Time magazine lists its favorite “geek” pranks

Time magazine offers a roundup of what it describes as "the biggest pranks in geek history" -- limited to pranks perpetrated by MIT and Caltech students.

The usual suspects are there: the great rose bowl hoax, Caltech relettering the Hollywood sign, etc.

Except, uh, some of the items in the list clearly aren't pranks. For instance, creating a program that allows DVDs to play on any operating system may be a useful hack, but it's not what I would consider a prank. And I don't think MIT student Star Simpson intended to cause a security scare when she wore her "socket to me" sweatshirt to Logan Airport.

One more complaint: Time omits one of my favorite Caltech pranks -- the sweepstakes caper in which they hacked a McDonald's sweepstakes by creating a computer program to flood it with millions of entries.

Pranks

Posted on Tue Dec 02, 2008



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