There's no other explanation. It must be a tradition like the Wilhelm scream.
What, haven't heard of the Wilhelm scream? Well, once you do it's impossible to not hear it in every film. It's in freaking Lord of the Rings, and it grates. It's THE go-to person screaming sound effect and has been for over 50 years. Here's a compilation of dozens of movies - including every George Lucas movie - that uses the Wilhelm scream.
Hollywood and TV seems determined to make the technology-aware jump up from their seats and scream NO!!! at the screen.
I can only imagine what a doctor or nurse must feel like when watching ER or a dramatic surgery.
A technical error pulls me out of the story like a slap in the face. It almost physically hurts. I'm not just nitpicking here, either. These aren't hard things to fix. One just needs to care.
Now, often they'll use internal IP addresses to represent external addresses and a lot of folks argue that using these addresses is the "555 Phone Number" equivalent. I can see that a little, but even if they used the IP Address of the studio it wouldn't be so jarring.
It's debatable who is worse between TV and Movies, but it's clear that CSI has the #1 spot locked down with this classic.
GUI interface in Visual Basic
This is so cringe-worthy, it's legendary.
Jurassic Park It's a Unix System
I wish all my file systems were in 3D. This was actually a real UI that you could use. Bummer that ls -alogF isn't as photogenic.
Bing it? Hawaii Five-0
Bad product placement (IMHO) is becoming a problem on TV as well. While this isn't inaccurate, the cheese-factor here is high.
Red Dwarf UNCROP
I personally love this video and while it's techno-nonsense today, I'm sure the next version of Photoshop will have this feature. Those guys are amazing.
The Net Hacking
What can I say about this other than I am nostalgic for 3.5" floppies.
Hackers Script
I have to admit that I love Hackers and it's amazing to watch a young Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller. You can read the script online. Nearly every technical detail is sketchy, though.
SkyFall
I found SkyFall to be very entertaining. The folks at io9 have a nice post on the hacking scenes. I love this;
"...at one point Q exclaims, "It's security through obscurity!" as if this is the most elite thing a hacker could ever do."
Sigh. Wouldn't it be great if a movie producer reached out to us to help?
NCIS - Hacking Gamers
Oh, CBS.
SwordFish - Giant Monitors
Most of my great hacking moments include 6 monitors on arms, dancing and a dynamic montage, don't yours?
NCIS - Two Idiots and One Keyboard
NCIS keeps bringing the hits with a keyboard maneuver that needs to be seen to be believed. "I'll just ASDF and you can JKLsem, ok?"
Chloe, open a socket
Chloe from 24 is always asked by Jack to "open a socket." There's a lot of questions on the net wondering what this cryptic tech-speak means: Can someone tell me what a "socket" is? "24" NO Spoliers [sic]!
There's even a band called Chloe's Open Socket. Awesome. http://www.chloesopensocket.com
SwordFish
Want to know what it's like to hack like SwordFish? Visit http://hackertyper.net. ;)
Antitrust
Here's not one, but two classics from Antitrust.
The Matrix
Sometimes I need to just re-watch the nmap hack in The Matrix to cleanse myself. It was so refreshing to see real commands and a real hack in a movie that we already respected for it's attention to detail.
Sadly, this hack is now the go-to hack for movies that care enough to steal their hack but don't care enough to research their a new one.
What's your favorite horrible technology FAIL in film or TV?
Do you think that all this is being done a purpose, like the Wilhelm Scream?
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