TV Accurately Portraying Computers & PC Gaming

Roliath said:
lol
accurately my ass

how is this front page material?
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-----> this is the joke




-----> this is you.

*missed*


As far as "how is this front page material?", I don't know...in five hours there have been 80 responses and the thread has 3,720 views. That is almost 745 views an hour, roughly 13 views a minute, or one view every 4.6 seconds.

...apparently the retard doing news here thought it would be popular. ;)
 
Oldie said:
Good fiction gets the non-fiction backstory and details right.
Posted via Mobile Device
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Good fiction does this. TV/Movies take that back story, change something to what they think is "cool" and you get something like the Matrix backstory (humans as batteries).

Then you get someone as clueless as Michael Crichton, who can't get anything right.

Xee said:
I think it's more likely that they just don't have a clue and they care just enough to make it sound plausible.
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More like each producer sees that the otherguys are doing less fact checking, and know they can get away with the writers spouting idiocy. There is absolutely no reason for them to be able to tell degrees of BS to keep this spiral happening.


Xee said:
Man, be glad you didn't watch the rest of the show.

The underlying plot was that a game programmer had included a program inside every release of "Fear Tower" which used all "15 million" computers it was installed on as a distributed computing network to "crack the Pentagon's six layers of firewalls".

The best part is at the end when one agent empties his pistol into the hackers "mainframe" to end the attack. The computer gives one dying gasp and he shoots one of the monitors to put an end to it.
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What is it about computers that people are so truely clueless about it? TV can't have people magically teleporting through phones, cars mostly follow the laws of physics (until they crash, cars that land on their wheels in a car chase suffer zero damage, non-cop cars that crash explode on impact. I expect this is due to the low number of crashes most people have seen). But somehow computers have traditionally been shown as "magic" (movieOS anyone?), and that tradition remains unchanged.

In 1995 Neal Stevenson published Zodiac, which included the (techie) hero determining that the guys who attacked his computer were probably not mob muscle, because when they trashed his computer they specifically smashed the hard drive. He figured that hired muscle would rip up the place, kick in the monitor, and call it a day. Fifteen years later, TV can use "shooting the monitor" as proof of an agents mastery over technology.

I think all the media (news and fiction) picked this up together. Movies and TV only really screw up driving in kids shows (there is a classic scene in Risky Business that few kids today will understand...). News reports usually get the sports right, since 50,000 people watching it in person will get the word out if you screw it up (then there was that curious report from the AP about Sarah Palin dropping the puck in Philly to "polite applause" and a utube clip showing reality's liberal bias and the audience acting like Flyer fans). Stock prices have to be accurate (people will know and rant and rave if they suddenly get ripped off that way). EVERYTHING else is just as wrong as the tech articles. Probably worse, if they have a tech collumnist. People see the small details they specialize in as wrong, mark it down to their own superiority, and don't assume that everything that they can't check is just as wrong as what they can. So they assume it is 90% right when in reality it is closer to 1%, and that bit is misleading.

/rant off.
 
Why doesn't fiction get tech right?

Simples, we geeks watch it, spot the inaccuracy, complain.

Normal people watch it, the gloss of jargon is enough to suspend their disbelief, they don't complain.

Both groups watched it, job done who cares if people complain afterwards.
 
What ever happened to simply removing the power from the server rack? Or the network cables? It seems to me it'd be a lot faster and more reliable, not to mention the preservation of evidence...
 
450 said:
That was the most accurate representation I have ever seen.
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Seriously. Sure, it wasn't perfect, but it wasn't CSI:Miami. Oh, Lord, they pull tech ideas out of their butts on that show that looks like they're trying to make the 24th century Star Trek LCARS setup look antiquated. LOL
 
The bit where Flynn's kid starts typing commands on the console was more realistic, in Tron Legacy, at least he searched for the last file used, and ran it.

Only time I have seen anything close to accurate portrayal of computer commands.
 
BigYoSpeck said:
Why doesn't fiction get tech right?

Simples, we geeks watch it, spot the inaccuracy, complain.

Normal people watch it, the gloss of jargon is enough to suspend their disbelief, they don't complain.

Both groups watched it, job done who cares if people complain afterwards.
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I don't watch TV as of a month ago, as we cut it from our monthly bill, and I have never watched NCIS, regardless of the hot emo chick, actually I haven't watched any of the Bruckheimer series since I moved in 2005, CSI Miami pissed me off (is there a police/military/maintenance/handyman job Horatio hasn't done, besides a career at dumb punchlines and sunglasses modeling?), gave up on that show after the second season.
 
I thought this would be the scene from a couple of years ago where he dug out his first pc and stated it was a Mac SE when it's clear in the shot it was a Mac Classic. or shots of impossible ip addresses. I thought everyone knew that most procedurals glance over the tech/medical jargon, but you never hear spurge on how some move on Grey's Anatomy would actually kill a patient or does not exist.
 
TechPirate said:
And yet she's using an iBuypower Chimera system...sigh...
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Noticed that too. Gave a good chuckle. It let me suspend belief a brief moment in thinking McGee was ridiculing her through sarcasm and looking at the case for coolant leaks for her.

So many small changes could have made this better but it fits it's niche. I find it hard, even today, to explain to my parents about an MMO (even the career network specialist). I'll say something and they'll retort about my 'score' and ask if i'm 'winning'. Then again, maybe I should blame these damn show's inaccuracies for putting me through this crap.
 
I dunno. It sounded like an episode of Star Trek set in 2011 on Earth.

And "high score in every MMORPG"? Dumb.
 
Ryokurin said:
I thought this would be the scene from a couple of years ago where he dug out his first pc and stated it was a Mac SE when it's clear in the shot it was a Mac Classic. or shots of impossible ip addresses. I thought everyone knew that most procedurals glance over the tech/medical jargon, but you never hear spurge on how some move on Grey's Anatomy would actually kill a patient or does not exist.
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I always thought that the fake IP thing in movies/tv shows exists so that some poor schmo in real life doesn't get DDoS'd into oblivion by rabid fans. Kinda like the fake phone numbers with the 555 prefix. Of course, if I ever watch a show that uses something painfully far fetched (IPv4 addresses that have more than 3 digits per field or "hexadecimal" using characters like "g" or "n"), then I know for sure that they have no fucking clue.

Never have watched Grey's Anatomy, but it's fun to here my parents provide commentary while watching House (dad's a pathologist and mom is a retired cytotech).
 
facepalm_implied.jpg
 
to be honest, I was like twelve the last time someone shot a monitor in a movie to "kill" the computer and I was like "WHEW, that was CLOSE!!!"
 
Steve said:
-----> this is the joke




-----> this is you.

*missed*


As far as "how is this front page material?", I don't know...in five hours there have been 80 responses and the thread has 3,720 views. That is almost 745 views an hour, roughly 13 views a minute, or one view every 4.6 seconds.

...apparently the retard doing news here thought it would be popular. ;)
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Post a pic of dog poo and title it "Next Gen AMD CPU Revealed".

I guarantee it will have more replies :p
 
Phatal said:
I've played my share of MMORPG's and don't recall any of them having a "score", let alone a "high score".
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Really? You must not have played wow in your mmorpg days. We have three different 'scores', perhaps more depending on how technical you choose to get:

Most notably: Gear-score, avg item lvl, dps, hps, threat meter.

As a tank, you sure as heck want to be highest scored for the threat-meter, or at least second-highest in raids.

As a dps, it can't hurt to strive for the best score possible and compete for the server-best on fights etc posted on wowlogs.com where you can compare your dps numbers to other's of the same class on the same fight. Granted, not all games have 'dps' meters and its more of a 'feel of how fast the mobs are dieing in pulls.
 
WBurchnall said:
Really? You must not have played wow in your mmorpg days. We have three different 'scores', perhaps more depending on how technical you choose to get:

Most notably: Gear-score, avg item lvl, dps, hps, threat meter.

As a tank, you sure as heck want to be highest scored for the threat-meter, or at least second-highest in raids.

As a dps, it can't hurt to strive for the best score possible and compete for the server-best on fights etc posted on wowlogs.com where you can compare your dps numbers to other's of the same class on the same fight. Granted, not all games have 'dps' meters and its more of a 'feel of how fast the mobs are dieing in pulls.
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... ok, but it's pretty obvious that's not what the dialogue is referring to.
 
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