A movie released in 1995(?) where a computer savvy woman's life gets hijacked by a group of hackers.
* The game that she is trying to clean a virus
from is Wolfenstein 3d
* At one point in the movie, an IP address of
23.75.345.200 is shown. The numbers can only
go up to 255 for each decmal place. I suspect they
did this so they wouldn't end up putting someones
real IP address in the movie, and end up getting
sued (or the owner getting DOS'ed by the hordes
of geeks pinging that address :-)
* Not to rag on Macintosh, but that scene at
the computer fair that showed the woman
desperately copying a file from a floppy disk was
made more tense by the lack of an eject button
(they even showed a close up shot of the drive).
Imagine if the copy failed, or worse, the
computer crashed, and as she was fumbling for
a paperclip of anything to get the disk out, she
gets apprehended by the guys chasing her. :>
* I'm suprised nobody consults the hard copies of
her files, to verify the information on the computer. But then too, I wonder how many people
actualy do that. Scary :\
With its use of a telephone line for Web access, and 3.5 inch floppy discs, the movie is rather quaint. And, a bit dated. Then again, 2002's S1mone showed a character using 5.25 in. floppies, which I hadn't seen in years before I watched that pic in 2003.
Fun movie. The computer stuff is dated, but that's true of pretty much any movie about computers that more than 3 years old. The idea of computer hackers stealing somebody's life is rather prophetic given that identity theft is the fastest growing crime in recent years.
Of course the movie is over the top in how dependent everyone is on computers, epically for 1995.
***SPOILERS AHEAD*****
The bad guys kill Dennis Miller's character by hacking into the hospital's computer network and changing what medication his files say he needs. The night nurse just gives him the wrong stuff and he dies, I believe it's said that he's allergic. My Mom is a nurse and said "no way." Records are kept on computer but patients at the hospital have a chart sitting at the bed where doctors put in hand written instructions/notes and nurses write down medicines & treatments given. True in 95, true today.
The bad guy tracks a cell phone by calling the cell company pretending to be a cop and telling the guy to just find two repeater cells that can pick up the phone and give him the bisect. Technically that procedure would work but there's no way some flunky at a cell company tech support could just punch a few keys and do it. These days it would be more plausible since so many phones have GPS devices and it's a rather controversial subject as to who should be able to access that data.
Angela (Sandra Bullock) doesn't have anyone, except for her old shrink/lover who can verify that she is who she claims because she lives her life on the computer and her mother has Alzheimer's & doesn't remember who she is. What about the rest of the staff at the nursing home? Surely one of them could vouch for her being Ms. Bennett's daughter.
At the time this film was made, the Internet was just coming into common usage.
I wonder if he could be done today.