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One Ring Rules the MIT Dome
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."
all I did was bite off my ring finger.
I saw that on my way into work this morning and flashed back to when they did the dome up as r2d2 years ago...
I think this counts as news for nerds regardless. Circling the entire dome is no small feat, and of course you know they'll have gotten the elvish right... Love those MIT hackers ;-)
It's making hacks.mit.edu server disappear...
--
Victor Danilchenko
However, they were successful in making Building 15 vanish.
sulli
RTFJ.
I am sure that we can come up with lots of suitable places.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I could be horribly wrong, but I'm pretty sure that the script on the one ring was written in one of the ancient languages of Mordor, not Elvish.
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.
:-)
Hey, good for them. But you'd they'd put a new lock on the roof access door by now...
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
onering-2.large.jpg
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Compared to MIT's history of frankly, wicked cool Hacks (What the students and faculty at the nerdiest of the nerd schools call prectical jokes) this one is pretty lame. Topical, but lame. See the MIT Campus Police Car Hack for one of the better ever performed.
\Drew National Data Director, John Edwards for President
but their website, on the other hand, seems to have vanished quite quickly.
I posted to
The MBTA (The T) is a subway in Boston, but runs as trolley cars in Cambridge. One night, a swarm of MIT students surrounded a stopped trolley car.
And welded it to the tracks.
y Friends Dad was student there at the time. His report is the only evidence I have that this happened. Any one else know about it?
Open Source Identity Management: FreeIPA.org
The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call "cracking").
There must be alot of 1337 hackers out there who dont even know it.
Anybody got any good college prank stories?
I Heart Sorting Networks
Made me crack up.
thought of making the dog taking the shit in the picture disappear?
...because their servers wouldn't have been /.ed.
Yeah, it's a troll. So what.
-- Will program for bandwidth
My Highschool Social Life would have been much more elaborate had more people cared about Lord of the Rings.
With the slashdotting MIT's getting right now, I'd say the 31337 h4x0rs from /. own joo, MIT. ;-)
Kurdt
I'm not anti-social. Just pro-technology.
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."
Because Outlook virii and worms are about as topical as this story submission:
2001-12-19 08:15:21 Woke up, took a dump (article, news) (rejected)
There seems to be an incongruity here. Hacking is usually associated with computers and mechanical things unless it involves fraternity-type pranks executed by MIT engineering students. Someone clarify please.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
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?"
As far as MIT hacks go, I'd rate this a 3 or 4 out of ten. Usually, the pranks exhibit a certain flair of engineering knowhow, not simply a bungh of guys breaking onto the roof of a building a putting up a (pre-made, obviously) banner. I'd have been much more impressed if they'd forged a giant metal ring and somehow hoisted it up onto the dome. It wouldn't even have had to have the circumfrence of the dome's base - just have been large enough to sit on the dome comfortably and require some real genius work to get it up there. I guess we can expect little in the way or creative genius from this year's graduating class...
Hey, just be thankful it wasn't "Klingon" or "Esperanto" or something :-)
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
I wonder if any non-LOTR fans got freaked out over this.
Please see the Jargon File Apendix A which discusses "The meaning of 'Hack'" at http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/The-Meaning -of-Hack.html.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
For you people at MIT, there is a mural of
Middle Earth on the sixth floor of Building 24
painted by yours truely some time ago.
MIT used to have lots of wall murals, but they
come and go.
The new coffee house one in the Infinite Corridor
is neat.
Judging from most of the women who were at the midnight showing last night, serious injury and even death is definately preferable to sex.
when i first saw the pics (without knowing the story) i thought this was like a protest by islamic activists or sth. like that cause the "letters" look very similar to arabique(?).
keep it simple.
We don't post those stories, we have a guy called "The Turd Report" who posts them as diary entries. I was going to say "log entries", but I got to laughing too hard.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
...using V in place of U in English does not make you seem Roman, and neither does it make you seem erudite. A point lost on many neo-classical architects, it would seem.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"One ring to rule them all..."
I'm a big Elvis fan, and he never had a song
with those lyrics.
They're at MIT, of all places. Of course these people have not heard of sex, at least in a non-fictitious sense.
"Evil company X is threatening to restrict our rights! Let's all get together to stop--OOOH! SHINEY!!!" -- AC
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?
When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
My fave was a series between my room and the room next door. Just a bunch of small things here and there...nothing major like the MIT stuff
There was the usual buckets of water, soda cans stacked in front of a closed door so opening causes an inrush, placing the beds outside (fully made).
The two funniest were:
Removed the door next door and put up a sign saying "Damn Termites". Friend walked in, tearing down the sign saying "okay...what did you do?"
Made a small hole from our room to theirs, and ran a wire to his speakers, so when he had his girlfriend over later and had nice soft Enya playing, we replaced it with Slayer.
Like I said...nothing major, but fun for us.
Hackers are terrorists now, aren't they? These clever folks from MIT may have just made themselves disappear.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
One year I was in engineering school, the graduating year took a car and (somehow) got it hung beneath our tilting bridge/causeway (Kingston Ont). And this is on one of the main arteries into or out of town... and it took the city the better part of a day to get it off safely so they could get boat traffic through...
.... giant sized condoms. It was... a site to see. And gave new meaning to the phrase "size matters!".
Another good one: Some U of T students had access to some Ministry of Transport kit... they went to RentAll and picked up some pneumatic jackhammers, a generator, a tamper, etc. Then they went to downtown TO, setup a dig, even had the cops come by, talk to their foreman-type guy who had all the right paperwork, and had the cop direct traffic for them. After digging a big ass hole, they packed up, put up sawhorses and flashing lights and signs, and buggered off, never to be seen again.....
Another exploit: A student's dad is an electrician. Gets a new white panel van, no logos yet. Summer time. So one of the major Toronto libraries has summer staff (read: without a clue). So they go down in coveralls with a fake work order for "annual dry cleaning" of the carpeting. They bamboozle the staff, pack up a really nice carpet into the van, off they go. It subsequently adorned their cottage floor.
Then there was the year that graduating engineers at Queen's U covered all of the street lights along University Avenue with
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
After seeing a couple of hacks appear here on /. , I am half tempted to start my own chapter of the Hack group here at the University of Wyoming. Although it would just be a flagrant ripoff of MIT, it might give a couple talented engeneering students an excuse to something (instead of getting drunk!).
Would this bea good idea, or just looked down apon?
Would the University (or any school for that matter) be willing to accept the hack team as one of there own?
How do you recruit people to do it?
And most importantly: How would you fund such a project? Those hacks have to cost some money!
Well just an idea as I search though the hacks done at MIT. I'll look forward to your replies.
~Brandon
Not to presume anything, but the preparation for this might have been a copy-paste job.
Even if it was, it's still more work than I'd do, and the execution deserves some serious props. It was fucking freezing out there on monday. And the wind up there must have been brutal. Hope they still have all their fingers.
These are the times when I think slashdot needs a (+1 Obsessive) mod point.
+ 1 ear.
Destruction of public property, impeding the flow of traffic, forgery, and the theft of a rug would not be considered pranks. There is nothing subversive nor ironic about any of those things. It sounds more like high school kids in a hick town behaving as drunks. Realy pranks have a value of humor or irony to them and cause no harm nor damage.
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
Redmond City Hall IS invisible already. Stop any random Redmond passerby and see if they know where it is--2 outta 3 will probably remember it more as "that building close to where the carnival rides are set up for Derby Days".
Hell, I wouldn't even remember where it is if I hadn't had to take my brother over there for a few licenses and exams. The City Annex probably gets more traffic.
--
How much of a fangirl would you have to be to name your firstborn son after Strider of Aragorne? ;)
My mother earns my eternal love for my middle name.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
As the MIT drinking song goes...
...
I happened once upon a girl whose eyes were full of fire.
Her physical endowments would have made your hands perspire.
To my surprise she told me that she never had been kissed.
Her boyfriend was a tired Engineering scientist.
...
In the large version of the first photo, near the left it looks like a guy wearing an overcoat and a hat walking to the right, and a wild turkey walking to the left. Both of them are looking down, like they are dejected. Is there more to this story? What just happened?
The first sight of it should strike me with awe. Or if not awe, at the very least I should be somewhat surprised. Momentarily after that, I should ponder "How the heck did they DO that!".
This feat does neither. Its a banner. They wrapped it around a building. I'm sure a lot of work went into its creation, but in the end, I remain unimpressed.
And its not that I'm faulting them for their motives. Its just that they need to reach further. The dome has featured many glorious hacks. They need to strive to top those, not suffice to simply let past events overshadow the present ones.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Letters chiseled in stone at the top of the pillars:
MASSACHVSETTS INSTITVTE OF TECHNOLOGY ?
Why the V instead of U ?
All your bridges are belong to us!
Karma hell, here I come!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Oh, they've heard of sex all right! The problem is, they seem to be lacking in practical experience!
You're using her as bait, Master!
For those interested in the whole MIT/Caltech hack/prank scene, this is an excerpt of a review I did some years ago of books from The MIT Press, the Caltech Alumni Association and St. Martin's Press.
First up, Legends of Caltech and More Legends of Caltech. These two 80 page volumes chronicle technopranking at Caltech from the 1920s to the late 1980s. Learn about the classic Rose Bowl card section prank that was broadcast live on NBC, See the HOLLYWOOD sign become the CALTECH sign before your very eyes. Vicariously enjoy the revenge of Caltech students upon a greedy police department.
These books MUST be ordered from the Caltech bookstore, as they are privately published by the Caltech Alumni Association. Ordering info is at the bottom of this page.
Ah, but what of MIT? For their history we must turn to a pair of books.
The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT. Published by the MIT Museum, this is a 158 page book with lots of photos and text concerning the hacks pulled by MIT men and women over the decades. See The Great Breast of Knowledge, The Great Pumpkin, the legendary Smoot Marks on the Harvard Bridge. Read about the chronic humiliation suffered by the inmates at Harvard as MIT has its way with the statue of John Harvard and the Harvard Stadium.
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore. 165 pages of legends, essays, photographs and stories of and about hacking at MIT. This book, published in 1996, continues where the Journal leaves off. The MIT Campus Police car on the Great Dome, arguably one the greatest hacks in MIT history, graces the cover and several inside pages. Regrettably, only black and white photographs are used in the body of the book, as there are several hacks, most notably, the Cathedral of Our Lady of The All Night Tool (The "stained glass" panels in Lobby 7) that really should be seen in full color. That minor gripe aside, this is a fine companion volume to The Journal and shares the same binding dimensions as The Journal, making them a handsome pair of books to grace the shelves of any creative malcontent. (The title refers to the canonical reply to an MIT Campus cop when one is discovered in a spectacularly inappropriate location, such as the apex of the Great Dome at 4:00AM.)
Our final book is published by St. Martin's Press and should still be available via any bookstore that will special order books for its customers.
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks, is a 240 page history of collegiate pranking in America, beginning with the earliest colleges in America, and even taking note of some hijinx taking place in Canada.
This is an excellent companion volume to the preceeding four books, as it covers collegiate pranking in general, as well as detailing some events that are NOT covered in either the Caltech or MIT books.
If I were sending a son or daughter off to college, I would certainly include all five of these books in their "books to bring to school" box. Start 'em off right!
I have all five books and have enjoyed reading and re-reading them. I trust that these will be inspirational to all who enjoy a good hack and tweaking the nose of Authority, be it the State or the School.
Ordering information
Legends of Caltech is $9.00
More Legends of Caltech is $15.00
The mailing address of the Caltech Bookstore is:
Caltech Bookstore Mail Code 1-51 San Pasqual Street Pasadena CA 91125
The website for the Caltech Bookstore looks like you might be able to order these online.
The toll-free number for the Caltech bookstore is 800/514-2665. For those of you outside the US, their non-free number is 818/395-6161.
In my case, shipping was $6.00. Call to find out what your charges might be or to use a credit card.
(Neither book has an ISBN, so ordering via your local bookstore is not recommended and may very well be nigh-impossible.)
The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT is $20.00 The ISBN is: 0-917027-03-5
"Is This The Way To Baker House?" - A Compendium of Hacking Lore is $20.00. The ISBN is: 0-917027-04-3
The address of the MIT Museum is:
The MIT Museum 265 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge MA 02139
The Museum Shop online ordering is now being handled by Tha Harvard/MIT COOP.
The URL for ordering The Journal of The Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery & Pranks at MIT is here and the URL for "Is This The Way To Baker House?" is here
If At All Possible, Involve A Cow - The Book Of College Pranks
by Neil Steinberg
$9.95 St. Martin's Press ISBN 0-312-07810-2
I'm told by Editor Keith at SMP that as of September 1994, there were about 4000 copies still in the warehouse and SMP will fulfill orders for the book. St. Martin's Press officially urges you to order this book from your local bookstore or Amazon.com.
I've just found out that this book has now made it's way to the remainder tables at some bookstores. If you want a copy, order it NOW from Amazon or inspect those remainder tables very carefully.
Guaranteed! This comment 100% Anthrax free!
The best part is if you follow the MIT links to http://hacks.mit.edu/ the "Gallery of Hacks". These guys really like to paint things, or do some really creative stuff with bulletin boards, Yeah! High Five! Oops! Missed again!
But they are making "Frosh" cart around a giant tombstone despairing the "The End of Rush as We Know it." Are they claiming to have some frat thing going on? Like Animal House? Have you ever been on that campus? C'mon, Pinto and Flounder might be there, but Otter and Boon are nowhere to be found!
Dean Wormer may work there, though.
"She'll pay attention to this."
LOTR=Crappiest Xmas Movie Ever?
2 00 11220
A movie review parody contends that LOTR is the crappiest Christmas movie ever. Again, it is a parody. Unbunch panties, please.
Another Short Barefoot Boy Saved by Fabulous Shirt
http://www.ridiculopathy.com/index.php?display=
What kind of fool risks life and limb to inscribe a high dome in a fictitious language?
What makes a language fictitious? That nobody speaks it? Then I guess Elvish doesn't apply.
Of course, it's actually written in Black speech, as several other posters have discussed here... so I won't go into further detail there...
May we live long and die out
There are of course many more out there, VW bugs hung off every conceivable place in Vancouver, the infamous Rose Bowl Heist, etc...
PK
Where are we going... and why are we in this handbasket?
Engineers arn't boring people, we just get excited about boring things.
in case somebody forgot to tell you. you fsckin suck
very few real-world alphabets have been based on the relationships of sounds
The only alphabets I know that don't stop at the phoneme level and reflect phoneme features (as voiced / unvoiced) are, apart from Tolkien ones, Shavian (a proposal bespoken by GB Shaw for a new alphabet for English) and Korean Hangul (its writing can be analysed as syllables, phonemes or phoneme features, neat). Are there another ones?
I read that Tolkien was inspired because of the relationship between B and P and C and G. He started thinkling that adding a mark could tell voiced from unvoiced.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
it's a sad comment on society (especially geek society here on /.,) that you're more likely to find someone fluent in klingon and tengwar than esperanto.
Well, Slashdot types speak English natively or are polyglots so they don't feel the language barrier much.
On the other hand, how many of the Esperanto speakers know at least two languages more? I'd say lots of them.
Anyway, for geeky stuff try ESR's Esperanto mode for tengwar.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
that said, it's a sad comment on society (especially geek society here on /.,) that you're more likely to find someone fluent in klingon and tengwar than esperanto. it's a beautiful language with good ideals behind it, and it's dead easy to learn.
Check out this story from the Onion.
One fairly noticable difference is that most Arabic letter connect to each other, while it seems that Tengwar character do the same.
Solution to blink tags: wrap them in another blink tag, with a javascript delay loop, so they cancel each other out