The World's Largest Scavenger Hunt Returns
mresolver writes "University of Chicago students have once again emerged from the library after a long winter to participate in the world's largest scavenger hunt. The multiple day event is famous for the working breeder reactor that students managed to build during the 1999 hunt. This year, the official list (PDF) includes a superconductor, working wood refrigerator, hot air balloon made to Montgolfier specifications, one-way funhouse mirror, and a walk-in Kaleidoscope."
The goal this time is to build a working Atari 2600 from everyday household objects.
What, no human organs? How boring.
Philosophy.
1. 2 lines of source code from Duke Nukem Forever
2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison
3. 1 Site which can withstand a force 10 slashdot effect (Not a search engine)
4. Someone who can actually write IAAL
5. Used items belonging to the goatse man
6. 3 pounds of lime green duct tape
7. 1 pound of Sillier Putty (tm)
8. 1 Signed Microsoft UAT
9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time
10. A girlfriend
Task Mangler
Ok, most of this list was harmless fun. But how dare they violate the valuable IP of patent #6,368,227? Don't bother letting these hardened criminals rot in jail- just shoot them for their crimes against humanity.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
well the list already contains.
/. is covered.
"23 In Soviet Russia, Scav hunts you! Get the autograph of the One and Only. What a country! [19861951
points]"
so
shameless karma whoring; patent 6368227 is "Method of swinging on a swing.", supposedly unique in that instead of swining the "usual" way you swing sideways.
When i was younger my brother and i used to sit astride swings and swing towards each other in a joust/battle scenario. Which would be slightly different to the method described in this patent, so maybe i should patent mine. there might even be prior art in my photo albumn from the 80s when i was a wee whippersnapper to support my claim that i (co)invented it!
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
I give you as many as 5 lines: int main() { throw NotImplementedException(); return 0; }
If they used "Aluminum Tubes", then they may qualify for a free bonus WMD point/strike from GW...
[The driver] may not have received no moving violations or convictions or court-ordered supervision.
I really hope that's a typo... I'm not sure how easy it would be to find someone with a prior conviction to send on the road trip.
"Flying is the art of throwing yourself at the ground and missing." - Douglas Adams
So i'm going to visit my friend at U of C this weekend, and she says, "oh, this was a good week to come, you will get to participate in the scav hunt." obviously, i figure, "hmm, this would be fun for a short while." Then... i see this article. "damn, this is gonna be hard." but compared to Centurix's list up there, this is a walk in the park. sure anyone can find things like "2. DNA From a) Bill Gates b) Linus Torvalds c) Larry Ellison" and "9. A travelling salesman who understands non-deterministic polynomial time" but if i was able to find something like "10. A girlfriend" do you really think i would be writing this at 4:56, come on, at least make it a realistic list.
That is one line... you forgot the
tags.
I could point some other errors. Like that it might be WinMain, that is might be written in C and throw does not work there. the program uses "exit" instead of return. or it returns a error exit code instead of 0 (0 is assumed "ok" mostly for unix programs) .
safer would have been:
{
}
But then there is still point 10 in the list. That is the real hard part.
In the future, before insulting someone else's intelligence, ensure that you understand the post you are criticising. He clearly stated that the real list was bad enough, but at least not as hard as the spoof list.
of course the http://www.geocaching.com/ concept is smallfry, but no, a school in USA has the biggest right ?
this is like the "World Series" where the winners are "World Baseball Champions" when only teams from USA play, most American kids dont even know what the world is.
And does George Bush know about this?
They needed to find a UofC Unicyclist. I was about 10 years old and went to UofC lab school.
11. That Fucking road sign.
... In August 2005 the road signs were replaced with theft-proof signs welded to steel and secured in cement to make the signs harder to take. ...
Poor people of Fucking, Austria (Europe). As if they didn't have enough tourists stealing their sign. At least it has become harder to steal now:
from the to-stupid-for-words dept.
This just in: Item #43 'Drawing a perfect circle freehand' has been replaced with 'Redesigning Slashdot.com' instead.
It's a one-shot deal and no further information is available about this update.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Cmon, we can do better than that...
B1. Ponies!
B2. Desktop Cold Fusion, the energy of the Future!
B3. Gray Goo.
B4. Profit!
B5. AI Based dust collecting overloards.
B6. A working automobile metaphore.
B7. An actual first post.
B8. An editor who actually reads the articles before posting them.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Should I say it? I'll be dammed if someone didn't take the same tours that I did. It's sort of interesting to go on two different tours and have them both point out a library that has a book bound in skin. It's not even like there were 1000 other things that happened in this place that weren't more interesting. Too bad it's not a public library and you have to pay a yearly fee to use it. Pretty interesting story too. A psycho killer wrote a book and read it. Realizing at how deranged he was he had his skin bound with the book to give to the family of those he killed.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/rhode_island/arti cles/2006/01/07/some_of_nations_best_libraries_hav e_books_bound_in_human_skin/
Ill be dammed. Skin bound books are everywhere. The one specifically that I was thinking of was the one mentioned on the second page.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
...
11. Weapons of Mass Destruction
12. A copy of "Where's Waldo? Special Osama Edition"
12. George Bush's rear end
12a. Tony Blair's puckered lips
g.
Why, oh why did I just waste my mod points on someone insightful!
don't the rules state that you cant have any animals...?
I guess you could give her a dead animal... but the bee would need to be alive...
225. A live eyelash mite, to be removed from a team member on Justice Sunday and displayed under a microscope. [15 points]
thats 3 items that are against the rules...
MacGyver could easily do this one.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The key is the line, "Think S.P.C.A guidelines." I don't know the guidlines all that well, but my understanding is that bees are not considered worth protecting. At any rate, the enforcement of the list rules is done by our ORCSA advisor, who checks the List to make sure we're not doing anything dangerous/illegal. I'm not sure where exactly they would draw the line, but it appears to be somewhere between insects and mammals.
OTOH, the story I've heard from judges older than myself is that the original source of the no-animals rule is a Little Bo Peep item gone awry several years ago.
Finally, and for what it's worth, Item #228 ("T Bee A") has been revealed: Catch a bee.
--colin, Keeper of the Scrolls
183. A pet bee on a string. Do not conflate with Item #228. [3 points]
Nowhere in that line does it say "live pet bee on a string". It could easily be a dead bee on a string. I don't think that a "pet" necessarily implies that the object is alive: think pet rock, etc.
So, find a dead bee, some string, and some Krazy Glue. You've got your pet bee on a string. Macabre? Maybe, but not as much as the book bound in human skin...
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Or if you don't want to pay the money, why not request that Netflix carry it. Or your local library.
Can anyone tell me how to set my sig on Slashdot?
Every fall, the freshman engineering class at Queen's University is sent on a scavenger hunt. Over the years, in addition to thunder mugs many "large" items were turned in, but even a the great lakes lake freighter that someone moored near campus isn't the biggest. The greatest bit of scavenge ever turned in was the United States of America. Apparently one of the frosh had a parent with connections to the Carter administration and they got the White House to send a document handing over the USA for one hour to the Queen's Engineering Society. The year was 1978 or 1979. My memory's a little hazy; I was in Clark Hall working on that week's issue of Golden Words when I heard the news.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
From the list:
7._________ The Amulet of Yendor. [ 1 point ]
Oh, come on, that has got to be worth at least 1,000,000 Zorkmids!
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Half a bee, philosophically, must, ipso facto, half not be.
...semi-carnally
But half the bee
has got to be,
vis a vis
its entity - do you see?
But can a bee
be said to be
or not to be
an entire bee
when half the bee
is not a bee
due to some ancient injury?
Singing...
La dee dee, 1 2 3,
Eric the half a bee.
A B C D E F G,
Eric the half a bee.
Is this retched demi-bee,
half asleep upon my knee,
some freak from a menagerie?
No! It's Eric the half a bee.
Fiddle dee dum,
Fiddle dee dee,
Eric the half bee.
Ho ho ho,
Tee hee hee,
Eric the half a bee.
I love this hive employee-ee-ee
[with buzzing in background]
bisected accidentally
one summer afternoon by me
I love him carnally.
He loves him carnally... [together]
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
This game, played at Stanford, is much cooler than a scavenger hunt.