Computers in the Media

The other day, I was watching CSI, and I couldn't help but notice all the references to science, as well as computers, they made. For all I know, all the references to science were in correct context, but one thing caught my attention.

The episode was about a serial killer who would capture people in his taxi cab, and take them back to a warehouse to murder them. The killer eventually kidnaps a blogger to get his message out to the world. The investigators, back at the the station, are viewing his blog, and notice how the entries are being posted in real time. One of the investigators then stated that she would quickly code a program in Visual Studio to create a GUI interface to trace the IP address, and find where the posts were coming from.

There's a problem with this scenario. I will ignore the fact that programming a GUI interface would probably take longer than writing a command prompt program, and skip to the part that matters. How exactly were they going to trace the IP address? In order to get an IP address, they would have to packet sniff, and the blogger would have to be on the same network as the investigators, and chances are, he wasn't.

What would have happened in real life? Well, I would imagine it would go something like this. The investigator makes a call to the blog service that the blog is hosted on. If the service monitors what IP addresses connect to their servers, they could immediately respond with the address, but if not, more calls would need to made to the internet service provider that the blog service uses. Keep in mind that I do not work for the government or any investigation service, so some of this may be wrong, but in theory, the investigators' methods would not work.

I know that it's just television, and a bit of false information is okay, but I do believe that shows like CSI could gain more intellectual viewers (although I'm sure they have a lot of them already) if they included correct information, or at least a bit more info to explain their methods. Sure, it may not be relevant to the plot, but it couldn't hurt!

One intellectual show, although it is a comedy, that I enjoy watching is The Big Bang Theory on CBS. The show focuses on two “nerds” who work in the field of physics, and is filled with various references to science, as well as the stereotypes of what intellectuals like to do with their spare time, such as playing MMOs and other video games as well as watching lectures by Steven Hawking.

I am glad to see that our television is not completely filled with idiotic references to nothingness (that means you, Family Guy). Although I do not watch television much anymore, I have to say that I am glad that I can sit down and watch a program that won't leave me feeling more idiotic than I was when I sat down.

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Comments

I also love how every action the computer takes is accompanied by some sort of sound and fancy visual indicator. What ever happened to silence and a spinning hourglass? I know, I know...watching an hourglass spin isn't as entertaining as watching 1000 fingerprint scans flash by while the machine beeps like the audio of Bobby Knight in a press conference after losing a game.
I really enjoy CSI (Las Vegas), even though they do bend the rules some for entertainment value.

gundark

May 19, 2008

8:52 AM PT