To almost every one of us, computers are about as mysterious and unfathomable as cucumbers.
That every word of this piece appeared in one go?
Which makes it all the more bizarre that the high-tech machines of Hollywood havent caught up.
Heres hoping no major movie character gets their hands on a Kindle anytime soon.
And while were on the subject…
They sneak in, silently, and magically appear before your eyes.
Just like letters from RoboCops legal department.
Not in the movies though.
Lots of movies do it too, as if its adding some drama to the proceedings.
It isnt, of course.
In the likes of24, to be fair, the operating system looked awesome.
None of it looked in the remotest bit useable in any practical way, of course.
But the days of a bit of Unix inJurassic Parklook long gone…
This is more than just about passwords, which were going to come to shortly.
This is about hacking.
Because it seems that there is no system in the world thats safe from a good movie hacker.
Hollywood isnt satisfied with that though.
Its barely worth turning the computers security system on…
When a computer crashes in real life its often quite annoying, but spectacularly dull to watch.
In films, when a computer goes wrong, its very exciting and stuff starts to explode.
The way computers go wrong depend on the film or TV show.
InStar Trek,Kirk need only ask an alien computer to Explain.
Quite why youd ever build this feature into your army of destruction is beyond us.
But as technology has advanced, it seems that computers ability to protect themselves remains non-existent.
Given three chances to make the correct choice then, this is generally what happenings.
The person concerned firstly types the password in incorrectly.
It wouldnt be dramatic if they got it on the first go.
But no: nobody gets the password on the second attempt either.
For take three, even more serious headscratching is required, but the magical flashback of glee is deployed.
Thats when the eureka moment happens, inspiration is found, and the correct password is entered.
Just see the bit inWatchmenwhen they correctly guess Ozymandias password by finding a book on his desk.
You wouldnt be able to guess them after all.
You know the point in the film.
Our heroes look confused, and start wildly typing away in an effort to stop the process.
To be fair, thats one that Hollywood gets pretty much bang on.
The things viruses do in films are always stupid.
Instead, just get a few Dummies Guide To Virus Creation books out of the library and swot up.
Because you might just need to be a movie star to get away with it.
Of course, we should have gone to gog.com, but weve learned the moral of the story since.
In the movies though, any disk works in any computer.
Every machine has the requisite software on it to open any file.
A quiet beep perhaps, or a visual indiciation.
Maybe even a pop-up.
Oh, and every e-mail is important too.
Nobody in the movies gets Viagra spam.
Its not just Macs, either.
Apple good, the rest of the world bad.
This ones becoming truer as time goes on.
This technique was brilliantly parodied inRed Dwarf.
Can you imagine what this would do to your eyes if your monitor worked like this?
Youd definitely be blind.
Then theres the question of privacy.
