Comuter related goofs in movies or TV

[hawke_67]

From time to time (very often in fact) you see computers in movies preforme amazing tasks. For example:

In one episode of the TV serie Highlander a photo wich is TOTALLY out of focus is scanned and then processed in a comuputer (home PC). The results are absolutely stunning, the photo wich was nothing but a grey blur becomes crystal clear and (ofcorse) gives the hero the information he needs to catch the bad guy.

As I said before, these kind of things happens quite often and I really wonder wich is the "All time worst" computer related goof in a movie.

Got any suggestions?

[VJ]

In Enemy of the state:
A video surveillance camera shows somebody carrying a bag. The people manage by only postprocessing this image, to rotate (some 3D like rotation !) the image so they can se the other side of the bag...

In quite a lot of movies:
The logo on a laptop is normally oriented so that if you have the laptop in front of you (and closed), the logo is readable. When the laptop is in use, it is upside down. In a lot of movies, this logo is mounted the other way around, so it can be read when somebody is using the laptop...

Jörg

[TdB]

just about every movie where the main character is a teenage-hacker.
there you see our young hero turn on his computer(which by the way can talk with a female voice, and features the infamous "instant-boot" tehcnology). Then he will (typical) type something like "hack pentagon" in a prompt, and a vitual reality-like descent-clone/cyperspace-thingamob will start up. Then he will start dogding firewalls, knights in shiny armor, and the occasional virus(shown as a firebreathing dragon), untill he approaches a solid metal-door.
then he will type something like, "hack door"and a colorfull progressbar will apear, saying something like "decrypting password", which BTW only takes 4 seconds.

I guess sci-fi movies like bladerunner doesn´t count.

[Dogbert]

This one was out there even before the Interned:

http://us.imdb.com/Title?0087197

[thop]

my favourite:

in ID4 they upload a mac virus to an alien spaceship. this is just so ridiculous it's not even funny anymore.

[Chris Blake]

Computers they use in movies always seem to be Macs. And they never crash, which is very odd.

[az]

I think it was in hackers (don't know anymore) that someone hacked into the pentagon using MS internet explorer...

AZ

[hawke_67]

Yeah, the macintosh vs alien spaceship is one of my favorites to... Gee, I didn't know ET used a mac... *LOL*

[RichL]

I saw a fantastic episode of Star-Trek TNG on the rerun channel (ooops, thats Sky One to the rest of the UK) the other day.
The Enterprises sister ship, the Yamato, had been scanned by an alien probe and was suffering severe system problems (something like 90% of a starship is run automatically by the computer, says Geordie the engineer).
So the Enterprise hooks its systems up to the Yamato's to see if they can help. Funny thing, they start getting the same system failures too. The Yamato then gets the future equivalent of a BSOD its warp core blows up.

Captain Picard has a bright idea to go to the planet where the Yamato got scanned and find out what happened. As they arrive an Alien probe pops up and goes to scan them. Seconds before it does Geordie tells them to destroy it, as its 'scan' actually contained a computer program that tries to overwrite the Enterprises systems with its own code (I think we luddites in the 21st century call these viruses).
They do, but the Enterprise still has caught a dose of the virus from the contact with the Yamato, so Picard beams down with Data (the walking computer) and Worf (graduate of the Stevie Wonder school of marksmanship) to try and find a cure.
Data gets the virus.
Worf manages to take Data back to the Enterprise, where he 'dies'. Seconds later, Data comes back to life.
"Ahha!" cries Geordie, "What must have happened is Data's self repair routines rebooted him and used a backup copy of his core systems!"
"So all we need to do is reboot the Enterprise and restore the computer core from its secure backup!"
It works, and the Enterprise goes to Warp 8 seconds before the planet explodes.

So, although they have no idea what a computer virus is, no firewall and no sort of security to stop unwanted processes running on their computer, they still have a 'secure backup'. Why? If this computer is so good it doesnt need to worry about viruses, why does it need a backup of its Operating system?
And again, a completely alien virus manages to infect a completely different computer system. Two different systems in fact, as some Romulans who'd been evesdropping caught the same virus from the Yamato.

It makes the old Captain Kirk startrek look realistic

[RichL]

Originally posted by hawke_67
Yeah, the macintosh vs alien spaceship is one of my favorites to... Gee, I didn't know ET used a mac... *LOL*

Yeah, if they'd really wanted to crash the Alien's systems, they'd have uploaded Windows XP

[az]

I think I just hate it the most that WHENEVER there is a PC in just about ANY movie, EVERY message is BIG, bad messages are RED, and when the PC has caught a virus, a BIG, RED message stating "VIRUS" appears on the screen.

Oh, and I just hate it that those things are so unrealistically easy to use, work flawlessly, have a fitting sound for every big, red message they pop up... well, I just hate it when computers are unnecessarily shown like they are not. It wouldn't make any "realistic" movie any worse if the PCs were running windows - and I don't think Microsoft would object to that.

AZ

[GNEP]

And when you have to enter a password, a BIG RED BOX comes up, allowing you to type in the letters (which are not turned into stars until the password is completed and "ACCEPTED" flashes up) in about 72pt text.

[RichL]

Someone really ought to make a GUI with all that on - just to see if they can sell it to people

[Electric Amish]

Originally posted by thop
my favourite:

in ID4 they upload a mac virus to an alien spaceship. this is just so ridiculous it's not even funny anymore.

...and the virus is written in Java...

amish

[KRSESQ]

I didn't have as big a problem with the MacVirus in ID4 as I did with Bill Pullman as the President! :P

Kevin