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Celebrating its 20th anniversary the Chaos Computer Club has made a special present to itself and the city of Berlin. From September 12th, 2001 to February 23rd, 2002, the famous "Haus des Lehrers" (house of the teacher) office building at Berlin Alexanderplatz has been enhanced to become world's biggest interactive computer display: Blinkenlights (a term defined by the Jargon File).

The upper eight floors of the building were transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 front windows. A computer controlled each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels.

During the night, a constantly growing number of animations could be seen. But there was an interactive component as well: you were able to play the old arcade classic Pong on the building using your mobile phone and you could place your own loveletters on the screen as well.

Blinkenlights was up and running at until February 23rd, 2002, running 23 weeks and 5 days in total. During that period, we constantly improved its feature set. Even now, work on Blinkenlights is not completed. The software has been released as Free Software under GPL. Our documentation video shows all aspects of the project in 11 minutes.

For the friends of Blinkenlights we have prepared a little trailer movie [QuickTime 5 Format, 3,2 MB] [MPEG-1 Format, 3 MB]. If you want the soundtrack of the trailer have a look here.

Overview

Using your mobile phone you could play Pong with Blinkenlights or your friend. The program Blinkenpaint enables you to create your own animations allowing you to take part in our contest.

For the nerds there is a description of the Blinkenlights Movie format and a couple of nice tools to display and convert your animations. A look behind the scenes reveals some technical details of our system.

A list of press reports about Blinkenlights und a couple of interesting links to other projects complete the overview. Get a regular update on what is going on with the project on our News page.

WebCam

Those who wanted to have a remote view on the building were able to have a look at the pictures of our webcam. The WebCam is no longer in operation. We are going to publish the WebCam picture archive here soon.

The BerlinOnline WebCam looked at Blinkenlights as well, although it was a bit more distant than our cam. Maybe you find some nice pictures in their archive as well.

Contact

Although the installation itself is now dismantled, the Blinkenlights project group is still active. Your contact for inquiries of all kinds is Tim Pritlove contact@blinkenlights.de.

If you are interested getting information on our future activities, please send a mail to blinkenlights-update-subscribe@lists.ccc.de.

I remember that too. Apparently it is now legendary...

The September that never ended

oh, the blinkenlights has a long history!
check it out here!

Differing reports on how close it was to completion. Some said it was 90% there. Other reports said at least another year of work.

How do *you* the correct user, find out which AP is correct?

What keeps the wardriver from doing that?

How does this affect performance?

how does this affect range?

If it doesn't affect either of the two above, then how does it work?

Not swearing helps. . . .

It is not the time spent on them if you are just spewing out of your rectum, you have to CONVINCE the other side that you are right.

Think convincing arguments back from your primary education.

What? Weren't paying any attention in Elem/Mid/High school? That could be your problem right there. . . .

Seriously though, my ass capped out at 50 karma soon as I started COMPARING and CONTRASTING Microsoft and Linux, hell I didn't have to go out and bash either one of them, I just had to state how it was (or at least how I saw it and then convince others that is how it was. :) )

Take some basic improv classes, they always help, and then some poetry classes, Blicken Lights always help, even if they are just verbular. (damnit I am having fun bastardizing the English Language tonight.)

And above all else, fuck, just say whatever the hell you want to say, shit some of the idle pure CRAP that I have posted has gotten modded up to +5, even the shit that has been buried four or five layers deep in a thread has gotten modded up before.

Oh yah, and ALWAYS, I repeat, ALWAYS read the article first.

Learn to speed read if you must, trust me, it helps.

Read other comments before you post yours, odds are that witty retort you thought off will get a -2 redudent because it is exactly that, redudent along with the 4 other people above you who have already said it.

It is easier to get a +5 ---> 2 ---> +3 starting a thread, and to get a +4 staying at a +4 replying to an already existing post. You have more of a chance of sounding half assed intellgent if you already let somebody else do the thinking for you, all you have to do is follow the post to its logical conclusion (or even a bit beyond, heh) and then you can pretty much spout off whatever propaganda you want to (great for spreading Memes which is what I see being online as partialy being all about anyways. :) ) and still get modded up + something or other.

Especialy if you restate your base underlying "who the fucking hell could possibly disagree with that" opinion at the end of your post yet again.

Swear less.

HHOS? Really, have you actually tried this, and do the bars care when your ID isn't readable in their scanner?

uuh...NO. they arent a backup medium. ever read the warranty information on the box ? they are most certainly NOT a backup medium. CDR's, AIT/DLT tapes are a backup medium.

uuh...NO. CDRs and magnetic tapes have lifespans measured in mere decades.

This is a backup medium. If it can't last 10,000 years submerged in salt water or in a mountain cave, I'm not interested.

(HHOS)

Actually what you're referring to is Finagle's Law.

Murphy's Law states:
If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Actually what you're referring to is Finagle's Law.

Murphy's Law states:
If there are two or more ways to do something, and one of those ways can result in a catastrophe, then someone will do it.

Why did you capitalize and add the (TM) to Real Work(TM). I've also seen that kind of thing done to Good Thing(TM) and Bad Thing(TM). What do the caps and (TM) mean???

• TM
• Good thing
• Bad Thing

Why did you capitalize and add the (TM) to Real Work(TM). I've also seen that kind of thing done to Good Thing(TM) and Bad Thing(TM). What do the caps and (TM) mean???

• TM
• Good thing
• Bad Thing

Why did you capitalize and add the (TM) to Real Work(TM). I've also seen that kind of thing done to Good Thing(TM) and Bad Thing(TM). What do the caps and (TM) mean???

• TM
• Good thing
• Bad Thing

Why did you capitalize and add the (TM) to Real Work(TM). I've also seen that kind of thing done to Good Thing(TM) and Bad Thing(TM). What do the caps and (TM) mean???

• TM
• Good thing
• Bad Thing

You're not serious... are you? (Hmm.. Perhaps HHOK or HHOS could have been appended to your post)

You're not serious... are you? (Hmm.. Perhaps HHOK or HHOS could have been appended to your post)

• Only on slashdot can one call social interaction social engineering :)

• Only on slashdot can one call social interaction social engineering :)

Yes, it's a meta announcement, if you will ;).

Alex Bischoff