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© Copyright 1999, Jim Loy
Good acting, good hacker movie, good nuclear war movie. This movie is very good on many of the details. But, it goofs up on a few major details. My main objections are:
A "back door" plays a big part in the story. Do you think there are no back doors? Plenty of programs (including operating systems) have back doors. It may be rare, nowadays, since back doors became so famous.
The way that Brodrick made a free phone call from a phone booth, by shorting two parts of the phone, was apparently possible, at one time.
Great escape from NORAD. Good tension. I imagine that Joshua had to solve the launch codes one digit at a time, to keep the tension.
Addendum:
Let's think about tic-tac-toe and global thermonuclear war. The games are different in many respects. In tic-tac-toe, we can win, lose, or draw. And if both players have any skill at all, then all games end in draws. A child sees that is a flaw in the game; the game is too simple. In global thermonuclear war, we can also win, lose, or draw (from some perspectives). Presumably, we are going to war for some purpose. If we achieve that purpose, then we win, with or without war. From the computer's perspective, that is not true. We are already at war, and the objective is to win. How do we define "win?" Do we win if more damage is done to the enemy than to us? Presumably, that is the definition that the computer uses at the beginning of the movie. Then there are two types of draws, either inflicting equal damage on each other or refusing to play. But we know differently, don't we? We know that nobody wins a global thermonuclear war. It is obvious, even to Generals and Presidents, even to war mongers. There is a shift in perspective between the simplistic definition of "win" that the computer is using, and our definition. Winning is not possible, only degrees of loss. The game is flawed, in a different way than tic-tac-toe. But we can still draw, by choosing to not playing the game.
And so, in the movie, we go back to tic-tac-toe. Perhaps the lesson learned by playing tic-tac-toe is not that the game is flawed, but that within the game draws are logical and acceptable. Wins and losses are illogical, showing a poor grasp of the game. We want draws, so we can shake hands and say, "Well played." Does that attitude carry over to global thermonuclear war? Yes. But from the computer's point of view, I would say "No." It carries over to global thermonuclear war, only because we have redefined the word "win." So, the lesson we have to teach the computer is not that draws are logical and acceptable, but that in global thermonuclear war, no one wins. Then we can argue that draws are acceptable.
In the movie, the computer apparently did shift its definition of "win." Apparently, it did come to realize that there are no winners in the game it was playing. But it did not learn that from tic-tac-toe, or from any other event that we can see in the movie. And I consider that a flaw in the logic of the movie. Someone should have said, "Joshua, we contend that if your opponent loses worse than you do, that you have still lost. By the way, would you like to play tic-tac-toe?"