Hack The Planet!

As fun as Hackers is to watch, it is riddled with inaccuracies and exaggerations when it comes to computers and and hacking.  The most obvious detail is how the Graphical User Interface is presented in the film.  Hackers would have you believe that when navigating through a site looking for data and backdoors, you are taken on a journey through a neon landscape of data and codes.  Once the protagonists of the story find the important files there screen is flooded with glowing patterns and designs indicating that they have hit to mother load.  Within this inaccuracy I found it interesting that that data shown looked like mathematical equations with greek symbols and so on.  I would figure that within this hyper computer world they would at least show the code as binary, with 1's and 0's.  All this is Hollywood trying to glam up what would normally be mundane and tedious on screen.

Another problem that I found was an extremely common technique of using sound effects for every single keystroke and event that happens on screen.  To make computers more sexy, film makers often over enhance computer technology with bleeps, bells and whistles.  As I am writing this I wish my computer made these sounds.  Another instance of the film makers making hacking more interesting and sexy is the first duel between Acid Burn and Crash Override.  When they are battling in the TV station mainframe, they make it seem as if the two were battling like  two pirates over control over the tape deck.  Mess with the best, die like the rest.

Passwords were a big part of this film and I have a feeling that the most common passwords of the film (sex, god, and secret) are a bit off base.  I would assume that a techno-wizard would know that these passwords of 3-6 characters would be easily cracked by others trying to gain info.  The mega corporation in the movie would most likely not have all of their information protected by a simply 3 character password.  Maybe it's just me, but it seems ridiculous.