IT pitfalls in movies [closed]

I was watching Battlestar Galactica and realized the Cylons have Windows on their baseships :). So I thought that may be it could be a good communicty wiki question, like the badastronomy movie reviews but for IT.

What pitfalls have you found on movies or TV series (screenshots or concepts)?

How is it possible that we had two references to CSI, but none to NCIS?

Every single fricking episode has Abby and McGee cracking a custom encryption algorithm read from the magnetic platters of a hard drive that has exploded leading to an anonymous blog that they backtraced through a GPS-enabled cell phone to perform a voice analysis on static that reveals that a train was running through a shipyard where the terrorists are hiding a bomb, at which point the team runs down to their high security room where they can see live infrared images from a satellite of the bad guys hiding in shipping containers.

I want to punch the TV!

My wife makes me leave the room whever NCIS comes on now, I don't know why.

I find it amazing they can talk in normal voices in a fully loaded data center and not even a wisper of server can be heard.

That would have to be either:

The scene in Jurassic Park where the girl opens this 3D operating system GUI and goes "Oh, it's UNIX"

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFUlAQZB9Ng

-- or --

The scene in Robocop 3 where this 12-year-old alley kid plugs her little "My First PC" into an ED209 combat robot with an alligator clip and "hacks" it to be "loyal as a puppy". Hmmm.. Obviously the concept of "hardened military systems" is a bit misunderstood in Hollywood.

Video: At 8:00. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9QB8v4YopQ

How about:

• the entire duration of "The Net" with Sandra Bullock...
• CSI NY's "GUI interface using Visual Basic to track the killer's IP address" (fantastic)
• Nearly every bit of computing in 24 (viva Jack Bauer)
• Nearly every OS ever shown on film.
• In Clear and Present Danger when Petey uses a tape library to hack Ritter's password (although I did guess my brother's VM password first try based on common information that Petey rattled off in this scene)
• Of course, "It's a Unix system. I know this!" in Jurassic Park (already been listed, but well worth additional mention)

Here's a decent top-10 list of general screw-ups

Somewhat related: Digital Video Recorders that use a PC for the recording process.

SCRIPT SCENE:

The crime lab, or a national security room, take your pick. Something horrible was recorded on a DVR system and a hapless lab tech is performing a playback to see "what happened".

ENTER PRIMARY CHARACTER #1:

So, you find anything?

TECHIE:

Yeah. (puts down some other distraction) Look at this.

TECHIE PROCEEDS TO PRESS MEANINGLESS BUTTONS ON A KEYBOARD AND MOVES A MOUSE. IF WE ARE LUCKY THE MOUSE MOVEMENT ACTUALLY CORRESPONDS WITH SOMETHING ON THE SCREEN, OTHERWISE WE'RE JUST LEFT TO THINK THAT YOU CONTROL EVERYTHING THROUGH TYPED COMMANDS THAT HAVE NO DISPLAY

PRIMARY #1:

Ok....

PRIMARY EXAMINES VIDEO. SOME KEY PLOT-POINT OCCURS.

PRIMARY #1:

Hold it!

TECHIE THEN PRESSES THE SPACEBAR AND THE VIDEO PAUSES. OK, THIS IS AT LEAST SOMEWHAT IN LINE WITH SOMETHING LIKE WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER OR QUICKTIME OR VLC...WAIT A MINUTE, THEY DO ALL PLAYBACKS WITH CONSUMER-GRADE SOFTWARE?

PRIMARY #1 (LEANS FORWARD TO SCREEN, OR IF SCREEN IS AN IMPOSSIBLE WALL PROJECTION, OR WORSE, A HOLOGRAM, WALKS UP TO IT, AND WITH DRAMATIC FLOURISH:)

Enhance resolution!

TECHIE THEN DOES MORE MEANINGLESS KEYBOARD TAPS AND THEN DRAWS A BOX AROUND THE PICTURE TO ENHANCE. THE PICTURE "MAGICALLY" ZOOMS IN AND THROUGH THE MAGIC OF BEING ON A COMPUTER, "ENHANCES" TO AN EVEN FINER RESOLUTION, REVEALING THE PERSON'S IDENTITY. OF COURSE THE DIGITAL RECORDING HAS ANALOG LEVELS OF RESOLUTION, NEVER SUFFERS FROM ARTIFACTING, ENCODES INFINITE LEVELS OF RESOLUTION DESPITE USING A FIXED CCD, USES A MAGICAL VIDEO COMPRESSION CODEC THAT ALLOWS YOU TO STORE SEVERAL DAYS OF NON-STOP VIDEO ON A SINGLE COMPUTER, ETC.

This is what drives me nuts. We actually have people at work that think this kind of crap is real. They'll come in and ask for an extract from the DVR system that covers the parking lot (it's an industrial area next to the train tracks, so we get some issues inside the lot from time to time), and then after we find the snippet of video they're looking for, they'll ALWAYS ask, "can you get a close-up of that"? They're fixed cameras with CCDs that are only slightly better than NTSC resolution....