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WarGames and the Great Hacking Scare of 1983
James W writes "Yesterday was the 25th anniversary of the release of WarGames and Christopher Knight has written a retrospective about the film and its impact on popular culture. In addition to discussing how the movie has held up over time, WarGames was responsible for what Knight calls the Great Hacking Scare of 1983. Some examples mentioned are 'one CBS Evening News report at the time that seriously questioned whether parents should allow their children to access the outside world via their personal computers at home. A magazine article suggested that computer modems be 'locked up' just like firearms, to keep them out of the reach of teenagers. I even heard one pundit proclaim that there was no need for regular people to be able to log in to a remote system: that if you need to access your bank account, a friendly teller was just a short drive away. And Bill Gates once declared that the average person would never have a need for more than 640 kilobytes of memory in a personal computer, too.'" 2008 is also 25 years after the real-life prevention of a WarGames-style nuclear incident.
if yesterday was the anniversary .. isnt this a bit late?
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
I saw WarGames when I was 5 years old. Later on that year, my father bought us our first computer: an Apple //c. I was incredibly depressed when the computer exhibited neither near-human emotions nor a synthesized English accent.
They that would sacrifice their
Uhm...not the Peter Brady one either.
Jeeze. Will the real Chris Knight please stand up?
Careful What You Wish For....
I suppose next you'll try to convince everyone that Al Gore did in fact NOT invent the Internet.
No sig for you!!
>Like the geek scoring Ally Sheedy.
That's how you know it was a science fiction movie and not a documentary.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
> I think I'll go home and play some.
Spoiler alert:
The only way to win is to not play the game.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
I think the year was 1990 or 1991 -- I was about 6 or 7. On a tour of the school library, the librarian made a point of telling us about the modem they had connected to the computer in the library.
I had an old Leading Edge computer at home, running DOS 2.0. I asked if it were possible for someone to dial into the library's computer and erase their overdue fines.
Thus was ended the tour of the library, and the modem was never mentioned again.
Oh fuck you all for making me re-live the hell that was DOS memory managment.
Now I'm going to have those nightmares again.