Nikita



  • Just saw this in Nikita S01E10:



  •  Ah yes, the Hollywood Operating System that gives us techies so many headaches when clueless users can't/don't understand what computers are actually capable of.



  • Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night (or, in this case, ping-flood some unsuspecting Internet user)



  •  @smxlong said:

    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night (or, in this case, ping-flood some unsuspecting Internet user)

    Yeah, but they could at least put the dots in the right spot.



  • @smxlong said:

    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night (or, in this case, ping-flood some unsuspecting Internet user)

    Riiiggghht, that's almost less plausible than the plot of Nikita!


  • Garbage Person

    @Timmmm said:

    Just saw this in Nikita S01E10:

     

    All the abuses of technology in that show and you pick THIS ONE?

    It's known and accepted that most TV shows that aren't sitcoms operate outside our universe's continuity - and that's a perfectly plausible IP address in an alternate universe - particularly considering that 5332 bytes is an acceptable ping packet size and that the episode's central plotline contained this:

    1: "Present the problem again, quickly"
    2: "I got rid of the flash drive but your encryption is too robust for the satellite's bandwidth"
    1: "Why"
    2: "I don't know, this thing's got a wifi emitter that isn't even in the real world yet... But it is an emitter... So that means it's designed to broadcast... So if I shut off that functionality during download...."
    [DOWNLOAD SUCCESSFUL: ENCRYPTION STABLE]

     

    So obviously their laws of physics are different than ours, why the hell should they have the same IP addressing scheme?



  • I don't watch TV, so excuse my ignorance of crap. But is this YET ANOTHER REMAKE of La Femme Nikita? And if so... why!?



  • @smxlong said:

    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555.
     

    That doesn't explain how ping traced the owner of the IP address (that's whois) or render what appears to be a HTML link in a terminal (while pretending that only one website can run on each IP address).

     

    Also, 192.0.32.10 exists for a reason.


  • Garbage Person

     No, it's a followon.



  • @scgtrp said:

    @smxlong said:

    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555.
     

    That doesn't explain how ping traced the owner of the IP address (that's whois) or render what appears to be a HTML link in a terminal (while pretending that only one website can run on each IP address).

     

    Also, 192.0.32.10 exists for a reason.

    Maybe it's not your standard ping. Maybe it reverses the IP and automatically does a whois lookup, and maybe it assumes that it can just slap "www." on the front of the domain to get a likely web server address.

    Not that I'm defending the show, which I've never watched and know nothing about.

    As far as using the ordained example IP, that's cool, but what if you wanted to show a list of IPs -- would you just put down a bunch of 192.0.32.10's? I'm not particulary bothered by the nonsense IP.


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @smxlong said:

    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night (or, in this case, ping-flood some unsuspecting Internet user)
    So what's the problem with using an RFC1918 address? Or a 127/8 address? Or TEST-NET?



  • @PJH said:

    @smxlong said:
    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night (or, in this case, ping-flood some unsuspecting Internet user)
    So what's the problem with using an RFC1918 address? Or a 127/8 address? Or TEST-NET?
     

    Enlighten me, what's the problem with using "552.2331.452.02"? I don't see any.



  • @smxlong said:

    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night
    Then of course there is Jenny



  • @pbean said:

    @PJH said:

    @smxlong said:
    Uh, it's really no different than using fictional telephone numbers that begin with 555. The reason it's done is so some drunk moron doesn't end up calling some poor 85-year-old lady in the middle of the night (or, in this case, ping-flood some unsuspecting Internet user)
    So what's the problem with using an RFC1918 address? Or a 127/8 address? Or TEST-NET?
     

    Enlighten me, what's the problem with using "552.2331.452.02"? I don't see any.

    Snarky people complain about it on thedaillywtf.com!



  • @Weng said:

    All the abuses of technology in that show and you pick THIS ONE?

    Haha, yes you are correct of course. I think it's because I have come to terms with the 'coolification' of the hacking dialogue. I.e. all the talking is written by people who clearly have no clue and just think words like quantum sound cool. Fair enough.

    But I always thought the people who did the crappy 'hacking' animations actually knew something about technology, and there's obviously no reason not to use a real IP address.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    I don't watch TV, so excuse my ignorance of crap. But is this YET ANOTHER REMAKE of La Femme Nikita? And if so... why!?

    Nope, it's a TV series based on the movie. Sort like a high-tech version of 'The Prisoner' IMHO: quite an enjoyable show, including a resident techie character named 'Berkoff,' obviously based on the 'Radar O'Reilly' character in MAS*H (again IMHO); they even chose an actor who resembled Gary Berkoff (see what they did with the name there?), the actor who played 'Radar' in the TV series. The TV series of 'La Femme Nikita' also had really cool title music.


  • Garbage Person

    @Timmmm said:

    Haha, yes you are correct of course. I think it's because I have come to terms with the 'coolification' of the hacking dialogue. I.e. all the talking is written by people who clearly have no clue and just think words like quantum sound cool. Fair enough.

    But I always thought the people who did the crappy 'hacking' animations actually knew something about technology, and there's obviously no reason not to use a real IP address.

    Why? Those people are ARTISTS. That makes them, at best, proficient in the tools of their trade. Any artist's tool which requires an artist to know wtf an IP address is has failed as being a tool for artists.

     

    Think about it - if you didn't know an IP address was a couple of bytes, how would you know that numbers above 255 aren't possible? Just because you've never seen one doesn't make that a valid assumption. Hell, if you didn't know that, you wouldn't know that 4-digit octets are impossible

    As for why they don't just use the reserved ranges, it's really quite simple - because more people would nitpick that than can't get it through their stubborn heads that they're watching fiction, which means it doesn't need to have the same gods damned addressing system. Also, the reserved ranges are ugly. Seriously. They have horrible aesthetics.

     

    I write trashy sci-fi for fun. When I need an IP address, or a DNS address, or prettymuch anything technical, I aim for something recognizable, but clearly differentiated from real world/present day. Email addresses in one of my future works are a rediculous mashup between a UUCP bang path (for routing between stations, planets and star systems), modern DNS (for routing to a specific organization within an installation), and a UUID (which travels with the person no matter where they are). There's no difference between that and a fucked up IP address.



  • I'm waiting for these shows to start pinging IPv6 link-local addresses.



  • Reminds me of an episode of Numbers. Oh, the hard disk was caught in an explosion? Let me just wave my magic wand of data recovery over it for a few seconds. Hey, look, the exact text we're looking for!


  • Garbage Person

    @moog said:

    Reminds me of an episode of Numbers. Oh, the hard disk was caught in an explosion? Let me just wave my magic wand of data recovery over it for a few seconds. Hey, look, the exact text we're looking for!
    Ha, this same episode of Nikita had a "hard drive"  being shot once and only once to make [i]DAMN SURE[/i] the data isn't recoverable by the Big Bad Organization with its unlimited budget and Godlike tech dude. Seriously. They weren't even in a rush. Go take a walk to a damned incinerator, this is only the future of the world or whatever the hell that depends on the shit on that disk never getting out.



  • @Weng said:

    Go take a walk to a damned incinerator, this is only the future of the world or whatever the hell that depends on the shit on that disk never getting out.

    Or use a vacuum cleaner.



  •  They got one thing right - never use V1.0 of anything. 



  • @b-redeker said:

    Or use a vacuum cleaner.
     

    Big Bad Corp may have access to a Clean Room and accompanied services. So given that greasy sprinkled dust doesn't damage the platters (compared to, like, shooting a bullet through them), Big Bad Corp might be capable of perfectly restoring a dusty drive to flawless functionality.



  • @dhromed said:

    @b-redeker said:

    Or use a vacuum cleaner.
     

    Big Bad Corp may have access to a Clean Room and accompanied services. So given that greasy sprinkled dust doesn't damage the platters (compared to, like, shooting a bullet through them), Big Bad Corp might be capable of perfectly restoring a dusty drive to flawless functionality.

    So... in the other thread... you lied?



  • @fennec said:

    I'm waiting for these shows to start pinging IPv6 link-local addresses.

    What for? There's 2001:db8::/32 (but knowing Hollywood, they'll probably use something ridiculous like "2452:/:f0x8").



  • @b-redeker said:

    So... in the other thread... you lied?
     

    I told an incomplete half-thruth!



  • @dhromed said:

    thruth

    And stop talking with your mouth full of pepernoten.



  • @moog said:

    Reminds me of an episode of Numbers. Oh, the hard disk was caught in an explosion? Let me just wave my magic wand of data recovery over it for a few seconds. Hey, look, the exact text we're looking for!
     

    Reminds me of an episode of RoboCop: a disc was badly damaged so when they put it in the computer it looks like a layer of (analogue-TV-esque) snow over the lettering. Or did RoboCop look at the disc and saw "001010011010101" in their ridiculous font? Maybe that's how it got onto the screen. Still no reason for the snow, since if was corrupted like that the letter would be simply wrong (or actually fail CRC checks) - since the text was in the same font it wouldn't have been stored on the disc as a bitmap.

     @Weng said:

    All the abuses of technology in that show and you pick THIS ONE?

    Every show has incorrect things in them. Never watch a nursing show with a nurse, or a (whatever) show with a (whatever). Don't let real life get in the way of good fiction! Just like you can have FTL drives in BSG, a cop can get DNA/facial recognition/cell phone location/street camera evidence back in minutes - or less!



  • @moog said:

    Reminds me of an episode of Numbers. Oh, the hard disk was caught in an explosion? Let me just wave my magic wand of data recovery over it for a few seconds. Hey, look, the exact text we're looking for!

    You'd rather they show the ACTUAL process of hard drive data recovery and let the plot drag for days while they sift through recovered junk files one by one?

    I agree that TV tech speak could use a bit of consulting, but taking artistic liberties to move the plot along don't bother me nearly as much.



  • @b-redeker said:

    And stop talking with your mouth full of pepernoten.
     

    oh shnap!



  • Yeah, sometimes this stuff stands out to me like a sore thumb, too. It gets to the point where if you think too hard about it, you'll never enjoy watching anything ever again. I lived in Chicago back when the show "ER" was on, and it took place there. The 2 streets it was on the corner of were really parallel to each other and in different parts of town. A friend once joked that the hospital must be huge and floating over the city in order to make that work, or something.

    But like I said, you can get really obsessive about these things if you want. You can sometimes tell when a lens flare was added in after-the-fact because the number of blades on the aperture of the simulated camera is different than the ones on the real camera used to film the live elements. You really don't want to be able to notice those sorts of things as it just makes watching everything painful.



  • I enjoy the show the way I enjoy "24" or other popcorn thrillers.  There are all kinds of plot holes, but it's still cheesy fun.

    In the last episode, why not blow up the plane right away?  They sort of cover it by having Percy say "Rats, we should have blown it up" but why wasn't that their FIRST course of action? 

    Why doesn't anyone ever notice Alex chatting with Nikita?  She doesn't even sit in the very back row, wouldn't the student sitting behind her see?  Isn't there a firewall?  Especially with security as tight as it is and Berkoff so in tune with security cameras, surveillance, and network traffic.

    Speaking of, how do they find Nikita on surveillance footage so darned quickly every time?

    And when Michael lies about seeing that other girl shot dead a few episodes ago -- wasn't he with a driver at the time? Wouldn't the driver have also seen the girl alive with Nikita while they were escaping?

    Just a few off the top of my head...

     



  • @WhiskeyJack said:

    Why doesn't anyone ever notice Alex chatting with Nikita?  She doesn't even sit in the very back row, wouldn't the student sitting behind her see?

    Yeah that one really irks me too! I think they could easily make these things more realistic without affecting the plot at all. For example they could have used a small radio transmitter or something rather than MSN. Then there'd be no need for all that speech synthesis crap either. And it would open up other plot lines, like what if they find a repeater and then they know they have a mole...

    It still makes me a bit sad that the most accurate hacking in a film was in The Matrix Reloaded. Oh, and The Social Network, but that's because they used Zuckerberg's blog posts verbatim.



  • @Timmmm said:

    I think they could easily make these things more realistic

    But they don't. They don't do it with cartoons, not with porn (or so I'm told), not with TV series. But then again, neither does popcorn have much nutritional value.

    The weird thing is that you can usually put those sentiments aside and just watch/read dumb fiction but occasionally it irks. I can look at Star Wars and forget about all physical impossibilities, yet I look at the next SciFi movie and I get annoyed. When the story is compelling enough, you don't care.

    But try to explain that to your wife and they'll look at you funny (or if you're lucky and/or still in the early stages of a relationship, tenderly).

     



  • @b-redeker said:

    The weird thing is that you can usually put those sentiments aside and just watch/read dumb fiction but occasionally it irks. I can look at Star Wars and forget about all physical impossibilities, yet I look at the next SciFi movie and I get annoyed. When the story is compelling enough, you don't care.
    I'd say it's due to the way it's presented.  In Star Wars, to fly faster than light speed, they say, "Punch it, Chewie!".  In irksome sci-fis, they try to impress the audience with their ignorance: "Alright, quantum flurp the smuons field manifold converter and squark the tacheyon neutralino cannon!  We're going to break the quantum light speed barrier which they said was quanum unpossible until Xyro McFutureson single-handedly proved them wrong in 2189!  Oh, and something about Higgs, because the writers saw a Nova special a few weeks ago!"

    It's like they try to shove their wrongness in your face.  Yes, it is irksome indeed.



  • @Xyro said:

    In irksome sci-fis, they try to impress the audience with their ignorance: "Alright, quantum flurp the smuons field manifold converter and squark the tacheyon neutralino cannon!  We're going to break the quantum light speed barrier which they said was quanum unpossible until Xyro McFutureson single-handedly proved them wrong in 2189!  Oh, and something about Higgs, because the writers saw a Nova special a few weeks ago!"

    It's like they try to shove their wrongness in your face.  Yes, it is irksome indeed.

    Nothing exemplifies this phenomenon more than the "GUI interface in Visual Basic" quote from CSI.

     



  • @b-redeker said:

    @Timmmm said:

    I think they could easily make these things more realistic

    But they don't. They don't do it with cartoons, not with porn (or so I'm told), not with TV series. But then again, neither does popcorn have much nutritional value.

    The weird thing is that you can usually put those sentiments aside and just watch/read dumb fiction but occasionally it irks. I can look at Star Wars and forget about all physical impossibilities, yet I look at the next SciFi movie and I get annoyed. When the story is compelling enough, you don't care.

    But try to explain that to your wife and they'll look at you funny (or if you're lucky and/or still in the early stages of a relationship, tenderly).

     

    This is called "Fridge Logic" on TVTropes, BTW. The theory is that they don't have to make everything in the movie believable all the time, they just need to make it believable enough so it doesn't detract from the movie itself. (Or, you think of it on your way to the fridge later that night.)

    For example, District 9 is a great movie while you're watching it. Then you think back, and it strikes you that the alien UFO used DNA viruses as fuel? Or maybe UFO fuel just happens to mutate humans into another species? It doesn't make any damned sense.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @b-redeker said:

    @Timmmm said:

    I think they could easily make these things more realistic

    But they don't. They don't do it with cartoons, not with porn (or so I'm told), not with TV series. But then again, neither does popcorn have much nutritional value.

    The weird thing is that you can usually put those sentiments aside and just watch/read dumb fiction but occasionally it irks. I can look at Star Wars and forget about all physical impossibilities, yet I look at the next SciFi movie and I get annoyed. When the story is compelling enough, you don't care.

    But try to explain that to your wife and they'll look at you funny (or if you're lucky and/or still in the early stages of a relationship, tenderly).

     

    This is called "Fridge Logic" on TVTropes, BTW. The theory is that they don't have to make everything in the movie believable all the time, they just need to make it believable enough so it doesn't detract from the movie itself. (Or, you think of it on your way to the fridge later that night.)

    For example, District 9 is a great movie while you're watching it. Then you think back, and it strikes you that the alien UFO used DNA viruses as fuel? Or maybe UFO fuel just happens to mutate humans into another species? It doesn't make any damned sense.

    Sorry a movie where aliens looks like food is not great by my accounts, other than that I agree



  • @serguey123 said:

    Sorry a movie where aliens looks like food is not great by my accounts, other than that I agree

    Mmmmm...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    The theory is that they don't have to make everything in the movie believable all the time, they just need to make it believable enough so it doesn't detract from the movie itself. (Or, you think of it on your way to the fridge later that night.)

    Being irked by technobabble is not fridge logic, since it irks you when you're watching, not afterwards. This is more about breaking [url=http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief]willing suspension of disbelief[/url].



  • @serguey123 said:

    Sorry a movie where aliens looks like food is not great by my accounts
     

    They don't... look like... food...



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Then you think back, and it strikes you that the alien UFO used DNA viruses as fuel? Or maybe UFO fuel just happens to mutate humans into another species? It doesn't make any damned sense.
     

    I solve it by knowing that the prawns use a bio-interface, and because it's not explained how thta works, there's no telling what effect that has on alien (human) biology. So not a problem.

    The problem I had was like, why did the ship leave and leave all the aliens behind? That constituded a major Motivation error I think.

    Everything else put it squarely in my top ~3 movies of all time.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    District 9 is a great movie

    Hey, I think I missed that movie, but it's now on my must watch list. Thx!

     



  • There are all of these posts regarding meaningless technobabble and no one has quoted CSI yet?



  • @Kaulesh said:

    There are all of these posts regarding meaningless technobabble and no one has quoted CSI yet?

    Alternatively, you could try reading the thread.
    @WhiskeyJack said:
    Nothing exemplifies this phenomenon more than the "GUI interface in Visual Basic" quote from CSI.



  • @dhromed said:

    @serguey123 said:

    Sorry a movie where aliens looks like food is not great by my accounts
     

    They don't... look like... food...

    They do, if you are Asian, anyway they looked like shrimp to me but any kind of insect-like creature is edible by Asian standard 



  • @blakeyrat said:

    @b-redeker said:

    @Timmmm said:

    I think they could easily make these things more realistic

    But they don't. They don't do it with cartoons, not with porn (or so I'm told), not with TV series. But then again, neither does popcorn have much nutritional value.

    The weird thing is that you can usually put those sentiments aside and just watch/read dumb fiction but occasionally it irks. I can look at Star Wars and forget about all physical impossibilities, yet I look at the next SciFi movie and I get annoyed. When the story is compelling enough, you don't care.

    But try to explain that to your wife and they'll look at you funny (or if you're lucky and/or still in the early stages of a relationship, tenderly).

     

    This is called "Fridge Logic" on TVTropes, BTW. The theory is that they don't have to make everything in the movie believable all the time, they just need to make it believable enough so it doesn't detract from the movie itself. (Or, you think of it on your way to the fridge later that night.)

    For example, District 9 is a great movie while you're watching it. Then you think back, and it strikes you that the alien UFO used DNA viruses as fuel? Or maybe UFO fuel just happens to mutate humans into another species? It doesn't make any damned sense.

    The alien's weapons, armor, etc all used a single generic energy source and were also somehow keyed with a species level biometric trigger preventing non-species members from operating their devices.  It would make sense (depending on the quantity of mind altering substance used prior to trying to make sense) that the fuel source itself contained a template of the DNA sequences required to pass the biometric tests.

    I find it fascinating that the aliens apparently have a genetically enforced caste system :  A relatively small number of super-smart aliens ruling a larger number of dumb aliens. The fuel source could be the method by which the alien's "promote" the members of the lower class to members of the upper class.  If, through accident or design, the "leader" class alien's required a replenishment of their numbers they could just use the same fuel/energy source to promote from within.  This would more than likely require a complete re-write of the lower class alien's DNA.

    Introduction of quantites of the fuel source into the bloodstream of a human with certain immune deficiencies might allow that template to interact with the nuclear DNA in such a way as to create a hybrid.  A very short lived, painfully malformed hybrid.

    More likely it would kill the person outright, but hey --- it's a movie.


Log in to reply