-------------------------------------- The Official List of CyberMasturbation -------------------------------------- David Ljung Madison DaveSource.com ROUGH DRAFT - DO NOT DISTRIBUTE Us computer geeks resent how movies portray computers and computer users. It's bad enough that society doesn't understand us, and it's bad enough that computer geeks are almost *always* the fat, nerdy villan, but do they have to use Pac-Man concepts to represent what is going on in a computer? Because of this I have decided to create a new term, CyberMasturbation, which can be defined as: Definition ---------- cy.ber.mas.tur.ba.tion \.si--b*r-mas-t*r-'ba--sh*n\ n : An attempt by the media or the arts to represent computers to the lowest common denominator (people who still can't figure out how to get their VCRs to record) using concepts that don't even make sense in the computer world. This is a list that I have come up with of some movies (the biggest offender in media) that contain or *are* CyberMasturbation. Feel free to add to this list by writing me at the address below. Common traits ------------- Using screen savers instead of what is actually being typed. Showing full screen animation/graphics over *current* technology modems. Reading bits or hex dumps as they fly by. Graphic representations of simple text concepts. HUGE font sizes. Computers befriend appliances and gain physical powers that they otherwise wouldn't have (launching toasters across the room, shooting disks out of disk drives). Portray hackers as people who break passwords. (Unfortunately, even some so-called 'hackers' seem to think this is the key to hacking) Figuring out these passwords is usually some wordplay or puzzle. Has military computers with classified information either accesible by telnet or by dialups. Complete Movies --------------- Lawnmower Man No plot, lots of groovy computer animation Lawnmower Man II Don't have to even see it to know it's the same old.. Hackers No plot, lots of groovy computer animation Johnny Mnemonic N.P., L.O.G.C.A. Scenes ------ Electric Dreams Offending scene: Champagne is spilled on a computer and it comes to life. Using AI doesn't bother me, but from champagne? War Games Opinion: This is not only a great movie, but is otherwise fairly good at representing computers with some artistic license. Offending scene: Defense computers do NOT have dialups! Real Genius Opinion: This is still a great movie Offending scene: Laslo is breaking into the army computer. He types madly while the _After_Dark_ 'Spheres' screen saver is on his screen. It goes blank and then starts spewing out hex code. Laslo apparently reads the hex code and is worried, until another screen saver pops up (Lines) and he says "We're in" Not only that, but he uses a counting password breaker (trying AAAAAA, AAAAAB,...) which would take a few million years. Sneakers Disclaimer: This movie was fairly good at representing computers with some artistic license, they just failed the 'bandwidth limited by modem rule' Offending Scene: Plugging in a chip converted low bandwidth ascii into hi-res animated graphics. (Now that's compression! ;) Superman III Offending Scene: The evil computer would grab a person with its wires, engulf them in the wires, and turn them into an evil robot or something. Disclosure Offending scene: The virtual reality 'file cabinet' that had *no* advantage over a non virtual reality file cabinet, and to make things worse, drew 2D representations of the user for no reason whatsoever. (On top of that, it used the users face, even though it had no visible means of getting such a picture) Prince Of Darkness Offending scene: One of the more powerful scenes of the movie had an annoying computer flaw that is not even possible regardless of technology. One of the actresses is translating an ancient book onto computer. Later, Ron Howard (I think) walks in on her and she is typing like a madwoman in a trance. Ron walks up to the screen and she starts typing a message. The message is in about 24 point font size and in the middle of a blank screen. That's fine - maybe she was really nearsighted. Anyways, each sentence she types out starts at a different point on the left side of the screen, and as she finishes it it happens to be centered! Imagine that! The computer had one of those chips that guesses the length of each sentence so it can center it properly before you've typed it! Jurassic Park Opinion: This is still a great movie Offending scene: When they realize that the *evil* (and fat and messy and socially inept, I might add) computer geek has sabotaged the computer system, the park security director (can't remember name) sits down at the 'UNIX' system and types 'access' and gets a failure message. He then tries 'access security' and fails. He then tries 'access security program' and fails - all as if the arguments 'security' and 'program' are going to make this 'access' program work. Offending scene: A video conversation with someone on the ship dock is really a Quicktime (tm) movie run by Simple Player (tm) Offending scene: "This is Unix! I know this" (Btw, the fly-through filesystem viewer is actually an SGI demo) Tornado Note: This was a FOX made-for-TV movie that came out when the movie Twister was about to come out. Offending scene: I only bring this obscure movie up because it is a prime example of how script writers will use 'Insert Technical Talk Here.' In the movie a scientist was showing off the guts of his tornado measurement invention and he said: it's got a blah-blah and a blah-blah-blah "and electric potentiometers and..." An electric potentiometer is a dial. Just a dial that controls resistance. That's it. But hey, the invention had some of them! Mission Impossible Offending scene: There are many, but the one that really made me cringe was when they were trying to convince a genius computer hacker to join their group, and he finally agreed if he got the equipment he needed, specifically 'one of those pentiums with the secret artificial intelligence RISC processors.' Wow, talk about mumbling tech talk. First of all, the pentium is not the processor of choice for computer security people. There are plenty of processors out there much faster than Intel, sorry guys. Also, what the hell is an AI processor? We don't even have AI in software yet, but I guess it's now an add-on to the Pentium. And finally, RISC? RISC is a processor design paradigm, it has nothing to do with AI and it is exactly what a Pentium is not. C'mon kids, can't you mumble something more interesting than a bunch of media inspired buzzwords? Distinguishingly Not In The List -------------------------------- The Net All not half bad at representing computers, though this is all relative to how bad most movies are at CyberMasturbation. The Net came close... Tron This is more a fantasy movie that uses computers as a location, rather than a plot device. Jumping Jack Flash Had a computer hacker that was a hero. Can you believe it? (I'm not counting the main characters in Hackers as heros, since they were a bunch of 'glamorous' and plastic teenage punks) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- The following is *not* written by me: COMPUTERS & ELECTRONICS (as depicted in movies, naturally) =========================================================== Word processors never display a cursor. You never have to use the space-bar when typing long sentences. All monitors display inch-high letters. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, will have easy to understand graphical interfaces. Those that don't, have incredibly powerful text-bases command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English. Corollary: you can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard. Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing "UPLOAD VIRUS" (see "Fortress"). All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off. Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn't go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer. All computer panels have thousands of volts and flash pots just underneath the surface. Malfunctions are indicated by a bright flash, a puff of smoke, a shower of sparks, and an explosion that forces you backwards. People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function (see "Demolition Man" and countless others). Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. Movie modems usually appear to transmit data at the speed of two gigabytes per second. When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building. If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it. No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has (Aliens). However, everyone must have been highly trained, because the buttons aren't labelled. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three- dimensional, active animation, photo-realistic graphics capability. Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY Supercomputer. Whenever a character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face (see "Alien", "2001").