i feel like i missed something here.

[godream]

So Sadoway's 3.091 got hacked this morning. -- Uh, translation from MIT-speak: there was a practical joke played in the large (400ish students, I think) chemistry lecture class this morning, taught by one of the most famous/infamous lecturers for freshmen. Someone rigged the sliding blackboards to go up and down, rather than being under the control of the professor. I'm not sure if they had a remote to control it or if it was just sliding every once in a while at random. And, well... people didn't laugh, probably because Sadoway was obviously more than a little annoyed, and he's also the professor who, when a cell phone rings, won't resume class till the perpetrator leaves. He seems to have a sense of humor about other things, just not about running his class.

And hacking is a huge part of the MIT culture, right, and it's really one of the things I was looking forwards to about going here, and I'm not sure why I didn't think the 3.091 hack was funny. Maybe it's because it's been done before -- I've heard the stories of how someone first did it, and that seemed clever and funny, and when you do it again then it just isn't. The creativity's gone; you're just imitating someone else's joke and it's stale now, it isn't new and it isn't funny. I'm not sure how it impacts the effect that they chose to pull it on Sadoway -- in theory it seems like it'd be more amusing; in practice, watching him get frustrated, I didn't even want to laugh. Maybe it's this, or maybe I just don't have the right sense of humor. Or maybe it's one of those stories that's only funny if you *weren't* there, the opposite of most anecdotes... which makes me wonder if the original were that way as well.

Comments

[shaktool.livejournal.com]

The sliding blackboards here only go up and down when you push and pull them. If you want to get a high one back down, there's usually a rope or pole to pull on. No electronics.

'Cus electronics tend to make things not work.

This is, of course, an interesting realization to have while majoring in computer science.

Is there any organizational force behind the hacks, or do people just decide to do them independantly? We have a sort of "do-crazy-stuff-like-hacks" organization here that I would be a part of if I had better time management...

[godream.livejournal.com]

There are a number of hacking groups, mostly organized around dorms -- the Order of Random Knights (from, of course, Random Hall), Tetazoo from Third East, Jack Florey's Roof & Tunnel Hackers from Fifth East, and evidently there's a new group called the Interstellar Penguins at Simmons, the waffle dorm. I'm not sure "organizational" is quite the word I'd use, but they're around. :P

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

*laughing*

Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with you. A lot of _hackers_ thought the 3.091 hack went very badly. I know that at least one of the people involved was a frosh, and maybe this had something to do with it going wrong. No offense to you, it's just that first-term frosh working on their own tend not to know what they're doing so much...

As far as hacking and groups go, most groups are residence based but many hackers don't belong to any group, just the general community. Most hacks these days are cross-group, but the exploring side of hacking is a mix of group and non-group, with one of the most popular options being Saturday Night Coffeehouse Club, where people from all groups and no group gather.

Interstellar Penguins, unless there's something I don't know (haha, what a concept ;-)) only ever had two or three members, and at least one of them moved to Tetazoo after her frosh year. They pretty much formed to pull a specific hack.

Just FYI, the current established hacking groups are:
Jack Florey - 5th East, EC
James Tetazoo - 3rd East, EC
Order of Random Knights (ORK) - Random Hall
Western Hacking Organization (WHO) - West Campus, they hacked the frosh photo this year
Technology Hackers' Association (THA) - non-residence based, membership semi-secret and by invitation only - many members are in other groups as well

[godream.livejournal.com]

Ah, thanks! I was kinda working off of the back few pages of HowToGAMIT, hacks.mit.edu, and hearsay -- good to know the actual information. :) I keep meaning to check out the Coffeehouse Club -- it sounds really interesting, and I keep hearing it's very cool -- but something always seems to come up. One of these days... :D

Another point of clarification...

[jessiehl.livejournal.com]

For you or any interested parties still reading by this point: :-)

Sometimes people working together on a hack will give their temporary group a name. Interstellar Penguins might be an example of this. So is the Guild of Dislocated Hackers, which hung the giant "paper" airplane in Lobby 7 several years ago, and I believe was actually led by someone from Jack Florey.

With the long-term, established groups, there's no "official" membership. Assuming one defines members as people who are somewhat active hackers, membership is fluid and tends to depend on who is or isn't hosed, or who has or doesn't have early classes, and general morale of the living group during any given term (or month, or week). The exception to this is THA, which has meetings, member ID numbers, and officers. And which you shouldn't talk about without having an idea how the people you're talking to will react, unless you want to take the risk of some excessively paranoid soul's head exploding.