23 Sep
1997
23 Sep
'97
10:55 a.m.
On Tue, 23 Sep 1997, Anthony Clifton wrote:
Secondly, in the scene when WOPR CALLS HIM BACK and he
looks all freaked
and pulls the plug out of the phone, how does the game timer keep
running AFTER he has disconnected from WOPR?
WOPR downloaded a Java aplet into his computer that the web browser
continued to execute! C'mon, that one's easy!
Thirdly, the cheapy paperback book made when the movie
came out, based on
the movie, descibes a much more hackeresque computer in his room...it
describes how he put it together with "chewing gum and baling wire" and
how Malvin and Jim Sting helped him with parts and advice and how he
learned more spending one summer with them at the computer center than he
had in a year in Mr. Liggett's biology class.
Melvin is it? That nerd is the BEST! "That thing's probably got top
secret data encryption algorithms!"
"Mr. Potato-Head! MR. POTATO-HEAD!! Back doors are not secret!"
Fourthly, not directly related but it seems that every
few years a
counter-culture type movie comes out that inspires tech-heads to go "Free
the World"
1983 - Wargames - Hackers
<spawned a generation of wannabe
"hackers">
1991 - Pump Up the Volume - Pirate Radio DJs (read
alt.radio.pirate)
<bleah> <well, not bad actually>
1996 - The Craft - Counter-Culture Religion
<oh please>
How about _Hackers_? That surely set off the latest wave of techno
dweebies who think just because they can connect to a URL they've hacked
into a system.
All the screens in the War Room were REAL BTW...they
were driven by an HP
Vector Graphics generator coupled with a video projector of some sort and
then color was added in post-production. Although my memory of the
article could be a bit off.
Ok, we have a conflict of nerd movie trivia here. Was it CompuPro S-100
boxes or HP Vector Graphics generators?
Wargames STILL has the most REALISTIC (strangely,
enough) computer
special effects (screens, etc) of any movie ever...even with movies like
Sneakers and The Net.
Yep! Oh, yeah, _Sneakers_. Where data encryption involves spitting out
simple ciphered characters and then this amazing box which cracks all the
encryption in the world and descrypts the characters on the screen.
Yeah, I believe that.
The Net. One word: EXTREMELY-RETARDED. (its hyphenated...one word)
It's important to remember that Wargames
wasn't about hacking and
computers. It was about the foolishness of the Cold War. Basically it
says, "Hey if a dumb computer can figure out how stupid it is, why can't
we?" BTW General Berringer's line (something like) "I don't know about
you but I'm not about to trust the security of the nation to a SILICON
diode!" has a real-life origin. There was, in fact, in the late 70s or
very early 80s a false missile launch detection resulting from a fried
passive component like a diode. Somewhere I have an article about it.
Sure, but how many people decided that the message was "It's cool to hack
into military computers because you can get chicks and turn into the hero
in the end"?
In the book, when David walks in while Jim Sting is
underneath his desk,
he says "Hey Captain Crunch, I'm from Ma Bell and Boy is she pissed!"
Nobody would've understood that reference. Nobody would today either.
I occasionally have Hacker Movie nights where all my
computer friends
(some of whom were REAL hackers but I plead the fifth) come over and we
watch Wargames and Johnny Mnemonic or The Net and Sneakers, etc etc.
(Sandra Bullock in a black two-piece can come over and interface with me
anytime!) =-)
I did this one time with my friends..._War Games_, _THX1138_, and damn,
what was that other movie from the 80s that involves computers and
hacking and stuff?
_Operation Condor_ (is that the name of it? The one with Robert Redford)
has THE most realistic scenes in terms of phone hacking. Like when
Redford's character is in the basement phone room and is tapping that one
dude.
Sam Alternate e-mail: dastar(a)siconic.com
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