Are You Ready To Get Your Geek On?

Are you geek chic?

The WOPR (War Operation Plan Response) is a (fictional?) machine that calculates all of the possible outcomes of various types of warfare, and if the nuclear football is activated, and The Button is pressed, it bypasses those guys with their keys in the missile silos and...

Anyway, I've only been able to find it in one place. http://wopr.adelphos.org/ But if you wan't to talk to "Joshua", you'll need telnet. It's an included utility on most Windows, Linux, and Mac computers. (Hehe. Mac 'computer')

Get to a command line.

In Windows, do:

  color 0a
  telnet
  open
  wopr.adlephos.org

It's essentially the same for Linux, except that for each version, there are different ways to change the display color. I'm old school, so I like green (or amber) on black.

For Macs... I don't know. Google it. 98% chance that all Mac users are hipsters, or geriatrics. I made that up.

How about an Android phone? If it's rooted, install a terminal emulator (change it to green on black, punk!)

It's a little trickier, but let's work through it.

In a terminal emulator on Android do:

  ping wopr.adelphos.org



Once the hostname has been resolved to an IPv4 IP address, press your escape key, and make note of the IP! (Your escape key is probably the Volume Down buttone, and the 'c' key, at the same time.

It will look something like this:

 Pinging wopr.adlephos.org [216.146.35.99] with 32 bytes of data:
 Control-C
 ^C


Now that you know the IP, you can continue.

In a terminal emulator on Android do:

  Su
  busybox telnet 216.146.35.99

YOU'RE IN THE MAINFRAME!

Greetings Professor Falcon. Would you like to play a game?

The firmware update is in the coffee machine.

There are a lot of fun things that you can do with telnet, if you're geek enough. Here's a good place to start: http://telnet.org/htm/places.htm One of my favorites is Blinkenlights.

Try towel.blinkenlights.nl for an ASCII version of Star Wars: A New Hope. Need an excuse?

The Bastard Operator from Hell has got your back! Try towel.blinkenlights.nl:666 for your custom excuse!


Addendum:

Microsoft is far from perfect, and they really screwed up when the left Telnet out of Vista and 7!

Users of Windows 7 or Windows Vista (lol) may need to add Telnet to their machine. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771275(WS.10).aspx says to go to a command prompt, and do:
  /iu:"TelnetClient";

It worked for me, but I also had to follow the steps on this page: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc771275(WS.10).aspx#bkmk_installVista

To install Telnet Client on Windows 7 or Windows Vista
Click Start, and then click Control Panel.

On the Control Panel Home page, click Programs.

In the Programs and Features section, click Turn Windows features on or off.

If the User Account Control dialog box appears, confirm that the action it displays is what you want, and then click Continue.

In the Windows Features list, select Telnet Client, and then click OK.


Good Luck!