Get a Grip on LAN Parties

Eclipse127 writes "If you're a LAN party go'er, you know how much it sucks to drag all your equipment in and out of a LAN party. Bulky cases, tripping over keyboard cords, dropping things on the floor.. sound familiar? Well, Boomgames has the goods on the Gear Grip Pro. Looks pretty sweet, and unlike most of my toys, actually useful.."

Comments

Re:[OT] - News?

[jandrese]

You might try submitting this to a dedicated health news discussion board. Slashdot isn't really focused on this sort of thing. Slashdot is more focused towards new Computer (Linux) toys, patent/copyright on technology news, and some various geeky news bites. You topic was really a little too broad and off-topic for Slashdot IMHO.
Unfortunatly, this is just my opinion. Everybody seems to have a different idea of what Slashdot is, and a lot of them get rather annoyed when the Slashdot editors don't do exactly what they expect.

Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

Pardon my ignorance

[RenQuanta]

but what exactly is a "LAN party"?

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[Jeffrey Baker]

Hey get over yourself already. LAN parties are a lot more fun than just sitting in your study alone playing games. Capture the flag games are vastly more interesting when each team is in a room with each other, communicating efficiently, and everyone has a 1ms ping. LAN parties are certainly a big improvement over the stlye of party that seems to engage most 20-30 year-old Americans: getting together to drink and make vapid conversation, then having the least drunk draggin the most drunk back to their homes.

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[walnut]

In my experience, a LAN party is where a bunch of 20- and 30-suffereings raid their friends house (which is overly wired because his company was bought out and his stocks went through the roof), bringing all manner of electronic contraption, but most importantly their computers.

There is a brief frenzy of activity where people erect card tables, run to office max for additional hubs and NICs, set up their machines, plug in their monitors and so forth... As people come in, the game of "monitor envy" begins, where those with 17"s see the 19"s and the 19"s get dwarfed by the 21"s, and the 21"s are envious of the flat 17"s (because they lugged a 75lb monitor from 1/10 of a mile down the street due to parking). People show off their palm pilots, their internet phones, their TiVo, and much geek envy begins.

Finally, someone who either doesn't have all the toys, is a Mechanical Engineer (and hence not quite as tech envious), or has seen them all becomes bored and says "Beer?"

Ah, now here the kegs of Guinness come forth from the kitchen, and the Mechanical Engineers begin to explain the intracacies of the guinness keggerator, the use of the second cooler, and the beer begins to flow.

So then the games begin, as patches are downloaded, game terms are agreed upon, and teams are set. Girlfriends and fiancees look on with disgust, then proceed to watch Wallace and Grommit. We watch as neophyte quake players take on the guy who knows exactly where the railgun spawns. A penalty is assessed to the "God player" and he is forced to drink more beer. The game changes to Starcraft, then to Tribes, then to Halflife, then to something else. The game constantly changes and evolves. Breaks are taken for Guinness, to watch portions of Wallace and Grommit and internet shorts like Troops.

No victor is declared, no tears are shed when the game is over, and everybody leaves happy. Even fiancees have a good time.
--

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[cavemanf16]

Haha! Read your story and I have to admit that I've seen the same sort of thing happen all the time when my 'bro hosts a LAN party. Although he has made it a LOT smoother than the first LAN party he had.

For one, he runs a local Linux server which auto-assigns IP's to all the machines as they connect. He also made sure to call his workgroup 'workgroup', since that's the default Windows setting and most people don't know how to change it. He also sends out an email about 2 weeks prior, with all the 'rules' for the party. That way, everyone knows which games will be played, what time to come, *exactly* what hardware to bring, etc. Our biggest party so far involved 10 people (all playing!). Five in the dining room of the house, 5 in the basement.

By the way, if you're thinking of doing this, make sure you have lots of fans and windows available. 10 machines + 1 server in a house make for an awfully warm house. :)

As for this GearGrip, I don't really see the need for it, as it's a short hike to lug my CPU into my car, then back out of it and into the house. What I need is a cheap, large (19"), high res flat screen monitor. That's the back breaker when it comes to LAN parties.

[OT] - News?

[SnowDog_2112]

I'm sure this will be quickly modded down, but ... is this worthy of Slashdot? This is not the first time I've seen this case (if not this one, one _exactly_ like it by the same company).

A few weeks ago, I submitted a story which to me would do us all good to look at. It was a link to an article discussing the ethical dillema facing the health care industry in trying to decide whether to use a live-HIV-virus AIDS vaccine. The issue being, of course, that some people would get AIDS from it. However, statistically, in countries with a high enough infection rate, it would prevent many more deaths than it caused. But in countries like the US with relatively lower rates, it would be a disaster.

The story really hit me, in terms of being something educated scientist-type folks would love to discuss.

It was rejected.

Instead, we get a fancy backpack.

This is my first "This isn't news, this doesn't matter" post. I'll try to refrain in the future. But....wow. I'm stunned.

Re:Swaweet

[Kintanon]

So what's your idea of a "party" snagging a Keg and drinking until you can't stand up? You act like any other group of people has a better way to socially interact. Human contact is human contact, and whether it comes in the form of me screaming 'Eat Rockets Bitchboy!!' at my little brother while I blast him off of 'the longest yard' or in the form of 4 or 5 buddies getting drunk with their girlfriends at someones house you can't tell me that either of those is a totally invalid form of contact. People do the things they enjoy, there is nothing wrong with that. So yank your head out of your ass and look around, not everyone likes what you like.

Kintanon
BTW, I'm posting all of this stuff because I don't give a fuck about moderation, I stopped posting when I stopped being able to gain Karma because it was already hard enough to add to what little conversation their was and with the incentive to post intelligent thought gone I started lurking. The quality of discussion didn't really change after moderation stopped except that a few of the most prolific people stopped posting as much. So Moderate me 6 ways from sunday, I don't care! I have karma flowing out my ass.

Truly news for nerds.

[supabeast!]

This item really cements that whole "news for nerds" thing. This is why I am getting sick of Slashdot: more and more articles are pointless. It isn't enough that they waste all the space on the Jon Katz stories that so many of us have stopped reading, but crap like this takes the cake.

I know plenty of people submit better stuff than this. Hell, I can think to two stories I have submitted about online music (One about Prince moving his music sales online, and one about a group of artists striking out against record companies.) and neither were posted, although they were certainly of more interest than yet another case modded for lan parties.

Is it just me, or does it seem that /. is just getting too geeky?

Re:LAN Party? Why?

[donglekey]

Go to a bar...there are usually women there. 8^)

Women are only a a way to escape from the reality. The reality that you don't have any video games play.

Re:Of course, there's....

[Erasmus Darwin]

There's always getting a case with coasters on the bottom.

Assuming s/coasters/casters/, it sounds like a great idea until you manage to push your computer off of your desk while trying to eject a floppy.

What really sucks...

[Sodakar]

is when you get 10 different people with:
10 different network settings
9 different speed PC's
8 different versions of the game patch
7 game CD's missing
6 machines that need to be fixed after transport
5 machines with NIC's that don't work 4 different versions of OS
3 machines with viruses
2 people who have to go home, now that's it's getting late (and haven't even started) 1 long night wasted with no gaming

...very typical...

sure, it gets better after the first few times of this junk, but... with broadband, it's hardly even worth it...

11 comments and /.ed

[Anoriymous Coward]

Obviously they take their LAN games seriously, and don't waste bandwidth on stupid stuff like serving up web pages.

--

You forgot a part

[typical geek]

its where guys who can't get chicks hang out on the weekends , playing computer games versus each other.

They also post to Slashdot, whining about how geeks can't get girls.

Swaweet

[oooga]

Now, if they could figure out some way to quickly solve the "what the hell, you're at a lan party and you don't have a nic?!?!" and the "No, we cannot play multiplayer solitaire, get some real games!" issues, LAN parties could actually be fun!