Hacker News Reader

Comment by VLM | Hacker News Reader

Can't wait to see fake hollywood bitcoins in the movies. I'm sure they'll just 'cat /dev/urandom' for awhile and call it good.

My assumption based on the title was the article would be a discussion about hollywood accounting where numbers are manipulated until only the studio wins. I was pleasantly surprised to read about fake currency.

View on HN

> Can't wait to see fake hollywood bitcoins in the movies. I'm sure they'll just 'cat /dev/urandom' for awhile and call it good.

You overestimate Hollywood tremendously. They'll create a GUI interface using Visual Basic and see if they can track an IP address. [1]

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkDD03yeLnU

The writers of that show take is as a challenge to come up with ludicrous technobabble that fools laymen but causes geeks to bite through their keyboards.

The more rage the better.

What makes that one so funny is that they tried. You can just imagine the conversation between a writer and a technical consultant.

Whereas this one ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y2zo0JN2HE

My father is a big fan. I saw some "enhance" sequence once and decided no thanks. I was at his house and this episode came on. cringe It seems like there should be a reasonable middle ground between NCIS and reality. Sneakers was pretty good. :)

Also The Net, Antitrust and David Fincher's Social Network and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo have very realistic computer sequences.

Antitrust and Social Network also show real source code that compiles (C, Java, Perl, Bash, HTML), Antitrust even explains "Open Source" to the audience. The camera work (especially showing relevant parts of the computer monitors and pan around to keep it engaging for a longer time) on all four movies is really fantastic.

* The Net (1995) - filmed one year before the World Wide Web got traction with the first fully graphical Mosaic web browser: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0113957/

* Antitrust (2001) - famous for highlighting the open source movement, features a "CEO" that resembles a mixture of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs in one person as evil character, shows Linux desktop and command shell, and shows real Linux developer: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817/

* Social Network (2010) - very realistic, based on real detailed technical blog posts from 2004 on LiveJournal from Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin's memory: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/

* The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) - nmap tool, etc.: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1568346/

---

* Jurassic Park (1993) - real 3D file manager application on Unix desktop, first use of OpenGL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/ , see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ and http://fsv.sourceforge.net/

* movies (like The Matrix reloaded) that use the nmap tool: http://nmap.org/movies/

If you are interested, check out gmunk work on Tron:

http://work.gmunk.com/search/tron

Hollywood has gotten better about faking technology. At least some people in Hollywood have. "Silicon Valley" on HBO went as far as having a Stanford CS professor develop a viable compression-rating system to be used on the show (the "Weissman Score," named for Professor Tsachy Weissman).

I've been really impressed by the TV show Halt And Catch Fire in this regard, the sales guy is slightly incorrect as a sales guy would be, but the engineers are bang-on.

Halt and Catch Fire is doing a bang up job of reflecting the technology and even the market of the time. Really refreshing to see.

The first two seasons of Alias were pretty ok regarding the use of computers. Granted, they still did impossible (highly advanced) stuff with them but it looked plausible. But after season 2 they jumped the shark in all regards.

It's important to note that this is not intended to be realistic. It's a parody of hacking sequences in TV and movies.

No..... Oh wow.

http://xkcd.com/1053/ (everything is new to someone)

I wasn't lucky. I would have preferred not to see this.

They did an interesting article on that:

http://priceonomics.com/why-do-all-hollywood-movies-lose-mon...

The most interesting part of that is the line where people need to agree to follow Hollywood accounting as part of the contract and actors have a large incentive to 'exaggerate' their income.

Still, I suspect a more honest studio could quickly gain a lot of traction.

"Honesty" is a logistical headache when it comes to recorded performances. Imagine, before digital distribution, tracking every movie ticket, every rental, every purchase (don't forget discounts like matinée tickets, coupons, clearance, etc), every clip used where royalties are due, etc ... and paying royalties to every face in your movie, at various rates depending on screen time or 'voice' time...

As the talent, it's just easier to demand a large payment up front and just forget about the royalties. As the studio, it's easier just to pay that amount up front. Then, magic voodoo accounting and poof any statutory royalties are eliminated.

I suppose in this case, the "honest" studio is negotiating that large up-front payment to its talent rather than trying to sell the talent on the eternal royalties that never come.

Maybe that's why these days actors demand a % of the profits:

"Bullock's deal with Warner Bros. for the Alfonso Cuaron-directed space epic calls for her to earn $20 million upfront against 15 percent of first-dollar gross. "

USD $70 million

USD $50 million for Robert Downey Jr. on Iron Man 3

Not too bad

You mean something else, but the cancelled Almost Human did bitcoin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8LqlMzEe-I

Reply on news.ycombinator.com