welsch@houxj.UUCP (06/04/83)
I saw war games last night and enjoyed the whole movie! The film was much better than I thought it would be. I was expecting a grossly unrealistic depiction of computers, hackers, and the defense establishment. What I found was surprisingly realistic. Oh I can fault some details, but I am willing to grant the director artistic license on the details. The important story elements though were quite believable. For example, the way the hero got the password to his school's computer and altered his grades. The fashion the hero went about looking for the computer that contained games. The conflict between the scientist and the general at NORAD. The president's aide who didn't want to look bad. The two computer experts who told our hero about trap doors. They were precious. The way the hero went looking for the trap door and discovered the password. The trap door password itself was very likely. The fact that the computer could learn and did learn. Most important to my enjoyment of the movie was that computer people were allowed to be diverse. We had the hero himself, a scientist who had sold is soul to the government, a spasdic, a bearded grungy expert and a brilliant scientist. The only unfortunate aspect of the movie was that so few people realized that nuclear war is a NO WIN. Oh the computer figured it out. The brilliant scientist and our hero knew. Here the movie was realistic, for we realized that even, though the world had narrowly escaped destruction the government would keep on trying to win a war that it cannot win. Now if Ronald Reagon could only learn the lesson that the WOPR learned the world would be a safer place. Larry Welsch houxj!welsch
kalash@ucbcad.UUCP (06/11/83)
#R:houxj:-26100:ucbcad:3800002:000:486 ucbcad!kalash Jun 4 15:24:00 1983 Realistic????? While I enjoyed War Games, it was CERTAINLY NOT even remotely realistic. Me and two friends had lots of fun after the movie spending an hour or so (over ice cream) making fun of the movie's rather glaring errors (no passwords required, just account names; a kid with an better than state of the art voice generator; crt's with graphics displays; high security systems with dialout units; english language parsers; and more that would put me in a spoiler class). Joe