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From: bstempleton@watmath.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Comments on WARGAMES
Message-ID: <5456@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jun-83 13:00:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.5456
Posted: Mon Jun 27 13:00:06 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jun-83 04:49:54 EDT
Lines: 28

We read that the "humans are fallible and should be replaced by computers"
issue is only dealth with in the first 10 minutes of War Games.  This
is true directly, but underneath I don't think it's hard to understand
why you don't want a computer capable of launching all the missiles.

And it particular why you don't want a russian one.

Let's face it - there are bugs everywhere.  Bugs crop up on code you "know"
to be bug free.  War Games could not get this message through to the public
which doesn't understand programming, so the routine they chose (this is
fantasy, remember) was to have a dormant AI program resident in the computer
which was given missile control.

A movie where they give missile control to a computer and a bug causes
a big launch would provide no drama, and they have to have drama or they
have no movie.  Instead we got what I thought was a much better than
expected treatment of computers.  Sure AI is not that advanced (and wasn't
in the seventies) and sure they would not use the games computer as the
missile control computer, but that's the SF part.

For those of you who wonder about the ability to login with just a single
name, I have heard the DoDs concept of a secure computer is one in a locked
room with armed guards and no remote logins.  At this point, no passwords
needed either, except for priviledged accounts.
War Games tries to point out that this was the case, and they ordered TelCo
to remove all incoming lines, and they screwed up.
-- 
	Brad Templeton - Waterloo, Ont. (519) 886-7304