A magazine where the digital world meets the real world.
On the web
- Home
- Browse by date
- Browse by topic
- Enter the maze
- Follow our blog
- Follow us on Twitter
- Resources for teachers
- Subscribe
In print
What is cs4fn?
- About us
- Contact us
- Partners
- Privacy and cookies
- Copyright and contributions
- Links to other fun sites
- Complete our questionnaire, give us feedback
Search:
The Matrix Reloaded - sorry to bug you
In The Matrix Reloaded (2003) Neo, Morpheus, Trinity, and the rest of their crew continue their battle with the machines that have enslaved the human race in the virtual reality of the Matrix. To find the Oracle, who can explain to them what's going on (which given the twisty plot in the Matrix film series is always a good idea) Trinity needs to break into a power station and switch off a series of power nodes to allow the others to enter the secret floor on the skyscraper. The computer terminal displays information that she is disabling 27 power nodes, numbers 21 to 48, but that's actually 28 nodes, a computer that can't count and worse still, shows the wrong message. Sadly there are far too many cases of software today having mistakes in them. These mistakes are known as bugs because, way back at the start of computer development in 1945 Lieutenant Grace Murray Hopper one of the women pioneers of computer science found an error caused by a moth trapped between the points at Relay 70, Panel F, of the Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator being tested at Harvard University. She sensibly removed the moth, and attached it to her computer testing logbook, writing "First actual case of bug being found". Her team then said they had "debugged" the machine, and so started the term "debugging a computer program". As the Oracle would no doubt say 'Check for moths Trinity, check for moths'.
More Film Bugs
Back for More Film BugsDo you have a favourite film bug? Tell us about it at cs4fn@eecs.qmul.ac.uk