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MIT Pirate Certificate
- pizzaknife 3y agoif theres any reason for my geriatric ass to go back to school, it's this.
- askiiart 3y ago> The MIT Pirate Certificate is for entertainment purposes only and does not give the recipient license to engage in piracy or any pirate activities. Jeez, what buzzkills.
- devjab 3y agoI mean, wouldn't it be a privateer certificate if it gave you a license?
- eschneider 3y agoEh, you don't need a certificate to engage in piracy. Also, do they have a Highwayman Certificate if you also make the equestrian team? Asking for a friend...
- 082349872349872 3y agoCombine the two and capture prize ships from horseback: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Dutch_fleet_at_Den_Helder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_of_the_Dutch_fleet_at_... ?
- eschneider 3y agoTempting, but I've already been dinged by the local police for asking motorists to "Stand and deliver" at stoplights.
- philsnow 3y agoA certificate says “we are Some Group that Knows about This Stuff and we think that so-and-so is capable of doing pirate-y things” You’d want a letter of marque for an endorsement of being “allowed” to do pirate-y things. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_of_marque
- number6 3y ago> Article I of the United States Constitution lists issuing letters of marque and reprisal in Section 8 as one of the enumerated powers of Congress, alongside the power to tax and to declare war. It's still a thing
- pclmulqdq 3y agoReportedly the Russian government has issued letters of marque to hacking and cybercrime groups. I can imagine the same has happened in the US.
- dragonwriter 3y ago> Reportedly the Russian government has issued letters of marque to hacking and cybercrime groups. Those would only be metaphorical (and even then not a particular apt metaphor) letters of marque and reprisal; a literal letter of marque and reprisal is to a private vessel to attack and seize property from enemy vessels, converting acts which would otherwise be piracy under international law into lawful armed combat. Cyberhacking groups aren’t vessels, and what they are doing isn’t something that would be piracy under international law without being under the umbrella of government war efforts. > I can imagine the same has happened in the US. Not under US law (even if it still wouldn’t make any sense under international law for the reasons described above), since Constitutionally that would require an active of Congress authorizing such letters, which has not occurred. You can imagine what you want, but its simply not a reality.
- pclmulqdq 3y ago> Not under US law (even if it still wouldn’t make any sense under international law for the reasons described above), since Constitutionally that would require an active of Congress authorizing such letters, which has not occurred. You can imagine what you want, but its simply not a reality. As we all know, the US defense apparatus, particularly its clandestine branch, has never done anything illegal.
- irq-1 3y ago> Jeez, what buzzkills. Sure, but what about the preceding sentence? > Non-MIT courses and life experience are not counted towards completing the certificate. (emphasis added)
- paulddraper 3y agoThey say that, but realistically no one ever checks for your pirate license anyway, so you can get away with it. YMMV
- mikrl 3y agoWho even gives out letters of marque these days?
- Asparagirl 3y agoA US Congressman (from Texas, naturally) introduced a bill to grant letters of marque to be used against Russian oligarchs’ property early last year, just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Alas, it did not pass. But letters of marque are still explicitly enumerated as a power granted in the US Constitution, and notably the United States was not one of the signatories to the 1856 treaty that mostly banned them. And that treaty was the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law, which came about at the end of a war for…Crimea. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6869 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6869
- akomtu 3y agoIs the certificate recognized in major pirate organizations? Can you go to Somali, show the certificate and receive some respect?
- xhkkffbf 3y agoWell, sure, it's a bummer. But one has to wonder why we glorify a practice of pillaging, raping and destruction. What's next for MIT? A Hitler Certificate? A KGB Certificate? A Slave Whipping Certificate?
- nyc_data_geek1 3y agoYou mean to tell me I can't get a Letter of Marque from MIT? I mean technically then I'd be a privateer but still
- benatkin 3y agoIt doesn't mean that they can't. Just that they have to engage in them as pirates normally would – without permission!
- antihero 3y agoIf you were licensed wouldn’t you be a privateer anyway?
- polygamous_bat 3y agoFun fact: registration for the classes required for the pirate certificate (sailing, archery, pistol/rifle, fencing) generally run out within a minute of opening. However, this being at MIT, I was never sure whether this was because of humans or bots.
- abdullahkhalids 3y agoI don't know why universities think the best way to decide enrollment is smashing the register button. My undergrad university had the sense to let everyone pick their first preferences within 24 hours of enrollment starting. Then for over-selected courses, people were enrolled randomly [1]. This was repeated once more, iirc, and then in the third round enrollment was instantaneous. This, thankfully, prevented virtual stampedes and allowed for people to select their courses in a non-panic manner. [1] after required-for-graduation enrollments.
- ocdtrekkie 3y agoI mean, in this case it is probably considered a net win, MIT is known for its culture of "hacks", and having to game your way into the required courses adds to the challenge!
- monocasa 3y agoEh, I wouldn't want the MechEs to be left out.
- brewdad 3y agoThe Industrial Engineers have completely redesigned the registration process. Documentation is running about six weeks behind schedule. Good luck.
- doctorwho42 3y agoEh, just in the last decade MIT has seen a huge shift towards a culture of risk adversion. The administration have actively suppressed and dismantled cultural elements they do not find desireable. See what happened to Bexley house and senior house, and I'm not sure what's happening with east campus these days but some kind of construction is going on. Still a fine university, but the days of 'hacker' culture are definitely dwindling. There are still pockets here and there, but like with old forms of communication (IRC, etc ) it becomes harder and harder to foster that culture when there are less and less spaces for it while simultaneously creating curated spaces that are so much easier to use.
- evanb 3y ago"If they ever come up with a swashbuckling school I think one of the courses should be laughing, then jumping off something." -- Jack Handey I tried to register for pistol every single term and never got in; I think this may be the most difficult obstacle in obtaining MIT's pirate cert.
- labster 3y agoYou never had a shot.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoHe was too slow on the draw.
- seabass-labrax 3y agoAnd that sealed his fate, lock, stock and barrel.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoArtists must be as fast as true pirates.
- ghaff 3y agoI never took it but I shot on the range at one point. As I recall, the pistol team at the time was one of the best teams after the service academies and some of the better shots were some fellow photographers on the newspaper.
- doctorwho42 3y agoI believe you can do rifle as a substitute.
- madars 3y agoMIT also famously does not award honorary degrees [1] which restricts its commencement speaker pool. However, commencement speakers can get honorary Pirate Certificates which is way cooler: https://alum.mit.edu/slice/arrrr-mit-pirates-and-matt-damon-certified https://alum.mit.edu/slice/arrrr-mit-pirates-and-matt-damon-... [1] https://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees https://news.mit.edu/2001/commdegrees
- esrauch 3y agoDo famous people really choose not to speak at MIT Commencement because they won't get an honorary degree for it? You'd think "spoke at MIT Commencement" would be an equal line item for a CV given the context.
- giantg2 3y agoI would think if someone was important enough to speak at commencement, the act of speaking at commencement would be a relatively unimportant and not worth putting on a CV (if someone in those positions actually needs to use CVs).
- madars 3y agoFrom what I've heard, yes. The choice is not between speaking at MIT+no honorary degree and not speaking at all; speak at MIT+no honorary degree/speak at Harvard+honorary degree -> well, could be swayed to speak at Harvard then!
- amelius 3y agoDoes MIT now have a kindergarten on premises?
- ke88y 3y agoYes [1]. They also provide tuition scholarships for children of staff and graduate students [2] who could not otherwise afford childcare in the Boston area (which runs on average $20K/yr against a post-tax stipend as low as $31K/yr, ie, completely impossible to afford unless you have a trust fund or a scholarship). Not sure what that has to do with a bit of workplace levity at an otherwise famously intense undergraduate institution. Having a bit of fun is a time-honored MIT tradition; e.g., "All Tech Men carry batteries!" [3] and The Journal of the Institute for Hacks, TomFoolery, and Pranks at MIT more generally [4]. [1] http://childcare.mit.edu/ http://childcare.mit.edu/ [2] http://childcare.mit.edu/tuition-scholarships/mit-childcare-scholarship-program http://childcare.mit.edu/tuition-scholarships/mit-childcare-... [3] http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1990/H-Y/ http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/by_year/1990/H-Y/ [4] http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/books/ihtfp_leibowitz/ihtfp_leibowitz.html http://hacks.mit.edu/Hacks/books/ihtfp_leibowitz/ihtfp_leibo...
- fragmede 3y agoUnless you're, y'know, Aaron Swartz.
- ke88y 3y agoNot sure why something that happened when they were 8 years old means that current undergrads aren't allowed to have fun, buy okay.
- anikan_vader 3y agoIt clearly demonstrates a time when MIT completely hung one of their own out to dry, in contrast to the “all tech men carry batteries” defense. It is representative of the modern administration’s inability to empathize with the students and faculty they represent. And yes, I would characterize fighting peacefully for open access as trying to have fun in a way that MIT should be trying to protect.
- ldehaan 3y ago[dead]
- kapitanjakc 3y agoDid you inspire the reddit TIL post or were you inspired by the same?
- CharlesW 3y agoA friend shared it with me, but it wouldn't surprise me if they saw it there.
- keybpo 3y agoAvast ye! 'Tis not yet the hour fer me to be makin' use of me three-headed monkey, arrrgh!
- jlev 3y agoThis was an informal thing for a long time, but I didn't know that there's now an actual certificate. I may have to go back and request mine retroactively.
- 082349872349872 3y agoQ. How do you know if the pirate you just met was MIT-trained? A. Ask them for a probability density from the wavefunction Ψ, and see if they respond by hitting it with psi-stAARRRRRR. (also useful: reduced Planck's constant or form evaluating to the head of a list)
- jachee 3y agoAsk them their favorite programming language. You might expect the answer to be R… …but a true pirate’s first love will always be the C.
- Dulat_Akan 3y agoMIT as usually have great results in research and achievements, Good guys keep going
- beeburrt 3y agoSuddenly I need a pirate certificate in my life
- eschneider 3y agoGotta have goals. :) I don't have the cert, but I've covered all those skills and I have to say it was fun. :)
- everyone 3y agoNot actually related to article, but the title made me think this... I feel like the piracy / p2p / scenegroup communities have been aging and being whittled down by brutal relentless lawsuits and lobbying from corps. I get the impression not many younger people are interested and are generally more content to accept the corporate slop they are given. This is a bad thing. However u feel about piracy, keeping the skills alive to circumvent unfair systems imposed on you is really important for society and egality imo. MIT should teach a computer piracy course.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoAye, with an internship on the crimson permanent assurance laying waste to The Very Big Corporation of America. https://youtu.be/aSO9OFJNMBA https://youtu.be/aSO9OFJNMBA
- midoridensha 3y agoIf it weren't for software pirates, countless old pieces of software (esp. DOS-era games) would be forever lost now. Society owes software pirates a huge debt of gratitude for keeping historical digital data archived. However, I feel your perception of the piracy/p2p communities might be dated. I think they took a bit of a nosedive a while back when Netflix reigned supreme, at least for movies, but due to the fragmentation of streaming services and the constant removal of content and increase in prices and now the crackdown on account-sharing, movie/TV piracy seems to be alive and healthy. I'm not so sure about music piracy though; the streaming services there haven't made the huge mistakes the movie/TV services have, so having a single streaming service for music seems to be quite popular these days because it's so convenient. Software piracy appears to be largely dead, thanks to the move to SaaS and online gaming. But my perception could be quite biased too.
- ghaff 3y ago>the streaming services there haven't made the huge mistakes the movie/TV services have I'm not sure it's so much mistakes of the streaming services as the fact that music has a near enough to universal for most people licensing scheme from a handful of major labels that the major services can offer a near-universal essentially interchangeable (other than UX and integration with other services) service to consumers. Whereas the fragmented (and frequently changing) rights owners in the film/TV business have no equivalent. I'm honestly not sure of the impact on piracy though. A lot of us shrug our shoulders, see all the content that is at there with a few subscriptions, and just ignore all the stuff we can't trivially watch.
- Racing0461 3y agoI bet $20 they are gonna remove the pistol requirement from this.
- GuB-42 3y agoWhy? Shooting is an Olympic sport, it is also very pirate-y. Archery is the odd one here. It is not part of the popular image of a pirate, and historically, I don't think they saw much use in the 1600s and after (so, not during the "golden age").
- Racing0461 3y agoSame way the bipartisan safer communities act defunded archery and hunting programs in public high schools, it’s part of the plan to delegitimize all guns.
- jasoneckert 3y agoMy first thought when reading the title was "I bet it's a certificate that demonstrates proficiency in R.'
- swader999 3y agoObligatory Arrrrgggghhh!