Worlds Largest Computer Party, In Progress

cyb97 writes "As I write this the worlds largest computerparty is going on in Hamar, Norway. The Gathering 2003 is in action with over 5.000 participants! Webcams and participants are live on the internet through a 1 gigabit line, so you better lock down your servers tonight!" Some of the webcam images are just surreal. Update: 04/17 01:00 GMT by T : Speaking of images, reader vvizard (currently Gathered) directs you to this directory of high-resolution images.

Geek Mecca

This looks a lot like Woodstock for computer geeks.

The Tech Group (TG) has a page explaining the differences
between a "LAN Party" and a "Computer Party", here is an
excerpt:

"But LAN party and computer party is the same thing!"
No. LAN party and computer party is NOT the same thing. At a
LAN party everything is centered around the network. Everybody
just sits there, staring at their screens whilst copying porn,
warez and playing games. A computer party is much more. There
are competitions, both in computer games and computer
art. People meet, people talk, and there is plenty to see and
experience even when away from you computer. (I didn't even
bring my computer to TG01, and I had a great time!). Sometimes
there are shows on the stage (LAN parties don't even have a
stage), and even speeches you can go to to learn more computer
stuff. How about learning something new and fun to impress your
friends when you get back home?

If you want to read the full page go here:
http://tg.nlc.no/notalan.html

We need to get one of these going in the US. :-)

Re:Geek Mecca

No, we rich geeks bring it all too.

1) The leather padded seat (folding chairs suck ass)
2) The tower with 6 HDD's all with rounded cables and neon light kit for oohs and ahhs
3) The flat panel monitor (beats lugginng that old viewsonic P810 21", you know which one I'm talkin about)
4) Premium headphones with extension cable (nothing worse than gettin cozy with your PC since that 5 foot cable barely come to the front of your pc)
5) And last but not least, a laptop, to scour the network with ShareScan and download movies, iso's, and games while fragging your friends into oblivian.

No Alcohol

Beverages containing alcohol is not allowed inside the hall or anywhere near it

--

Well, what's the point then? 5,000 sober guys all trying to impress each other with the size of their equipment. It's like Hell.

So people won't get "Hamared"

If you see this message, you need to increase your "comment threshold."

Re:No Alcohol

well, nobody else made a proper comment to this.. so here goes:

that means that if you want to drink inside, you have to smugle the beverages, which means that when you want to drink you wander outside(besides, it's norway, drinking is f**** expensive). also it would be hell for the organizers to get permits for an event where drinking would be allowed and minors would be present, also, this way, they can deny access by all the guys that are _TOO_ drunk for their own good(happens at most parties, that are 'alcohol free').

the 'no booze' is just a remark that the organizers try to keep the boozing to minimum and not scare away any parents too(would you let your kid into an event that said 'drinking is ok, bring your own booze'). however drinking has been, is , and will be a very common in demoparties.

Re:No Alcohol

If you had ever participated in a demo party (or "computer party" as TG organizers have called it for the past few years) you'd know that the "no alcohol" policy doesn't mean that people don't drink alcohol ;-)

Usually the majority of demo sceners (the people who come there to participate in the art competitions) spend most of their time outside the party hall, boozing around open fire with other likeminded folks that they can only meet at parties.

When the Finnish equivalent party, Assembly [assembly.org] (it is also one of the oldest demoparties along with The Gathering) is held, there is a shadow party called Boozembly going on in the nearby woods and you can find all the demo scene legends out there when there are no competitions running.

I hope that the quality of releases at TG will be OK, but I'm afraid that the majority of people will go to Breakpoint [untergrund.net] instead which is a strictly demo scene oriented party.

1500 drunk guys all trying to impress each other with real-time computer generated art. It might not be heaven but it's far from Hell.

Oh well, back to coding my demo for BP..

Oops

I think we all slashdotted Norway...

/Me high fives everyone.

Re:Oops

...participants are live on the internet through a 1 gigabit line...

Well at least it serves those 500 errors very quickly...

Heh

"As I write this the worlds largest computerparty is going on in Hamar, Norway. The Gathering 2003 is in action with over 5.000 participants!"

They'd have 10,000 participants if they brought datess!

Re:Heh

"They'd have 10,000 participants if they brought dates!"

• Yeah, except for the fact the half of them are dating somebody from IRC who's actually a guy, and the other half have developed crushes on their Sims.

In most of Europe

they use a "." instead of a "," to delimit their thousands. It's not a mistake. It's a communication deficit. Get over it.

Re:In most of Europe

• /. is an American hosted site.
• It is read all around the world
• The event is not in America, it's in Europe
• Residents more local to the event would find this more interesting, as they might want to join in if they have time, or sign up for the next event - unless you feel like a flight to Norway in order to participate?

but it does give rise to childish comments.
I think you just explained yourself readily enough. The explanation of the . is fine, no need to make a big issue of it.

Helpdesk call

'Um, hello? I'd like to get Norway installed on my PC. It's Mac compatible, right?'

If you want...

I have both of the girl's phone numbers, if anyone is interested...

Re:If you want...

I guess if you can't use 'em, give 'em away, right?

Waste not, want not! :-)

-/-
Mikey-San

My mate has gone to this..

and he's taken over 400 CDR discs with him.

Not that I'm emplying anything ;) I can't wait untill he gets back \o/ *cough*

Pr0n & warez? Not!

A LOT of great stuff has come out of this event, if you follow the demoscene. I remember checking constantly to download the Amiga demo winners from this event. That stuff was cutting edge! I haven't looked at the last few years' winners, but I bet the competitions are still churning out some amazing code.

A few of the coding groups at these parties went on to form actual "money making" companies, like Team 17 [team17.com].

While I wouldn't characterize The Gathering as a Geek Think Tank, it most certainly ain't all about pr0n, warez, and fragging.

"Party report"

I am sitting at The Gathering at the moment, and I can say that there is not only gamers here. They made one section of the area a demoscene area (with a no gamers allowed banner).
It's a step in the right direction.

Re:"Party report"

Future Crew was ahead of computer game companies, so they get credit for "making machines do ridiculous things". Today game companies have budgets rivaling movie studios, so they get all the attention. But small teams and even individuals can still make great demos. Here are the three big demo parties and some recent results (may not be the latest):

• The Gathering [gathering.org] - 2002 winners [gathering.org]
• The Party [theparty.dk] - 2001 winners [cfxweb.net]
• Assembly [assembly.org] - 2002 winners [assembly.org]

Here are some other sites with demos:

• Pouet [pouet.net] - Has a big list of demos, intros, and lots of comments.
• 256b.com [256b.com] - If the 2-10 meg demos on pouet are too bloated for you, check these out.
• CFXweb [cfxweb.net] - A community web site with forums and a magazine.

My favorite demo of the moment is IV-Racer [scene.org] by The Lost Souls, though it uses mostly pre-made 3D models instead of calculated effects. For a good tiny one, try this one [scene.org] by Haujobb [scene.org]. They both have incredible atmosphere that I'd love to have in a game.

Re:Bah

eh, so?

the gathering, the party, assemblies, and other european DEMOSCENE-parties are first, and foremost meant to be DEMOSCENE-parties, they're not meant to hell-of-a-size lan gaming parties anyways. they're about having good time, having couple of beers, shooting the breeze, checking some cool new/ancient hardware, toying around, catching up with old times. you're meant to compete with your creativy, not with your speed of wrist and accuracy in sniping.

the bigger demoscene events have been slowly turning into laning events though which is a shame.. the unity is left out, and the newer attendees don't often even know the history behind the events..

the number of attendees has nothing to do with the amount of fun, a lot of the smaller demoparties have been very funny events that have left many good memories.

if you're only a _gamer_ you take quakecon over that, if you're a demoscener, you don't even think quakecon as an option (except maybe have your own shadow party in the woods, telling legends over a camp-fire drinking beer).

btw, is it really so now that the gathering is _the_ biggest? 5000 for real? couldnt find accurate information on their webpage.

Only gigabit?

Those poor geeks... that's only 200kbps per person. Even my cable modem is faster than that.

Great Googly-Moogly

Is it me, or is the dude at the bottom center-right of this image of the gathering [nmee.net] using a plasma tv as a monitor? If not, sure does look like a 42 inch screen. Maybe it's a new Apple flat panel ;-)

What is happening?

If you are interested in what will happen here in the next few days, take a look here: Schedule [gathering.org].

Wow...

Just imagine the size of the pizza that they'll order for delivery...

Obligatory Beowulf comment

Imagine if everyone connected their computers and created a beowulf cluster!

They could then calculate the average time it's been since any one of them actually had a date (hopefully no overflow errors occur).

Downloads 'r' Us

On their website, they link to their own Harlem-client for Windows [tg.nlc.no] for browsing SMB shares.

It seems to work from outside of the party too - anyone looking for a few thousand Windows boxes with shared files on might want to take a look. :o)

Surreal?

Only on Slashdot could a blurry picture of what appears to be a few thousand computer users called surreal. Not only that, but one of the other webcams is pointing at a guys power supply. Breathtaking.

I'd love to go to this...

...just to see the result of somebody calling me a camping fag in person.

Karm's gonna roast for this

But I simply cannot resist.

AGENT SMITH
Can you hear me, CmdrTaco? I'm going to be honest with you.

I hate this place. This zoo. This prison. This Gathering, whatever you want to call it, I can't stand it any longer.

It's the smell, if there is such a thing. I feel saturated by it. I can taste their sweaty mice and every time I do, I fear that I've somehow been infected by it.

I must get out of here, I must get free. In this mind are the cheats. My cheats. Once the Gathering is gone, there's no need for me to be here. Do you understand? I need the cheats. I have to get some fresh air.

You have to tell me how... or you're going to die.