Computers in the Movies

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How many times have you groaned at the ludicrous ways in which computers are portrayed in movies? Jakob Nielsen has had the great idea of doing an analysis of some of the biggest howlers.

Here’s a condensed version…

1. The Hero Can Immediately Use Any UI

Break into a company — possibly in a foreign country or on an alien planet — and step up to the computer. How long does it take you to figure out the UI and use the new applications for the first time? Less than a minute if you’re a movie star.

The fact that all user interfaces are walk-up-and-use is probably the single most unrealistic aspect of how movies depict computers. In reality, we know all too well that even the smartest users have plenty of problems using even the best designs, let alone the degraded usability typically found in in-house MIS systems or industrial control rooms.

2. Time Travelers Can Use Current Designs

An even worse flaw is the assumption that time travelers from the past could use today’s computer systems. In fact, they’d have no conception of any of modern technology’s basic concepts, and so would be dramatically more stumped than the novice users we observe in user testing. Even someone who’s never used Excel at least understands the general idea of computers and screens.
[…]
If you were transported back in time to the Napoleonic wars and made captain of a British frigate, you’d have no clue how to sail the ship: You couldn’t use a sextant and you wouldn’t know the names of the different sails, so you couldn’t order the sailors to rig the masts appropriately. However, even our sailing case would be easier than someone from the year 2207 having to operate a current computer: sailing ships are still around, and you likely know some of the basic concepts from watching pirate movies. In contrast, it’s highly unlikely that anyone from 2207 would have ever seen Windows Vista screens.

3. The 3D UI

In Minority Report, the characters operate a complex information space by gesturing wildly in the space in front of their screens. As Tog found when filming Starfire, it’s very tiring to keep your arms in the air while using a computer. Gestures do have their place, but not as the primary user interface for office systems…

4. Integration is Easy, Data Interoperates

In movieland, users have no trouble connecting different computer systems. Macintosh users live in a world of PCs without ever noticing it (and there were disproportionally more Macs than PCs in films a decade ago, when Apple had the bigger product-placement budget)…

5. Access Denied / Access Granted

Countless scenes involve unauthorized access to some system. Invariably, several passwords are tried, resulting in a giant “Access Denied” dialog box. Finally, a few seconds before disaster strikes, the hero enters the correct password and is greeted by an equally huge “Access Granted” dialog box.

A better user interface would proceed directly to the application’s home screen as soon as the user has correctly logged in. After all, you design for authorized users. There’s no reason to delay them with a special confirmation that yes, they did indeed enter their own passwords correctly…

6. Big Fonts

In addition to the immense font used for “Access Denied” messages, most computer screens in the movies feature big, easily readable text. In real life, users often suffer under tiny text and websites that add insult to injury by not letting users resize the words.

This is just a digest. Worth reading in full.

Disintegrating Euros

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Hmmm… Do I believe this?

Users of the drug crystal methamphetamine may be causing euro banknotes to disintegrate, German police have told Der Spiegel magazine.

Sulphates used in the production of the drug could form sulphuric acid when mixed with human sweat, they say, causing banknotes to corrode.

Drug users sniff powdered crystals through rolled up banknotes.

About 1,500 banknotes have crumbled after being withdrawn from cash machines, German banking officials say.

Much of Germany’s supply of crystal methamphetamine is believed to come from eastern Europe, and has a high concentration of sulphates.

Its corrosive effects are also spread between contaminated notes and clean notes in wallets and purses.

The Bundesbank announced in early November that reports of bank notes worth between five euros and 100 euros disintegrating began to be received in the summer.

A 2003 report by the Institute for Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Research in Nuremberg found that 90% of German euros were contaminated with cocaine…

Quote of the day

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” Well, I know when I finish a book I know that it’s not only the worst book I’ve written (laughter all around), but that it’s the worst book that’s ever been written. [Laughter all around] I always tell my wife that. Actually there’s always a point where I go upstairs and go, ‘Oh, God, it’s the worst book ever written.’ And she says, ‘Oh that’s good dear, it means you’re almost through.'”

Novelist William Gibson, in an interview published on his Blog.

This is very consoling. Gibson is such a terrific writer, and even he feels like that. When people ask me if I like writing, I always reply: “I like having written“. Which is true.

Gates on the future of DRM

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From Techcrunch…

Microsoft convened a small group of bloggers today at their Redmond headquarters to discuss the upcoming Mix Conference in Las Vegas. Highlights of the day included:

  • The receipt of a Zune as a gift (the third I’ve received from Microsoft – I now have all three colors)
  • Seeing the look on Gates’ face when he walked into the room and every single one of us had a Mac open on the desk in front of us – Niall Kennedy had also set up a makeshift wifi network using an Airport
  • An hour-long anything goes Q&A session with Gates

    One of the questions that I asked was his opinion on the long term viability of DRM. I don’t hide the fact that I think DRM isn’t workable, and actively support DRM-free music alternatives such as eMusic and Amie Street. The rise of illegal or quasi-legal options like AllofMP3 and BitTorrent ensure that users have plenty of options when it comes to DRM-free digital music.

    Gates didn’t get into what could replace DRM, but he did give some reasonably candid insights suggesting that he thinks DRM is as lame as the rest of us.

    Gates said that no one is satisfied with the current state of DRM, which “causes too much pain for legitmate buyers” while trying to distinguish between legal and illegal uses. He says no one has done it right, yet. There are “huge problems” with DRM, he says, and “we need more flexible models, such as the ability to “buy an artist out for life” (not sure what he means). He also criticized DRM schemes that try to install intelligence in each copy so that it is device specific.

    His short term advice: “People should just buy a cd and rip it. You are legal then.”

    He ended by saying “DRM is not where it should be, but you won’t get me to say that there should be usage models and different payment models for usage. At the end of the day, incentive systems do make a difference, but we don’t have it right with incentives or interoperability.”

    These quotes are rough – I was typing fast but it was not an exact transcript. Still, it is interesting insight from a man who is in a position to shape the future of digital music models.

    • There’s a nice picture of the assembled bloggers and their host here.

    The bubble reputation

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    This morning’s Observer column — on the eBay ‘reputation’ system…

    It has become the linchpin of the eBay phenomenon. But as the importance of having a good reputation has increased, so has the temptation to manipulate the system. Fraudsters have been fooling the rating system by conducting transactions with friends or even themselves, using alternate user names to give themselves high satisfaction ratings – and luring unsuspecting customers to buy from them.

    It’s difficult to know how widespread this scam is, and eBay is fanatically tight-lipped about it. Policing the billions of transactions that take place every year in its online auctions is a Sisyphian task. And reputation-faking rings have been difficult to spot, especially since there are lots of close-knit groups on eBay (for example, porcelain collectors) who trade intensively – and innocently – with one another…

    Digging a deeper hole

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    From today’s New York Times…

    WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 — Military planners and White House budget analysts have been asked to provide President Bush with options for increasing American forces in Iraq by 20,000 or more. The request indicates that the option of a major “surge” in troop strength is gaining ground as part of a White House strategy review, senior administration officials said Friday.

    Discussion of increasing the number of American troops, at least temporarily, has coursed through Washington for two months, as a possible way to reverse the deteriorating security situation in Baghdad. But the decision to ask the Joint Chiefs of Staff to specify where the additional forces could be found among overstretched Army, Marine and National Guard units, and to seek a cost estimate from the White House Office of Management and Budget, signifies a turn in the debate.

    Officials said that the options being considered included the deployment of upwards of 50,000 additional troops, but that the political, training and recruiting obstacles to an increase larger than 20,000 to 30,000 troops would be prohibitive.

    At present, only about 17,000 American soldiers are actively involved in the effort to secure Baghdad, so even the low end of the proposals being considered by military and budget officials could more than double the size of that force. If adopted, such an increase would be a major departure from the current strategy advocated by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., which has stressed stepping up the training of Iraqi forces and handing off to them as soon as possible…

    What’s interesting about this (apart from the echoes of Vietnam) is that it’s not so long ago that we were told that US military planning and budgeting was predicated on ensuring that the US would always be able to fight two major wars simultaneously. I was always incredulous about that — but, hell, what do I know about war-fighting. Now it seems that the mighty US war-machine is stretched beyond endurance by a raggle-taggle crowd of turbanned and balaclava’d insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq.

    A place of greater safety

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    My friend Nicci Gerrard has written a perceptive piece about the Suffolk murders. Excerpt:

    Hintlesham is a small, attractive village scattered along a main road (it’s just a couple of miles from where I live, and my husband, Sean, and I named one of our characters Jenny Hintlesham in the Nicci French thriller that we wrote when we arrived here). Now it is the place where Gemma Adams was left, in a swollen ditch off the road to Ipswich.

    Copdock lies nondescriptly just beyond the noise of traffic, a village squashed between the A12 and A14 and almost swallowed up by the town; now it’s the site where Tania Nicol’s body was discovered in the same stretch of water as Gemma Adams. The ditch has become a churned-up stream here; on the bridge there are already several bouquets of flowers bearing messages from friends and from strangers. One of them – with a touchingly formal courtesy – addresses her as Ms Nicol…

    It’s a typical Nicci piece — soft and intuitive one minute, detached and analytical the next.

    The victims were beloved daughters, sisters, mothers, friends. Gemma Adams’ father spoke movingly of his “wonderful, beautiful” dead daughter, who was secure and happy as a child; she was a Brownie, loved horse-riding, played the piano, was “good”. Her addiction sucked her into a world from which the continued efforts of her parents couldn’t rescue her. Which parent, hearing this, wouldn’t feel a shudder of dread? We like to think we deserve our luck and are in control of our lives; actually we are forever walking on thin ice. And sometimes we are made more aware of this precariousness.

    Most believe that the murderer has changed something about the way we feel about our community. We are not living through an Agatha Christie whodunnit in which a fiendish criminal, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, will be discovered and ejected, and everything will return to tidy normality; it’s a creepy psychological thriller in which the sheer horror of what has happened unsettles how we think about the world in which we live…

    The (tiny) local police force is clearly overwhelmed by what it now has to deal with. The government, for its part, will respond with its usual duplicity. The Home Secretary will solemnly promise in front of TV cameras to provide any extra resources that are needed; while behind the scenes he will be gleefully pointing out to the Suffolk Constabulary that this is exactly why the government was trying to amalgamate local police forces into larger, less accountable, units.

    The Rule of Law (contd.)

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    From today’s Guardian Unlimited…

    The government should be stripped of its power to stop prosecutions in the national interest, a professor of law at Cambridge University said yesterday.

    John Spencer called the power to halt cases “the sort of thing you find in countries where the rule of law is not respected, and where criminal justice is instrumentalised [used by] the government as a stick with which to beat its political enemies, while its friends are allowed to flout the law with impunity.”