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One Ring Rules the MIT Dome

Posted by Hemos on from the awesome dept.

Patiwat Panurach writes "The Great Dome of MIT was overtaken on the morning of Monday the 17th by a great golden ring, inscribed in red Elvish with text that translates to: "One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them." The hackers were apparently not completely successful, for neither the Great Dome nor Building 10 managed to vanish into the realm of shadows."

18 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. Way more impressive than my tribute by typical+geek · · Score: 3, Funny

    all I did was bite off my ring finger.

  2. The ring IS working! by Victor+Danilchenko · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's making hacks.mit.edu server disappear...

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    Victor Danilchenko

  3. Buildings by sulli · · Score: 4, Funny
    The hackers were apparently not completely successful, for neither the Great Dome nor Building 10 managed to vanish into the realm of shadows.

    However, they were successful in making Building 15 vanish.

    --

    sulli
    RTFJ.
  4. Re:Wow... by gorillasoft · · Score: 2, Funny

    They're gonna except anything that's slightly related to it for the next 2 days!

    I know I would like it if they would except anything else about the movie for the next two days - then I wouldn't have to read even more media coverage about it.

    :-)

  5. Not bad. by Mike+Schiraldi · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hey, good for them. But you'd they'd put a new lock on the roof access door by now...

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    --
    Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again

  6. More "the ring" at MIT by mr100percent · · Score: 5, Funny
    Over here we see a photoshopped poster of the LoTF, but instead holding the "brass rat" (MIT class ring) with the slogan "One ring to rule them all."

    Made me crack up.

  7. Like the guy in the theater next to me said.... by Ieshan · · Score: 4, Funny

    My Highschool Social Life would have been much more elaborate had more people cared about Lord of the Rings.

    1. Re:Like the guy in the theater next to me said.... by ethereal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Or if you'd known Denise, apparently :)

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      Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and

  8. Speaking of MIT folklore by 4of12 · · Score: 3, Funny

    The undergraduates used to award a nice-looking trophy with a large aluminum left-handed screw to that professor that best exhibited the kind of callous attitude that makes getting through MIT more difficult than it needs to be.

    You know, like scheduling a 4 hour final exam at an inconvenient time, etc; the kinds of things that drove the sale of the IHTFP T-shirts.

    There wouldn't be such a list on the web, would there?

    --
    "Provided by the management for your protection."
  9. Re:Language by devphil · · Score: 3, Funny


    Never before has anyone dared to speak that tongue in the house of /., el_nino the... er, poster.

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    You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
  10. Inscribed in <i>Elvish</i>? by Zen+Mastuh · · Score: 3, Funny

    What kind of fool risks life and limb to inscribe a high dome in a fictitious language? For crying out loud, haven't these people heard of sex?

    There goes my karma, but a man's gotta take a stand!

    --
    "What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
  11. Re:Inscribed in Elvish? by siliconvortex · · Score: 2, Funny

    Judging from most of the women who were at the midnight showing last night, serious injury and even death is definately preferable to sex.

  12. hmm by poemofatic · · Score: 3, Funny

    The hackers were apparently not completely successful, for neither the Great Dome nor Building 10 managed to vanish into the realm of shadows."

    Fool! That works only on mortals. Bombadil did not vanish when he put on the ring, and I'm assuming that Sauron didn't either, since he used his powers to take human form, and his power was in the ring.

    The real question is, in which category does MIT fall?

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    When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.

  13. Watch out for Ashcroft by sharkey · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hackers are terrorists now, aren't they? These clever folks from MIT may have just made themselves disappear.

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    "Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
  14. Re:Image Mirrors Due To Slashdotting by idonotexist · · Score: 2, Funny

    In the onering-5.large.jpg, is that I man walking his turkey?

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    "There ought to be limits to freedom"
  15. Re:Image Mirrors Due To Slashdotting by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's not a turkey- it's the arse-end of a dog, and if you can't tell the difference then I'm not coming to your house for xmas dinner.

    graspee

  16. It's times like these by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    These are the times when I think slashdot needs a (+1 Obsessive) mod point.

    1. Re:It's times like these by Frater+219 · · Score: 5, Funny
      Posting that level of knowledge regarding an obscure fictional linguistic mythos should trigger some sort of Carnivore alarm which causes the NSA to arrest that guy before he starts shooting people from a clock tower.

      Heh. And I'm not even a conlanger. You ain't seen obsessive.

      (Honestly, I don't see how knowing facts about something "historical" or literary can qualify as obsessive. Old facts don't change, so they don't require constant pursuit to keep up one's knowledge. Following things which change, such as technology or fashion, requires a great deal more active engagement -- obsession, as you put it -- than knowing dead facts does.)

      For a little bit more "obsessive" information on the Ring inscription and Dr. Tolkien's languages: Tolkien used over a dozen invented languages in his works, of which the most well-developed are the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin. Less developed were, for instance, the languages of the Rohirrim, the Adûnaic language of Nûmenor, and the Black Speech of Mordor (the language of the Ring inscription).

      The Tengwar, the Elvish script used on the Ring, was Tolkien's attempt at a logical system of writing. The majority of the consonants fall into a simple arrangement which describes the relation of their sounds. For instance, the pairs of sounds ("T", "D"), ("P", "B"), and ("K", "G") all have similar relationships -- in each pair, the latter sound is merely the "voiced" form of the former. So, in the Tengwar, the symbols for these sounds are closely related. A few sounds, such as "L" and the rolled "R" do not fit the system, and have unrelated letterforms.

      Historically, very few real-world alphabets have been based on the relationships of sounds. Most "natural" alphabets derive from ancient hieroglyphic or pictographic systems. The Latin letters A, B, C and the Hebrew aleph, beth, gimel both derive from Middle Eastern pictograms meaning "ox", "house", and "camel" -- hence Joyce's "Semper as oxhousehumper." Most "invented" alphabets are derivatives or composites of natural ones. For instance, Cyrillic (created by Sts. Cyril and Methodius and now used to write most of the Slavic languages) is a fusion of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew alphabets. Cherokee is worse. By comparison, Tolkien's alphabets are radically simple.

      However, unlike Prof. Zamenhof (the creator of Esperanto), Tolkien did not intend or even imagine that his languages or scripts might be adopted by real-world populations. He invented them as an intellectual or linguistic game, and later as historical and cultural background to his stories. It is in that sense, not in the evangelical Esperantist's sense, that Tolkien fans pursue them.