The other night I was flipping through the channels and the 1983 movie "War Games" was on. For those that don't know, the movie is about a teenage hacker that accidentally stumbles into a military defense mainframe when trying to access a software company to play games. Once he gets in he thinks that he is playing a harmless simulation, but he almost causes the US to initiate a global thermonuclear war with the "Soviet Union."

What I thought was funny is that to log in to this top secret government machine all he needed was a modem and an one-word login. No passwords, no authentication, no terminal emulators...just a computer that was attached to a TV and a modem. The mainframe was attached to a public exchange, too. Sooooo funny looking back at it now.

Oh, well. Hopefully everyone won't be bothered by this post. Just a nice bit of nostalgia....