Slashdot Mirror
MIT Gnome Invasion
J. Arthur Random writes "On Wednesday, April 23, hundreds of gnomes invaded the main public computer cluster at MIT. There were big gnomes, little gnomes, even naked gnomes. A gnome army carried the GNOME banner. Fortunately, the ACME Gnome Exterminators took care of the infestation within a few days."
gnome is about as user friendly as girls are
The Hack Gallery
I'm not Seth.
Go calculate something
Is there really no news at all? Wow, astonishing!
Cole's Axiom: The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant. The population is growing.
Must you use the magic word, Kappa Delta Edward?
HELP!
The Gnomes are coming! The Gnomes are coming!
The colo just called. They're coming through the raised floors, and just appearing inside cages and cabinets! They're overrunning us!!!!
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
But you guys really have to get out more.....
Looking at the pictures... wow. Pirate gnomes! Goth gnomes! Alcoholic gnomes!
:)
I think some people really need to get lives.
Phew, about time someone rounded all those gnomes up in one place where they couldnt do any dammage. This way we can get rid of them once and for all.
Thank god it wasn't the underpants gnomes!
doesn't look abgnome-al to me!!
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
Last time they struck the Harvard School of Eco-gnomics.
*click click click click click*
What's that noise??
Why it's a metrognome
I'm truly sorry for this post.
Who are y oo ?
According to legend and tall tales, the great gnome (the ones' footprint is in the gnome logo) comes to view his subjects, therefore, all the gnomes got ready for their grand king.. they even shaved their feet. In other news, was this a prank or what?
slashdot editors care about fluff like this, but not that the father of relational databases passed away.
2003-04-26 00:59:52 Father of the Relational Database, Ted Codd, dead (articles,storage) (rejected)
the register story here
flood your submission queues until they get the idea that we care about the death of computer science pioneers as much as porcelain gnomes placed around campus. geez.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Were any of the gnomes bouncing and throwing flowerpots?
he shall be missed.
I greatly respect and admire the man. He achieved a good deal.
Yah, I have to agree with you, that should be news. The gnomes were mildly amusing but I wouldn't concider them front page material.
Certainly not Slashdot, which is based on MySQL.
Anyway, I'm kind of bummed out now. Codd really is one of the great CS pioneers, like Turing and Van Neumann.
Hundreds of Gnomes couldn't take down the MIT computer labs, but Slashdot does it with one story submission. Is there anything that can stop the Slashdot army?
"On Wednesday, April 23, hundreds of trolls invaded the front page stories at slashdot. There were long trolls, short trolls, even goatse trolls. A troll army carried the spiralx banner. Fortunately, the moderators took care of the infestation within a few hours."
It is 11:20pm on a Friday. I am sitting in the cluster in question. It feels like it will take me years to create and compile all of these modules. It started out as a class, but grew into a final project and I will keep coding until I reach critical sleep deprivation levels. It has taken me well over 4 hours to get this far. The hardest part of doing it is resisting the party nearby. Screw it. Beer time.
We have proven that gnomes do not exist.
Fight Spammers!
here maybe a road trip is in order.
Hmm, I'll leave it to a second party with mod points to decide if the parent is a honorable, valid point or a well crafted troll masquerading beneath a less honorable, valid point.
just wonderin...
"If I wanted your input on my pet project, I'd stick my hand up your ass and use you like a sock-puppet." - Muse
you must be new here?
"...you can plant a Japanese Rock garden here, I know a Japanese guy, he might have some rocks" -Dale Gribble
I thought that the Gnome Invasion had something to do with the Gnome Liberation Front, and I just could not understand why Slashdot would be interested in them.
A splinter faction...very nasty bunch.
I heard once a deposed leader Al-Knotbeard got so angry he put himself in the backyard of a kid with a BB gun. Though speculations fly he has never been heard from again. Some say Cowboy Neal has joined him in the limbo of the missing.
Sick-0s
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
My favorite is the 1982 Havard/Yale/MIT football game. My second favorite was the police car on top of the dome, including donut.
Fight Spammers!
Look! It's one of Zim's Lawn Gnomes!
It lives up to it's name: http://www.sanspoint.com
It does not take a mensa grade detective to notice there are no female gnomes at the MIT Athena cluster. Those wacky MIT natives and their cunning stunts - Whatever happened to panty raids at the local girls college - Thongs and bras hanging from the girders of the Athena cluster white room
http://www.sdplotkin.com/img/gnome.jpg
Smelly Trolls!
And the worst trolls of all...moderators too stupid to post an intelligent reply thus they mod down a post!
You may mod us down but you will never get rid of us...We kinda like Howard Stern you just can't wait to hear what shit we submit next!
But I thought a metrognome was a gnome that lived in the city. :)
So the computer lab is filled with hairy little men. What's so great about this? You should see my friends at a LAN party... Woohoo! Hack! =)
Now, Turing has some claim to being the very first computer scientist. His attempts to explain mathematical logic in terms of mechanistic abstractions predates the computer revolution by a couple of decades. And when actual computers did start to appear, he was one of the first to deal seriously with what we now call software.
For details of Turing's life, I heartily recommend Andrew Hodges's biography.
But here's another bummer. It seems pretty obvious that the security bozos murdered Turing because they couldn't stand the idea of faggot with all those state secrets in his head. I should emphasize that this is my paranoid theory, not Hodges's -- as a UK citizen, he could get in trouble just for suggesting the possibility.
Look through the pictures. Several of them have the Sun Microsystems logo prominently displayed.... Looks like a grassroots marketing campaign led by the Gnome population of Massachusetts.
Anyone have bittorrents up?
Bah! ACME Gnome Extermination has, in my experience, been a waste of money and time. I prefer calling in the...
KDE Extermination Service. Their superior technology and leadership has led them to victory against the GNOMEs time and time again. Their great Konqueror crushed the Gnome legions before, and can do it again. Even the mighty Gnome Republican Guard fall when faced with the awesome power of the Konqi Special Forces!
Fear the Gear!
Now, I await the Mohammed Saeed Al-Sahaf joke.
Slashdot is a waste of time. I enjoy wasting time.
Are you actually the Iraqi Information Minister?
Dude, everyone gets stories bounced from time to time. Ive had one accepted and two bounced. Shit I'm even a journalist by trade, so you'd expect it. But everyone gets bounced.
Accept it and get over it.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
i don't care about my story ego.
just do this: mentally compare the story value of the passing of a computer science pioneer to that of plastic gnomes on campus.
by being the submitter of the story, i was privy to the contrast when my story on his passing got rejected at the same this gnome story got posted.
the contrast got me miffed.
i don't have anything against gnomes or funny stories! great!
i don't care if my story gets rejected! happens all the time.
i just want SOMEONE to get this story posted, anyone, because i believe, and i think you would agree with me, that the "news for nerds, stuff that matters" value of a computer pioneer's passing is of MUCH GREATER VALUE than... plastic gnomes on campus.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Hardly a new trend - the same thing happened when I submitted the story about when the author of ping died, and various other 'important' stories. Trying to predict whether a story would be accepted on slashdot is an exercise in futility. I've officially stopped trying.
There are no Gnomes, we have butchered them all! They have no foothold in MIT, we have pinned them down at community colleges!
These Gnomes shall burn the the stomach of a Beowulf Cluster Allah willing! I repeat, there are NO infidels with funny hats and beards in MIT! I shall take you there myself to show you, we are butchering the invaders as we speak! The LAN will flow with their non-beleiver blood! I blame Slashdot, they are the IT Media for the community colleges. Be assured. MIT is safe, protected. I triple guarantee you there are no Gnomes in MIT, blood sucking bastards. We will welcome them with small shell scripts and shoes! We will kill them all........most of them.
-I had to post AC so they dont find me
~M.S.S.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Look through the pictures. Several of them have the Sun Microsystems logo prominently displayed....
That's because most of the computers in the Athena clusters ("computer labs") at MIT are Suns.
There are also many linux boxes and SGIs as well. MIT's Athena network is un*x only.
I was walking down the High Street
When I heard footsteps behind me
And there was a little old man (Hello)
In scarlet and grey, shuffling away (laughter)
Well he trotted back to my house
And he sat beside the telly (Oaah..)
With his tiny hands on his tummy
Chuckling away, laughing all day (laughter)
Oh, I ought to report you to the Gnome office
(Gnome Office)
Yes
(Hahahahaha)
CHORUS
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me"
Said the laughing Gnome
Well I gave him roasted toadstools and a glass of dandelion wine (Burp, pardon)
Then I put him on a train to Eastbourne
Carried his bag and gave him a fag
(Haven't you got a light boy?)
"Here, where do you come from?"
(Gnome-man's land, hahihihi)
"Oh, really?"
In the morning when I woke up
He was sitting on the edge of my bed
With his brother whose name was Fred
He'd bought him along to sing me a song
Right, let's hear it
Here, what's that clicking noise?
(That's Fred, he's a "metrognome", haha)
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you don't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me"
(Own up, I'm a gnome, ain't I right, haha)
"Haven't you got an 'ome to go to?"
(No, we're gnomads)
"Didn't they teach you to get your hair cut at school?
you look like a rolling gnome."
(No, not at the London School of Ecognomics)
Now they're staying up the chimney
And we're living on caviar and honey (hooray!)
Cause they're earning me lots of money
Writing comedy prose for radio shows
It's the-er (what?)
It's the Gnome service of course
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you don't catch me"
Ha ha ha, oh, dear me
(Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me"
Ha ha ha, hee hee hee
"I'm a laughing Gnome and you can't catch me")
(One more time, yeah)
Blatantly from Teenage Wildlife, David Bowie fansite. Oh yes, he wrote the song, back in 1968 or 1969.
here in Fremont, Center of the Universe, we have parties with trolls, goblins, and other creatures, a Giant Troll which lives under our bridge, and space aliens on our Space Needle.
....
And that's on a good day
> --- All Of The Above --- >
Iraqi intelligence quickly refuted the claims on Abu Dhabi and Al Jazeera, claiming that the imperialist GNOME crusaders have been meeting swift ends well before reaching the university level. "We have already plunged the burning spear of Allah deep into the hearts of thousands of infidels. KDE shall prove victorious"
It took all of us (literally) years to compile and create all of these gnomes.
It took you years to compile GNOME? Dude, you need a faster computer.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Then please answer a question: what's so "hack" about this?
Is there something special about this facility? Did it require Mission Impossible stunts, hanging from wires and redirecting the laser detectors?
Or did some doofus just walk in through an unlocked door, scatter a bunch of gnomes around, and walk out?
On the face of it, it doesn't seem as impressive as putting Beetles on flagpoles.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
They've all gone there to meet Gnome Chomsky.
There is no "Stanley Blitzer" at MIT. You guys have been had.
You have your hacks too narrowly defined. The definition of hack commonly used at MIT includes computer hacking (as opposed to cracking), roof and tunnel hacking (getting into inacessible places), and performance hacking (probably the best definition is a wide-scale prank). And it takes a bit longer than you'd think to scatter hundreds of hand made and hand painted gnomes, in various rooms, without anyone noticing (the cluster that most of the gnomes were in is the largest on campus, with probably 100 workstations, and there is always someone in there).
No, not to compile it, but to find all the dependencies hidden about the web...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Hacks don't always require getting into unusual places, they just need to be entertaining. What's difficult to express in the post is the sheer number of gnomes. They were everywhere. Also, the vast majority of them were hand-made (plaster of paris) and hand-painted, and many looked a lot like particular people.
If it's Mission Impossible stunts you're looking for, the naked gnome is on the outside of the window, on a ~12 inch ledge 5 stories up. (When ACME Gnome Exterminators came, they didn't get this one, since the window stopped him from getting gassed.)
Don't mod someone up just because he claims to know what's going on.
e r
See for yourself - http://web.mit.edu/bin/cgicso?query=stanley+blizt
Finally a new story worthy of Slashdot!!!
how far some bored nerds will go, just for a little attention.
I am just wondering of these kinds of student jokes are news for slashdot. News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, yeah, that applies for this news item, yes it does, it has changed my life!
Or could it be that if anything happens at MIT, this gets posted?
ah, the benefits of peer review...
Genius doesn't work on an assembly line basis. You can't simply say, "Today I will be brilliant."
You wouldn't believe how long I've been waiting to use that line.
Well maybe you would.
KDE says: How are you, Gentlegnomes - You are on your way to destruction. Make your time....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This is slashdot, remember? You have to wait at least 48 hours before information like that can be posted. Then it will be posted twice in the same day.
All I have to worry about is a few thousand bugs.
If there is a Stanley Blizter at MIT, he doesn't exist in the Faculty Directory, nor does he have an Athena Account. The parent is a troll. Whoever modded it up to 5 is an idiot.
There is no sig, there is only Zuul.
This hack was done in my senior year of high school with plastic, green army men. There were a thousand of them.. I wouldn't doubt if the school still has them floating around on top of lockers, underneath gym bleachers, on top of award trophy cabinets, etc.
2003-04-23 19:52:28 Edgar Codd dies at 79 (articles,news) (rejected)
NY Times story (registration, etc.) Edgar Codd, Key Theorist of Databases, Dies at 79.
Like you, I couldn't care less that my submission was rejected, but this should have been on the frontpage of /. one way or the other.
JP
Norway is full of nomes allready. (Well it is really more like a -1 Troll, or -1 Flamebait, but whatever).
gnome mirror.
Search
Sorry
Irene KHAAAAAAN!
I don't see planting a bunch of gnomes in the computer room at MIT of any significance at all. Vaguely amussing on a slow news day, that is all. Of course I know about gnomes and Gnome, but wtf is this doing here. Good tech hacks like CCC's blinkenlights yes, but otherwise, sorry no!!!!
See my journal, I write things there
i AM a Gnome, you insensitive clod! *shaves back*
Look out! He's not from the government, he's from MICROSOFT !
.....
DON'T LOOK INTO THE LIGHT, HE'LL ERASE YOUR
<FLASH>
www.eFax.com are spammers
And somewhere in a lab deep within the MIT complex, a lone scientist named Gordon Freeman just found a crowbar...
"...rather real..." "...those of us..." Oh, the humanity! Spare me while I puke. So the photos were taken there, so what? You were terrorized by a couple of hundred (if that many) toy figures? What's next, Wellesley College's computer center invaded by Barbie dolls? Gimme a break. So you freshman had your lame little laugh, this is nothing compared to my day.
I am not impressed. Where is the skill? Where is the "how did they do that?" factor?
Maybe if the gnome had been *inside* the 'alarmed room,' that would have been something.
You know, guys throw toilet paper across trees all year around at colleges, is that news worthy? Oh, maybe if its at MIT?
Shoot they have run out of articles not only to POST but also to Re-Post, and RE-RE-POST. (snickers outloud)
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
Hmmm, maybe the US should go invade someone. Getting a little slow around here.
A very reputable source denies this report. Don't believe the lies of the infidels!
Likewise: 2003-04-21 03:01:12 Inventor of the RDBMS Dies (articles,news) (rejected)
I found the news on alt.folklore.computers where they actually care about the history of computing.
My submission linked to the San Jose Mercury News obituary and Codd's original paper on the relational model.
I think your missing the point of why people complain about article rejection here on Slashdot...
/. any more because of it.
Slashdot editors regularly and frequently (not just 'now and then', but frequently) reject interesting stories by many people, then, days, weeks or months later repost the same story (often with a worse writeup) *several times*.
I've seen it happen many times, and read other people's write ups that they got rejected, as well as have it happen to me.
*That's* what pisses people off. It's illogical and annoying. Frankly I don't submit stories to
There are NO GNOMES in MIT. Or in Baghdad. If there were, we would destroy the infidels! - The Iraqi Information Minister
Leave it to a nerd to find humor in pranks that a 1930's housewife would have thought cutting edge.
I've shit funnier and more interesting things, and that's not even counting the expunged foreign objects.
Get a life you stupid nerds, nobody thinks this is "cute".
If ever a slashdot post deserved to be followed by a rimshot...
// harborpirate
// Slashbots off the starboard bow!