{{Gus}}: The page at the link below wants to install software. Use at your own risk.

//IncrediMail has actually made an email program that works like this. Originally billed as "EMail like in the movies": http://www.incredimail.com/english/splash/splash.asp

{{Uhl}}: Police Academy IV (I think) paritally subverts this. The password that the villain uses on his computer (when he has the female cop tied up in his room watching the screen) is covered in asterisks. The squad has to guess the password by knowing the number of letters. ("GREED" All caps.)

{{Seth}}: I want to use this gif here Its just so great
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/2463_startrek-bluescreen.gif[[caption-width:320:Something that will never happen to a viewer friendly interface.]]

LooneyToons: ''Where'' did you get this? It looks like a blooper clip from ''[=ST:TNG=].''

{{Seth}}: My friend showed it to me on MSN, its hosted on her photobucket right now but i would upload it to the server of course. Its good isn't it.

BTTheP: It's a real scene from a TNG episode, except all the screen does on the show is go blank. The BSOD was edited in. I can't remember which episode it's from, I think that's actually Lore in Data's uniform on there.

LooneyToons: If that's an edit job, it's ''superb'' -- Brent Spiner's face is still reflected in the glass ''over'' the BSOD.

BTTheP: Near as I can tell, they keyed in the blue screen as a layer over the black screen. Then they somehow trimmed the insert layer around Brent Spiner's hand in each frame; my money's on a mask that responds to pixels over a certain brightness, but if you look closely there's a slight ghost of black around his hand in some frames, so perhaps it was trimmed manually frame by frame. As for the reflection, either they copied the original video layer, trimmed it to the shape of the blue screen, and re-keyed it over the top, or they inserted the screen layer as a semi-transparent key. Not hard in the era of Final Cut Pro and Photoshop, but definitely good, careful work; not a pants job.

RadioactiveZombie - Jeez, [[ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontLike complaining about tropes you don't like]]? Yes, it's complaining about complaining again, but I think we could do with a dose of TropesAreNotCliches. I'll re-write when I have time.

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gryffinp: I was thinking, the Bit in Cryptonomicon where Randy does a hell of a lot of stuff, while ensuring that none of it is visible on the screen, could be considered a subversion maybe? Thoughts?

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Prfnoff: Removed this point for being contested and attracting lots of natter:
* Don't even think about using the mouse with a GUI (even if there is one provided). Instead you must make the clickity-clackety keyboard noises. RapidFireTyping if you're a "computer genius."
**This troper had a computer science professor who had made a point of learning any pertinent keyboard shortcuts for software used in class and therefore rarely had to resort to the mouse for anything, so this can sometimes be TruthInTelevision.
** This troper can tell you it's not computer geniuses, but accountants that don't use the mouse. I used to work for a company that makes financial software. Although this was software for Windows, the primary method of navigation was the keyboard because accountants don't like using the mouse while inputting data.
** Allen Holub's ''Enough Rope to Shoot Yourself in the Foot'' even mentions forcing user to switch between keyboard for data input and mouse for control as a typical example of bad interface.
**This troper also agrees that keyboard shortcuts are faster and also easier to explain to other people in instructions ("hit Control-k" instead of "find this icon, now right-click, go to this menu option..." But the point of using keyboard shortcuts is to minimize the amount of typing. The only computer systems currently in use that require a LOT of typing (and also are on antiquated enough hardware that the keyboards ''[[http://www.dansdata.com/ibmkeyboard.htm clickclackclack]]'') are the ticketing systems used by the airlines.
*** That's why orthodox filemanagers are alive and well - it's just faster than anything WIMP-based.
**This troper's computer science class requires that EVERYTHING be done via a unix command prompt. The only use the mouse has is selecting text, and sitting inside a window to keep it active.
*** ThisTroper believes that is, in fact, the quickest and most efficient way of doing things in unix/linux... provided, of course, you can touch-type. It is often much faster to hit alt+f2 and then type in the name of the program than to move your hand to the mouse, click the button that shows the desktop, wait for that to happen (if using a slow machine), find the appropriate button on the desktop and click it.