The story I'm posting is from Slashdot, and you can read the original story here. It put me into a 5-minute laughing fit, so someone reading this blog might chuckle :P
Randall Munroe, the creator of XKCD, was recently invited to deliver a lecture at MIT. I badly want to read the transcript, so if someone has a link, please leave it as a comment!
Anyway, coming back to the lecture, do I even need to tell a word about XKCD and how simply brilliant it is? So, what did MIT have in store for Mr. Munroe?
One word - HACK
Part 1: "MIT hackers dropped hundreds of labelled playpen balls onto the audience from the hatches in the ceiling"
The image shows Randall Munro reading the contents of the labels on the balls - the XKCD logo and the 128-bit AACS key.
The key is one of the encryption keys required for HD-DVDs, It got leaked into the internet and has spawned a meme ever since. The leak would mean that one could easily play a licensed DVD on an unlicensed player, losses in millions. The key was spreading like wildfire over sites like Digg, and the controversy it created is in no way, small. The key (of which I shall not use the name, owing to fear of copyright allegations!) has spread a lot through things like T-shirts, songs, YouTube videos, tattoos, comic strips and what not! Here's an example from Wikipedia.
This is called the "Free-Speech-Flag". The idea is that the RGB code of the colours on the flag give away the code. But whoever created this, couldn't fit in the last part of the code, which is C0, which figures at the end of the flag :DHere is a link to a T-shirt with the code on it. By the way, stop staring at the wearer, and look for the code!
Time for a PJ on this: Were the MIT guys trying to delete the code from their database by doing this?
Part 2: "Munroe was stalked by remote-controlled mechanical velociraptors"!!!
This is the part that made me go ROFLMAO.
What an absolute crack! I wonder how it would have been if he were wearing a "Say no to velociraptors (and all other members of the dromaeosaurid family) T-shirt. For all the mortal fear one should have for Velociraptors (and all other members of the dromaeosaurid family!), lady luck smiled on our man.
"He had been supplied with a squirt gun full of grape juice" - and is it a sad thing that MIT haven't yet uploaded an image of him using the gun on the vicious predatory attack on him.
Concluding Remarks:
I have one more nice image, of which I have analogy to show. The credits for the second image are to Mohan KV. The connect is "Conformal Mapping"
