As many of you know, MIT is famous for its culture of hacking. In the MIT vernacular, hacking is non-destructive, innocuous fun that may bend the rules of legality. This has included famous hacks like placing a working police car or fire engine on the roof of the MIT dome or threading a telephone pole through the hallway of a dorm.

I have been meaning to mention one of the highest profile and most impressive hacks to date which occurred about a year ago in April of 2006. MIT hackers were able to successfully move the famous Caltech cannon to the MIT campus without any permission or legal authority. Even better, they manufactured an oversized MIT class ring (known as a brass rat) that was placed on the cannon. These pictures were taken in front of the Green Building on MIT’s campus last year (credit to Donna Coveney of MIT, Dean Phillips of Technology Review, and the Howe & Ser website):

You can read the whole story in Technology Review here.

The kicker to this story is a letter to the editor from an MIT alum who happens to live near Caltech. It seems the school in Pasadena took some extra precautions to make sure it isn’t so easy to swipe the cannon in the future.

MIT and Caltech hackers have gone intercampus, coast-to-coast, in recent years, as reported in the September/October 2006 issue. As retribution for a Caltech hack, MIT hackers had a large cannon transported from the Caltech campus to the MIT campus. (Caltech had acquired the cannon as a gift when a local military academy morphed into a general college-prep school.) Caltech students, of course, transported it back to Pasadena. But as an MIT alumnus, a Pasadena resident, and a Caltech associate, I was surprised to find that instead of returning to its place in front of Fleming residence hall, on the Olive Walk between the faculty club and the main library, the cannon reappeared chained to a large sycamore tree in front of the nearby residence that serves as the hall for undergraduate registration. I was also surprised to find on closer examination that the chain is much heavier than any I ever purchased for use with my D-8 Caterpillar bulldozer on my central-coast ranch!
Henry Lee ‘47
South El Monte, CA

It’s been over a year, but this story still makes me smile.

On Sunday, April 15, I moved Clanwebb.com and the various services that went with it from an old PowerMac G4 to a new Intel Mac Mini. The G4 has been the faithful home of Clanwebb for almost five years and has survived two separate moves in that time.

The old server is the gray Mac at the bottom of the picture. The new server is the unassuming silver brick at the top of the picture. The old server will take on some less strenuous duties in the near future.

Recently, I’ve been wanting to add more services to the server as well as keep it up to date. So, with a few hiccups, we migrated to a newer machine. It is proving to be faster and easier to maintain. It’s also quieter and cooler, which is always a bonus for our multi-computer den.

If you have any trouble with Clanwebb.com or with emailing to any of us, please let us know.

Enjoy!