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WarGames - Patreon Version (Patreon)

Published:
2023-08-06 12:00:03
Imported:
2026-06
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Content

No Sync Required Version: https://cinebingers.ca/tmy68NE4H6 - For Patreon tier "Bingers on The Wall" or higher.

Movie runtime: 1:52:42

Files

Previews only

Wargames - Patreon Version

Comments

Jay Davis

It's like you're reliving my childhood for me 1 movie at a time! ...and then you went and said, "that's a long ass time ago." :(

Odd Thomas

I got excited for a second when I got the alert. WAR For the Planet of the Apes or WAR of the Worlds? Another great John Badham movie: Short Circuit (Ally Sheedy again too).

the smiling sadist

I wish you all would do the movie Fail Safe from 1964 as a companion piece to Dr. Strangelove and Wargames, but its kind of bleak and not as much action.

Prof. Writhms

Oh noooo! An 80s movie depicting old computer tech. George must have had a field day with this one. lol [cringe]

Amos T Fairchild

Luckily I never owned one of those acoustic modems... Mine were all wired. I still don't miss dialup. They actually use a real computer of the time (IMSAI 8080) in this, and made it famous.

Peter Register

Google Capt Crunch, 2600, and little blue box to read more about using sound to access systems. Fascinating stuff.

JediLounger

So I just finished the movie with you guys. Based on your reactions and what you said at the end, I strongly advise you guys check out Sneakers (1992) and move it to the top of the list. The same writers worked on that script, and I've always considered it a spiritual and technological sequel to WarGames, though they have nothing to do with each other story wise. In terms of the technology and hacking, to my knowledge most everything in the movie is real(technology, hacking methods). George is correct, what David does with the phone is called phreaking. What he was doing at the start of the movie when he was looking for the phone numbers was called hammer dialing, but after this movie came out it became known as wardialing. These days wardriving is also a thing(though it's less common now due to awareness and better wifi security) where people would drive around neighborhoods with a laptop looking for unsecured wifi networks. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardialing In terms of the phreaking, that started in the 50's but grew in popularity in the 60's and 70's. More here, along with a hilarious and famous story about a cereal toy whistle that could hack phone networks. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking

Young Blood Priest
>>114618831

I was just about to suggest Sneakers. It came out around the time the general public became aware of the internet. I could be wrong but I’m fairly certain it was the first movie to give an accurate warning to the dangers of the sharing of information on the web.

EMB

I absolutely love this movie, and I was so excited to see you guys watch it. I also agree that this is one of the most accurate depictions of hacking in a movie. The hacking is dated, but the principle is the same. I hate "hacking" in movies with someone furiously typing while random code streams across their screen. A classic movie with a good message. Now, how about a nice game of chess?

NotlobParrot

I just realized I would absolutely buy Merch of Simone saying, “Jesus, George.”

REDR58

Going to watch this later, but another AI-related movie you might like is “Tron” from 1982. It was a mild success for Disney at the time but is something of a “cult classic” now. It’s one of the first movies made with computer graphics, though a lot of the “computer” animation is actually just hand-drawn and backlit animation. It’s a very visually-striking movie for the time and it also has Jeff Bridges. So go for it!

Patrick Egan

It's amazing how WarGames can be so dated and so timeless at the same time.

Lost1Sole

The novel this is loosely based in is "The adolescence of P-1" and the teacher does catch the grades bringing changed. That novel (and the tv-movie version of it) go farther down the AI road. The thing the phone went on: Acoustic Coupler. Maximum rate in 1983 about 300 bits per second, That computer was awesome for a year or so before. The IBM PC was about to come out. The nerds in the university computer center, played by Maury Chaykin and Eddie Deezen were the first representations seen in pop culture (as far as I remember as an old) Other movies about nukes and following orders: Crimson Tide, When this movie came out, it was chilling. I lived (and still live) within 100km of Loring AFB. You could watch the B-52s stacking up over the base when they returned from patrol. This was a real threat, that your nose was rubbed in, every day. And yes, the movie get's the DEFCON numbers backward. "1" is normal, "5" is war to the US.

Mark Perry

Glad you two enjoyed the film so much. It really is a great one. I'd like to add in just how strong the fear of nuclear war was at the time. So while a little lighthearted at times this movie was pretty emotional and terrifying at times to watch. I had just turned 14 when this came out and the images of the destruction on the computer screens was horrifying to me at the time. I can remember the audience applauding when

Martin Nicholls

This movie makes me want to play DEFCON. What was security like back then? About zero, the problem was access. It was like - we still run SS7 globally and the security in front of it is essentially zero and everybody refuses to fix or replace it because governments quite like that it's essentially zero. It's one of those movies that kinda dumb with hindsight but also quite smart in maybe even ways it doesn't even realise - it's somewhat the Arrival or Ex Machina of it's day. Strange Game. The only winning move is not to play. Also there are whole armies of military lawyers precisely because people don't follow orders and unpicking it. Yeah, if you have a button security system that uses tones as signalling you could entirely record them and replay them. They sounded like DTMF and there are tools for that. And you can win nuclear war if the other side isn't capable of delivering a warhead to target for any number of reasons - I guarantee you right now that question is being asked vis-à-vis Russia in various corridors of power; and directed energy weapons are being integration tested that will eventually make nuclear weapons moot regardless - also these projects were stopped for decades because everybody hoped that Russia was a reasonable, rational actor and would become a normal country and now they've been accelerated, cobwebs dusted off etc.

William

OMG, Love this film. This is what got me into I.T when i was a kid. Ok, now I know its all Hollywood, but still love it. I had a BBC model B, and a 1440 modem. I thought I could rule the world

sarCC

Yay! I love this movie. I think Ally Sheedy in this was my first crush.

Lou Gallucci

The world is still here because on multiple occasions people didn't follow the order to launch the nukes or got second opinions first.

Dioskur

My dad has such a device, it was calleda acoustic coupler. It was just a speaker and microphone that slanslates the data to be sent into dialing tones. About the question "should you fire back when the missiles are allready on the way". Obviously not. It might be okish if you could hit exactly those people who fired at yourself, but instead you kill the civilians. It is useless. BUT: It makes sense to have you opponent believe that you will fire back for sure! The M.A.D. (mutual assured destruction) strategy says if your opponent knows that killing you will lead to his own death, he wont attack. So if your opponent thinks you might possibly not fire back, it increases the chance of a war starting. The general was angry at the start because his men didn't do what they were supposed to do during the test. If the soviets would know that a large portion of the enemys missiles likely wouldn't start, they might think the war can end with an acceptable outcome for them. That was the point in red october, btw. The sub was capable to get close enough to hit the united states with so little warning time, that the large part of the retailiation strike might be prevented. While the soviets had that ship and the usa had no idea how to stop it, there was a time window in which the war could be won. But that window would be closing, because the spies would find out about the boat and a tech would be created to counter it. Ramius knew that. Thats why he took the very first prototype and closed the window by delivery the tech to the usa. So there wasnt enough time for his country to build enough boats to do that attack, should the hardcore generals that wanted to fight and win the war get theire will. The Tom Clancy novels are great, and most of the movies are trash. Red October is one of the very few good ones

Tim T—
>>114622519

Malibu Stacy: „Let’s go shopping“ – Canada Simone: „Jesus, George“. I know what I would choose.

Robert C

In the late '80s I owned a watch that had a phone directory built into it that played tones down the phone line to call a phone number. You had no need to press the keypad on the telephone (landline) to call someone. Nowadays it seems so basic but back then it was so futuristic.

punterjoe

Matthew was the child of a fairly well known actor at the time (James Broderick) James was a staple in a lot of TV series back in the day. Another very early Broderick film you might enjoy, though it's mostly forgotten today is "Project-X" with a pre-Supergirl Helen Hunt. Ironically, like Wargames the plot revolves around super secret military shenanigans (I know that's a Joe Biden word, but it's so much fun to throw into a conversation - especially about 40+ year old movies!) I'm sure as a fan of Ready Player One (the book) George recalls this movie was one of the challenges.

Martin Nicholls
>>114628380

Without mutual destruction the entire weapons platform is useless, you *have* to strike back. You don't even have to believe it, you need to lock it in under penalty of people being shot if they don't follow orders. That's the only way it works - an absolute guarantee without even a micron of wiggle room that you're going to do it.

MatthewBrown74m

Yes they should have doubts and second guess but you be dead either way system is a failed system actually. I think it's time for you 2 to watch crimson tides!

Spacedone

Re: the door being opened with the tape recorder, it wasn't the sound of the dial tones that opened the door (that was for the audiences benefit) but he'd connected the magnetic tape recorder to the door mechanism and recorded the signal onto the tape, then played it back to open the door. It's still Hollywood nonsense I think but vaguely plausible Hollywood nonsense.

Eddy V Ruiz II

I looked at the Writers and the 1st guy Lawrence Lasker also wrote Project X another Matthew Broderick movie you have never heard of that will mess you up and Sneakers another AMAZING movie. like you said look up the writer and go for it. You wont be disappointed.

8bitAndy

You should watch Glory. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Spacedone

Considering this was a kids movie it dealt with some serious themes that really felt much more real back in the 80s; that the US and USSR were one mistake away from wiping out the whole planet and were both itching to do it. Growing up as a kid in the 80s it was something that was always in the back of your mind, which is why a lot of culture produced in that time is obsessed with the Cold War. It did however lead to some excellent music... If you want to watch something similarly themed that definitely not aimed at kids and traumatised a generation, check out the 1984 BBC made-for-TV movie 'Threads', which depicted in documentary-style the events before, during and after a nuclear attack on a UK city, with Chernobyl-levels of grim bleakness in store for those not instantly killed in the attack.

Chase Lonnergan

I'm sure this has already been said, but the reason for retaliatory strikes wasn't to kill your enemy because you didn't want them to win. The entire purpose was a deterrent. If your enemy knows that if they attack you, they will die, then they won't attack you. Mutually Assured Destruction was essentially the policy that PREVENTED nuclear war for decades. At this point, I should just change the spelling of my name... Lol.

Spacedone
>>114635611

I still can't understand why that movie isn't better known, it's so much fun and the cast is excellent.

FranciscoGios

Guys Matthew Broderick is also in The Cable Guy with Jim Carrey.

Kinokind

One can see Simone's guy with the mustache (actor Michael Ensign) before the potential launch, appearing to be soundlessly praying. A lovely touch. As others have said, most of the computer technology was accurate (but the DEFCON numbers were backward). Except that if the computer was generating random numbers to find the code, it would have to succeed by having all digits at once. It wouldn't just find them one by one. It doesn't work that way. And since we assume the code is 26 upper-case letters plus ten numerals, then there are 36 symbols, times the ten places, then the code would have 36 to the tenth power permutations, or 360,000,000,000 (360 trillion) permutations. So it just depends on how fast the WOPR is counting. It would just not have the code - and then it would. But that allows no dramatic digit-by-digit countdown. And that's not exciting! I'm willing to forgive them tiny logical violations for such a fun film. Very accurate, otherwise (and that Imsai 8080 computer with those 8" floppy discs - classic! Oh, and Production Design did a great job! The missile silo control rooms really do look like that, although the NORAD control center in the film is apparently much cooler than the real one (according to SAC). You can even see that the control room is mounted on huge springs to compensate for shock from any nearby, non-fatal, bomb impact. And everything is practical. Instead of using visual effects for the control room displays, they were all synchronized and projected real-time, just as they appear. That meant that what we see is exactly what the actors saw on the day. This must have been a great help in their performances. Thus, the reality of Mustache Guy and the others' performances. And when General Beringer (the great Barry Corbin) Exclaims: "I'd piss on a spark plug if it'd help", it was improvised.

Kinokind

Oh, forgot to mention . . Ronald Reagan screened the film before it opened, and it scared the crap out of him. He asked his people to look into our computer vulnerabilities and they reported back that it was far worse than they believed. He instituted changes to improve things.

REDR58

According to the commentary on the disc for this movie, most if not all of David’s equipment was already considered somewhat old even during the time the movie was made. This was to show how he couldn’t afford new gear and had to make do with what stuff he could find cheap.

Anthony Villena

There was an underground publication at the time called The Anarchist Cookbook that detailed phone phreaking steps like the ones the movie shows. I think it might have talked about wardialing too, which is where the computer was calling all the phone numbers in sequence. The book was a popular file on BBSes at the time, so it makes sense that someone who dialed into BBSes might have learned that kind of spy-looking stuff that he did.

ExtraBigAssTaco

For my other childhood favorite nuclear themed movie, check out The Manhattan Project.

kanpai_rod

It was an acoustic coupler modem he used in his bedroom. Used actual audio from the handset speaker and microphone to basically transmit data. Just a few years after this movie the first "Smart Modem" was released and you can plug directly into the wall jack. The IMSAI 8080 on his desk is a real computer and he had dual 8" floppies (before the 5.25" and 3.5"). Also there is a South Park replicating parts of War Games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppQQG56CIQU

JayF

Going to also recommend Glory for another Matthew Broderick film...plus some other big names you are familiar with if you check the cast. Yeah this one was a big deal for my generation. The cold war was still very much a thing, hacking was just becoming a thing, and there are other themes in this one that are relevant. I've not watched your reaction yet but I'm wondering if you spotted that the General was the old man in No Country for Old Men that TLJ goes to see towards the end. Dabney Coleman was also in this one and he seemed to be in every other movie around that time period.

Logan Kerlee

Awesome! I'm very happy that you both enjoyed this one! I remember first watching this when I was like 10 or 11. It opened my eyes to how the world can end super quick. I didn't understand the impact when I first watched this, obviously. There's no way that a kid that young would comprehend something so deep. I'm not sure who this movie was geared toward. I enjoyed it as a kid but it's a very serious movie that adults could enjoy as well. I'm guessing that it was geared toward people in their late teens to mid to late twenties. I'm with Somone! That scene in particular really made this movie feel honest, feel real. Also, I'm 100% with George on this being accurate hacking! lol, it always makes me laugh when people watch Swordfish and they're like "Whoa, HACKING IS SO AWESOME!" hahahaha

Tim T—

It’s weird that people don’t recognise acoustic modems. That modem noises are so embedded in my brain, even if I’m of a younger generation. George: That title font you wonderered about is Westminster, a font designed in the 60s to be machine-readable via optical recognition. Think cheques and such. For a time that font was used outside that intended use in computer- and sci-fi-related things to signal “future”. Even in the 90s I still found books in the library which used that font for its titles. There are of course far more terrifying movies about WWIII from that exactly that time. Threads (1984), The Day After (1983). It was … well … part of the cultural zeitgeist. The nuclear weapons and MAD and NORAD and all the infrastructure still exists, of course. Somehow we stopped caring after 1991. But a least the missiles are aimed today at an empty patch of ocean, reportedly. Oh, and the very best scene in which a nuclear launch officer managed to turn both keys at once by himself is in S03E05 of “The Leftovers”, a fantastic, but utterly weird television series.

Elvenwitch

In 1983 I was 6 and my soul left my body when Simone exclaimed about how long ago it was. She is right of course, but the reminder was still like a splash of freezing water.

punterjoe
>>114645401

40 years - almost half a century.... I misunderstood when Barbie said "Math is hard". Now I get it. Although I might've said "harsh" 😒

punterjoe
>>114648884

God, I remember acoustic couplers & 110 Baud TTY (once upon a time, 300Baud was considered 'fast') ....how far we've come... but then again, it only took us 66 years to get from Kitty Hawk to the Sea of Tranquility.... 🤔

Jimmy H
>>114636443

Good grief, just you mentioning 'Threads' depresses me. Definitely not a popcorn movie. 'The Day After' is a light-hearted Disney movie compared to 'Threads'.

Alan Kobb

That is how remote network access worked back in the 1980s. Look up MODEM in Wikipedia for pictures of the same device they showed. Bits were converted into an audio wavelength and travelled over audio phone lines. However, this was very slow, with the highest speed being 56 Kilobytes/second. Still, data compression and clever programming gave us a lot to start with back then. No streaming, or any video as you can imagine, but lots of text communications. Regarding retaliation strikes. In the theory of mutually-assured destruction, it is the threat of a retaliation strike that is supposed to be the ultimate negative incentive to prevent a first-strike. If you know that your enemy cannot prevent your first-strike, but can let loose their own missles before yours arrive, then you would never want to fire your own missles. There are no winners. If you know that the enemy will not retaliate, then thre is no negative incentive, and nothing to stop you from attacking. The phone booth hack. Yes, some of the earliest hacking was to make free phone calls, which as George sais was called "phreaking". There were several ways. If you've ever heard of a magazine called "2600: The Hacker Quarterly", it is named for the 2600 hertz tone that set the old phones into "Operator mode", so you could get into the guts of the system. A guy found a whistle in a box of Cap'n Crunch cereal that gave the exactly accurate tone. (No lie!) The technique in the movie was called "switch-hooking". Since the payphone would not let you dial without paying, you used an electrical conductor connected to the voice pickup. Scratching it on a piece of metal would duplicate the clicks that would activate the phone. He used the pop-top as a conductor. I don't buy the door hack, but it was possible, I suppose. Telephones used those tones to signal the phone company equipment what number to call because the phone lines were analog and only handled sounds. The newer push-button phones had to work with the existing circuits One would expect a security system to be designed digitally, and in that case, the tones not only would not be needed, but would be an opvious weakness. So, if you assume that they were dumb enough to use telephone technology for a security system, then it's feasible.

Chase Schleich

The guy at the beginning didn't prevent the start of WW3. The missile wouldn't have launched when he turned the key. It was a test to see if he (and everyone else with his job) would follow orders to turn the key if the order was given. They just didn't know it was a test. He and others (22% of them) failed that test. That's why the generals were pissed. Those soldiers failed to follow orders.

Chase Schleich

In the 80's, phones sent tones to talk to computers. You could call long distance for free if you played the tone for it into the receiver. Years later, this way of having computers talk to each other through phone lines would become the public internet.

Juley

Technology was so basic back then that just a tiny bit of knowledge would let you hack things. When we first got cable tv, we used cable boxes that plugged into your television. The box was programmed to only let you view the channels you paid for. Of course, there were only about ten channels. And HBO was the only movie channel. Many people chose not to pay for it, including my parents. The boxes were designed to play all of the channels by default. They just set it so that when you turned the dial to HBO, it would send an electrical signal to scramble it. I opened the box with a screwdriver and put a piece of masking tape over the circuit connection to HBO. Voila! HBO!

Purple Dragon Knight

You haven't heard of this movie because it is dated. George is right. When this movie came out, we were IN the cold war! The threat was real, at least according to both sides. We all wanted our "leaders" to watch this movie and figure out what the rest of us knew: "The only winning move is not to play" Then, old war over. Movie no longer relevant. However, maybe relevant now. When the movie came out, it was about "nuclear war bad". Today, "AI bad?"

Purple Dragon Knight

I also love how the General went from stereotypical "Army General Bad" to The Voice of Reason. At the beginning, he was confident that all his soldiers would follow orders to launch. Then, he is the one who chooses not to.

MacGuffinStuff

There is one other movie that deals even more realistically with how closely the world came to Armageddon during the Cold War, because it's a true story. "Thirteen Days" is about the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Kennedy administration faced off against the Soviet Union, and the scariest thing is that after the Soviet Union collapsed, we got access to more of their records, and apparently they really had their finger on the button so to speak, the military leadership in both countries wanted to launch. I think it's an underrated movie, very tense, and such a crazy story. "The Death of Stalin" however, is also about how insane the Cold War was, but a way more satirical version of what was at least somewhat based on a true event. I personally enjoy both movies, but Death of Stalin is definitely more entertaining, 13 Days more cerebral.

Gary Fixler
>>114621349

But it's always fun to pause the screen and try to figure out what code it is they stole for the visuals.

Gary Fixler
>>114645617

Random memory - I thought the dude next to me was reading the AC on a cross country flight years ago, and after he fell asleep, book on the empty seat between us, I quietly lifted the cover, and saw it was The Anarchist Woodworker, by one of my favorite woodworkers, Christopher Schwarz. I'd had the 3-book collection on my list for years, which is why the cover - a red A on black - made me think "Anarchist."

W T

Depending on where you are, a teacher doesn't really keep track of what the school is jotting down in their file cabinets. Some (most, arguably) don't care one bit beyond the classroom, and they shouldn't because worrying about individual students' grades, as ambitious as it may seem, is someone else's job, and just going to put historically overworked and underpaid professionals into an even worse position. School size clearly is a huge factor, like no university professor really would bother micromanaging a student's grades. It's very, very possible something like this would happen, if only because there are two dozen different reasons why someone might not notice - or care. Even if someone sees it, the prospect of more dull work might as well make a certain type of person go "nah, who cares about them getting an A in phys ed." Which, in general, is a sentiment that resonates with me. I never minded grades myself, but plenty folks struggled for it and I witnessed mates or heard a bunch of stories, like the one of that girl in class who managed to get into the best tier of secondary education schools (something that exists in a bunch of countries beyond DAChL, akin to England's Grammar Schools) and since her family put that achievement on such a high pedestal, they ended up going full abuse on her (which they already did, force-feeding her into obesity as a child, something that is absolutely ubiquitous - not only in North America, but in most of this messed up world. You just don't pay attention for two decades or so and now your kid is a balloon, with only the slimmest chance of suddenly reaching this enlightened state where they realize how bad obesity and sedentary living is for them... as if maintaining a healthy weight wasn't already difficult enough for folks who weren't bullied into bad eating disorders. So these people ended up locking her daughter to eat her lunch in the bathroom. For getting Cs. Grading, even if it was useful (which it isn't, because all of education and academia is riddled with those lazy, dumb, or straight-up evil morons who care least about educating young, tiny people - and I say that with lots of appreciation for the field, for good reasons) has not only been twisted into this intense lever cultures like China loved and still love to weigh down on like an mf'er, most of all, it's just such a confusing metric dumb parents with smart children will always interpret as an easy scale based on which to punish or reward their children. Nothing can replace 1-on-1 time, which would be the point where I push one of my favorite books, Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson on everyone and point out that we're about to get its core premise with contemporary LLMs: kids everywhere are about to enjoy a form of private, personal, round-the-clock tutoring, and people, preoccupied with very real fears about the world or even said language models, can't quite yet see how massive the jump in educational standards or "enlightenment," to be extra vague about it, will end up being.

W T
>>114653289

I didn't think someone that old would need any more reminders about their age (ask me whether I'm ancient, too)

Gary Fixler

George: "Has there ever been an instance of a computer straight up ignoring like an alt-F4 order?" Me: "Has George never done battle with a network printer?" Can't get them to start. If they start, you can't cancel them. Print jobs stacking up for weeks, unkillable.

redddfer44
>>114624003

Sorry, but every source I found -- including the military.com -- says that DEFCON 5 is normal.

Teyon Alexander

Now you can watch Captain America : The Winter Soldier and exclaim, “I get that reference”, when Natasha says to Steve, “Shall we play a game?” Before activating Arnim Zola.

redddfer44

Hacking-wise, more modern stuff: the excellent tv show Mr. Robot. All four seasons. And about the Cold War mentality: General Thomas S. Power is quoted as saying (possibly in the heat of an argument): “Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win." The excellent 1v1 board game Twilight Struggle contains a lot of Cold War trivia (and it also has a card for this movie). There's a digital version, too.

MasterElodin
>>114689320

If they ever do Mr. Robot it will probably be in 20 years or so because new shows will always outvote it. Which is a shame because its a great show but not that well known I feel like. Its the same for a lot of movies but at least for movies they do non-poll ones. TV-Shows that are older or less well-known will take ages realistically :(

PickettsChargingPort

Phone phreaking. Look up Captain Crunch and the famous whistle. A good book on this is simply called 'Hackers' by Steven Levy, at least I'm pretty sure that's the book as I read it decades ago. It follows the work of students at MIT, I think, and their work on the PDP-1 and then moves out from there. Also, DTMF tones... yes, you can record them and if you played them back some systems would recognize them. It's not likely they'd and audible DTMF tone on a door, but I suppose it's possible.

Gary Fixler

Interesting history I was just reading through on Mental Floss. Martin Brest was hired to direct Wargames, but had a different vision, and was making script revisions with the original authors. The studio didn't like his darker thriller, and 2 weeks into shooting had him replaced. He went on to direct Beverly Hills Cop, which came out a year later. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/545667/facts-about-wargames

W T
>>114641235

To expand on NORAD: people need to remember that screens like that weren't a thing, it's all meticulously projected and backlit/projected on the back, with synced strobe lights illuminating the actors and the room... it's really insane for its time, and, at the same time, pretty prescient of what huge-ass TVs and monitors will look like.

W T
>>114682573

Like, half of the PC pains are based on the machine ignoring desired inputs, and alt+f4 has very little priority to boot. Printers are just rogue programs who read too much gödel escher bach, couldn't make up this kind of insane bullshit if you tried your hardest.

gobmob2000

Yes that's how the internet worked at first, over dial up. There was no dedicated network lines so they used what already existed, phone lines. The digital signal was converted to analog tones, sent over the phone line, and converted back to digital. The device looking like a phone was called a Acoustic Coupler, and early type of modem, eventually they got rid of the speakers and microphone altogether and just converted straight to Electronic analog signal and then, some time later, we got broadband.

Com1xguy

Had a crush on Ally Sheedy for years after this movie came out.

gobmob2000

Alt-F4 is a windows specific function, it can theoretically be ignored. And a program that ignores human input or intended function is just called malware.

gobmob2000

For quite a while, the nuclear codes used by the president to launch the missiles was 00000000, this was used because they where worried that the president might mistype or forget the codes. Even today a lot of the security infrastructure around the nuclear missile system is decades old, and frankly probably unsecured.

gobmob2000

Now to give you real nightmares: In 1979 there was a real situation where the computer systems at NORAD had an error that made them believe that the Soviets where launching their missiles, they told the president that he would need to make a retaliation decision within a few minutes, however satellites where able to confirm in the last minute that it was all fake.

Tinfoilnation
>>114817245

Uhm, no. The President's code was carried for him along with the "football" -- and the President had no need to memorize it, since it was changed from time to time anyway. There is exactly one person on earth that made the claim of zeros being the code and he had no supporting evidence... but he did have a book to sell.

E.P.B.F.
>>114817395

Oh i can do you one better/worse. Look up Stanislav Petrov and Able Archer 83. In 1983 tensions NATO and the Warsaw Pact had been continuously ratcheting up. Then one day in late September the soviet early warning system misinterpreted satellite data from a rare combination of weather and light conditions over North Dakota as a launch of multiple ICBMs at the USSR. Soviet doctrine in the event of a detected launch was an immediate and compulsory all out nuclear counter-strike without waiting for further confirmation. If Petrov hadn't violated his standing orders and reported the warning to his superior like he was supposed to by the time the error was discovered the Russian missiles would have already been out of their silos. Petrov's reward for saving the world? Getting removed from his post. Because Soviet Union.

Andrew Roach

At the very start of 2014's Edge of Tomorrow they used the war room from this movie as a backdrop while Tom Cruise was talking. That speaks volumes to how great that set was from 1983 to be used as "current" in 2014. Alas come the middle of September I turn 58 so I recall my first computer with a floppy drives and no hard drive, my first internet using phone lines where you had to dial in to your service provider. When I got my first computer with a hard drive I was amazed that I could now turn on my computer and without me doing anything it would boot up. And when Windows came out it was Wow. I also played all those Sierra On Line games: King's Quest, Space Quest, etc... I still have a VGA monitor upstairs collecting dust which is a huge, heavy tube monitor.

Ray Ward

I think you commented that you love 80s action comedies. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or had it on a poll, but you should consider “Innerspace”. It’s Spielberg and Joe Dante (Gremlins), so you know it’s good. Also, something that makes it relevant right now is that it stars Martin Short (as well as Dennis Quaid and Meg Ryan). Exciting, suspenseful, hilarious and very well made. https://youtu.be/nETKzcMDf9U

Brad Lowry

Matthew Broderick was the "Golden Boy" genius actor prodigy of Uta Hagen from HB Studio in Greenwich Village. He was on Broadway in 1981 in Harvey Fierstein's groundbreaking "Torch Song Trilogy" as the adopted teenage gay son of Harvey Fierstein's main character. What is amazing is that seven years later, Matthew was in the MOVIE "Torch Song Trilogy" where, all-growed-up, he played Harvey Fierstein's younger boyfriend that was killed by a homophobic gang. Couldn't resist sharing this perspective – that is little known, especially by those not alive then – when Sagacious Simone spoke of him being a "really serious actor"... notwithstanding his amazing charm and comic flare (most famously as Ferris Bueller), he was and is a very serious actor.