Why I Hate Television
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http://img-9gag-lol.9cache.com/photo/aj6P891_700b.jpg
They try to be nerdy or something. Just like Big Bang Theory. But no one can manage to have even an intern level IT person fact check the statements. Even casual college students in non-IT and non-software fields know enough to know that this is wrong. Are all of the people who work on this show really so vastly inept that no one stopped and said "this line is wrong" and fix it in a second? It was so hard to get this wrong it's like they went out of their way to do so.
It's always like this. None of these shows have the slightest clue about anything, how can the writing be so bad when getting this right is so easy?
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@scottalanmiller said:
http://img-9gag-lol.9cache.com/photo/aj6P891_700b.jpg
They try to be nerdy or something. Just like Big Bang Theory. But no one can manage to have even an intern level IT person fact check the statements. Even casual college students in non-IT and non-software fields know enough to know that this is wrong. Are all of the people who work on this show really so vastly inept that no one stopped and said "this line is wrong" and fix it in a second? It was so hard to get this wrong it's like they went out of their way to do so.
It's always like this. None of these shows have the slightest clue about anything, how can the writing be so bad when getting this right is so easy?
If they changed Javascript to Flash, it might have been better. Still, 90% of the people who watch the show will have no clue at this blunder.
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@thanksaj said:
If they changed Javascript to Flash, it might have been better. Still, 90% of the people who watch the show will have no clue at this blunder.
That's a horrible indictment of the state of the American knowledge base. Or at least of the people who watch this show, but sadly, you are probably correct. But still, if 10% see how dumb it is, isn't that worth the thirty seconds it takes to have someone proof a script? I've never seen this show and now all I know about it is that the lead actor was fired because he couldn't do his job and the writers aren't taking their jobs seriously and that the show isn't good enough to be on any modern media (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu.) Those are the three facts I know about this show.
Flash isn't exactly a language and would not exactly be a good choice. You don't "talk Flash." Just using ANY programming language instead of mentioning the same one twice would have been fine. Doesn't need to have any real thought. Just any programming language. There are thousands, picking the only two that are the same one with different names took real effort.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
If they changed Javascript to Flash, it might have been better. Still, 90% of the people who watch the show will have no clue at this blunder.
That's a horrible indictment of the state of the American knowledge base. Or at least of the people who watch this show, but sadly, you are probably correct. But still, if 10% see how dumb it is, isn't that worth the thirty seconds it takes to have someone proof a script? I've never seen this show and now all I know about it is that the lead actor was fired because he couldn't do his job and the writers aren't taking their jobs seriously and that the show isn't good enough to be on any modern media (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu.) Those are the three facts I know about this show.
Flash isn't exactly a language and would not exactly be a good choice. You don't "talk Flash." Just using ANY programming language instead of mentioning the same one twice would have been fine. Doesn't need to have any real thought. Just any programming language. There are thousands, picking the only two that are the same one with different names took real effort.
Writers don't always consult like they should. That is pretty bad though.
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@thanksaj said:
Writers don't always consult like they should. That is pretty bad though.
Not really up to the writers. The producers don't have anyone editing the final draft. That's just unprofessional and sloppy. Presumably this show has some number of viewers and enough money to have basic copy editing going on. You'd have to be failing pretty hard to not have that kind of budget. Television shows do okay if they are still on the air. This one might not be big enough to be anywhere but legacy media (a trend with bad writing, it seems - the two probably go together catering to the Luddites) but surely it has a budget large enough that proof reading wouldn't even show up as a blip. I mean YouTube content creators can afford that!
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Writers don't always consult like they should. That is pretty bad though.
Not really up to the writers. The producers don't have anyone editing the final draft. That's just unprofessional and sloppy. Presumably this show has some number of viewers and enough money to have basic copy editing going on. You'd have to be failing pretty hard to not have that kind of budget. Television shows do okay if they are still on the air. This one might not be big enough to be anywhere but legacy media (a trend with bad writing, it seems - the two probably go together catering to the Luddites) but surely it has a budget large enough that proof reading wouldn't even show up as a blip. I mean YouTube content creators can afford that!
I get them having a large budget, but they might not have the right people reading every joke. Maybe they have chemists and physicists reviewing the script, but IT is not something that they screen with. Maybe they did screen the script and the IT guy didn't know. It's hard to say.
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It's a good show though. Don't write it off because of one blunder.
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I completely agree. Unfortunately I think AJ is giving the viewing public to much credit. If even 1% understood this to be wrong, I'd be surprised.
Not a single person other than me in my office of 85 people would know this was wrong.
Hell, even my techie friends who don't code webpages wouldn't know it.On the scale of things being just horribly wrong, this is rather minor. There is a new show called Scorpion where they portrayed a datacenter in use by LAX as a row of storage units with only a keypad to a garage type door as the only way in, further made ridiculous by the fact that simply turning off the power grid would open the garage style door.
hangs head in dispair
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@Dashrender said:
I completely agree. Unfortunately I think AJ is giving the viewing public to much credit. If even 1% understood this to be wrong, I'd be surprised.
Not a single person other than me in my office of 85 people would know this was wrong.
Hell, even my techie friends who don't code webpages wouldn't know it.On the scale of things being just horribly wrong, this is rather minor. There is a new show called Scorpion where they portrayed a datacenter in use by LAX as a row of storage units with only a keypad to a garage type door as the only way in, further made ridiculous by the fact that simply turning off the power grid would open the garage style door.
hangs head in dispair
I try to be optimistic.
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My biggest gripe is shows like CSI where they view a really low-res CCTV image of the bad guy, and someone says "zoom in right there" and they zoom in a 1000% and can suddenly view a high-res image of a box of matches the bad guy is holding with the name of a bar on it or something. I just end up screaming "You can't zoom an image like that!"
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@thanksaj said:
I get them having a large budget, but they might not have the right people reading every joke. Maybe they have chemists and physicists reviewing the script, but IT is not something that they screen with. Maybe they did screen the script and the IT guy didn't know. It's hard to say.
All it takes is anyone with a solid high school education today. Literally this is something taught in most high schools today. This doesn't require scientists or IT people to proof read. Just semi-minimally educated young adults. My fourth graders at a zero money private school in a rural town in Upstate NY could have proofed this a decade ago!
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@Carnival-Boy said:
My biggest gripe is shows like CSI where they view a really low-res CCTV image of the bad guy, and someone says "zoom in right there" and they zoom in a 1000% and can suddenly view a high-res image of a box of matches the bad guy is holding with the name of a bar on it or something. I just end up screaming "You can't zoom an image like that!"
My favorite example of this is U.S. Marshals, where Wesley Snipe's character is in a dark garage, and they zoom in to see he is wearing leather gloves.. Classic..
Yeah I too hate TV producers.
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@Carnival-Boy said:
My biggest gripe is shows like CSI where they view a really low-res CCTV image of the bad guy, and someone says "zoom in right there" and they zoom in a 1000% and can suddenly view a high-res image of a box of matches the bad guy is holding with the name of a bar on it or something. I just end up screaming "You can't zoom an image like that!"
@dominica was actually a forensic biochemist, like the CSI people, when we first met. She did that for several years. She didn't do the crime lab stuff, she was with racing and wagering, but same science. Let me tell you, far less exciting that it looks
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
I get them having a large budget, but they might not have the right people reading every joke. Maybe they have chemists and physicists reviewing the script, but IT is not something that they screen with. Maybe they did screen the script and the IT guy didn't know. It's hard to say.
All it takes is anyone with a solid high school education today. Literally this is something taught in most high schools today. This doesn't require scientists or IT people to proof read. Just semi-minimally educated young adults. My fourth graders at a zero money private school in a rural town in Upstate NY could have proofed this a decade ago!
Ummm....they don't teach this kind of stuff in schools....even Web Design classes likely wouldn't have given someone the knowledge they needed to know the difference.
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@thanksaj said:
Ummm....they don't teach this kind of stuff in schools....even Web Design classes likely wouldn't have given someone the knowledge they needed to know the difference.
They do at every school I ever deal with. And going way back. Like mid 2000s. Very common.
They were teaching freshman basic web design in 1995 at liberal arts colleges that didn't have any tech programs.
You should know this when someone says "What is HTML5?" And the answer is "It's HTML, JavaScript and CSS as a single spec." You can't get past "what is it" without having the answer. You don't even need to know what they are for.
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Schools teach a lot of things these days. My niece takes robotics, for example. The one thing that they have lost is programming. You don't see that anymore. It was super common in the 1980s. By the 1990s, it was mostly gone. We've lost a big piece of the education that we used to have.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Ummm....they don't teach this kind of stuff in schools....even Web Design classes likely wouldn't have given someone the knowledge they needed to know the difference.
They do at every school I ever deal with. And going way back. Like mid 2000s. Very common.
They were teaching freshman basic web design in 1995 at liberal arts colleges that didn't have any tech programs.
You should know this when someone says "What is HTML5?" And the answer is "It's HTML, JavaScript and CSS as a single spec." You can't get past "what is it" without having the answer. You don't even need to know what they are for.
Yeah, hate to tell you this, but this is not in most primary or secondary school curriculum. Some, and only some, schools offer web design classes, but most focus on teaching you the basic of how to actually write the tags. They don't really explain what HTML, or CSS, or Javascript, are.
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@thanksaj said:
Yeah, hate to tell you this, but this is not in most primary or secondary school curriculum. Some, and only some, schools offer web design classes, but most focus on teaching you the basic of how to actually write the tags. They don't really explain what HTML, or CSS, or Javascript, are.
Are you familiar with schools outside of NY? I think you'll find it very different than your experience.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Yeah, hate to tell you this, but this is not in most primary or secondary school curriculum. Some, and only some, schools offer web design classes, but most focus on teaching you the basic of how to actually write the tags. They don't really explain what HTML, or CSS, or Javascript, are.
Are you familiar with schools outside of NY? I think you'll find it very different than your experience.
I can guarantee most of the schools south of the Mason-Dixon line don't. Those schools are worse off than NY schools.
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@thanksaj said:
I can guarantee most of the schools south of the Mason-Dixon line don't. Those schools are worse off than NY schools.
Actually, no. That's exactly where they are doing it. That's where the push to improve the schools has happened so much. NY has fallen and is now one of the worst education systems in the nation. By and large the south is blowing it away. Texas, traditionally a sink hole of education, is now so far outpacing NY it isn't funny. NY was great in education once, those days are past. They aren't even trying anymore.
