Computers in the movies

Hollywood movies are well known among geeks for the usually poor (as in, unrealistic) representation of computers and computing. Obviously, one has to suspend a certain amount of disbelief in the name of entertainment, but it really bugs me when movies screw up technical details that almost any techie would spot.

I was watching one movie recently (alas, I can't remember the name), and the heros were looking at a list of IP addresses. However, some idiot thought that something like 456.23.75.749 was a realistic IP address! There are countless other examples (password overide, anyone?), but I think you get the point.

So I was pleasantly surprised last night when I watched Antitrust. Apart from one or two belief suspension moments, I thought the portrayal of computers was fairly accurate. The satellites in the movie are supposedly on a private network, and indeed they all have IP addrsses like 10.32.54.45. The OS the geeks use is obviously UNIX or UNIX-like, and the source code shown is real source code for real open source apps.

But as a Sun fan, perhaps the coolest scene (apart from when the CEO of NURV, Gary Winston, says "Bill who?" when Bill Gates was mentioned) for me was when one of the Good Guys is shown receiving an award from none other than Sun Chairman and ex-CEO, Scott McNealy! I wonder if the computers in the movie were running Solaris?