ddw@cornell.UUCP (07/01/83)
From: ddw (David Wright)
To: net-movies
Larry Welsch makes a number of silly comments about criticism of
"War Games." Probably not worth responding, but I'm in a combative
mood tonight, so here goes (some typos in LW's stuff corrected):
For example, some "experts" have claimed the the baud rate that
the hero's terminal is running at could not possibly have been
as fast as shown in the movie. First, do we really expect an
audience to sit there while the data comes up at 300 baud?
No, but it looked like about 1200 baud, which is at least possible
over voice-grade lines. Why did you put "experts" in quotes? Do
you think they're not experts? Are you?
Second, the terminal was not directly connected to the modem,
but passed through a personal computer. The personal computer
could certainly have driven the terminal at the speed given.
I don't know quite how to break this to you, Larry, but if the data
was coming in at 300 baud from WOPR, the home terminal couldn't put it
up any faster than that unless it was buffering the data, and the
pauses between the hero hitting 'return' and WOPR's reply were too
short for that.
The next claim is how secure our systems are. No kid could
possibly break into them. I hope your (sic) right, but remember the
military is where "Murphy's Law" came from and the term SNAFU.
Face it, if there is a way to screw something up the military
will probably find it.
Quite possibly, but this still a long way from dial-up lines into NORAD
headquarters. Or ten-year-old systems that have features nobody has
found.
As for security, I recall a recent episode described on "60
Minutes" where a person stole top secret information from TRW by
walking out the door to buy some liquor. His big problem was
bringing the secrets back to TRW. The same person later
literally walked out of prison.
This is completely irrelevant. Grabbing papers and walking out the
door is quite different from this movie.
Finally, the "experts" don't like the computer types shown. The
computer types shown here were certainly more realistic than the
hackers in TRON. To me they were diverse and funny. Can't
people laugh at themselves?
I think most people here have admitted to knowing hackers like those
depicted in the film. (I do.) I note that nobody on the net has
admitted to \being/ like the hackers depicted in the film.
The criticisms leveled at this movie have generally been valid, in
particular that the film is closer to realistic than most, sufficiently
so that it's hard for a non-computer type to know where the fiction
leaves off and reality begins. By the way, do you suppose that Burger
King (*boo*) could have been behind the name of the computer?
Hey, I only used "sic" once...
David Wright
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