The Machine That Won The War

created by Richard

(thing) by Richard (5 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Mon May 01 2000 at 21:45:11

Short story by Isaac Asimov describing the true story of how a vast war was won. Everybody thinks that it was a massive computer, which gave strategic advice. But the hackers who run it sit around explain to each other what really happened. See Monte Carlo.

(thing) by mdwyer (2 wk) (print) ? (I like it!) Wed Nov 15 2000 at 0:58:54

To elaborate a little more, in this short story by Isaac Asimov, you discover that all the great war-winning decisions made by a massive computer eventually just came down to a single human flipping a coin.

The story is more of a tribute to statistics (= The art and science of lying) than it is a tribute to computer science.

printable version
chaos

Monte Carlo	Target areas of the body for self defense	Isaac Asimov	hacker
Judgement Day	Dream Log: May 1, 2000	The Life and Times of Multivac	UniVAC
Cap'n Crunch wrecked my mouth	Synchronizing your computer clock to an atomic clock	blowjob	Robocop
Tad Williams	Zeroth Law of Robotics	soccer	Cogjoy
The Message	statistics

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