A Setup Conundrum

May 5, 2006

A colleague forwarded this perplexing dialog to me:

Exit Open Programs Dialog

Quite the catch-22. I guess the only thing to do is try something else:

A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?

Posted by Jeff Atwood
6 Comments

The same thing happened to me! It is simple enough to hit ignore and move on, but it's still funny.

Eric Appel on May 7, 2006 12:25 PM

Don't get me started on WarGames!! That movie is the bomb(and nuclear, at that!) It's one of those few movies that stands the test of time. It's still very entertaining to watch.

And, when it first came out, the possibility of nuclear war was still very threatening (and may be once again it now seems.) It is fun to look at the computers in the movie, too. Some would say it is amazing to see how far we've come technology-wise. I would argue the opposite.

We're still typing and we're still glued to monitors that are connected to boxes. Plus, although it was mostly fictionalized, we've not come very far concerning artificial intelligence either. Computers have gotten better at playing a nice game of chess, though. Just my thoughts.

Kenneth on May 8, 2006 7:25 AM

Oh man, very funny. Thanks for sharing.

Erik Lane on May 8, 2006 11:35 AM

That quote is from War Games, right?
When the computer is getting tired of playing tic tac toe.

Ayende Rahien on May 8, 2006 1:15 PM

tic tac toe!? GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR, baby!

Jeff Atwood on May 8, 2006 1:43 PM

The only (well...) thing that bugs me with Wargames is that a General in the Crystal Palace is nudging the DEFCON level up and down at will. The armed forces must have gotten crazy. "Hey, we're at DEFCON 3... no, wait.. 2.. wait... 4..."

I thought that was a decision reserved for the White House, or Pentagon at least.

Then again, you have talking computer terminals. And the hacker gets the girl! :) Otherwise, a great movie.

Mats Gefvert on May 9, 2006 1:40 PM

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