EPISODE 124 - Hackers

[RyanSz 3140]

The mission of BB8 is to appeal to South American and European audiences while also trying once again to get American audiences to give a shit about soccer. Like Pele and David Beckham before him, he will fail, but we'll still find that charming little soccer ball droid to be one sexy motherfucker.

 

Assuming he will be the biggest thing in entertainment, next year's issue, perhaps? Barring any sex scandals or becoming the next Jar Jar Binks, of course.

[Bumpy 1674]

Overshadowed by 'What's its mission?' right before that is a great exchange between June and Jason.

 

June: "Their brains might be different."

 

Jason: "Their brains?"

[cabinpark 1]

I love this movie. All my friends who were in computer science loved this film, so much so that we would do an annual film showing.

 

It was dicussed in the podcast good hackers vs bad hackers. In the real world, good hackers are known as "white hat" who do pentration tests of systems in order to make them more secure while "black hat" hackers are those who purposefully hack for personal or monetary gain.

 

It's also worth mentioning that the general premise of the film is based on reality. One could actually make free phone calls through pay phones by blowing a whistle from the Captain Crunch cereal box into the receiver. Incidentally, the man who discovered this, John Draper, was a friends with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. There is also a well known case of a hacker, Kevin Mitnick, who got arrested and was also banned from using computers although he was caught and tried after the film was released so maybe the judge was inspired by the film. The scheme the villians use has also been done many times as well.

 

And finally, June maybe has more reason to be afraid, because the hackers who broke into the Jeep did it while the driver was going down the highway at 70 MPH.

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/

 

Hack the planet!!

[WillowKasperLore 6]

About the hacking visuals: maybe I'm giving the movie too much credit, but I never thought the crazy cyber buildings or video game nature of the hacking battle were literal depictions of what was happening. I thought we were supposed to be seeing the code through the characters' eyes. For the average person, watching lines of code scroll down a screen would be dull...so it seemed to me like those visualizations were supposed to help the audience feel the excitement that the characters felt behind their keyboards; to see a world of possibilities instead of indecipherable strings of characters. This was reinforced for me by the film clips intercut with Dade's scenes; clearly he's not really seeing those clips. When he looks down on the city and sees circuit boards and whatnot, that's not literally what his eyes are seeing. All of these are attempts to put us in the headspace of a hacker. Granted, if that was the intent, it fell short...and again, I might be being too optimistic here.

[Lando 2019]

The scheme the villians use has also been done many times as well.

 

They did it in Superman III

[JoshVaughn 0]

serious omission here yall.

 

When Dade is hacking OTV he call the security desk and asks for the modem number, the Guard gives him THE WRONG NUMBER on the modem it says 212-555-4220 but the guard tells him 212-555-4240. therefore he couldn't have gotten into OTV would have never met acid burn and the movie would have never happened. Potentially saving the world from potential ecological disaster cause by their discovery of the worm.

[Lando 2019]

1995 was truly a glorious time for cyber-thrillers that didn't quite have the right idea, with that, "Hackers", and "The Net" making up the Triple Crown of ineptness.

 

Even though not about hackers and the internet, I think that Lawnmower Man belongs on that list too.

[JohnRRybock 14]

Angelina's fashion choice was clear - she's a hacker/nerd, so naturally, she'd cosplay as T'Pol from Star Trek: Enterprise a good decade before the show is even created.

 

[RikkiHo 84]

I like how Cereal's reading of the worm/virus plot, along with the off-shore account numbers, IMMEDIATELY cleared the hackers of any and all guilt. How did Gill know they weren't framing Fisher Stevens, just like he did to them? It's not like any of these characters have a good track record - hell, 2/6 of them were arrested while half- or fully-nude.

 

Speaking of which, where is Phreak? Is he still getting ogled (or worse) in prison? Is this a direct through-line into his new identity as Sally-Can't-Dance in Con Air?

 

I think we need a GIF of Fisher Stevens and Lorraine Breacco clinking champagne...uh...glasses? and cackling over being off the hook. They reminded me of Julia Louis Dreyfus and her boyfriend as Margo and Todd, the "snobby 80s couple" in Christmas Vacation.

[qaop_space 87]

I remember we used to be able to get free phone calls from public phone boxes using a similar technique (back in the mid 80's in the UK), you pressed a sequence of numbers, waiting for a sound, then hit the handset a few times. This would give you something like £90 worth of credit. Obviously it was an engineers tool but somehow word got out and of course it wasn't long until British Telecom removed it.

 

This article from Esquire 1971 is a fascinating read on the Blue Box and phone 'phreaking'

http://www.lospadres.info/thorg/lbb.html

[tasteslikestatic 62]

 

Also what's doubly funny about this is the fact when he's working on Acid Burn's computer he's typing a mile a minute which prompts Acid Burn to say "I hope you don't make love like you type." At this point he slows down to about the same speed he was using to hack the TV station. Maybe we are led to believe that after not using a computer for five years his typing speed had been reduced and he was slowly getting back into the speed of things.

 

You know, I swear the actual line is, "I hope you don't fuck like you type," but "make love" was ADR'd in there.

 

 

[agentstinky 33]

Did anyone else notice that during one of the ads, which was supposed to be for Squarespace, Paul said "Audible" instead of "Squarespace" several times? I had no idea an audiobook website could have such powerful website creation tools.

[Blast Hardcheese 636]

Angelina's fashion choice was clear - she's a hacker/nerd, so naturally, she'd cosplay as T'Pol from Star Trek: Enterprise a good decade before the show is even created.

 

 

Oh, am I projecting my dreams again???

[FisterRoboto 7499]

So, the tagline for this movie, which is taken from the Hacker Manifesto excerpt that JLM reads in a shitty VO, is "Their only crime was curiosity."

 

Literally every thing they do on a computer in this movie is illegal as shit.

 

Like, even if they were somehow exonerated by Cereal's statement (as RikkiHo gets into a couple posts up), Cereal, Razor, and Blade are still breaking the law and could spend up to 10 years in prison for broadcast signal intrusion.

 

Pretty much everything they do to Bunk is a straight up felony. Even if they plea bargained based on their help exposing Ben Jabituya/Jahrvi and Karen Hill, they're probably not getting off without at least a couple years in prison.

[NundercoverBrother 174]

feardotcom could also be a good alternate to The Net.

[PlanBFromOuterSpace 3138]

Did anyone else notice that during one of the ads, which was supposed to be for Squarespace, Paul said "Audible" instead of "Squarespace" several times? I had no idea an audiobook website could have such powerful website creation tools.

Clearly, he was hacked!

[Servo Academy 16]

serious omission here yall.

 

When Dade is hacking OTV he call the security desk and asks for the modem number, the Guard gives him THE WRONG NUMBER on the modem it says 212-555-4220 but the guard tells him 212-555-4240. therefore he couldn't have gotten into OTV would have never met acid burn and the movie would have never happened. Potentially saving the world from potential ecological disaster cause by their discovery of the worm.

 

 

See? I THOUGHT that was the number! I just thought my Nikon Eyez had failed me.

[Servo Academy 16]

The imagery wasn't any more plausible in 1995 than it had been in "Weird Science".

 

Being such geeks shouldn't they have referenced "Superman III" without waiting for Office Space to do it? One fleeting Star Wars reference?

 

I really don't remember bondage pants being a thing when I was in college. jnco's sure, but not that nuttiness they had on.

 

Also, I can't believe Jason didn't point out the mix tape of ZUKES! (though I guess he might not want to be associated with vomit)

[jarrycanada 2483]

Score one for june. you show him, whos the boss..

 

 

Almost forgot his hair. don't want to rob, Mr Scheer of the full on dansa experience.

[crumbcake 104]

I love this movie. All my friends who were in computer science loved this film, so much so that we would do an annual film showing.

 

It was dicussed in the podcast good hackers vs bad hackers. In the real world, good hackers are known as "white hat" who do pentration tests of systems in order to make them more secure while "black hat" hackers are those who purposefully hack for personal or monetary gain.

 

It's also worth mentioning that the general premise of the film is based on reality. One could actually make free phone calls through pay phones by blowing a whistle from the Captain Crunch cereal box into the receiver. Incidentally, the man who discovered this, John Draper, was a friends with Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs. There is also a well known case of a hacker, Kevin Mitnick, who got arrested and was also banned from using computers although he was caught and tried after the film was released so maybe the judge was inspired by the film. The scheme the villians use has also been done many times as well.

 

And finally, June maybe has more reason to be afraid, because the hackers who broke into the Jeep did it while the driver was going down the highway at 70 MPH.

http://www.wired.com...l-jeep-highway/

 

Hack the planet!!

 

In that article, there's a detail that MIGHT assuage some of June's concerns - it wasn't two guys going "look how easily we can do this," it was two experts who'd spent two years doing research.

 

Less comforting to her might be the account of the FBI agent who hacked a commercial flight in midair through his onflight video console - http://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-commandeered-plane/

[MichaelYakutis 14]

Funniest moment ever.

 

[Gym Sockerman 1326]

Please give me a BB-8 shirt with a caricature of June asking it what its mission is.

 

I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard.

[Bumpy 1674]

If The Force Awakens actually has a line where a character asks what BB-8's mission is it will be fun to find out if there are other HDTGM fans there by their uncontrollable laugh-screaming.

[KevinRiegle 17]

Does anyone know what the deal is with Penn Jillette's credit in the very beginning of the end credits?

 

The pool sex scene starts and the credits roll. First credit is Associate Producer and it appears alone on screen. Second credit, also appearing along center screen over the pool sex, is "Penn Jillette as Hal". Next is a solo credit for the casting director. Several credits later, the rest of the cast, including Penn is listed in the normal style: a scrolling column.

 

Does Penn Jillette just have an amazing agent? I have never seen that before.

 

 

PS "what is its mission" is an all-time favorite podcasting moment for me. Full Chort-level laughs.

[babyoilbandit 81]

So, the tagline for this movie is "Their only crime was curiosity."

 

Literally every thing they do on a computer in this movie is illegal as shit.

That reminds me of one of my favourite bad movies Fortress. The tagline is "A Prison of the Future. A High-Tech Hell. Built to Hold Anything... Except an Innocent Man" except the problem is he was guilty of the crime of which he was convicted, it's not the story of a wrongly-convicted man at all - he really did break the law and was sent to prison for it.