Creating a GUI in Visual Basic to track an IP address ^[1] in CSI

Depiction from a related video ^[2]:

This is what CSIentologists actually believe

• It's got to be Independence Day for most inaccurate: Uber geek Jeff Goldblum saving the world by using an PowerBook 5300 to destroy a city sized alien mothership by infecting it with a homemade computer virus, all within 30 minutes. Go Jeff! A Mac saved the world people, woohoo. Not.

• While Demon Seed is the worst and most disturbing and, thank God, only movie to ever star a sex crazy computer rapist that actually manages to knock up the human protagonist. I kid you not.

  Here's the plot summary if anyone can still remember:

  "A scientist creates Proteus--an organic super computer with artificial intelligence which becomes obsessed with human beings, and in particular the creators wife."

  -- Demon Seed, IMDB.com ^[1]

I just love the fact that in all TV and movie login interfaces, a successful login results in a giant modal window popping up that says

ACCESS GRANTED

Hackers, pretty much the entire movie.

Enemy of the State ^[1]: "Zoom in. Enhance. Rotate!"

Since TV shows keep appearing, this little tidbit from Stargate Atlantis ^[1] was one of my favorites:

Tech: "They're sending a databurst"

Weir: "Download it to a non-networked, firewalled computer."

The scene in Swordfish where Hugh Jackman is writing the app. It was a great setup. Just unrealistic.

Cracked.com ^[1] had a pretty good list called 5 Things Hollywood Thinks Computers Can Do ^[2]. Some of the worst offenders are there.

Probably all movies do this:

Everytime a letter is written on screen it produces a sound

Typing any key does this as well

Since I used it as an example in the original question, it should be included as an answer:

Jurassic Park ^[1]

"It's a Unix system. I know this" -- in Jurassic Park where a computer-genius girl sees a computer and quickly takes over like a 3-D video game, flying through the file system to shut down the park. [ video link to the scene ^[2]]

Obligatory TVTropes link?

Obligatory TVTropes category ^[1].

Everything in Swordfish.

I love the progress bars at the fund transfer scenes. Counting dollar by dollar :D

As much as I enjoy NCIS, apparently a normal desktop (Dell I think) is able to crack a 30 character alphanumeric password in just under 3 hours. If that's the case, I need to get a Dell.

Y'know the replicators from the Stargate universe?

Apperently their programming is not that much different from opening a pop-up in Javascript ^[1].

The hand-waving interface in Minority Report. Not that it's unrealistic (it's the future), but that it's impractical.

In Madagascar, the penguins break into the ships computer by jumping up and down on the keyboard with their flippers.

Actually I think this is probably quite realistic and pure genius.

The Net - if I remember correctly, hitting the Escape button and/or clicking on a rogue pixel would unleash a devastating virus

I'm also really enamored of electromagnetic pulses as they appear in the mass media — friendly, fluffy little EMPs that just make all the computers take a little nap for 15 minutes or so, and then everything's fine.

As opposed to, say, every circuit finer than a toaster heating element being slagged.

I think the way Die Hard 4 used technology looked pretty bogus to me.

In "War Games", the big launch-missiles security code was cracked--one digit at a time.

Well this isn't a movie - but a TV show.

On Bones ^[1], there was an episode where they were recovering JPEG files off a partially destroyed USB drive. When they tried to open a JPEG - it was all noise and only a strip off an image visible. When the lady magically did something, the whole image started to fade in behind the noise. As she worked her magic, the image became more opaque until they could see the JPEG!

Firewall ^[1] - a horrible movie starring Harrison Ford as a "security expert".

Lawnmower man. ^[1]

Ok Not an actual film but a parody script one:

There is a heavy silence as they search for a solution. Finally BRUCE’s face lights up with equal parts brilliance and insanity.

BRUCE: We Hack the Internet

ALFRED: Hack the Internet?

BRUCE: Yes, Hack the Internet.

GENERAL: No One’s ever hacked the Internet before.

BRUCE: Well, there’s a first for everything

GENERAL: But which one of the internets do we hack?

BRUCE: All of them

From here ^[1]

All of them. 

Some kind of all time award has to belong to the non-existence of Norton Antivirus: Alien Mothership Edition.

Any crime program where the facial recognition software cycles through all the faces in the database to the side of the correct image until it finally makes a match. As if any program would waste CPU cycles displaying incorrect matches.

Any File download sequence in any film. The hero always seems to be able to download 500TB of data, onto a USB drive, in under a minute and always about 2 seconds before the old security guard / bad guy enters the room. (Die Hard 4 for example)

This article Hollywood's Computers: Telling A Story In A Flash ^[1] describes why the computer interfaces in movies look like video games. Great description of the work of Mark Coleran.

How could Mission Impossible (the movie) not be listed here? I remember well how they'd send an e-mail, and the screen would show a little envelope tipping over and zooming away.

I've watched James Bond: Goldeneye ^[1] a 2nd time yesterday. The hacker stereotype was almost unbearable (even more so with his insane German synchronization voice). Apart from that: This 1995 movie looked above-average antiquated with all the big CRTs and references to 500MB hdisks and 14.4 modems. IMHO the much older (pre PC-era) James Bond movies with Sean Connery are better in this respect.

Memo to all directors: Don't show contemporary technology (and don't let the protagonists talk about it) if you want to produce a timeless classic!

I can't believe nobody has mentioned the spining security cube ^[1] they had to hack through in Swordfish ^[2].

The one I remember the most is the one in The Net ^[1] where a virus ate the computer screen content.

I also remember a similar case in another movie where a helicopter took off outside the house, and the "good guys" inside it made it crash by moving a chess piece infected with a virus from the house computer to the "helicopter computer". I'm fuzzy on the details but it was something like that.

Also, you got the ftp session with the alien mothership in Independency day where they uploaded a virus. That's just classic.

Who knew that aliens ran windows. No wonder they're not here yet, or that they are grumpy when they arrive.

I was going to say you're missing out on a lot of answers by saying movies, but people are still mentioning TV series, anyway.

One of the worst I've seen was in The Pretender. For some dubious reason I don't really recall, those at The Centre had to find out what a wierd large number meant. The nerdy character suddenly turned to his computer and typed something random, something too busy for a TV camera popped up on his screen and he turned back and said his line. Trouble was, the window that opened was an xterm window and a unix directory listing... ouch.

Kind of a shame they did this, actually, as The Pretender was most of the time quite a good show.

Zoolander ^[1]

When examining the computer (an eMac) with the incriminating evidence:

The files are "in" the computer?

Later he throws the TV off a ledge in front of a crowd to show them the "files"

Swordfish.

The invalid IPv4 address is the most retarded thing I ever saw in a movie.

Weird Science ^[1]. They create a real woman (who has magical powers no less) from a computer somehow.

Just watched Gamer ^[1]. Oh dear.

Any magical "image enhancing".

Because with the good algorithm, you can interpolate just everything which was on the scene, or as reflection in the eye of the killer.

( complementary video ^[1], compilation of "enhance" moments, from serials and movies)

EureKa ^[1] tv-show is full of "hyper" computers that could launch all rockets in the world simultaneously :))

All movies where the ultimate-password of some ultra-genius boss/criminal is the name of his love or something silly like that.

For instance, Detective Conan movie 10

Youtube Clip ^[1] @ ~ 8:10

24, especially this season, when they cracked blowfish because they had the backdoor that the creator had left.

I watched "Cloudy with a chance of meatballs" with the kids; I have to say that the computer codes the main character typed looked more realistic than most hollywood blockbusters.

I know, kind of an "anti-answer" but hey, I noticed.

The first half of Prison Break Season 4, where they use a special device that wirelessly steals data from any electrical device within a yard's radius.

In the movie "The Net", which deals with hackers and elite cyber terrorists:

YET EVERYONE USES A MAC???

Superman 3!

Freakazoid ^[1], while not a movie but a cartoon, is my favorite. There's a bug in a certain piece of hardware that if someone types in the string "@[=g3,8d]\&fbb=-q]/hk%fg" (quotes included), and presses backspace, he turns into Freakazoid!

Terminal Error: Sentient computer program killed by a virus written on a game boy color

Office space, when the printer says 'PC Load Letter' -
But they are in the US so the printer would be loaded with letter anyway, you get this error in europe when you try and print a US formatted document to a printer loaded with A4.

Other than that Office Space is an excellent documentary

The SuperDetective goes to security office of the building:

SuperDetective: Do you have the tapes of yesterday?
CluelessGuard: Yes
SuperDetective: Show me the parking
CluelessGuard: (immediately) Here.
SuperDetective: Jump to 2:13 pm
CluelessGuard: (immediately) Here.
SuperDetective: ummm, I can't see the plate of the killer clearly. 
CluelessGuard: No problem, I will run this program that takes a very 
               low quality and dark video and magnify and enhances it 
               out of the blue.
CluelessGuard: (inmediately) there's the plate. Anything else?

You could say Deja Vu. However, the program they used ended up not being a computer at all. Still, there explanations were funny.

I'll go for a slightly different take, and that is computer use in the movie TITLE. "You've Got Mail", for whatever you think of it as a movie, always reminds me (horridly) of AOL. Every time I see mention of that movie, I hear that damned voice in my head, loud enough to drown out all the others...

Every use of a computer in CSI.

Zooming in on a pretty poor CCTV, rotating around an angle and zooming in further to see a fingerprint.

Ghost in the Machine ^[1] - The killer transfers his mind to the computer when he dies in an accident and continues killing by using the internet. Yet, he controls mechanical switches and stuff that surely was not connected to the internet back then (probably not even nowadays), like the electrical cover of a swimming pool.

am wondering what program was on the screen in Mission Impossible (the movie). Was it supposed to be netscape?

This answer is kind of the opposite, and answering the rare question "What media portrays computers correctly?"

Well I was watching Dexter ^[1] last night and all the computer screens seemed quite believable - perhaps it was only the episode I was watching, but bravo to them!

UK TV series Spooks. I snort with laughter while my Wife watches it and she goes "What!!?"

Last series the guy hacked into an enemy satellite in about 10 seconds..all with a lovely fancy GUI...bwah ha ha ha

They aren't cluless about technolgy but rather most geeks are cluless about Hollywood.

They don't use 3D graphics because they think it's realistic but because it's more exicting for the viewers.

Michael Crichton, who wrote the book for Jurassic Park, explains ^[1] very well how scientists fail to understand media. The same argument also goes for other geeks like programmers.

The virtual reality sequences in Hideaway ^[1] come to mind, especially considering that the Dean R. Koontz novel that it was based on had nothing to do with virtual reality.

TRON ^[1] anybody?
The guy is transformed into a program then becomes a human again. How can this be realistic?