Watch movies on demand and debug the kernal while you're at it

While traveling on Air New Zealand to Sydney last weekend I was half way through a movie when this happened....



... it's good to see them using Linux but surely they could have turned the screen echo off and leave a message that might explain to the non sys-admins that "Normal service will resume shortly"?

Despite this the service is really good - well done Air NZ.

On the subject of movies I have a beef about the way the studios portray computers. I watched "The Day the Earth Stood Still" which should be re-named "The 90 minutes the audience sat still, and fell asleep", but it had two traits that are interesting.

Have you noticed two things about movie computers. They always bleep and blip when someone is typing or the screen changes - where does that come from? And secondly, and more importantly in this modern world of paranoia, have you noticed that if an organization (usually an American security agency) is under threat it is their "mainframe" that is at risk? This is fair enough perhaps as American security agencies are the only organizations who can afford to run "mainframes" but most of the world has moved on haven't they?

This is no different to any portrayal of a specialist subject that is not in the mainstream. I just think it would upset those people who consider that computers are ubiquitous, there may be a large number of computers around but only a few understand what's going on with them!