Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Who Watches The Passwords?

Just because sometimes, methinks, we all need to be reminded that the original Watchmen wasn't quite 100% perfect:






Wait a minute...this calls for a close-up:

Now, I realize that this was only 1987...but that's still some shockingly bad understanding of computers that Moore & Gibbons display here.

Seriously...a computer that let's you know when you have a password almost but not quite right? Talk about a hacker's paradise. That's the very opposite of computer security, and one would think "the world's smartest man" wouldn't have something so laughably stupid on his desk, especially when it held the clue to all his involvement.

Then again, that same smartest man used a variation of his own name as his computer password, so those quotation marks are looking more and more necessary. And yes, even though he filled his office with a ridiculous amount Egyptian paraphernalia to serve as a wonderfully non-subtle clue, he chose to use the Egyptian version of his name as the password. Oy.

Not to mention using a company named after for your well-known Egyptian fascination (Pyramid Deliveries) as the cut-out to hire your fake assassination, which is the only clue leading Rorschach and Nite Owl to your involvement, is hardly bright.

Frankly, that's Scooby Doo villain level stupidity.

All of which means either that Adrian Veidt was, despite all the precautions he took to cover his tracks, a stunningly stupid and careless man; or, that Moore plotted himself into a corner, and had no way to get his heroes clued into Veidt's scheme, so he had to resort to the "idiot plot" to make it work (in which a smart character inexplicably acts like a total idiot because that's the only way to get the plot from A to B).

I'm just sayin'.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Or...
Adrian WANTED them to find out, so he could brag to someone and/or prevent the people that were nearly his friends from dying with New York.

Daniel said...

"Do you wish to add rider?"

I know what it means in context, but... "add rider"? Where did THAT come from?

S Bates said...

It's a rather awkward way of tying into the "Two Riders..." title and quote of this issue (the 'rider' is the number 2 - hence two rider)whilst also meaning a type of addendum.

Anonymous said...

After I saw the movie last night, I told my wife the same thing (flying ship or no, two guys easily rummaging around in his office also demonstrates a certain consistent laziness about security, unless both Moore and the movie had to delete the Mission Impossible-style break-in). My wife, a Chief Information Officer, was actually not surprised by the lax security at all; I guess it's funny what gets forgotten when you're plotting world-changing schemes.

VariousVarieties said...

WatchmenComicMovie.com: But your dad — I hear he doesn't use the Internet or even own a computer for that matter. Why is he such a technophobe?

Leah Moore: Of course he uses a computer! Why on earth would any writer, let alone one as prolific as dad, stubbornly stick to carbon paper and Tipp-ex when spell check and word count are available?

He doesn’t use email, and faxes scripts instead, but that is more about his privacy, and not wanting everyone in the world sending him emails the whole time.