Slashdot Mirror
Remote New Zealand Volcano Sees Dinosaur Alert?
Thanks to BoingBoing for pointing to a ChannelNewsAsia story discussing a 'dinosaur' sighting in webcam pictures of a remote New Zealand volcano. The latest live webcam picture shows the offending creature, with Geonet spokesperson John Callan saying: "Some wag has glued a [toy] pink dinosaur in front of our digital camera", even though "...most people do not go ashore on the uninhabited, rumbling" White Island, east of Auckland, where the webcam is located. Apparently, the dinosaur will stay for now, since authorities "are not planning on removing it, counting on the sulphur and high acid environment to deal to the creature."
I'm a little surpised the news article and Slashdot are just using the term "pink dinosaur"... is it that hard to recognize Dino from The Flintstones?
How about a Gnome? Also be nice to see Waldo in a random webcam picture. It is great that the dinosaur is in such a remote place that they are going to leave it.
Those who trade freedom for security will lose both, and deserve neither" -- Ben Franklin
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation has a story complete with picture in case of a Slashdotting.
This is a great hack. It has to be an inside job. How else would they know when the camera takes pictures, to avoid getting caught. Not to mention the exact location of the camera.
Too funny!
"Some wag" is a cop out. They did it and are afraid to admit it. Who else would have the necessary safety equipment to put the toy there, other than the people who put the web cam there, and who else would know exactly where the web cam was on an island that "people don't go on"? We're expected to believe "some wag" jusy happened along in that forbidding scenery and just happened to be carrying that particular toy, and happened to find that aprticular spot and know what the thing was attached to?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
... to go unnamed.
Actually, there IS no other news, which is why this made it to the front page.
Who has the time to go up a volcano to pull a global prank? Only a geek
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Slashdot points to BoingBoing points to ChannelNewsAsia points to a webcam pointing at New Zealand?
I think I'm getting dizzy..
Not that this wasn't entirely predictable.
I can't think of a better place for Barney than an un-inhabited island!
Of couse a web-cam Barney could give new meaning to the song, "I love you, You love me......"
hehehe
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
This could create a new fad. Place object of choice in the field of these site cams.
I mean its made of plastic, but it looks like it might be one of those rubber types.
I would also like to know WHEN it showed up. I mean, really, who would miss something like that.
SOMEONE has to be getting paid to stare at that camera, or at least review it every day.
here comes Enzy...
Now I have to pick up after Pebbles and Bam-Bam in New Zealand?!? WILMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
Many plastics are fairly resistant to acidic environments and sulfur aren't they? Isn't this why toys like this last for hundreds of years? I realize that many plastics have different chemical characteristics, but aren't the majority pretty inert? Someone out there with some plastics chemistry knowledge like to weigh in?
After turning up the audio gain for the web cam, said dinosaur was heard to vocalize: "Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh!!!"
IAALS.
It's an ad for Jurassic Park IV Sorry for the lousy link. Had to beat the mind readers to the punch. Hope I made it.
What?
That's great except that it's not Barney, that's Dino from Flintstones.
So this is where the hide the studio all these years.
That's not a dinosaur, it's Smaug! He's escaped from the set of Peter Jackon's The Hobbit and is trying to nest!
If they don't do something quickly, this could be even worse than the incident when all those orcs got loose during the Battle of Helm's Deep filming and slaughtered that busload of Japanese tourists!
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
If you're ever setting up a webcam outside, position it so that the sun is always behind it, not shining directly into the camera for two or three hours every afternoon.
I learned this the hard way; my weathercam has exactly the same pattern of smokey lines across the sky now too..
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
actually it's not that remote, it's a 40 min boat ride from where i live, tourists go there almost daily (yes i've been too) and it certainly is not fuckin east of auckland!
they will need to wait for Mother Earth to do this dino in.. The slashdot effect has allready got it ;)
Paranoid tinfoil hat crowd say Y here, everyone else say N.
White island would be over 150 Miles south of auckland thats a long way in New Zealand Heres a map SafT
Actually, white island isn't that remote. It is a fairly popular daytrip. I'd post photos from a holiday there, but there's no way my 128k DSL line can handle slashdot :-(
There have been musings from several New Zealand-based fark.com members that other items may soon be joining Dino.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Surprise at Dino Peak
Here is a copy of the photo, as the site is S L O W at the moment
nt
..in case of slashdotting. Mirror
Look about a third from the right and a third up in the shadowy area. Is that a dragon head I see?
http://s92169157.onlinehome.us/img/whiteis.jpg
Mirror 2
Enjoy, and hey at least this post had a point.
If you're not paranoid, then you're not paying enough attention. - Unknown, Slashdot
http://130.236.227.49/whiteis.jpg
To deal what to the creature? Cards? Drugs?
WWJD? JWRTFA!
If plastics melt in this particular enviroment, what is the webcam made out of?
C:\earth\humans\del *.m0ronz
If it does slowly melt like the article implies, it would be rather neat to download and save the photo everyday and create a time-lapse video of it melting... If it actually does...
We here at U-Dub wouldn't dare limit ourselves to plastic toys in our webcam shotstealers. For proof, see http://www.washington.edu/cambots/archive.html and look for the birds, spiders, and other goodies that show up.
I rather doubt this is a small toy glued to the camera, since Dino is currently (May 25 10:00 am NZST picture) casting a rather distinct shadow on one of the rocks.
Unless, of course, the prankster also glued a rock to the camera... :-)
A marriage is always made up of two people who are prepared to swear that only the other one snores.
1. More objects appear next to Dino.
2. Dino melts.
I would have fucked with their heads and been like, unfortunately due to abnormally high radiation and toxic gas levels these poor young comedians wont live out the month.
Come on you should have at least tried to hoax the hoaxers and get a good reaction out of them.
The real thing is that scientists are conducting experiments on the poor little thing by testing the limit that Dino can reach in an inhospitable environment. Please stop the insanity and save the dinosaur.
--This announcement is sponsored by PETA
Yahh, hiii haaaaa! -Major Kong, from Dr. Strangelove
Great... so how long will it be till guys start sending messages to the volcano asking it to get naked and make out with Dino? Oh wait... that'd be bad...
Question everything that you've accepted without thinking.
Anyone else think it would make a neat GeoCaching point!
iRepairIT - iPhone, Mac, & PC Repair
Gaaaaaah! Only Godzilla has the power to fight this menace!
The Smog Monster was no match for him. We can only hope he escapes Monster Island in time to save the day!
...maybe the dinosaur is hollow, and it's all an elaborate Geocache? (TNLNSDino)
the dinosaur _is_ there, I work at GNS and our internet is really slow thanks to you lot.
I, for one, welcome our new dinosaur overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted volcanologist, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sulphur caves.
That server is so gone, if you know anything anout NZ IT inferstructure you'll know that. Hell our back bone is probably browning out right now.
I always told em, 'Copper wire! NOT No.8 wire! you fools!'
GPLv2: I want my rights, I want my phone call! DRM: What use is a phone call, if you are unable to speak?
One variety of which involves going to the GPS coordinates and finding the webcam, then either staying there 'till it takes your picture, or calling a friend back home and having them go to the site and click "save".
Makes authentications of one's claim that you were there a bit easier; just post the photo to the forums. Yeah, you could Photoshop it, but no one cares enough to do that.
yet another fool who reads the headlines, but doesnt follow the links.
The plastic dino is in every hourly shot with the lighting perfect.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
Because I know who did it?
I had something similar happen with my christmas lights display when a friendly neighbor vandelized my snowman ... but I don't think he was aware I had a webcam on it and caught him in the act! ;-)
My all-time favorite (and semi-unique) was whupping my brother in a game of Rock Paper Scissors ( RoShamBo ) after he Slashdotted my Christmas Webcam.
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
are you trying to tell me that a picture is imposible to doctor to put something in it...has it ever occured to you that there are tools that do this with perfect lighting effects...somehow thats seems like a better explanation than the one when someone actually climbs up there...don't belive evrything now.
An inside job!
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Are you trying to tell me that someone would/could carefully manipulate a series of webcam shots and hack the web servers rather than simply climb up there, where anyone can go? It's not like the cam is on the moon you know...
glad /. managed to get to the bottom of that one. /. should have checked with me before posting this story. quite the fuckin' Clouseau.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
What's this "Foreign" area you keep talking about? Is that part of Nebraska?
Gee, I'm not sure what I could have to back it up that would make you believe me. Yes, it was an inside job. No, I don't have proof.
Of corse it's possible to climb up there...but it seems more likley a security breach to me,like a defaced web site as a practical joke...plus it's easier for the officials there to say someone climbed up there than to say "we got owned". Makes any sense?
Not if you don't want to meet a hydrogen sulfide(I think?) gas cloud that might come out of a vent at any second and wind up dead pretty much on the spot. Remember they said they're planning on the acidic fumes taking care of Dino? That sucker's active (the volcano, not Dino), and I remember a story about most of a team of volcanologists getting killed from that and a rock slide (of course, they ignored warning signs of an impending event, but still- you don't get anywhere near that close to an active volcano without at least a gas mask.
Please help metamoderate.
Well they would have had to hack about 10 different systems as it's in all our internal monitoring software as well.
all dooable with root accessto the system.
Was there with some friends a few years ago. It was fun. Sail north for a couple hours, climb around the volcano for a few hours, and sail back. I've got tons of pictures of us climbing around the crater, sulpher pools, and factory ruins. They used to have factories built in it to process the sulphur, but after they were destroyed the third time, they never rebuilt.
It's actually fairly safe there. The volcano is quite well behaved. It throws out steam continuously, and only occasionally has hissy-fits where it throws out rocks the size of coffee-tables. Those come and go, so as long as you avoid it during particularily active times, you'll be fine.
I should point out that there are trips running out to White Island regularly. In particular, it's a popular dive spot, considered by many to be on par with the Poor Knights.
Actually, it's probably not easier for someone on the inside to upload doctored pics. Scientists go to White Island pretty regularly... once a fortnight at least I'd say to take crater lake temperatures and what not.
Also,there is no reason to belive anything you are saying so if you like you can share how exactly it happend maybe it will make a bit more sense.
Will, normally, I ain't no writin' nazi, but shouldn't this be "the end is neigh" or something? "The end is night" might be somewhat true with the sun blowing up in the (not so distant?) future though...
I'd like my purple dinosaur with hot grits by the way... but IN SOVIET RUSSIA, PURPLE DINOSAUR EATS YOU! ALL YOUR VOLCANO ARE BELONG TO US! Will it ever stop?
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
Yes, there is a big conspiracy with a toy dino. Yes, they are busy making many photoshops of the location of the shadow and lightening in different places in each hourly shot to fool us all!
Oh, the humanity! Oh, my life is one big lie! *puts on tinfoil hat*
Oh, oh GOD no! They won't get me! Not me, not MY Dinos! I'm not fooled.... I KNOW these things....
Wait! ALIENS DID IT, IT ALL MAKES SENSE! Yeah, that's why they are lying, it's one big coverup!
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
you're an idiot, you know that right?
leave the man alone. go look for conspiracies elsewhere
Something like the stuff on happytreefriends.com (MAY NOT BE CHILDREN FRIENDLY)?
Neeat ;)
.... ... }
int main (void) {
ahh that's imature :P...all im saing is we don't know how that happend and it seems more likeley to me that the site was defaced than someone actually climbing up there thats all...in my opinion it's easier to do that than to think somone put a deno in front of a cam that looks at the freaking colcano.
It's a hell of a lot easier to just climb up and place the dinosaur in the webcam view than to hack the webcam feed - especially in a country where people go outside their houses on a regular basis.
thanks for the sentiment, but I'm not male.
"and no you do not owe me any proof." You just told me you didn't need proof. I explicity told you about 10 minutes ago I didn't have any proof. I think we've all agreed there is no proof. Go away.
That's the funniest thing I've seen... well, since the beginning of this article, I guess. It's at least the second funniest thing I've seen on Slashdot today, though, which is worth something.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
Din't say it's imposible,the original point was supposed to be that it is one of the possibilities.the whole original idea kinda got out of hand into me thinking it's definitly some kinda conspiracy...i dont think anything near that.just saying that a comprimized system is one of the possible things that could have happend.people just don't like to admit that they got there system comprimised,not that i'm saing it's what happend im just saying it is possible.
Next thing you know - BAM! One of the three-eyed aliens from Toy Story in a photo from a mars rover! Scheming pranksters...
Someone has found that the dinosaur turned up between 1100 and 1200 NZST on the 5th of May. :)
20040505-1100
20040505-1200
As in the email I sent to the Inquirer in reply to this article, it appeared between 11am and Noon NZST on the 5th of may, as evidenced by these archived shots: 11am Noon. Given the positioning and angle, I suspect someone who has access to the camera and was able to make sure it was lined up correctly.
Consultancy: If you're not part of the solution, there's money to be made in prolonging the problem
I've been studying this sauropod since thursday, and I believe that it is a plastic pen topper, one of a group of Flintstone pen toppers available on the web:
http://amres-pics.com/p_asp/a4091.asp
Here's the topo of the island:
http://www.gns.cri.nz/what/earthact/volcanoes/nz volcanoes/bookimages/Whit_fig1.gif
..and more stuff about it:
http://www.wi.co.nz/hazards.htm
The camera is actually located near the beach, about 3/4 kilometers from any active vents, so it's pretty safe and highly accessible by boat. Apparently groups of geology students are sent out there to study, and probably to maintain the camera too. I guess one of them had this fancy topper along, and was struct by sudden inspiration. Since there is likely a pen or pencil under Dino, it will be highly stable against disturbances.
There is a forum about White island, but in 3 years most posts seem to be blank submits from students "learning" about the island. There was one post a few days ago that mentioned the 'saur, but no other word before that.
A page on that now-slashdotted site showed the camera setup, and it looks like the camera is just above ground level, matching what's seen in the live image, so I doubt it's faked.
Compared to some other photos, the island seems fairly quiet right now.
Perennial student + Impractical joker + CSS junkie = Big John
The dino has been there since 11am-12am 5-May
0 5. 1200.jpg
http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/volcams/W200405
Rumor has it these pranksters have high-jacked White Knight and SpaceShipOne and are now enroute to Mars.
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
dr. demento anyone?
i do remember a "movie review" with the flinstones and jurassic park in the same song. possibly volcanoes.
SIGERR: laziness exceeds quota
If the scientists could obtain a duplicate Dino they could subject it to varying amounts of sulfur, etc, in a controlled environment. Then based on the changes that occur to the on-site Dino (everything from color changes to actual melting of plastic), they could roughly determine the amount of chemicals it was exposed to. It should at least be useful to know when a particularly large venting has occurred.
For example the pigment used to make the collar green may be particularly susceptible to fading when exposed to a certain kind of acid, etc.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Here's the dope on sulphur mining on White Island.
The island was mined from 1874 to 1900, with a break because of the 1886 Tarawera eruption. Mining resumed in 1914, but the operation was anihilated later that year by a minor eruption. There was further mining between 1923 to 1930 but finally closed because of financial losses.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
The dinosaur is contravening OSH guidelines by not wearing a hard hat.
Looks like Dino, but is he really there? Looking at the picture and the fact no one has been there to remove it, whether Dino hasn't just been added digitally, like the overlay text?
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Judging from these photos (please mirror), it looks like the plastic dinosour is on site. I base this on the varying lighting on the thing, and the shadow on the rock.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I don't know about the sulphur, but the acid should make things interesting...from Dino's POV anyway.
Your brain is not a computer.
I, for one, welcome our purple dinosaur overlords!!!
They've got a page of snapshots from the last 24 hours: http://www.geonet.org.nz/whiteisland.html
I can't tell you what he was doing in those (presumably middle-of-the-night) black images. Maybe he slipped out for a beer...
the clock on the wall says 4 til 7
Hey people, a big "hats off" to GNS. they've been serving zillions of images from a previously unknown webcam to zillions of nerds worldwide, and their server HASN'T been slashdotted yet. Well done GNS, we've slashdotted much bigger organisations than yours in the past. (no I don't work for GNS, but credit where credit's due) The only thing that worries me is the "joke" emails we'll all be getting by the truckload in a coupla days, when the rest of the world notice and perpetuate what will be an old joke by then...
sustainable living
I thought that was what http://www.archive.org/web/freecache.php is for ... you simply put a link as http://freecache.org/http://link.to/mysite.jpg ; freecache then retrieves a copy of the linked material and serves it from their site.
Brilliant!
What the kind readers fail to know, however, is that poor MrRuslan has no legs. Therefore, from his perspective, it would be much easier to manipulate dozens of webcam images, gain root access on a NZ webserver, and write a script to regularly replace the new webcam image with a doctored one, than to, say, get on or off a boat.
Please, do excuse this momentary disregard for the healthy on MrRuslan's part.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
Except it is for serving single files > 5MB. The files are only ~100kB.
What, are they running out of virgins?
Table-ized A.I.
Now we know what really happened to Anakin Skywalker.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I figure as a UW fan, you'd appreciate the pictures of CopperTone Girl at Husky Stadium and McMahon Hall Handstands ... 7 stories up! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
It is not a toy man, its a toy dinosaur.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
Well I just came back and i noticed no one really understood my point,I don't care about karma it's just the whole point i was trying to make didn't go acreoss,but thats ok and for the record i did see the pics.
LoL This is just cool,U know i just come back and all these people post stuff,Look it dosent matter all i was saying is it is possible for no dino to be there at all...and it seems to agrivate evryone soo much that i said that,should it not just be ignored?
Look in case it didnt get trogh to anyone before i said it's just posible,and all that has to be comprimised is the web server that serves the images to you.nothing else.
In case anybody wanted to know the actual location of White Island, here it is
not to nitpick someone who is trying not to nitpick, but shouldn't the sun blowing up in the future be "The end is bright"?
cheers.
im so lame.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
but you have to also make the fake images - every hour. it's not a superimposed cartoonish picture, it has actual shadows/lighting... yes, there are tools to do it, but there has to be someone sitting there running the tools _every hour_.
We've secretly replaced Slashdot with new Folgers Crystals - let's see if it notices.
Oh.
You could pad them!?
No, I don't think you should either.
In the olden days, they had a similar situation at the Eiger North Face: some mountaineer died in an accident while attempting to ascend it, and rather than fall down, he stayed stuck in the "wall", hanging in his rope. In plain view from the nearby village. For two years (!). With no feasible way to remove him from there.
Bugs Bunny cartoons have taught me that modern day drunks see pink elephants so I guess pink dinosaurs are what drunken cavemen would see.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
looks more like a simple 3d rendering to me:. 1100.jpg
http://www.geonet.org.nz/images/volcams/W20040525
c0w goes moo.
It appears as though I've accidentially stumbled into the field of archeology.
Nothing to see here, save for an unattended group of mentally-handicaps and quite an impressive mass of fertilizer.
I'd really rather watch Barney melt to a purple goo. Dino is such a nice pet.
:o)
Agreed - then you'd have Betty all to yourself, right?
If it were a deep purple with a green stomach... someone had better hand me a shotgun, and quickly. >=D
Don't eat me
The most hilarious thing about this thread is that so many fools think its more likely someone has been hacking the webserver and editing the photos perfectly EVERY SINGLE HOUR ... than it is for someone to have wandered up on a mountain and put the toy in place. ... on a mountain that the locals have said is not remote at all. ... no more than a fun weekend day trip and hike to an interesting place.
Of course I suppose 'remote' means something different to the geeks here that live on their computers, only getting excersise in the time it takes to go to the bathroom, or call for a pizza to be delivered. Ya know, most people do venture from their homes regularly, some even enjoy a moderate workout!
The far simpler explanation is that someone wandered up and placed it.
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
sorry, i assumed. i apologize
Moron, don't you know the meaning of "miss"?
Looking at today's picture, as of June 1 NZST (day ahead of here), Dino is lookin' fine. High quality toys they make today!
$#!^ happens, but why does it always have to happen to me???
LordK3nn3th you are freaking me out!
seriously!
because my true name is
Kenneth Lord
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"