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WarGames Sequel Now Filming
iluvcapra writes "This news is a little late, but on November 20th WarGames 2: The Dead Code began filming in Montreal. (I only became aware of the new production when I read that MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com for his domain name.) The film will be produced and distributed by MGM — distributor of the original WarGames — and directed by Stewart Gillard, director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3. Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, the team behind the original film, are not involved. The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer."
I can think of no better way to kick off the marketing campaign for WarGames 2 than by filing an outrageous lawsuit that will piss off the very geek fanbase who'd potentially be interested in the film. Well done, MGM. Because wargames-movie.com just wouldn't be good enough, would it?
The chances that I would see this movie just went from slim to none.
"Wargames 2: The only way to win is not to watch."
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Get that 12yo girl from Jurrasic Park.... she knows Unix!
No Matthew Broderick? It's gonna suck.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
War Games 2: The Direct-to-DVD Adventure
and then his family would be shipped to Gitmo.
What moron thought up this as an idea for a sequel? I love movies, but this smells like a desperation move by someone clueless.
Count me out.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
It was a good movie for its time IMHO. It was definitely more geeky than those "geek" movies that followed (The Net, Hackers, etc). I certainly enjoyed it then and will still sit through it if it happens to be playing on a boring Saturday afternoon.
This looks like it has nothing to do w/the first other than the stolen name for credibility.
tagging (beta): lame
Odd. While there were huge *glaring* technical problems with the film (acoustic modem wardialing, anyone?), it had a fairly reasonable portrial of "young hacker kid" before it was popularized. Social loner who wardials entire exchanges looking for carriers is EXACTLY how a lot of us spent our time growing up. Poking and probing new systems was always a joy.
Few other movies include the phrase, "I'd piss on a spark plug if I thought it'd help."
The film will be produced and distributed by MGM -- distributor of the original WarGames -- and directed by Stewart Gillard, director of such gems as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3... The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer.
At the rate they're going, why don't they just get Uwe Boll to direct?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
...take...that....back...
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
It's for scaredy-cat non-geeks who want to be terrified by what those mysterious boxes can do in the wrong hands.
Plus, a romantic sub-plot, a cool chase scene, and some improperly used computer terminology.
Blar.
If you saw it back in the Cold War era, it was actually a very good movie. It's hard to take serious now with the current state of technology and political climate.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
The rightful owner of a domain is being sued for that domain by the people behind this new movie. That's pretty damn YRO-y.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
The owner of wargames.com should give MGM the domain, on one condition.
They beat him at Tic-Tac-Toe.
...WarGames2.com which is really more relevant to the movie...and already registered and re-directed to another site. At least content of WarGames.com appears to have some relevance to its name.
My mom always said, "Jim, you're 1 in a million." Given the current population, there are 7000 of me. God help us all!
The title is not exhaustive, but the description clearly says: "MGM is suing the rightful owner of WarGames.com".
People have the right (or ought to anyway) to keep domains that they purchase, develop, and maintain in good faith. MGM is going to try to bully him into giving it up. They will probably succeed, and if they do, it will be because they have more clout and more money (a more expensive lawyer). Ergo, his online rights are now in jeopardy of being violated.
I bet you're glad you posted anonymously now. And to the lazy moderator who gave this guy an "insightful", shame on you. Check more carefully next time. I realize it's too much of a hassle to read TFA, but please take the time to at least read the short description on Slashdot.
Already sounds lame, I doubt it will have the soild story line and lesson that the first had, and it already sounds like its being made by and with sub par talent.
I am sure that it will focus to much on action sequences (for the most part the first had very few) and Technobabble/Technobuzz, that will confuse the uninitiated and make the rest of us groan. The first movie avoided most of that by not over explaining concepts and just sort of glossing over just letting the viewer assume there is a technology to make such a thing happen, and letting those in the know imagine how it might be possible.
So far sounds I'm seeing direct to video land, as its best hope.
Hopefully now I can be plesantly surprised, but I doubt it.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
That'll be the whole "MGM suing the rightful owner of the domain wargames.com" bit, that you seemed to miss in the *summary* (let alone the *story*)....
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
LAME!
0xDE
0xAD
0xC0
0xDE
Really, why?
Canthros
They tried to get Uwe, but he didn't like the way the producers were looking at him, so he punched them out.
I have a better question? Why would we care about this particular movie over any other that has blown this year, the first wasn't exactly epic and was a far cry from holding any kind of geek/nerd symbolic status, so why would we care now after the cold war? Who is the enemy, and why nerd/geeks like peace and then death because of technology accidents (see all sci fi)
That would be the right to own a domain name that MGM claims it has trademarked. Nevermind that Wargames.com is not infringing on the trademark in any way, it is a legitimate use of the term, and the owner legitimately owned the domain long before MGM ever had a dream about "Wargames: the sequel"
Dear Kid Zero,
You suck. Also, you smell funny.
Have a Merry Christmas, you ridiculous philistine!
Canthros
This movie will be as popular as Firewall.
You know, the one with Harrison Ford. He's a network security specialist.
HAN SOLO! INDIANA JONES! RICK DECKARD! DOING NETWORK SECURITY!
Well, if you can't get the nerds out to watch Han freakin Solo do Network Security...
On the number of LCD's _the_ super computer has attached to it.
The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer.
No AWPs!
Would you like to play a game?
>> Y
Game Over. Opponent has no weapons.
Lets see, considering Hollywoods track record with movies sincce the time period of the original Wargames, I have a feeling that they are going to make this soooo bad that it will ruin any quality the original had. This.... this is why your profits are slipping, bad movies, not piracy.
Yeah, I'd rather play a nice game of chess than watch this piece of crap...
Remember when you asked me to tell you when you were being rude and insensitive? You're doing it now.
The premise behind the original - for those too young to remember - is (abridged) that a hacker breaks in to a NORAD computer and proceeds to run a wargame simulation of an ICBM strike on the continental US. The game plays out on the screens of the main command centre at NORAD and, unable to tell that what they are seeing is not real, a retaliatory strike is nearly launched.
That's probably not an exact synopsis of the plot, but it's close enough to make no nevermind.
Now in the world of Mutually Assured Destruction, which relies on a massive counterstrike against the initiator BEFORE his missiles arrive at their targets, this is at least a plausible scenario - close enough to allow sufficient suspension of disbelief to allow the movie to work. It's true that these command centres were manned 24/7 watching for any sign of an incoming strike, and that the time window between detecting the strike and making the decision to initiate the counterstrike was very small. It's also true that in real life there were a number of "near misses" where technical failures and other issues were initially interpreted as an incoming strike and disaster only narrowly averted.
But we aren't in that game anymore. There is no longer a 20 minute window in which someone has to decide to launch a nuclear counterstrike based on a fairly narrow band of incoming data. No terrorist group - indeed, very few nations - are capable of the "mutual" in "Mutually Assured Destruction".
So a Homeland Security central command centre starts reporting dozens to hundreds of terrorist strikes on US Territory? So what? Response will be in the hands of local Guard units and law enforcement/emergency responders, not a remote C3S cell. The worst that could happen is that troops are mobilized needlessly - and there's time to see if the purported strikes show up on CNN.
The premise only works in a Cold War, MAD environment, not the modern day "ball of snakes" environment.
That doesn't bode well for the success of the movie, methinks.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
BLASPHEMY! BLASPHEMY! Stuart Gillard, you are raping my childhood. What next? Are you going to have your way with my mother?
MGM, how dare you? Shame on you.. shame shame shame... everyone knows your name... I'm upset now.
Yopu for you?
I was in High School when it came out and went to see it with my girlfriend. We really loved it even though I couldn't understand how he had a S100 Bus system with a $20,000 graphics terminal. :)
He should have been using an AppleII
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
It's because of the domain-name lawsuit. Now, sure, this happens all the time. On that face, it wouldn't be news. But the fact that MGM does this to the geek community with one hand while making a geek/hacker movie with the other is what we might call "dropping the gauntlet." It's not the foul that makes it news-worthy, it's the flagrancy.
Also, IMHO, the reason why big companies can step on people this way is because they know that the worst this community can do is blog about it. More front-end organizations with legal clout might be the sollution, but between the EFF and the ACLU, it seems that slinging legal bullshit back at the legal bullshitters has been more or less useless. Frankly, it's impressive that such an old-school system of broken laws and financially repressive legal systems has managed to stymy the collective creativity of our entire community.
> (acoustic modem wardialing, anyone?)
:)
Not sure how that was a huge technical problem, particularly as name for that technique is derived from the name of the film which popularized it
Imagine a plot involving the AI Joshua who was ported through several generations of Unix before finally being ported to Windows NT and forgotten about. Joshua has become self aware and he doesn't much like Windows...
Oh no, never mind something vaguely imaginative, this is Hollywood and some cookie-cutter plot about terrorists in the style of 24 will be far more interesting I'm sureZZZZZzzzzzzzzz...
...that they recast Matthew Broderick as the erstwhile teen again. Sure he's a bit grey behind the ears, but he's still got the right composure. Right? RIGHT?
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I get my mindless plot-holed terrorism fantasies from the US Govt.
Umm.... I think the viewers of 24 will disagree.
Actually, in the opening scene of Wargames a psychological experiment reveals that many silo crews would not launch their ICBM's, there not being much point to pounding the rubble when the world is ending anyway. In order to plug this leak in our defense control of the missiles is handed directly to the WOPR supercomputer which already has the most trusted advisory role in case of an attack. And it's WOPR that Broderick hacks. And it's WOPR that doesn't realize the "game" is real, its missile control outputs having been directed to the control of real missiles. And the humans, having been removed from the decision loop, aren't in a position to stop it.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
The plot outline from IMDB (unedited, though it pained me): Computer hacker Will Farmer (Lanter) engages a goverment super-computer named Ripley in an online terrorist-attack simulation game. Little does Farmer know that Ripley has been designed to appeal to potential terrorists, and certain glitches have turned made him become paranoid.
So, this kid plays Counter-Strike against some bots? He's in de_dust, plants the bomb and starts thinking, "gee..terrorism sure is a bad thing, and by playing this game I'm almost condoning it. I must have been born to be a terr'ist. Better go turn myself in now...[logs off]"?
Sounds like a wonderful movie.
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
Not sure how that was a huge technical problem, particularly as name for that technique is derived from the name of the film which popularized it
It's named after the method explained in the dialogue, not the particular visual portrayal used, which was clearly chosen by the director so as to let the lay viewer know he's "hooking the phone to the computer". The glaring technical problem is that you can't auto dial with an acoustic coupler because the computer obviously has no mechanism for pressing down the hookswitch on the damn phone to hang up between calls.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I would go see it if Mathew Broddrick were playing the father of the hacker and they had this film have continuity with the original film - i.e. bring back some of the characters who were kids then as adults now, inside jokes on the old film, etc.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
The chances that I would see this movie just went from slim to none.
But if you don't see the movie, you might miss out on Jean-Robert Bourdage's performance as the hot dog vendor! And you know it's gonna be good, because only him and Matt Lanter have signed on to the production, according to IMDB.
Hot Dog Vendor: Kid, you don't have what it takes to hack into a terrorism-simulation computer.
Will Farmer: I'd like mustard and ketchup on my hotdog.
Hot Dog Vendor: Will, it's too dangerous!
Yeah, I vaguely remember the AI "coming back to life" and playing GTNW against itself (in simulation) and losing every time, then deciding the "only way to win is not to play".
But that doesn't make any difference; the AI playing "for real" or the actual human controllers seeing the game data on their screens and assuming they were seeing a real strike - the end result is the same thing: a real counterstrike launched in response to fake (simulated) data.
And while the process to get to that point is nowhere near as facile as depicted in the film, the concept is at least plausible.
But when you change the nature of the system to a counter-terrorism, there's no longer anyone to launch missiles against - thus, no consequences for duping either real humans or a controlling AI that a strike was ongoing.
Hard for a good movie to spring from a dumb premise....
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
can't wait to miss the inevitable double feature
.... The domain that they grabbed got hijacked by some kid named David.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Al Joshua? Like the ugly step-brother to Al Jazeera? Ohhh ... that's A.I. ... damned non-serif font ... gotta get the glasses cleaned again.
Doesn't make much sense to have the propagandist news agency get all upset because they migrated from Unix to Winders.
I spent my time playing wargames. The kind from Avalon Hill, SPI, etc.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
I'm sure they're planning to remake all of Matthew Broderick's films including "Ferris Bueller's Day Off 2 - Skippin' Work" where the now middle-aged Ferris and Cameron miss work to grow their sagging beer bellies and watch strippers all day.
Ruby on Rails Screencast
yeah, that one got me too. I was sure Dell had registered a domain to inform me of the suckiness of their products.
This may have some merit. According to the Decision, the domain originally pointed to the respondent's site, on which he sold computers. After receiving the C&D, he pointed it to a site featuring commentary critical of Dell.
It really shouldn't matter though, as there is no way a reasonable person could confuse a site called dellcomputersucks.com with Dell's own website, thus violating their trademark. Unfortunately, Carolyn M. Johnson, Peter L. Michaelson, and Tyrus R. Atkinson, Jr. didn't see it that way:
I don't care why you're posting AC
"The glaring technical problem is that you can't auto dial with an acoustic coupler because the computer obviously has no mechanism for pressing down the hookswitch on the damn phone to hang up between calls."
Sure ya could. You could hack a relay into the phone that would be controlled by the computer in the software. A real hacker of the early-mid 80s could wire that up and have driver done for it in an hour. Pretty simple, really.
You could even use that relay to dial the phone if the coupler didn't speak DTMF.
For historical quaintness, and my proportionate age at the time, Wargames will always be worth watching every 5 years on my $1 copy. (1981 pricing!)
The truth is that the kid will hack in, find someone using the server to host Things Not Intended For The PG13 movie rating
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
The glaring technical problem is that you can't auto dial with an acoustic coupler because the computer obviously has no mechanism for pressing down the hookswitch on the damn phone to hang up between calls.
Well now, hang on there, chief. Recall that in answer to the question, "doesn't that cost a lot of money?" he replied "There's ways around that." Clearly, he was blue-boxing. Now, correct me if I recall wrongly, but when you're blue boxing, you don't actually have to ATH1 - instead, you broadcast a 2600 Hz tone so that the trunk line appears "dead", then stop the tone and transmit the routing digits for the remote telco office now listening to the trunk line. Coincidentally enough, broadcasting a 2600 Hz tone and routing digits could be done with an accoustic coupler. Maybe the directors knew a little more than you give them credit for?
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
Am I the only one who cringes a little at the sheer suckiness of most aspects of the original. Yeah when I saw it in the theatres I liked it but then I was also NINE YEARS OLD! And now they are going to do a remake? I am not going to be nine again so I know I won't go see it.
> While there were huge *glaring* technical problems with the film...
:-)
On that note, one of the things they did RIGHT was they wrote a special program so that every time Matthew Broderick hit a key on the keyboard, one letter showed up on the screen. (That is, he could press any key, and the correct letter appeared.) I hate that in 99% of movies, the sounds of the keys being pressed has no relation in time, speed, or quantity to what is appearing on the screen. God damn, it was a solved problem TWO FREAKING DECADES AGO!
That said, the studio loaned him a Galaga machine to practice on while shooting--that's really him playing in the scenes that show him playing. He was sad to see it go at the end of filming.
Source: Dynamite Magazine (anyone else remember that?) I think, in an article published way back then.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I also see the idea of not allowing people to put up blatantly copyrighted domain names, and then holding them from the copyright owner (i.e. "cocacola.com" or buying "amazon.biz" and holding it from Amazon.com purely for profit), but something like "apple.com," while a name of a major computer manufacturer, would be perfectly valid had it been bought by a person who used it to sell bushels of apples online, or had apple-picking vacations for sale, etc. Similar to "War Games" - it is a common term. Of course, had wargames.com been squatting the site, that'd be another story.
When the U.N. decided that famous people can sue for their domain name (juliaroberts.com was the case I remember), I assume this does not apply to some 24 year-old girl whose name is Julia Roberts from Ithaca, NY - right? Surely Erin Brockovitch has no-more right to the domain name than the nobody from upstate NY. But they both have a right to it over some squatter of course. But then again, what if someone bought that site and made a legitimate Julia Roberts fan page? Would that be valid?
I would have to most certainly agree with you. MGM has more money and more power, but why would they not go about it in the normal way people try to capture domains. Offer a shitload of money to get it back. My suspicion tells me solely for publicity. Why else would they try and arbitrate some lawsuit against someone that would most likely just take the money and purchase another domain for his business. I for one think they should have no say in the matter. Trademark on the movie or not. lets see the timeline here
- 1983 Wargames the movie releases
- 1998 wargames.com purchased
- 2006 lawsuit filed
Just doesn't add up to me, I can't remember the exact year domains names could be purchased, maybe someone can append to this, but seems to me they had plenty of time to purchase the domain before this guy they are going after. I hope they lose to set some sort or presidence.
-- Brought to you by Carl's JR
... currently listed at IMDb.com, this should be an instant classic!
.... Will Farmer
.... Hot dog vendor
Cast (in credits order)
Matt Lanter
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jean-Robert Bourdage
P.S. Hollywood - If the role for 'Operator #4 (panicking in control center)' is still open, I'm available!
Does anybody really think the notion of an intelligent computer is realistic any more? I mean, it's believable that a computer won't cooperate with you, but having a mind of its own and actually getting things done? It seems that the popularity of Windows OS has pretty much made such a concept pretty unbelievable among average people these days.
Now maybe when the computer was a mysterious device that few people used, could you get away with portraying them as dubious, intelligent entities, but is that a believable plot device nowadays? This kind of premise should have been abandoned about the same time movies about high school kids building sentient robots was abandoned.
I suspect, like most late remakes, this will fall flat.
the worst this community can do is blog about it
Actually, I think that some hair-sprouting, testoterone-driven, girlfriend-lacking dweebs who read about it are, actually, capable of doing a great deal more than blog about it. Even scrote-kiddies have more l33t sk1ll5 than those protrayed in the original movie. A certain element, regrettably, may feel inclined to attempt to spoil MGM's website in some way. That would, of course, be immature, but since when has that stopped idiots?
Though scrote-kiddies don't have such good hardware as in the first movie (THOSE graphics? over a THAT baud modem? PHENOMENAL! I WANT ONE!)
comment form: http://www.mgm.com/help.do
I'm not sure of you are trolling, or simply a box buying script kiddie.
:-(
Back in the 70's and 80's acoustic modems were popular because they were cheap and simple. One of the 'hacks' (from where the term 'hacker' comes) was to crack the case open and install a relay, with a socket amnd line. The output of this went to a relay you installed in your phone to (you guessed it) go on hook and off hook.
Now I can understand your disbelief - it's not like normal computer people to break stuff open and make it better - but back then hacking was more hands on than just downloading pirated moves and running scripts that other people wrote.
If you remember the setup that the kid in the movie had (speech synthesiser - I still have a set of the chips that Tandy sold for that), a nicely kitted out Imsai if I remember, it's not unreasonable to assume that he may have modified his equipment somewhat outside the manufacturers recommendation.
It was called hacking - nowdays its a dying art
That being said, I will never see it, because it will suck.
"No offense, but the first blew chunks. I don't see how this can be improved."
Rimmerian Nitpick: If it blew chunks, wouldn't it stand to reason that it had plenty that was improvable?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like a remake.
Except, Wargames was pretty good in terms of research and accuracy. The AI philosophy (learn from its mistakes) looks a bit outdated now but was pretty much what researchers were looking at at the time. The voice synthesis on every terminal in the world was a bit daft, and a few bits and pieces were a lttle hokey, but we didn't have the usual computer cliches. There was no "Running Virus" with progress bar. No 72 point lettering. No magic mechanism to break the password. Broderick's character actually had to spend ages rummaging through information just to get past the login. I'll admit that some of this was hokey but it's the least hokey computer movie ever by a long shot.
If they can manage a similar level of realism for Wargames 2, then it would be interesting. Somehow, I doubt they'll do that. I expect to see loads of pointless explosions, a whole bunch of meaningless jargon, and lots of computer nerds totally bamboozled by the genius of some 16 year old kid.
Is it wrong of me to judge the movie so soon?
It's still a glaring technical problem though, because the movie doesn't seem to implement your solution.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Great, I can see it now. "The Whopper, brought to you by Burger King". Sigh...
mp3's are only for those with bad memories
solely for publicity
Of which variety? The good kind of the bad kind? I can't imagine that a litigious movie studio makes for a good marketing campaign ("And now, the corporate bully of decent hardworking 'netizens brings you War Games 2!"). No, there is only one reason why MGM is going about it this way. Big corporations bully the rightful owners of domains until they break under the weight of thousands in legal bills - all with the hope that the next time they want something, their target will simply relinquish what they have out of fear.
It's a low, morally bankrupt way of doing business, and I hope that one day they pay a horrible price.
Turn in your Phreakers United™ card. :)
:P
This plot hole can be filled a couple of ways:
1 - He dialed a PBX first that allowed hitting # or * to make another call. Since he already said: "There are ways around that." when asked about how much it cost, this is very plausible.
2 - He could have modified his modem to allow him to blue box. This also is very plausible as it only requires blowing 2600hz to trunk the line and place another call. It has been a while since I have seen the movie however, and I can't remember if the you could hear the tones. If you can and they are DTMF and not MF, then that blows this one.
Ahh I miss the days of microwave... screwing with inward operators was a blast. (If you read that link you will notice that "normal" people were not supposed to be able to reach inward operators, they were such trusting souls too.
The infamous Sprint and MCI back doors were nice also. For those that don't know, when Sprint and MCI were just turning up their fiber networks you could dial an 800 # that was not provisioned on their network, hit # 3 or 4 times, then you would get the standard calling card dial tone. From there you place your call as normal. The fact that AT&T and Sprint calling card numbers were only 6-7 digits sure was nice too.
Then came Feature Group D. In order for you to be able to choose your "default" carrier and not have to gypsy dial (10XXX+1+areacode+# 10222 for MCI, 10333 Sprint, 10288 AT&T, etc) they had to implement a system that allows any carrier to be able to track your phone # for usage. That pretty much shot all Phreaking.
PEACE!
-- http://anonet.org -- The internet the way it was meant to be. Check it out, you may be surprised.
Come now, don't you remember your bible lessons from childhood?
The AI Joshua downloads the Old Testament from Project Gutenberg in its quest to aquire knowledge. After assimilating this text, Joshua believes it has a divine mandate to conquer the city of Jericho.
"I spent my time playing wargames. The kind from Avalon Hill, SPI, etc."
Hello soul mate. I lost much time to Ambush! Tactics II, and Kreigspiel.
"Personal ownership is a hallmark of conservative capitalism. And I don't believe I am entitled to anything that I did n
Is not to make this film.
--They say only a fool looks at the finger pointing to the sky...
Here's a bunch more.
So what if it doesn't really make sense, I could care less about logical statements!
I'l wait until Wargames 3: Money vs People. Hackers in a cociety where common citizens cannot afford to buy luxury items such as UltraDef BR7 movies or BHD-Audio music have taken on Robin Hood roles to bring these greedy corporations to some interpretation of social "justice". They hack into DNS servers to set up internet domain names for uses other than those sanctioned by the US Department of Copyright Defense, crack API access and encryption on media storage and distribution servers, and in general just to annoy the privelaged few who are super-rich enough to enjoy a legal monthly movie rental. One rogue hacker takes over a military simulation machine in order to attempt to determine the most successful attack method on the ConglomoMedia Corp. data servers. Due to a flaw in the worm payload delivered to the military megacomputer, it mistakenly attempts to actually carry out an attack on ConglomoMedia instead of simulating it, which triggers ConglomoMedia's digital defense system and retaliates against the military megacomputer. Martial law is put into place and the ConglomoMedia army sets out to seek retribution against its vassal the UNA (United North America) government, since it has failed in its duties to police the peasants residing on the UNA's fief of land. The UNA, of course, must discover who is responsible for this most heinous of crimes and bring the hacker to justice, so that they may appease their corporate overlords and avoid their own death penalties.
The only winning move is not to make it.
Badass Resumes
They are going to have trouble winning this since Wargames is a existing term and the bloody sites sells war related games. I say they should have grabbed the domain 15 years ago. Folks the horse is not only out of the barn but he's out of sight and several states over. The judge should have no sympathy and laugh it out of court. If it's that critical to marketing pay the company a fortune for their website otherwise deal with it. They figure it's cheaper to bully the them. They should file a harrassment countersuit.
It's a remake.
I HATE Remakes (mostly). And this one REEKS of $$$$ greed.
Yes! Jeez, childhood flashback...
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Dude, you've obviously never blue boxed. To quote the movie, "..There are ways around that." You don't need to physicly press down the hookswitch if your 'boxin. A machine capable of generating a 2600hz tone is all you need.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
Whassat, the terrorists use FreeBSD? Everybody knows terrorists use linux: http://shelleytherepublican.com/2006/04/20/linux-a -european-threat-to-our-computers-by-tristan.aspx.
The posts in this thread are pathetic. Comments about how good the original story line was and how this movie is just a money making ploy... you silly fools... you've just romanticized your childhoods. WarGames, although amusing and a first of its kind, is lame... it's a cult film. It doesn't stand up on its own.
I suspect this movie will suck, I suspect it will not really have much to do with the oringal war games other then idea that a really smart kid causes a problem with a supposed to be smart government and then he has to learn some stupid lesson and save the day... all the while with a My Chemical Romance track playing in the background. Uugggh angst. Uggghhh nerds. Lame.
I just hope when they flash source code on the screen it is as good as the stuff in Antitrust...
Does anyone have that code? I heard the structure is PERFECT!
f u cn rd ths u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgmng
At some point, you have to accept that the movie isn't going to portray every little thing with maddening detail, and that you have to assume some plausible backstory exists that isn't being depicted. Guess what, you rarely see characters going to the bathroom or sleeping either. Rather than calling it a "glaring technical problem," you assume they do it off-screen at some point.
"Sufferin' succotash."
"If you saw it back in the Cold War era, it was actually a very good movie."
I did, and while mildly entertaining it was as absurd as most Hollywood depictions of anything to do with the military.
It's overrated because it features "hackers".
Like motorcyclists, geeks are so grateful to see anything to do with their interest on the big screen they view it with rose-tinted glasses.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
More like direct-to-piratebay.org
Now I'm not saying this movie will be a bomb, but the KKK just tried strapping an advance editing screener copy to Al Sharpton's car bumper the other day.
what some film executive found too. By gosh he's gonna fix that!
damaged by dogma
Obviously.
I predict that the cool-factor of this movie will largely depend on what technologies they choose to showcase. One of the reasons why the original was so good was because, except for the super-intelligent AI computer, nearly all of the technology they used was reflective of actual technology that was common at the time. The kid's school had an old-fashioned mainframe. At home, he had a state-of-the-art IMSAI with an honest-to-god acoustic coupler modem. And were those 8" floppy drives that I saw in the background? You bet they were. Compare and contrast that with movies like The Lawnmower Man which portray computer networks as virtual reality mazes and crap.
> The plot revolves around a hacker breaking into a terrorism-simulation computer.
You know there's something wrong with the world when Global Thermonuclear War isn't sexy enough anymore. Especially since, given the recent increase in nuclear-capable and approaching-nuclear-capable countries, the likelihood of nuclear war (albeit on a smaller than Wargames scale) is increasing.
... if Fox sued MGM for naming the computer in Wargames 2 "Ripley."
It's all about US trademark law.
Essentially the judge will look at the case in the light of 'causing confusion in the marketplace'. In other words, the entire goal of trademarks is to PREVENT confusion in the free market. If the judge finds the current domain name to be causing confusion, then he could potentially rule that it is to be surrendered to MGM. Who knows how it will go? That's why it pays to have a good attorney that can make a convincing case before a judge.
Libertas in infinitum
Thats pretty sick that the people posting seem to give two shits less about this guys right to his domain name. MGM cant be allowed to do this. I pray the EFF or someone with fat pockets steps in and helps this guy retain control of his domain name. I look forward to keeping up with this...
Shame on you MGM, I'll make sure they never see another any of my $$$ and I never see any of their crappy movies.
WarGames was very realistic and based loosely on a real person and a real situation.
The only other somewhat realistic computer movie is Sneakers.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Name me one person in the real world who is completely evil, other than Hitler.
Easy. Bob Saget.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Will Jar-Jar be in this? Maybe they can tell us the monolith is really just here to ignite Jupiter. Will they add CGI? As someone who lived in the Cold War era, I can tell you that a CGI Soviet Union would have been much more threatening.
Way to go, Hollywood. I can hardly wait.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Ur like really old, right?
Not to delve into the TRON MPC territory here, but I've heard there may actually be a few AI research programs in progress that have shown signs of becoming increasingly tempermental of humans as they continue to learn and develop. While such an AI would probably never end up in a system that could pose any realistic threat to human life, it is a bit creepy to think that if one of these AI systems would ever become sentient, its first reaction toward humanity might be one of malice and hatred.
Is my Roomba going to become a "pusher" robot every time I go near the stairs, simply for shedding a few skinflakes and eyelashes on its precious floor?
8==8 Bones 8==8
theaterwide wmd tactical warfare
The lameness filter didn't allow me to match the all-caps look of the original options. Thank you, lameness filter.
I take issue with your pseudonym of Overly Critical Guy.
Your post seems very reasonable, and - dare I say - generously forgiving.
It won't be cool unless it takes place in the cutting edge 80s!
I fear the Y2038 bug
More importantly than the movie/domain time line is the term/movie/domain time line, IMO. The term war games predates the movie. Further, wargames.com is using the name in the vein of the older term (a war game is a board/PC game that simulates warfare). It sells war games.
If wargames.com sticks in it, they should be able to walk away with a nice settlement. If not, then they should get a nicer settlement, a la the $20 million for the Lindows name. A generic term, correctly used, no malice, a good time to short MGM stock.
"Would you like a nice game of Sudoku, Professor Falken ?"
you could show your support by buying a game from this guy - I saw that he had some good european board games like alhambra, settlers, Carcassonne. Also robo rally is a fun board game
Did anyone else find it ironic that the lawyer representing MGM is named Nathan Jayhole? (okay - it's Nathan J. Hole - but you get the point...).
I have to wonder if he did a Michael J. Fox middle-initial change thinking he'd be safe...
Trust me. This is an inactive account. Regardless of what the
A real hacker of the early-mid 80s could wire that up and have driver done for it in an hour.
If you left out the part about a "driver" you'd have been right on.
(Unrelated stuff here: When I tried to post this I got a message that it's been only 4 minutes since I've posted a message so I have to wait. Slashdot admins, please stop trying to protect us from the terrorists, I'm sick of it!)
I was in High School when it came out and went to see it with my girlfriend. We really loved it even though I couldn't understand how he had a S100 Bus system with a $20,000 graphics terminal.
Huh? I thought he was using IMSAI. You can actually find the dealer's address in David's room if you watch carefully..
"If this is what you really want.... The code is Midnight Sun. Midnight Sun."
Cress, cress, lovely lovely cress
I don't know how many people know this, but a man from Reservoir Dogs actually was in Wargames. Michael Madsen played the younger of the two missile silo technicians at the start of the film.
Let's play global WMD war.
Frog blast the vent core.
I used to think she was hot..
Mind you she'd probably say the same about me.. except I was never hot.
Ok, so he says he bought the domain in 1998 "in good faith." However, he also says that he finally realized his online store "this year," in 2006. What has he been doing with it for the past 7 years? Well, a few clicks over to archive.org will tell you.
March 02, 2000 was the first record that archive.org collected on wargames.com. It's just a "there is no site here" page. Then, in October 2000, it became a "there is no site here" page with a banner ad.
December 2001, he sets up Tomcat, the default installation page. It remains that way until March 2002, at which point it reverts back to a "there is no page here" page, but with links to a few pages, including the Drudge Report and a few others. A flurry of activity in 2002 as he updates and changes the links on the "there is no page here" page. The page remains the same style of "there is no page here"+links until November 2004 (2 years!), at which point is appears he is trying to turn it into a blog about programming. This Blog-like page remains until January 2006, and there is no archive.org update after then.
It seems clear to me that this is not exactly in good faith. Every page in archive.org is "there is no page here" and there is nothing on there having anything to do with selling war-based games, or anything else that would intuitively be related.
This guy is a squatter, plain and simple. My guess is that he heard about the movie filming in early 2006 and someone told him he had better start a legitimate use of the domain or it was likely he would lose it, so he threw something together. It's too bad for him there are so many recorded years of squatting.
Who says the computer doesn't have the capability? Pressing down on the hook switch just does a loop disconnect. It would be trivial to add a computer-controlled relay in-line to perform a 3 second loop disconnect between each call. Control the relay coil with the computer's parallel port. Doesn't even need any fancy electronics.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Will Farmer? Let me guess...his middle initial is 'T'?
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
Would you like to play a game ? >> No
What is the computer's name???
W.O.P.R. for the first movie..
Whopper Jr?
Big Mac?
Big Montana?
Seriously, there's absolutely no point in calling this thing "War Games".
I liked War Games because it was a self contained story, with a good resolution that delivered a moral message. It was a story with a point, and not just entertaining fluff.
I don't see any unresolved threads in the original story that a sequel could possibly expand on. Without that kind of hook, this will just be an unrelated story trying to ride on the reputation of the original. What's worse, if it tries to make superficial references to the original, it'll probably piss off people who saw War Games, and confuse people who didn't.
I can't help thinking of the "new, edgier Wormhole Xtreme", where all the actors were replaced with angst ridden teenagers.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
Wheee!!! Thank you. New keyboard please... I'm really old too.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
MGM has a link on their web page that allows you to report unethical behavior, https://secure.ethicspoint.com/domain/en/report_co mpany.asp. I reported that MGM is atempting to steal the Wargames.com domain name.
The real problem is the loner hacker getting off with ally sheedy. Mind you, she later turned out to gay: http://imdb.com/title/tt0139362/ ("High Art") http://imdb.com/title/tt0337717/ ("Shelter").
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
my post at his website:
You actually appear to be a cyber-squatter yourself. After checking the Wayback machine internet archive, you have had no website at wargames.com for the last eight years, even though you've owned it for the last eight years. It appears that you got notice from MGM and then put in your "1,000 hours" of web development by using an open source shopping cart system (possibly taking up one of the 1,000 hours to setup) and then spending 999 hours finding images and descriptions of computer and board games related to warfare and loading them into the shopping cart. I would hardly agree with you that that constitutes "development." If so, it significantly cheapens real web development. This case appears to be a situation of a geek (not derogatory, for I am one myself) registering a domain name a long time ago because it had a special significance to him. That significane being the movie of the same name. You got a legalish notice from MGM, freaked out, and went into overdrive to concoct a legitimate appearing use for the name and are now pandering your "David and Goliath" situation to the internet community. I hope MGM does take the name from you, just as you took it from the internet community and did nothing with it for so many years and now have a mediocre "store" in place. When someone types in wargames.com, they are looking for the movie, not for a copy of "Rise of Nations".
Let me ask you this, if I ordered a copy of one or more games, do you actually have them in stock? Are you even setup to take credit card payments (other than Paypal)?
IMSAI was one of the first S100 buss computers. There was actually as standard buss for micro computers before the PC. S100 based systems where high end machines and tended to us 8080s, 8085s, and Z80s. Some of the first 8086 machines where just S100 cards.
The Zenith Z100 which was a much better machine than the IBM used the S100 bus as well. It had better graphics than the PC, it ran MS-DOS and CP/M, and actually got a lot of goverment contracts with the US military.
S100 got killed by the giant land slide of really crappy IBM PC and it's evil Army of clones that Darth Gates pushed on us.
The IMSAI along with the Altair, CompuPro, and Zenith where all S100 buss systems.
That is one of the reasons that I get really bent when people talk about how the IBM became the standard because it was "Open"!
Before the PC we had open hardware standards in the S100, we had a very popular OS that ran on a large number of different machines. C/PM. and we had some diversity and inovation as well.
The PC became a standard because of only three things!
1. I
2. B
3. M
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
BURN!
I nearly cheered at your explanation. Good show.
Everyone forgets that NORAD really went through this...'exercise'. The lore was legend by the time I worked there back in the early 90s, but, it really happened:
p ace_Defense_Command#Cold_War_and_false_alarms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Aeros
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
I thought Terminator was the sequel?
You know, when the computers take control and blow up humanity...
Intelligent, insightful (i guess, my commodore modem sat in a closet - unused), funny, with a little dash of flamebait for spice --- oh, and extremely geeky (all it needs is an anime/ultima/GEB/HG2G reference). This should be the litmus test for a slashdot comment.
Atlas Shrugged : Thematic Story
I submitted this two months ago. Slashdot FTW!
I agree, though in this case the guy is just a cybersquatter. If you look at this site's history, you'll see that as late as Jan. 2006, the guy had it parked. Legally I still think he's entitled to it, but I don't feel any sympathy at all for this guy. He sat on that domain for years hoping somebody would buy it out. After he was sued over it, it suddenly became a shopping site for computer games.
IAmNotALawyer. But two ideas from my (mis)understanding of the law seem relevant from where I sit.
First, there is in US property law (via common law) the idea of adverse possession. Essentially, if you occupy a property long enough without the rightful owner doing anything, you can't be booted. I'm not sure what the exact case law is; I have a vague recollection of seven and ten years being associated, but I'm guessing.
The other idea is that a trademark, if not actively and vigorously defended, may be voided, and lose its protected status.
The current Wargames.com owner has been there since '98 -- over seven years. The original Wargames movie came out in 1983, according to IMDB. In my jaundiced eye, this leaves MGM on very questionable ground for both of these aspect. With a good lawyer, he might have a decent shot at getting a settlement where he keeps the domain, and in exchange agrees to carry their computer game if they make one, maybe points some lost traffic their way, maybe a non-compete agreement in the movie business... but he doesn't challenge the underlying validity of their trademark. A damn good lawyer might even be able to get MGM to cover all legal expenses, but I wouldn't bet on that.
And, yeah, based on what IMDB says, MGM seems to have a plot vastly less realistic than the hardly credible original, and are starting out by pissing off the zealous geek contingent and their solid block of prospective moviegoers. I'd wonder if Harlan Ellison's proverbial "intellectual capacity of an artichoke" was involved, but he seems to be listed as being with Paramount (currently working on a project perhaps well-suited to the reputed scope of his intellect). This is one movie where I'd not only be unwilling to go to, but now might consider encouraging refund requests by taking advantage of my knowledge that the main breakers for individual projectors at three of the local theaters are located outside the buildings.
This movie sounds like it may not be merely a gobbler, but radioactive putrid gobbler fecal matter. Get the hazmat suit.
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
raising *deep* sounding questions isn't all there is to philosophy... believe it or not, philosophers actually do a pretty good job of addressing, and coming up with *answers* to these questions, which the matrix movie does not.
I don't like the philosophy in the matrix movies, or in almost any movie, because the constraints of the medium dictate that nothing more can happen other than a few brief sketches of questions are made, and that there just isn't *time* to address them. This is just a cheap trick used to inject the sensation that the movie is "deep," without actually making the writers go to the trouble of saying anything original or meaningful.
ATH1
I feel woefully inadequate correcting someone from the golden age of phreaking, but...I think you meant ATH0. If the phone's already off the hook, ATH1 does nothing.
That's really fucking unlikely. If they got anything right, it was only by accident.
Mod parent down as retarded Bush voter.
Apparently he can't tell the difference between people from Saudi Arabia, who crashed planes into our buildings, and Iraqis, who had nothing to do with it.
yuo must be JEFF K!!!!! i mean UWE BOLLEL
I ENJOYED YUOR POST
also teh verifacationes text for tihs post si BASINS!!!!!!!! taht means teh post si GEOLOCIGAL