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
[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.
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.
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....
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://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewerFriendlyInt...
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:
Of course not, because porn is fantasy that has as a crucial element the affirmation of male power, validity, and competence. Those elements of "realism" would detract from the purpose of the medium. It's the same with movies. In the climactic scene where the protagonist is on the cusp of capturing the Macguffin, what the plot needs--and what needs therefore to be quickly, visually, and unambiguously communicated to the audience--is that the protagonist or the protagonist's allies have been granted access to the god-like computer system that unlocks the whosywhatsit. "ACCESS GRANTED" does this. Is it realistic? No. Does it matter? Nope! Like an exploding car or a space fighter that banks like an F-16, it communicates to the audience in a way that is immediately recognizable and plausible on a time-scale consistent with the pacing of the action.
Complaining about the lack of realism of coding sequences in movies certainly does not identify you as a "nerd" or "smart person above pop culture." It emphatically identifies you as an unimaginative dork and a boring pedant.
"But now that the majority of the movie-watching public has a pretty good idea of how computers work, having a "hacker" enter some kind of 3d virtual reality world to hack the NSA is perceived as ridiculous..."
Are we in the future? Or, are we trying to destabilize the audience's expectation of what's possible? Or, are we trying to communicate to the audience that computing is so ubiquitous and so disposable that society has spent its resources on superfluous displays? Is the protagonist a fish-out-of-water invited into an enclave of super-advanced geniuses situated in otherwise present-day America?
Narrative is craft, and it's subject to expedience. The question to answer, in any given instance, is not, "Is this use of technology realistic?," but, "How does this element of technological unrealism operate within the wider context of the (obviously unrealistic) fantasy world of the movie?"
Anyone can come up with an instance of how this has failed in a movie, but the title of the article is "Coding the Movies: Don't Fake It." This person wants code to look real in movies, and that's a profoundly stupid generalization to insist on.
It's worth noting, too, that the author's "blog post" is really an advertisement for his consulting service. In a Habermassian sense, we would be suspicious that this element of the Lifeworld, this Communicative Action, has been colonized by the System, namely his need to get work.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine.
Oh could you ever. Except back in the 60s, blinkenlights, tape reels and noisy dot matrix printers were more likely to be featured than screens.
I distinctly remember a 60s (probably, can't remember the name) movie where the con man lead character gets himself hired as head of a bank's computer division despite having no technical expertise whatsoever, and one technician explains that the computer is totally secure and this is indicated by a specific red light - as long as that light is on, it's secure!
Would the author want more realism in porn?
Yes, please!
Should there be more dates in porn? Awkward moments where the conquering male can't decide whether or not to pull his date's chair out for her? (...)
You're confusing "realism" with "boring stuff nobody cares about". A biography is no less realist because it doesn't include the person going to the bathroom.
In fact, I'd say the best porn out there is less shitty because it does away with some of the unrealism that permeates the industry: it allows the performers to acknowledge that they're doing a porn video instead of forcing them to act on a grotesque script written by the directors cousin, all the while sounding like morons because they're told to never shut up.
it communicates to the audience in a way that is immediately recognizable and plausible on a time-scale consistent with the pacing of the action
Good directors can do that without making its audience to be idiotic.
By the way, I'm not saying realism is above everything; like in your space fighter example, I think disregarding realism to achieve a particular stylistic effect is perfectly valid. But it should be a deliberate and well reasoned choice, not something bred out of ignorance and negligence.
Moreover, when you say that "the best porn out there" is characterized by a particular description, you have to remember that this is your own, highly nuanced, subjective view on this. There are other people who probably hold an opinion that is a direct inversion of yours.
If you want realism, then start watching more art films and start supporting the independent film industry.
It's good to see some studios and directors addressing these issues, particularly David Fincher but also Disney with recent Tron works (few surprises there, Disney owns Pixar where many computer graphics pioneers work; nerds are some of their most bankable filmmakers).
But see /r/ItsAUnixSystem for even more funny sequences even from modern times.
Bunch of scrolling data
a memorable quote from some forum as best as i can remember it
What really matters is that the movie's characters, plot and dialog are inconsistent and formulaic cliches.
I wrote a post about it before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2134065
As with every movie, they had to shortening some scenes like "hacking" houses websites and coding Facemesh in one night (in the book and in reality it was not that case - it took several days/nights).
And the book is missing a side-"story" too. There was already a "Face Book" kind of website called houseSYSTEM. And Zuckerberg tricked this guy: http://www.aarongreenspan.com/writing/essay.html?id=80
So the reality is even wilder than the movie.
Incredible stuff and an enjoyable read.
Since then, the ASR-33 mechanical chugging sound has been replaced with a high pitched beep, but the text appearing on the screen still made 'printing' sounds.
It's only recently that that has started to fade from movies.
Of course, sometime we don't want realism, because it would make things uninteresting. For example, it is an acceptable break from reality to have space ships slugging it out in space opera. Otherwise, space battles would be mostly about who is the first to shoot their kinetic weaponry against an opposing side's planet.
"You'll flip a few switches and then do the button for opening the door. OK?
"No... no no, I can't do that. The switch for the door is over there, that panel over there. I have to move around for it after I stand here. The kids will notice, so we have to do it that way. Hm? Yes?"
"... uh... ok sure. Whatever. Go ahead"
I still notice, and it's a more rewarding experience.
You can check the Full HD version, frame by frame and read real perl code and shell commands like wget. The screenplay even is based 1:1 on the real blog posts of Zuckerberg (except the girls name).
I wonder if they were able to reuse Facebook website design by using archive.org. Shortly after the movie was released Facebook changed the robots.txt to disallow and prevent archive.org.
But there are some minor errors. Like later in the movie somehow Zuckerbergs PC runs Windows XP instead of Linux. And in one short scene the Windows XP screen is not completely visible, the right side is cut of (like the clock of the taskbar).
Scott McNealy (of former Sun Microsystems) and Miguel de Icaza (creator of GNOME, and Mono) supervised the movie. Several computer scenes involve Gnome Linux desktop, realistic IP address input sequences (though non-public IPs http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reserved_IP_addresses ) and an infamous HTML code intro.
Btw. the art style of buildings and interior was awesome.
http://chomaloma.blogspot.com/2011/02/social-network-inaccur...