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Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#61

Post by hernan7 »

scott_s wrote: post #30

Apollo 13 has some great hacker scenes. It has, in fact, my favorite hacker moment from any movie. "We gotta find a way to make this [holds up square peg] fit into the hole for this [holds up round peg] using nothing but that [points to random assortment of crap that they know is on board].": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNDuGuerpf8

The square peg/round hole sequence is of course the embodiment of the hacker spirit (not an original thought of mine, but I can't seem to find the original URL at the moment).

Another space/hackish movie would be "The Dish" about the Australian engineers in charge of one the (of course) dishes used to communicate with Apollo 11. Cliffhanger scene: the dish goes out of alignment for some reason and they need to scramble to regain contact in time to televise the moon landing.

And of course there's always "The Right Stuff".

Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#63

Post by mschwar99 »

rogercosseboom wrote: post #20
mschwar99 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Triumph of the Nerds is great. Hopefully Cringley will make a version for this decade about Web empires.

He did make "Nerds 2.0" about the first web boom. Sadly, this has never been released on vhs/dvd.

Evidently there is VHS / DVD out there. Didn't find anything streaming, but didn't look too hard. Mr Cringley was nice enough to point us in the right direction:

http://www.pbs.org/opb/nerds2.0.1/

http://www.amazon.com/Nerds-2-0-1-Brief-History-Internet/dp/...

Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#64

Post by tlrobinson »

tptacek wrote: post #11
artlogic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sneakers may be corny - but it's actually based on some serious math. Essentially one of the characters has developed a way to solve a prime factorization in what appears to be constant time (i.e. O(1)). Once you do that - well that's the end of basically all public key cryptography based on the RSA algorithm (pretty much everything in common use). Much more realistic than say, Hackers.

On the other hand, Hackers did take the time to name its characters after handles taken from 2600.

And there are a few other realistic bits:

                      PHREAK
                            (to Cereal)
                D'you bring those Crayola books?

                            CEREAL
                Oh yeah, technicolor rainbow.

     Cereal brings a book out of his bag.

                            CEREAL
                Green one.

                            JOEY
                What is that, what is that? Lemmie see. What
                are these?

                            DADE
                International Unix Environments.

    Cereal pulls out another book.

                            CEREAL
                Luscious orange?

    Cereal hands the orange book to Phreak.

                            DADE
                Computer security criteria, DOD standards.

    Another book comes out.

                            DADE
                The Pink Shirt Book, Guide to IBM PCs. So
                called due to the nasty pink shirt the guy
                wears on the cover.

    Another one.

                            CEREAL
                What's that?

                            DADE
                Devil book. The Unix Bible.

    Another one.

                            CEREAL
                What's that?

                            DADE
                Dragon book. Compiler design.

    Cereal brings out a large red book.

                            CEREAL
                Oh yeah? What's that?

                            DADE
                The Red Book. NSA Trusted Networks.
                Otherwise known as the Ugly Red Book that
                won't fit on a shelf.

    By now Phreak has made a pile of the books, and the Red
    Book looks wholly out of place on the top of the pile.

Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#65

Post by tom_rath »

The Dam Busters (1955 - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046889/ ) is excellent. You can see real-world examples of the hacker problem-solving mindset right from the start of the movie and it continues on throughout.

(PC Warning: One of the main characters has an unfortunately named black dog, which I suspect is the reason this superb film is only rarely seen).

Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#66

Post by dallasrpi »

rms wrote: post #17

E-Dreams: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262021/ Startup.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/

A little more info - Traces the birth and failure of new media company govWorks.com

If you are or were part of a start-up company you will be entertained by this documentary. It makes your head spin to see some of the mistakes and money this company goes through. They hired literally hundreds of people for an idea that could now probably be run with a dozen people (most of them sales).

Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#67

Post by tlrobinson »

CaptainMorgan wrote: post #29

Swordfish; if nothing for the totally cool monitor setup he had at Gabriel's place. Alien; the original- the next couple of movies in the series were okay but the first I think is a classic in form of technology and all that good stuff. If you watch it, it may seem a bit old-school for our time, but for their time that was pretty cool! Finding a solution to space travel at light-year speed? Come-on- that's awesome. S…

Swordfish did have a cool monitor setup, but he built a virus using some sort of graphical tool! I suppose that's a bit more exciting for most people than vi or something.

And, of course, there was the "break into this system in 60 seconds while I hold a gun to your head and some woman gives you a blowjob" scene. Hollywood...

Re: Ask HN: What are some (good) hacker movies?

#69

Post by aduk98 »

There was a sort of 'unofficial' 'hackers 2' with Skeet Ulrich playing Kevin ("My kung-fu better than you kung-fu!") Mitnick in Takedown (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0159784/) - the story following the book of the same name by Tsutomu Shimonura. Also, I think they recently screened 'Wargames 2 : the dead code' (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865957/) over here in the UK. Don't forget Tron! Ah.. just hearing the sounds of the video arcade at the beginning...
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