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Since you originally brought up AA, though:

The only mentions of blur on Wikipedia's AA Page relate to photography (near the top of the page) and an separate operation done before resampling an image (in a comparison against proper AA).

But, Wikipedia is a horrible source, so I won't leave you with just that. So, here's another, along with an explanation of the Nyquist–Shannon Sampling Theorum, and one more not from Wikipedia (PDF warning). I didn't cherry pick these, these were top results for simple searches on the subject (and also all items I've already read and understood at points far preceding this argument).

Clearly, having read and understood any factual materials on the subject, AA is, as it relates to digital signals, not a form of blur. Your link (which is very basic and dumbed-down for the graphics card consumer; a poor choice for an actual technical argument) doesn't disagree with that stance, either.

The scene is still alive and well, and there are still Amiga demos to be found without great searching. Pouet.net is a great place to begin. For more general eye catching demos take a look at scene.org

from Pixar-sponsored scene.org, check out (2011) Numb Res by Fairlight (yes, that one) and CNCD; requires DX10 (or check out 2010's Agenda Circling Forth without the GPU-crushing endbit)... Epsilon (2011, 64k) for tasty ray tracying (or google "pouet photon race 2") ... (2010, best effects) FR-063 also has GPU physics. and (2009, 4k) Elevated has an insane amount of content for 4k.

off-scene/pouet, there's Separable Subsurface Scattering (Real Time). semi-raytracingish, there's Rigid Gems

Not to mention all the crackers and hackers with BBSs came before and spawned the Demoscene to one up eachother's cracked intro screens, and coined the competitive term N-Day, eg: 3-day or 0-Day (three day or zero day -- meaning a software (or game) that had its copy protection (DRM) cracked on 3rd day or 0th day (release), thus devs didn't know about the hole and it needed to be patched immediately) all originally in the pursuit of sharing files...

Will a torrent server operator wake to the beeping terminal alarm "Archive Not Present" and search frantically to swap in a different disk/drive just so you can access the warez or porn you're looking for before you log off the BBS at 2:00am? Now THAT is a service; For what compensation? Just to meet folks and share common interests -- You're browsing the files when suddenly: Your screen splits in two "Sysop Wants To Chat" and you chat about some rare games / demos / warez for a bit, seeing each keypress as they're typed, much more personal than today's revisionable chat progs... Ah good times.

File sharing has been around since files. Torrents, eMule, Usenet, etc. are just the latest incarnations. Seems like the smart thing to do would be to join them and leverage the "pirates" (who are the biggest fans) as word of mouth advertising, I mean, considering that "you can't beat 'em". That's what we're seeing in some new-media, e.g., Indiegame the Movie uploaded their film to TPB with a scroller that appears ~3 times at the bottom asking you to buy a copy if you like it so they can keep making films... That's smart, but the scroller text could have been more wobbly and colorful IMO... kids these days...

I get your post is specifically about torrents, but if you're just picking some arbitrary point in the past to say "these sharers came before", if you ask me. To say they're the "last man standing" is laughable at best. File sharing evolves, they're just another notable part of its history, more relevant due to being more recent and powered by a global network, not limited by local calling area codes, you know, like the warez rooms on IRC w/ direct transfer requests... I feel that so many people get caught up in the present day struggles that they forget sharing files is something that has always been a part of digital culture.

You can't win the war on sharing information -- That's what makes us human. Making laws against human nature is how you create a police state...

http://www.scene.org/

They seem to still exist

Members of Future Crew turned into Remedy Entertainment later on. The Demoscene is awesome.

A number of people who work in the industry today came from the demoscene.

Mikko "Memon" Mononen, founder of Demoscene group Moppi Productions and developer of the legendary Demopaja Demotool, is a programmer at Crytek, located in Frankfurt, Germany. He expanded the company-owned CryEngine with spectacular effects.

Graphics artist Xenusion of the group Plastic, an exceptionally gifted graphician, participated in demos such as 195/95 and Final Audition. He's been working on the fascinating world of Crysis as a concept artist.

Speaking of which, check out this awesome All Your Base Flash video!

Things they have in common: I've seen them both before Slashdot enlightened me...

• This makes a feature I paid for on my $1000 USD receiver for "multiple zones" absolutely useless. That very same feature is also crippled by default by Sony such that *only analog* video and audio can be piped to the other zones.

Charging extra for "digital download" for content I have already purchased a license for

• I've intentionally not purchased many blu-ray discs because of the absurd crypto on them preventing me from watching that content on something besides a severely locked down combination of HDCP compliant players and display sets. When blu-ray's crypto is 100% broken like CSS for DVDs, then I'll start purchasing all my favorite shows in high definition on blu-ray. Until then, I'm downloading shows that I watch on TV in the US via BitTorrent.

Cable Companies that set the CCI bytes such that TV shows can't be transferred from one DVR to another

• http://www.zatznotfunny.com/2009-09/tivo-and-the-cci-byte/ Cox Communications (my cable TV and cablemodem internet provider until I get Verizon FiOS) sets the CCI bit to prevent me from moving content off my TiVo. FiOS doesn't set these CCI bytes, and permits "multi room viewing" on both TiVo DVRs and their own FiOS DVRs. I've been working approximately a 66 hour work week for the past month and a half, and I can't be sure that when I have time between work and sleep to watch a TV show that it will be present on my DVR because other programs have been recorded and replaced it. So, back to BitTorrent.

MPAA/RIAA/friends suing their consumers instead of getting with the program and adopting the new world that they find themselves in

• I stopped buying CDs entirely. I stopped buying music entirely. I now find music that I enjoy much more than the cookie cutter "formula" stuff I hear on the radio that artists put on their own website available for free. And you know what? I paypal them money as a thank you for producing the music. Direct cash to the artist. If you like ambient/chillout electronica, go to http://www.scene.org/ and look up the artist Xerxes.

Take away features with a software update

• Yep, I'm pissed that instead of Sony fixing a software problem with a patch, they remove a feature all together. When was the last time that Microsoft told you that they were retroactivly removing support for Mice and all pointing devices in Microsoft Windows because of a Click-Jacking vulnerability? Fix the hardware or software bug you made and don't negativly impact your consumers, or live with the fact that users will get what they want out of what they purchased. Licenses be damned, I'll take a soldering iron to my Sony PS3 if I damn please.

Oh lord. Not a lot of scene folks around, are there.

If you missed it, for video versions recorded at the party digitally(via HDMI I believe) in 2300, 4000 and 8000 kbps, all AVI XVid, go to :

http://scene.org/

and search for 'elevated' . Presto. Lots of mirrors. High speed. Have fun!

Get open watcom c++ http://www.openwatcom.org/ and start here: http://www.scene.org/dir.php

A few years back there was a smallish competition to code Knight's Tour in x86 assembler (limited to 8x8 board, though). The winning entries were only 46 bytes compiled to a DOS .com file. Fond memories, despite my entry being almost 60 bytes of bloat ;)

Clicky here

I found it odd that it took 1.8 MB of source code to compile to an interpreter that used to fit in 8K of ROM space.

Especially when you consider that Farbrausch were able to create a near-complete c64 emulator for Windows in under 64K a couple of years ago.

So what does that other 1.74M go to?

Proceedural generation is NOT compression.

Check out some of the things around this site, starting from this page if you're interested in more stuff like this.

http://www.scene.org/misc/best64kintros.php

Check out the Debris megademo by Farbrausch. It's a music and animation demo whose executable is under 200kb but procedurally generates its textures and shadow maps (totalling almost 1GB) before playing. Artistically it's beautiful to watch, but that compression ratio is what really blows my mind.

download Debris by Farbrausch

Assembly the demo party or 80x86 assembly? Either way, pouët.net and scene.org might be useful.

http://scene.org/

] CALL -151
* 300: AD 30 C0 20 ED FD 4C 00 03
* 300G

This is:

300: LDA $C030 ; Toggle the speaker
303: JSR $FDED ; Print (random) contents of accumulator to screen
306: JMP $0300 ; And start all over again

Makes a wonderful visual clickfest on your screen that gets annoying. Imagine a school lab filled with machines running that. :) Last time I posted this, someone provided the relative branch alternative, thus saving a byte. However, I remember the above code from 20 years ago and that's the ways I likes it! If there's any demo competitions restricted to programs with a single digit number of bytes, that's my entry.

I think my favourite of all time would have to be Sonnet. The 3state guys did an incredible job on this one. 7 minutes of brilliant coding, all in 64 kilobytes!

More really good demoes are compiled at my maa.org article, 64K or less. http://www.maa.org/editorial/mathgames/mathgames_08_16_04.html The main demoscene sites are better though: http://www.scene.org/ and http://www.pouet.net/ . One of my own recent favorites is a 4K demo, synchroplastikum http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=20967

There's actually a lot you can do with 640K:

http://www.textmodegames.com/download/index.html

64K
4K
96K Game Compo

And who could forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

  Of course, these are talking about disk space, and not memory. But still pretty cool.

There's actually a lot you can do with 640K:

http://www.textmodegames.com/download/index.html

64K
4K
96K Game Compo

And who could forget http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger

  Of course, these are talking about disk space, and not memory. But still pretty cool.

Code is organic by nature, because humans tend to evolve things in an organic way. As such, keeping code in good health requires a lot of attention, which costs money. Automatic refactoring tools may be evil for VCSes, but they are the most valuable tools we have to keep code in shape.

Code is also (usually) a collaborative exercise, bringing lots of different ideas and principles to the table. That is why software "Patterns" are so valuable, so that people can communicate about code in a structured and compatible way.

Code is something that no one has time for. Visual programming 4th generation languages and Functional Programming are ways to get the job done faster, easier and with less of a hassle, and more docs to read. Both are still way off the target goal, but in the last few years some nice tools have developed.

Code is bound to run on something, and that "something" is changing all the time. You can't check in and label your machine in your VCS, which means you have to try to make it run as good as one can within certain constraints. This is where the virtual machine has helped make a lot of progress.

Code will always be needed, though the format and logic behind it will keep changing and morphing. The battles between speed and memory, cost and ownership, data or function, abstraction or generalization, top-down or bottom-up, these battles will always exist. In the end, writing an executable program that does the job is just a very sophisticated search in a search-space that we still need to define better.

That said, check out Variform by kewlers for no apparent good reason, other than to look at code as an artform. Ps. There's tons more where that came from.

Cheers!

You may also consider the demoscene. Besides the impressive skills in programming, they often include killer music too. Or if you don't want to run programs just to hear it, you can go to nectarine radio too.

http://awards.scene.org/nominees.php?cat=10

There's plenty of very impressive stuff done in 4k, far more so than changing a variable and a tray icon.

It's somewhat moot either way since you're using libraries, whether they be Win32 or DirectX..... it's not REALLY 4k of code.

http://www.scene.org/redhound/AYB.swf ;)

The lecturer is no native English speaker. So sometimes you have to replace the word 'base' with 'scheduler'. The clip shows deep insight into what Con Kolivas really feels is going on right now.

http://www.scene.org/redhound/AYB.swf/

• Kahvi Collective -- ambient / electronic / chillout; 700 tracks, all free as in beer, mix of ogg and mp3 (much of the archive is available in both). This free music is the only stuff I've insisted on paying for in the past year :P
• The Scene had some great backing music; each episode has links to artists' sites, which tend to have more of the same, for free. I can't seem to find season 1 though, and season 2 sucked :(
• scene.org (a different scene to the one above) has a huge archive of demoscene music; typically electronic / dance

I'm sure there must be more huge archives of free music, and genres other than electronic; anybody know of any?

How come nobody mentions Hornet? It's been distributing free songs online since 1987! In addition, there are other free sites:

Kosmic: http://kosmic.org/
The MOD archive: http://modarchive.org/
scene.org: http://scene.org/

How come nobody mentions Hornet? It's been distributing free songs online since 1987! In addition, there are other free sites:

Kosmic: http://kosmic.org/
The MOD archive: http://modarchive.org/
scene.org: http://scene.org/

The demoscene DOES still exist, even on Amiga, Atari ST and so on. Just see sites like Pouet and scene.org. The focus has obviously moved away a bit from pushing the hardware, instead creating very visually appealing productions.

If you realy want to report accurate info about the demo scene:

Those sound loops come from FastTracker and FastTracker2 (FT2 is now free !), their file extensions are respectively ".mod" and ".xm".

Those kind of file are called "modules" (.mod => module, .xm => extended module).

The best way to play them now is with the BASS winamp input plugin

If you want to try this out, download modules from all Class Rips by maktone....

To be fair, of course there's a big C64 demo scene with C64 sound loops (.sid files), but you don't actualy find them bundled in PC warez.

The upshot was that the M2 code was measurably faster, smaller, and on examination better optimized.

Optimized for speed, or space?

I'd like to know more about what the problem was, how the M2 solved it, how the C coders solved it, etc., before deciding what such a test supposedly means. At the very least it might teach some C coders some better techniques.

C is a relatively low-level language, and that is its advantage, IMHO. However, it is harder to code in a lower level language, requires more experience and knowledge of the compiler and the hardware. It's the next best thing to a good macro assembler and enough time to work on it. :-)

On the other hand, it is true that modern processors have capabilities that most programmers are unaware and do not understand the effects it and their compiler will have on their coding constructs. This was not true originally, when many programmers were familiar with the machine language of the processor they were coding for, even when writing in C.

When "hello world" in a modern language produces a binary that is tens or hundreds of K in size however, I can't help thinking that "optimization" has come to mean "optimized to waste memory and CPU time so that dealers can sell processor and memory upgrades."

As a sanity check on the "new high-level languages are better" concept, pick a recent highly rated demo from http://scene.org/ and recode it in your favorite new language-- then compare the size & performance and see how things fare. When your language consistently comes out ahead then I'll likely agree...

ago.

http://www.phlow.de/netlabels/index.php/Main_Page
http://starfrosch.ch/
ftp://ftp.de.scene.org/pub/music/

Only the former ruling industry hasn't
recongized it yet...

4 years ago a 3d version of the intro was shown at mekkasymposium: http://scene.org/dir.php?dir=%2Fparties%2F2002%2Fm ekkasymposium02%2Fwild%2Fshown/ file yellow3d*, multiple formats available.

Just to let you know, there's still a vivid commodore demoscene (evolved from intros), producing enormous creative output. some links: http://scene.org/ - repository for all demoscene stuff; the bigger parties like breakpoint and assembly have c64/amiga compo categories http://scene.org/file.php?id=289244 - unbelievable amiga demo from 2004

Just to let you know, there's still a vivid commodore demoscene (evolved from intros), producing enormous creative output. some links: http://scene.org/ - repository for all demoscene stuff; the bigger parties like breakpoint and assembly have c64/amiga compo categories http://scene.org/file.php?id=289244 - unbelievable amiga demo from 2004

Check these out:

http://www.phlow.de/netlabels/index.php/Main_Page
http://www.archive.org/audio/netlabels.php
http://numia.scene.org/n2/yellowpages.php
http://www.rowolo.de/labels
http://www.acowo.org/labels.php

BTW, I have an even better one, "Legoland" by Phobic, from The Gathering '99, but I can't find a good download section on gathering.org (there at least used to be one) and I haven't found the file elsewhere on the web. I would upload it if it wasn't for 1) copyright considerations 2) my crap Internet connection would hardly cope with even one download (100 kbps DSL) - I'm not even thinking about giving the slashdot crowd a link...

Is there a website or blog that you would recommend to be the best for Demoscene information? I already know about Scene.org and a few others, but I'm not sure which is the most popular. I first saw the Demoscene mentioned in an article about an upcoming game called Spore. I asked a friend of mine who is heavily into Linux and has been in the computer industry for years. I was surprised to find that he never heard of it. I'm curious about finding any local groups.

Try this one: http://scene.org/file.php?id=257607

The demoscene, a collection of artistist nerds making cool little animations, spawned something of great importance: the netlabel scene.

Now I'm not sure if the demoscene is as large as it was when I was a part of it (future crew days), the netlabels are bursting at the seams and there is A LOT of high quality music in many different genres available. Several promiment artists have their roots in the netlabel scene when trackers were still #1 (Fast Tracker, Scream Tracker, Impulse Tracker), but now adays, while trackers are still in use (Buzz, MPT, Renoise), there are a lot of home studios and garage bands releasing music through netlabels as mp3s and oggs.

Thinnerism
Ronin Collective
Camomille
Kahvi
One


There are also two main repositories where netlabel releases are uploaded, available at:
Scene.Org
Archive.Org's netlabel repository

These netlabels are starting to be taken a lot more seriously these days, and has even attracted corporate attention. Mercedez Benz's "Soundtrack of the Autobahn" contained several prominent netlabel artists.

While 90% of the music available is electronic in nature, there are still some artists (including myself) that are hitting up other genres. It's just a matter of looking. Some of these artists go on tours, and in some cases, the netlabel itself sponsors their artists for tours.

So for people who want to seek non corporate tainted music, the netlabel scene is where to look.

I think it has more to do with intent. If your goal is to design a program or build a network to accomplish a certain task, that is engineering. But if your goal is to make an impression on the viewer, to say something, to induce emotion, to do something other than just run network cables or perform a calculation, then that's art. If it also happens to be a usable program or network, then it might be functional art.

Look at the demoscene. For many years programmers have created demos, which are generally ten minute graphical presentations set to music. They're sort of like music videos. The good ones take a huge amount of skill to create, both in coding and design. A good demo has aesthetic and often musical value and has a strong effect on the viewer. Demos are definitely art; they just happen to involve a great deal of technical skill as well.

Two good demoscene-related sites are http://www.ojuice.net/ and http://www.scene.org/ .

-John

I'm sure this is considered art, while it's still 'nothing but code': http://www.scene.org/awards.php

Don't forget scene.org.

If you're tired of Terminator 3, Matrix 3 and LOTR 3, there's always http://www.scene.org/

Don't forget Assembly.

The Gathering (and really, how hard is it to put the official URL in the summary?) is primarily a demoparty, not a lan party. I'd say that this would better belong in a different section. Its not just about games and it has never been about games!

Instead of just oogling over the gaming competitions, take a look at the compo winners (hell, all of the entries) and see what kind of artwork can be done with computers.

Ignore the games and appreciate the demos. Keep the spirit of the demoscene alive.

When I think of "the scene" I think of the demo scene, as in http://www.scene.org/. What scene is it? The piracy scene?

Surely if you're into the Demoscene you're aware that your scene has origins in the piracy scene.

Every scene calls their own scene "the scene." When I think of "the scene" I think of the demo scene, as in http://www.scene.org/. What scene is it? The piracy scene?