The other day I found myself watching a rerun episode of Nash Bridges. The basic plot of the story is that a mans wife is being held hostage buy a group of criminals that want rob a bank or something like that, I forget. To prove to the man that they have his wife and he better do what they want, they put her via web cam on a web site. We won’t go into the fact that this should have made them some what traceable. Anyway, the man just happens to be a top flight programmer of security systems for buildings. The criminals give him on paper the source code they want him to change to allow them access to secure areas. They give him something like 24 hours to complete the task. This source code looks about as thick as the Albuquerque phone book. Not only is he able to go through all of the code in time he is able to type it all into the computer. Wow! When it comes time to give these kidnapers the program he has changed they provide him with a phone number to allow him to upload via modem the new code. Here is where it crosses the line. The comment is made by the programmer and one of Nashes lackeys that it will take several hours to upload. The sound effects crew did a fantastic job of adding a sound bite that sounds just like a modem dialing a connecting. A graphic of a progress bar appears on the screen and in just a matter of seconds the upload is complete. The comment is then made that the other end of the connection must be a T-3 line. This makes Nash mad because the connection didn’t last long enough to trace. So we as intelligent people (if I was intelligent why I was watching in the first place?) are supposed to believe that if you pour liquid through the small end of a funnel the bottle will fill faster.
I believe it is time to start sending the message to the folks in Hollywood that we are no longer going to stand for this reckless, gross misrepresentation of technology in their form of entertainment. Don’t they realize that this could be offensive to people say nothing to effect it has on computers.
8:44:47 AM 
|
