Computers in the movies

  • You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences.

  • All monitors display two-inch-high letters.
  • High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces.
  • Those that don’t will have incredibly powerful text-based command shells that can correctly understand and execute commands typed in plain English.
  • Corollary: You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing “ACCESS ALL SECRET FILES” on any keyboard.
  • Powerful computers beep whenever you press a key or whenever the screen changes. Some computers also slow down the output on the screen so that it doesn’t go faster than you can read. The *really* advanced ones also emulate the sound of a dot-matrix printer as the characters come across the screen.
  • A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries.
  • Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second.
  • Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability.
  • Laptops, for some strange reason, always seem to have amazing real-time video phone capabilities and the performance of a CRAY-MP.

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