I tend to find the Hollywood portrayal of computers and hacking to be pretty amusing. If you really want to get a kick out of it rent Weird Science and watch what heppens when they hack into a government computer (who knew a 14.4 BAUD rate modem could move that much data? and where do I get the screaming skull and crossbones security software? lol).
seriously though, when you think about how little the average person knows about computers it really isn't that surprising that people will buy into anything hollywood wants to show them. I mean if Best Buy can charge $50 to install people's software for them (not including the price of the software itself) it's pretty obvious to me that most people just don't jack about computers.
besides, someone supposedly seening something in the Matrix-style scrolling numbers and letters is a lot more entertaining to watch than someone slowly reading through page after page of log files
