Computer programmer cracks secrets of films' dodgy code

Computer code shown in a Doctor Who episode had been taken from Wikipedia

If sci-fi fans knew that the code that reboots a space station in the movie Elysium is actually taken from an Intel processor manual, they might be less than impressed.

nd Iron Man's exploits seem slightly disappointing when you know that code in his visor is for a Lego computer.

They are among bloopers exposed on a blog started by a computer programmer.

Producers take chunks of coding from manuals, websites and even Wikipedia, John Graham-Cumming told the BBC.

"I was watching Elysium and this guy had to write a programme," he said. "What appeared on screen was clearly the assembly language for an Intel x86 processor - basically any standard Intel chip.

'Right track'

"I recognised it because I'm a programmer. Turns out,it came from an Intel instruction manual. I tweeted about it and got over 500 retweets, so I decided to create the tumblr."

Mr Graham-Cumming's site - Source Code in TV and Films - has had more than 10,000 hits since its launch on 3 January and people from around the world are now submitting their own observations about coding they have spotted on screen.

The producers of Elysium were on the right track with the code they chose, he said.

"The code they have taken is the sort of thing you might do if you were starting a microprocessor up so it is kind of relevant," he said. "Somebody knew something."

The code in Iron Man was actually a programming language for a Lego computer

Another film featured on his site is Swordfish, a movie about hacking released in 2001. It used real code from a program that was genuinely used to crack US encryption methods in the 1980s.

'Source code... from Wikipedia'

However, he was less impressed by a scene in the BBC drama Doctor Who, in which the Doctor examines an image of a lightwave surrounded by programming code.

"It is actually the source code needed to draw [the lightwave] - it's from Wikipedia," he said.

"It's sort of relevant... but it's not perfect."

The producers of the 2010 movie The Social Network, about the creation of Facebook, appear to have taken a more serious approach to their on-screen code.

"It's written in [the programming language] Perl," said Mr Graham-Cumming.

"They either wrote something or they got really relevant code - I couldn't find it. I'm guessing someone helped them write it."

'Accurate... just silly'

Other productions appear to have been less particular. Contributors to the site have spotted the code behind a Canadian bank website and even tech news site Engadget popping up on screen.

Mr Graham-Cumming said both good and bad code is entertaining on screen for those in the know.

"My advice to movie producers? I can't decide whether it should be 'do something relevant', because if it is accurate it is very cool... but I also like it when it's just silly," he said.

He has been astonished by the response to his site, he added.

"It's not aimed at a mainstream audience - more a bunch of nerds having a laugh about how this stuff works," he said.

"It was a bit of fun that's caught the imagination of a lot of people."

PC sales are expected to face yet another challenging year during 2014 because of pressures from devices such as smartphones and tablets as well as spill-over of economic and political uncertainties of last year, research firm IDC said.

"2014 is expected to remain another challenging year for the PC market , as competition will only grow among the devices," IDC Asia/Pacific Research Manager (Client Devices) Handoko Andi said on Tuesday.

Besides, exchange rate pressures, political risks and economic uncertainties will all likely spill-over into 2014 as well, Andi said in a release.

"That being said, if the big ticket education projects from last year get repeated, or if the Wintel (Windows + Intel) eco-system is able to bring low-price full function PCs to the market, these are all potential upsides that could help drive volumes in the upcoming year," Andi added.

Last year, even education projects failed to arrest the decline in PC shipments.

According to IDC, PC sales fell by 10 per cent to 108 million units in 2013 in Asia Pacific (excluding Japan), its second consecutive yearly decline, due to smartphones and tablets cannibalising PC shipments on the consumer side.

"The economic sluggishness in big emerging markets in the region adversely affected buying sentiments, with the education sector projects being a lone bright spot in the commercial space, without which the region could have dropped even further," IDC said.

On the consumer side, smartphone and tablet distractions spread throughout the region this year, further contributing to the sharp decline in the PC market, it added.

"The year ended on a somber note for the PC market, as it declined for the second consecutive year. Distraction from competing devices, ongoing pessimism in the economy and exchange rate pressures were among the factors impacting the market this year," Andi said.

In Q4 of 2013 specifically, the market came in 2 per cent below IDC's initial forecasts with a 9 per cent year-on-year decline, IDC said.

"While, most of the region was generally in line with forecasts, Thailand stood out as an exception, as the market there was plagued by the ongoing political turmoil. Shipment volumes this quarter will likely be the lowest in Thailand in the last four years," it added.

In 2013, Lenovo retained its top spot, although it could not shrug off the slump in its home market China, posting an annual decline in 2013 as a result, IDC said.

HP's year-on-year growth in 2013 was almost entirely due to fulfilments for a big education project in India. Weakness in China arrested an otherwise good year for Dell in the region, despite the internal distractions affecting the vendor, it added.

ASUS too fell in line with the overall market trend, declining year-on-year, while Acer continued to struggle with its product strategy, declining in nearly all markets in the region this year, IDC said.

Satya Nadella Microsoft CEO

             

                    
Indian-born tech wizard Satya Nadella is expected to take over as the next Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Microsoft, the world's largest software company.

Rising star Nadella, a native of Hyderabad, India - where Microsoft has its largest non-US research center - was promoted to run the company's fast-expanding cloud, or internet-based, computing initiatives in July last year as part of current CEO Steve Ballmer's radical re-organisation of the company.

Born in 1967 and educated in India and the United States, Nadella's tech career started at internet software pioneer Sun Microsystems. He joined Microsoft in 1992 and quickly climbed the corporate ladder with leading roles in the Office and Bing search-engine teams.

A look at the life of the man who may soon become only the third Microsoft CEO after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.

-Born in Hyderabad in 1967, Nadella is currently the executive vice-president of Microsoft's Cloud and Enterprise group

-Before that, Nadella was a member of the technology staff at Sun Microsystems

-Nadella got his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Mangalore University, before getting a Master's degree in computer science from the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee

-He did his MBA from University of Chicago

Nadella at Microsoft

-He joined Microsoft in 1992

-Nadella is responsible for build-ing and running the company's computing platforms, developer tools and cloud services 

-He and his team delivered the 'Cloud OS', Microsoft's next gen-eration backend platform which not only powers all of its Internet scale cloud services but -also fuels global enterprises around the world to meet their mission-critical computing needs 

-He has also served as senior-vice president of research and development for the Online Ser-vices Division and vice-president of the Microsoft Business Division

Latest Apple IPhone 5s

               

iPhone 5s is precision crafted down to the micron. And it’s evident throughout. The beautiful aluminium housing. The sleekness of metal and glass. Sapphire crystal in the Home button. And more sapphire crystal protecting the iSight camera. Design and construction on this level is unmatched. As a result, iPhone 5s looks and feels unbelievably thin and light. And it’s available in three elegant expressions: gold, silver and space grey.
iPhone 5 set a precedent. Apple engineers and designers managed to compress first-of-their-kind technologies inside a space that’s a mere 7.6 millimetres thin and 112 grams light. A feat like that required designing or redesigning multiple components. And it resulted in an incredibly thin, impressively light, extraordinarily powerful smartphone. After coming so far with iPhone 5, it was a perfect place to start with iPhone 5s. And while the engineering challenge was significant, we succeeded in adding more to it without making iPhone 5s bigger or heavier.