Way back in 2001, after recently becoming a United Devices cruncher, I happened to discover the Zero Wing / All Your Base Are Belong To Us phenomenon, and posted the following message to the UD forum. UD was offering cash prizes for the top scorers, and Pentium 4's were the latest advance over the slower Pentium 3 processors. (I was running a 733 MHz Pentium 3.) Crunchers were frustrated by certain workunits (the "molecule from hell") that took forever to finish. There were no "checkpoints" to periodically save the task; if the client crashed, the workunit had to be started over from the beginning. It was a fun time.

--------
In A.D. 2001
War was beginning

Inside Home - 83800000 conformers - 98% for over 8 hours.

Team Captain: "What happen ?"
Newbie 1: "Somebody set up us the molecule from hell."
Newbie 2: "We get signal."
Team Captain: "What !"
Newbie 3: "Main screen turn on."



Team Captain: "It's them !!"
UD: "How are you gentlemen !!"
UD: "All your molecule are belong to us."
UD: "You are on the way to big prizes."
Team Captain: "What you say !!"
UD: "You have no chance to save take your time."
UD: "Ha ha ha ha ...."

Newbie 4: "Captain !!"
Team Captain: "Buy up every Pentium 4!!"
Team Captain: "You know what you doing."
Team Captain: "Run Pentium 4."
Team Captain: "For great prizes."

[Click here for the original.]
--------