Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 421 New Dark Horse

  The third week of "Night of the Comet" will continue to decrease, and it is estimated that it will receive less than 3 million box office in the whole week.

   Surprisingly, the weekend's new film, "The Two-Brained Man," starring comedy star Steve Martin and **** **** star Kathryn Turner, was a poor box office. 1,200 theaters have only received less than 3.5 million box office.

  The "Psycho 2" released in nearly 1,500 theaters is just average, just over 8 million. A large number of viewers who came to watch because of Hitchcock's name seem to have a low opinion of the film, and everyone expects that next week's box office will not be good.

   Even Roger Albert, who often speaks for big studios, had to separate it from Hitchcock's original at the beginning of the film review, using an opening to lower the audience's expectations first, and then say good things.

   "Audiences who think about Hitchcock going to the movies, get Hitchcock out of their heads, this movie simply can't compare to the original."

  Ronald laughed when he read this, this guy is always yin and yang, but he gave the movie three and a half stars, second only to the top four. In the end, it was good words for the distributor Universal Pictures.

  Although the two new films with high expectations, under the power of Star Wars, all the box office was less than expected. But Ronald's "Night of the Comet" is not optimistic about next week's schedule.

  Because of a new dark horse, it grabbed the third position with the opening scale of less than 800 theaters. With a box office of 6.2 million and an average revenue of 7,300 for a single venue, the uppercut hits the stomach of many movies firmly.

   In addition to Star Wars, film critics have also begun to discuss this newly released sci-fi apocalyptic film - "WarGames".

Ronald also wanted to see the quality of the movie. He came to the Sherman Oaks department store again, bought a ticket for the evening show, and sat quietly in the pizza shop opposite, watching the movie theater opposite. The situation at the ticket gate.

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

   "Meet again", the fat glasses last time, still holding a sign, this time replaced by "MISC.FILMS - war game". Still his friends, gathered together one by one.

  Ronald put down his coke cup and walked towards the opposite side. It was about to start. Approaching the group of nerdy students, Ronald overheard them discussing the plot of "War Games."

   "As you said, there are episodes related to our BBS, of course we have to watch it. How do you think it's better than 'Night of the Comet'?"

   "I read the film review and it may be more realistic than Night of the Comet. I heard that there are a lot of episodes related to us playing BBS, as well as the episode of dialing up to the ARPANET of the North American Air Defense Command, which is very exciting."

   "Really? I don't believe it, our modems can still connect to NORAD? They use ARPANET, we use Usenet, they are two grades."

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

   "What's the use of that? You can't get in. Are you a Hacker? Can you crack their password?"

"hey-hey……"

   "Really? You can really crack a code?"

   "Actually, as long as you use a dictionary and exhaustively, you can get a lot of passwords. Many people are very careless in setting passwords. I will send you an email when I go back."

   Ronald was at a loss as to what they were talking about. But he heard a few words, Usernet (Usenet), Newsgroup (NewsGroup), it seems that they contacted each other through this thing, and made an appointment to meet here.

   "Go back and ask someone", Ronald felt inexplicably familiar with these words.

  The beginning of the movie is very catchy. In the ICBM silo under the North American Air Defense Command, several staff members are eating hamburgers and chatting as usual.

   Suddenly, a sharp alarm came, and the red warning light on the wall began to rotate and emit red light. Confidential phone calls came with instructions from superiors that the Soviet Union had fired hundreds of intercontinental missiles with nuclear warheads at America and its allies.

   Many big cities and military targets were destroyed. These staff members were asked by their superiors to immediately start the missile launch procedure and counterattack against Suwell.

  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 password from the secret line to activate the missile in the launch silo.

   When things came to an end, one of them was sweating profusely. He could not bear the psychological pressure of pressing the launch button and sending hundreds of thousands of people to hell. He refused the order and asked his superiors to verify whether the enemy missile attack was a false alarm.

  Suddenly, the alarm stopped. It turned out that this was just a stress test. The North American Air Defense Command wanted to try to see how many staff would obey the instructions and launch the ICBM under the sudden pressure.

The results of the    test were very unsatisfactory, and finally the command decided to use the supercomputer WOPR (meaning War Action Plan Response) to activate the missile instead of a real person.

   "The concept that this computer causes the end of the world is really popular now." Ronald thought of Cameron's "Terminator", as well.

  The screen suddenly changed and came to a high school in Seattle. High school students David and his girlfriend Jennifer both failed in class because they were kept in trouble by their teachers.

   David, who returned home, dialed the school's computer where students' grades were stored. After hacking into the database, he revised his and his girlfriend's grades so that he would not have to take the summer make-up exam.

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

   Game Company in a small town in Colorado. Who knew that David's call was actually the supercomputer WOPR of the North American Air Defense Command. WOPR will play a lot of games with people, the last one being the "Global Thermonuclear War Game".

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

The   WOPR computer didn't understand the difference between games and reality, and it succeeded in convincing NORAD generals and experts that the Alliance was really preparing to launch a nuclear raid.

  David found the problem and finally found Falken, the designer of WOPR computer. It turns out that Falcon was fired from NORAD after designing the computer.

   They went to the headquarters together to prevent their own ICBMs from launching, and only one general in the Air Defense Command endorsed 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, it was a draw. The WOPR computer discovered that not all games have winners, and finally the WOPR computer cut off the war game and typed a line.

   "A strange game. The only way to win is to not play." Then the WOPR computer cut off the elevated alert, as well as the ICBMs that were already on the launch pad.

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

  The story of the whole movie is very good, and the plot is also very tense and intense. The best part is the two young lead actors, the hero Matthew Brodick is very handsome, really has a nerd temperament. The heroine, Ellie Sheedy, is young and beautiful, and looks like an American beauty.

   In addition to the new generation of teenagers, they have been exposed to some computers more or less. Those with money at home have played IBM's personal computer, or Apple's old version of the Apple II, and those without money, at least like Ronald, have played Commod's computer, which is actually a game console.

   For a normal teenager, with a phone line, a modem, to be able to get into a NORAD computer, or hack a school computer, and change his grades, that's a pretty cool thing.

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

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

When he was waiting for the end, he stopped the glasses boy who was holding the sign, "Excuse me, I saw what user network or newsgroup you were talking about just now, what does this mean? Is it the same as David in the movie? Communicate with other people who have computers."

  The glasses boy was startled at first, and he started talking immediately after hearing Ronald asked about his strengths.

   It turns out that this has to start with the bulletin board BBS. A personal computer plus a modem (Modem) can be connected to someone else's home telephone line, and if that person also has a Modem, 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 from a computer."

   "Huh? Then there's no need for stamps?"

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

The glasses guy started talking about USENET again, and many people started to build a platform by themselves, and let many people call him, so that everyone could discuss issues through email, and everyone who dialed the phone could see the last time After the call, all new discussions.

However, a node can accommodate too few people. In order to connect with more people, several schools led by Berkeley University began to establish a protocol to synchronize emails in different BBSs, so that you only need to connect to one node. , you can see the responses of all the people in North America.

USENET is divided into eight forums, such as .MISC on his brand, which is the "other" forum, in addition to .COM for computer-related issues, .SOC for discussing social hot issues, .TALK for discussing various controversial topics, etc. .

"All you need is an email address, and a phone line, and a modem, and you can join this 'poor man's ARPANET.' ARPANET, you know? It's really NORAD and everywhere The network connected to the ICBM is fast and advanced, we can only use the poor man's version, and we only have one discussion per day."

   Ronald was a little moved by what he said. Wouldn't it be possible to discuss movies with others? You can also talk about topics you don't know about.

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

   (end of this chapter)