Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site linus.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!smk From: smk@linus.UUCP (Steven M. Kramer) Newsgroups: net.movies Subject: War Games (definitely a spoiler) Message-ID: <26930@linus.UUCP> Date: Tue, 28-Jun-83 00:32:42 EDT Article-I.D.: linus.26930 Posted: Tue Jun 28 00:32:42 1983 Date-Received: Tue, 28-Jun-83 01:36:55 EDT Organization: MITRE Corp., Bedford MA Lines: 33 I'm with you. I'm mad that I paid my $2 (a matinee) and didn't get a realistic account of how to blow up the world. My note pad came up blank. My autodialer has been going full blast and the only numbers I've obtained from Sunnyvalle (I'm up to 3456 on the prefix) is the computer of a games company that is supposed to put a new product on the market on Christmas! --- COME OFF IT! What do you expect, the writers to be PhD's in CS? Their profession is writing. As far as being realistic, they had a great many realistic things there. The state-of-the-art had been reached in many areas (like the voice synthesizer -- we have one -- and autodialers -- although I wouldn't have believed it 1.5 years ago myself) although one of the fatal flaws is expecting a 1972-3 vintage (the guy died in 73 remember??) machine to still be operational and expecting the machine to learn that fact on its own ... Being a person who gets PAID to penetrate operating systems (don't worry, it eventually comes from your tax dollars and helps guard against OTHER who would do the same but get paid thru ANOTHER source), I could see many things that occured as happening. In net.unix-wizards, many people are beginning to wake up to the idea of computer security. The idea of authentication, Trojan horses (called trap doors in the movie), physical security, modem control, overriding are ideas that are brought out in the movie. Whether or not they are truly realistic utterances of these concepts, how secure is your system?? Give them a break. It was good entertainment! No flames please. Send them to /dev/[dn]ull -- --steve kramer {allegra,genrad,ihnp4,utzoo,philabs,uw-beaver}!linus!smk (UUCP) linus!smk@mitre-bedford (ARPA)