I work in politics, as a campaign advisor. There really aren’t that many smoky back room deals; most of them are clear and aboveboard, and for the most part donors aren’t insidiously trying to control the Senator’s (or whoever) votes. Barney Frank isn’t going to give a damn what the NRA thinks about him, and they both know that. Most politicians are neither power-hungry crazy villains nor smarmy windbags, just ordinary boring people.
Also, if you announce you’ll be running for President, the response is normally yawn, not “OMG OMG OMG” followed by your victory. It’s really very hard to be elected President. And most underdog campaigns fail; incumbents are usually reelected, and it takes money to beat them.
I’m not terribly surprised that the aliens had TCP/IP, or were able to translate to it on the fly, (give me a little advance notice, and I’m sure I can hook you to something ancient using VINES, AppleTalk or NetBEUI) but I’m suspicious about them using RJ-45 jacks.
Speaking as an information security guy, the latest “Die Hard” movie was a comedy.
Actually most reporters nowadays aren’t unionized. I’ve worked at about a half-dozen papers (including a couple in large markets), and only one has been a union shop. And even reporters who are unionized are getting a pretty raw deal these days (look at what’s happening at the Boston Globe).
Also at a paper like the South Florida Sun-Sentinel where Grogan was working at when he got his salary doubled in the film, a columnist would certainly have a little more clout than the workaday reporters, but, unless he’s syndicated, probably wouldn’t be making that much more than someone else with similar seniority.
I don’t know a thing about being a reporter but the way Robert Redford was tutoring Michelle Pfeiffer in Up Close and Personal to be a “real good” reporter seemed ridiculous and silly.
Ah, okay, I retract: Didn’t see the movie, so didn’t know the situation. Yeah, can’t see a QA guy getting a dev kit to take home (unless he stole it, but even then, I remember those things being kinda scarce.)
I should also add that I did like the movie. But it’s just that one thing about his salary getting doubled that bothered me. Perhaps because nowadays a print reporter is just as likely to get a salary cut as he is a raise.
If movies got everything right there would be more complaints because they would be 30 hours long and only make sense to a few people.
That being said . . . do you notice a pattern among the movies being listed here? Die Hard, The Net, Independence Day; studio crap designed to turn your brain off for 2 hours. You can watch it or complain about it, but it’s unfair to do both :).
I haven’t seen any non-studio crap which got programming right, either. (Though admittedly, I haven’t seen any non-studio movies which included programming at all.)
I didn’t start a thread to complain about “The Net” Or “Live Free or Die Hard.” I was responding to a thread somebody else started.
I enjoyed “Live Free or Die Hard.” I just couldn’t take it seriously. I understand as well as anyone that realism would be boring. Nobody wants to watch the villainous hacker twiddle his thumbs for 2 minutes while waiting for something to happen. The audience wants to see things blow up at the click of a mouse. I get that. But a cool movie scene can still be laughably implausible.
I wonder what that virus was written in. Maybe the aliens sent copies of their API through the comsats. Why they need to use ours, when they could trivially put their own into orbit is beyond me also.
I think it often happens that the writers get this great idea, then come to the part where the good guys win, and say “oh, shit.”
Example, from the old Secret Agent show. Drake is in a cell in the basement. There is a soft dirt floor, and he has a spoon. How to escape. Easy - he digs a hole hides in it, the guards come, see he is gone, and rush out, leaving the door open. Only trick - he somehow managed to smooth out the top of the hole so as not to show while he was in it.
I’m not a musician, but I see movies where a band picks up an entirely new piece and play it perfectly the first time - often without any music. The BBC had a movie about the first playing of Eroica for Beethoven’s patron. He comes in, hands the orchestra the music, they flip through it and find it hard, and then play it perfectly the first time. He does yell at them about the tempo in the very beginning, just to be realistic.
That’s a double whammy right there. One of my pet peeves is that in any given navy movie, a ships crew consists of:
-A half dozen or so officers who are well characterized and often the senior officers on the ship.
-Thongs of random enlisted blue shirts who don’t actually do anything but make the ship look inhabited.
-One Chief, who is also the only NCO on the ship. Those guys with chevrons(nobody knows what they are called in hollywood) are just random seamen.
On the nuclear power side, my favorite one is “Nuclear Reactor=Nuclear Bomb…made of nitroglycerin(and will explode at a moments notice)”. :smack:
I was formerly an Army infantry officer, and I used to find myself face-palming frequently at how little the makers of various military-themed movies knew about tactics, uniforms, weapons etc…
Things have gotten better in some areas since a lot of movies/TV shows have hired military advisors, but you still get a lot of bonehead tactics. The one that shows up the most and I guess is necessary for character interaction, is when you have a squad/platoon/team moving tactically and they’re all within about ten feet of each other.
One of the first things you’re taught about tactical movement is to keep a good distance between you and those on either side of you so that, if one of you steps on a mine or has a grenade thrown at them, it will only take out the one guy and not people on both sides of him.
With the exception of Ernest Gann classics and some recent pseudo-documentary 9/11 movies, just about everything that has to do with airplanes, pilotage, or flying, is wrong.
Some common pet peeves
The yoke doesn’t steer the aircraft on the ground. The rudder pedals do. The yoke controls the ailerons on the wings.
Non-sightseeing flights don’t skim mountain tops, go down narrow waterfalled canyons, or roust flamingos off the beach from 50 yards up. A serious professional pilot, transporting passengers or cargo on a point-to-point route, would never jeopardize the safety of the flight by giving away his/her ‘outs’ in case of engine loss.
The cockpit of a non-pressurized, propeller-driven airplane is pretty damn noisy. Spoken word conversations without the use of headphones are difficult at best, impossible at worst. Holes blown open in cockpits of planes travelling at 400+ knots would about as noisy as a hurricane coming through your backyard.
The government isn’t all in on a huge conspiracy to do, well, anything. Civil servants, for the most part, go to work, slog thru the day, then go home. We’re not plotting behind your back. Really.
And while I’m not part of the Intelligence community, I’ve had dealings with many who are, and it’s more boring than you can imagine. And don’t get me started on satellite imagery capabilities…
But if it was shown as it truly is, well, what a snooze-fest.
Hey, I even kinda like Independence Day, in exactly that mindless fun way. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still laugh at the ridiculous implausibilities.
But that reminds me about 2 more flying pet peeves from ID.
The hick cropduster tows his plane behind an RV to go from town to town. It looks like he has 8.50x6 tires on the plane at least, and possibly larger tundra tires. Those things are not made like automobile tires…they can’t roll for 1000s of miles down a highway without serious damage. And they’re expensive. Tundra tires run about $4000 a pair.
The notion that a rag-tag band of cropduster pilots, rusty old service officers (the President) and a few others could hop in F-15s and fly them in perfect formation after a few minutes of briefing strains credibility. To say the least.
