I''m always puzzled by the little "noises" you hear as the screen paints in a movie or TV show. I''m specifically thinking of the Fox series "24." I can actually let the verbal "computer talk" BS pass through and still enjoy the show. But those little screen activity noises are too much. I would go insane in the cube farm where I work if all the computers were making squeak noises every time a screen changed.

I do understand why the screens paint so slow. They''re supposed to be government computers ;-).

Sorry, but I think that the movie (Independence Day)was not good from the start because it was too much American for me (I''m not american of course). I like Goldblum but the movie look like a propaganda film for America where we can see that the American are the best, the clever and so on. It''s such a pain !

Actually if the Mac was running Virtual PC, it could easily have been running DOS (at that time, DOS was a supported configuration on Virtual PC). I used to run it all the time on my Powerbook 5300!

F.

Sun''s Project Looking Glass is in the early stages, but it appears to be an interesting step in the evolution of the GUI:
[visit link]

"simply by writing a random password generator and watching it break each digit of the password one by one"

Actually this is exactly how you hack a TENEX system.

Heres an article about it: [visit link]

"... decent movie"? How old are you?!

Two myths here: First one is, that a "windows" style GUI is by default more effecient and productive than a text based UI (TUI). As just one example, ever watch legal secretaries work? They never take their hands off of the keyboard. To do so is very unproductive. Using a mouse to manipulate drop-downs and such is not necessarily better, but in fact can create more complexity, depending on the nature of the work.

Second myth is, that Hollywood is connected to reality enough that they should know how to portray a realistic computer UI. Hollywood is out of touch with day to day reality in almost every respect, let alone computer use. :)

I was really impressed by the UI on the Mac that uploaded the virus. Didn''t it actually have a progress bar with the text "Uploading Virus" displayed above it?

My personnel best computer scene is in Jurassic Park when the 12 years old girl tell "Hey, it''s Unix, i know this system" and at the commputer we see 3D interface where the cursor fly over what seems to be the file system looking for a way to open the Park gates...

Really unrealistic...

Actually, my favorite movie scene on computer interfaces and portrayals is in the Star Trek movie where they go back in time to our day "from the future". Scotty is in an engineering department or something and walks up to a PC (again, a Mac) looks at it a moment, picks up the mouse off of the table and puts it to his mouth and says: "Hello, Computer!" in a very loud voice .... Extremely humerous, but makes you think ... not quite the M-5 is it (now THERE''S another portrayal) :)

Liked the article - very amusing and to the point in terms of "where''s the next UI revolution". Kind of akin to "why do we still have internal combustion engines". On the Hollywood angle, the best example to break the mold of talking UIs with 24 point messages etc must be Minority Report (with a concept that was repeated in Paycheck).