On occasion, these lists that make the rounds of the internet are interesting. Thanks to Greg Lyle for passing this along...--RL 1. All monitors display 2 inch high letters. 2. You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences. 3. You never have to use the spacebar when typing long sentences. High-tech computers, such as those used by NASA, the CIA, or some such governmental institution, have easy-to-understand graphical interfaces. 4. You can gain access to any information you want by simply typing "ACCESS ALL OF THE SECRET FILES" on any keyboard. 5. People typing away on a computer will turn it off without saving the data...and it never seems to get lost or deleted. 6. A hacker can get into the most sensitive computer in the world before intermission and guess the secret password in two tries. 7. Any PERMISSION DENIED has an OVERRIDE function. 8. All computers are connected. You can access the information on the villain's desktop computer, even if it's turned off. 9. Complex calculations and loading of huge amounts of data will be accomplished in under three seconds. In the movies, modems transmit data at two gigabytes per second. 10. When the power plant/missile site/whatever overheats, all the control panels will explode, as will the entire building. 11. If a disk has got encrypted files, you are automatically asked for a password when you try to access it. 12. No matter what kind of computer disk it is, it'll be readable by any system you put it into. All application software is usable by all computer platforms. 13. Most computers, no matter how small, have reality-defying three-dimensional, real-time, photo-realistic animated graphics capability. 14. Computers never crash during key, high-intensity activities. Humans operating computers never make mistakes under stress. 15. Programs are fiendishly perfect and never have bugs that slow down users. Useless Trivia When I was a senior editor for Personal Computing magazine back in the late 1980s, our magazine was used as a prop (for about 2 seconds) in a major movie that had a high-tech hacking sort of premise. Sadly, I can't remember the name of the movie or actor, the the issue's cover was "The Power Brokers" about the movers and shakers of the computer industry. I helped polish the concept and write part of the series and remember seeing the movie and (with prior prompting) spotting the magazine as the character pretends to read it for a couple seconds just before he begins his dialogue with another character. I betcha half the items above appeared in the movie...whatever its name was... -- Russ Lockwood Back to 2nd Quarter 2005 List of News Items Back to Master List of News Items Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2005 by Coalition Web, Inc. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com