Computers in Movies

Twenty things the movies teach you about computers:

1. Word processors never display a cursor.

2. You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences.

3. All monitors display 2 inch high letters

4. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.

5. Those that don’t will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English

6. Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES” on any keyboard.

7. Likewise, you can infect a computer with a destructive virus by simply typing “UPLOAD VIRUS.” Viruses cause temperatures in computers, just like they do in humans. After a while, smoke billows out of the disk drives and monitors

8. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain’s desktop computer, even if it’s turned off.

9. 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 then you can read. The really advance ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen

10. Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress.

11. People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data.

12. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.

13. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function.

14. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.

15. When the power plant/missile site/ whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building.

16. If you display a file on the screen and someone deletes the file, it also disappears from the screen. There are no ways to copy a backup file-and there are no undelete utilities

17. If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it.

18. 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

19. The more high-tech the equipment, the more buttons it has. However, everyone must have been highly trained because the buttons aren’t labeled.

20. Whenever the character looks at a VDU, the image is so bright that it projects itself onto his/her face.

Also, have you ever seen someone use a computer mouse in the movies? It seems that everybody would rather type the commands, instead of pointing and clicking. You know in a show where some computer tech is asked to zoom in on a certain spot, he starts typing, never will he use the mouse to select the spot. Why is this ???

Movies have also taught us that most laptops are powerful enough to override the onboard computer systems of any alien mother craft.

lol..more things that we would never know without the moves...