Yerp. It was my birthday today. Getting old. At work they brought lunch for raphael and myself along with a cake, which was excellent. Of course, raphael and I both disapeared as lunch was being procured, raphael to eat at the very place they were bringing lunch from, and myself to deal with yet another figure in powerpoint issue. [You'd think after having so many problems with the figures they'd learn. My bailing them out every time must not be enforcing the lesson with enough clarity.] Anyway, I had fun.
Then I wandered home and worked on some random stuff before deciding to head out and catch a flick. As luck would have it, I went to go see [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0292506|The Recruit], which was a moderately decent movie. Unfortunatly, as with many movies that have any technology or computers in them, they're buzzword ladden, but anyone who knows anything about computers or cryptogrophy or mathematics knows that it's all garbage.
Applied linear cryptography? A wireless webcast that takes over other monitors And non radio emitting crt's! A virus that is hardware agnostic that infects through electrical outlets? HAHAHAHA! I almost died laughing in the movie. Unfortunatly, I don't think anyone else who was watching the movie understood what was so funny.
Ever since Hackers: "Hack the GIBSON!" and Jurassic Park's "It's UNIX!" (NOT!), writers and directors have consistently shown computers in the most implausible ways. What's worse, is there are many extreemely cool and crazy things out there, but some writers just aren't aware of them, because they write in a buble, without doing the appropriate background research behind their topic. Of films in my memory, only [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0086567|WarGames] showed computers in a relatively correct situation, although the whole WOPR thing was a bit out there.
If any writers out there are reading this, here's one geek who will glady volunteer to help remove the technical problems from your scripts. Directors, same goes for you too. You wouldn't do a film about horse jockeys with unicorns in it, now would you? [Those of you who would, no, you're not shooting Stile from Piers Anthony's Juxtaposition.]