A computer in the year 3500 with a floppy disk drive? My grandchildren won't know what floppy diskettes are unless they take a course in ancient computer history. I accepted it when they went through the black hole and came out the other side. I had no problem when their fusion pistol cut enemies in half without leaving any blood. I completely accepted the idea that they could communicate billions of miles apart with only a 20 millisecond delay. But a floppy diskette? No one has used a floppy diskette on Earth for years. What is it doing in a movie about the future?

Why are scriptwriters such idiots?

Look at this scene from Flash Gordon. This is what 1930s Hollywood thought future beings would be wearing. Of course we laugh today when we see rockets dangling on strings with cigarette smoke shooting out their tails. The 1980s version was just as ridiculous although that was probably intended anyway.

Now I have no problem with transporters and warp-drives, what bothers me are the little things. Why do people in the future still wear wristwatches? In the early scenes of the film Flash is wearing a Seiko automatic chronograph, model 6139-6002.

Why are phones still being used in the Matrix? This is 2006 and many young people are using cellphones as their only means of communications. Indeed last year marked the turning point: there are more wireless subscribers than fixed wireline.

Certainly Hollywood scriptwriters have calculators: a little math will show that at the present loss rate of 4% a year, the Baby Bells (with 180 million customers) will have half as many fixed wireline customers in less than 16 years, 1/4th as many in 32 years,... and less than 4 million by 2100. Of course, they would most likely get out of the fixed wireline business much, much sooner.

As for watches, except for vanity, who doesn't see that ending before the turn of this century? Ask a young person for the time and he flips out his cellphone. I happily acknowledge great scenes such as the "the Genesis sequence" in 1982's "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." It's a favorite of mine. I have no problem with computer generated graphics; I have no problem with robots coming back from the future. Even car crashes where our hero emerges without even his hair mussed up. These are things upon which I am willing to suspend my disbelief.

A Flash Gordon trivia: George Lucas had hoped to remake the original Flash Gordon (1936), but when he learned that Dino De Laurentiis had already bought the rights, he wrote Star Wars (1977) instead.

Here, in no particular order, are Hollywood idiocies that burn my bacon:

1. No Caller ID. Why in movies taking place in the present is someone still hanging up in 30 seconds for fear the feds will be able to grab the number he is calling from?


2. Plain Text Passwords. In War Games (1993) Matthew Broderick's character breaks into a US Military Computer controlling missiles and guesses the password in under a minute. If you want me to believe that you can break into a military computer then at least show me some gadget that you put into a keyboard to transmit the password to our hero. Something. But please, don't try to pass off "Bosco" as a password, that's absurd - no one would ever use such a simple and easy word. Even my bank account is protected with the password "$FcI223kMhgfD3" (Bank of America).


3. And stop blinking "ACCESS DENIED" when you fail. What system does that anyway?


4. Stupid email addresses. In Mission Impossible (1996) an email address to "Job@Book of Job" is being sent from "Max@Job 3:14". I can take the lack of.com or.net, but spaces?


5. Huge type on computer screens. Who, except the legally blind, types in 48 pt type? Stop it already. Just zoom in on the screen.


6. Money has no weight. In Twins (1988) Danny Devito's character is running with a suitcase filled with 5 million dollars. Anyone who has ever carried 5 million in hundreds knows that it weighs 110 pounds. No weigh anyone that small can run with that much money.


7. Old fashioned watches. The year is 2606 and our hero looks at his analog watch with the big hand on 12 and the little hand on 6 - it's 12:30. How ridiculous. This is 2006 and most kids don't know what an analog watch is. If you want to have someone from the future still wearing a watch, at least make it look somewhat futuristic.


8. TVs. In I, Robot (2004) we see huge tv screens filling a wall. Nope. Before the end of this century there will be tiny mirrors the size of a dime in all corners of your house with a laser shooting the image directly onto your retina no matter where you sit giving you the illusion of a 220 inch screen set 15 feet away, or 110 inch screen at 10 feet (perfect 30 degree viewing angle).


9. Noise in space. I hear it so much now, I'm willing to forgive ship-shaking explosions heard through deep space. Do I need to mention that sound needs a medium to pass it's waves along; they aren't electromagnetic.


10. Cars that explode when they bump into a wall. What, every car comes from the factory with 100 pounds of TNT in its trunk? Sure cars can explode but not with flames shooting 200 feet into the air. Give me some basis for believing that the car can explode so spectacularly.


11. Nuclear weapons that get diffused when there is only one second left. Can't we have a rule that explosive devices get stopped at the 3 second mark. My heart can't stand it when there is only 1 second left.


12. Money Transfers. It makes me laugh when I see money transfers being done on a graph as if they are physically sending dollars over the network. In real life it is done before your finger leaves the SEND key.


13. And who the hell has a standalone SEND key on Windows machines anyway?

Hollywood spends millions for that special effect: car chase scenes at 100 miles per hour, detailed inner workings of space craft, destruction of entire cities, tidal waves, fiery comets. Yet they have someone transferring data with a floppy! For me, that destroys the film's verisimilitude.

This has been a Thursday 13 post [#2] and is updated certain Thursdays.

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