Thanks guys!
October 08, 2008
October 04, 2008
A hack and a message
Hacking at MIT is one of MIT's strongest selling points. MIT proudly talks about all the creative hacks and pranks that students pull off, but what a lot of people don't realize is that MIT, while loving hacks, hates hackers. It doesn't quite seem fair that MIT is willing to hand hackers that its caught over to the Cambridge Police and file charges against them, especially when they love the hacks so much.
Chancellor Clay sent out an e-mail the other day to the entire student body, discussing hacking and proclaiming that the current state of hacking doesn't conform to current societal standards.
Several days later was a response. The first half was an opinion article in The Tech (MIT's newspaper) written by one of MIT's dorms' presidents, Vinayak Ranade.
That same day a hack was pulled, paralleling the sentiment expressed in the article. The Hack Gallery in Stata was altered to reflect what MIT hackers thought about Chancellor Clay's e-mail and the Institute's current stance on hacking.
Hacks on display were covered in black cloth, caution taped, and had violation notices posted on them.
How will the Institute respond? Chancellor Clay, after having the Tech article to him, replied by saying that he was "open to suggestions." Maybe things will get better again.
Photographs used with permission, courtesy of Eric Schmiedl since my camera was in my dorm
Chancellor Clay sent out an e-mail the other day to the entire student body, discussing hacking and proclaiming that the current state of hacking doesn't conform to current societal standards.
Several days later was a response. The first half was an opinion article in The Tech (MIT's newspaper) written by one of MIT's dorms' presidents, Vinayak Ranade.
With President Hockfield’s ‘State of the Institute’ just passed, I felt that it would be appropriate to address the state of the Institute hacker, who is after all, a member of MIT belonging to myriad macro and micro communities.
As the president of East Campus, I often have to deal with the popular misconception at MIT equating hacking with the dorm. While hackers are not exclusive to EC, some hackers do reside within the dorm, and it is my duty to represent them as best I can.
The Institute hacker, like you and me, is just another hosed MIT student. He wants to graduate on time, needs to pull an all-nighter for that extra-long p-set, and is worried that airfares are going up and that he might not be able to make it home for Christmas. Sometimes he thinks about just partying the entire weekend. Tonight, however, he wants to do something more exciting, something that makes him feel alive — something he can only do at a place like MIT.
He starts off his night by grabbing a couple of like-minded people; he knows that one should never hack alone. The group sets off for a grand night, thrilled with the prospect of being the next generation of “those brilliant MIT hackers” that mystify everyone.
Soon enough, the Institute hacker finds himself at a door which he is not supposed to get through. He’s really curious to know what’s on the other side. For the Institute hacker this is not something new, and a few minutes later he is on the other side of the door.
It turns out to be just a janitor’s closet, and the Institute hacker knocks over a pail of dirty water walking in. Remembering the code of ethics he was taught his freshman year, he quickly cleans up the mess, and leaves the place just as he found it, perhaps even better.
He takes extra care to make sure that the door is locked on his way out, because he doesn’t want some bum who’s wandering MIT’s open campus to come and spend the night in or steal anything from the unlocked janitor’s closet that he found. The last thing he wants is for hackers to be blamed for someone else’s mistakes.
The night eventually leads the Institute hacker to a roof. He really enjoys the cool breeze and the Boston skyline as it stares back at him. He feels fortunate and proud to be one of the few people who can get to this particular roof. Suddenly, he hears the roof door click.
His first instinct is to remain as calm as possible. Safety safety safety, he remembers an upperclassman drilling into him during his freshman year. Within moments, there is a gruff looking Campus Police officer shining his light on the Institute hacker, rumbling “Hey you. Come over here.”
The Institute hacker knows that he’s been caught. Not so long ago, he would have immediately obeyed and walked over to the officer on duty, and cooperated fully. But tonight, he isn’t so sure. He’s read the letter from the Chancellor earlier in the night. He’s heard of his friends being treated like common criminals.
He’s read about the police brutality accusations in The Tech. He doesn’t trust the officer to know what the hacking code of ethics is, and he is terrified at the prospect of being thrown to the Cambridge Police by some MIT authority who doesn’t really understand hacking. He remembers hearing about a friend’s belongings getting confiscated for weeks by the Campus Police. He remembers a friend who had to face lengthy criminal court proceedings and defaming articles in newspapers.
The Institute hacker’s mind is filled with doubts. Maybe he should have just agreed to go and get drunk with his other buddies instead of trying to carry on some MIT “tradition.” Was it even a tradition anymore, or just a game of cat and mouse? He wonders.
There is a lack of appreciation for the amount of effort that hackers put into pulling off ridiculous feats. Tours led by hackers convince many prefrosh to choose MIT, because they know that this experience wouldn’t be possible at Harvard or Yale. I didn’t hear a single administrator complain when hackers committed grand theft for the Caltech cannon hack, but they all changed their tune the moment students got caught on MIT’s own campus.
I walk into the Stata Center for classes and see the exhibits commemorating old hacks, but the hackers that I know don’t feel commemorated. They feel like MIT is on track to becoming like any other university. They are tired of the administrators changing their stance on hacking all the time, depending on external pressures and internal politics.
They never know what to expect if a Campus Police officer stops them, even if they’re just walking down the Infinite. They don’t feel like staying calm and stepping up to the officer on duty. They want to deal with neither the policies nor the changing whims of police officers and administrators. They just want to explore interesting places, understand exactly how that machine room works, and pull off some spectacular engineering.
If they want to make a statement, they usually do it in style. But these days, the state of the Institute hacker is such that he is afraid of making a statement; he doesn’t know whether getting caught means community service, going to the Committee on Discipline, going to trial in a Cambridge court, or having to explain his actions to prospective grad schools.
Every student has a message in their inbox today telling them that, “Those who violate the tradition, by endangering themselves or others, by breaking the law, or departing from the ‘hacking code of conduct’ cannot seek protection from responsibility.” This sounds like the administration wants hackers to keep doing all the things which help MIT’s image, but if hackers get caught doing these things, they’ll be mercilessly prosecuted.
Why does MIT put on display all the hacking memorabilia when they would prosecute anyone in the act of putting together those very hacks? Since when do administrators know more about the hacking code of ethics than the hackers who wrote it? Since when does hacking get thrown into the same category as academic integrity and hazing? How can a hacker follow the hacking code of conduct without hacking?
The Institute hacker on the roof is still debating whether to step up to the officer on duty. The state of the Institute hacker is confused, nervous, and insulted.
That same day a hack was pulled, paralleling the sentiment expressed in the article. The Hack Gallery in Stata was altered to reflect what MIT hackers thought about Chancellor Clay's e-mail and the Institute's current stance on hacking.
Hacks on display were covered in black cloth, caution taped, and had violation notices posted on them.
How will the Institute respond? Chancellor Clay, after having the Tech article to him, replied by saying that he was "open to suggestions." Maybe things will get better again.
Photographs used with permission, courtesy of Eric Schmiedl since my camera was in my dorm
September 29, 2008
September 27, 2008
My New T-Shirts
I bought three awesome new t-shirts today, thought I'd share:
Who knows what each one means?
Who knows what each one means?
A glimpse
Just a glimpse at why MIT is hard. The first problem on my 2.003 PSET. If you have any idea how to or have calculated omega, let me know how please. I know the velocity of the center of mass and the moment of inertia but can't figure out how much of the impulse is transfered into rotational energy. Actually, if you know the rotational energy that's just as useful, so let me know about that as well. Click the image to make it bigger.
Yay MIT!
Yay MIT!
September 22, 2008
E-mail MESS!
Don't you hate it when you send an e-mail and the intended recipient doesn't get it?
Don't you hate getting Spam?
Don't you hate it when people steal from you?
Don't you hate it when all of these things happen at the same time?
About two weeks ago I began to realize that people weren't getting my e-mails. After some work I realized that my e-mails were getting spam filtered by other peoples' mail accounts. Then I started getting mysterious returned-mail e-mails for e-mails that I didn't send, all with spam-related subject matter.
Uh-oh.
Nearest I can tell, a spam bot is using my gmail address to send spam to a bunch of contacts on my gmail contacts list, causing MIT's spam filters to think I'm a spam bot. My MIT e-mail and gmail e-mail are linked such that whenever I use my MIT address it sends the e-mail via gmail, so even though the spambot couldn't get a hold of my MIT address, the fact that it's using my gmail one is hurting the credibility of my MIT address. The only solution I could come up with for this is to host my MIT e-mail on a new and different gmail account.
I set up my new gmail account, imported all my old contacts, and set it up to work with my MIT address. Then I began POPing all of my e-mail from my old gmail account into my new gmail account. This brings me to the point of this entry:
1) The transfer has been going for almost a week now and is just about to finish up.
2) All of my filters are totally screwed up.
3) I'm trying to figure out what e-mail is being forwarded to my new account from my old one.
4) I can't tell what's being sent to my gmail address and what's being sent to my MIT address.
5) I've been receiving about 10 e-mails every minute for the last week during the transfer.
In essence, my e-mail status is totally hosed. If you e-mail me and I don't respond it's because I probably lost your e-mail in the deluge of e-mails I've been getting and I didn't flag it or group it or filter it. I'm doing my best and hopefully I'll be able to get all this sorted out within the next week.
Also, it sucks that I have to use a separate Google account for e-mail since my YouTube and blogger account are both the same as my gmail. I have to sign in and out of Google each time I want to switch between gmail and YouTube or Blogger. I'll probably get this all worked out, but the Internet is being mean to be right now so I apologize for any confusion for a little while.
Don't you hate getting Spam?
Don't you hate it when people steal from you?
Don't you hate it when all of these things happen at the same time?
About two weeks ago I began to realize that people weren't getting my e-mails. After some work I realized that my e-mails were getting spam filtered by other peoples' mail accounts. Then I started getting mysterious returned-mail e-mails for e-mails that I didn't send, all with spam-related subject matter.
Uh-oh.
Nearest I can tell, a spam bot is using my gmail address to send spam to a bunch of contacts on my gmail contacts list, causing MIT's spam filters to think I'm a spam bot. My MIT e-mail and gmail e-mail are linked such that whenever I use my MIT address it sends the e-mail via gmail, so even though the spambot couldn't get a hold of my MIT address, the fact that it's using my gmail one is hurting the credibility of my MIT address. The only solution I could come up with for this is to host my MIT e-mail on a new and different gmail account.
I set up my new gmail account, imported all my old contacts, and set it up to work with my MIT address. Then I began POPing all of my e-mail from my old gmail account into my new gmail account. This brings me to the point of this entry:
1) The transfer has been going for almost a week now and is just about to finish up.
2) All of my filters are totally screwed up.
3) I'm trying to figure out what e-mail is being forwarded to my new account from my old one.
4) I can't tell what's being sent to my gmail address and what's being sent to my MIT address.
5) I've been receiving about 10 e-mails every minute for the last week during the transfer.
In essence, my e-mail status is totally hosed. If you e-mail me and I don't respond it's because I probably lost your e-mail in the deluge of e-mails I've been getting and I didn't flag it or group it or filter it. I'm doing my best and hopefully I'll be able to get all this sorted out within the next week.
Also, it sucks that I have to use a separate Google account for e-mail since my YouTube and blogger account are both the same as my gmail. I have to sign in and out of Google each time I want to switch between gmail and YouTube or Blogger. I'll probably get this all worked out, but the Internet is being mean to be right now so I apologize for any confusion for a little while.
September 19, 2008
GAudi
For those of you who, like me, don't own a phonebook, you may have heard of GOOG411. Simply dial 1800-GOOG-411, speak the name of the city, state, and business, and all of a sudden you have a phone number and address. An awesome system, right?
What if I told you that it's actually just a front? Sure, it works, but what is it actually for? It's actually just a way for Google to train a speech recognition engine that it HAS FINALLY IMPLEMENTED (in beta form of course) that allows users to search the speech in YouTube videos. Right now it can only be used in political videos but it's still REALLY impressive. Yay for Google!
Click
What if I told you that it's actually just a front? Sure, it works, but what is it actually for? It's actually just a way for Google to train a speech recognition engine that it HAS FINALLY IMPLEMENTED (in beta form of course) that allows users to search the speech in YouTube videos. Right now it can only be used in political videos but it's still REALLY impressive. Yay for Google!
Click
September 10, 2008
So Many New Bloggers!
All the new MIT bloggers went semi-live today! I've never seen so many bloggers on one page before!
[Read]
[Read]
September 08, 2008
My Weekend
Several weeks ago, Lauren '10 sent an e-mail to the floor inviting us all to Race for the Cure. She created a team for our floor and a bunch of us decided to join and do the race. I used to be a really avid runner but stopped when I got to college. This was a great chance for me to get out and go for a nice 5k with some friends and support breast cancer research so I went for it.
We ordered our shirts and I signed on as a runner. There were several option other than running, a couple of which I found rather amusing. My favorite was "Sleep in for the cure." For $25.00 you don't have to run and you could just stay in bed. As tempting as that sounded, I think I'd have felt a bit guilty not running.
Saturday I spent all day working on painting an 8-bit Mario mural in the hallway and towards the end of the day I was exhausted. Why? Here's a glimpse into Boston weather. . . yesterday was 85 degrees with 100% humidity. Basically, it was so hot that I was peeling white wall paint off when I tried to remove blue tape. I figured, after a while, that if it was hot enough to melt the paint on walls, it was probably too hot to be painting said walls. I stopped and cleaned up a bit, then I hung out with some people and showed them awesome YouTube videos. I had one of my first realizations of the evening during this moment. Spore, the game that's been in development FOREVER and I'd been waiting for FOREVER was going to be coming out in a few short hours! This caused an outburst and turned some heads.
It was actually quite funny, I'd forget for an hour and then randomly remember again, burst out, startle, and then return to YouTube. Midnight came, I checked, and was devastated to see that instead of releasing at midnight, Spore would be coming out at 2 PM! NOOOO! There was general mourning by the part of the present parties and we proceeded to watch more YouTube videos. I looked to my right and saw Dan '11's giant inflatable penguin who had been outfitted with my Race for the Cure shirt (which, presently, is so stretched from being worn by a massive penguin that it no longer fits). This reminded me of a shirt that I had seen somebody wearing around campus last year that he had purchased to support breast cancer research. It, in a nutshell, said "I *pink ribbon* Boobs." A slightly tacky but well-meaning mix of NYC and Web2.0-esque humor. I realized, after the race today, that I would have fit in PERFECTLY wearing it because I was surrounded by breast cancer survivors sporting shirts saying "I'm in it for the ta-tas" and "Boobs, who needs them?" Anywho, back from my tangent, everybody in the room was hot, sweaty, sticky, tired, and knew that they were going to have to wake up at 7:15AM to go running so we decided to go to bed.
Dan and I hopped into bed, laid there, and then started complaining.
"I hate this weather."
"This is terrible! There's not even a breeze!"
"You know, the conference room has an air conditioner."
"We should just sleep there."
"We should."
"I'm not kidding."
"Neither am I."
Boom, out of bed, grabbing pillows and cushions, we started towards the conference room when we were intercepted by Dorothy '12 and Sara '12.
"Where are you guys going?"
"Conference room."
"Why?"
"To sleep. It's air conditioned."
"Oh my gosh, wait for me."
Soon there was a party of four with sleeping bags, pillows, cushions, and exhaustion, all settled into the conference room with the AC set for 60 degrees. It was beautiful.
At 4:30AM I heard something.
"Hey, you guys can't be here, leave."
Huh, what, what's going on? Somehow, and for some reason, the dorm security guard opened the door to the conference room and found the four of us asleep, not hurting anybody, and made us move back to our rooms. By now, Tropical Storm Hannah was in full force and rain was coming down in sheets outside, with gusts upwards of a bazillion miles an hour, so our room had cooled a bit, but it wasn't nearly as nice as air-conditioning.
3 hours later we were up, dressed, and ready for a race. We hopped the Red Line and rode it to JFK/UMass, caught a shuttle, and arrived at the race. There were about 5,000 runners and a lot of pink. We joined the mob and began our race for the cure. After some running, walking, exciting talk about the GIRs and Sophomore Exploratory, Sara and I finished, grabbed some yogurt (not whipped) and met Adalaide, Rick, and Sauza. We headed back to campus and I turned right back around to help deliver ElectroPlushies to a museum exhibit in Lowell Mass. At 3 o'clock I got back and headed into the dorm.
SPORE! OMG, it's out!
A decryption (legal decryption, I bought this game) and installation later I was sporing! A crowd of 6 or 7 people quickly realized that the microbe/water stage of Spore is the Most Entertaining Game Ever. It can be pretty well summed up with "Om Nom Nom Nom Om Nom Nom OMGOMGOMG!!! WE'RE GOING TO DIE! SWIM SWIM SWIM! SWIM FASTER! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Om."
Now we've taken a break from Spore, I'm blogging, and then I'm going to get back to Spore. All in all, I'd say it was a good weekend. I started a mural, fought breast cancer, and got Spore. What else could I want? How about no 2.005 PSET? Yeah, that'd be nice . . .
We ordered our shirts and I signed on as a runner. There were several option other than running, a couple of which I found rather amusing. My favorite was "Sleep in for the cure." For $25.00 you don't have to run and you could just stay in bed. As tempting as that sounded, I think I'd have felt a bit guilty not running.
Saturday I spent all day working on painting an 8-bit Mario mural in the hallway and towards the end of the day I was exhausted. Why? Here's a glimpse into Boston weather. . . yesterday was 85 degrees with 100% humidity. Basically, it was so hot that I was peeling white wall paint off when I tried to remove blue tape. I figured, after a while, that if it was hot enough to melt the paint on walls, it was probably too hot to be painting said walls. I stopped and cleaned up a bit, then I hung out with some people and showed them awesome YouTube videos. I had one of my first realizations of the evening during this moment. Spore, the game that's been in development FOREVER and I'd been waiting for FOREVER was going to be coming out in a few short hours! This caused an outburst and turned some heads.
It was actually quite funny, I'd forget for an hour and then randomly remember again, burst out, startle, and then return to YouTube. Midnight came, I checked, and was devastated to see that instead of releasing at midnight, Spore would be coming out at 2 PM! NOOOO! There was general mourning by the part of the present parties and we proceeded to watch more YouTube videos. I looked to my right and saw Dan '11's giant inflatable penguin who had been outfitted with my Race for the Cure shirt (which, presently, is so stretched from being worn by a massive penguin that it no longer fits). This reminded me of a shirt that I had seen somebody wearing around campus last year that he had purchased to support breast cancer research. It, in a nutshell, said "I *pink ribbon* Boobs." A slightly tacky but well-meaning mix of NYC and Web2.0-esque humor. I realized, after the race today, that I would have fit in PERFECTLY wearing it because I was surrounded by breast cancer survivors sporting shirts saying "I'm in it for the ta-tas" and "Boobs, who needs them?" Anywho, back from my tangent, everybody in the room was hot, sweaty, sticky, tired, and knew that they were going to have to wake up at 7:15AM to go running so we decided to go to bed.
Dan and I hopped into bed, laid there, and then started complaining.
"I hate this weather."
"This is terrible! There's not even a breeze!"
"You know, the conference room has an air conditioner."
"We should just sleep there."
"We should."
"I'm not kidding."
"Neither am I."
Boom, out of bed, grabbing pillows and cushions, we started towards the conference room when we were intercepted by Dorothy '12 and Sara '12.
"Where are you guys going?"
"Conference room."
"Why?"
"To sleep. It's air conditioned."
"Oh my gosh, wait for me."
Soon there was a party of four with sleeping bags, pillows, cushions, and exhaustion, all settled into the conference room with the AC set for 60 degrees. It was beautiful.
At 4:30AM I heard something.
"Hey, you guys can't be here, leave."
Huh, what, what's going on? Somehow, and for some reason, the dorm security guard opened the door to the conference room and found the four of us asleep, not hurting anybody, and made us move back to our rooms. By now, Tropical Storm Hannah was in full force and rain was coming down in sheets outside, with gusts upwards of a bazillion miles an hour, so our room had cooled a bit, but it wasn't nearly as nice as air-conditioning.
3 hours later we were up, dressed, and ready for a race. We hopped the Red Line and rode it to JFK/UMass, caught a shuttle, and arrived at the race. There were about 5,000 runners and a lot of pink. We joined the mob and began our race for the cure. After some running, walking, exciting talk about the GIRs and Sophomore Exploratory, Sara and I finished, grabbed some yogurt (not whipped) and met Adalaide, Rick, and Sauza. We headed back to campus and I turned right back around to help deliver ElectroPlushies to a museum exhibit in Lowell Mass. At 3 o'clock I got back and headed into the dorm.
SPORE! OMG, it's out!
A decryption (legal decryption, I bought this game) and installation later I was sporing! A crowd of 6 or 7 people quickly realized that the microbe/water stage of Spore is the Most Entertaining Game Ever. It can be pretty well summed up with "Om Nom Nom Nom Om Nom Nom OMGOMGOMG!!! WE'RE GOING TO DIE! SWIM SWIM SWIM! SWIM FASTER! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!! Om."
Now we've taken a break from Spore, I'm blogging, and then I'm going to get back to Spore. All in all, I'd say it was a good weekend. I started a mural, fought breast cancer, and got Spore. What else could I want? How about no 2.005 PSET? Yeah, that'd be nice . . .
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