Neil Smalley

Just finished watching it for the first time in about 15 years. One question, how did making Joshua play tic-tac-toe invoke the global thermonuclear war game .
Also while i'm at it. How did making Joshua's CPU's max out cause consoles to go spark, ala Star Trek .

I'm taking this too seriously, but hey i'm back at work tomorrow so i'm on the last dregs of holiday mode.

ProperCharlie

i thought playing 0s and Xs was what saved the gaff in the end of the day - as the computer realsied that it was a pointless game with no winners...

oh how quaint and lovely.

fitzscoob

I thought by making joshua realise that by playing tic tac toe, there were no winners ? :P making the whole process of the game meaningless.

Bit sketchy but it must be atleast 6 years or so since i watched it last

Neil Smalley

Yes, but all that does is teach Joshua that TTT has no winners, not G-T-N-W

boxst

Hello

But then it ran through all the scenarios of war and found that it is the same as noughts and crosses: no winners.

And anyway, we are talking full screen graphics via the telephone 20 years ago, so I wouldn't take the whole thing TOO seriously!

(as I had a 300/300 modem then, and it would take me an eternity to download the "massive" 16K games)

Steve.

PiNkEyE69

Never mind that, how did he get a stable connection over analoge using an acoustic coupler?

GaryK

exactly like all films that use computers its complete guff!

Markus

Ahh, War Games, great little film.

As said by others, TTT was a tactical game, showed it was a no-win situation. J applied this to all the first strike and response scenarios it knew about, played them out on the screen, and then realised that this too was a no-win situation. We'll ignore the usual "acceptable losses" type thing that the superpowers usually go on about in these types of situations

As for the consoles sparking, well, it was pre Windows (probably DR-DOS or CPM or something) so there was no blue screen of death, so machines would just spark plus of course, it would be yank hardware, and we know how shoddy that is! lol

Markus

Not totally true. One segment of a film that springs to mind is where Trinity is hacking in Matrix Revolutions, I recall she is actually using some known hack of somesort, ok, so it was found and closed a while ago, but still.

I do agree that most of the time the computer stuff in films is just shoddy, for example, have you ever met a hacker like Sandy Bullock in "The Net", nope, neither have I (and I'm not saying there a no cute geek girls out there, there are, I've met a few )

Neil Smalley

But how did J know to link the results of TTT with GTNW? It'd be like my PC deducing because i'm crap at Far Cry I also am on BF1942 all by itself.

See! No logic to it. Also a computer would'nt know when to give up it'd just go something like

While Nukes_still_to_use >0
..Boom
..Nuke=Nuke-1
...if Nuke =0 then
......total up casualties
......If US_casulaties >=Commies then
...........Winner="Uncle Sam"
........else Winner="Commies"
.....End If
end while
display Winner

So long as the USA kill more people than the commies, then they could be termed to be the winner.

ProperCharlie

won't it be more like:

total known popn = 10111000101
total casulaties= 10111000101
erk?

Neil Smalley

No, because it will assume that there are people still alive in shelters etc etc.

Going off topic, This reminds me of a film called 'On the beach' about the survivors of a nuclear war waiting for the radiation to kill them all off while they eat drank and be merry in Australia.

vindaloo

I remember that one. They were in a US nuclear submarine and had been out of contact under polar ice or similar. When they surfaced, the world had gone boom, radiation everywhere. Chilling ending with the Aussies giving out suicide pills and the Sub crew mustering for a final voyage home to die....

J.