# Technology BS in movies **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 16, 2006, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003 "2006-05-16T17:40:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Merijeek](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f05b48/32.png) [@Merijeek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merijeek)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/21 "2006-05-16T20:36:34Z")
> [@ddgryphon](#): > > I accepted many things when watching “Jurassic Park” but when the little girl sat down to that video game and said “I know this. It’s Unix.” I actually moaned out loud – which I almost never do. But that was just one of the most blatantly awful Tech BS moments in a movie built on them. My favorite was when Nedry was on the phone with his contact and Nedry was watching his contact on a video camera. You can see the playback bar sliding past on the bottom of the screen. Nedry was talking to a Quicktime movie. 🙂 -Joe ---
**Author:** ![LiveOnAPlane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3d9bf3/32.png) [@LiveOnAPlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LiveOnAPlane)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/22 "2006-05-16T20:37:38Z")
> [@dwc1970](#): > > … Movie computers also make lots of gratuitous beeping and clicking noises that real computers usually don’t make. Yes, but that’s because they are just killing time while waiting for the tape drives they’re connected to to finish loading their file(s)! 😃 ---
**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:** [May 16, 2006, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/23 "2006-05-16T20:39:29Z")
I forgot about the speech synth. Eh. Considering it was named after the guy’s kid, he could have been batty enough to build a speech synth into it. RC Pterodactyl, remember? Okay, okay. But I just mounted a reel-to-reel tape today. 6250 CPS. Why? To do the frigging medicare billing. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. Still, all things considered, I consider WarGames at least as accurate as your average cowboy, car racing, or, heck, college movie, and more accurate than _most_ movies since. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/24 "2006-05-16T20:41:12Z")
> [@ddgryphon](#): > > I accepted many things when watching “Jurassic Park” but when the little girl sat down to that video game and said “I know this. It’s Unix.” I actually moaned out loud – which I almost never do. But that was just one of the most blatantly awful Tech BS moments in a movie built on them. Not true. I went to see _Jurassic Park_ on opening night with a couple friends, one of whom was a major computer geek (and a great guy). The girl sits down at the computer, and there’s a brief shot where you can see the screen. My friend said “that’s Unix,” even before she said it in the movie. It wasn’t the interface that tipped him off, but he recognized some of the directory names as being standard Unix. ---
**Author:** ![Tripwire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ccd318/32.png) [@Tripwire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripwire)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/25 "2006-05-16T20:46:58Z")
I’m sitting here with about 5 black command prompt windows open right now. It’s called UNIX, kids. All the big boys play with it. ---
**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:** [May 16, 2006, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/26 "2006-05-16T20:49:50Z")
> [@ddgryphon](#): > > I accepted many things when watching “Jurassic Park” but when the little girl sat down to that video game and said “I know this. It’s Unix.” I actually moaned out loud – which I almost never do. But that was just one of the most blatantly awful Tech BS moments in a movie built on them. … it was Unix, you know. Very obscure Solaris graphical interface. I think Solaris. (Sun?) VERY obscure, 3D, bizarre. That the little girl could identify it as unix is… possible, if she was a genius computer geek. Unix is pretty identifiable. ---
**Author:** ![ddgryphon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/8c91f0/32.png) [@ddgryphon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ddgryphon)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/27 "2006-05-16T21:01:04Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > … it was Unix, you know. Very obscure Solaris graphical interface. I think Solaris. (Sun?) > > VERY obscure, 3D, bizarre. That the little girl could identify it as unix is… possible, if she was a genius computer geek. Unix is pretty identifiable. True geeks don’t use graphical interfaces – let alone those that resemble a video game. Honestly, I have ten Unix systems to deal with and I never use anything but a command prompt – the graphic interface, along with security issues, just gets in the way of getting things done quickly. You will bow to the will of the command prompt, resistance is futile. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/28 "2006-05-16T21:04:05Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > [War Games …] Except for the self-aware minicomputer’s ventriloquist routine, managing to physically reproduce the voice of the kid’s hardware text-to-speech device in the DOD war-room, when said device was still sitting on top of the kid’s monitor at home. 😃 Well now, it’s _possible_ that NORAD bought the same brand of voice synthesizer that the kid had. Possible even that they’re using an IMSAI microcomputer somewhere in that control room. Maybe even an Apple II Plus as well, given how advanced we’d expect NORAD to be. (Possible — but yeah, pretty outlandish.) > [@E-Sabbath](#): > > … it was Unix, you know. Very obscure Solaris graphical interface. I think Solaris. (Sun?) I believe it was an SGI, and so probably IRIX. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/29 "2006-05-16T21:13:12Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > I believe it was an SGI, and so probably IRIX. … Not that I’m claiming IRIX came with a 3D game-like interface as shown in _Jurassic Park_. That would seem to be something tossed together for the sake of the movie. ---
**Author:** ![Hostile\_Dialect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e495f1/32.png) [@Hostile\_Dialect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hostile_Dialect)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/30 "2006-05-16T21:32:36Z")
Nothing to do with the technology, but that DHL/Mission Impossible 3 commercial made me swear off of both forever. FWIW, **Ethilrist** , I would be more disappointed with a movie industry that showed the world’s most competent users clicking and dragging on Windows on the world’s most advanced computer. The fact that they use graphical interfaces at all is irritating, but saves time in some cases, and a good movie spends seconds sparingly. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/31 "2006-05-16T21:39:37Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > … Not that I’m claiming IRIX came with a 3D game-like interface as shown in _Jurassic Park_. That would seem to be something tossed together for the sake of the movie. The 3D directory navigator was actually off-the-shelf software and not specifically written for the movie. You can download it here: [http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d\_navigator.html](http://www.sgi.com/fun/freeware/3d_navigator.html) [works only on IRIX]. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/32 "2006-05-16T21:44:37Z")
There’s a lot of technology BS in the movies, but that 3D directory viewer isn’t one of them. Even if they hadn’t seen it before, any tech hacker worth their salt would immediately recognize the directory structure as being Unix. ---
**Author:** ![FatBaldGuy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ecd19e/32.png) [@FatBaldGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FatBaldGuy)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/33 "2006-05-16T21:47:48Z")
I think the all time winner in this category has to be _The Net_ with Sandra Bullock. For those fortunate enough not to have seen it, poor Sandra is victimized by the Bad Guys, who make her drivers license, credit cards and all traces of her existence vanish from computers everywhere. At the end of the movie, she manages to upload a virus onto the Bad Guys’ computer, and _Presto_ her identity is restored. Who writes this stuff? ---
**Author:** ![c\_goat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f4b2a3/32.png) [@c\_goat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/c_goat)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/34 "2006-05-16T21:49:39Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Okay, okay. But I just mounted a reel-to-reel tape today. 6250 CPS. Why? To do the frigging medicare billing. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know. Was it EBCDIC format too? ---
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/35 "2006-05-16T22:01:02Z")
> [@CookingWithGas](#): > > I just saw M:I III last weekend and if I see one more movie where they blow a satellite photo so you can read a license plate number my brain’s going to ex Well…satellites do exist that can read something the size of a license plate (assuming the license plate was pointed toward the sky) – would the NSA person monitoring this care to confirm? But, yeah…you can’t “improve” the resolution after the fact. (The TV show \*Las Vegas \* is the world’s worst transgressor on this…they’re always “cleaning up” surveillance camera images.) ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/36 "2006-05-16T22:05:30Z")
I think it’s the viewing angle that irks the most. Movie satellites often seem to be in orbit about fifty meters off the ground. ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/37 "2006-05-16T22:17:07Z")
> [@dwc1970](#): > > And when users enter passwords, they don’t just get a simple “Access denied” dialog box on a gray background with the “!” yellow triangle icon like you’d see in Windows, but instead a screen that says **ACCESS DENIED** in a huge font. Movie computers also make lots of gratuitous beeping and clicking noises that real computers usually don’t make. My favorite alternative to this was in _Jurassic Park_. Nedry had reprogrammed his computer so that when you put in the wrong password, his face would show up saying “Ah, ah, ah! You didn’t say the magic words!” ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/38 "2006-05-16T22:37:52Z")
> [@Terminus Est](#): > > There’s a lot of technology BS in the movies, but that 3D directory viewer isn’t one of them. Well well, live and learn. The few times I played around with an SGI machine, in the mid-90s, they did have a 3D file navigator program. But it simply presented the directories as “stone slabs” that twirled around and listed their contents as “carved” words. There was no helicopter pilot’s view of a virtual city with buildings, as the movie shows. > [@](#): > > Even if they hadn’t seen it before, any tech hacker worth their salt would immediately recognize the directory structure as being Unix. Right. Would have been funny though if the girl had said, “Oh look, it’s Unix!” — and then hit control-Z to break out of the stupid 3D thing so she could bring up **xterm**. ---
**Author:** ![garygnu](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garygnu/32/2924_2.png) [@garygnu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/garygnu)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/39 "2006-05-16T23:10:41Z")
You want computers and technology in general to be accurate in movies? OK, along with relationships, dialog, situations, people’s reactions, trials, fights… ---
**Author:** ![ivylass](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/9de053/32.png) [@ivylass](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ivylass)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2006, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003/40 "2006-05-16T23:18:55Z")
> [@FatBaldGuy](#): > > At the end of the movie, she manages to upload a virus onto the Bad Guys’ computer, and _Presto_ her identity is restored. > > Who writes this stuff? Probably the same folks who wrote _Independence Day_. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/technology-bs-in-movies/357003.md?page=3)