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Canadians Hang Bug Off Golden Gate
Strider- writes: "Early on the morning of Feb. 5th, a group of Canadian Engineering students from the University of British Columbia accomplished their annual prank: hanging a Volkswagen Beetle off of some structure, usually a bridge. However, to celebrate the 20th aniversary of this annual event, they went for the creme de la crem, la piece de resistance: They
hung the Beetle off of San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge."
I do agree this is a disturbance to some, especially those cargo ships, but why the hell can't anybody take it for what it is : a harmless publicity prank ? Sure.. let those psycho rapists walk around, but arrest a bunch of genius students who are just displaying their talent just because some fat cop's not getting laid enough ? Geezus.. life wasn't meant to be taken so damned seriously.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
As far as I remember, they did not assemble the WHOLE car and make it run, just the outer shell (with the cop car lights of course)
I thought it would have been common sense to just make sure there was no shipping traffic below the bridge, then cut the cord...
You can't just leave a few hundred pounds of scrap metal in the bottom of the bay! That's one of the purest bodies of water on the planet -- no-one has ever indiscriminately thrown trash in there.
Slashdot is jumping the shark. I'm just driving the boat.
Hitlers reign of terror is responsible for creating alot of things that we use today.. lasers.. rockets.. advanced airplanes with jet engines.. his control made alot f our lives better today.. all you ever hear about is how many jews he killed.. which.. yeah.. sucks.. but how often do you hear about how many arabs the jews killed? and what did they give us!?
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
You always get caught at UofC because you aren't very bright about it. The HRC hasn't had a good plan in years. Us guy's from SAIT on the other hand had a very small group, with a good plan, and managed to pull several small scale stunts in our years. It's great to see that UBC is setting a standard for you youngin's to live up to. Now get the HRC to come up with a real plan, and they too can pull it off without getting caught.
As an immigrant in this fine country I have to admit to beeing proud. The idea though is stolen. I remember in the 70's when someone (presumably students at the Royal Institute of Technology) hung a complete bug under the span of Stockholms largest bridge.
Oh good, so I'm not the only one thinking "How in the world do you hang a software bug from a bridge?"
ChodaBoy
- The preceding statement is the product of a deranged mind and the sole property of the voices in my head.
The Irish put an E in it, how thoughtful.
With apologies to Ally McCoist.
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
hell yes so we have the biggest drug usage in western north america we have the largest number of free-thinkers in western north america! :P
drugs are bad, mmkay?
no, thats just a myth fed to you
the most used drug (well, most used schedule I controlled substance) is marijuana
whih has ben proven, many times, to be safer than either alcohol or tobacco
and atleast the potheads in vancouver arent scared by the system into meekly obeying an unfair law
potheads forever!
Ratio of replies to old sig content : replies to actual post content > 0.5. Sig changed.
la creme de la creme(both creme spelled the same) is right in that context though la piece de resistance usually means the main dish of a meal so one might argue that this expression is out of place...
from an annoying french canadian
> - suspended below the Lions Gate Bridge
> - suspended above the Lions Gate Bridge
So, what you're telling me is that they're going to hit San Francisco again next year?
- David
True. But how exactly do they get charged in a Canadian court for something that happened in the US?
"...takes a lot more skill then that."
What is it with you people? THEN is not the same as THAN.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
Well duh!
Stepping forward to be tossed in jail would be pretty stupid. It'd be like DeCSS and then mailing it to the MPAA with your return address on it.
No harm was done, no jail time or $10,000 fine should be needed.
It's fairly common knowledge at UBC who the engineers are who perform these pranks. Nobody actually acts on this information though because in most cases they don't cause any problems and no harm is done. They'd be insane to step forward and let some over zealous cop arrest them.
The one year that actually damaged something (nothing major, but they scraped up whatever they mounted the VW on) a cheque was delivered to the city (anonymously) for damages.
I don't remember the details exactly, but it's fairly obvious that while they're pulling a bit of a stunt they aren't actually damaging anything.
It is even prouder to be a Canadian with gooder grammer. :P
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That's remarkably unfunny. And with a score of 5. More and more, I'm starting to think I'm at the wrong website.
It's not really terribly hard. Just use a Really Big Rope(tm) and strip the VW of all the heavy parts. And they had practice, this was twenty years after the first time...
Until we hear further we won't know if they just tied the rope to a railing and pitched, or if they went under the bridge earlier to rig up a better tie-down. I suspect they did, if only to deny easy access to the rope and prevent a few brawny cops with a winch or block and tackle from pulling it back up again.
Anyways, their original pranks required a bit of skill. Their later pranks seem to be more quick little reminders of how odd it seemed when they did the first one, rather than a true prank in their own rights.
IMHO they should take the VW to new heights, attach it between high-rises in the downtown core, or something similarly bizarre. Park it in the street and have it self-winch itself up at 7am, or something.
I think it was funny, but nothing exceptional.
Definately don't read much.
They still havn't figured out how they secured the cables to the bridge.
Sorry, I didn't realize that re-assembling hoses and wires to their designated space took an engineering degree. I'll have to ask my speedy muffler attendant which ESS he belongs to.
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Desperation is a stinky cologne
You obviously think you're emulating the great hacks of MIT - and are congratulating each other on being oh-so-clever. But here's the difference - MIT was amusing, but at no time inconvenienced tens of thousands of people - who, by the way, don't give a rat's arse for you or your dilettante egos. Fuck you - I hope to read they have expelled all who took part.
GO CANUCKS!
Back in the early 60's my father and his friends pulled this same prank on one of his high school teachers but they reassembled the car in the teacher's office. As chance would have it the high school in question is in Vancouver. Of course then they had to take it apart again and redo the whole thing or face suspension... probably didn't quite seem as funny then.
The news account I heard on television indicated that they used bungees to hold the shell of the beetle, which they estimated to be 500 lbs. Considering that the UBC guys used two cords and I've seen a 300 lb guy bungee jump on one cord (really not a pretty sight) I'd say they were within tolerances for the bungees.
FWIW, the author is wrong in stating that the Golden Gate is the creme de la creme of suspension bridges. There's one in Japan that's significantly longer. I saw the Discovery program on it and it's a pretty wicked piece of tech. The main span of the Akashi-Kaikyo bridge is 6532 feet compared to the Golden Gate's 4200 foot span. And it survived the earthquake that hit Kobe with no problems whatsoever - it connects Kobe to Awaji Island so it took a pretty massive hit from the quake.
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Slán leat agus go n'eirí an bóthar leat
A car very much like the bug is pictured in the Walter Chrysler Museum in Ellis Kansas. There is a picture of an early design that looks like a bug and has the rear air cooled engine from the early 1930s. It never made it to production since it was too small.
>Stepping forward to be tossed in jail would be pretty stupid.
Once again, this is _not_ how real engineers act.
Its not the point of if you think it is fair to punish them or not. This is irrelvant to the issue. Its called respect for the legal system.
Would it also be stupid if I designed a building and then, when I was getting sued for incompentance, leave the country? Damn those over-zealous cops.
Not taking responsiblity for their actions is not actions of a leader, its something vandels do. They should act like engneers and not like a grade 5-er.
> a cheque was delivered to the city (anonymously) for damages.
How can a cheque be anonymous? You can always trace it back. Who signed it?
Are they going to send a cheque for those city engineers time and for fishing out the VW out of the Bay?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
"It's funny. Laugh." Which is just what the "authorities" should do. Geesh, stop worrying about stupid cars hanging from bridges and go out and catch some "real" criminals like murderers and rapists, etc. Doesn't anyone get a prank any more?
Uhm. Have you tried removing the plates before you suspend the Bug?
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It is PROUD to be Canadian, especially Western Canadian...... :)
Feed the need: Digitaladdiction.net
I like your attitude, but exactly what law did they break. Is their a San Fran statute that states that no vehicle will be suspended from bridges? My favorite charge (from the article) is the trespassing. How do you trespass on a public bridge?
In Sydney I remember that UNSW engineers once stole a train carriage from our city metro. I think it was an old one, but still, pretty huge to go bringing back to campus.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
I'm of two minds deciding wether it would be worthwhile, or even proper, to prosecute the cuprits (if they're ever found).
:)
Sure, its a great 'hack' in the true sense of the word, but can we truely rely on their safety assurance skills? Also, look at the traffic trouble they caused: I wonder how many people missed their flights from SFO because of the trouble.
Personally, I think they should both be congratulated, and be sentenced to community service at the same time
Micrososft responded today by hanging 63,000 bugs off of windows. Bill Gates was heard to say that those Canadians were wimps for only doing one. We will kick their collective ass.
He then proceeded to buy canada, and lay off all the students who had done this.
MIT does this every year.
MIT Hall Of Hacks
Wow, close to first post.. Anyhow, having been a victim of the traffic caused by the VW this morning.... I will share...
Anyhow... rumorville says that in the past years, they have managed to get a VW onto the bridge towers back home -- which is more impressive, IMHO, then tossing a car off the bridge. I mean... hanging a VW (chassis only, almost) off the side of the bridge via nylon cable sounds pretty simple... Tie car to bridge, throw car off bridge with multiple people, or off a ramp. Done.
But... getting the car to a higher ground would be far more challenging... I wonder how they managed to get the VW up onto the bridge towers in the past without getting caught...
Despite being inconvenienced, I thought it was pretty amusing. My only gripe was that they chose to do this prank on a bridge with already horrible visibility... Thankfully the VW was 100 feet off the ground, but if it ended up getting hung lower, we'd have ferries crashing into it...
The problem is that all people in california are pretty damned stupid. Instead of building Power plants 20 YEARS AGO like normal people do, they whined that the power plants were ugly, and stinky. Nuclear? OMG! they ran screaming as nuclear power as we all know is deadly! it will kill everyone instantly!
California deserves every problem it has, the people there voted for the problems years ago.
Stories like this make me damn proud I took engineering rather than some pansy artsci stuff.
STFU about slashdot bias.
What do you expect? They go to UBC and they're engineers! That's two strikes against them right there!
No, only engineers (and others) with a sense of humor. Which they did.
sulli
RTFJ.
Would that be Canadian Dollars? If so, it would make sense since they are only worth about that.
The Economics of Website Security
BC's biggest cash crop == Weed
:)
Our silly government might legalize it and make money off that too since they see huge tax possiblities here
it's been done before: and will be done again
Part of the reason thet I imagine they're being so picky about this is that the Golden Gate Bridge has a huge draw for such things. They stopped realeasing the number of people who have killed themselved by jumping off of it years ago because they thought it was only encouraging others. Though the number is no doubt much higher than for your average bridge. (There was a special on the History Channel, sorry i don't remember more details)
It's a highly patroled area and the city/police are very concerned with anything that goes on there in general. To simply let them get away with this would no doubt be an insult to the efforts they've made and would encourage a far larger than average number of "copycat" pranks that would endanger many (being that few would be by engineers)
I really don't think that this group researched things well enough to say that they were truly concerned with "safety first". There are pranks, and then there's crimes, things you just have to suck it up and deal with the consequences for once you've done them.
The oddest thing I noticed in the article was the quote from the president of the university, "There's a little bit of a cheer that goes up when you see someone has found a way to put us on the TV and helped raise people's awareness about engineering...I think we all cheer when students do this." I don't know what James Stukel (president of the University of Illinois) would say if some of his students did something like this but I doubt he would encourage others to "cheer"...
very true. i can tell by your low, low userid that you've been here a while. you truly are too elite for slashdot.
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
The design of the Tacoma Narrows bridge wasn't as flawed as many believe. As built, the sides of the bridge consisted of railing that allowed the wind to pass freely across the bridge. A local politician thought it would be more attractive to have solid wood on the sides of the bridge, and had plywood attached over the railing after the bridge was built.
That change caused the bridge to "catch" the wind, allowing the harmonic oscillations in the structure to develop and destroy the bridge.
Was mich nicht umbringt macht mich hungrig.
...when you can't even hang a car, in an obviously well planned way, off a bridge without fear of spending the next few years in prison? Notice the CHP didn't call UBC's engineers for help in figuring out how to get it down? No, those morons at CalTrans who haven't done anything more challenging than point at a map and say "put a lane here" in the last 20 years were content to let commuters just sit there while they grappled with the obvious: "Hey, let's cut the cable!" For that matter, what if the CHP does arrest the culprits? And what if they do go to jail? Gee, if they can manage to hang a VW Beetle off the Golden Gate without a soul noticing or bothering to report it, surely nothing that the California prison system has can hold them. Better put them in solitary confinement. Wouldn't want them conspiring to build something. These engineers are dangerous you know, they just randomly go out and build stuff. They must be stopped! Does this sound anything like the geek persecution after Columbine to anyone else but me? I mean sure, the students in this case are guilty, but the authorities are just taking everything way too seriously these days.
The only thing truly impressive about this prank is that it was done outside of Canada. Engineering students all across Canada pull pranks regularly. Most engineering programs have "non-existant" groups whose sole purpose is to raise school spirit via pranks, or by fanning the flames of school rivalries. U of Toronto Engineering (Skule(TM)) finally re-aquired the upright stolen from Varsity stadium by the Queens University Engineers some 50 years ago (when it became the Queen's Greased Pole). Queens tried in vain to get it back, until it was finally left out in the open and they were notified of its location so that it could be taken back again next year.
There's been tons of pranks done over the years, ranging from UBC putting bugs all over the place, UofT welding streetcars to their rails, cars in lecture halls, hanging off buildings, painted buildings, altered street signs, relocated statues, park benches, etc.. In fact, most of the time, (in Toronto at least), this is done under the collective noses of the local police. As long as no permanent damage is done or there is a dange r to the public, it's generally seen as harmless fun.
Perhaps the best part of these pranks is the way they are often resolved by the powers that be. For instance: Last September, during F!rosh week in Toronto (I think you can guess where I'm from), the first year engineering students (F!rosh), were paraded around the city, disrupting traffic, etc, and this culminated in a water fight in a fountain in front of City Hall (this is an annual event). This year however, Toronto had a "Moose in the City" art exhibit, where statues of moose were placed around the city (think Chicago's "Cows in The City"). One of these moose was placed on top of an arch above this fountain (by the city, not us). Our "non-existant" committee, (who are only interested in Being Fair to Children), climbed an incredibly long ladder (in fact 3 ladders tied together) to reach this moose and place an Engineering yellow hard hat on its head, no harm done. Everyone left, and the city then spent hours trying to figure out how to get the hat off the moose. It took them 3 hours to undo what took 5 minutes to do.
Farmilarize yourself:
http://www.apeg.bc.ca/about/act_code.htm
Note tenents #2 and #10.
These were students from BC, these apply to them.
>Schools have no place teaching ethics or morals,
This point doesn't matter. They do teach it and a certain level of ethics are required from engineers. Sorry that reality doesn't fit your view.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Not true. The freeway construction came to a halt when Jerry Brown appointed Adriane Gianturco as the head of Caltrans. She thought freeways were a terrible idea and suspended construction. It wasn't until Brown was kicked out of office 4 years later that it was possible to finish construction. That debacle cost California taxpayers millions. Course, inflation being what it is, the latest state sponsored debacle is going to cost us billions.
Back to hacks My favorite hack involved a Caltech student who returned to his dorm room really late one Friday night. 8 AM Saturday morning ...BANG BANG BANG . "Move out of my parking spot!"
The techie goes downstairs and looks at an almost empty parking lot with his car and the secretary's whose reserved parking he had appropriated a few hours earlier. He moves the car, and then later rounds up some friends. They re-blacktop and re-stripe the parking lot making each parking spot fractionally larger. After they repaint the reserved names on the respective slots seems one obnoxious secretary lost her reserved parking.
Monday morning, the maintenance crew and secretary were trying to figure out where the missing parking spot was.
Ahhh, spoken like a true upper-Canadian snob. What have you got against the maritimes? It's a great place to live. Don't knock it just because you think Toronto or Ottawa is the king shit of Canada.
Yawn. :-)
:-) ) is one time a small group of CalTech students hacked a grandstand placard display from a college team back east. Done back in the days before computers were common, the result was that during a game at the Rose Bowl when the team's fans held up the placards, instead of the something of the colors of the home team it really spelled out CALTECH.
The UBC prank seems totally unimaginative compared to some of the hacks pulled off by California Institute of Technology (CalTech) students.
Who could forget when someone hacked the scoreboard at the Rose Bowl so during the Rose Bowl game it showed CalTech winning over MIT? I saw this on live TV some years ago and that was a real classic.
But still, perhaps the most famous hack of all time (IMHO!
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I believe that the underside of the bridge is off-limits, so crawling underneath to setup the cabling to support the car was tresspassing.
Ender
Nothing to see here
Attaching a beetle with a good wire and then pushing it off the edge of the bridge doesnt seem to be very technical. I would have hoped that they would have done something more creative.
You certainly aren't an engineer then. Making absolutely sure that the cable won't snap like wet spaghetti, without being able to run a test, is not exactly non-technical. The dynamic loads involved are pretty significant, and non-trivial to calculate in the real world.
(what they did, any hick with a truck and an empty beetle shell could have pulled).
Any hick with a firm foundation in Strengths of Materials and Dynamics... The more difficult part is, IMHO, pulling it off without the bay traffic/bridge authority collaring them right there...
A computer without Microsoft is like ice cream without ketchup.
"At six in the morning on Sunday, 8 June 1958, an early bird on the watch for worms in the Senate House lawn would have seen a strange sight. On the steep slates of the Seely Library there sat, huddled together with a faraway look in their eyes, three admiring policemen, a professional photographer in morning dress, two plimsolled undergraduates who looked as if they had not slept that night, and a shivering girl. Opposite them, on the leaded apex of the 85 ft high Senate House was parked an elderly black Austin Seven van, battered but outwardly complete. The roof party had climbed up convenient scaffolding to get a better view of this phenomenon. I cannot vouch for the policemens' thoughts - it was too late to prove any suspicions they may have had - but for one of the undergraduates this was the moment of victory, the climax to a year of dreams"
Hanging a manor from the GG bridge would, indeed, be an impressive feat of engineering, as well as a dramatic perversion of the classis physics model. You'd have to shrink it a bit.
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ALL YOUR KARMA ARE BELONG TO US
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are they going to close down the border? Really, I doubt that SF is going to pay to send cops to another country to investigate a prank. Let alone pay to send an lawyer to Canada to get them extradited? The prank is funny, but the cops commenting in the story are smoking crack.
What are the long term benefits of publishing malicious code? Some would argue none; and many may do it simply to make a name for themselves in the community, get a better job, etc.
The point is that some people out there still remain true to figuring out a way to do cool stuff--sure, this might not be something incredibly unique, but these kids who studied how to suspend a car off a bridge w/o hurting anyone are the same kids who will be building tomorrow's suspension bridges--they are tomorrow's tradespeople.
IIRC, the engineers (or the aggies) also put up "sculpture" all over the campus over a period of months.
It was ooohed and ahhhed over by the arts students. Fine art sculpture on campus!
Then the pranksters spent one fine spring morning razing the sculptures.
The artsies, and university, freaked. Most amusing.
IIRC, they also did something with signposts on campus.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
>template for Ugly Americans
I'm Canadian.
Would you like to try another attempt to be clever?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I realize it was foggy, but did anyone get any pictures?
You (and I) wish.
The NAFTA agreement makes it pretty clear that we're fucked. We started supplying the assholes with electricity, so we *have* to continue supplying it.
We no longer have control of who we sell to, at what price and when.
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I remember that story, a bit better. I don't remember the year, but for those interested it goes something like this:
Buchanin (the new arts building at the time) received a bunch of new sculptures that Plant was suppose to put up. Plant are the guys who run the steam plants (yes we have steam tunnels at UBC) and do all the maintenance. Of course plant was taking their sweet time. So Engineering decided to play a prank.
They came up with the most hiddious statues you can think of and then put them inplace. They then started a campaign in the university newpaper, letters to the editor, articles and similar things, about how bad the art students' taste was and how they could make statues just as bad. The arts students fought back saying that the statues were master pieces.
It came to head one day when the engineers went out and started smashing the statues. It all ended when the engineers admitted that they made the statues, and the real ones were still waiting in a basement somewhere for Plant to install them.
The Engineers are UBC have done a similar thing with 'indecent' books at the main library. Planting the books in the library, complaining about all the smut and then having a book burning later on.
Software Engineer & Writer of Military Science Fiction and Fantasy Blog: petermwright.com Twitter: WrightPeterM
Check out "If At All Possible, Involve a Cow" by Joel Steinberg. It's available at Amazon or wherever, and details all sorts of college pranks, including extensive info on CalTech and MIT and even a short section on UBC.
I also thought this to be an actual HUT student prank from the 50's, but a web search gave no references, and neither does Ossi Törrönen mention it in his definitive book on HUT pranks (in Finnish) .
In fact, Abbie Hoffman himself takes credit for a suspiciously similar prank (search for "bench" on the page) .
Word-of-mouth can't be trusted. The classic pranks of which I had heard from fellow HUT students differ slightly from their actual documented counterparts. While reading Törrönen's book, I found out that the classic "weld a tram to its rails" done by the Chalmers (Sweden) students was not, in fact, done while the tram was taking passengers at a tram stop, but at night at the depot. And the Paavo Nurmi prank mentioned above, a great media scandal of its time (Paavo Nurmi was a source of animosity between Finland and Sweden) was actually executed by a hired diver, not the HUT Diving Club.
So these things seem to get embellishments over time, just like good jokes that change form over the years.
I'm really sorry to conclude (though hoping for evidence to the contrary) that the park bench prank was not done by HUT students. Too bad, that was my all-time favorite, and fit well with my idea of Finland in the 50's. The police school students and the HUT students had a friendly one-upmanship going on, and the HUT pranksters habitually asked for police permission for their stunts (usually getting it).
Ahh,
what about the guy who found that same beetle bug car in his tiny dorm room! That's right, another tradition was to dismantle the car and reassemble it in an "unusual" spot. Like your dorm room!
I wonder if American engineers do something like this?
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jeff13
The complete Engineer's Hymn (well, one version) for those who might be interested...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
It sounds like an urban legend but it's not, it's well documented. There's a long history of student pranks here in Finland, and that (among other good ones) is quite true. They keep records of these things at the university, since there is actually an annual student prank contest at the University of Technology. This year some guys exchanged the labels on some cans of beans (or whatever) at supermarkets with authentic-looking labels thay advertised the cans as containing "Seal meat" (or "norpan lihaa" in Finnish, "norppa" is a variety of Finnish seal which on the protected animals list). The store managers were reportedly quite puzzled when irate shoppers saw the cans on the shelf...
their 500M dollar payment . . yes. Would this be the one that during standard price times, would have been *LESS* than 15c on the dollar? BC Hydro still made more than expected from this endevour.
i could care less if they are celebrating the 100th anniversary of the stupid prank. this was a public area, people were trying to do things in their lives that had nothing to do with a bunch of college idiots that have nothing better to do than waste everybody's time. people are trying to live their lives, going to the airport, going to work, going to job interviews, hell, what about ambulances? what gives 12 schmucks the right to interfere in 100's (1000's?) of peoples lives.
i would throw them in jail for 10-30 days and fine them the cost of getting that bug out of the water and the costs involved in bringing all the emergency services to the bridge to deal w/ it. I would bet that will be in the 6 digit range at least.
ej
Hey what about hanging a bug off the hydro tower? We are we are we are we are we are the engineers we can we can we can we can demolish forty beers drink rum drink rum drink rum drink rum and come along with us, cause we don't give a damn for any damn man who don't give a damn for us... ERTW!!!
- remove the primate to mail
Well, then you gotta worry about the wannabes who will imitate the prank, possibly not listening to the implicit "don't try this at home kids".
Then there's the issue with San Francisco - possibly the VW beetle capitol of the US. No small number of vintage aircooled VW fans were deeply offended today at a destruction of a piece of automotive history. You can take that to the bank.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
True, True.
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Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
While, yes, National Engineering week might be at the beginning of March, most engineering schools in Canada have their own "E-Week" at other times during the year. UBC Engineering stunts are traditionally done during UBC's Engineering Week, which happens to be the first week of February.
CalTech hacked the Rose Bowl game.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
And what, play tell, does this have to do with the President? I suppose Joe "Censorship protects our children" Lieberman and the hubby of Tipper "PMRC" Gore would have been better?
Perhaps you should abandon your party bigotry and make a stand on the specific issues.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Sure, it's funny....but putting a VW bug in strange places is starting to get a little old. I won't be impressed until they hang something a little larger...like a GTO...
"Good. I thought we were in real trouble for a minute." -Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
1.1) Jean Chretien
1.2) Bernard Landry (et. al.)
Jean Chretien is better known as Prime Minister Poutine to Dubya.
:wq
Oh look at me, now I'm the off topic one, doh!
Anyhow, congrats UBC (I'm from UVic across the channel), I understand the significance for the 20th anniversary and hanging the bug, but next year, try to do something really really different (maybe come to Victoria and clean the legislature's roof copper colour instead of the green copper oxide)
Woo hoo!
--- I used to moderate, then I read the -1 articles and decided having to filter through them was not worth it.
Hey buddy. I'm more than a little concerned about your state of mind.
I didn't vote for either Bush or Gore (or Nader or Buchanan, for that matter), but I don't see how either of those guys would have "destroyed the country as we know it."
If you honestly, legitimately believe that in the next four or eight years, the entire country is going to be turned on its head because we have a slightly right of center commander in chief, I think you need to go re-read your copy of the US Constitution and take some Lithium.
That goes for all you extremists, including the ones who would be spreading FUD about liberals if Gore had been elected. It's nothing but a bunch of sour grapes.
Stand up for what you believe in, but quit posting this crap about THE REPUBLICANS ARE GOING TO END REPRODUCTIVE FREEDOM! and THE LIBERALS ARE GOING TO LEAD US ALL TO HELL! bullshit comments that I seen on slashdot every day. With 280 million people, each with different views on how things should be, this country is in no danger of listing too far to either the left or the right.
Moderation is your friend.
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
The welders on the Bay Bridge put a gnome-like figure on the south side. It was invisible to all automobile traffic and was shown only once to the news media (Chronicle TV and Newspaper). The welders were of the Old-School-Mechanics-Bank-Style-East-Bay-Workingme n and thought that such an addition would be good luck. I was there before and after the placement. I knew the folks that put it there. All I can say is that it must have worked. We who lived through the quake lucked out. But is it forever? When will luck run out? God bless those that live on the Hayward Fault!
There is no way to take into account all of the possible things that could have gone wrong. Since it seems that they were undergratuates, it would be even more likely that something could have gone wrong. As someone already mentioned the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is a prime example of engineering that didn't turn out as planned.
That almost sounds like it's a publicity stunt to bring up their enrollment. If something had gone wrong, I wonder if the school would be cheering or even standing behind the students.Julia also stated:
I wonder if their code of ethics says anything about obeying the law. Being an engineer does not exempt you from the law. Regardless of whether this is funny or even completely safe, if they broke the law, they should pay the penalty.
Mail fraud?
Seriously, lets declare war on them and force them to feed California all their electricity!
Actually, BC Hydro is already supplying a big chunk of electric power to California. Last week, with over $400M owing, the California utilities announced they would only be paying 15 cents on the dollar. BC might not be sending much more juice south if this situation continues.
Trickster Coyote
Howl at the Moon!
Ideology is for ideots.
According to Bartleby, it's Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, though it was apparently a common saying at the time.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
At my high school in Toronto, we have a course called "Robotics". The first assignment we get is to build a bridge out of popsicle sticks. Rules were (if I remember correctly):
* 250g maximum weight
* 60cm span
* made of popsicle sticks and hot glue
Last semester a bridge was built that held something in the realm of 70kg of weight. Not bad for a bunch of Grade 11 high school students.
That happend at my highschool before I was there too. Except a few of the guys were good mechanics, and were able to disasemble the bug, and reassemble it on the roof. My silly school had to get a crane to get it down :)
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
Respect for the legal system? Have you lost your mind?!
So this is my Ask Slashdot... what other schools have cool geek tradition like this, aside from the obvious MIT (but have they ever accomplished anything this amazing?)
And companies?
Keep innovation and prankstership thriving!
"a powerful and unexpected ally..."
I'm sure your definition of a real engineer is the correct one...
Respect for a legal system that's threatening overblown fines and jail time for a harmless prank? Dude, even your own citizens don't respect your laws, why should anyone else?
I would agree that someone should come forward if they caused harm, like a driver stopping instead of speeding off after an accident, but I don't think this is anything like that.
Why would they pay for someone to fish it out of the bay? It wasn't them who dumped it into the water. If the officials cared about it, they could have either winched it back up or attached a longer rope to it and lowered it onto a barge. I'd agree that the engineers should pay for any work entailed in a rational cleanup, but nobody is asking that. Instead they threaten jail time.
A cheque was the term used when I heard about it, but I'd guess that it was a money order, or other pre-paid cashable.
Ah... yes... but I bet your soda can entered the water directly. Those boys merely hung the car off the bridge. It was the authorities who completed the process by cutting it loose - thereby becoming accessories in the crime. Very clever of those students, don't you think?
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Solve the California power (for us anyway) - convince them to secede along with Quebec!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
The only problem with pranks like this is that every once in a while, they do go wrong... and they do hurt somebody. IMHO It comes down to un-necessary risk. If these pranksters had hurt anybody, then (if caught) the would and should prosecuted to the full extent of the law... However, since they didn't hurt anybody, and as usually most of the inconvenience was in the fact that the authorities blocked traffic while looking at the thing, the penalty if these people are caught should be a simple slap on the wrist.
They violated the DMCA! Suspending the VW bug is not considered fair use. :)
Sure, so a bunch of people come forward after having written something like DeCSS, and they all get sued back into the stone age. For what purpose?
Everything they accomplished by releasing the source code can be done with an anonymous release, as well as staying out of a corrupt court facing insane damages for lawyers for a faceless corp.
The engineers didn't do anything that required blocking traffic. At most, one lane should have been blocked while they hauled it up. That would have been a disruption, true, but if they were asked to make reasonable restitution for it, I think they'd do it. But to expect them to come forward to be stuck in a foreign prison in a country with an appalingly back record when it comes to justice... No.
As for the Ghandi/MPAA thing, I do think it's a bad metaphor. But, not all change must come with a martyr. Releasing something like DeCSS and watching the corps scramble when its shown that their bought laws are irrelevant to the issues at hand and that they're willing to violate the rights of anyone who gets in their way to protect their ill-gotten profits... That says more to the public than someone getting arrested and tossed in jail to rot, while the MPAA-owned media calls them an evil hacker.
You may think that quiet suffering is the only force for change, but I disagree.
I remeber reading about the Tetris game MIT made out of a computer, a multi-story building and its lights. Too much.
At the risk of sounding weepy-eyed for college days -- IT'S A PRANK. Lighten up, California. No one gets hurt 'cause they're ENGINEERS. They have looked at all the contingent risks and eliminated them. Move on.
If there wasn't the risk of getting arrested, though, the hack wouldn't be so beautiful.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain with all your metadata.
>No one gets hurt 'cause they're ENGINEERS
This is the exact attitude which causes massive failures in systems. Arrogance and ingnorace.
They caused a massive traffic congestion and rerouting of shipping lanes. Don't real engineers want to avoid this? Hell, think of if any emergency response had to cross this sort of traffic.
It was not an elegant prank either. In the end engineers had to cut it down and let the whole thing sink to the bottom of the bay. Doesn't that fall into "enviromental contamination"? What does the engineering standard say about that?
Think of the resources the city engineers had to use to investigate and neutralize the problem.
An engineer is a responsible professional. Exactly what part of this action, prank or no prank, demonstrates that?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I would be willing to bet that there was at least one accident that resulted because of the backup caused, or the spectacle. Just because everytime there is something out of the ordinary in the bay area, someone always gets in an accident.
Living here, I have a great appreciation for clear roadways. I have to say that this just really pisses me right off, as it serves no real purpose to anyone around here. Yeah, it's a canadian prank.. keep it in canada.
As far as screwing up the traffic routes more than they are already they are just stupid bastards. For example, I leave for work and I am an hourly employee. I have an appointment at 5:30 PM which requires me leaving work at 5:00PM. I leave my house at 7:00AM, thinking I will be into work by 8:00AM which is usually the case; even if there is an accident.
I seriously doubt I would have made it to work by my standard 8:00AM if I had to drive across the bridge. Therefore, they would have cost me money as I lose it if I don't work my full 8 hour day. That's bullshit right there. I think we should cause these kids to pay each and every one of the drivers stuck in the traffic jam $100 to make up for the inconvenience.
Pranks are cool. Pranks that cause problems are not.
This, regardless of whether it was safe or not, caused many problems and cost a lot of money. Tar and feather the bastards.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
I've always thought that a great way to paralyze the US for a day would be to coordinate about two dozen people in major cities across the US to buy $100 junkers, drive them down the freeways during morning rush hour, and park them at strategic locations, pop the hood, toss in a smoke-bomb, and drive off in a freind's car.
The rubberneckers would keep the roads clogged for hours.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Blame Canada
For all the Volkswagon Bugs
they go around hangin' 'round like thugs
Seriously, lets declare war on them and force them to feed California all their electricity!
--
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
My favorite part of the article was the banner ad above it for the book "The Beatles."
Canadians actually buy into that turbonium stuff...
>Respect for a legal system that's threatening overblown fines and jail time for a harmless prank? Dude, even your own citizens don't respect your laws, why should anyone else?
That is the whole point of my first post. Engineers are priverledged citizens. Just like doctors and judges, their chosen profession dictates how they should act.
Regardless of what the law is, they do not get to chose which laws they want to apply to them or not. Its not up to them to decide. I don't think that murder should be a crime, does that mean I get to get away scott-free? Thats why they have courts to decide if they are guilty or not.
These undergrads know this. They learned it in first year. Prank or no prank, its not the way an engineer should act. They did the act, so they should step forward and take responsiblity.
>I'd agree that the engineers should pay for any work entailed in a rational cleanup, but nobody is asking that. Instead they threaten jail time.
Read the article. They threatened to sue that means the city does want money. By your own admission, they should pay. So why haven't they come forward?
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
NHS?
El Karma: excelente(principalmente la suma de moderación hecha a los comentarios de los usuarios)
This is funny, wish I had mod points!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
Thanks. You said exactly what I've wanted to say to those who are underestimating this task.
But leaving aside engineering cleverness, the rigging work below the bridge deck must have taken a lot of courage. Working aloft, in the dark, in constant danger of arrest or falling is not everyone's cup of tea.
I submitted this very story yesterday before, and it was rejected.
2001-02-06 02:50:18 Engineers Suspend VW Bug from Golden Gate Bridge (articles,humor) (rejected)
Even the wording was very similar. What's with Slashdot's submissions process? There seems to be a strong bias towards only accepting articles from a certain "in" group. Bastards...
Can't we draw a comparison between this and the hacker ethic?
Of course, in the short term, making exploits widely available (or performing them as shown) may temporarily endanger public safety.
However, the long term benefits of pioneering the coolest hack (on-line or off-a-bridge), far outweigh any temporary inconvenience. (Even if we factor in the inevitable script kiddies and copy-cat pranksters.)
Actually, the "b" stands for "believed." As it "Believed to be false, but you can't prove a negative."
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
So the bug fell 225 feet before hitting the water? That's the fastest a bug has ever gone!
...they didn't lighten it by losing
the engine the way these guys did.
That may have been a savvy move on their
part. The Cost Guard and CHP ought to have
a better sense of humor, but this way they
at least avoid "toxic waste dumping at sea"
blah blah blah (residual gas & oil).
And, I'm sorry to say, the Golden Gate Bridge
is more famous than the roof of your school.
I give this prank a c-
You're a tough grader.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
One day in the early 1980s, the high bridges were found full of cars. It quickly turned out to be a well-funded lobbying operation by several local businesspeople wanted the interchange finished. They'd brought in a large crane late at night, and simply done it as if it was a construction project, with guys in hard hats, flares, and lights. It worked; they got enough political attention on the interchange to get the money to finish it, and today it's the biggest interchange in the South Bay.
It's legal to walk on the walkways or drive on the roadway, but it's not legal to go climbing on the underside of the bridge.
They stiffened the penalties for this sort of thing a few years ago after Woody Harrellson and his friends blocked all traffic on the bridge for several hours during a protest agains rainforest logging.
Godiva was a lady who through Coventry did ride
To show to all the villagers her lovely bare white hide.
The most observant villager an engineer of course
Was the only one to notice that Godiva rode a horse!
Oh, we are we are we are we are are the engineers.
we can we can we can we can demolish forty beers.
drink rum drink rum drink rum drink rum and come along with us.
Oh we don't give a damn for any old man who don't give a damn for us.
Thankyou.... UBC, you've done an honor to engineers everywhere. You've challenged us all to one-up you!
-a Guelph Engineer student.
Sure, its a great 'hack' in the true sense of the word, but can we truely rely on their safety assurance skills?
You rely on their skills every day, in every manufactured product you use.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Hey, I think it's time to go to war with Canada.
George W can follow in his daddy's footsteps.
The engine alone weighs 275 lbs.
This, I know, from experience.
Without the engine, two strong men could lift the body of a beetle over their heads. With the engine, three, maybe four are required.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Fuck off, you goddamn useless frog.
Y'know, of all the possible definitions for the word "bug," this was the last one I was expecting when I opened this article. ^_^
---
I wonder if the authorities screamed "we'll prosecute!" as loudly when it was a celebrity that was demonstrating, instead of some students pulling a prank.
From the land that brought us William Shatner, Dave Foley, and Canadian Whiskey comes this? I have to say that I'm a little disappointed. Perhaps they could've chosen a more scenic location. The pictures in the newspaper aren't that great.
F**k off. Take a joke. And take it as something interesting that happened in your mundane life.
It seems that the people most offended are Americans since Canadians managed to pull this one from under your nose. They look like the ones screaming sue sue sue, put them in jail, fine them.
There's more I could say, but I feel that it's pretty trivial since I'd be wasting my breath.
ERTW.
~~~NO CARRIER~~~
It's funny. Those of us in the West grow up thinking Quebec is pretty cool, that it's neat that people speak French... etc.. etc...
Then we get older, and realize that apparently we 'oppress' them, and we are the 'enemy'. Believe it or not, the rest of the country is raised in an evironment that makes us LIKE Quebec....
Too bad you guys can't do the same.
The hack is a little more involved than tossing a car w/a rope attached to it... there were 2 cables involved, the first one going from one side of the bridge to the other, the second one suspended the car from the centre of the first cable. Thus forming a y shape cable with the 3 points attached to either side of the bridge and the car. Also rememer, these guys dont exactly live in SF so they didnt have unlimited time to do this in, not to mention unfamiliarity with the area (then again, maybe not?).
;-)
Not exactly trival, not to mention they got away scot free. So far
Kindly fuck off now, there's a good lad.
Fuck Slashdot
Silly person, Canadian engineers don't work in Canada anymore.
You've gotta wonder if our extradition treaty with Canada covers vandalism . . . or are the CHiPs going to just saunter up to Vancouver and drag these guys back by their hair?
well the car was _under_ the bridge... it was the overcautious authorities freaking out over a little car...
Anyways, please repeat this rant for the 'voyeur bus' incident. And anything which isnt strictly 100% legal which "ties up traffic".
Traffic is traffic, expecting to get somewhere in a hurry during rush hour? Naw, forget about it.
Anyways, its the authorities and rubberneckers, I'd like to see you prove that the students either caused direct damage or had intent to damage.
Besides, when was the last time you pulled a prank in another country?
Its not the point of if you think it is fair to punish them or not. This is irrelvant to the issue. Its called respect for the legal system.
Respect for the legal system??? The same one that passes the DMCA? The same one that is mocked around the world? When even many Americans have no respect for their legal system, what makes you think that foreign nationals would care one bit.
It was a prank, ok? Perhaps if Americans spent less time abusing their own system to their advantage, by suing everytime they fall over, they might be a little more relaxed and be able to sit back and appreciate the cleverness of such a prank.
The point of the annual bug toss is to draw attention to engineering and particularly to those who build bridges. It is also a challenge to city engineers made by engineering students -- specifically, can the city engineers figure a way out to recover the thing. Obviously, the Americans couldn't comprehend this, so they dumped the thing in the ocean. Greaaat.
How can a cheque be anonymous? You can always trace it back. Who signed it?
The UBC Engineering Students' Society has bank accounts of its own. Nobody said it was anonymous -- the ESS paid for it on behalf of the engineers who did it.
I agree. He makes good points which I would love to see answered.
If it was Bill Gates hanging cars, I'm sure that this would be mod-ed up to Insightful.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
Same two guys, standing on a ferry below the golden gate. Camera pans out to show beetle hanging from above:
"Didn't I tell you to let out on the clutch easier?"
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Hey wasn't there some prank of legend involving a manager-type at apple whose underlings thought it fitting to get a VW through his door and into his office?????
"Chill, Orrin!"---Trent Lott
I first heard about this story before UBC had taken credit. I turned to the person who told me and, having heard mom's stories from when she was dating a UBC engineer, said, "You know, I bet the UBC Engineers ran out of Vancouver bridges to hang bugs off of. Imagine my suprise when I turned out to be right. Heh.
Hats off to em, going to a foriegn country, and executing this prank in a very public place, without being caught. Bravo!
--
Remove the rocks to send email
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
The VW bug isn't the only thing that brings them fame =)
A while ago, UBC students advertised an artshow, they painted several sculptures for display and after the folks came to see the art, some engineers leapt out of the bushes and smashed the artwork into pieces. Needless to say, the guests were petrified.
Oh and of course, the lady godiva thing. Back in the 60's/70's the graduating class would hire a naked stripper and have her parade around campus naked on a horse. They stopped doing that now unfortunately.
A few of my buddies at UBC engineering were ecstatic when they told me about what the engineers did. They didn't know who did it though, I guess that's why those types of pranks have been pulled off almost yearly for 20 years. It's not about individual pride at all.
--
Karma: -1,257,423
if you can't beat 'em might as well join 'em
I live in Vancouver, where University of British Columbia is. And I knew some of the students who played a part in the prank. Frankly, the university doesn't mind it, since this event is great publicity for it. And I don't mind either, since now every Slashdot member knows Canada and Vancouver and what it's known for :-) Who says anything about Canadians being polite anyway? Canada rules!
Mystx
The pranksters didn't hold up traffic, the authorities did. They do this every year here in Vancouver, and the authorities act reasonably.
The bug *really* didn't need to be pulled down right away.
Cheers,
Rick Kirkland
THAT'S why they look like little Nazi helmets!
Actually, it was the underlying engineering that Porsche was wholly responsible for, that was amazing about this car. Not the sheet metal.
The aircooled engine would be reliable in a desert.
The small displacement would provide fuel economy.
The rear-engine placement would aid in the efficient weight distribution of the car (as well as allow rear-wheel drive, for better turn-radius, and simpler manufacturing).
The flat-four engine design allowed for a lower profile and less space required inside the car - allowing for a better aerodynamic profile.
The torsion-bar suspension allowed for excellent handling and weight capacity, and could also be very cheaply manufactured - as an added bonus, torsion-bars are adapted most well to offroad applications (thus the amphibious kubelwagen, or VW Thing, which was Germany's equivalent to the US Jeep - and the same scheme has been applied in countless dune-buggy-adapted beetles).
These same principles were applied to the legendary Porsche 356, and 550, which kicked-ass all over the sports car and racing scene of the 1950's. Porsche added two cylinders onto the end of the flat four, for the 911 (leaving the traditional flat four in the 912), and continued the legacy of creating the "Sports car for the rest of us" (true. . Porsche's are too expensive for your average American, but they're FAR more affordable, traditionally, than your Ferrari's, Jaguars, and Lambourghinis).
So, while Hitler gave a rough outline for the sheetmetal, it was based off of the nascent science of aerodynamics, mainly pursued by Porsche and his collegues in the 20's. Hitler was a layman follower of that school of automotive engineering, so it was no mistake that his design was fairly compatible with the ideas Porsche already had pioneered. The main principles shown in the Beetle, are still part of today's most advanced Porsche cars; the rear-engine (despite Porsche's ill-advised Audi-inspired foray into the front-engined 944 and 928; pieces of crap designed to appeal to Americans who were afraid to learn how to deal with the handling characteristics of rear-engined cars), flat-six design. The suspension is more modern, as are the engine cooling systems, etc - but the basic design is still the same, tried and true from the 1930's. Truly, the Porsche is the Unix of the car-world. Front engine, front-wheel drive cars are obviously the MS Windows cars.
Ferdinand Porsche was a man who cared little for politics, and was not a fan of Hitler or his ideas, and strongly resisted, at first, the idea of actually producing this car for him - until Hitler told him that he was right, it was probably impossible; and that challenge took advantage of Porsche's pride.
Henry Ford, on the other hand, was a well-known racist, and supported the Nazi party from America.
After the war, the French asked Porsche to come to France to help design a French version of the Beetle (which was not really in production yet, because they were still trying to rebuild the factory). When he arrived, they arrested him as a war criminal, and he was put to work repairing tractors.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
As I understand it, the design of the Volkswagen was such that factories used to manufacture them could be rapidly retooled to produce other fun things, like tanks and support vehicles.
- billn
The fact that they are studying engineering does not make them engineers.
--
Marc A. Lepage (aka SEGV)
--
Marc A. Lepage
Software Developer
The only thing that being an engineer dictates is how they should perform their job. I don't expect a doctor to be any more or less ethical than anyone else, outside of the work environment. If non-medical students would perform a prank, I can't see why a doctor wouldn't. I'd just imagine that they'd be a bit better an making sure that it had less potential for harm.
Schools have no place teaching ethics or morals, asside from those directly releated to the job, and even then it's a "peer-accepted code of conduct". Teaching ethics is no better than a school teaching "proper christian behaviour" or any other subjective view.
The city threatened to sue. How typically USA... They didn't ask for money, they threatened to sue for unspecified and no doubt inflated damages.
If they were asked to cover actual damages or expenses, that'd be different.
There's a huge difference for taking responsibility for your actions, and being the brunt of whatever assinine punishments someone choose to arbitrarily hand down to appease their hurt feelings.
I don't suppose you'd like to submit to twenty lashes for posting your message? It's the penalty I assess for people who post irrational and unreasonable replies to my posts. Come on, take it like a man.
"Students in a B.Eng. program should make themselves fully aware of the APEGBC Code of Ethics (http://www.apeg.bc.ca/about/act_code.htm) and apply its principles in their work."
... and with fidelity to the public needs"
It does apply to them. If it didn't why do they even mention it?
Ummmm. Why do they mention it? They don't mention it. UBC Engineering isn't even a B.Eng. program. It's a B.A.Sc. program for undergrads. This is a nitpick, but you're the one who started down that path of quoting little facts. Go back. Re-read the article, now go to the correct school's website before you start quoting things! It's UBC, not UVic!
"Professional Engineers and Professional Geoscientists shall act at all times
Note the part where it says "at all times". It does not say "when being paid" or "when working". Doing something like this is not showing "fidelity to the public needs".
Undergraduate students are not Professional Engineers. Even after graduating, there is a process to go through (not the least of which involves paying regular dues) to become and remain Professional Engineers.
For all you jingoistic Americans fearing an insult to your national hacking pride, rest assured by visiting At http://hacks.mit.edu/
---
---
the pen is mightier then the sword. the sword is mightier then the court. the court is mightier then the pen.
Apparently, they went up earlier, and attached the rope to the bridge. and then at about 3:40 am, they just attached the rope to the empty beetle shell, and tossed it over. Apparently, according to witnesses, it was done with "Commando-like" precision.
Wrong. Ferdinand Porsche design(yes, that Ferdinand Porsche).
Just because I can imagine doing a hippopotamus, doesn't mean I'd like to do it.
Check out MIT Hacks.- -------
-----------------------------------------------
>Happy E-week everybody! ERTW!
Too bad National Engineering Week in Canada is the first week in March, not the first week in February. UBC 'geers continue to get it wrong.
They had stripped pretty much everything out of the car. It was an empty shell, really
I live in SF and thought it was hilarious. So did everyone I know. Who are the locals who got angry about this?!
sulli
RTFJ.
California is full of the biggest weanies.. Bunch of ME ME ME the world revolves around ME.
You guys need to learn to share... and have some fun.
It amused me most of all that the local news channels tried to cover this, but the bug was completely obscured by fog for most of the morning.
I think it's curious to assert that it's the authorities fault for blocking traffic because they decided to pull it down promptly, (probably since it was over an active shipping channel.)
Apparently the authorities should have just left it until later, because after all, it was engineers what put it up there, and they must know what they were doing. Yeah, just like the engineers who designed the giant bonfire at Texas A&M. Oops, engineering students in both cases.
Imagine this: You're getting a citation, and somebody zooms by at 90, so the officer points out that he knows him. "Don't worry, he's almost a civil engineer. He probably knows better than we do what speeds are appropriate for this road."
I also don't appreciate more crap in the bay, but apparently that's the authorities fault too.
Many of the same bright sparks who think suspending a VW bug from the bridge qualifies as an engineering feat, assert that those students shouldn't be responsible for the bug in the bay, because the authorities could have just hauled it up. Now, if getting it down there was a feat for engineers, getting it back up would qualify as something of a feat as well. Too bad those engineers weren't around to help out.
Actions have consequences. The Canadian engineering students actions had unpleasant consequences for a lot of people. You don't just go around littering & blocking (or causing to be blocked,) traffic just for amusement. At least, I don't.
To me, an early suspension bridge in deep water is an engineering feat, but crap dangling from a rope is not.
The engineering students have allowed us a lovely insight into the origin of the word sophomoric.
Assembly is the reverse of disassembly.
They weren't worried about boats bumping into the car, dude.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
And what, pray tell, does circumcision have to do with UNIX?!
UNIX, when pronounced as a word, has a homonym that describes a person who has endured a somewhat more radical alteration of the male anatomy. Lest you be confused.
Most people seem to understand and enjoy my sig, based on the sheer volume of e-mail that it creates for me.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
OK.
This was a bad hack. A good hack is supposed to *only* broaden the mind. This caused shipping to slow down and someone could have been hurt.
Please people. If you are going to do something like this make sure it won't hurt anyone or cost money.
... I also live about 2 miles from the Golden Gate... would have been cool to walk down and check it out.
Well.. actually the design of the original beetle was done by Ferdinand Porsche, who later founded Porsche.
The "culprits" are now safely back in Canada. They're tired, but very happy.
Their three goals? Coverage on international press (Sydney, Australia covered it), coverage on CNN (accomplished), and coverage on Slashdot.
As for all you weenies saying they should be prosecuted or forced to pay for all the time lost, just go ahead and subtract that from the $200 million+ your state has stolen from our province.
Did you even read the fucking article?
Careful. You're just begging to be put on his worst-dressed list.
Are we _really_ having a low userid contest?
I'd be more impressed if they could:
Solve "the Quebec Problem"
Build Canada a functioning economy
Reduce Canadian taxation levels
Get Jean Chretien to resign
End the socialist dictatorship system in Canada
Rewrite the Constitution and Bill Of Rights of Canada to allow Canadians to have free speech, defend themselves, and own property (apart from just paying taxes on things they own)
Raise Canadian job opportunities and salaries to US levels
THOSE would be impressive engineering feats. But that would be beyond their ken.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I've been reading a lot of comments, but they generally go into one of two groups:
1) Hey, it's funny, it's a prank, have a sense of humour!
2) It's not funny, it held up traffic, some people have to work, taxpayers money spent, lame prank anyways, ect...
I don't know if it's even really nessesary to respond to the second one, most of us just shake our heads to these... well perhaps "anal retensive" is the only word that fits?
Anyways, if you start viewing pranks in the latter fashion, pretty soon you won't be having ANY fun! Generally the people who are offending by this are well-meaning (important to mention that, because they are) citizens who see the costs (traffic jams, late for work, taxpayer money, ect) outweighing the benefits (humour, shaking up the ordinary, a challenging goal, ect)
Yes, traffic was jammed. Yes, people got to work late (and I'm sure the economy suffered greatly for it or something). Yes, it took time and taxpayers money to remove the bug. But is it really THAT big a deal? Furthermore, what about the laugh it gave thousands of people who saw it live, and perhaps millions of others who got a chuckle out of it on TV later?
I think it's important to empathise with those that view this prank as harmful, and not simply tell them to get the stick out of their butt (but they should, nevertheless).
All in all, though, it's worth a laugh (or chuckle)
Yes, I am Canadian. I spell humour with a U...
---
Fuzzy Knights: New RPG Strips Tuesday and Friday!:
http://www.fuzzyknights.com
That's the trouble with professions which make things look simple: people tend to think they are simple.
--
Patrick Doyle
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
It is hard not too. My parents pushed for French in my elementary school, and I actually *liked* French. I thought it was cool that I lived in a country with 2 official languages.
Then, I grew up. I became politically aware. I saw the statistics, and I saw the attitude. I felt mildly raped...........
Why accept a distinctly beautiful.... a distinctly CANADIAN subculture, when they cannot accept the rest of us? Distinct culture? Perhaps if blind arrogance is a defining trait, then yes, Quebec is a distinct culture....
I may sound like a rednek Alliance member, but I am speaking from the heart. This fact should scare you........
Feed The Need[goatse.cx]
Just to play Devil's advocate, that prank may have inadvertantly saved someone's life - there may well have been a multi-car pileup on the bridge that morning. .t.
In addition to it being illegal to climb on the underside of the bridge (which other people already pointed out), it is also illegal to throw anything over the side of the bridge. In the cases of both the Golden Gate and the Bay Bridge, the police enforce these statutes VERY strictly. I was cuffed, arrested, and fined $250 about 10 years ago for throwing a SODA CAN over the side of the Golden Gate...so I can only imagine how bad these guys'll have it if they get caught.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
Eunuchs? I honestly didn't see it until you pointed it out. Cute.
--
Attaching a beetle with a good wire and then pushing it off the edge of the bridge doesnt seem to be very technical. I would have hoped that they would have done something more creative (what they did, any hick with a truck and an empty beetle shell could have pulled).
Imagine for instance if they suspended the beetle with match sticks (assume they figure out the tensile strenths involved), or more realistically if they used wire made out of spider webs (I think this might just be the right material). I would highly be impressed and it would definetly be worth the trouble of hanging the car there and causing all the traffic mishaps. Maybe the might even win an award?
Trust the source!
According to the article it was pushed off the bridge a little before 4am and finally cut loose a little after 8am.
Hmmm. OK a little over 4 hours deciding between hauling it back up, or cutting it loose. Geez, flip a coin and get on with it. The coast gaurd had already blocked of the bay from traffic, why did it take so flipping long to just cut it loose?
Well, at least at MIT, they come up with NEW pranks. This one is apparently a 20 year tradition.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
There fore just because of the timing, they had intent to cause damage to get publicity and attract the ruberneckers. If they did the thing at 9pm on a Monday night they would have had it down before it caused any problems for the morning commute.
What is better, having authorities be over cautious of the situation or have something go wrong causing a few people to die. They are engineering students, students make mistakes (so do professionals). Something could have gone wrong, and I do not fault the authorities for being overly careful. If I had a car appear dangling from a bridge you can bet I'd be pretty damn careful too.
That's like blaming the fire department for parking in front of a fire hydrant.. it's just their job and they did it well. These students crossed a line that should not have been crossed.
Maybe their intent was not to cause damage, but it did and they should have to accept responsibility for the damages that did occur because of it. And I think that saying they did not intend to cause damage either means the students are absolute idiots (which it doesn't seem so) or the person saying thy didn't intend it is an absolute idiot.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
OK, i know this is going to be nailed as trolling or flamebait or something but.........
i always get a kick out of canucks going after the USA. (anyone really but the canadians seem to have a certain love for it)
there a plenty of arguements I could bring up:
- you would be hard pressed to tell you ever left the us when you enter canada
- 90% of them live w/i 100 miles of my border.
- their money has ducks on it (pet peeve)
- especially when travelling all canadians seem to define them selves as "i am not american". (you know you have seen that stupid flag on their backpack, there to make sure that you know, even though they look, sound and act american, they are canadian) how can I respect a country whose only national definition is the negation of a decent country.
i guess we should back off the canadians. it must be tough to live in the shadow of a real nation and pretend you are not just the 51st state.
yeah, yeah mod me down, my slash karma sux anyway
Haha! Dad told me about his involvement with the sculptures. His stories about engineering are hilarious.
One of the major factors of any engineering design is resource management; in these case how to accomplish their goal with as little work as possible.
So what was their goal? To safely hang a VW from a bridge in a manor that would receive media attention. To do this they would have to choose a bridge that was seen by the world. This means they had very little access to the bridge and very little time to accomplish their task. Also they had to design a system that was difficult to undo or the authorities would have quickly pulled the car back up the way it went down.
If any hick could do this why don't you tell us of a system that meets all of these criteria. Remember that how their hang was implemented is still a mystery; even to those who could directly observe the results. If you can't understand the skill that went into successfully pulling off such a caper then you aren't the type of person that engineers are trying to impress.
Now, if they'd strung it between the towers of the WTC in NY, that would have been impressive.
--
Every bloody emperor has his hand up history's skirt [Peter Hammill/VdGG]
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. - B.F.
:)
I presume that B.F. stands for Benjamin Franklin. That quote is from Thomas Jefferson
Mark Duell
Cool prank, but who is the guy?
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
The support vehicle thing, you could be onto something. The original beetle (not the Golf-engined new one) was fantastic off-road, which is why there are so many beach-buggy conversions.
In the UK, the bodies die long before the engines. The engines then get converted for twin spark plug ignition, and are used in homebuilt aircraft. They're perfect for it!
"Authorities could not estimate how much the prank cost. Asked it the charges could lead to jail time, Piazza said, "Sure"."
Cost? Jail? It was a prank ffs. Lighten up people.
I guess engineers just know how to have fun.
"but can we truely rely on their safety assurance skills? Also, look at the traffic trouble they caused: I wonder how many people missed their flights from SFO because of the trouble. "
Wooaaahhh. I don't think you like the idea of people of people trying out skills and hacks... . Come on. It didn't fall down. These people knew what they were doing. Maybe we should deny computer students access to telnet/ ftp / internet on the basis that we can't rely on their 'safety assurance skills'. ;-)
Yup, they broke the law. But I think they were careful not to endanger anybody. Who did they harm?
The world is a grey enough place as it is. I think we should encourage more of this kind of activity.
Or are you too frightened of what will happen if you do?
Incidentally, your "Kosher Food Tax" doesn't stand up to any serious scrutiny. Admit it, you made it up, didn't you?
Another AC. Time to ban them, Cmdr. Taco!
Try typing in BLAMECANADA when you play the next version of Flight Unlimited, Flight Simulator or Pro Pilot and then fly under the Golden Gate. The developers might pay tribute :)
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
Back in high school, the class three years ahead of mine somehow got a VW bug on the roof of the school, and they didn't lighten it by losing the engine the way these guys did.
I give this prank a c-.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Given the fact that one of the two major power companies in Califoria just defaulted on thier 500 million dollar plus payment to BC Hydro a.k.a. Powerex (paying only 15 cents on the dollar) I would have to say way to go UBC Engineers. We've kept the lights on in California for too long. Go ahead press charges... and hold court by candlelight. To the guy who wonders how many people missed flights because of it... I wonder how many flights were saved because of us silly reckless Canadians who have the forsight to plan ahead when it come to our infrastructure. Just plain good engineering all around I say!
Anyhow... rumorville says that in the past years, they have managed to get a VW onto the bridge towers back home -- which is more impressive, IMHO, then tossing a car off the bridge.
The rumours are true. In our proud 20 years of E-week stunt history, the UBC Engineers have placed beetles in all sorts of places:
Other pranks of note:
Happy E-week everybody! ERTW!
I can't see how you could retool from making VW Beetles to making tanks...
I can't see how you could switch from making VW Beetles to making tanks without retooling.
forth ?love if honk then
In June 1958, four engineering students at Cambridge University put an Austin Seven van on the roof of the Senate House overnight. There's a writeup of the methods used and the story of that night, complete with diagram, written by one of the conspirators. It's a document worth reading for anyone planning to follow in their hallowed footsteps.
M
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
They mention that the perpetrators could go to jail. But how? What law prohibits this kind of thing? (I'm sure the authorities will find a suitable charge if they want - something like Obstructing a Public Highway, or Causing Undue Disturbance, or some blanket law that lets them prosecute this kind of undefined crime).
Any ideas folks?
There's an annual tradition of similar jolly pranks at universities in New Zealand during Capping Week (graduation)... the best I can recall was posting official-looking notices to every home in one town claiming that the government needed a urine sample from every resident for scientific purposes. Residents were told to deliver their urine to local post offices... which they did.
If those same Canadian students hung these from a bridge:
1) George Bush
2) Script Kiddiots
3) Temptation Island cast members
4) Jesse Jackson
5) John Ashcroft
"When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am buddha, nobody is upset at all"
http://foxnews.com/etcetera/020401/mit.sml
I think somebody (perhaps me) needs to start a college prank website, and have either stories or links (such as one to the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Drop Squad). This kind of stuff needs to live on forever in cyberspace.
Although usually it's barber's poles rather than park benches. Has a Fb (false but...) in the AFU FAQ. Other sightings include Caltech, Harvard, and MIT. (many of the pages are quite long, search for "barber").
Say no to software patents.
Look here for a history of the VW Beetle, which seems to clarify that this was indeed the case. It also seems to indicate that Hitler refiened Porsche's designs.
It was done on the building of the faculty of electrical engineering at the Technical University in Delft, The Netherlands some years ago as well. Seems to be a trend in this
Sig (appended to the end of comments I post, 54 chars)