This is an incredibly bad film. It fails in just about every possible area, from script to "technology" to acting to directing. I have a theory about films like this. There is an old saying that you can never underestimate the intelligence of the public. Movies like this are obviously created by people who live and breath that mantra. As they are making it, I'm sure many people are sitting around screaming that this makes not sense, but they just say it doesn't have to. And yet another bad film gets made.
I object most vehemently to three major elements of this film:
1. The geek stereotype! This film is the most insulting presentation of Computer Scientists that I have ever seen. It is obvious that no geek could every have a girlfriend that looks that good and girlfriends in general are rare at a software company. None of them have a life. They all dress badly. One is referred to as "stinker". Not one programmer in this film is presented as a professional. Any concept of a software project management structure is ignored.
2. The technology. You can't look at a screen of code and tell what an entire program will do. Huge systems are not written by one person. The system does not know when you have "finished" a module and inform you that you are done. You can't access a satellite by its IP address. You can't take over all of the worlds communications with any company's satellite network. I could go on and on. They are bound to have had consultants on that film or at least the local systems staff who would tell them this was all dumb.
3. Information wants to be free. This is practically a mantra in the film and was clearly planted to try to get the open-source people to watch the film. So, are they releasing this film without a copyright? They sure preached at me enough. And, this mantra is portrayed as the fundamental belief of the open-source community. In reality, most open-source advocates believe that they have an obligation to release what they have done, but don't believe they have some right to other peoples work. This matra gets preached in the movie without a shred of debate or discussion. It's stupid.
This film also avoided dealing with real issues such as antitrust violations, cloning source you have add access to, buying out competition, and other issues that would have make this an interesting film in the same vein as Wall Street. Instead, it turns into the standard "giant conspiracy" story with lots and lots of gun-toting bad guys. You can tell they took the cast, tossed them into a bin, and pulled out the names of who would get to be the few good guys. It's a tried and not so true plot line and it's just plain dull. They buy this script in a store and just fill in the blanks.
Don't waste your time.
I object most vehemently to three major elements of this film:
1. The geek stereotype! This film is the most insulting presentation of Computer Scientists that I have ever seen. It is obvious that no geek could every have a girlfriend that looks that good and girlfriends in general are rare at a software company. None of them have a life. They all dress badly. One is referred to as "stinker". Not one programmer in this film is presented as a professional. Any concept of a software project management structure is ignored.
2. The technology. You can't look at a screen of code and tell what an entire program will do. Huge systems are not written by one person. The system does not know when you have "finished" a module and inform you that you are done. You can't access a satellite by its IP address. You can't take over all of the worlds communications with any company's satellite network. I could go on and on. They are bound to have had consultants on that film or at least the local systems staff who would tell them this was all dumb.
3. Information wants to be free. This is practically a mantra in the film and was clearly planted to try to get the open-source people to watch the film. So, are they releasing this film without a copyright? They sure preached at me enough. And, this mantra is portrayed as the fundamental belief of the open-source community. In reality, most open-source advocates believe that they have an obligation to release what they have done, but don't believe they have some right to other peoples work. This matra gets preached in the movie without a shred of debate or discussion. It's stupid.
This film also avoided dealing with real issues such as antitrust violations, cloning source you have add access to, buying out competition, and other issues that would have make this an interesting film in the same vein as Wall Street. Instead, it turns into the standard "giant conspiracy" story with lots and lots of gun-toting bad guys. You can tell they took the cast, tossed them into a bin, and pulled out the names of who would get to be the few good guys. It's a tried and not so true plot line and it's just plain dull. They buy this script in a store and just fill in the blanks.
Don't waste your time.