Alain M. Lafon

Sometimes I wonder what kind of IT consultants are employed in the movie industry. The particular incident is taken from the  CBS series Jericho that I just started watching. This series tells the tale about nuclear bombs going off in the US and how a small town copes with the aftereffects.

The scene I want to tell you about, happens just after an EMP. Of course, it was meant to cut off communications. The local blond High School cutie goes to the local Internet Café, anyway. She tries to get access to some web page; without success. Then the nerdy black girl comes into play. She is the daughter of a special agent from the CIA.

Blondy explains Nerd that she needs to check her mail, Nerd then asks if Blondy tried “using the IP address”. After a decline Nerd goes to action and does the following:

IT geek fail

Nerd then crosses her arms and uses a very interesting facial expression. The chat went on as follows:

“It’s weired. the Internet was built by the military. It’s supposed to survive nuclear war.”
– “So why can’t I check my email?”

Considering that the two girls didn’t know each other very well, I have three questions about the used IP address.

1. Is there only one email provider in the US?
2. Shouldn’t IE display a message like “Address cannot be found”?
3. How do people get these half truths? Knowing about the 4-tuple structure, but with random numbers? Hints: RFC760 and RFC2734

Well, maybe she got confused. After all, her dad is a CIA agent acting as if he were from FBI. But to the locals he said he was a cop. Confusion seems to be running in the family, I guess.

It’s a pretty nice series, anyway. Too bad it got cancelled early “due to bad ratings”. Obviously the American public didn’t like the idea of a creative and controversial series showing what people(that includes Americans) can do when times are tough.