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That film sparked my interest in computers. Matthew Broderick was the coolest dude and the tech blew my mind up. I owe Mr Broderick my career in some sense. One
by harel 3y ago
That film sparked my interest in computers. Matthew Broderick was the coolest dude and the tech blew my mind up. I owe Mr Broderick my career in some sense. One day I'll send him flowers and a raspberry pie.
- kadoban 3y agoIt had a lot to do with my interest in computers as well. Acoustic couplers, war dialing, and basic cracking and phreaking were all _so_ cool in that movie, not to mention everything in and near the war room stuff.
- harel 3y agoand lest we forget that with all that nerdery and geekery, he still got the girl and saved the entire planet.
- wkat4242 3y agoThe home computer (imsai 8080) wasn't all that unrealistic either. There's another story floating around here about the people that provided it. One thing that was unrealistic was that acoustic couplers couldn't do autodial. Of course the WOPR (lol) and the big screens were. Computers of those days did indeed have large rows of flashing LEDs (or on the earliest models, regular bulbs) but they weren't just a huge strip for show. They were all marked with the values each bit of registers etc. They also didn't hide the most important info (eg countdown to the end of the world) in an LCD display hidden somewhere it couldn't be seen. But Hollywood just took the flashing lights part the way they now think hackers sit in the dark with hoodies on and the screen projecting green readable text on their faces.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoWonder if the Altair and its clones were capable of producing the waveforms for DTMF signals. Still would need some minor hacking to get that signal into the phone line but I'm confident that David could do it.
- titzer 3y agoI frickin love computers in movies that have tons of Blinkenlights.
- wkat4242 3y agoMe too but a bit more realism and a bit less cringe please :)
- heelix 3y agoSame. It is the reason I took all my lawn mower money and bought a Commodore 64. I believe the movie graphics were done with a Commodore PET. Things went from peaking/poking from magazines, picked up a tape drive to start keeping things... to a 300 baud modem and eventually a 5.25" floppy. What glorious days.
- bradknowles 3y agoI also owe much of my BSCS degree and resulting career to this movie. By the summer of 1983, I had already been programming on my Commodore Vic-20 for over a year, and using the Apple ][+ computers at the high school for a semester, and I had seen computers using Hayes 300 baud modems that were directly connected via an RJ-11 jack. I thought that the stuff I was seeing in that movie was already antiquated and obsolete. By the summer of 1984, I had my own Apple ][+ computer at home with a Hayes 300 baud modem that was directly connected via an RJ-11 jack, and I was dialing up local BBSes as much as my parents would allow. By the spring of 1989, I had gotten a job offer to go work in the basement of the Pentagon for what was then the Defense Communications Agency, and in late August I actually got to go start working there. And I got to see the Crisis Action Center floor, which was supposed to be the space that they were simulating in the movie. But the real thing was much less interesting. But then I also got to see what was called The Chairman's Briefing room, and that was much cooler. They had video conferencing setups that were better than anything I had seen in any movie up to that point. Ironically, at that stage Colin Powell was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and he hated that room. Much too much space for far too many people. He always held his briefings in much smaller rooms where it was standing room only for the majority of people present (flag officers only), and no one got to bring any of their Aides or other junior officers.
- harel 3y agoWe could really start the "Matthew Broderick Career Appreciation Society for Showing out Gratitude Club".