THE PACK Message Boards

Most far-off explanation of IRC and leet speak (Numb3rs): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2rGTXHvPCQ
Mystical IP address wizardry with non-sensible technobabble (CSI Miami): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU
Mystical "enhance 640x480 surveillance to +10 gigapixel imagery" (CSI New York?) : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uoM5kfZIQ0
Or a whole series of the above: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vxq9yj2pVWk

If you're ever going to write something that has anything technologically-related; consult a person who actually knows something. I've seen far, far too many movies with "i'm haxing the fbi lolz!" with no practical methodology at all.

I especially love the way the entire angle of the image shifts when they zoom in on her eye the second time in the third clip. Even the guys in Minority Report (Who were, what? Two hundred years into the future?) couldn't get an image that clear at that resolution.

CBS is the absolute worst when it comes to cheap crap science, techno-related or otherwise. They're just sleazy soap operas that write subcultural "expose" episodes and throw in a bunch of crap science on top of it hoping that will disguise the fact.

To me it's almost equivalent to the writers of Battlefield Earth expecting us to believe A) that the aliens came to Earth looking for gold but never checked to see if the humans had been harvesting it, and B) that they developed space travel while living on a planet where a single explosion would make the entire planet go inferno (see the N.C.'s response to such here). And the assumption both they and the CSI / NUMB3RS writers were making, I believe, is the exact same: that their audience is a bunch of drooling neanderthals, therefore they don't even have to try.

Even if you can't afford (or can't get any worthwhile information from) an expert, you'd still get much more accurate information about tech / criminal profiling by watching Dateline or 48 Hour Mysteries. Only reason they don't: Real police work takes months, and those idiots don't think the audience will be able to A) wait, or B) connect the dots without an "A-ha!" moment.

Incidentally, this is part of the reason I'm avoiding tech, science and police talk like the plague in my own writing (just because it's about vampires and werewolves doesn't mean I should feel free to stoop to that kind of stupidity).

Terastas wrote:I especially love the way the entire angle of the image shifts when they zoom in on her eye the second time in the third clip. Even the guys in Minority Report (Who were, what? Two hundred years into the future?) couldn't get an image that clear at that resolution.

That was the very first thing I noticed, the angle shifting from top to straight on the eye ball which is borderline impossible and then zooming in so much with crystal clear image and the dumb women complains about the damn resolution not being very good! I never watched CSI shows because I knew right away that everything they do in it is wrong but when I saw these videos on youtube that just put the last nail in the coffin.

If you think thats bad? I saw this video from this one show (Can't remember which) that actually took a 2D photo and made it entirely in 3D! What the hell is that? If these shows were set 100 years into the future I would normally give it a free pass but these Criminal Investigations are doing things that not even the CIA can do. What is sad is that I know a guy from my job who is going to be a CSI actually thinks they have those types of equipment. He will surely be disapointed.

Now if you excuse me, I have to go create a GUI interface using visual basic. to track the common sense for these writers.

Shadow Wulf wrote:If you think thats bad? I saw this video from this one show (Can't remember which) that actually took a 2D photo and made it entirely in 3D!

The only time I know of where they did that was in the movie Enemy Of The State, but the guy telling the (very stereotypical) techies to "rotate and zoom in" was this government guy that had set up a wiretapping agency that would make the N.S.A. look like the crazy old folks spying on the Mexican landscapers with binoculars by comparison, so I guess the writers of that expected to get a free pass on "the technology does exist, but it's all classified and such."

What is sad is that I know a guy from my job who is going to be a CSI actually thinks they have those types of equipment. He will surely be disapointed.

That should honestly be the first test on a Criminal Justice final: Is CSI: Las Vegas credible? And if you answer "Yes," it's an automatic F.

I knew somebody who was inspired by CSI to study criminal science too when he went to college. He says he doesn't regret his decision, but not surprisingly, he hates that show even more than I do now.

Yup thats what it was, Enemy of the State.

And lol I love how gullible some people are about the field they going into.

It's not limited to technology. In the show Kyle XY, he gains the ability to 'rewind' his memory and relive a moment to try to notice things he missed the first time. So, in the memory of him talking to a guy, he walks to where he never stood, to read the book the guy has. Yeah, in a memory, he pretends like it's the holodeck and deviates from what happened.
It confused me a bit, along with the bit of him levitating by altering the polarity of his electrons or something that would probably result in him dying spectacularly. I need to watch the rest of the series some day.

I find movies that like to use the Big Faceless Evil Government as a convenient antagonist, and the superscience level criminalistics technology, somewhat annoying. Why CSI pisses me off is that it is taken for granted that a local jurisdiction is going to have access to that kind of crap. Okay, the FBI admittedly has some impressive technical resources, but they are very limited in how many open cases they can apply that to -- and even then, it still doesn't come close to the Buck Rodgers crap they have on CSI. But CSI isn't about the Feds -- It's supposed to be freaking Las Vegas!? Most law enforcement agencies I've seen have problems getting enough funding to replace their handheld radio batteries (which wear out every year or so). If you can't afford freaking batteries, you're probably not investing vast sums of money on your crime lab. Most agencies (including most counties) don't even have a crime lab at all, and for those that do, most are best described as primitive. Heck, I find the criminalistics people in Law & Order a bit unrealistically effective.