h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

They have a 20 billion dollar clean room with all sorts of clever alarms (which only detect people walking on the floor, not somersalting across it) which the hero will penetrate and steal data from.
Surely it would be much simpler to mug the operator taking the off-site backup tapes home with him?
Why do they use radios / cellphones which will not work inside a big white room but which will work perfectly well in a nuclear bunker or deep mine shaft?


Heros always have a laptop never a desktop PC.


How can a password cracker program have a progress bar? It can't possibly know how long it will take to beat the system.

It's the Movies - Hackers (the spotty, bespectacled Geeky type) ALWAYS succeed on the third attempt to get the password - and in the nick of time, generally.
Password cracker programmes will invariably take 100 attempts to complete their task - ergo the progress bar with a percentage complete message.

turvy(42% complete?)

On Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, computers are _always_ made by Apple. This is demonstrated by Willow's numerous Apple laptops, her iMac, her G4 with LCD screen (both of which made an appearance in the room she shared with Buffy in season four), the desktop workstations at Wolfram and Hart, and Wesley's and Cordelia's Apple laptops. The only exception I've noted to this is in the computer classroom at Sunnydale High, where one finds old and clunky machines that are suspected to be from the short-lived range of Macintosh clones. With any luck, the students at the rebuilt Sunnydale High will be treated to newer computers.

I find this terrible, but at least they don't all have to use Windows.

What is so terrible about macs everywhere.
It's about time Mr. Gates and the world dominaton of the wintel PC had a run for there money.

Macs are not just computers, they are art. Lets hope that Sunnydale High get the new iMac or eMac throughout!

turvy on an iMac DV

Yes, this is true, but it's not accurate. There is nowhere where EVERYONE has an Apple. It just doesn't happen. And while I value the good taste of the characters, it might be nice to see a bit of variety from time to time.

Oh, and also, computer interfaces beep a lot on TV and in movies. They bleep when windows appear, the bleep when progress bars are being drawn, when text is scrolling... can you imagine working all day with a computer that makes noises like that?

* shudders *

yeah, well, blame the "sweeteners", those people with the access to the sound effect tapes who seem to think that every action must be accompanied by a noise that will tell a blind person that they are hearing a movie and not experiencing RL.
I often wonder if deaf people who watch films are bothered by the fact that they can't tell if the safety is off or on on a hero or villain's firearm.
I also wonder if they know how lucky they are that they can't hear every actor's feetware clicking or clomping along on every surface, unless it's a very tense moment when you could hear a biro drop and then suddenly everybody's feetware gets vewy vewy qwuiet...