[QUOTE=Antigen]
I haven’t seen anyone get lab work right on TV. CSI is insanely exaggerated - nobody gets results from the sorts of tests they’re doing within an hour or two.
And as for the medical shows… For the love of God, Dr. House, could you please order a CBC and Chem7 before you start with the brain biopsies?
[/QUOTE]
To add to that; having worked in a medical library doing research hunts for doctors… Can they once… JUST ONCE… Not immediately know every possible thing it might be? Some of those things are actually in books and periodicals… Periodicals the doctors ask for -every day-, and we root out the necessary info for them. No doctor remembers it all. It’s just not possible.
[QUOTE=Bayard]
In an episode of 24, a bad guy evades some super-duper IT security system by sending data offsite through … wait for it … the wall outlet. Yup, you can just route packets right over the 110 lines. Works like a charm.
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Only if you use the 24 point font! Preferably flashing.
[QUOTE=Chimera]
I’ve also worked in Security for three years. TV/Movie Security Guards are always either Baton Wielding Buff Morons who throwdown at the first sign of trouble but always get beat up, and/or they’re completely incompetent. Whereas in real life, Security Guards are more likely to be Gary Coleman or Wilford Brimley.
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I dunno…Wilford Brimley, security guy, was pretty bad-ass in The Firm, which was totally accurate in all other respects.
I’m a civil servant and I’m frequently asked if my job is like Yes Minister. Having worked for a Minister I can tell you that it’s not (maybe it was at one point, but not any more). The notion that my perm sec would go around trying to hamstring the efforts of Ministers is just laughable in itself.
I’ve not seen it but apparently the show The Thick of It is quite bang on the nose about a few things in the running of a British politician’s office.
Yep. The situations and byplay between station personnel were so real to those of us in the business. We could only sit and gape in amazement and wonder how they got the advance copy of our autobiographies when we hadn’t even written the damn things yet…
But the on-air studio sequences were so fake. For one thing, when your microphone is live, the studio speakers turn off to prevent feedback - and you wear headphones to hear the mix. Of course, that would really screw up any continuity in the sequence, so I can see them not doing that, but…
And only ONE turntable? And ONE cartridge tape machine? The worst station I ever worked had 2 turntables and 3 cart machines. You’ve got to have that to maintain on-air flow!
I’ve never seem a protrayal of the videogame industry that is even remotely realistic. Most of the time they tend to assume that making games is similar to playing games. Yeah … just like performing surgery is similar to having your appendix out.
What’s worse, commercials for trade schools that purport to train you how to be a game developer do exactly the same thing … .
[QUOTE=Bayard]
In an episode of 24, a bad guy evades some super-duper IT security system by sending data offsite through … wait for it … the wall outlet. Yup, you can just route packets right over the 110 lines. Works like a charm.
[/QUOTE]
Well, there is something called powerline ethernet, but it’s meant for single-house use and doesn’t have a very long range. Think of it as a weird alternative to wifi.
Or did he just bite the end off a LAN cable and jam it into a wall outlet?
That said, Monsters, Inc. was pretty accurate (in a tangential fashion) in depicting how people get along in a factory. Most people are schlubs who have been friends for decades but don’t really have much to talk about. Some people are heroes, office politics can be murder. The bosses might be willing to kill their firstborn for a profit, but they present themselves as really nice guys… and one secretary has all of the real power.
[QUOTE=gotpasswords]
Well, there is something called powerline ethernet, but it’s meant for single-house use and doesn’t have a very long range. Think of it as a weird alternative to wifi.
Or did he just bite the end off a LAN cable and jam it into a wall outlet?
[/QUOTE]
They didn’t go into details. But I like the idea of biting the end off the cable. Anyway, the bad guy (girl, I guess) was sending the data to some bad-guy HQ someplace. The “good” guys just glossed over the process with a statement like “She sent it out over the power line! There’s plenty of bandwidth!” 'Cause mentioning the bandwidth gives it that air of plausibility.
I will have to see A Little Trip To Heaven, but honestly that Adjustor movie just looks like porn. My job is not very porno-like at all. The rest of my life, sure, but not my job!
[QUOTE=beowulff]
I’ve never seen a movie or TV show (other than a documentary) that was even remotely accurate about what I do - hardware / software / product development.
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Ditto. My favorite scene is when some character sits at a random computer terminal (that isn’t locked apparently) and types 600 words a minute without using a mouse, then declares “I’m in!”
Bonus points if the keyboard plays a sound with every keystroke (beep boop bip bip beep boop) - yeah - that’s how my dev machines are set up.
Extra bonus points if they’re only using ONE HAND while twirling and clicking a ballpoint pen with the other.
Extra Extra bonus points if they have a gun to their head, have only 30 seconds to hack into a government encrypted system, and are getting a blowjob.
As for a specific least accurate example: the made for TV movie Pirates Of Silicon Valley with Bender as Steve Ballmer and Noah Wylie as acid-dropping swami guru Steve Jobs was one of the top three comedies of all time for me.
