Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!MDP@SU-SCORE.ARPA From: MDP@SU-SCORE.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: WarGames Message-ID: <3340@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Fri, 22-Jul-83 05:29:24 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.3340 Posted: Fri Jul 22 05:29:24 1983 Date-Received: Tue, 26-Jul-83 17:07:00 EDT Lines: 42 From: Mike PeelerLet me start by saying that I enjoyed the movie. Since I make a point of evading reviews and previews before seeing a movie, it did not occur to me, at the time, that people would think the scenario was realistic. There is a big difference between "not impossible" and realistic. Interstellar space travel is not impossible. It is clear to me, in retrospect, why so many people, even intelligent people, thought WarGames was realistic. The setting is very much here-and-now. Dr. Strangelove was a comedy and plainly was not meant to be taken seriously. Colossus was a fantasy computer buried under a mountain somewhere, and it wanted to take over the world--faraway and farfetched. The home computer, on the other hand, is commonplace, everyday, ubiquitous. "So," thinks Joe Average, "maybe they made the computer a little too human. Maybe the bit with the tic-tac-toe at the end was a little hokey. Home computers, though, I know about them, and I read where a person can use one to dial up the big computers. Maybe it takes more cleverness than I've got, to break into one of them, but I'm always hearing about the clever 8-year-olds who know how to beat those things. It could happen. I bet it could." This kind of thinking stops being funny when Joe Average turns out to be your congressman and he starts demanding to know how come this kind of thing could happen. He will end up wasting his time, as well as that of his colleagues; they will set up investigative bodies to report on "the sad shape of the internal security of our country's national defense organization" brought about by their reliance on computer systems, for "as everyone knows, computers are inherently unreliable". Urk. Cheers, Mike -------