What an exhausting and long year since last August – my last full vacation!
And exhausting … for ALL OF US! I am so fortunate to have been able to work with such amazing and incredible colleagues at The Computer Help Desk over the past … 500+ DAYS! Yes, it has been that long since we started working remotely, late in March of 2020!
Without ALL of their support, humour, leadership, imagination, guidance and every single possible ‘intangible‘ that each and every single one of them, ALL BRING to our Teams meetings, emails, texts, GIFs, Emojis, Jeopardy, Quote Contests, it would have been impossible to accomplish a fraction of what WE ALL DID AS A TEAM!
THANK YOU ALL!
A few key UVic and BC websites for returning to campus in September for everyone!
“DANGER WILL ROBINSON!“ or “I’m sorry Dave.
I’m afraid I can’t do that“ Famous Computer Quotes !
ANOTHER CALL JEOPARDY YESTERDAY FOR HELP DESK! The theme this time was ‘MEMES‘ and the movie quotes were all from famous SF computers, androids, robots, AI, replicants, ‘bots or even organics (people!) forthem!
I sure had fun creating this new updated version, which included all kinds of memes and .gifs that are Computer Help Desk related! So, for a new feature here, will identify EACH QUOTE in EACH CATEGORY below, with a link to the IMDB movie page too! And as most of them are potentially ‘older’ movies, many Consultants have not SEEN these awesome movies! So a quick way to go to EACH MOVIE that I referenced! I will call this .. CHDMDB for Computer Help Desk Movie Database!
(Click Character-for IMDB profile / on Movie/TV Show- more info)
Next Jeopardy (October 2021??) will involve Movie Quotes, again, for the categories, but … the CATEGORIES will be based on a Poll in Teams that I will create soon! So they will be more current i.e. released AFTER most of our Consultants were BORN! Some of the movies I referenced, some of the PARENTS of our CHD Consultants .. might not even have seen!
Almost every single day, there is news of a new security breach somewhere, and that includes Canada too. And just one aspect of computer security is using a VERY difficult to guess password or passphrase.
What is the difference? To make a long passphrase short … IS a password! Passphrases are longer and are often REQUIRED to be longer than the passwords that we have become familiar with.
Send automatic emails upon passphrase change to preferred email
All of the above AND MORE
are explained at Nav’s CISOVlog!
And in addition, something called MFA, Multi-Factor Authentication. Basically TWO things you need to know or provide, in order to proceed securely to a UVic or other important site. Think of it as an extra lock on your way into your home, each lock needing a unique key. If you don’t have the first key, you are stopped. And if you don’t have the SECOND key, you are also stopped!
This is great news and will provide ADDITIONALand IMPROVEDsecurity for all of UVic and that means for ALL OF US! Check out, of all places, Wikipedia for a ‘Wikipedia’ explanation of (MFA) Multi-Factor Authentication.
So, the next client might not be swearing at you … they might be providing you with their PASSWORD! WHICH THEY SHOULDN’T DO!
Some fun and interesting links below about famous movie hacks and security!
This will be my list of my favourite computer/AI voices from Movies and TV shows that I have seen and grew up with! They can be human or actually computer generated. So some of them will no doubt be VERY obscure for many of you young folks! LOL! But that does not mean you should disregard them! They might prove to be dated, but they have all influenced how we percieve computers and AI, to this day!
The voice of EVERY computer in every episode and movie of Star Trek is Majel Barrett, who was married to Gene Rodenberry! She even voiced the computer in the Star Trek:The Animated Series too! Outside of Michael Dorn (Worf), Majel Barrett has appeared in more episodes than ANY OTHER ACTOR!
Robocop morphed a critically injured policeman with state of the art technology to enforce police protection. What could go wrong? Well, more than you can imagine, including a horrible remake of this classic movie!
And at the time, TRON was the greatest computer movie OF ALL TIME! The graphics were amazing, the storyline was new and amazing and I remember watching it multiple times!
And then they made a reboot of it TRON:Legacy .. and I liked that one too! It got bad review, but I still liked it! And the graphics were amazing too!
And how could ultimate cuteness and the end of the world combine any better than in WALL-E! Eve and WALL-E have instant chemistry, albeit confrontational at first, but it is still one of my favourite animated series and WELL ahead of its time in terms of environmentalism!
And probably the most iconic computer/AI interface, at least recently is the combined character of Vision in theMCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe). Vision is ‘powered’ by the Mind Stone, one of the Infinity Stones.
And … if you got this far, then you have seen the movies! Vision is a weird blend of the personality of Tony Stark (Iron Man), Ultron (his ‘Frankenstein-like AI), JARVIS (his own AI ‘butler’) and the power of Thor to kick-start him! Yeah, you had to be there … multiple movies and multiple personalities … what could go wrong! Actually, he is a pretty good character and very strong too!
And the rebooted series is fantastic too! The new robot, although not named Robbie, is unique, integral to the storyline and has amazing graphics! And it is filmed in Vancouver too! But only one season left! Sigh …… I remember building a model of this robot too!
Another TV show ahead of its time was Knight Rider! A virtually indestructible AI car (K.I.T.T. – Knight Industries 2000) guided by a secret organization dedicated to fighting injustice! Whoa, wait … NOT ELON MUSK! LOL! It kind of looked like a cross between Elon Musk and a Cylon! And we don’t want to go THERE either!
And having mentioned HAL 9000 above, did you realize that there was a SEQUEL to 2001? 2010: The Year We Make Contact featured SAL 9000 (voiced by Candice Bergen) as the upgrde to HAL that did not quite meet factory specifications! LOL! The most obvious difference (no spoilers here!) is that SAL is a blue orb’!
And coming up to just a couple more examples! There are SO many, that I really did limit myself this time! I had previously written posts about favourite computers in all kinds of media at “Shall We Play a Game . . . or Fictional Computers” but that did not focus on anything but the computers themselves. This post is on their actual voices used! Okay, a small distinction! So that does mentioning a previous post count as … Product Placement or what! LOL!
War Games! Just go find it somewhere and have a great popcorn time! A young hacker breaks into a High Security computer, unknowingly trying out a ‘game’ called Global Thermonuclear War and … well, the use of the modem is hilarious! But the voice of WOPR is amazing! If it makes you think of Stephen Hawking …. no spoilers here! A great, great movie!
And I will never hear the end of it from all my colleagues if I don’t include those two wacky robots from a relatively unknown cult classic … C-3PO and R2-D2. Did you ever wonder WHY they are called … R2-D2 and C-3PO?
Perhaps the quintessential use of voice to convey language! C3PO is designed to be able to talk to ANYONE with his linguistics programming and R2D2 happily whistles, clicks, bings and we can all understand exactly what is going on! The classic straight man out of vaudeville humour and it works so well! Arguably the best parts of Star Wars are those two! Note: Yoda is NOT a computer! LOL!
All the voices mentioned above are in YouTube videos below. I hope I got them all! I might even do a sequel to this in a future post – there were many I have left off and they deserve a listening to as well!
Terrific Tuesday and More Favourite Posters and Cartoons!
Another very busy day this morning! I started with a different OAC Bog Blog Post about Desktop Publishing!
But soon, we were TEAMing more test scripts for Adam! I am testing scripts in Mail using macOS Catalina So the Desktop Publishing Bog Blog will be tomorrow … unless more stuff comes up! And a full CHD Training Session after lunch too! AWESOME!
And just a peek at aDesktop Publishing cartoon too! And, so true … so very, very true!
So some fun posters and cartoons over the past few years to round out the day and keep my daily OAC Bog Blog post going!
Sometimes the image has to be reduced in visible size, to meet the installed theme here. Just click on the images and a bigger, original sized graphic will appear in a new tab.
None of these computers actually exist except in the imaginations of the authors! SPOILER ALERT – hard to distinguish between fictional computers and Artificial Intelligence – so …. no critics and besides …. my blog!
Full Disclosure: I have collected and read science fiction for most of my life and consider The Matrix to be a documentary, not a movie! LOL!
DOUBLE Full Disclosure: As far as these OAC Bog Blog posts go …. ‘I’ll be back’!
So I WILL mix media here, including movies, television and literature!
One of my favourite movie computers is WOPR (pronounced ‘WHOPPER’ in WarGames from 1983! Think about it – a movie BEFORE Apple invented … THE MACINTOSH!
A teenage hacker finds the backdoor password to a Top Secret computer designed to run scenarios of ‘games’ including ‘Global Thermonuclear Warfare’, except … they aren’t GAMES! His hardware – a modem and smarts to figure out what the backdoor password is! There are SO many memes about this movie and it is a hoot to watch. And the ending is actually very good! I highly recommend it!
Even ‘The Avengers’ has made a sly reference to it from Black Widow and Captain America!
In the scene where the Black Widow boots up SHIELD’s supercomputer from a bygone era, she asks Captain America, “Shall we play a game?”, with Captain America replying, “Love to. How about Global Thermonuclear War?” This is a reference to a line from WarGames, a 1983 Cold War sci-fi film
So as to destroy ANY sense of mystery or surprises, my favourite science fiction computer is named ‘Obie’ from Jack L. Chalker’s ‘Well World‘ series.
Obie is one of the rare fictional computers that actually are at times, more human than humans. Obie is kind, smart, confused and self-aware. SPOILER – he was ‘killed’, then came back and then …. one of the best parts of this series! Check it out!
Yeah, not many of you have probably heard of these books, but they are absolutely amazing! Simply put, Obie is designed by an ancient race called Markovians … to manipulate the basic fabric of the universe. Imagine the monthly updates with Obie!
Chalker was a PROLIFIC author, but the first book in the series, ‘Midnight at the Well of Souls‘ then you will be hooked for life on ALL of his books! AND THERE ARE MANY!
Okay sure, he helped a lunar revolution but he has a wicked sense of humour and becomes friends with Mannie! And for why HOLMES IV is referred to as ‘Mike’, well let’s just say it was part of Heinlein’s wicked sense of humour!
The most well known computers in film include HAL-9000 (2001), ‘The Matrix’, the Holodeck and Data (Star Trek), Cerebro (X-Men), Skynet (Terminator), Arnim Zola (Captain America), Jarvis/Ultron/Vision (Iron Man(s)+), Mother (Alien) and Deep Thought (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and there are so many more in the popular genre, both recently and for many years. Here is a List of Fictional Computers , that is also at the bottom of this post.
But I want to point out a few obscure computers, such as:
KITT (Knight Rider) in Knight Rider – Elon Musk has NOTHING on this vehicle! Snarky, sarcastic AND can catch criminals too! Basically the Love Child of a Cylon and a TESLA! I will buy the first vehicle from TESLA that can do this! (Batmobile aside…..)
Colossus in Colossus! This computer was Skynet before Skynet! It ws the first of a trilogy and was one of the first science fiction books I read AND collected as a kid! It was even turned into a movie, Colossus: The Forbin Project! One of those ‘so bad it is good!’ kind of movies – if only for the technology!
And perhaps one of the most obscure computers comes from the first ever release by, of all people, George Lucas!
Yes, THAT George Lucas famous for that Star thing series! OMM in THX1138 by George Lucas! It was basically his thesis from USC and I remember GOING to this movie in 1971 and coming out thinking this was the weirdest movie I had ever seen! But, he ended up making a few more lesser know movies too! LOL!
THX 1138 OMM – On the other hand, maybe too much benevolence is a bad thing, too. Before “Star Wars,” even before “American Graffiti,” George Lucas created this highly experimental and hallucinatory filmed dystopia, all the more striking for being done on a small budget (exactly $777,777.77) with mostly found locations. His sterile and drug-controlled future world has one spiritual dimension, a sort of cybernetic father-confessor figure named OMM, with whom one communes in a chapel that resembles a phone booth. The feedback one received from OMM was reminiscent of the old AI program ELIZA, where soothing generalities and “but what about you?”-style questions sufficed to convince some people an actual human being was at the other end.
And one last one that you might never have heard of from the SEQUEL to 2001! Arthur C. Clarke wrote2010: Odyssey Two and it was turned into a movie as well, with SAL-9000 the ‘upgrade’ to HAL-9000 who had terrible social skills. But was always willing to go on a ‘bicycle built for two‘ – perhaps the first ever Smart Car technology?
And the usual assortment of recently searched interesting links, videos and other cool stuff – but beware, most of the computers are .. bad, very bad!