Computers: Flying the User-Friendly Skies

Walter Mitty pilots pack up their programs and take off

Actor John Travolta was in the middle of a business meeting with a computer software publisher when someone mentioned Flight Simulator II, a program that puts Walter Mitty pilots into the cockpit of a single-engine airplane. An amateur aviator who flies a small jet out of his ranch in Santa Barbara, Calif., Travolta could not resist taking the disc out for a quick spin. Much to the publisher's dismay, Travolta was still at the computer two hours later, doing daredevil stunts 5,000 feet above Los Angeles in an imaginary Piper 181 Cherokee...

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