Eagle Eye Review: (Computers don't work that way)

First off.  If you haven't seen the movie this maybe a spoiler, probably less than the preview however so I imagine your safe.

In this movie, a computer takes control of cars, accesses security cameras, cell phones basically anything that has a circuit it can control through the interweb.  (and those are just the things within the realm of physics).

It concerns me that some portion of the general public might believe that this technology is closer to non-fiction than fiction.  It also concerns me that they didn't consult so much as a teenager determine if something in the script was doable or not.

Section 1:  The physically impossible

There is one scene in the movie where the computer triggers a sprinkle system.   You even see a shot of the sprinkle head just before it triggers and it's your traditional sprinklerhead system right down to the fusable alloy with a melting point of 302 degrees Farenheit.  So I have to ask:  How did the computer make the head of all the sprinklers in the building become 302 degress Farenheit?

Section 2:  The logistically rediculous

There is a scene in the movie where the computer decides it wants to kill somebody so it blows up a transformer on a power line which then causes the line to whip into the victim with deadly accuracy.  To accomplish this feat the computer would have to locate the position of the intended victim using satellite imagery (which would be sheer luck to have 1 of 8681 satellites overhead in the first place), cell phone triangulation would be a possibility but unlikely to be accurate enough to accomplish something like this.  At this point it would have to hack our power grid, essentially rewrite the software to allow for decisions which overload the system to be performed, then quickly reroute power in such a way that it converges on that particular transformer miracalously without blowing the transformers it traveled to get there.  (I'm not gonna even get into the physics it would have to compute to determine if all this would even work, just assume it's far from trivial).

One thing that I don't think that people realize is that business rules are built into software.  For example, if I was writing software for trains I would likely put in some rules which prevent it from ramming into another train head on for example.  The only way to interface with the train tracks is through my software.  So guess what?  You can't ram trains into one another.  So even if you were able to gain access to some traffic light system for example, you would be bound by the rules of the system.  So while you may be able to turn lights green.  You wouldn't be able to turn lights green in both directions in order to cause a wreck.

For a moment let's ignore the artificial intelligence, and behavioristic predictions.  Logistically, having a system that integrated into all these other areas BY DESIGN would be the largest software undertaking to date.  The premise of all these movies is that the computers are in control of these systems without permission/knowledge of the system.  This is completely proposturous.  Even with the full cooperation of 3rd party companies, "daunting" would not begin to describe how difficult this would be.  To give a real world example some of the best programmers in the world have spent thousands of man years on word processors and operating systems and the government doesn't have the same resources in personel to my knowledge.   

I could go on but bottom line is I'm confident nothing even close to this exist.