Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 421 A New Dark Horse
The film schedule for the third week of "Night of the Comet" continues to decrease, and it is estimated that the box office will be less than 300 million for the whole week.

Surprisingly, the weekend's new film, "The Man With Two Brains," starring comedian Steve Martin and sexy porn star Katherine Turner, did poorly at the box office. 1000 two hundred theaters only received less than 350 million at the box office.

"Psychopath 2", which was screened in nearly 800 theaters, was just average, just over [-] million.A large number of viewers who came to watch because of Hitchcock's name seem to have a low opinion of the movie, and everyone expects that the box office will not look good next week.

Even Roger Ebert, who often speaks for major studios, had to separate it from Hitchcock's original version at the beginning of the film review, using a beginning to lower the audience's expectations before saying good things.

"Those audiences who want to go to the movie with Hitchcock in mind, get Hitchcock out of their minds. This movie is simply not comparable to the original."

Ronald laughs when he reads this, the guy is always kinky, but he gave the movie three and a half stars, second only to the maximum of four.It ended up being a good word for distributor Universal Pictures.

Although the two new films with high expectations, under the power of Star Wars, all the box office fell short of expectations.But next week's schedule for Ronald's "Night of the Comet" is still not optimistic.

Because of a new dark horse, it grabbed the third place with an opening scale of less than 620 theaters. With a box office of [-] million and an average revenue of [-] yuan for a single venue, this uppercut hit the stomachs of many movies firmly.

In addition to Star Wars, film critics have also begun to discuss this new sci-fi post-apocalyptic movie - "War Games (War Games)".

Ronald also wanted to see the quality of this movie. He went to the Sherman Oaks department store again, bought a ticket for the evening show, and then sat quietly in the pizzeria opposite, observing the opposite movie theater The situation at the ticket gate.

The most popular is of course the whole family going out to watch Star Wars.There were still a lot of people watching "Night of the Comet", but gradually as word of mouth fermented, there were more and more young women in the audience.

"Meet you again", the fat glasses from last time, still holding a sign, this time changed to "MISC. FILMS - War Game".Still his friends, gathered together one by one.

Ronald put down his Coke cup and walked to the opposite side, the scene was about to begin.Approaching the group of nerdy students, Ronald heard them discussing the plot of "War Games".

"You said, there is a plot related to our BBS, of course we have to watch it. How do you think it is better than 'Night of the Comet'?"

"I read the movie reviews, and it may be more realistic than the night of the comet. I heard that there are many related episodes of us playing BBS, and dialing up to the NORAD Arpanet. It's exciting."

"Really? I don't believe it. Our modem can still connect to NORAD? They use ARPANET, and we use Usenet. It's basically two grades."

"I don't think you understand, don't you know? At the beginning of this year, all network protocols have been unified into the TCP/IP protocol. As long as the phone can be dialed there, you can see the login interface."

"What's the use of that? You can't get in. Could it be that you are a hacker (Hacker)? Can you crack their password?"

"hey-hey……"

"Really? Can you really crack the code?"

"In fact, as long as you use a dictionary and exhaustively enumerate, you can get a lot of passwords. Many people set passwords very carelessly. I will send you an email when I get back."

Ronald was confused and didn't know what they were talking about.But he heard a few words, Usernet (Usenet), Newsgroup (NewsGroup), as if they contacted each other through this thing, and made an appointment to meet here.

"Go back and ask someone." Ronald felt that these words were a little familiar for some reason.

The beginning of the movie is very catchy. In the intercontinental missile silo under the North American Aerospace Defense Command, several staff members are eating burgers and chatting as usual.

Suddenly a sharp alarm came, and the red alarm light on the wall began to rotate and glow red.Instructions from superiors came through the confidential phone call. The Souvier Alliance has launched hundreds of intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads to America and its allies.

Many large cities and military targets were destroyed. These few staff members were asked by their superiors to immediately start the missile launch program and counterattack Souville.

Two people who have the right to press the launch button must turn the key in the opposite direction at the same time to turn on the launch switch, and then enter the launch code sent by the confidential line to activate the missile in the silo.

When the incident came to an end, one of them was sweating profusely. He couldn't bear the psychological pressure of pressing the launch button and sending tens of thousands of people to hell. He refused the order and asked his superiors to check whether the enemy's missile attack was a false alarm.

Suddenly, the alarm stopped. It turned out that this was just a stress test. NORAD wanted to see how many staff members would follow the instructions and launch the ICBM under the sudden pressure.

The results of the test were very unsatisfactory, and finally the headquarters decided to use the supercomputer WOPR (War Action Plan Response) instead of a real person to start the missile. This computer decides whether to launch a nuclear bomb to counter the opponent.

"This concept of computers causing the end of the world is really popular now." Ronald thought of Cameron's "Terminator", and it was the same.

The scene suddenly changed and came to a high school in Seattle.High school student David and his girlfriend Jennifer were held back by the teacher in class, and both failed.

After returning home, David used the phone to dial to the computer where the school's students' grades are stored. After hacking into the database, he modified his and his girlfriend's grades so that he would not have to take the make-up exam during the summer vacation.

David saw a discounted computer game written in a computer magazine, and he could also play with other people online, but he needed to dial a phone number provided by the game company.Out of confidence in my own hacking skills, I wrote a small program to traverse all the phone numbers under the area code of the game company's address from beginning to end, trying to find out which number to play games for free.

The game company is in a small town in Colorado.Who knew that David's phone call turned out to be the supercomputer WOPR of the North American Aerospace Defense Command. WOPR plays a lot of games with people, the last one being the "Global Thermonuclear War Game".

David started the game, and WOPR started playing with himself, each time he assumed that the situation on the Souvier side had escalated, and in response, the alert level on the NATO side was raised, scaring a group of generals and experts in Air Defense Command It's choking.

The WOPR computer doesn't understand the difference between games and reality, and it has successfully convinced the generals and experts of NORAD that the alliance is really planning to launch a nuclear bomb raid.

David found the problem and finally found Falcon, the designer of the WOPR computer.It turned out that Farken was expelled from NORAD after designing the computer.

They went to the headquarters together to prevent their own side from launching an intercontinental ballistic missile. Only one general in the air defense command recognized their theory.

In the end, the designer wrote a game of tic-tac-toe-flags on the spot and taught WOPR to play it on the computer. Every time the game ended in a draw. The WOPR computer figured out that not all games had winners, and finally the WOPR computer cut off the war game and typed out a line.

"A weird game. The only winning move is not to play." Then the WOPR computer cut off the elevated alert status, which also cut off the ICBMs already on their launch pads.

Finally he extended an invitation to David, "How about a game of chess?"

The story of the whole movie is very good, and the plot is very tense and intense.Best of all are the two young lead actors, the leading man, Matthew Brodick, who is very handsome and has a real nerdy air about him.The heroine, Allie Sheedy, is young and beautiful, looking like an American beauty.

In addition, the new generation of teenagers have more or less access to some computers.Those who have money at home have played with IBM's personal computer, or Apple's old version of Apple II, and those who have no money have at least played with Commodore's computer that is actually a game console, just like Ronald.

For a normal teenager, a phone line, a modem, and being able to get into a NORAD computer, or hack into a school computer and change his grades, is pretty cool.

No wonder those fat glasses students came to watch this movie together this time.

Ronald felt he had learned a little bit from this "war game".No matter how impossible it is in reality, let the audience feel that if they have the same equipment as the protagonist, they can also do the same thing as the protagonist.

When he was waiting for the end, he stopped the guy with glasses holding a sign, "Excuse me, I saw you were talking about usernet, newsgroup, what does this mean? Is it the same as David in the movie, you can Communicate with other people with computers."

The glasses boy was taken aback at first, but when he heard that Ronald had asked about his strengths, he immediately started talking.

It turns out that this starts with the bulletin board BBS.Adding a modem (Modem) to a personal computer can connect to the telephone line of someone else's home. If that person also has a Modem, then the two parties can communicate with each other through e-mail.

"Wait, what is email?"

"Why don't you understand anything? E-mail is an e-mail that can be sent through a computer."

"Huh? So no need for stamps?"

"Of course, but your monthly phone bill will go up."

Glasses started to talk about USENET again, and many people started to set up a platform by themselves, and asked many people to call him, so that everyone can discuss problems by email, and all people who dial can see the last time. After the phone call, all new discussions.

But one node can accommodate too few people. In order to connect with more people, several schools led by Berkeley University have begun to establish a protocol that allows emails in different BBSs to be synchronized with each other, so that you only need to connect to one node. , you can see the responses of all the people on the North American continent.

USENET is divided into eight forums. For example, .MISC on its brand is the "other" forum. In addition, there are .COM about computers, .SOC about hot social issues, .TALK about various controversial topics, etc. .

"All you need is an e-mail address, and a phone line, and a modem, and you can join this 'poor man's Arpanet.' Arpanet, you know? It's the real NORAD and The network connected by ICBM, which is fast and advanced, we can only use the poor man's version, and only synchronize discussions once a day."

Ronald was a little moved by what he said, wouldn't it be possible to discuss the movie with other people?You can also talk about topics you don't know about.

"So, where can I buy such a good thing?"

(End of this chapter)