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Whatever it's relative shortcomings (monochrome, no fancy animations), the tech-house installation had one thing that they didn't have in Poland: Steve Wozniac

Almost a decade ago, Technology House at Brown University did a similar thing to the Sciences Library. The display was larger (in pixels) on a slightly taller building, but only monochrome.

It also played Tetris.

They would be ripping off Brown students. You know, the largest playable Tetris game in the western hemisphere. Oh yeah, and it ran on Linux. :-P

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Brown is the color of poo. - Chris
Yes, yes it is. - Brian

Several similar projects preceded the Berlin Blinkenlights.

La Bastille: A Tech House Installation, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
10 x 10 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/ [techhouse.org]
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/04/16/2148245.shtm l [slashdot.org]

Marnix 2001, Brussels, Belgium
52 x 7 matrix of RGB lights
Links:
http://marnix2001.bbl.be/ [marnix2001.bbl.be]

MIT's Green Building Sound (VU) Meter, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
9 x 1 matrix of red lights
Links:
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1993/green_bldg _vu_meter/green_bldg_vu_meter.html [mit.edu]

Clickscape 98, Linz, Austria
13 x 8 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.servus.at/clickscape98/ [servus.at]

Poli-uni students dorm, Warsaw, Poland
14 x 16 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.astercity.net/~kvas/riviera.jpg [astercity.net]

Ignoring the fact they picked a bad host, their recent actions are more to blame.

On his site claims the same old tired suff the news group advises one not to do. He also encuraged his fellow mononic troll followers to find every thing the can about SPEWS so that he could sign SPEWS up for spam.

He claimed to have posted in the group, when he never did so. He has now resorted to writing FUD "articles" about SPEWS.

His moronic troll follower flooded the news group, which unlike the other geocitties type sites they encurage their followers to abuse, it was a bad idea to pick a fight with NANAE because they could fight back. This got them in perminit local blacklists they will never get out.

Umm, SPEWS does give people time to reconfigure their servers and react since they start with the spammer's IP. They only increase it if the ISP ignores complaints and continues to support the spammer. Since the site is being DoSed, here is a faq that sums up how they act:

"It starts with just the IP space of the spammer, and over a period of time, puts more and more financial pressure on $BADISP by listing more and more of their IP space until $BADISP gains clue..."

And if you want to know why the group responds the way it does, read the start of that faq.

Umm, SPEWS does give people time to reconfigure their servers and react since they start with the spammer's IP. They only increase it if the ISP ignores complaints and continues to support the spammer. Since the site is being DoSed, here is a faq that sums up how they act:

"It starts with just the IP space of the spammer, and over a period of time, puts more and more financial pressure on $BADISP by listing more and more of their IP space until $BADISP gains clue..."

And if you want to know why the group responds the way it does, read the start of that faq.

During an underground exploration, a few friends and I also came across this phenomenon. I don't remember if we saw any on the ground, but here's a very dripping piece.

Actually it wasn't MIT but Brown University. The did it on the side of the library building, by putting chrismas light behinf the windows. It was put by these guys, Techhouse Here is the official site.

Back when it was running I was a URI student, so I lived in the neigborhood. They were very nice guys and even let me play for a little while.

Brown University built a thing just like this and created the world's largest Tetris game. Steve Wozniak, a confessed Tetris addict, even went to play on it.

I think it was only a 10 * 12 matrix though.. so perhaps Blinkenlights' attempt will beat their record.. depends on the height of the tower rather than the resolution I guess.

Enjoy.

The guys responsible for the force feedback Pong were also involved in that giant tetris thing two years ago, which was reported here at the time.

I gathered similar projects into a single comment. I know that this is redundant, strictly speaking, but I'll post anyway. It's much more accessible this way. I'm knocking on the karma cap anyway, so no, this isn't whoring, just risking to get modded down for redundancy. Enough blabber, here we go:

Chaos Computer Club Blinkenlights, Berlin, Germany
18 x 8 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.blinkenlights.de/

KPN Building, Rotterdam, Netherlands
22 x 44 matrix of green lights
Links:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/makiueda/climbman/index-e.h tml
http://www.blezer2.myweb.nl/rotterdam2000/building s/kpn.html

La Bastille: A Tech House Installation, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
10 x 10 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/04/16/2148245.shtm l

Marnix 2001, Brussels, Belgium
52 x 7 matrix of RGB lights
Links:
http://marnix2001.bbl.be/

TU-Delft Electro Technology SMS-Display, Delft, Netherlands
264 lights (unknown configuration), displayed mobile phone short messages
Links:
http://etv.its.tudelft.nl/commissies/lustrum/stunt .php

TU-Delft Electro Technology Tetris, Delft, Netherlands
10 x 15 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://etv.et.tudelft.nl/commissies/lustrum/90/eng lish.html

MIT's Green Building Sound (VU) Meter, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
9 x 1 matrix of red lights
Links:
http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1993/green_bldg _vu_meter/green_bldg_vu_meter.html

Clickscape 98, Linz, Austria
13 x 8 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.servus.at/clickscape98/

Poli-uni students dorm, Warsaw, Poland
14 x 16 matrix of white lights
Links:
http://www.astercity.net/~kvas/riviera.jpg

Tetris for big-thinking people:
La Bastille: A Tech House Art Installation
That installation was up only a few days, though.

(a marketing rep lent Techhouse at Brown University an XBox so I got a chance on the system)

Halo is basically a pc game on a console, but the controls were quite good, despite it being a FPS.

The 1 player mode was short. I am not sure how many hours it took, but it was easily completed in a day.

Multiplay is cool. Its kinda fun to jump into a jeep and roll over your opponent, or even better, hitting his jeep just before he manages to get in, making his jeep roll him over (which counts as a suicide).

Anyhow, the graphics were damned nice - which is a good sign for microsoft - that a first gen game looked so good. Maybe most impressive is how smooth the game ran with so many explotions, and moving characfters, and such. Of course, our 65" HDTV helped the experience a bit.

I really wish I could get some nice pc net action on the game, though. I suppose the xbox wouldn't sell if halo came out for the pc. Oh well.

contact techhouse (those people that put tetris on the sciences library at Brown) and we would be (most likely) happy to take it (our server is only a 233Mhz!!!)

yup. =)

Whether it is using a 486 to play Tetris on the Science Library or set up a doom cluster or if we are really bored, dropping it at drop night. No matter what speed it is, we have a use for it. I mean, for a place where our server was only just upgraded from a p133 to a p233 3 days ago, and just cause we could, we do quite well with what we get.

Donate. It will go to good use. I promise. One of our next projects is a nice little developement linux cluster so that 4 or 5 people can sit down together and work on a project. We could use any donations you can give up.

(In all seriousness, if you are in the RI area, email me at j_hasbani @ (no spam) yahoo.com, and we would be glad to take what you got. One of our members is the head of BRUMUG, Brown Univ Mac Users Group, and she would happily take as many macs as you've got too.)

And btw, I am VERY willing to bet you will /. our server. That will suck.

if you want to see the movies on this site, try the following url instead of the link on the main page.

http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/movie s/

They are very low quality, grainy movies with pattern tests, a "Hello world" test and stuff. Their site says that were not able to film an actual game yet, so they will post a movie of an actual game soon.

I suggest everyone wait a day or two until the initial /. effect wears down, and they'll perhaps a Tetris game movie will be online. They do however have a pretty neat live-still webcam that you can sometimes see Tetris pieces here

http://bastilleweb.techhouse.org/live.ht ml.