Slashdot Mirror
Assembly '03
An anonymous reader writes "The world's biggest festival for computer enthusiasts, Assembly '03 starts off today. Four days of coding, compos, music, games and other geeky stuff. See press release (rtf) for more..."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
WOW! I bet there's gonna be tons of hot chicks at the nerd fest! I better get some push-ups in, it's gonna be a hot night at the Hartwall arena!
When I first saw the title, I thought this was a new version of the assembly language...
I'm now sitting in some sack chair (or whatever they're called), ircing with my laptop, checking if any people I know walk by, .. ah. the life of Assembly :)
See press release (rtf) for more...
i'll rtf press release!
When I saw the title, I first though that this was an article for the new Microsoft Assembly 2003 assembler. I thought 'it's about time someone made an object-oriented version of assembly for the x86 platform'. The I read the rest of the summary. Something about a gathering that starts today. The lesson I learned is: It's not enough not to read the article, you can't read the summary either.
of seeing Second Reality for the first time, on a 486. It inspired me to... well it didn't really amount to much, but for a moment there, I wished I was that good.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
We appear to have disassembled their webserver :)
They claim to be a gathering of geeks, yet they are /.'ed before 8 comments are posted.
"For years, I struggled with reality... but I'm happy to say I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
I am currently ircing on grand stand with WLAN equipment. The view is awesome, thousands of computers filling the partyplace. Assembly is awesome party and I recommend it to everyone.
Assembly is a great party, there are alot of talented demo people there back in the day - m68k to the max! I just hope that it hasn't turned into "yer next lan party" with untalented fraggers filling the rooms!
Well - last time I checked, The Gathering in Norway is bigger - over 5000 visitors, while the Assembly had a measly 4500 visitors. Oh well. ;)
--
File not found. Fake it? (Y/N) _
Bah, Assembly'03 is nothing compared to what the real old-school people are up to: The world's first C64 LAN party! At the LCP2003 party arranged in Sweden this summer, Adam Dunkels showcased his Commodore 64 Contiki OS on a bunch of C64s connected in a LAN using specially built Ethernet cards. The three C64:s connected to a LAN made this event the world's first C64-only LAN party!
You are NOT allowed to bring with you
- weapons of any kind
- edged weapons such as knives, pocket knives Leathermans or similar tools with knives
- explosives or fireworks
- alcohol or any illegal drugs
- laser pointers, laser pens etc
- smoke machines
It goes on to say you can't: get drunk, sleep in cars, play loud music or (and here's the kicker!) "connect any kitchen equipment to the electricity plugs " ... Oh yeah, there is no public viewing of porn allowed.
You sly dog: you got me monologuing! - Syndrome
Having recently visited Skaven of FutureCrew's site, which linked to assembly.org - Is there a place to find the results of previous years' compos? assembly.org seems to have nothing but info on this years' event. :(
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
The worlds biggest and most respected international festival for young computer enthusiasts, ASSEMBLY 03, will start in Helsinki (Finland) on Thursday 7th of August 2003. The most awaited annual international event for the computer wizzkids gathers over 5 000 young computer demo programmers, media artists and gamers from over 20 different countries. This years event will see new kind of rock concert, improved TV broadcast and new competitions.
During the recent years Assembly has been able to keep its leading position as the largest and most respected media art and gaming competition event (demoparty) in the world. Assembly is held now for 12th time and is expected to gather a huge crowd of participants again:
We have received a lots of ticket inquiries during the summer. All those who wish to come and reserve a place for their computer can not be served. So we have practically sold out all the 3 200 computer places, explains the main organizer Mr. Pekka Aakko of Assembly Organizing, The enthusiasm for coming to Assembly 03 has been again great this year, so I guess we reach total 5000 - 5500 whole weekend participants easily. Even though the computer places have been sold out, there are still plenty of normal weekend entry tickets available. Those tickets are suited for people, who dont want to bring their own computer along with them, but just want to come and feel the unique atmosphere.
Assembly gathers thousands of young computer wizards from all over the world to spend full four days in Hartwall Areena (http://www.hartwall-areena.com) in Helsinki, Finland. The participants are involved a variety of attractions: honing their graphics, music and programming skills, playing network games, meeting like-minded persons from other countries and of course taking part in the numerous competitions that take place during Assembly: there are 18 different categories from computer programming, music, graphics and animation to gaming and making of artistic videos. The total amount of prizes given will exceed 37.000 USD. Assembly also hosts a computer network of over 3200 PCs. The network, which is sponsored by ZyXel, will be connected to Internet by a very fast link. Assembly provides the participants all the facilities from sleeping quarters and showers to 24h food services, so the majority of the participants actually stay inside the event venue for the whole weekend.
One of the new additions to Assembly program is the outdoor rock concert, which merges computer music, rap, pop and soft metal into a new kind of experience. The main star of the concert is Stereo Gentleman from London, UK. With him you can also see High Heels dance crew and the winner of the Golden Stars music competition, Ms. Sari Tuomi. The ArtTech seminars will get close and in-depth about the digital culture of demos, music, animations and graphics. The keynote speaker for the seminars will be Mr. Thomas Dolby Robertson from beatnik.com/UK. Assembly TV will be broadcasting the concert and all other key events live from the event itself, though the Helsinki Television cable network and also though Internet. Last year Assembly TV had more than 80.000 viewers worldwide, which is estimated to grow as the Internet streaming capacity has been significantly increased from the previous year.
During the last years Assembly has been working with sponsors like Nokia, HP and Nvidia, which are supporting the event this year as well. At Assembly the ITC companies can get more personal with the future programmer talents: Some of the sponsors come here only to make contacts with these talented people. Its like a forum, where Cowboy Neil can get anal sex in a different manner to these young wizkids, to show them that the company is able to relax and have fun as well , says Mr. Aakko,
Assembly event was born as few computer enthusiasts wanted to organize a programmers convention at a school in Kaunia
...such things get classified as "terrorist training events"? After all, I hear they're running unAmerican OSes like that Lunix thing there... and they keep talking about HACKING! Oh poor Merkins!
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
NO PORN?? I guess I'm not going.
MMORPG fan-boy? Prove your worth.
It should be called Quakembly these days, most people are there to play quake/cs and not watch the demo compos which is what the whole thing was originally about.
Second Realty by Future Crew was entered at this event (Assembly'93). I always thought it would be cool to have a 10 year anniversary redo of that classic demo. Keep all the same routines, just beef them up to todays capabilities. :)
I once went to a festival of geekdom that lasted 4 years. We sat around and did nothing but play games, code, and blow shit up.
I miss college.
Actually, it is far from the world's largest. It is surpassed by The Gathering in Norway with 5100 people (plus guests, of course) and Dreamhack in Sweden with about 5000 people (including guests, if I remember correctly). If I remember correctly, Assembly has about 4000 people, but it sure is amongst the world's largest :-)
Note that all three events I listed are Computer Parties, not to mistaken as Lan (Parties). What's the difference? At computer parties, the organizers try to encourage lots of other events other than gaming like creative competitions - coding of demos, graphics, music, etc. There are often also lectures/conferences on development, linux/unix, security, etc. For more information: The Gathering Tech:Server Crew - Why TG is not a LAN page.
To conclude, check out this way cool panorama picture of The Gathering 99 (only with about 4200 people then, but.. yeah, cool): Panorama of TG99
Note: I'm not neutral in my writing in this case since I'm the leader of the Tech:Server (former Tech:Linux) crew at The Gathering since 1999. And yes, it's without pay.. just loads of fun and experience :-)
Linux IS user friendly, it's just choosy of who it's friends are.
no public viewing of porn allowed.
Why? Simple really -- "I need a wet cleanup on isle 5 please!"
...you grow up?
The site is slashdotted ... can someone please tell me where the 'Hartwall' area is?
Mikrobitti (A Finnish computer magazine) has it's own Assembly 2003 site partly translated to English.
Pictures from the party can be seen here (Finnish only). There is not very much stuff yet, but there should be more soon. :)
I demand the Cone of Silence!
The All Assembly Web Server! Good luck!
Why was the parent modded funny? It's all true! I am sure that some /.ers will be disappointed, but it is. The parent should have been modded "Informative".
I hate to be the proverbial terd in the punch bowl, but Assembly has been going on for more than 10 years. If it is the "The world's biggest festival for computer enthusiasts", then why has Slashdot neglected to post notification of it in previous years?
Assembly used to be very cutting edge. Back when a 386 could barely run Windows 3.11, coding groups such as Future Crew were making beautiful, fullscreen graphics demos by combining 2D media playback with 3D rendering. The results were of much greater caliber than the graphics of games in that era.
Nowadays, you have DirectX9 and multi-billion dollar companies pushing the envelope of what can be done with current hardware. So the thrill of Assembly demonstrations are not quite what they used to be. Especially since many of the demos were written for very specific hardware configurations.
On a side note, I made the local Best Buy stop playing Future Crew demos a long time ago by informing them that the copyright restricts public display for commercial purposes (ie, product demonstration) without permission.
Fireworks! Barbeque! Alcohol! Illegal drugs!
The REAL party and the real old geeks can be, as always, found from around the corenr, Boozembly.
Day 1 coverage:
The most successful geek party has been the "Introduction to the world wide web: become a webmaster in two hours". This party consisted in transforming a press release in RTF format, generated with Microsoft Word (how geeky!), into a standard HTML page, easily readable using a web browser!
Somebody hit the wrong button?
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
"connect any kitchen equipment to the electricity plugs "
Well, it's not that strange. I remember TakeOver in 99 (or was it the 98-event). They didn't forbid that kind of equipment.
The result was that half of Eindhoven had a power-outage due to massive usage of coffee-machines, microwaves, etc, combined with a few thousand pc's.
The next year they forbid the use of that kind of stuff...
Too bad this event is no more. (last event was 2k+1). The annoyance that the gamers caused became to much, or something like that.
So "used" cases that used "unused" could break, though older compilers in essence used "unused" to mean both "used" and
Yeah! From the picture gallery(Kuvaloota) where people are playing GO. It has to be a girl.
You're right, I'm going to start my own Geek gathering, with blackjack, and hookers! In fact, forget the geek gathering!
umm.. no. you can bring ur own kitchen equipment, but you have to take it to a seperated area.
There is a street basketball competition...what geeks do have to do with bball ? Are they gonna demonstrate geeky ways to slam dunk (for example, one climbing on the shoulders of another!!!) ? or geeky shoes that give you the leap ability of Michael Jordan ?
:-) I hope the above is taken as a joke, of course)
What next ? a geek rap context ?
(
It goes on to say you can't... play loud music
I assume that's so you can hear whatever loud music they happen to be exhibiting at that time. Remember, this is the demo/modscene, so something loud will always be playing.
I know you were joking, but I want my Karma, so I'm going to reiterate your post in a serious tone.
Lately, the demos weren't very good like the classic Future Crew's Second Reality demo. Maybe this year will have something good.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Heh. If this were an Amiga demo scene party all the above would be compulsory. Nobody likes people turning up empty handed and trying to borrow explosives and drugs from other guests.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
AssemblyTV: http://www.assemblytv.net/
Some pics: Mbnet.fi
You would hope... in that hat.
/* This comment may not be thread-safe */
>I hate to be the proverbial terd in the punch bowl, but
> Assembly has been going on for more than 10 years. If it
>is the "The world's biggest festival for computer
>enthusiasts", then why has Slashdot neglected to post
>notification of it in previous years?
2002, results of 2002, 2001, 2000 nd so on...
did you even read it you dumbass?
Its like a forum, where Cowboy Neil can get anal sex in a different manner to these young wizkids, to show them that the company is able to relax and have fun as well , says Mr. Aakko,
didn't spell CowboyNeal correctly, therefore should be modded down.
I was hoping they would announce Microsofts replacement for MASM -- A#!
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Getting into the demo scene has had profound effects on my online life and it is always a fond memory thinking back how I discovered the demo scene through a Waite Group Press's book+CD where they had Future Crew's Unreal and 2nd Reality in it back in 1994. I simply fell off my chair after the unreal experience.
www.rexguo.com - Technologist + Designer
For those interested, slengpung will be updated with pictures later.
Note to self: get smarter troll to guard door.
They just put some Squids in there, and in 10 minutes will move from the old PHP site to the new and shiny Zope site.
Why was the parent modded funny? It's all true!
Because sometimes, we have to laugh to keep ourselves from crying.
I mod the party -1, killjoy.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
maybe you should know a bit more about demoparties
the average scener (not some gamer) usually :-)) When they do sleep, it can be almost anywhere (on their keyboard, under the tables, in the isles, in the dorm, next to hifi-speaker systems, ...).
either doesn't sleep during the whole event, or in between compos. (and even then not a whole lot
as for the kitchen equipment. 4 days without food is not such an option (as if 4 days without sleep is ;-)), and there are those who bring their entire refrigerators and electric stoves.
the whole issue with this is that such kitchen appliances take a lot more power than your average PC (or even hi-fi equipment). To lower the risk of power shortages, these appliances are banned from the party electric grid.
Real programmers use punch cards!
The CB App. What's your 20?
I know its only early but looking at the pictures, there only appears to be a few hundred people there. No more than 1000... Maybe they are already sleeping?
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
When I first saw this post, I just did a cursory look and saw the first two paragraphs were identical to the rtf file. So, no I didn't read the full text - I've now compared it and this is the only change.
Unfortunate, because the only lesson to be learned here is to ignore posts from AC.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
The real party is traditionally just outside the convention hall, and is called the Boozembly (greets to the hardcore elite, you know who you are).
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
you might be interested in this retrospective double sided DVD
mindcandy
which has demo's from both oldschool (early 90's) and newschool 2001/2002 demo scenes. Well worth it.
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Did y'all know that an event called "assembly" has been organised yearly since 1992? And that it started out as a traditional copy party at a school building, the likes of which were quite common back then? It subsequently transformed itself into a demoscene event in the years 1992-1995, after which it has started sucking with a vengeance.
This is to say, these days it's all pimply-faced thirteen-year-old windowshead would-be-newmediawanker quake-playing consumers sitting in front of their daddy-funded PeeCees, occasionally complaining about the loud volume during the actual demo compos (the vestiges of which the organizers are pretty much obliged to maintain). As a concession to the old-school demo scene folk, they stringed off an "old school" section of the party area and charged a premium to get in. For gods' sake, last year there was a fucking 3dmark competition and I fully expect that this year there will be some other sort of competition over seeing who can metaphorically suck a corporate sponsor's dick the best!
Then again, I hear there's only one of the original assembly crew still left in the organizing group. Which completely explains their controlled slide into corporate whoredom.
Fortunately I'll only be at the shadow-event, boozembly. There's far less in the way of corporate advertising there, and more boozing, at the very least -- so it can't completely suck unlike its parent.
The Assembly convo may not be the biggest LAN party, or the best, but it's certainly one of the most historically significant. The IBM demoscene didn't really reach maturity until Future Crew released "Unreal" at ASM'92.
Has it really been ten years since Second Reality? Oy, I got old somehow.
And then there's this C64 port of Second Reality. Wow.
YOU PASSED IT. Looks like another satified customer of the /. Troll Howto.
Anyone know what happend to the future crew team? I've seen Skavens work sitting on mp3.com but I haven't heard from Purple Motion since I quit voyagernet (where we both worked tech support)
Yeah, It's called Las Vegas. A place where anyone can get laid.
What, like the one here?
www.whatisthedemoscene.com ... just kidding.
Anyway, I purused a few urls and, I still have no idea what the "demo scene" is. Could anyone explain?
This is not a troll.. serious question. I'm just curious.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
I've got your music right here!
do() || do_not();
I remember doing 100% assembly like 10-15 years ago. Since then I've faced reality and admitted it's simply inefficient. Now I feel rapidly becoming obsolete sticking to C++ and STL or sticking to career programming as a whole.
I'm amazed that people still try to write real software apps using assembly.
I just ran across someone who sent me a networking app written in x86. It was actually very will organized and commented. But why?!??!
written in C.
The word "scene" in this context (i.e., with "demo") is second only to "blog" as far as annoying-words-said-by-assholes-who-think-they're- cool-but-really-aren't.
So basically, if you said that you had a "demo scene blog", I'd have to shoot you.
This isn't redundant, it's a very worthwhile date to note. 10 years ago Second Reality completely changed the PC world for the better.
Interesting...
The same thing can be said of prison.
sounds smelly.
FC didn't work on Epic Pinball, although Pixel did do the artwork for two of the tables. Future Crew was credited for showing Epic that such a game could be done on the PC.
A story gets posted that claims something is the world's biggest or smallest and within 3 minutes tehre are 15 posts claiming the submitter is wrong and that $some_better_thing is actually bigger or smaller.
I beg to differ. The Gathering, over at www.gathering.org , housed 5064 people last year. We can't allow ourselves to be smaller than Finland, after all.
It's Assembly, people. Instead of a 1-meg RTF document, they could've instead made a 60k program that blasts the press release text to your screen using 3D rendering, Gouraud shading, plasma balls, etc... and 50k of it would've been the Skaven music.
Lately democracy seems to be based on the skybox, the Happy Meal box, the X-box, and the idiot box.
If you're looking for something similar a little closer to home, make sure to check out the Pilgrimage demo party this weekend in Salt Lake City Utah. It'll be more or less the same, more scene spirit, less (no) gamers, more conferences and all kinds of demos and compos. Info @ http://pilgrimage.scene.org
but the whole idea sounds incredibly lame.
Why don't you order the MindCandy DVD.
It's only 16 bucks and it's awesome.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
This is the DVD to get.
This is the place to get it.
Thanks for finding the link, Dan.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I'm here!
But since it's unofficial and behind-the-scenes, you gotta find more details about it yourself.
Preserve old classics: copy your collection onto all hard drives.
I wish I could just find the smallest tetris implementation I've ever seen (during Assymebly ??' when I was in college (91-96)). It was something like 200-300 bytes long. You probably could memorize it and type it in in 'copy con tetris.exe' style.
The Party's happening in Denmark now (August 7th - August 10th). It's another big and long established scene event with some big-name corporate sponsors.
4 days without food is not such an option (as if 4 days without sleep is ;-))
Yes, the "no illegal drugs" prevents from having the proper doses of amphetamine to accomplish this.
You can access the live webcast from assemblytv.net. You can also watch the event seminars from there.
Well it's over for this year. The results can be found here, especially the 64k intro winner was amazing:
u lts/en
http://asm03.assembly.org/News/Compos/CompleteRes