This is either a hack

November 6, 2001 8:19 PM

This is either a hack or the people running M.I.T.'s web site have a nice sense of humor. I suspect it's the latter.
posted by rdr (18 comments total)

I'd say a combination of both.

Nice, though. Very nice.
posted by Succa at 8:28 PM on November 6, 2001

Those nerds and their silly sense of humor, I suspect an inside job.
posted by rschram at 8:31 PM on November 6, 2001

Actually, the MIT logo on that site changes daily to something appropriate to the news item below it. They always have wacky stuff.
posted by bkdelong at 8:40 PM on November 6, 2001

Speaking of MIT hack's, this is my favorite.
posted by Mark at 8:55 PM on November 6, 2001

Hmm - no juvenille self-congratulatory tagging, so I'd say it's not a hack.
posted by holycola at 9:23 PM on November 6, 2001

I think the dead giveaway here is the obviously fake headline about the puffer fish genome. Hilarious.
posted by jjg at 9:33 PM on November 6, 2001

Ahh... It's changed. Nothing to see here anymore.....
posted by rdr at 9:40 PM on November 6, 2001

What was it?
posted by adrober at 11:34 PM on November 6, 2001

Screenshots, people. Screenshots.
posted by Su at 11:35 PM on November 6, 2001

Um. I got here and it doesn't look very exciting so either it's 'back to normal' or it wasn't very exciting in the first place.
posted by QrysDonnell at 11:50 PM on November 6, 2001

I would have taken a screenshot if I thought it was going to change this quickly. Sorry. A text description isn't going to be very fun but just for completeness it was a web page that was made to look like an ancient vdt banner. It was a visual joke so a text description isn't going to convey why it was amusing.
posted by rdr at 12:27 AM on November 7, 2001

Well, there's no screenshot of the vdt-style page, but this page showcases some of the previous designs for the front page. They do lots of fun stuff with it. During finals, they change it to a little MIT-trivia quiz using forms. Sometimes, it's even animated. Oooooooh!
posted by MonkeyMeat at 12:48 AM on November 7, 2001

i think i got it, yay for proxy servers :)
(someone else who uses my isp looked at it today, so i hit their cached version instead of the real time one)

the html source is a lot smaller than a screenshot, so here ya go
posted by sawks at 1:55 AM on November 7, 2001

I love the talking elevators!
posted by Carol Anne at 4:34 AM on November 7, 2001

Obviously fake headline about the puffer fish?
posted by mmarcos at 5:00 AM on November 7, 2001

Refreshing to see they don't take themselves so seriously, given that many traditional types might feel justified in doing so.
posted by Taken Outtacontext at 6:00 AM on November 7, 2001

Why do you think the
puffer fish headline is a fake? And as an MIT alum, I can positively state that the MIT community (and especially the webmasters) aren't "traditional" types....

P.S. Best MIT hack/practical joke ever - The Harvard bowl game with the trained pigeons.
posted by rshah21 at 10:36 AM on November 7, 2001

This has been up before...I think it's one of the standard designs the rotate in.
posted by ivey at 10:14 AM on November 8, 2001