

“WarGames” Magazine Identified - m_walden
http://mw.rat.bz/wgmag/

======
thomson
Probably the coolest part of that article was the realization that I could
read some arbitrary magazine from 1982 on my browser within seconds.
Archive.org really is an amazing organization, and I was also happy to find
out that they're matching donations 3:1 due to anonymous generosity after
their recent fire-y setback [1]. Do consider donating!

[1] [http://archive.org/donate/](http://archive.org/donate/)

------
Lagged2Death
Well this makes me feel old. The answer was clear enough from that one freeze-
frame[1]. When I was a kid, the local public library had a stack of Creative
Computing magazines. I remember that cover.

[1]
[http://mw.rat.bz/wgmag/09_Front_Cover.png](http://mw.rat.bz/wgmag/09_Front_Cover.png)

~~~
m_walden
If it is that easy, why is it that this information did not exist on the net
until now? I am someone who had the interest and took time to put this
together in a nice presentation.

~~~
rbanffy
You did an impressive job. Thank you. The reason this information did not
exist in written form is that it was fairly obvious to those who knew Creative
Computing and could readily identify the magazine, to the point of nobody
thinking about writing it down. I knew Creative Computing (it was one of my
favorite computer magazines, along with BYTE and Nibble) and if someone asked
me, I would readily identify it.

Now, I believe there is a lesson here. Those who were into computing at that
time know a lot of stuff that never got written down. Maybe we should talk
more with younger computer geeks who never heard a teletype (I love the sound
they make) or have no idea we elders like to stay within 80 columns because of
IBM punchcards.

You may have questions we can answer. Let's get them asked.

~~~
mratzloff
If you're ever in Seattle, stop by the Living Computer Museum sometime. You
can interact with mainframes, Teletypes, punch cards, etc. Lots of fun.

Here are some photos I took last time we went:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/mratzloff/sets/7215763439619459...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mratzloff/sets/72157634396194597/detail/)

I included descriptions on most of these, if you're curious about anything in
particular.

~~~
lotharbot
It's also fun to stop by the Museum of Communications [0], about 3 miles down
the road, to see old working telephone exchanges and such. There's a lot of
commonality between the two. (They are only open on Tuesdays, first Sundays of
the month, or by appointment.)

The MoC runs its own BBS off of an AT&T 3B2 model 500 [1], which can be
accessed via telnet.

[0] [http://museumofcommunications.org/](http://museumofcommunications.org/)
or [http://www.scn.org/telmuseum/](http://www.scn.org/telmuseum/)

[1]
[http://museumofcommunications.org/?page_id=164](http://museumofcommunications.org/?page_id=164)

[2] full disclosure: my dad was involved in forming the Telecommunications
History Group, which is the parent organization for the MoC.

------
chrissnell
This post got me thinking about my old hobbies as a high schooler in the late
80s and I remembered war dialing. It was trilling to come home after school
and see what my dailer had discovered while I was away. With a few weeks of
dialing, I covered all of prefixes in my local exchange. Found a back door
into my high school's library (but never could guess or shoulder-surf the
password, sadly) and found a terminal server at the local university where I
could telnet out without any authentication.

I was just now googling around for war dialers and came across this:

[http://sourceforge.net/projects/iwar/](http://sourceforge.net/projects/iwar/)

Looks pretty awesome and supports SIP/IAX2. I may have to give it a shot.
Surely there are still some interesting back doors out there.

~~~
macavity23
Yes! The war dialling in this movie was great, as was the hacking (or
'cracking' if you're gonna be precious about it). Also there's a scene where
David needs to make a call without change and hacks a payphone using a
technique that worked IRL.

Arguably one of the only two truish-to-life hacker movies ever made (the other
of course being Sneakers,
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435)).

------
harel
This film got me into computer programming. As a young kid, I was mesmerised
by it. Matthew Brodrick saved the world, got the girl and got to play with the
coolest tech at the time. What more could any boy want? I still think I owe
Matthew a pint of good Ale or a Raspberry Pie for single handedly launching my
career.

~~~
rch
My father only agreed to have kids if we lived near what's now known as the
research triangle. Same line of thinking as prof. Falken: go out early. I was
born in '78, so guess I don't owe my life to a movie, but it's an interesting
tie in.

~~~
harel
To be honest, I'd probably end up where I am with or without that film but the
early memory of it is so strong with me that I keep making that connection
(for that warm fuzzy feeling). I was born at '76 and that tech to me seemed so
far out futuristic for many years. It was only in the 90s that before I got my
first modem.

------
Botnet
TL;DR: It's "Creative Computing Magazine (September 1982) Volume 08 Number 09"

PDF for those looking to read it:
[https://ia601602.us.archive.org/6/items/creativecomputing-19...](https://ia601602.us.archive.org/6/items/creativecomputing-1982-09/Creative_Computing_v08_n09_1982_September.pdf)

~~~
eplanit
I appreciate the TL;DR in this case, as I could have done without the rather
odd egoistic intro. in the article. One would think the author had just solved
P=NP.

"I have performed a real world hack...Through the use of my knowledge of
computer magazines...my sharp eyes...I have overcome the limited amount of
information available...and with complete certainty...I finally achieved my
goal on 2013-02-24 at 5:30pm."

I mean, it is cool and of novel interest, for sure. The intro a little over-
the-top, perhaps?

~~~
bittercynic
My take on that was that he was poking fun at himself.

At face value it sounds like inflated ego, but I think his tongue was firmly
in his cheek.

~~~
mratzloff
Given his comment here[1] I don't think that's the case.

Clearly the author is very proud of himself after years of wondering about it,
so it's understandable why he feels this is a big achievement. I'm sure all of
us have these little things that we'd like to know, and the cool thing about
the Internet is that every year it gets easier to discover the answers.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944786)

------
cl8ton
The 'Pinball Construction Set' program was advertised, I cant remember the
page. I had that program on a Commadore 64 and it was phenomenal for what it
did in <40k memory.

It even had a movable cursor using keyboard with drag and drop. It was written
by a guy named Bill Bulge best I remember and have always wondered where this
guy is today? given how advanced his software was way back then.

~~~
Pxtl
Another one I remember was Arcade Game Construction Kit that in hindsight
blows me away with its power on the C64. A full dev-kit for platformer and
top-view games including sprite editor/animator, level-editor, tile-editor,
sound-editor, etc. All windowed.

I spent _days_ in a beanbag chair with a comfy Epyx joystick
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Epyx_500XJ.jpg](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Epyx_500XJ.jpg)
oh my god that form-factor needs to come back) making games.

~~~
soneil
Interesting, I know that stick as the Konix Speedking.

Not complaining, the more names I find for it, the better chance I have of
finding one.

------
Tycho
I get such a strong sense of nostalgia from old computer magazines like that.
I'm not sure why. Maybe because they tended to depict computer system setups
which you would never actually see in the real world, just some future utopia.
Compared to today's magazines where the computer work stations are much more
familiar. Or maybe this is just what nostalgia is.

------
ttuominen
This reminds me of the time I bought an old 1972 issue of Rolling Stone
magazine on eBay to be able to cite the Spaceware article (also available
online) [1] in my bachelor's thesis on Smalltalk as evindence that the culture
at Xerox PARC was somewhat unorthodox in the seventies.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5548719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5548719)

------
threeio
I picked my first Silicon Valley apartment based on the fact that it was the
location mentioned in War Games.. I also purchased my house in Sunnyvale...
that movie had a bit too much influence on my life ;)

------
avifreedman
The magic of the magazines from that era is that they were full of articles
from people showing "look what I did with my computer!"

Dr. Dobbs from that era vs the current or even worse, last decade's, shows the
difference.

Some of HN is now a feed of that kind of attitude and enthusiasm, which is why
we all waste so much time here.

------
bzelip
Bravo.

I am surprised to see a pistol in the Apple ad in Figure 16.

~~~
icebraining
It's not really an Apple ad, just an ad for a book about the Apple computer,
published by Creative Computing.

------
ezequiel-garzon
How does the Internet Archive get the appropriate rights to make these scans
available?

~~~
csixty4
The Sonny Bono copyright act has a specific exception for libraries and
archives who make available digital reproductions of works which are no longer
commercially available at a reasonable price. Details at:
[http://www.copyright.gov/docs/nla.html](http://www.copyright.gov/docs/nla.html)

Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer. I'm not affiliated with the Internet Archive. I
am, however, a packrat with a scanner.

~~~
toast0
That exception is only during the last 20 years of the term of copyright. The
copyright extension was for 20 years, so basically the exception kept the old
rules for libraries on stuff that wasn't commercially exploitable.

It's possible that the magazines were published without a copyright notice;
and the works were not registered. It wasn't until March 1st 1989 that
published works were automatically granted copyright. It's also quite possible
that the owners of the rights have granted distribution rights to the Internet
Archive; that is common too.

------
techsupporter
Related to the Jade Computer Products ad that is in the "real" magazine: Does
anyone know why so many computer shops had clusters of stores in both Dallas
and southern California? I remember dealing with Jade (which was in Addison,
not Dallas, though I guess they had a Dallas post office address) and seeing
their ad list just the one store here. SoftWarehouse/CompUSA did the same
thing for awhile but in reverse; a bunch of stores in north Texas and one or
two near Los Angeles. Fry's went the other way for a long time, like Jade.
MicroCenter is the only computer outlet brand, off the top of my head, that
didn't have that kind of store allocation in the late 1980s into the 1990s.

Just one of those oddities from when I grew up, I suppose.

~~~
canvia
If I had to guess:
[http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/factsheet.shtml](http://www.ti.com/corp/docs/company/factsheet.shtml)

"The company’s headquarters is located at 12500 TI Boulevard, Dallas, Texas
75243."

------
JeremyMorgan
Very cool. Just reading this article makes me want to go back and watch that
movie again. Those were some pretty cool times to be into tech.

------
twsted
One year later I got a TI99/4A, a modem and tried to emulate David. I was
literally fascinated by the film, especially its first part.

~~~
nsxwolf
I bet you were using the Terminal Emulator II cartridge, which with the Speech
Synthesizer attached could read you the text coming across, just like David
does in the movie.

~~~
pmiller2
The Speech Synthesizer was the coolest thing about the TI99/4A. Well, that and
Tunnels of Doom.

------
ifelsethen
wondering if the cleaned up video on the bluray master makes all of this
digging moot. based on the quality of the transfer (which can be seen in
screenshots on bluray.com) id bet the shot of the magazine cover as he walks
by would be clear enough to see exactly what title says. work smarter, not
harder.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
What fun would that be?

~~~
m_walden
Exactly!

Also, I think that the magazine will still be out of focus since the camera
was focused primarily on the father.

------
pohl
That Elephant floppy disc ad brings me back to the days of poring over the
latest issue of 80 Microcomputing.

------
nkuttler
Wonderful. I was a child when I saw this movie the first time, and it's one of
the things that piqued my interest in computers (besides having access to an
Apple ][).

Too bad the sequel was even worse than Tron's. Don't watch it if you haven't
yet.

~~~
vidarh
I loved the Tron sequel. I can't quite imagine making a comparison like that
though - both Tron and the sequel were extremely light on story and works
primarily with the combination of concept and art. In both cases the story
itself is enough for about a 5 minute short.

Tron: Legacy to me is some interesting ideas coupled with a movie length
absolutely fantastic Daft Punk music video, while the original excited me for
the computer graphics and the ideas it presented.

~~~
vinkelhake
Seconded! I enjoyed the Tron sequel. I almost leaped out of my chair yelling
"EMACS!!" in the office scene. Almost..

Here's an article about some of the visual effects in Tron (and emacs!):
[http://jtnimoy.net/?q=178](http://jtnimoy.net/?q=178)

~~~
vidarh
That article is almost more enjoyable than the movie.

------
snorkel
Ahhh, those were the days when your main source of new source code to play
with came from print publications.

------
avifreedman
For those talking about sequels, FYI... There is a WarGames sequel on Netflix
but I made it 3 minutes in before abandoning. Can anyone recommend it?

------
norswap
Tangentially related: is the movie any good?

~~~
aidenn0
Yes.

------
swamp40
Well, I'm glad _that_ mystery has been solved...

~~~
asima123
So do I

------
transfire
Zegats! I think I used to own that issue.

