[geeks] Professional. Do Not Attempt.

[Phil Stracchino]

Charles Shannon Hendrix wrote:
> Ask any cop who does this kind of work in real life, and he'll tell
> you that CSI is pure fantasy.  It's good that they show some real
> techniques, and how much can be done, but bad that they show it as a
> relatively easy and convienient process.
> 
> Everything that happens in CSI is almost magic, including a remarkable
> lack of things like lab failure, legal barriers, and the mind numbing
> tedium of real life forensic work.
> 
> Most cops I've heard talk about the show are also offended at the
> grossly unprofessional behavior you see on the show.  Yes it does happen
> sometimes in real life, but not only an almost daily basis like it does
> in the show.

Well, yeah.  Honestly, what else is new?  Accuracy has always taken
second place in Hollywood to "the director's vision".

This is why you see so many movies featuring hard-bitten professional
warriors played by actors who learned everything they know about
gunhandling from the director, the screenwriter and the prop man, who in
turn learned everything they know about gunhandling from watching other
movies.  It's why you see cars performing perfect barrel rolls in
mid-air before landing perfectly on their wheels, and Tom Cruise firing
rapid-fire with a pistol in his right hand at a moving target while
performing a one-handed (left-handed, even) rolling stoppie in a
complete circle on a Ducati Monster, and why cars that run off the road
or get hit by small-arms fire always explode, and why The Hero can stand
there and take multiple heavy-caliber hits with little more than a grunt
and a grimace, but The Bad Guy gets thrown twenty feet backwards through
a plate-glass window (even if they're duking it out on the wing of Air
Force One at 35,000 feet, somehow there'll still be a plate-glass
window) by the impact of a single bullet from The Hero's gun.

And I'm sure I needn't get started on most Hollywood "hack into the
computer" scenes here.  :)


-- 
 Phil Stracchino       phil.stracchino at speakeasy.net
    Renaissance Man, Unix generalist, Perl hacker
 Mobile: 603-216-7037         Landline: 603-886-3518