Jonathan wrote:

Slightly off topic, but I've noticed that in a lot of action/thriller-type films, there's some kind of important scene where a character has to do something on a computer. The convention was clearly developed in the 1980s because you always hear the nonstop sound of . . . TYPING. Not a single mouse-click. Pick any recent Hollywood scene of this type, and I guarantee you'll hear what I mean.

<snip> probably on Slashdot I once almost died laughing when reading a discussion of developing a GUI (Graphic User Interface) that would actually look like the interfaces in Hollywood movies. this developed quickly into how to make an Operating System that would meet the requirements of average computer use in a Hollywood movie. needless to say that this would involved oversized fonts and indeed, typing sounds as characters typed by a remote party appear on screen, etc. as for technology in movies: Hackers <http://us.imdb.com/Title?0113243> These hacker kids DON'T look like nerds (featuring a young(er) Angelina Jolie) and features a scene of Crash Override and Acid Burn waxing lyrically about the specs of Acid's top of the line notebook. Also neat/crappy in this movie are the visualizations of Gibsonesque cyberspace and Plague's love-affair with his mainframe. Sneakers <http://us.imdb.com/Title?0105435> Not a bad movie really, plus it has Robert Redford in it ;) Kind of neat scenes where the workings of the Universal Key Generator are discussed and the scene where they observe through a telescope (often telescopes, nightscopes etc. are overlooked as indispensible Hollywood technology) the location where the device is hidden (in an answering machine). Frank. -- The Cyberculture, Identity and Gender Resources ==> http://fragment.nl/resources/