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Comment by tzury | Hacker News Reader

As a coder who get shocked every time those running lines and "ACCESS GRANTED" pop-ups appear as that guy just break into the bank account and other phony stuff, I have to say that it did not started in here at all.

Hollywood has been faking it all the way, from ridicules gun-shots scenes, bombs explosions, cars that keep driving after getting smashed and street-kids who can shot and kill in one hand.

It is simply that code, software and hacking is closer to us than the other examples, so we care about it that it will look real.

Also, how would you show an owned server? a prompt that reads:

  # root

This means nothing to the masses.

[1] - regarding bombing scenes, I think is one of those rare directors who don't fake it, rather make it looks as realistic as possible, see Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty as examples.

[a] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0887912/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_3

[b] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1790885/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_1

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The guns thing really is pretty epidemic. There's a huge thread over on Something Awful about this, hundreds of pages of people pointing out how the movie's "M-16" is actually an SKS dressed up funny and how it doesn't have any sights, that kind of thing. Similar thing is most cases: how hard would it have been to buy a real AR-pattern rifle? And when they hire a consultant, they ignore them half the time, just like with computer stuff in movies.

This is so true. I remember how irate I was when I realized that Rambo III insisted that a thinly mocked-up Browning was actually a DShK. That annoyed me but not nearly as much as Neo's Scorpions ejecting what looked like 5.56 casings on the floor during the lobby gun fight. Maybe necked-down brass looks sexier pinging off the floor.

But worse than all of this is what happens in movies when people are shot. People inevitably fly backwards, sometimes tens of feet. There's a nice Quora answer about this [1]. I get the need for a great action shot, but it's a thumb in the eye to everyone who actually has even a ballpark concept of kinetic energy delivery.

[1] http://www.quora.com/Guns-and-Firearms/Does-shooting-someone....

Or if you don't want to register, http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlownAcrossTheRoo...

I also think it's interesting how TV and movies portray caring for gunshot victims.

In the movies, the first priority is to remove the bullet from the victim, usually in a dramatic and agonizing way. Once the bullet is removed, the victim is miraculously cured.

In reality, the first priority is to stop the bleeding. Most of the time, doctors won't even attempt to remove the bullet. The bullets are sterilized from the explosion, and you'll generally do more harm than good by trying to remove it.

I assume “ACCESS GRANTED” is preferred over your root prompt because it is more legible to the vast majority of viewers.

In fact, I suspect one noble goal in ItsAUnixSystem-style sequences is making sure everybody watching understands what’s going on: The access was granted, dummy.

Of course sometimes that’s gonna conflict with realism.

http://hackertyper.net/

Indeed, the whole point it to make it easier for the view to get what's going on.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewerFriendlyInt...

Not only is the hacking and programming in most screen flicks fake or far from reality, it also continues to amaze me how some shows are completely dependent on the falsehood that some people can use a computer to hack, mine and get everything they want as long as it has a keyboard.

Take for example "Criminal Minds". It is about a group of profilers at the FBI who catch serial killers. There is this one girl on the team who consistently manages to find out ANYTHING with the computer she owns and greatly assists the team of profilers; she can access ANY database on ANY computer. So the team says "give me a list of people with x and y from z between 2000 and 2002" and she gets it (after, of course, fast scrolling green text on a black background).

Rambo movies must give the same feeling to people in the military. A scene which might be cringe-worthy to anyone in tech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqtbN_VHXVA

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