Independence Day/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

*** They've had an alien ship for 50 years, but according to Dr Okun ''"See, we can't duplicate their type of power so we've never been able to experiment. But since these guys started showing up, all the gizmos inside turned on. The last twenty four hours have been really exciting!"'' so they have no clue as to what it's operating system is

*** He could easily have meant that major systems like propulsion, weapons, and shields were inoperable, but there'd probably be a small onboard backup supply for very basic things like a simple computer interface.

** Given that Area 51 has been studying the alien scoutship for circa ''50 years?'' Really, the only implausibility would be if they ''hadn't'' bashed together some kind of adapter in that span of time.

*** WINE can't even run half of the windows apps properly yet we're supposed to buy that a virus written for a completely [[Alien OS]] is supposed to work? Have they not heard of sandboxing? Even if they had a compatibility layer to communicate using earth's satellites you'd think an alien species capable of interstellar flight would be aware of security concepts like sandboxing or perhaps not tying the fighter control system into the power core system. Also, even if the ships were able to communicate with the mothership there's no reason to assume that the OS is the same OS from 50+ years ago. I'm sure updates would have happened in that time span and still allowed for remote fighter control.

**** Or, to suit the 50-year time frame better, accessing the Colossus or ENIAC with an iMac. I suppose that it could work if you assume that the alien computer technology has plateaued pending the next technological revolution (akin to vacuum tubes/transistors) for the entire five decades, or at least that significant advances weren't integrated into the fleetships. That is not entirely impossible given the probable limitations on what seems to be a society of nomadic [[Planet Looters]] that would have to build such a mobile fleet well in advance to move in force, but it's not necessarily plausible either, and it leaves aside matters of software interface and compatibility. Even trying to get Win95 to talk to [[Win XP]] can be a bit of a hassle, and that is a single decade's difference with a single evolutionary tree that was designed. Creating a working interpreter/adapter to cross-link alien and human computers with no knowledge at all of what changes and advances the ET has made on their own for five times that length begins to stretch disbelief a bit, especially given that even human computers alone are divergent enough to be unable to communicate with each other.

***** Unable to communicate with each other? Um, the TCP/IP protocol runs on every OS in the world!

***** Plus, you're forgetting that the iMac only has to communicate with the alien fighter that Area 51 has been studying for 50 years. The uplink to to the mother ship is by using their own fighter as a ''relay''. The backwards compatibility problem thus ''lies entirely on the aliens'', in that all that's needed is for their ''mothership'' to be able to sustain a network connection with an earlier model fighter.

****** And any interstellar empire would have to be capable of long-term backwards compatibility simply because when you send out a subgroup of your fleet to scout space for decades, you need to be able to work with your scouting party when they get back. Unless the alien civilization has a way to update every part of its computer infrastructure at the same pace, parts of it will be screwed after a while if there isn't at least 50-year of backwards compatibility available.

****** Also, most technologies plateau after a while. If you have a system that's worked perfectly well for the last 10,000 years, why bother to update it.

***** Okay, the fact that this bugs so many people bugs * me* . First off, it's the world's most expensive B-movie, so really it's not worth overthinking. Second, assuming that the Area 51 brain trust has been picking apart the fighter for decades, they would probably have a pretty good idea how to interface with it from Earth computers. Second, I've always found it ludicrous that somehow the fact that he's using a Mac makes it even less likely -- the PowerBook 5300 was in fact notoriously boring as far as hardware specs go (well, except for the igniting [[Li Ion]] batteries, but that seems to have been a problem for almost anyone who's ever used them). Goldblum's character most likely had access to the Area 51 technical data on the fighter's computers, and in all likelihood they also had a PCMCIA version of the interface kicking around. (I'm willing to handwave the driver issue.)

****** Actually, this wiki exists ''for overthinking''. And it's far from a B movie.

***** You sure? They had to find Area 51 ''somehow''. Despite entirely overlooking it in their original assault, the aliens were moving in on it less than a day after the captured alien had been killed there.

****** 1) They may have been homing in on the downed ship that Will Smith destroyed, it wasn't that far from the base. 2) Area 51 is visible from space. 3) It was probably the only military base that still had any significant activity going on and 4) The RV Armada went there after Will Smith hitches a ride.

**** We can as well speculate (because, why not?) that alien death throes are a stronger telepathic signal than the usual communication.

*** None of that changes the fact that the plan could have been completely scuttled by a [[Dr. Strangelove|CRM-114 Discriminator]]. Aliens apparently have never had to deal with their enemies sending fake or confusing orders...

*** True, but how long were the aliens in the sky before attacking anyway? A day at most, IIRC, arriving in the morning and blowing up the white house in the afternoon. That's 12 hours in which to contact the president. Sure, that seems like a lot, but the guy probably was making speeches all day and there were probably hundreds of people requesting meetings, as well as massive press presence near the white house waiting for an official statement following every new development. And it would probably be a bit suspicious to tell the secretary 'Hey, we are from the MIB. We have important information to share with the president regarding the alien invasion.', especially with a white house that is constantly filled with people who might just hear that. Not to mention that the person who knew the information likely had to fly to washington first. He could have arrived only an hour in advance of the attack, and be waiting for his appointment. If you really need a [[Hand Wave]]

*** The "person who knew the information" is the Secretary of Defense; not only is he already in Washington, but how long does it take ''him'' to get an emergency conference with the President? Drive time to the White House + 2 minutes?

* Anti-gravity might explain HOW the alien ships hovered,but it does nothing to explain why they weren't affected by atmospheric conditions,especially the wind. Ships of that size would have been buffeted by even the lightest breeze and them hovering directly over a spot in a major city (especially two close the ocean like LA & NYC)is ridiculous.

** They can move laterally. Ergo, they have some way of controlling their lateral position. That's like saying, "Okay, I know humans have legs so they can stand upright, but how can they keep standing when the wind hits them?"