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The Lights Keep on Blinken

Posted by michael on from the fingerpoken-good dept.

cavac writes "At the 19th Chaos Communications Congress in Berlin/Germany developers showed their newest developments for the closed-down Blinkenlights-Project. One of the projects was the Blinkenlights Fileserver Project. Members of this team developed a protocol and some tools similar to ftp, which you can use to share Blinkenlights-Movies. Today, a first Beta-Version was released. You might want to check it out. (It also includes the famous Telnet-Blinkenlights-Player). We are still searching people willing to help us developing this software even more or to work with us on "Phase II": Implementing Soft- and Hardware for a Hardware-Based Blinkenlights Player. This will most likely based on one of Zilog's new Development Kits - the "Z8 Encore!"."

2 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. An idea... by neksys · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I confess, I don't know much about how this system works... but wouldn't this be a neat way to get your protest message across? I mean, say you oppose Nike's sweat shop labour practices. Go to Nike headquarters, covertly set up the system, program a message like, "Just Don't Do It" or whatever strikes your fancy, and time it to start in the middle of the night. I expect the first few incidences would get huge media exposure, and have the added benefit of being somewhat more acceptable to the general public - thus, getting your message across to more people. I know it'd certainly grab my attention... you can see only so many crowds with signs before you sort of ignore them.

  2. Tsk, tsk, tsk. "Das Blinkenlights" is much older. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Every generation thinks that they invented they latest gizmo. The "Blinkenlights" referenced at http://www.jargonfile.com/jargon/html/entry/blinke nlights.html as being from 1959 is actually a rehash of a sign for radio transmitters (das transmittenmachinen). I was working on my novice ticket when I first saw a very yellowed version taped to a radio transmitter in 1962 at my "Elmer's" house in Key West, FL. He had been a radio operator on merchant ships going back to spark gap days and had picked up the sign somewhere along the way. Everything old is new again.