Tron Legacy: Countdown to Zero Hour

[LordZ]

Ah, there we go. It should stop on the 24th, I think.

Specifically, noon EST on the 24th give or take a few minutes.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Learned to count time in binary on Wikipedia, found out it was 8 days, check back on the article: realise it was posted at the end. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

But now you've learned a skill that will do crap-all nothing for you during the Zombie Apocalypse! You should be proud.

More on-topic: Ahh, Tron. You defined my childhood. May this new iteration not suck.

 

[Ben Legend]

.....Fuck Yeah!!!
I'm going to have to go back and watch the original... oh and play the game of it found in Kingdom Hearts 2.

 

[samsonguy920]

I do like how there is effort being made here to really dig into the mythos of Flynn. That's a lot of hype to put towards the movie. It better be worth it or there will be deleted programs galore!

Flynn Lives!

 

[joystickjunki3]

Hmm...

... [snip][/snip] ...

From which still translates to nothing. =[

It goes like this:

Row #4 (Top row) = 8
Row #3 = 4
Row #2 = 2
Row #1 (Bottom Row) = 1

... and the columns represent days, hours, minutes and seconds (2 columns for each, respectively).

So, we have the picture:

01 00 01 00
00 01 00 00
00 00 10 01
00 11 10 11

So if we have the values for each bit that is turned on (valued at "1"), then we get 8 days, 15 hours, 38 minutes and 13 seconds.

Does that make sense?

[edit] Try looking at this and see if it makes more sense. It's really not all that hard to read binary... it's the same as reading this clock, except you'll have to add on 2 more columns for the days if you're reading the Tron Legacy countdown.

 

[Bob_F_It]

I can read binary, but I can't read that. I've no idea which is a 1 or a 0 (it could be counting up for all I know), but I think it reads top to bottom, and my first guess is a count of seconds, which would suggest around 268435456 seconds, or at least 8 years.

I think I smell smoke from Developement Hell.

 

[Susan Arendt]

My vote is for new trailer. And I am fine with that.

 

[LordZ]

For those who couldn't understand my earlier post.

 

[Miral]

I'm actually really disappointed by the countdown clock. It's really, really lame to have a "tens" column if you're counting in binary. Why be so silly as to make it half binary and half decimal?

It's BCD (which isn't new-fangled, it's been around for a long time -- in fact many processors even have an assembly instruction to help with BCD-based calculations).

And yes, BCD is wasteful (each digit wastes 6 possible bit patterns), but it's also much easier for humans to read, since we're used to base-10 values.

 

[Nalgas D. Lemur]

It's BCD (which isn't new-fangled, it's been around for a long time -- in fact many processors even have an assembly instruction to help with BCD-based calculations).

And yes, BCD is wasteful (each digit wastes 6 possible bit patterns), but it's also much easier for humans to read, since we're used to base-10 values.

Yeah, I know it's not new (I've even seen watches/clocks using it for years and years), but it still bugs me for being kind of silly, particularly for a clock where it's not all that hard to count up to 59 in binary. Now you've got me looking stuff up about it, though, and I didn't realize how widely used it's been, outside of display purposes (which it's legitimately useful for). Maybe if I'd ever done financial or embedded stuff I'd have run into it more, since using BCD would be counterproductive for most things I have done.

Very, very tangentially, that reminded me that I should finally put together the Lego balanced ternary [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary] adding machine I've been pondering for a while but have been slacking on digging the Legos out of the basement for...

 

[TraumaHound]

Well, Zero Hour has been reached today. The countdown page has changed to a table of 66 panes, each holding what looks to be an image of a trading card from the original TRON film. Clicking on the card flips it over, looks like it's going to make a single, larger image (not unlike some of the trading cards from back then which had puzzle backs.) There are enough pieces revealed so far to see it's a figure, from the back, walking into a lit doorway or corridor.

Could that be Flynn?!

I'm waiting to see the Seattle info, see if I can find the "Flynn Lives" contact. Moreover, I want to know what happens (or what one gets) when one finds the contact.

Anyone heard anything or even better, found one of the contacts?

UPDATE: I poked around the web and found a blogger in Paris who detailed (in French & English) her findings, including some pics of the stuff she received:

http://www.miss-selector.com/2010/02/la-recherche-de-kevin-flynn-ou-comment.html