David Maw: PETCMT

Thu, 31 Jul 2003 20:36:43 GMT

The other night I was flipping through the channels and decided to check out this sit com starring Jim Belushi. I guess that Apple and what looked like Compaq either couldn’t afford or didn’t want to pay the price for product placement. Both of these machines seemed to have all the logos covered up. The laptop looked very much like an Apple had a sticker of a strawberry place over the usual Apple. I find this funny because in almost every other TV show or movie they go to great lengths to make sure everyone knows that an Apple computer was used. It makes me wonder just what the conversations were concerning this cover up. Was it something like prop guy places a laptop on the table in the scene and the director yells out that Apple Suck’s get that thing off my set, followed by the prop guy pulling out the strawberry sticker he had got out of a gum machine to bribe his kid not to embarrass him at the grocery store? Or was it in conflict with some advertiser that was paying for commercial spots during the show. I did not see even one Apple ad. Shouldn’t computers be allowed to come out and be who and what they are without someone wanting to cover them up and hide the truth?

FREE THE MACHINE!!!

Thu, 10 Jul 2003 06:05:34 GMT

My friend Wes reminded me today that the movie SIMONE has major flaws in how and what makes a computer work in the first place. The main character play by Al Pacino (Who is a brilliant actor despite the incompetent prop department) receives a hard drive from a currier and proceeds to drop it into a PC via a slide out drawer resembling a CD ROM drive. I do realize that it is possible to have a removable hard drive I have never seen one like this. The thing is that he simply drops it in and it auto plays like it is some DVD. The program contained on the drive was very high tech. Later in the move his daughter saves him from prison by inserting a virus contained on a 5 ¼ inch floppy. Can you even buy those any more? Why would a 12 year old be able to restore so much information from one floppy? Someday the prop department will get a clue. I hope.

Thu, 19 Jun 2003 21:38:36 GMT

I went to see the new Pixar movie Finding Nemo. I sat through all of the credits at the end expecting the usual outtakes. At the end to my surprise was a credit given to Sun Microsystems for handling the rendering. It is obvious to me that Pixar knows what they are doing. Two thumbs up for a job well done.

Wed, 30 Apr 2003 16:49:14 GMT

I realize that this one is kind of old but it is one of the best examples of Movie and TV makers think that we are all a bunch of idiots. Do they really think that no one will know the difference?

In the movie Mission Impossible, the character of Ethan Hunt is looking to recruit the best hacker on the planet to get him into CIA head quarters. This so called hacker tells them that in order to do this job he will need the best equipment. The actual line is “I’m talking about the 686 prototypes with the artificial intelligence RISC chip.”

What?

Fri, 25 Apr 2003 20:27:10 GMT

Ok this is just too much. In the movie The Recruit it is revealed that the CIA has come up with a computer virus/doomsday program that will infect every computer on the planet. How do they avoid firewalls and other detection? Anyone? Of course in movie it is portrayed that the CIA has got technology that no one else can ever have. They are so ingenious that they came up with a virus that can be sent to every computer via the power grid. That’s right every computer will be poisoned by the very electricity that supplies the machine with life.

I only have one question… What protocol does this use, TCP or UDP?

Thu, 24 Apr 2003 14:44:47 GMT

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.