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Great Hacks and Pranks Of Our Time
Luther Blissett writes "There's a history of pranks and hacks in the year-end issue of the Economist, including MIT hacks, the Bonsai Kitten, and the Pentagon hack by my favorite, Abbie Hoffman." From the article: "At Harvard's neighbour, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 'hacks', as the MIT crowd calls them, are more serious. So serious, in fact, that in 2003 the institute's best hacks were assembled in a 178-page book, 'Nightwork'. The pranks at MIT tend to be feats of engineering. They are positively encouraged, because they teach students to work in teams, solve complex problems and, sometimes, get a message across. Mr Peterson's book includes an 11-point code for pranksters: leave no damage, do not steal, do not drop things off a building without a ground crew, and so on. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, at least, student pranks have become an establishment activity."
*cough* check links *cough*
Like lemmings we click on the bonsai kitten link to find out more. The snopes bonsai kitten link is here.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
Not really.
The recent MIT administrations have a very two-faced policy toward hacks. While they pretend to extoll the virtues of such creative acts (sending out a picture of the Wright Flier hack as part of the alumni literature), they also discipline any students involved harshly (As in the aformentioned Wright Flier case). I suspect that this is one of the reasons that the hacking culture has gotten weaker lately.
If your theory is different from practice, then your theory is wrong.
In this video, MIT's Samuel Jay Keyser discusses the culture and history of hacks at MIT; he's for them. You can read excerpts from the Nightwork book on the MIT alumni site.
Can be found here. Unfortunately it ends in 2004...
One of the favorite ones that I witnessed firsthand was the police car on top of the MIT dome.
I also get a kick out of all the hacks that MIT has pulled off at the Havard/Yale football games. One at least one of those occasions the local papers stated that MIT had won the game. (In fact I seem to recall they DID win, technically, by hacking into the scoreboard and changing the score during one game)
You kid, but yea, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (the UA he speaks of is in Tuscaloosa) is actually an excellent engineering school. Huntsville is the home of one of the 2nd largest research park in the US (fourth in the world), huge missile and space access R&D occurs here (Marshall space flight center, Army Aviation & Missile Command, Strategic Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal [where I work]) ... we're #4 on the hit list if nuclear war ever breaks out... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsville,_Alabama
-everphilski-
Too bad your story is bullshit.
1. Laser pointers were very rare in 1991.
2. Laser pointers work in visible light, not Radar.
3. You can't produce Radar with any sort of laser.
4. Navy pilots aren't idiots, and they wouldn't freak out by being lit up over Oregon. They would just say "Hmm, something is up with my plane" or "Seems like something must be interfering with my radar detector.".
5. Friend or Foe is based on codes encoded into the radar signal itself, and has nothing to do with frequency, especially since many many radars operate on any given frequency range.
6. It is basically impossible to only hit a single plane in a formation with radar. It is simply not that directional.
7. You suck.
But keep in mind, millions and millions of people were watching on NBC during the prank. The CalTech kids had altered the cards subtly (which requires a LOT more work), and at the end of the day, they were the first to do it. So, the Yale kids were definitely doing something cool, but they were unoriginal. It's a good prank, but nothing like what CalTech did.
CalTech is so well known for pranks, that there are two books, Legends of CalTech and More Legends of CalTech about them. One of my favorites comes from the '30s, I think. In those days, on the rare occasions CalTech won a football game, the students would build bonfires in intersections. Needless to state, the Pasadena Fire Department took a dim view of this and put them out. Once, some pranksters put some asbestos sheeting down on the pavement, put some blocks of Calcium Carbide on it and built the bonfire on top of that. No problem, until the FD started hosing it down. The water hit the carbide and released acetylene. The resulting flames were enough to melt the insulation on the power-lines going overhead!
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