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Linux and Gnome Go to the Movies 203

Posted by CmdrTaco from the aint-that-cool dept.
brandonj writes "Looks like the new movie, Antitrust, will be using GNOME as their desktop in the movie. Here are screenshots and the Antitrust movie homepage is here. The movie will in theaters January 12." The website has a little bio for Maddog and Miguel.
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Linux and Gnome Go to the Movies More

Linux and Gnome Go to the Movies

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  • There are interviews in QT, too, I think (who knows, no qt plugin here...)

    it is a very strange site, but I really like Tim Robbins, so perhaps it'll be interesting...

    2001-01-04 16:16:01 Gnome goes Hollywood! (articles,gnome) (rejected)

    ---

  • Does anyone else think that it's rather odd that RSA data security seems to be sponsoring this movie?
  • If apple decided not to give them the computers for promotion like they do most movies then where else are they going to find CHEAP software?

    Cheap software that can easily be made to look like its doing something important and is also free of any weird legal entanglements. Who would've thought they'd choose *NIX?

    Besides Linux has all those WMs that look so *high tech*. :)
    FunOne

  • Re:So... (Score:4)

    by MAXOMENOS ( 9802 ) <mike&mikesmithfororegon,com> on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:47PM (#530008) Homepage

    I personally found it humorous that the movie's producers seem to be aiming for the geek market, but apparently ommitted a Linux version of the screen saver. [antitrustthemovie.com] Think someone will throw a fit about this? :)

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • You know I was thinking the same damn thing. I have a feeling the producers are Evangelion fans. Heck look at the lead bad guy, he even has the same "style" glasses as me...er Gendou. :)
  • I know this is an offtopic tangent; can I run VMWare on NT, install and run Linux in VMWare, then install VMWare in that Linux, and then install and run windows in that VMWare? Etc?Maybe it's time for me to go home today...
  • Why're some people automatically assuming that the GNOME screenshots are running Linux? Did GNOME suddenly stop running on any other un*x? The screenshots mentioned in the posting don't give any good indication of what the OS is. Could just as easily be a Sun box or Free/Open/NetBSD.
  • 5.5 volts? What's the extra .5 volts for? Does a series protection diode in the power line so eat up the extra voltage?
  • i wonder if the movie producers have ever seen Evangelion. I wonder if this is intentional, or if N?RV is just an easy "world power" acronym to come up with ;-)

  • Oh joy, more beautiful people portraying hackers.

    Ever since the dashing Matthew Broderick hacked W.O.P.R., hollywood has just fawned all over them lovable nerds. When are we going to see some real computer geeks depicted the way they really look (besides the "Mr Potato Head! Back doors are NOT secrets" duo). For every dozen Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock flicks, there needs to be at least one "Revenge of the Nerds" to really nail reality of it.

    And don't none of you purdee pierced gothy gen-y Linux dorks start emailing me pictures of your beautiful hairless chins, I believe you.


    ---

  • Re:Its not Gnome (Score:3)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <{ajs} {at} {ajs.com}> on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:35PM (#530015) Homepage Journal
    How realistic the screen they show is, is usually up to the director. However, as the previous post said, the FX people who are in charge of providing the computer that does what the script says it does will invariablly use a Mac running something like Director (a sort of Power Point for more dynamic displays and cut-n-paste movies). The actors will have to interact with this machine the same way over and over through many reshoots of the same sceene, so you want something very... well, scripted... on the screen.

    Let's take a solid example. Let's say that the person working on the screen is supposed to click on a link and then go to a shell window and run a command.

    Take 1: Click on the link. Browser is sluggish for no obvious reason, ruins shot.

    Take 2: Click on the link. Page comes up, click on text window to bring it to foregroud, but actor misses and brings wrong text window up. Ruins shot.

    Take 3: Launch PC running GNOME out window and install Mac (with PC-like keyboard and monitor) running Director. Actor screws up line.

    Takes 4-10: Actors get it right, but director want's additional coverage.

    I hope this clears it up....

  • Re:Its not Gnome (Score:3)

    by Lac ( 135355 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @02:33PM (#530016)

    Its screenshots of Gnome, doctored up by a graphic designer and written into director-style animations, so all the actor needs to do to interact with it is hit a key to go to the next frame or animation sequence.

    Actually, the computer industry is moving away from that practice and moving towards hacker doubles: CS majors who take the actor's place when he/she is at the keyboard. We already saw this in The Net... It *looks* like Sandra Bullock sitting in front of the computer, but in fact, it's Alan Cox.

    He was wearing make-up. And a hat. Not the usual one. One Sandra Bullock might wear. Were you fooled too?

  • or just run vnc or exceed and run gnome on another machine.
    treke
  • Check out this [rsasecurity.com] link to see how this movie is also going to involve RSA's secureID cards. This movie should rock. Good actors, good technology :)

    Ian
  • My Macs all have NetBSD installed on them.

    (Quadra 800, IIci, SE/30)

  • " iF I EVER MeEt You, cAn I TWIST YoUr TITS? "

    Geeze... And people wonder that there are so few female geeks?
  • Speaking of OSs in movies, BeIA is in Ahhnold's new movie. From BeNews,

    "... The fridge was shown twice during the movie, once in the beginning where Arnie tried to get some milk off the fridge and then he just
    clicked some buttons on the touch screen and once near the end, when the "bad guys" went there to find Arnie, but they couldn't find him around. BUT, the IA
    'betrayed' Arnie, because it was written on it his "Schedule of the Day", so they knew where to find him..."

    Get the article here from BeNews [benews.com]

    Yea, you don't care. Go ahead and -1 Offtopic it, see if I care ;)
  • Just a suggestion, but if a helix employee says Miguel is in it then they probably know what they are talking about ;) Seriously- from what I understand, he has a very, very small cameo. Additionally, you'll note that the IMDB notes suggest that only 12 people are in the movie. That's because IMDB notes are almost always very, very incomplete until the movie is released. So, while I love IMDB and your instinct to go there was a good one, it isn't the end all and be all, especially when the movie has not yet been released.
    ~luge
  • Hmmm. I'm a dashing young computer geek (using GNOME to read /., no less).

    I'm also an Mac-using artist (FD Painter is too good to give up) ...

    I guess this movie will be the perfect date flick for me and my hand!
  • Goto http://www.antitrustthemovie.com/media/ There are some rooms you can move around inn...
  • Knowing our luck it will be GNOME in the standard configuration running a couple of terminal windows. They should really make it look nice, and have GIMP up and some other really cool Linux apps.




  • How do they know its Linux? (Score:5)

    by AntiBasic ( 83586 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:48PM (#530026)
    Just because it's running GNOME doesn't necessarily mean its underlying OS must be Linux. It could just as easily be Solaris, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, or any other platform which GNOME runs on. Claiming it is Linux just by GNOME is highly erroneous.
  • I'm not sure I'd like that, I mean, my bank has enough trouble keeping my measly account straight without having errors flying across the screen every five minutes ;-) OK, so 2.0.1 isn't so bad, hell, I'm even using it right now :-) But seriously, folks, I don't mind these articles, as I (a Dane, and thus from Europe where many films never arrive...) like to know this stuff. It makes finding the right film at the local blockbuster so much easier - in six to eight months time ;-)
  • ugghh.. thats horrible ;)

  • Actually, not all Windows code is written using Hungarian. I'm a Windows programmer by day, and refuse to use Hungarian. From what I've seen, a lot of Windows programmers simply adapt sample code taken from MSDN, and so they either get used to Hungarian or like it (!). Personally, I prefer to write code from scratch, using my own style.

    As observed by J. M. Newcomer, languages that embed type information in the name (like early BASIC or FORTRAN) have either disappeared or changed. He also notes that problems occur when a variable's type is changed, since the name must be changed everywhere it is used. This is why we get the confusingly named wParam in Win32 window procedures (it's confusing because the w prefix implies it is a WORD type, whereas it is actually a LONG type).

  • This doesn't have anything much to do with GNOME, but I found all the Sun logos intruiging...

    What does that tell you? It tells me that they're running GNOME on Solaris. Why is it that anytime you see GNOME or KDE or whatever on television, you always assume that Linux is running under it? Remember that GNOME runs on just about every UNIX. In this case, it's Solaris. So next time, don't get too excited and assume that it's Linux.

    --
  • ...where are the moderator points when i need them ;(
  • I tried to post this one this morning - just the interviews part but as always was rejected. But I know what you mean; I went through the site and it doesn't credit them with anything. I was bewildered.. I think it's supposed to be some sort geek placement as marketing spin. The did enough research to realize their demographic was too clever to care what Bill Gates had to say and plugged "k3wl Underground Hacker" types, the prototypical 'old beard' and 'the kid'. There are other hip tech but unrelated things scattered through the site.
  • I have really big doubts about this movie. I haven't seen it yet, but I have a feeling it's going to be another over glorified script kiddy movie which likes to be trendy. Why did they have to have a "young hacker"? Doesn't that say anything right there that they're going for the same old hype?

    As for the shots being Linux in the movie, I highly doubt this. There probably isn't any kind of operating system running in that sense and the monitors are just connected to a video deck which advances frames on director cues. I doubt Linux is ever functionally used in this movie at all, albeit a good deal of the movie may be about it.
  • Failing that they would have been asked for permission to feature their products gratis. Microsoft's absence implies express denial.

    This is hardly surprising considering that this movie's badguy, like the badguy in 'Tomorrow Never Dies' could easily called 'Bill' with no change to the plot. Regardless of how you feel about him, a *lot* of people are uncomfortable with how much power this man really has in the world, and are wont to satirize him.

  • Windows Code (Score:4)

    by PotatoMan ( 130809 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:50PM (#530035)

    Is it just me, or did anyone else notice the Windows code in the screenshots? I.e., "GetDlgItemText(hDlg...)"

  • I wonder if this could be true? This article is an interview with a company that ported GNOME to Windoze, and is working on a KDE port!!!! http://www.linuxorbit.com/features/interview2.php3

  • Well, there was a film recently in which the bad guy was called "Will Stiles" who ran a large technology company. For those that don't know, a stile is a wooden structure at the edge of a field with built-in-steps to allow entry and exit to the field, serving essentially the same purpose as a "gate"

    Rich

  • Seriously, that's as bad as watching someone solve calculus equations. I can just see myself yelling in the theater

    "The limit goes to zero!"
    "Take the second derivative!"

    and so on.
  • ... At least you can proudly say that it's not named "Gates Building" or something equally stupid. Our Computer Science building is actually kinda cool, it says "Gymnasium Building" in front. Apparently they built a new gym and left the beautiful all wood floor building for CS department.
  • I thought Hollywood North was where all the
    trailer parks and strip clubs were?
  • Everyone knows that most people use Windows, so you'd think they'd use a Windows theme...

    What reason would an ad company have for promoting something other than the Macs they love? Unless they're specifically asked to use Windows screenshots (and the corporate people paying for the ads generally don't know the difference anyway), they'd rather show their Mac desktops.

    --

  • Claiming it is Linux just by GNOME is highly erroneous.

    Absolutely! In fact, according to the "about the production [antitrustthemovie.com]" section on the movie's website, Gnome is an entire operating system! Wow!

    (See last sentence of second paragraph on this page [antitrustthemovie.com]) - "Miguel de Icaza from Mexico, originator of Gnome, another open source operating system." (emphasis mine)
  • Hey TWM is alright. It's what I run on my Mac SE/30. Anything more than that just crowds anything useful off the screen. (let's see YOU run KDE or Gnome on a 512x348 display!)
  • From what I gather, this movie is about a Gates/Jobs/Ellison type that is trying to take overe the world via corruption and murder. Why then, use Gnome in all of the screen shots? Shouldn't the hackers in the movie be using Gnome and KDE and all the heavies using Windows or Mac0SX?

  • So, let me get this straight - the company whose founder is trying to take over the whole digital world (or so it seems from the trailers) is using Free Software to do it?!?! My God, what have we done?

    I guess the prognosticators who said Red Hat would become the new Microsoft weren't that far off after all...

  • Wonder what all that code is on the wallpapers? It's real! It's a multi-threaded HTTP server written in Java [sun.com] from developer.java.sun.com [slashdot.org]. On the right side (on some image where the head is on the left) you can quite easily make out the comment "go back in wait queue if there's fewer than numHandler connections." - it's on lines 173-174 and the surroundings match too. In the large images one can also see many HTTP-texts on the right side.

    Are they into Sun or what? I bet it's GNOME on Solaris...
  • I found it entertaining that on an episode of "Angel" they were using what was clearly an iBook, but there was a sticky note on the back of it covering the Apple logo. I guess Apple didn't kick in their endorsement fee for that episode.
  • Thath's becuase to to their GPL, they don't have the right to take any credit for their appearences.
  • does anyone else find it interesting that video interviews of leaders of the open source and linux/unix movements are being show in quicktime?

    "yeah bill, i've got my interview on the web!" - "where, mig?" - "right here, but damn hold on, gotta install windows first."

    riiiight...

  • John "Maddog" Hall [antitrustthemovie.com]

    Miguel de Icaza [antitrustthemovie.com]

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • The AntiTrust movie's website [antitrustthemovie.com] has an interview [antitrustthemovie.com] with everybody's favourite linux guy Joh "Maddog" Hall with questions like "What is Linux and what does it do? " and "What is open source?" Check it out, it is interesting watching and can only be good for getting the word out there.
  • We may like seeing our egos massaged on tv when they use our stuff, but we're not willing to do our part to say thanks, it seems.

    If, by saying thanks, you mean watching a TV show or movie that we would otherwise find boring just because it features Linux, then you are correct.

    Is it neat to hear that Linux has made it into a visible role in the entertainment industry? Sure. Is it enough to make me devote an hour of my time every week? Sorry -- I got over the "Whoa! They're using Linux." thrill long ago.

  • Is it neat to hear that Linux has made it into a visible role in the entertainment industry? Sure. Is it enough to make me devote an hour of my time every week? Sorry -- I got over the "Whoa! They're using Linux." thrill long ago.

    Besides, unless you have one of those Nielsen boxes in your home, it's not like anyone knows or cares what you're watching anyway. you may as wewll sit in your bathroom repeating "use Linux" over and over.

    Rich

  • OK, fair dos. But the point stands. Most people will not influence the success or failure of a program based on their viewing habits (although that may change in the future). I also suspect that any information Tivo gathers will not end up back in the hands of those responsible for purchasing programs (that's what they pay Nielsen for). Of course, that may be a market Tivo is looking to enter.

    Rich

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • "This is UNIX. I know this."

    Your comment would be funny, except its not. According to the second part of the quote, the girl apparently already knew UNIX, thus the movie says nothing about its intuitiveness. I hate being anal-retentive, but your oversight more or less ruins the joke. (I am dead serious here)
  • I thought I was crazy during the previews for this Movie. I remember catching a quick glimpse of Ghome.
    This is weird because the majority of all movies that I see, they are using either Macintoshes or some sort of clone when they have a computer. I can't think of any movie I've seen where they have used Windows. (Except for "You've Got Mail" but that movie doesn't count)

  • "I know Unix!"

    really? How'd they get that way? motorcycle accident with the gas cap? broken bicycle seat? only job available was to guard the Sultan's harem?


    "Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

  • I ain't been this excited since the Fat Boys starred in The Disorderlies and they featured an Amiga 1000 on screen!!!

    Of course, it turns out that the Amiga 1000's 5.5v keyboard is explosive when wet, if movies are to be believed.

  • It takes a Mac to wirelessly hack into a martian mothership and plant a system disabling virus.

  • Re:Burn, Hollywood, Burn! (Score:3)

    by catseye_95051 ( 102231 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:54PM (#530090)
    Yeah! Lets just pirate the movie and watch it at home!

    >>> Sarcasm mdoe off

  • You tell me how this [microsoft.com] code is easier to read than this [gtk.org] code.

    I show these examples to a lot of people (mostly casual coders) and not one tells me that Microsoft's official Hungarian style is easier to read.

    I will admit that a simple prefix makes things easier to read, but stuff like rgbsyHash is garbage.

  • Need to save space? use wm2 :)
    http://www.all-day-breakfast.com/wm2/
    There was another even more different WM I saw recently, where you have one main window at a time, with mini-windows for your non-focused ones. I don't think I could have gotten used to it though.
  • Even more likely is that screenshots were captured by some graphics designer and the animated screens were assembled and generated with a Macintosh.

  • Just because it's running GNOME doesn't necessarily mean its underlying OS must be Linux. It could just as easily be Solaris, NetBSD, OpenBSD, BSD/OS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, or any other platform which GNOME runs on. Claiming it is Linux just by GNOME is highly erroneous.

    While what you said is true, there is more proof on the site that leads towards the idea of it being linux underneath. Specifically, if you look at www.antitrustthemovie.com/special/special.html [antitrustthemovie.com], you find that they mention linux quite frequently. The would seem to lead to the conclusion that it is, in fact, linux underneath.

    Of course, this doesn't prove it, but it does supply fairly strong evidence to that end.

    *shrugs* I could be wrong. :P

  • he should have used diff at the command line...

  • Good point, however, someone else already pointed out [slashdot.org] that their treatment of linux is a bit different [antitrustthemovie.com] than other films... that is, they actually mention it!

    I haven't had a chance to research the movie much, but maybe the director is a linux (well, unix/gnome) buff and thought "hey, it'd be cool to use this in a movie instead of that obviously fake stuff everyone else has!". A minor point to most people, but it does (or could) raise the film up a bit more in the minds of geeks like us.

    Even if they are doctored images, why are they doctored to look like the real thing, instead of the bastardizations that are normally seen, with 2" fonts and big flashing access denie messages? Seems to me if they were going to fake it they could make it look a lot cooler than the default gnome desktop...

  • Seen a little bit of everything (Score:3)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:15PM (#530110)
    Mission Impossible #1 used Netscape for most of the
    computer screen shots.
    You've Got Mail had the typist reading their mail
    out loud to themselves.
    Jurassic Park #1 used VR flythoughs on a Silicon
    Graphics with Connection Machines in the background.
    War Games had speaking computer terminals.
    Original Star Trek has a feminine speaking computer. However, Spock always seems to be looking
    into a oscilloscope hood for readouts.

    2001: Space Oddessy was most prescient. They had
    video monitor graphics before computer graphics images was invented. The best at the time was stoking lines on an oscilloscope display.
  • Won't it be strange to see Gnome running on a Mac?

    Remember Hackers where everyone was using a Mac? Or The Net where every computer must have had a 3D card and a T3? Hollywood is so full of shit.

  • Hungarian notation is ugly on an aesthetic level. This alone however is not enough to condemn it's usage.

    There are however, better ways for a programer to find out the type of a variable or the definition of a function, namely just run ctags on all your code, and then use an editor that supports tag-based navigation (vim and emacs do, off the top of my head). This allows you to effortlessly jump to the thing's original spot o' definition, and back to where you were. I dare say this is easier to use (no decoding xyLDsTRdyQvariable_name anymore)... ;-)


    --

  • The link is here [antitrustthemovie.com]. (See the last paragraph at the bottom of the page).

  • While you have a valid point about product placement, the original poster's point about choosing an OS based on movies or tv shows still stands, IMO. Yep, Gateway has a strong brand identity and placing it on tv shows and movies probably works as well as Coca-Cola or McDonald's, but...

    This is kind of a different animal, isn't it? If there were redhat logos or some other readily identifiable image to create an advert 'impression', then yeah, I would probably agree. But this is a glimpse of a desktop that probably only people who are already familiar with will recognize. I don't think it's the same thing as having Kramer carry around a bucket of KFC.

  • The other repliers are all correct WRT it wasn't linux, it was IRIX, probably running on a Crimson (was the indy available then?). The program was called fsn [sgi.com] and you can run it if you have a machine running IRIX 4.0.1 through 5.3.

    It's interesting, becuase the childrens' interaction with the computer system got a lot of space in the book (proportionally way more than, what, 30 seconds or so in the movie). They actually had "screenshots" (in a sort of ncurses-ish way) in there to show what the kids were doing. Pretty interesting. (of course as a whole the book was a lot better than the movie but isn't that always the case?)


    --
  • actually it was "fsn" on an IRIX box

    renders your file-system as 3d columns, where the ehight of the column has something to do with the size of the file/directory. You fly around in the fs and can click on things.

  • Good points! However, for scenes like: Actor sits in front of a terminal and writes code while camera pans around, sitting someone down at a real terminal, opening up an editor (ok, if you used vim you'd have to hit "a" for them :) and having them look intense and type while the cameraman wanders around them wouldn't be too bad.

    Oh man, I hope I never acutally pay to see a movie where I watch someone code. Oh crap, he didn't terminate his statement, the killer is going to get him now......

  • As hard as unix programmers hate to admit it, hungarian notation (i.e. windows style programming) is far easier to read than unix code.

    I don't hate to admit it, I don't have to. I hate it. It's a personal preference thing - some (very few) like it, the majority don't. In fact, I've yet to see the source to a GPL'ed program which uses Hungarian Notation. Counter examples welcome.

    Mr Torvalds' personal perference can be found in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/CodingStyle:

    C is a Spartan language, and so should your naming be. Unlike Modula-2 and Pascal programmers, C programmers do not use cute names like ThisVariableIsATemporaryCounter. A C programmer would call that variable "tmp", which is much easier to write, and not the least more difficult to understand.

    ...
    Encoding the type of a function into the name (so-called Hungarian notation) is brain damaged - the compiler knows the types anyway and can check those, and it only confuses the programmer. No wonder MicroSoft makes buggy programs.

  • This isn't any different than selling a distribution. GNOME is free software, no one has to pay anything. If they modified the code, they probably have to release that (I'm not sure if any modifications would be considered "in house" or not).
  • Am I the only one who noticed that their site ROUTINELY crashes Netscape for Linux? I tried it under Netscape 4.76 for Linux and was unable to get the main page (the one past the spiffy little splash screen) to display; the browser kept hanging.

    I have had problems with the "UMP" and "Plugger" MIDI players causing my browser to crash. Disable those plugins and you should be OK.
  • Wow. That will have a huge impact on Gnome usership, I'm sure.

  • When I was at Thinking Machines, they took the entire company to see Jurassic Park. What was more interesting to us was when the ubergeek bragged about networking together 8 Connection Machines (actually, they were just the cabinets, no processors; I don't remember, but they were probably running the random & pleasing blinkenlights hack that was floating around).
  • Hint: nobody chooses their next OS based on what they saw someone in some crappy movie/tv-show using.

    I'd suspect that you're kinda wrong about this one. Computer makers (I'm talking mostly hardware here) pour big bucks into television for product placement. Every computer on ER has a Gateway logo on it. Every time someone on that show is putting something into a box, it's got cow spots. Drew Carrey hauls an i-book around with him on his shows. Guess what... It's not an accident. Someone must think that it's worth the money.

    On the other hand, graphic designers love macs. Pretty much every (screen shot|simulated screen shot|I want this to look high tech) graphic you see in print ads has MacOS widgets in it. You even see this in ads for MS products sometimes. Overall, I'd that that that hasn't convinced all that many people to switch from windows.
    _____________

  • Will somebody please explain to me what this movie has to do with Open Source, and why there are biographies of John Hall and Miguel de Icaza, on the site? Is this movie modeled on real events or something? That site is just incoherent.
  • Unless someone with a copy of VMWare and QuickTime Pro converts it to MPEG, like this:
    ftp://jk1.net/pub/antitrust.mpg [jk1.net]
    Unfortunately, the MPEG version is 26 megs. Doh!

  • Re:Windows Code (Score:3)

    by locust ( 6639 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @04:58PM (#530153)
    From: How To Write Unmaintainable Code [mindprod.com]

    Hungarian Notation: Hungarian Notation is the tactical nuclear weapon of source code obfuscation techniques; use it! Due to the sheer volume of source code contaminated by this idiom nothing can kill a maintenance engineer faster than a well planned Hungarian Notation attack.

    :)

    --locust

  • Too bad it looks like it will be a crappy movie (Score:4)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:06PM (#530155)
    I have now seen enough previews to know for sure that this movie will be a complete piece of shit.

    Warning: rant starting

    Tim Robbins was great in The Shawshank Redemption and all, but I have a hard time believing that idiot could run a neighborhood reading group, let alone be an Evil Corporate Execitive. In the scenes shown during the previews, he does everything short of mustache twirling to make sure you know he is a bad guy.

    Just once, it would be nice to see a high-tech thriller that is not completely built around the Baby Boom Generation's irrational fear of computers, corporations, and/or suburban life.

    What these Hollywood dicks fail to see is that normal Americans, especially young people who go to a lot of movies, don't fear technology. At all. Even if some nefarious Evil CEO(TM) wanted to sneak a camera into my PC, how would an actual hacker kid react? "Yay! Free camera! I bet I can hack this!"

    Out here in the real world, corporations don't give a shit about who you are our what you are doing. They only care about what they can sell you and how much you will pay for it.

    Every year, Hollywood makes another crop of movies to tell us that the Star Chambers of Wall Street are out to destroy us... but most of us know that Corporation is the river by which wealth and prosperity flow to us. Without corporations, there would be no Hollywood productions to complain about them, and no customers with enough money to go to the movies. So shut the hell up, Tim Robbins. Nobody cares about what frightens you.

  • Or, heck, a version of the trailer that isn't in Quicktime? (not that they can't be found elsewhere, I suppose..)
    --
  • New movie...
    Heavy UNIX ties...
    Gnome Desktop...

    and a trailer in a format that can't be played on UNIX.

    Maybe they're just trying to make a point...

  • It's 1992 all over again (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The Amiga community used to go gaga over TV shows/movies that either featured Amigas, or used Amigas in their production. SeaQuest, Babylon 5, and WaynesWorld 2 are 3 big ones that had the community all hyped up: "ooo the world will see that this is the best platform now." "Ooooh, won't those Mac/Windows users be jealous!" "ooo, Commodore is probably getting a lot of money for this -- We're SAVED!" Gee, where is that community now? It doesn't mean diddly-squat, people.

  • So... (Score:4)

    by Daemosthenes ( 199490 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:41PM (#530168)
    Does this mean that RMS will go ape crazy on their asses for not GPL'ing the movie because it includes GNOME (and GPL'ed code)?

    End the insanity!


    47.5% Slashdot Pure(52.5% Corrupt)

  • Its not Gnome (Score:5)

    by tgd ( 2822 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:42PM (#530170)
    This has been said before about earlier movies, but NO movie director would put a real computer system in front of actors. Its screenshots of Gnome, doctored up by a graphic designer and written into director-style animations, so all the actor needs to do to interact with it is hit a key to go to the next frame or animation sequence.

  • This is good for Linux, if unexpected! (Score:3)

    by Lover's Arrival, The ( 267435 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:42PM (#530172) Homepage
    See, what everyone forgets when they talk about Linuxs superiorities (SMP, Multi-Tasking blah blah drone ;) is that sexiness sells! The fact that Linux and Gnome is appearing in a major Hollywood production should help Linux be a little more sexy, which it isn't at the moment, as far as most people are concerned.

    Usually in films it is the big commercial offerings that get this sort of product placement, and the Directors don't mind, because expensive things are sexy status symbols (I fell for my last boyfriend because fo his car, so it is probably a bad mistake to make ;).

    But for Linux, it is important that it try and be sexy to appeal to the vacant audience that Windows and Macintosh so succesfully manages. When it gets sexy enough, lots more people should start using it. People are stupid that way ;)

  • Re:whah?? (Score:4)

    by itp ( 6424 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:42PM (#530177)
    Miguel and John Hall are in it.

    --
    Ian Peters
  • I hate to run this for you, but you can run VMWare under windows 2000. Then put Linux on VMWare, and then run GNOME on the VMWare Linux. Or even better, port XFree86 to Win 2000,and then run GNOME on it.... :-)



  • Let's see. The movie is being put out, in part, by RSA Security Systems; the script involves a dashing young computer geek with an artist girlfriend; and the GNOME shots, with a possible Miguel cameo, get the Slashdot crowd.

    Do you think they may be aiming for a certain demographic? Hm?

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • karma [talamasca.org]

    frozen [purdue.edu]

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • This movie either had:
    a) a small budget
    b) someone under payroll in the props department who had used Linux/GNOME before and could customize the hell out of it to get the look they were after.

    I'd guess b. Besides, Gnome/Linux's Openness lends itself nicely to customizations, something the producers wouldn't have been able to do under Windows, aside from changing the background image and bar location.
  • Are you referring to coding style? or is that an actual win api call? Because hungarian style isn't necessarily windows.. I do all my unix c in hungarian notation which looks very windowsish because.. well it looks better. As hard as unix programmers hate to admit it, hungarian notation (i.e. windows style programming) is far easier to read than unix code. Especially in languages like c++ where variables can be declared anywhere and its a bitch to try and find its declaration so you can know what type it is. >1000 line programs and I'll strongly advocate for an "M$" coding style.

    eheh I'm torn tho, because while W. Richard Stevens is my hero, I can't stand to read his code ;-)

  • Deh... MGM? (Score:5)

    by Pflipp ( 130638 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:30PM (#530191)
    I guess they only figured out that Linux was cool after they tried to forbid Free DVD software...? They _are_ part of the MPAA. Too bad the target audience won't be able to view this movie once it's kicked out of the bioses. Dehh.

    It's... It's...
  • Wow that's kind of scary. I'm (and I don't flatter myself) a dashing, sexy, and hot computer geek with an artist girlfriend. Scary...

    Mike.

  • Burn, Hollywood, Burn! (Score:3)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:32PM (#530195)
    Let's give this latest clever attempt to coopt our eyeballs and dollars the amount of attention it deserves - i.e. none but the energy expended to warn others away.

    Remember that the dollars you give the studio when you go to the theatre are being used to lobby for laws like the DMCA, wage lawsuits like MPAA vs. Eric Corley, and lobby the FCC on copy-controls for digital broadcasts (just to name a few of the more well-known examples of the ways the MPAA members are attempting to limit your freedom).

    Let's not give these pricks the chance to use our own money against us.

    -Isaac

  • Finally it's out! (Score:3)

    by antarctican ( 301636 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @01:33PM (#530196) Homepage
    A number of us have been looking forward to this movie for almost a year!

    You see, it was filmed on the campus of the University of Britich Columbia in Vancouver, BC, Canada. It was quite entertaining watching them film it. We all got a good laugh over the giant monitor and keyboard sticking out of the ground by one of the arts buildings.

    As well, the large white building with the glowing "Computer Science Department" sign is actually our CS department! Unfortunately they didn't leave that nice glowing sign. =)

    Anyhow, it sounds like a typical lame movie plot line, but who knows, it could actually turn out to be cool!

    We're definately going to see it when it comes out, and will be playing "spot the UBC building" through the entire movie.

    Cool to see Gnome was used in it too! I only wish we actually HAD linux machines available for student use.... well, we will in about 2 months, but that's another story. =)

    antarctican at trams dot ca
  • RedHat should pay Fox to load Gnome up on Dana Scully's laptop with custom themes for GTK and Sawfish and then make those themes available either on Fox's home page or RedHat's (Or both.) It'd be some killer advertising, IMHO.

  • Re:This is UNIX! I know this (Score:4)

    by Decado ( 207907 ) on Thursday January 04, 2001 @12:45PM (#530201)

    Yeah i remember that line, its funny though, the girl in jurrassic park identified unix by looking at a 3rd party GUI tool running on linux and immediately identified it as unix. She was then able to immediately use that application to achieve tasks that the systems designers couldnt do 5 minutes earlier, seems all unix apps are intuitive after all.

  • "Do our part to say thanks"?

    who gives a shit what desktop environment is being used in a television program or movie? It's now the civic responsibility of geeks to midlessly support any tripe that happens to include a computer with linux running in the background? Get a life.

    Hint: nobody chooses their next OS based on what they saw someone in some crappy movie/tv-show using.

    And Antitrust looks like a shitty movie. Despite having Tim Robbins in it. Gnome or no Gnome.

    /bluesninja

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