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terrifel)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/7 "2006-08-21T01:27:53Z")
> [@Surbey](#): > > I was watching Swordfish this morning Well, there’s your problem right there. ---
**Author:** ![bouv](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bc8723/32.png) [@bouv](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bouv)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/8 "2006-08-21T01:53:50Z")
> [@Surbey](#): > > Jurrasic Park? IIRC, that was based off of a real UNIX type OS. However, the plausibility of a 12-year old knowing UNIX is certainly debateable. ---
**Author:** ![catsix](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e19b73/32.png) [@catsix](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/catsix)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/9 "2006-08-21T02:03:02Z")
> [@](#): > > **bouv** said: > IIRC, that was based off of a real UNIX type OS. However, the plausibility of a 12-year old knowing UNIX is certainly debateable. I wasn’t much older than that when I got my first shell account. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/10 "2006-08-21T02:38:00Z")
And if you have any idea what UNIX is, if you see something marked /bin /usr /etc, it’s Unix. It was a SGI GUI. Eh. At 12, I’d used it, but not much. Good hacking: WarGames. Social engineering, bad security… allowing for a little movie magic, it’s the most realistic hacking I’ve seen in a movie. Semi-good hacking: Office Space: Yeah, it’s that lame. But I loved the music, and the mac/pcs. 🙂 Based on a real hack. ---
**Author:** ![betenoir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/258eb7/32.png) [@betenoir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/betenoir)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/11 "2006-08-21T02:51:19Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Because a realistic depiction of hackers at work would be boring as fuck. But…I’ve never found fuck that boring. Maybe you’re doing it wrong. ---
**Author:** ![Mayo\_Speaks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c57346/32.png) [@Mayo\_Speaks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mayo_Speaks)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/12 "2006-08-21T02:53:16Z")
> [@Surbey](#): > > I was watching Swordfish this morning and I wanted to gauge my own eyes out with a spoon. This guy was writing a computer virus to drain the bank of its money. Ok, I can see that being logical. But while I watched this man, hammer away at a computer, he is flying through what looks to be Tron in realtime. I swear to god. Why does hollywood think that everything that has to do with computers needs to be in virtual reality?? This isn’t the only movie too. Ever seen Hackers? Jurrasic Park? The Net? That movie just pissed me off. Arg! Why does it always have to be that way? The “best” part is when Hugh Jackman sees his new amazing computer and is dumbfounded because it has EIGHT SCREENS! Because we all know that the only thing computer geeks care about is the number of screens, particularly if they’re not arranged in any logical fashion. Of course, we all know the real best part of that movie… ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 3:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/13 "2006-08-21T03:00:27Z")
> [@bouv](#): > > However, the plausibility of a 12-year old knowing UNIX is certainly debateable. The dinosaurs which eventually moved on to feature intelligent, talking velociraptors, that was fucking _science_ man! ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/14 "2006-08-21T03:28:40Z")
> [@threemae](#): > > The dinosaurs which eventually moved on to feature intelligent, talking velociraptors, that was fucking _science_ man! Talking? Did I miss a directors cut or something? Anyway, the stupidity of _Swordfish_ doesn’t even involve computers - it involves a ridiculously complex heist that could have been pulled off with about one-thousandth as much effort. ---
**Author:** ![threemae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f9b8f/32.png) [@threemae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/threemae)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 3:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/15 "2006-08-21T03:36:27Z")
Jurrasic Park 3, the dinosoars look at each other, squak a bit, and know exactly what one another in thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/46a35a/32.png) [@Tim\_T-Bonham.net](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tim_T-Bonham.net)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/16 "2006-08-21T04:05:56Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Good hacking: WarGames. Social engineering, bad security… allowing for a little movie magic, it’s the most realistic hacking I’ve seen in a movie. Except for the scene at the end, to have the computer play tic-tac-toe against itself: “enter number of players zero”. So he actually keys the word “zero” instead of the digit “0”, and the program accepts it! Now a program could certainly be programmed to accept either words or digits for this, but this is clearly unlikely for this routine, given the primitive user interface shown in the rest of that scene. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/17 "2006-08-21T04:34:00Z")
> [@](#): > > Of course, we all know the real best part of that movie… There were two great reasons to watch that movie. ---
**Author:** ![Lazlo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lazlo/32/9678_2.png) [@Lazlo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lazlo)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/18 "2006-08-21T04:38:37Z")
> [@friedo](#): > > INT. HACKER’S LAIR – DAY > > STEWEY NERFDINGER, 14, AKA “Nurfbawlz” sits in front of his six-year-old Dell > with a tiny CRT and types furiously in an Emacs window > … That. Was. Brilliant! ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/19 "2006-08-21T05:02:17Z")
One nice example of hacking is in [Sneakers](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/). A password needs to be found to do something or other. What do the guys do? Do they they run a counter decrypt thingy? Mirror a flash drive using a mind control device? No. They film the guy typing his password through a window and then argue for five minutes as to whether he tped an R or a 5 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Malienation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4af34b/32.png) [@Malienation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malienation)\ **Post date:** [August 21, 2006, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515/20 "2006-08-21T05:33:36Z")
Harumph. What pisses me off about movies, computer-wise, is the ease with which criminologists magically increase the resolution of poor photographs by pushing one fucking button. My guess is that such video enhancement involves mapping video images into a scalar field, taking the curl of it to form a vector field, increasing the magnitude of the vectors to enhance the image, and performing an anti-curl operation to show the image. I’m just guessing, though, and even if I’m right, that’s a lotta work for a computer to grunt through. I’m also guessing that the enhanced image would tend to look a little unnatural; the enhanced images in movies never do. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-hate-computer-hacking-in-movies/369515.md?page=2)