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Caltech Pranks MIT's Prefrosh Weekend
doughnuthole writes "Caltech students ventured to Massachusetts this past Wednesday to unleash a series of pranks at MIT's prefrosh weekend. They distributed shirts with MIT on the front and '...because not everyone can go to Caltech' on the back. They placed inflatable palm trees in the infamous Tomb of the Unknown Tool and around the great dome and floated Caltech balloons in building seven. A banner transformed Massachusetts Institute of Technology into That Other Institute of Technology. Saturday night a LASER spelling the letters C-A-L-T-E-C-H was directed at the top of the Green building. A full account of the pranks is located at www.caltechvsmit.com."
Being that caltech is so much better than MIT you would think that they could find a good spell checker...
Who's Caltech, by the way?
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The following email went out on the MIT hacking mailing list:
>Someone apparently released a number of balloons in lobby 7 with
>CalTech written on them. There is also a much larger Mylar Balloon
>with C.I.T. My initial reaction, and the reaction of most people I
>talked to was "C.I.T, what's that?"
>
>Several suggestions were made on what to do about this since if we do
>nothing the balloons will float mockingly over lobby 7 for days:
>
>-Remove the balloons tonight (might be able to get a number of them
>with a needle on a stick from the intersticial space).
>
>-release a second large mylar balloon that says "SUCKS"
>
>-Hack Caltech.
>
>one friend I talked to commented that she was friends with the moles,
>the "legitamate" hackers at CalTech, and they claim to have no
>knowledge of this and are busy with some other project. It would be
>good if we could find out who did this. Could it have been an overzealous prefrosh?
>
>
>As I said my initial reaction was "what is C.I.T? I have drafted an
>article that I hope to send to the Tech Newspaper. Offering an
>alternate explanation.
>Comments, and suggestions are highly encouraged as this is a first draft.
>
>Amilio
>amilio@alum.mit.edu
>
>
>
>>>proposed tech article follows below>>
>
>
>C.I.T Looses BALLoonS
>
>The Center for Incompetent Technologies lost all of their display props
>on the way to the activities midway today. Representatives from the
>research group lost numerous small balloons and a larger one bearing
>the group's acronym while crossing lobby 7, "We thought slip knots
>would hold," said Ben Bitdiddle director of C.I.T.
>
>The Center for Incompetent Technologies is a newly formed nationwide
>research group interested in developing ineffective, arcane, and
>generally useless technologies. "So many companies and institutes are
>focused on doing 'good research' and developing 'useful technologies'"
>said Mr. Bitdiddle accenting his comments with air quotes, "we decided
>there was an untapped niche market for useless technologies." The
>group's motto is taken from an episode of The Simpsons: "Aim so low
>that even if you succeed, no one will care"
>
>The smaller balloons were apparently leftover from numerous C.I.T
>events at Caltech. The balloons were custom printed for the school
>where the group is apparently very popular. Many of the poorly made
>balloons have already popped and are littering the floor of lobby 7.
>"We probably should have had some new customized balloons made, but if
>we wanted to do things well, we wouldn't be CIT."
>
>The lost balloons were originally mistaken for a hack, but
>representatives for the hacking community quickly corrected the error,
>commenting "No, that was just a screw up, hacks are generally more
>interesting and creative," Jack Florey.
>
>>>>>
>
This is news for nerds. If we don't keep up with the MIT / Cal Tech rivalry, who will??
While I tend to understand the enthusiasm that each of these groups of students have towards their alma mater, I have to wonder if the Caltech kids are as smart as they think they are.
I'd much rather stay in warm CA during April than go to MA. Invite the MIT whiz kids down and haze them in the relative comfort of your own hometown. For chrissakes, what fun is it to freeze your ass off over there?
College students conduct prank - film at 11!
Seriously, why should I care about this? I mean, it's about nerds and all that, but... how is it "news for nerds"?
See, the problem with this is, MIT has a reputation (deserved or not) as being better than Caltech. Caltech can do this to MIT, and people go "Hah hah, how clever." But, if MIT were to do this to Caltech, people would say "What stupid arrogant assholes, why don't they stay in Cambridge and stop bragging about their superiority at other schools."
This space intentionally left blank.
This is "Slashdot" news, you know news for nerds.
The topic is MIT and Caltech, not much nerdier than that!
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Well if we want to rehash old rivalries, we could bring vi vs. emacs in, or one of the numerous others that has been flogged to death over the years. However, its not like we'll get to see emacs running around with a VI t-shirt, so I guess the *IT rivalry is more entertaining.
They don't have girls at Caltech. (T-shirt picture.)
...that is some serious dedication. However, I was under the impression that Caltech had a rival on the West Coast, namely Harvey Mudd, right?
Tierce
Who sponsors your feelings?
In response, MIT slashdotted a server carrying accounts of the pranks.
destroying CalTech's web servers...
Looks like they slashdotted http://caltechvsmit.com
Mmmm.. Donuts
All your servers are belong to us!!!
:(
24 comments and the site is down
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Caltech may have pranked MIT's prefrosh weekend, but MIT got the last laugh by having their puppet doughnuthole submit the story to Slashdot. Caltech is a small (no, tiny) campus, and that one server fire could take the entire place out by morning.
So... anyone want to comment on why the web (caltechvsmit.com)page is down? You REALLY ought to secure your server when you're bragging.
... grumble, grumble, grumble, mutter, mutter, Millenium... Hand... Shrimp, I tol' 'em, I tol' 'em.
We suspect that someone posted the URL to /.
They've posted a whole bunch of links to Caltech sites on slashdot. Bwahahahaha!
MIT pranks tend to be so much more artful than the ones listed here. Caltech has yet to transform an MIT building into a cathedral or cause the president's office to disappear entirely.
I'm unimpressed by Caltech if they can't pull pranks that are better than the pranks MIT pulls on itself.
that's not funny. what WOULD be funny would be to see a Caltech student fight a M.I.T. student. I would pay to watch that.
RTFF
Newsflash: Dorkwads Prank Dickwads in Famous Wad Rivalry!
It was DoS attacked it before it was /.ed.
If it was insecure why didn't MIT just deface it and then brag about it by changing the score and leaving a noten like the rules say to do?
There is no arrow pointing anywhere, it just repeated C-A-L-T-E-C-H. No arrows anywhere.
No you dolt, it's the nerd Super Bowl. Soon we will have collegiate teams of geeks that contest with each other in great fashion like the other college sports..betting on such, making regional trees, ranks, etc :p
Use Minidisc? Join the Minidisc.org forums.
Travel 4k+ miles to put balloons up and put on a laser show? When I was in college all we ever did was get drunk and have sex, I am glad I never turned in my app to CalTech.
I wish I had mod points. Take a look at the last few stories. This guy's just been copy/pasting stuff to get his FREE CRAP links up.
A bunch of Yalies pulled a similar prank at this year's The Game, but there was no lock-picking or theft involved - just pure social engineering. They reconnoitered the Cantabs' stadium and designed their own card stunt. The day of the game, they dressed up as the "Harvard Pep Squad", and passed out their cards, without, apparently, raising an eyebrow. And not once, not twice, but three times (or more!), they got 1800 Havard students and alums to declare as one: "WE SUCK".
In their own words, or as told by the Yale Daily 'News'.
Apparently they don't cover how to keep your webserver running at Caltech.
"We can't solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them."
Say what you want, but pranks and happenings such as these really spice up the students days and I love reading about them. We used to do similar pranks when I was studying, several made it to the news. Our favourites included installing elevator music in the elevators, bashing the Faculty of Engineering Science and Technology students (we were electronics) and their train (they had one train, we had one on tracks that actually works). One night we made two "full size" garden gnomes out of paper mache and placed them on two readily available points. We made the news in several newspapers for that. See the pics here http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2004/06/24/401413.h tml?i=1 16 pictures total.
Also, nearly immediately after the banner was placed that read:
"That Other" Institute of Technology
"That Other" was changed to "The Only" by the M.I.T. kids.
And it looks like that is the film where they got their prank ideas from, the laser lights. Too bad they did not have the frozen ice that turns directly to gas... maybe... or kaboom. I couldn't finish the equations last night so I don't know how volatile it is.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Would anyone at MIT have entertained, even just for a moment, traveling to California to do something similar to the California Institute of Technology? I doubt it.
Not to say that Caltech isn't one of the top engineering schools in the country: of course it is. But it doesn't enjoy MIT's prestige, and these pranks just go to enlarge that prestige.
you'll hopefully have all heard of http://www.harvardsucks.org/. I bet their video will be slashdotted before morning though...
Are you not aware that that Yale/Harvard football game prank was itself a rip-off of the Caltech Rose Bowl prank? Guess not...
mirror (see the pranks link for images)
I remember meeting a kid from Cal-Tech, and to this day his impression remains with me. I have never met such a mix of intellect with insanity. He was working for the summer at Northwestern University, and I spent a couple days at his rented house (which a friend of mine from high school was renting with his girlfriend, there were 6 people living in this old house). Anyways, this guy had a pet spider, but not any spider, a black widow. And one night he wanted to cook for all of us. He boiled a big pot of water, Dropped in a head of chopped lettice, and two slices of american cheese. He then served it to us with so much pride. Later that night I broke out a huge jug of Vodka and a half gallon of OJ. We were making screwdrivers that were nearly see-through. After his first glass, he started crying about how he's never been with a woman. By his second glass, he was singing in chineese. He could not finish his third glass, he fell asleep on the floor right there. So the next morning we wake up, and I look in his fishtank, and the black widow is gone. I ask him what happened, and he said he felt bad for it and let it lose the night before. I asked where, and he said "I don't remember, maybe in your room" FUCK! I left that day, and never returned.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
If there have ever ever been wedding for any of the MIT students, even more so, on the site itself...
Well, you get the idea.
With this story hitting /.'s frontpage, they'll have to retaliate. And of course, we'll probably have to hear about it here.
News for nerds. College pranks that matter.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
know that Caltech is more hardcore. We also hear that it's more miserable.
For all those interested in more school rivalries and pranks, get a copy of:
If at All Possible, Involve a Cow: The Book of College Pranks
by Neil Steinberg
Very fun reading.
The wit of it all. I'm sat here amazed and astounded!
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
one time, in middle school, some people let some pigs onto the campus. They painted on the pigs "1", "2", and "4". The faculty spent weeks looking for the third one.
http://www.bash.org/?482717
that reminds me of a yale vs harvard video i saw on exbyte http://www.exbyte.net/media/videos/416/Harvard_Suc ks.html
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
Could someone had an option to Slashcode to filter out any story containing the word "prefrosh"? I don't have to know what it means to know I don't like it.
fish and pipes
and a brother of the play midnight-wiffleball-with-prefrosh fraternity, I must say the balloons in lobby 7 were pretty tame. I guess they never heard about the balloon at the Harvard-Yale football game. We'll be sure to get them back, don't you all worry.
To: All Admissions Staff
From: Director of Admissions
In order to continue fundraising, we have to admit 40% legacies that are shit for brains. They can't read or write, but their fathers have us on an allowance, and we want the money. Plus, without legacies, there would be nobody there to say "You got me again, you silly nerd!". The other 60% will be merit admission, with 30% comming from India. Please be mindful that engish is their second language, and some of them might feel more at home taking baths in the Boston River. The other 30% are American Chinese students. Unlike the other 70%, they know american grammer and spelling.
But feel good, at least we are not Harvard. There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
This event [Big Screw] is still run; this year's event happened this week.
See here for a slightly outdated list of winners and charities; Chuck Vest (Make a Wish Foundation) won in 2004 and Prof. George Verghese (Doctors Without Borders) won in 2003. The 2005 winner will be announced tomorrow evening, and will be presented with the four foot long, left-handed aluminum wood screw.
Access denied: Not enough clue for requested operation.
I am not affiliated with any school. When I applied for colleges in the early 90's, I did not apply to either, although I did my research. MIT has been declining the past 20 years. Cal Tech is making a name for itself.
The only news out of MIT that I have read the past 2 years is kids getting drunk and dying. The news out of Cal Tech is they are playing with lasers and doing cool stuff.
MIT is at risk of becomming obsolete. 50 years ago Berkeley was a stud school. Today it is nothing special, no better than the University of Michigan or University of Texas. Berkeley rested on their laurels, and that is what MIT is doing.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
That's lame.... If you don't care about them one way or the other, then why spend nights patrolling rooftops of all the buildings, and not allow them to show their 'stupidity' when they try? That's what I don't understand.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
I still think the 1961 Rosebowl prank is one of the very best. But yeah, these latest MIT ones were lame.
As one of the Caltech students who was at MIT this weekend, I'd just like to point out that regardless of how lame the MIT hackers may think our pranks were - and I know from talking to many of them personally that a large faction of them were actually quite impressed - I haven't seen MIT doing anything better in the past 10 years.
Why don't you ask her yourself? :-)
Because most slashdotters probably won't actually browse around the site, I think it's important to repeat some of the rules of this prank war. The intent of this is good-natured fun, which seems to be missed by some of the commenters here.
From http://www.caltechvsmit.com/overview.html:
Both Caltech and MIT require that students put in a lot of hard work studying math and science. Because the stress is so intense, we students at Caltech believe that pranks are an important, if not essential, way to relax and have a little fun. We are familiar with MIT's tradition of hacks and hope that we can merge the cultures at the two schools, if only for a short time.
We propose that MIT joins us in a pranking/hacking war. As you may have already noticed, we struck first, so now it is MIT's turn. Obviously the distance between schools poses a great difficulty, but we believe that MIT students will find that this difficulty can be overcome. In fact all of the pranks need not even be on the other school's campus so long as the pranks are made public enough through the media.
The rules of the contest are simple and are essentially the same as Caltech's prank ethics and MIT's hackers' code. Pranks should be reversible. No permanent damage should be done and the pranksters must provide some sort of contact information on a note so they can be contacted if things are damaged. The note need not contain names, but it must be a reliable way to contact the pranksters.
Pranks should be creative and display some form of originality. Novel ideas, particularly novel ideas involving technology, are generally well received, but repeats are strictly discouraged. We suggest that those wanting to participate make themselves very familiar with the history of pranks and hacks at both schools in order to prevent repeating pranks.
Finally, we wish to inform MIT students that Caltech Prefrosh Weekend is next weekend. It may not be possible to organize something so quickly, but we have faith in the ingenuity of MIT students. We hope to see you all in Pasadena soon.
As a side note, denial of service attacks are lame. Anybody can do that. Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to put a '2' on the scoreboard?
These pranks only seem to indicate that CalTech students have a massive inferiority complex? These pranks are lame. How hard, interesting, creative, or amazing is it to release balloons with C.I.T on them or print T-shirts? Flying thousands of miles just to do that only shows you have too much money and not enough creativity.
Sorry CIT, but you only seemed to have proven to the rest of the world how lame you are (and I didn't even go to either of these schools).
AccountKiller
Okay, someone is catching on that these are two different words. That's good, but "to loose" is a perfectly cromulent word, with its own meaning. It was properly used here. If you lose something, you no longer know where it is. If you loose something, you unleash it (generally against someone or something).
To use both in a sentence: If you lose your dictionary again, I will loose my wrath upon you!
Or, to use some other tenses: Loosing her exquisite talent on me last night, she made it clear that she had long since lost her virginity.
I apologize for the belligerent tone; these pranks were, in fact, meant to be in the spirit of friendly competition. If they've actually gotten MIT people and 'Techers pissed off at each other, I apologize on behalf of the Caltech pranksters.
I'm not going to get into which is a better school, that's rather subjective when you get down to it better how) but they are worse because they pull pranks? HArdly, Caltech is known to be the king of pranks, this pales in comparies to their ultimate, the ultimate prank if you asked me.
The year was 1961, and it was the Rose Bowl, which is held in Pasadena California. Now this is also where Caltech is located. Now Caltech doesn't play in the Rose Bowl ever, they don't play 1A ball for that matter, but some students form there decided to get in anyhow.
That year, the Washington Huskies had an elobrate halftime show planned. It involved not only the band, but a set of cards that the audience would display. The way it worked was audience members sitting in the selected section had a bunch of coloured cards, and a sheet of instructions, telling them which colour to hold up on which cue. The cheerleaders then called cues, and the cards went up to form pictures.
Well a group of Caltech students, later known as the Fiendish Fourteen, decided to alter what happened. They broke in to the room where the instructions sheets were stored, took them, made alterations, made copies, ageded the copies, then replaced them. Nobody noticed that a switch had been made.
On game day the modified sheets were distributed and during halftime the show commenced. Most of the images were left largely unaltered, expect for minor changes, so no one knew what was happening. PRoblems started on the 12th image. It was supposed to be a huskie, but had been altered to look somewhat like a beaver (Caltech's mascot). The 13th image was worse, it was to spell out "HUSKIES" but Caltech reversed it to say "SEIKSUH". Seeing this, and figuring it for a fuckup, the cheerleaders quickly called for the next image, which read "CALTECH" in block letters.
The band stopped playing, the stadium went silent, and the announcers were speechless. It couldn't have been more perfect, as the cameras were focuesd on the crowd at the time (halftime shows were broadcast then) and it went out on national TV. After a few moments silecnt, laguhter broke out. The band left the field, and the final image was never called.
Now that, my friend, is a prank, and it's one of the things Caltech is known for. It's an odd university, with a somewhat different sense of humour, but that certianly doesn't make it bad. That they traveled to MIT to pull a prank is not supprising, like I said, they've done better.
FYI: If this stuff intrests you, read If At All Possible Involve a Cow by Neil Steinberg. It was there that I orignally heard of this great prank.
Hey, speaking as someone on the Caltech campus, we're waiting for something cool to show up, courtesy of MIT folks.
The floggings will stop when morale improves.
First, I don't think we see MIT as a rival in a "we win you lose" sort of way. But let's assume that we do in a "we want the best frosh we can get and a lot of people are considering both schools" sort of way.
A typical Caltech freshman class has about 215 students. MIT's have on the order of 1,000. This means that the schools admit around 500 and 2500 students, respectively. MIT, then, has at LEAST 2000 students in it's prefrosh pool that don't even have Caltech as an option (in a given year), so that even if Caltech took all of the students that are chosing between Caltech and MIT (I don't know the number, but probably more than half of total Caltech admits applied and were admitted to MIT), MIT would have at LEAST about 4/5 of its prefrosh pool in tact. If, on the other hand, Caltech lost all of the students deciding between the two, it's pool of prefrosh would decrease by 1/2.
Such a "rivalry," then, is understandably more important to Caltech than MIT, due to Caltech's small size (which, by the way contributes to lots of its awesomeness).
Regarding a pranking rivalry, I don't think one has really existed in the past at either school. But wouldn't it be cool if there was one? Lots of cool stuff might happen. That was kind of the point of Caltech's work this weekend. We're suggesting a pranking rivalry, in good spirit. Looking at the response, it looks like MIT might agree, but let's keep it in good spirit. Pranking/hacking should be fun for the pranker and the prankee. If you give a good joke, you should be able to take a good joke.
Prankers/Hackers at Caltech and MIT have a lot in common, and should have more interaction. Anyone up for an ice cream social? I'll provide music and a laser light show (much better than the one that was projected on to the green building... there will be more preparation).
There legicies are dumber than our legacies.
Ahem. "Their legacies". I take it you're not part of the American Chinese 30%.
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Well whoopy they made tee-shirts and put up plastic plants, Geee what next. Wearing there tee-shirts inside out. A standard teenager on a drink up does more exciting and defining pranks than this. Had they not highlighted them as `pranks` I suspect everybody would have missed em.
:(*
MIT,, Mass Ingenuity Trashed or is it Major Idiotic Tricks
I look forward to it. When you fly into LAX have the SuperShuttle take you to Caltech Stop #1.
... that's all i wrote...
I'd do a good prank, but those pansies would probably cry or wet themselves or something, and I'd have to deal with the stench as it drifted across the causeway into our town.
(hopes some Davis students read this... ;) )
-Vendal Thornheart
They're both good schools, and it's pretty difficult to assign a ranking. Sure, they do largely compete for the same students, but most of the difference between them people use to decide isn't whether one is objectively "better" than the other, but which sort of environment they prefer. For one, they are vastly different in size, have rather different cultures (both among students and especially faculty), and quite different location (suburban LA versus urban Boston).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"The Jacks began searching for the source of our laser, which they shortly found but could not shut off without risking costly damage to MIT equipment."
Anyone know how this is so?
I didn't go to either of them, although I briefly considered both. I ended up going to a school that really does have a bit of an inferiority complex, Harvey Mudd College, although it too is so different as to be hard to compare (undergrad-only; humanities-heavy curriculum; part of a consortium with 4 other undergrad liberal arts colleges).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I'm sure the guys at MIT are studying 'Real Genius' with great intensity as we speak, looking for revenge tactics.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
No.
And the April Fools waste of time and space stories are staying too. How terrible that you have to scroll past a silly story.
And I thought The Boat Race was bad enough.
The 5 area rankings are:
Arts & Sciences #1
Biological Sciences #5 (after Stanford, MIT, Harvard, UC San Diego)
Engineering #2 (after MIT)
Physical Sciences & Math #1
Social & Behavorial Sciences #1
Link
from: http://people.bu.edu/fmri/somers/cannon.html
I think the first cannon attempt goes back to '74 or even '72. They once got it on a pickup truck only to break the axle. Another time the fire hose was turned on them. By the mid 80's there was still a buzz about the cannon, but no serious efforts had been made for awhile. Mark Moeglein and I made a trial run as a frosh, with a pick up truck and a pair of bolt cutters, but all we did was cut the lock -- I don't know how we would have gotten it on the truck.
In '86 I was ASHMC president and had a bit of a prank reputation. ( I was nearly expelled for moving the stakes of New II/ 7th/ Case Dorm early in construction ). Jeff Hong and Steve Olson revived the idea of stealing the cannon and had made a few observational runs. They knew it was a big job and that it would take some money (hopefully ASHMC's) so they brought me in. I got some covert help from the administration -- the phone number of an alum, Bob DePietro, who had a construction engineering company -- and a promise to post bail if we got busted.
The DePietro connection was critical. We used his name to rent a flat bed truck and a fork lift in Pasadena. I don't think they would have given it to a 21 year college student with a visa card. There were so many logistics. We had to find 2 people with class 2 drivers licences to drive the truck and the fork lift off site -- Greg Felton and Tom Jed.
We also had the problem of where to park the fork lift. We planned an early Saturday morning raid. But had to pick up the forklift by 5 on Friday. The forklift was huge and clearly could make a trip on the 210 between Claremont and Pasadena. So I scouted around and found some road construction where they left the equipment over night. We picked the fork lift right at 5 and fortunately the work crew quit a little early. Tom Jed just drove it in behind the Pasadena equipment, parked it and took the key. Well, actually it wasn't that simple. Tom ran into a BMW on the way! As we would later discover, the hydrolic steering on the forklift was defective.
OK, so we had the hardware, but how we're we going to pull it off. We picked an early Saturday morning when most of Fleming House was off on a dorm ski trip. But still we needed cover. We decided to go in daylight and pose as a construction crew. Joe, after a stint in the army, was a bald 27 year-old Mudder. He was made foreman and H&M construction was born. Phony work orders were made and blue workshirts, overalls, and workmen flannels were aqcuired.
We could not think of one story that would fool everyone, so we came up with two stories. We told campus security that we had be contracted to take the barrel for polishing. There was no way would that the students have bought that lame story. So we told them we're just moving it to get access to a broken water main that was below. Still a little fishy, so we added some decoys. Tom, Steve, and Eric went in 15 minutes before to pose as Caltech students. Two playing catch and one reading. I think this was critical. Each time someone would come along, they would be suspicious. But then they looked around and saw other "techies" who seemed to think all was right so they moved along. And to add insult to injury, Byrne Sanford hid inside the dorm and shot 8 rolls of photos of the whole event.
Of course it wasn't all so smooth. Campus security was called almost immediately upon our arrival. I thought we were busted. But Joe our foreman played his role beautifully and made our story hold up. Once campus security was pacified, we knew we were going to make it. Also there was a Fleming house frosh who was up early and chatting with us. He gave us a bit of a scare, but by the end he was telling us stories of how people had tried to steal the cannon in the past. Poor frosh.
Unfortunately, the steering on the forklift was no good and we had to do it by hand -- two of us on each wheel, back and forth trying to back into a corner so we could lift the cannon. The wheels were so rotte
frosh is the name applied to incoming freshmen before they are formally admitted at the begining of the year by the chancellor of the university.
I'm sure the guys at MIT are studying 'Real Genius' with great intensity as we speak, looking for revenge tactics.
Ah, but according to the rules, pranks should be original and not mere repeats of old ones. Many/most of the pranks from the movie Real Genius were based on real things which happened at Caltech.
Even though I'm an alum (you guess from where), the following are un-biased examples of inscription hacks.
(1) recent hack by the west coast school
(2) a classic inscription hack
It's clear which of the two is more thoughtful, creative, and true to the spirit of hacking.
This is news? The only people who would care about this are Sci or Eng students.
:P
Including former and wannabe Sci or Eng students, you get 95% of the Slashdot population
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Why does the person wearing the T-shirt in that photo has 2 lumps on his chest?
That would be a rare example of what is known as a FE-Male. Fulminate of Estrogen infused male. Handle with caution as they can be extremely volatile, but with proper care can be quite nice to have around.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the bottom of the "Overview" page:
:o hacked already, or a mistake on CalTech's part?
"As a side note, denial of service attacks are lame. Anybody can do that. Wouldn't your time be better spent trying to put a '1' on the scoreboard?"
The scoreboard on the Home page:
Caltech - 6 | MIT - 1
Sounds like I need to enroll at CalTech.
...but only hot women can reside in my closet.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
balloons in the dome at night
e r/c.jpgr /a.jpg/ l.jpgt .jpg. jpgj pgp g
palm trees inside "Tomb of the Unkown Tool"
a full shot of someone wearing the shirt
a the only institute of technology retaliation
prank signature on white board
and the spelling of CALTECH:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/las
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/lase
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/e
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/c.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~gremmer/laser/h.j
HD Trailers
But perhaps it's stuff that matters.
Somehow.
The Internet is generally stupid
As someone who's at UIUC right now, the top students here are comparable to MIT/Caltech, but the other 90% are mediocre.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The person modeling the T-shirt has too many curves.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
Nope.
Prefrosh are prefrosh until the end of rotation, when the cannon fires.
Frosh are frosh until the very same moment the next year, for there shall always be frosh.
It's a complicated set of customs and traditions, but that's how it is.
The T-shirt concept has been used in the MIT-Harvard rivalry for *years*. Can't fin a picture but here's a reference.
Were that I say, pancakes?
I guess that this must be an inverse contest. Whoever wins will prove that they spend too much valuable time thinking about pranks instead of getting an education.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
Nah, we can always hire someone like you to do it for $22K/yr.
Sure, by the time when the total contribution to human science created by the Eastern Timor school or the University of Argentina becomes as significant as those of MIT and Caltech, then I'm sure we will read a lot about them.
Then start your own website. FWIW, your country doesn't have a single university as good as Caltech OR MIT. And I don't even have to ask where you're from before making that determination.
Approximately 1/4 of Engineers are foreigners, so it may just be that some of the people who run your country or it's large companies went to MIT.
Were that I say, pancakes?
2500? Do your Googling, buddy -- you're way underestimating MIT's yield. 1495 students were admitted for the class of 2009. In terms of percentages perhaps that says a lot about which school is viewed as more desirable in the eyes of incoming freshmen.
:)
About the one-way rivalry thing -- don't feel too bad, Caltech. Us at MIT have spent years mocking Harvard and they don't even notice...
And I was there from Thursday to Sunday. Not saying it didn't happen, just that it wasn't very obvious. The a capella choirs' concert (the closing event) was hacked though - a banner dropped down with some pictures of beavers & such. It read, "MIT: more dome for your dollar, more beaver for your [can't remember], more bang for your buck".
that is all
Nixon was a big football fan and decided to go see the Rosebowl game that year which meant the Secret Service had to scour the Rosebowl. As part of their checkout, they powered up the scoreboard and because Rosum had scrimped on his relays, they blew his circuit out. Debugging the blown scoreboard led them to his fried, and smoking, circuit. That would have been the end of it except some other Techies decided independently to pull the same prank. Except they didn't know the Secret Service was waiting for the first prankster to come fix his prank. Guess who ended up getting caught?
if messing with so many asian kids is considered a hate crime...
This means WAR...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
INI
As a product of UIUC working for Cornell, and a former employee of a company that employees hundreds of MIT grads (mostly from the prestigous MIT Gas Turbine Lab). I have to say, you are almost exactly right.
I'd say the top 10% at UIUC are roughly equivilant to the top 20-30% at MIT (and the bottom 20% of UIUC engineering/physics would never get in the door at MIT). Not everyone at MIT is great, but they do have a higher rate...
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
No, whoever posted the story to Slashdot is the one that is DOS-ing your site.
2) "our group bribed two kids with a stereo into playing the Ride of the Valkyries, Caltech's song"
The Valkyries were the ones who carried the dead from the battlefield (and into heaven if i'm not mistaken). If they tried that garbage at my school they had better bring their own Valkries to clean up the mess.
I don't keep a lid on my coffee so when I walk around I look busy -me
wha?
What the hell is wrong with "is located at"?
"has been located at" doesn't even mean the same thing.
Unless you're making a weak slashdotting joke by your insistence at past tense, the present tense is perfectly correct, and the use of active voice far preferable to the passive voice you seem to be insisting on.
Compare the original sentence and your preferred replacement:
"A full account of the pranks is located at www.caltechvsmit.com"
"A full account of the pranks has been made available through www.caltechvsmit.com"
See how much more concise and to the point the original is?
There are no prizes for wordiness, and "through" is just wrong anyway.
A web site (note the use of the word "site") is considered to be a location (albeit a virtual one), not a service, therefore "located at" is perfectly fine.
Advanced users are users too!
What the hell is wrong with "is located at"?
..." is actually correct.
The "is" and "located" don't match in tense. That's like saying "He is medicated yesterday."
Saying "He is medicated" is also incorrect [for the same reason].
It's "yet another english thingy that became the norm". In reality the guy put the thing up available at that address in the PAST. He's not still putting it up there...
So
"It was made available at
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
This their verison of the NCAA Champsionship!
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
Who takes pride in it and loves technolgy and wishes he could go to MIT. I say that MIT hacks are way much better. Though, now is the time to strike back, MIT! INVADE TEH CALTECH CAMPUS!!!!
In America, you spam computers In Soviet Russia, computers spam you!
At the risk of incurring the wrath of a grammer flame, a minor correction to my post:
"there are actually a lot of other countries out there with colleges as good or better than MIT or Caltech."
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Back in the 1980s I wrote a letter to Scientific American complaining about their spelling of Caltech.
...)
They wrote back and told me I was wrong -- the official abbreviation is Cal Tech. Sigh. At least as of 1980 they were right and I was wrong.
I doubt that's changed.
We all used Caltech (t-shirts, stationery, etc) -- but technically it's probably still Cal Tech.
In the 80s we did use CIT on occasion.
As to the MIT/Caltech comparisons, I think most people who know both would agree that the 'top 120 SAT scorers' in an MIT class are very comparable in personality and academic inclinations to a Caltech class (used to be about 120). MIT, however, has another pool of students that's more diverse and not as physics-focused as the Caltech students. I do think we were (still are based on the single visit I've made back there in 25 years) the geekiest student body that ever lived. (When I was a member of the Caltech Y I championed a "Nerd Pride" event. If you can't beat it
John Faughnan
jfaughnan@spamcop.net
To help you out...[since I know you still don't understand]
"locate" is a verb. That is to find something.
Location is a noun.
"It is located" is wrong. "Its location is" is correct.
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
It may be a correct sentence, but it screwed up the meaning, and the meaning is far more important that finer points of style.
>In reality the guy put the thing up available at that address in the PAST. He's not still putting it up there...
The original message says nothing about the act of putting up the page - because no one cares about that.
It tells you where you can find it _now_ - which is what we do care about.
"was made available at" tells you nothing about where you can get it now.
You could make two changes to the original sentence that would improve its style without losing the meaning.
Drop "located" -
"A full account of the pranks is at www.caltechvsmit.com"
Or change located to available as you suggested, but without screwing with the tense -
"A full account of the pranks is available at www.caltechvsmit.com"
The first is probably preferable as it's more concise.
In any case, we're talking about a slashdot submission here, it's informal speech and no one cares whether or not it meets the highest levels of style.
As long as it's clear, says what it means, and spelt right. Bad spelling is far less acceptable than not adhering to a style guide, and attempts to improve the style that sacrifice meaning do not help anyone.
Advanced users are users too!
MIT should send Caltech a girl...or maybe a picture of a social interaction. Also, it should be noted that MIT hackers promptly changed the banner "the other" to "the only."
I know this is stupid, but I'll make my comment: ............
is medicated != is located
is - present tense, which means that as of right now, as of the time of this writing
example:
The building is located at
or
the information is lacated at this web site....
as the previous writer wrote, a web site is a virtual location (remember the URL?)
It is true that the information WAS PUT up there at some point in the past, but that is irrelevant to us. We are only concerned with where the information is LOCATED, not when the information WAS UPLOADED to this specific LOCATION.
When we're referring to a person BEING MEDICATED we cannot say is medicated. So we use IS BEING MEDICATED (if the patient is still under treatment. So you arte comparing two different things.
"it was made available..." is correct, but that doesn't mean "is located at..." or you can "find it at...." is incorrect. In fact they are more correct than "it was made available...."
The phaomnneil pweor of the hmuan mnid. Fcuknig amzanig eh!
locate ... IS A VERB!!! "located" is past tense!!!
"its location is" is what "is located at" means. Just because it's common doesn't mean it's proper.
"is" is a present tense VERB... He is here. He was here, he will be here, etc.
So in summary, locate == verb, location == noun
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The University seems to look down upon pranks. Here at U of Waterloo, they look down upon pranks that are even just contained within the University.
They would take down those balloons easily.
Even better would be selling the right to shoot them down and using the money for some charity.
Even a novice should be able to hit a balloon with a scoped pellet gun.
To the person who said that the cards weren't readable: some pictures at the prank website. Definitely legible.
yeah who neededs correct grammar when posteding. Cuz anything has fly!
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Is it still arrogant if it's true?
FYI, there are actually a lot of other countries out there as good or better than MIT or Caltech. Of course, they're found in obscure, little-known countries like India, China, Britain, and Canada, but they're out there.
Names? As for England, Cambridge and Oxford are very good, both in the top 10 in a lot of fields. But Britain goes down fast after that. China's rising but not there yet, same for India. Canada doesn't have that many good schools, none of their best would top our top 20. That includes, for example, UToronto. You failed to mention Germany and Japan which would likely provide the best competition to the US, actually, after Britain.
Here's a list of the top schools compiled by a Chinese university: ed.sjtu.edu.cn/rank/2004/top500(1-100).pdf. I deliberately chose a non-American source to prevent any "bias.". Of the top 25, 18 are American. That's not the only authority, of course, but I'd love to see any measure in which well over half the world's top universities weren't in the US.
Perhaps if your "super-elite, best-in-the-world" US colleges focused a little more on their geography classes instead of their patriotism classes, you'd know that.
I'm familiar with many institutions across the world (and quite good at geography). And I've never seen one that profs in the sciences would routinely choose a job at as opposed to any of the top 5 US schools (say MIT, Harvard, Caltech, Berkeley, Stanford). The only ones that would offer competition would be Oxford and Cambridge. And I'm quite familiar with this situation. Probably different in liberal arts, but not science.
You may not like it - but it IS true.
At the risk of incurring the wrath of a grammer flame, a minor correction to my post:
How about a spelling flame? "Grammer"? You mean like the guy who played Frasier?
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
Bah you idiot - you must be an American we are talking about here - i mean ignorant and presumptuous. That was supposed to be funny for all the other geeks. Pffft - disrespectful? How the fuck would anyone know she's "active" on the /. circle and why the fuck would i know. Oh lord - go get a life you geek.
The pranks were not as bad as they seem to have been reported. The balloons did go up under the dome, but very few people noticed them. The palm tree also went up on the dome, but it was not up there for more than a few minutes before it was retrieved and spray-painted white to appear covered in snow. The t-shirts were handed out at the Academic Fair which a fair number of prefrosh didn't even go to, and the laser on the side of the Green Building...well, let's just say I witnessed a few people departing to make that guy's life miserable. The banner reading "That Other [Institute of Technology]" was also rapidly counter-hacked to read "The Only [Institute of Technology]".
It took a while for people to realize that Caltech students really had taken the time to fly out here and bother us (the smart money was originally on Caltech alumni at the grad school). MIT may have a rivalry with Caltech, but it's quite far away and not supported by any sort of sports team encounters. Caltech may have only MIT to focus on, but MIT spends a lot of its energy harassing Harvard, which has the advantages of being easily mocked and just down the road. Caltech has had some great hacks in the past - the Rose Bowl prank, the Hollywood sign - but MIT has a greater culture of regular hacking that involves much of the community. Thus, it's a little surprising that Caltech would throw down the gauntlet like this...and the invitation to prank their prefrosh weekend can mean only trouble.
But it would probably be trouble for Caltech. They seem to have invested a lot of pride in this, but most of the prefrosh at least didn't even know it was happening. If MIT heads to Caltech and gets humiliated, Caltech might be cheering but the rest of MIT might not even know about it. I hope they know what they're getting in to.
a lot of people seem to confuse University of Pennsylvania (in Philadelphia) with Penn State.... or they do not realize it is two unrelated schools. when i hear somebody just say "Penn" i assume they mean University of Pennsylvania, but i live in Philadelphia.
while Penn State's main campus is in State College, PA... they have satellite campuses all over the place. that may help with the confusion?
You may not like it - but it IS true.
No, it's not. I'll even use your own source to prove you wrong (your link is broken, by the way). The original poster said:
your country doesn't have a single university as good as Caltech OR MIT.
Well, according to your list, the University of Cambridge (in the UK) ranks higher than both MIT and Caltech.
So the original poster was wrong, according to your own data.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
Actually, if he was British you might be wrong, but Slashdot covers their hacks too, so you both have somewhat flawed arguments.
Yeah, I took a gamble poster wasn't British. I'll obviously concede Oxford and Cambridge are both great universities. Though I would contend that after that, things fall quickly.
Main point stands, though. The majority of the world's best universities, especially at the top, are in the US.
I hope that changes, honestly, and I say that as an American. Not because the world sends its best and brightest here (I actually like how multicultural that works out), but because more education is good for everybody. Europe is quickly falling behind - particularly the Continent - and India is quickly gaining. China will too, and Japan is already there.
Compare this to before WWII years ago, when Britain and Germany were dominant, America had a few good world-class schools, and India, China and Japan weren't on the map.
Dude, chill, it's also an adjective!
"Steve located Dave's VCR" -- past participle of locate
"Dave's VCR is located at Steve's cafe" -- adjective
Try using a dictionary sometime.
This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we'll all be lucky to live through it.
Yeah, rich kids. 72% of whom qualify for need-based financial aid. Damn those rich kids. And 16% of whose families have annual incomes less than MIT's annual costs. Damn those stuck-up rich kids.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Then they put it on Slashdot...
And MIT did it to Harvard first. (#7) They weren't even original in their choice of schools.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
was when the laser was invited at Bell Labs. That is old news.
While it is true that research University such as MIT focus more on their grad students than undergrads, there are opportunities for motivated undergrads to get involved with cutting edge research. MIT had a Undergrad Research Opportunity Program for many years. It is up to the students how much they want to take advantage of it.
You must pick the right school for your own interests and abilities. However, one would make better choices after collecting accurate facts to support the decision.
Ok, so that was a more relevent statement pre-2001. You know what I'm saying though.
*adds Samari711 to friends list*
Go Irish!
I always thought that the point of a prank was to be clever or to be funny, preferably both. Most of these "pranks" really are neither. They fall into the category of either "who cares?" or "I'm being a dick!". Please, Caltech, strive for humor or cleverness. This series of "pranks" seem more like the kind a petulant child would play rather than students/graduates at one of the premier technical schools in our nation.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
That's funny, when I went there for Campus Preview Weekend only three years ago it rained the first day (and I mean it poured). Another night it snowed. And it was windy and cloudy most of the time when it wasnt precipitating. I don't know what else to say, so I'll just let the facts speak for themselves.
Ooooooh... they put a big bulletin board on the wall in front of his door. How innovative!
Puleeeez. Aren't these guys supposed to be engineers?
[Link]
I can't find pictures of the Grant Hall alarm clock, but here's Grant Hall to give you some idea of the scale of the alarm clock.
And that wall built in the JDUC (John Deutsch University Centre) was a full-scale drywall wall, painted to match the surroundings, hung with posters and other things, and generally made to look exactly like the walls next to it.
This is on top of individual departments doing their own thing. The physics department (i.e. me and some buds) made the physics lounge (a little sitting room) into a real lounge. We "borrowed" all kinds of fun things from the labs upstairs, physics labs and dance clubs having so much in common: lasers, strobe lights, clouds of liquid nitrogen vapours, etc.
Other years did similar fun things, like taking apart a car and rebuilding it around a light post, or rebuilding it inside a building on a second floor balcony.
Compared to that, putting a bulletin board in front of a guy's office is rather lame.
we "downsized" our President's office which we thought was a more productive way of complaining about budget cuts and tuition increases than making it disappear entirely. While I cannot find the pictures at the moment, we basically turned his office into a shack and gave him an upside-down trash can as a chair and so on. And yes, we haven't transformed a building into a cathedral, but can you imagine getting that much stuff across country? Be realistic please.
Stop proving there are limits to my madness! ;-)
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Also, I won't dispute with you that Caltech isn't for everyone. It's a unique place, and if one isn't prepared to work really hard, despite his/her smarts, then one shouldn't go to Caltech. The social environment is not what most are used to, though, to some, very cool. Caltech may have a repuation of being a bit harder/weirder than MIT, but I'm not sure this is true, though it wouldn't surprise me. See my previous post (Re: Aargh) for exploration of this issue.
I've tried hard in these posts to explain my reasoning, and even point out where I'm lacking data (as in the above post). I'm disappointed by your comment:
It's useless (in terms of conveying useful information) and misleading! First of all, the qualifier "perhaps" makes the statement weak and almost manifestly true. You don't provide any information on what the precentages might say, if indeed they say anything. The percentages COULD indicate many things. But do they ACTUALLY indicate anything? "Dear reader, assume what you will."Perhaps the percentages indicate that noxious fumes from the Charles River leave prefrosh in a state of euphoria-induced poor judgement, though I doubt it. Your comment provides little guidance. You can do better.
This /. story, and the Caltech prank, are not about MIT vs. Caltech in a "who is better than who" way. They're about having fun and taking pride in the things we have in common.
These schools are composed of individuals. We don't need to fight for our school's names as if we're fighting for our own. Sure we have an interest in the "value" of our degrees, but which school is slightly better (if that even has an agreeable well-defined meaning) doesn't matter. Personally, I try not to tie my self-respect to anything or anyone but myself. Again, they're all fine houses.
Yes, well, Mr. "Kombat", YOUR country's space shuttles are SO much nicer than our space shuttles. And YOUR Mars rover is so much nicer than OUR Mars rover (race you for pink slips). And YOUR software companies are SO much bigger than OUR software companies. And YOUR standard of living is SO much higher than OURs. I know, I know - stereotypical arrogance (actually, I think our arrogance is greater than the aggregate stereotype). But it's just because we're BETTER than you. So get over it.
I've often thought that Harvey Mudd and University of Chicago ought to prank each other.
Come on, giving away free shirts to their prefrosh that say MIT on one side (when handed the shirts, wrapped in plastic, they looked like normal MIT shirts) and "...because not everybody can go to Caltech" (which is true) on the other! That's awesome. And clever. The shirts have been made before (we've had the same shirt made by individuals around Caltech for quite some time, and I think MIT at one point sold the opposite shirt in their store), but the execution and timing were quite clever.
Admit it. Now. For the children.
Well, if all of the smarty pants at the various Institutes of Technology have time to leave their books and pull some pranks, they should have enough time to do something a little more creative like invent a cure for cancer or make a better transistor like the folks at University of Illinois, or an operating system like a poor Finish boy, or drop out and start a software company like the richest man in the world, or just stop being snobbish dorks and go _____________ (Fill in the blank with your own obnoxious saying). And that completes the longest run-on sentence.
Don't the T-shirts that say "Wright State" (front) "Wrong School" (back) count? That's at least as clever as "not everyone can go to Caltech", and I think you can still buy them at the Universtity of Dayton bookstore...
Vuja De: That sinking feeling that this is going to happen again. Often occurs in meetings with Product Managers.
Many of the pranks are just to get Caltech's name out...the point of Prefrosh weekend is to help undecided prefrosh pick a school, and there are a fair amount who have a choice between MIT and Caltech. If it appears that Caltech is smart enough to prank MIT with impunity, it will convince some undecideds that Caltech really is the place with the better education, a fact that previous posters have mentioned is much more important to Caltech (~200 undergrads per class) than it is to MIT (~1000 undergrads per class).
Shouldn't the two nerd schools team up and pull pranks on a jock school? All of this seems so counter-productive.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
I'd say the difference in losing 100 students in a group with 500 excess admitted as opposed to 1500 excess admitted is significant... but you're right, I'm missing the point anyways. Sorry. Was stuck in bed sick all weekend hearing about this and not seeing it; am cranky; that was uncalled for, my apologies.
/. is her homepage.
With the prank images hosted in ~gremmer it wasn't too hard to dig up likely prankster Isaac Nielsen Gremmer and his residence, with a map to his room.