Just watched a CSI episode from a week or so ago. They find some pages written in Gregg shorthand. Do they go to a secretarial college? Do they ask around to find a secretary in her fifties or sixties?
Nope. They get out a Gregg shorthand manual and DECODE the symbols one by one. :rolleyes:
So what’s the stupidest thing you’ve seen?
Fifties? No. Sixties? Maybe.
I agree with this, because I make it my duty to always agree with non sequiturs.
Gregg who?
Gregg Shorthand. A notorious pirate with bad handwriting.
Stupidest? I dunno, but whenever these guys need to query a database the fucking monitor will show millisecond flashing of records until the correct match is found.
You know the drill; they input a fingerprint or a tattoo or something and then
"flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash.
BING!
ETA: Usually accompanied by some kind of database-rattling-through-the-records sound like the computer on the Enterprise. Maybe the relays clicking. Fuck.
I love the ones where thay have a picture on the left hand side of the monitor and the right hand side ff the monitor is rapidly cycling through a series of images untill the same one pops up on both sides and overlayed on the images bold red text flashes
MATCH
MATCH
MATCH…
It’s even better when there’s a loud “BING!, BING!, BING!” to go with it.
I’ve never understood the popularity of the CSI series, because it seems to be the most patronising, unrealistic, infuriatingly inaccurate, and ridiculously plotted show on TV. Nobody should be tolerating its absurdities, and yet it was the definitive runaway hit of the last decade.
In the pursuit of fighting ignorance, could you please explain this to me? As a 50 year old non-gamer, I’m not getting it.
Be gentle.
Eh, its not realistic, but I don’t think that makes it stupid. It makes it clear to viewers what the computer is doing, and is more interesting then a progress bar.
TV shows are supposed to tell a story, not create an exact fascimilie of real life.
That might be OK for Ward and June Cleaver. The rest of us know how computers work.
Obligatory Two Idiots, One Keyboard.
Holy CRAP.
A secretary in her sixties. Sequitur.
I nominate the Ripper Street pilot, where the entire plot revolves around a snuff film. In 1889.
And computers are the most boring thing in the world. If you know how they work, you know enough never to want to watch one working. So they fake it, just like every other single thing in every movie or TV show is faked to make it more exciting than reality. Like snuff films in 1889. They bother some people, but not others. And everybody still watches.
The problem is computers have become too ubiquitous. Most viewers are going to have direct experience with them nowadays.
That’s why people will accept it when they see a machine gun firing for two minutes without with a reload or a revolver with a silencer - most people don’t have the direct experience to know this is ridiculous. But if a movie or TV show had somebody driving a car and put it on autopilot, viewers would know that was wrong because everyone drives cars. And computers are reaching the point where they’re as commonly used as cars rather than as uncommonly used as firearms.
Because we Americans are by and large lazy, unthinking tubs of goo that want to plop our fat behinds on a chair or sofa and watch a show and not think about it.
When you find a winning combo, like CSI, you can even water it down and put it on at least three times a week and the public STILL can’t get enough.
Can you imagine the founding fathers being from this generation of Americans? Yeah, me either. They would all be talking about the tyranny of King George, and then CSI would come on and they’d go back to doing what they do best.. Vegetate.
Our government had turned a very large population into a bunch of docile automatons. Its almost like they are seeping an odorless gas into each of our homes to make us compliant. That’s what the TV does.
Don’t forget… You can watch CSI all day if you are at home, too.. The reruns can be found everywhere.
By the way, I share your amazement at the popularity of the show. But the general rule of keeping things simple, while throwing in a murder that can be solved in an hour with technology that most people don’t understand, and you have a winner!
Try watching an old rerun of Columbo. You’ll pull your hair out. They are all exactly the same!
i’d like to see someone defend that.
And yet cars still burst into flames when they crash. And no car in an action movie ever has an airbag. Nor do they have rear-view mirrors. They find parking spots right in front of any building they drive to. They get across Los Angeles in five minutes. Night roads are always slick with rain. Sport cars can never outrace a sedan filled with mobsters. They fly through the air and land without hurting the suspension or bending a wheel. You can drive them on two wheels through a narrow alley. Every car scene you’ve ever seen in Hollywood is faked in some way to make it less boring than the reality of driving.
Colors! Flashing lights! Cool!
It’s for people who like fiction, not hung up on reality.
I hate to point this out to you, but there isn’t a single show on TV that’s “realistic” other than the news, and sometimes not even that.
As for the OP, it seems a perfectly reasonable way to do it. It might take you a few hours to find a secretary who was still fluent in Gregg (tell me, where would you look for one?), but only a half hour or so to decode the message using a listing of the Gregg alphabet (which could be downloaded).
