# Wargames (1980's movie) **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 23, 2013, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540 "2013-04-23T21:44:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 6:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/21 "2013-04-24T06:13:05Z")
The scene where they’re running to catch the last ferry to the Professor’s island was filmed about three miles from where I lived. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/22 "2013-04-24T08:09:03Z")
> [@Face\_Intentionally\_Left\_Blank](#): > > The term “wardialing” itself is derived from _War Games_. > > > [@](#): > > > > ``` > > Originally Posted by **Wikipedia** > > The popular name for this technique originated in the 1983 film WarGames. In the film, the protagonist programmed his computer to dial every telephone number in Sunnyvale, California to find other computer systems. Prior to the movie's release, this technique was known as "hammer dialing" or "demon dialing". 'WarGames Dialer' programs became common on bulletin board systems of the time, with file names often truncated to wardial.exe and the like due to length restrictions of 8 characters on such systems. Eventually, the etymology of the name fell behind as "war dialing" gained its own currency within computing culture. > > > > ``` Actually there was a device called a ‘demon dialer’ back in the 80s, I lived with a guy who owned his own small telcom and office machine company and he actually had one hooked up in his office as a demo along with some other types of odd equipment. When it wasn’t used to demo, he mainly used it to store all his more frequently used phone numbers [I think my office was number 45 or 46, the model he had would store 100 numbers] Interesting guy, the only guy I knew who dealt weed on the side and could take mastercard or visa for it =) Amazing how many ‘service call base cost’ charges were put through 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Disgruntled\_Penguin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a8b319/32.png) [@Disgruntled\_Penguin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Disgruntled_Penguin)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 9:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/23 "2013-04-24T09:59:56Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > Actually there was a device called a ‘demon dialer’ back in the 80s, I lived with a guy who owned his own small telcom and office machine company and he actually had one hooked up in his office as a demo along with some other types of odd equipment. When it wasn’t used to demo, he mainly used it to store all his more frequently used phone numbers [I think my office was number 45 or 46, the model he had would store 100 numbers] > > Interesting guy, the only guy I knew who dealt weed on the side and could take mastercard or visa for it =) Amazing how many ‘service call base cost’ charges were put through 😛 Demon Dialers would repeatedly recall the same busy number over and over again until a connection was reached. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 11:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/24 "2013-04-24T11:09:28Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > Yeah, the military were all fine. The closest thing to a bad guy was Dabney Coleman’s character, a self-important bureaucrat who took over someone else’s work and couldn’t think his way out of a paper hat. Heck, unlike _Colossus: the Forbin Project_ and the _Terminator_ series, even the computer system isn’t the bad guy - it was just blithely playing the games it was taught, with no understanding of the real-world consequences or even knowing there _were_ real-world consequences. ---
**Author:** ![OttoDaFe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ottodafe/32/356_2.png) [@OttoDaFe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OttoDaFe)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 12:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/25 "2013-04-24T12:46:00Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > The scene where they’re running to catch the last ferry to the Professor’s island was filmed about three miles from where I lived. And as I said in another thread about the movie, they must have been planning on swimming to the island\* since they were running down a boat ramp — the ferry dock is on the other side of the trestle. Why they didn’t use the actual dock was something of a mystery to me, my best guess being that they didn’t find the human barnacles that encrusted the Dock Lunch at the time particularly photogenic. (My mother, on whom be peace, was born & raised in Steilacoom.) \*If they didn’t freeze first. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/26 "2013-04-24T13:31:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What I like is that a lot of the hacking techniques are reasonably close to authentic. He gets the password to the school’s computer by looking at the paper note the principal has in his desk drawer, and the password for WOPR by reading up on the programmer and guessing what would have been important to him. Both are time-honored and oft-used techniques. > > OK, so WOPR cracking the launch codes was hogwash, but done for understandable dramatic purposes. Yes, I have it in my list of “stories about computers in which the computer stuff makes sense”. As opposed to my list of… well, Swordfish, The Net, etc. The ones where “lots of screens” equals “big computer”. We happened to catch it on TV a while back. My brother remarked on how back then I was one of a relatively small amount of people in our social circles who both liked and understood it; nowadays, that “cutting-edge technical stuff” which was almost incomprehensible has moved to being taken for granted. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Gadai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d6d6ee/32.png) [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/27 "2013-04-24T13:42:46Z")
I’ve said it before but that scene where the dad is putting butter on the corn is amazing. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/28 "2013-04-24T13:44:02Z")
> [@tsm](#): > > To the points raised about the voice synthesizer: David has a voice box on his home computer. He shows it to Jennifer when he asks her “Do you want to hear it talk?” It’s a pretty big inconsistency that Dabney Coleman’s office at NORAD would have the same voice synthesizer. Is it? I’d imagine there was a finite number of companies making voice synthesizers so maybe they both bought from the same manufacturer. That of course assumes you needed a hardware solution at all. I used to have a WarGames game for my Commodore (no idea if it was licensed or not) and you could run the voice simulator program separately. So I spent as much time making the computer say dumb stuff as I did playing chess or nuking Moscow. I remember showing it to my mother and her immediate response was “Make it say ‘fuck you’.” Looking back, I guess I’m more skeptical about it speaking with decent enunciation. Mine used to take the raw text and say things like “U-knitted States. So-VY-it U-non. Choose one.” Edit: I started at the bottom of the thread and worked up so missed most of the conversation about speech synthesis at the time. Interesting stuff. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/29 "2013-04-24T14:13:15Z")
[quote=“Jophiel, post:28, topic:656540”] Is it? I’d imagine there was a finite number of companies making voice synthesizers so maybe they both bought from the same manufacturer. That of course assumes you needed a hardware solution at all. I used to have a WarGames game for my Commodore (no idea if it was licensed or not) and you could run the voice simulator program separately. So I spent as much time making the computer say dumb stuff as I did playing chess or nuking Moscow. I remember showing it to my mother and her immediate response was “Make it say ‘fuck you’.” Looking back, I guess I’m more skeptical about it speaking with decent enunciation. Mine used to take the raw text and say things like “U-knitted States. So-VY-it U-non. Choose one.” Edit: I started at the bottom of the thread and worked up so missed most of the conversation about speech synthesis at the time. Interesting stuff.[/QUOT] The one for the C64 I remember being common is [SAM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm4ZCGgzeeU). It’s actually pretty damned good for 1982, I’d say, especially as a software solution. ---
**Author:** ![mlees](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba8739/32.png) [@mlees](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mlees)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/30 "2013-04-24T14:27:11Z")
> [@Roderick\_Femm](#): > > I caught this on cable a couple of weeks ago, and I agree that it does stand up really well. I love it when he sticks the telephone handset into the modem to connect to - it wasn’t the internet yet, was it? What was he connecting to? My guess was that it was some forgotten direct connect modem link. > [@](#): > > Anyway, I just hope that we would never be/are not so stupid as to put that much control in the hands of any computer. _snort_ Don’t get me started on computer controlled/driven automobiles! ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/31 "2013-04-24T14:27:54Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > The scene where they’re running to catch the last ferry to the Professor’s island was filmed about three miles from where I lived. So does Bair’s on Lafayette St still have the blackberry sundaes? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/32 "2013-04-24T15:18:39Z")
> [@Jophiel](#): > > I used to have a WarGames game for my Commodore (no idea if it was licensed or not) Did you learn nothing from the movie? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/33 "2013-04-24T15:20:32Z")
Ironically, the chess game it came with was better than the Global Thermonuclear War game. I guess Joshua was on to something. Edit: I think [this was the licensed game](http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/wargames-/screenshots). Mine didn’t look like that and was green on black – which would make it closer to the depiction in the movie. You started it and it offered you a selection of games like chess and tic-tac-toe (which were playable) and then GTW. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/34 "2013-04-24T15:32:11Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > I’ve said it before but that scene where the dad is putting butter on the corn is amazing. [Have a bit of nostalgia, on me! 🙂](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btZi6EiIXbY) ETA: I saw it a couple of months ago. It tickled me that the guy who first mentioned back door access to Joshua was the same actor who later provided the voice of Mandark on _Dexter’s Laboratory_. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/35 "2013-04-24T15:44:16Z")
> [@Disgruntled\_Penguin](#): > > Demon Dialers would repeatedly recall the same busy number over and over again until a connection was reached. And this particular model would store 100 numbers in memory, with up to 32 digits per number [back in the day of those alternate to AT&T long distance numbers where you had to dial an access number, then the passcode of 5 or 6 numbers, then the area code, then the 7 digit phone number. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/36 "2013-04-24T15:46:35Z")
> [@What\_Exit](#): > > I have it near the top of my Netflix queue. I really liked this movie and I hope it has indeed held up. It’s available for Netflix instant viewing right now. ---
**Author:** ![Death\_of\_Rats](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a6a055/32.png) [@Death\_of\_Rats](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Death_of_Rats)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/37 "2013-04-24T16:08:54Z")
The one plot problem I can never get past is that it is freaking _easy_ to force a win in Tic-Tac-Toe. I can beat other people and my smartphone app more times then we tie. Not the best tool to teach a no-win situation to a computer about to start WW3. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/38 "2013-04-24T16:16:27Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > The one plot problem I can never get past is that it is freaking _easy_ to force a win in Tic-Tac-Toe. I can beat other people and my smartphone app more times then we tie. Not the best tool to teach a no-win situation to a computer about to start WW3. I’m pretty sure that perfect play guarentees a draw, though [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tic-Tac-Toe.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Tic-Tac-Toe.html) - and WOPR is smart enough not to want to play a game that he can only win if the other player makes a mistake. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/39 "2013-04-24T16:19:15Z")
> [@Death\_of\_Rats](#): > > The one plot problem I can never get past is that it is freaking _easy_ to force a win in Tic-Tac-Toe. I can beat other people and my smartphone app more times then we tie. Not the best tool to teach a no-win situation to a computer about to start WW3. With optimal play by both sides, I don’t think you can ever force a win in tic-tac-toe. I mean, the strategy is pretty simple. If you move first, you play the center or corners. If you move second and the player didn’t play the center, you play the center. Otherwise, play the corners. If you play a side, you lose. If you start and play a side, you will lose, too. ---
**Author:** ![JohnGalt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johngalt/32/184_2.png) [@JohnGalt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnGalt)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2013, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540/40 "2013-04-24T16:27:06Z")
Although I love the movie (and Ally Sheedy’s pretty sweet in it), the one glaring computer problem for me is when WOPR asks for the number of players, and to play by itself, the number is zero. So when Broderick types in the number, he types “zero” instead of the number “0”. Heck, typing the English version of a number into forms on todays’ computers would probably make them crash. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/wargames-1980s-movie/656540.md?page=3)