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MIT 'Hall of Hacks' Gone
WhyCause writes: "The MIT "shrine to clever pranks" has closed it's doors due to space concerns. I thought this development particularly pertinent after the review of "The Hacker Ethic." You can read more about it here." This is a real shame -- it was on my list to visit the next time I traveled to Boston. There are still some great online resources detailing MIT pranks, though, and the exhibits aren't being thrown out, but their future home is uncertain.
Slackers are per definition white - their equivalent exist everywhere. Spend some time "on da block" & you'll meet enough non-white slacker-equivalents.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Yes, MIT's student body has become more diverse. However I still don't see any divergence from the MIT-population-mean in the folks into pulling hacks. Indeed if one were to follow stereotypes few of the Asains would be involved in hacks, particularly considering the streses placed upon them by their sponsoring nations and the possible consequences of a hack gone wrong. However they seem to hack as enthusiastically as everyone else.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Actually the cow on the dome was a University of Virginia prank, pulled off by the current President of NASDAQ back in the late 60's, I believe. It was placed on the roof of the Rotunda, but didn't make it down alive. Unfortunately UVa tends to overlook fraternity-ish pranks, but would most likely crack down severely on MIT-ish pranks. Blah.
I haven't heard of many clever ones lately.
(I am an alumnus from the 1970s.)
Some possible explanations:
(1) The student body is much rounded with nearly
half women, lots of non-white, non-middle class.
These groups are more into studying and less into
hacking.
(2) Shifting attention from the physical to virtual.
You see more hacks happening on computers rather
than buildings.
This despite three deadbolts on the tiny, 3-by-3 door leading to the roof and four other locked doors prior to reaching the top.
:-)
But, unless you leave someone on the roof permanently, 3 deadbolts aren't going to help much, because they'll be on the inside.
Gerv
Biotech researchers have made mice that glow in the dark, thanks to jellyfish genes and gene-splicing technology. All that one needs to do is make a few of these mice and put them in a cage somewhere.
If you could add a few other lifeforms, it could be a really interesting display.
The state-of-the-art may not yet have advanced to the point where this can be done easily outside biotech companies, but it's likely that such a hack can be possible by 2010.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
Yeah, MIT's hacks sure make our effort of putting a roll of tickertape in an airvent at uni pale in comparison.
The airvent was a 4 metre tall ground-level duct that was the main outlet to the airconditioning at a uni in Melbourne. A small slot in the side of the concrete pipe permitted the entry of small objects like boxes of confetti, computer cards and rolls of tickertape. These unauthorised wind-tunnel experiments proved to be great fun and fairly harmless.
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
This was definitely an MIT prank. The cow was a life-sized plastic cow from the "Hilltop Steakhouse", a Boston area monument of cheese. The owner of said steakhouse, long rumored to have Mafia connections, was sufficiently amused that he not only declined to press charges but donated the cow to the the Prank Museum.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
read the article... it's the physical museum that's closing, not the website, which is still alive and well
There are other groups who do/did this. The MIT Hacks though are populer becouse they are ment to show of technical and other skills. Mainly they seem to be pranks. But becouse they are MIT and the scale they get more press then most others.
I was in a group a while back that did things on this scale or better. None of us hold degrees and when the cops come we are commiting vandalism/terrorism. The only differnece it seems is where you go to school.
I am by no means putting down these hacks for these pranks are great to read about. Aswell they do involve alot of skill.
But i would like to say there are many other groups of people that put things out that are bigger and more chalanging then a banner. As of yet my group was disbanded.
Now pranks are behind me as I am getting older and the law does not enjoy my jokes.
darklink
When you look into the abyss the abyss looks back.
As AC said above, and speaking as a DC-area resident myself, I'd bet that the Smithsonian would love to get their hands on some of this memorabilia. If the PTB at MIT can't find another home for this material, and soon, then they ought to contact the Smithsonian. Some of those hacks are hilarious, and it's too bad they aren't more widely known - and, it would be a real shame if people never got the chance.
The Museum is *not* getting rid of any of the hacks, and has in its collections even more than were ever on display at once. They are remodeling the exhibit space for an exhibition on the longer history of education at MIT: exhibition details are at http://web.mit.edu/museum/exhibitions/in-the-works .html
Chocolate Pi
it was clearly hax0red.
-aardvarko
webmaster at aardvarko dot com
I find this quite sad. I associate MIT with a mecca for hackers... and their "pranks" are basically a tribute to the "Hacker Ethic". The hacker museum was actually good for the hacker image. It presented a view of the light heartedness and FUN that the hackers follow; why did you do it? Because it was FUN. Why else? *strange stare*
Actually, Real Genius was not filmed at Caltech, although a large number of other movies have been filmed there. The administration didn't like the way that the Institute was being portrayed and refused to let them film there. They did do a highly accurate copy of a section of one of the Undergraduate residences as a set, though. The details were pretty damn accurate, down to the (sanctioned) graffiti on the walls and the interiors of the closets. IIRC it was a chunk of Dabney Hovse.
Sadly, Interhouse is no more. It was killed off my Frosh year (1990-91) because it simply got out of hand; too many outsiders were coming in and getting violent. A number of the other events portrayed in the movie (Decompression, the Tanning Invitational, etc.) are based on Caltech events, though, and I had Frosh Physics from the professor with his own TV show who was a model for the one in the movie. They even duplicated one famous Caltech hack- stuffing the entry box in an "enter as many times as you wish, printed entries accepted" sweepstakes. The Caltech (Page House, IIRC) students printed up several hundred thousand entries on a line printer and won a substantial share of the prizes including a car.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Already addressed in the Doonsburyesque "Ferd the Nerd" comic strip by Fred Hutchinson that appeared in "The Tech", I believe, in the mid 1970s. As best I can recall:
Student to Asst Dean: "Man, you gotta help me - it's my roomate."
Asst. Dean: "What's the problem?"
Student: "He keeps me up all night."
Asst Dean: "A real tool, eh?" [tool: n., someone who spends all their time studying]
Student: "No. He glows in the dark!"
Asst. Dean: "What?!"
Student: "Yeah man. See, he fell into the reactor while retrieving a wrench and now he's got this pale green glow!"
And hacking was NEVER limited to seniors (limiting hacks to seniors is the tradition at Caltech's "Ditch Day")
In the first phase of my undergraduate career (long story), I was at Purdue, a place famous for engineers and infamous for its mind-numbing, unspeakable conservativism. We didn't get many pranks, but one of the better ones was the time someone erected three outhouses outside of the Math building: one for Men, one for Women, and one for UNIX. Sadly, they were torn down only a bit later. Steve Beering had no sense of humor.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
>`These kids are splitting atoms and stuff, so a
>lock poses no barrier to them,'' marveled Barber.
A little overdramatic, I think, this sounds kinda like something out of the Matrix, I can see it now in Matrix 4:
MIT Undergrad: "You mean to say that I can dodge padlocks?"
Morpheus: "I mean to say that when time comes, when you have your PhD in nuclear engineering and you want to put a cow on the dome, you won't have to."
- Twid
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
The hacking museum is one of the coolest things about MIT--it gives current and former students a shared culture, and it gives new students something to aspire to. After all, what could be cooler than being imortalized in a museum of cool hacks? (And come on, MIT students: You may claim that you went there for the academics, but we all know that you all secretly want to be the Val Kilmer character from Real Genius.)
I knew of a few cool hacks that happened at my school while I was there, and I'm sure that there were cool hacks in the past, and cool hacks after I left. But these hacks are destined to fade into history until they are forgotten, which is really too bad. I sure hope someone at MIT wises up and does everything possible to keep the museum alive and opened; it would be a shame for them to lose something that makes the school unique and cool.