Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!tekecs!orca!davidl From: davidl@orca.UUCP (David Levine) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: War Games (no spoilers) Message-ID: <1426@orca.UUCP> Date: Fri, 22-Jul-83 03:59:03 EDT Article-I.D.: orca.1426 Posted: Fri Jul 22 03:59:03 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 22-Jul-83 21:20:44 EDT Lines: 58 I just returned from the late show of "War Games" and it seems only appropriate to do a little late-night dialing-in, so I think I'll send in a quick review and some observations before I go to bed. I liked it a lot! In fact, it was better than I'd expected after reading about it on the net. I particularly liked the fact that it made you laugh and cry without the more manipulative heart- string pulling of "E.T." It had realistic bits (for example, the jeep bit... in many other movies the jeep would have been able to do that without undue problems, but here it caused realistic effects, given strengths of materials) that made it believable, and the unrealistic aspects of the computers (such as the fact that modems in the film were more melodious than they really are) were acceptable given the intended audience. I think this film compares very favorably with "E.T." How does it compare with RotJ? I'll reserve judgement until I've seen RotJ again. Now on to the nitpicking details we are all so fond of... That the kid had eight-inch disk drives I find acceptable. The larger drives are older technology and therefore cheaper. I'm a little less willing to accept the fact that he had a fast Diablo printer (OK, we only heard it, but Diablo got credit for providing hardware...), especially since he was using an olive- drab (Army surplus???) acoustic modem. (He was at about 38,400 baud, but that issue's been dealt with elsewhere...) Did you notice that the President's phone number was "dit-dit- dit-daah" (the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth, the "Victory" symphony)? I also caught the bit about the prophylactic- recycling facility (somebody else pointed that bit out on the net a while ago). Was the Professor's cryptic comment about "See path. Follow path, find gate, open gate," some sort of unix-wizard in-joke? Or am I reading too much into that? It is entirely believable (not to mention necessary for the audience) that a high-school hacker should have a voice synth hooked up to the input from the modem. It's also reasonable that the Government should have a voice synth on their big whopper computer. But the same voice? Again, necessary for the audience's comprehension. Some of the above comments may seem a little cryptic (jeep, Professor, whopper) but I'm just trying to avoid putting in any spoilers. I HATE spoilers. Now, how about a nice game of chess? -- David D. Levine (...decvax!teklabs!tekecs!davidl) [UUCP] (...tekecs!davidl.tektronix@rand-relay) [ARPA] P.S. While driving home from the movie, I thought of a fiendishly simple way to steal someone's password in Un*x...