Friday, May 21, 2004

More about that Star Trek episode
A reader, Hillel (Sabba) Markowitz, explains:

The point of the episode was that when Captain Kirk destroyed the computers that automatically calculated "casualties" and the "casualty implementation stations" the other side's computers were programmed to fire real missiles to punish "noncompliance" with the treaty.

As soon as he took action, both sides immediately began frantically trying to disable their missile strike capability as they realized what had happened.

Somehow, I do not think that this would occur with our current adversaries.