Tech Quotes That Sound Cool But Are Meaningless
First, I’d like to say that none of these lines were on shows or movies that really targeted anyone who knew anything on the subject being discussed, so sounding technical and cool is the only point.
I should point out as well that any time you see a really cool GUI, they don’t exist in the real world. No one takes the time, effort, or money to make user interfaces like that. It costs too much. But I guess that isn’t a problem for the Autobots and the American goverment in Transformers, Tony Stark (who is really rich) in Iron Man, or for the creator of Jurassic Park (he always states they “spared no expense”, so their GUIs can be cool).
Things to be added:
- Firewall (“10,000 songs, 10,000 accounts, it won’t know the difference” – Apparently iPod’s can interface with scanners too these days…)
- Goldeneye and other Bond movies
- Dire Hard 4
- The new War Games movie (“Shoot the glass, if we raise it’s temperature we can force a command prompt.” – ….WHAT?!)
- Swordfish (After hours of playing with a crazy looking GUI on like 8 screens, he says “Now all I have to do is modify the code….” What the hell was he doing then? I know graphic design can be rough, but usually you do that after you have a program that works.)
- CSI New York -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ni_rAamVP2s
Why it will make you laugh:
GUI stands for Graphical User Interface, so this is like saying PIN number. Her using Visual Basic and the slip up of terms secures her status as an amateur. Also, making a GUI has nothing to do with getting an IP address, effectively making her statement completely meaningless.
(Side Note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9GD4ehJ25o&feature=related)
- Jurassic Park -
One of my favorite movies of all time, but some of the tech humor is too good to pass up.
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=jurassic+park+unix&www_google_domain=www.google.com&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#
Why it will make you laugh: While she is a self proclaimed nerd, her statement of “It’s a UNIX system; I know this” is still very amusing. At one point it looks like she is typing, as if that will make the slow panning GUI camera move faster.
(Side Notes: Unfortunately for them the raptors then realize there is glass right next to them they can break, and apparently Timmy can’t hand them the gun because he is busy doing nothing. Also, when the raptor gets it’s claws in the door (both of them, which based on their anatomy looks impossible), what the hell is it pushing against them with?)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGqzVGJ9bGg&feature=related
Why it will make you laugh: His command names don’t make any sense. If you pause at 0:12 you can see he types several silly commands. Obviously not too much of a tech savvy person given his “I hate this hacker crap” quote at the end. L2P Samuel L. Jackson.
(This movie is abundant with flaws. Check out a very amusing analysis at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQ0Lnyt4m84)
- Ocean’s 13 -
“We found a way to piggy back the system in between firewall checks” – Let it be known that this makes absolutely zero sense. The firewall is active and not checked periodically. Piggybacking the system could mean several things, but is too ambiguous to mean anything here. Also, no hacker (or, more correctly, crackers) would ever say they piggybacked a system.
- Transformers -
I can’t locate any videos, but many parts are hilarious.
“This is the signal that hacked the military network” – This occurs several times. Why the hell are they analyzing sounds? You can’t hack a shoe, let alone a computer with a piece of sound. The fact that they can hear the network being hacked the second time is rediculous.
“There’s a message embedded in the signal!” – The blonde hacker chick takes the signal over to her friend’s place. Apparently he has a really fucking cool program that deciphers sounds and gives you text from them. If it isn’t obvious, that doesn’t happen in real life. His program doesn’t make sense. The sound signal doesn’t make sense. Embedding a message in the signal also doesn’t make sense.
“Even a Brute Force hack on a supercomputer would take 20 years.” – This is true, it’s just halarious. To any unknowing, brute force methods are always inherently slow and inefficient. Thus, the fact that she states that openly in a room with many people who are well aware of that fact is laughable. So even though this is painfully obvious, the premise is true. It would take many many years to brute force hack a password protected system with encryption on the government defense network. A guess of 20 year’s is pretty random though. Technically the minimum time could be however long it takes to try one password, and it could go on forever since it is impossible to know what system they are using and how complex the passwords are (not to mention when they change), so a guess of 20 years means nothing.
I ran across this and thought it was fitting. Kudo’s to forkazoo over at the XKCD forums for this:
In A.D. 2007, film was beginning.
What happen?
Somebody set up us the logic bomb.
We get signal. (A signal from giant hacker brute forcing robots)
What!
Main brain turn off.
It’s Michael Bay!!