April Fools' Day is coming--beware of your browser

(continued from previous page)

In any case, CNET News.com has put together the following list of some of our favorite April Fools' pranks, and those of the people we spoke with for this article.

• The kremvax hoax--which purported to be the announcement that the Soviet Union had joined Usenet.

• Say "cheese" to Google Satellite--a Slashdot posting that urged readers to simultaneously stand outside and wave as a satellite flew overhead capturing April Fools' Day images.

• TeeVeePad--a site claiming to be the home of blogs by numerous television celebrities.

• MSN Search Spoof--a site that creates bogus MSN Search results for any name entered.

• Google Copernicus Hosting Environment and Experiment in Search Engineering (G.C.H.E.E.S.E.)--"Google is interviewing candidates for engineering positions at our lunar hosting and research center, opening late in the spring of 2007," the Google-hosted site teased.

• U.N. decides to shut down Internet permanently--a bogus report about a U.N. General Assembly vote eradicating the Internet.

• Apple hires DVD Jon--a TechTree story joking that Apple had decided the best way to keep DVD Jon, who had previously hacked into iTunes several times, from bedeviling the company was to hire him.

• Cold War bomb warmed by chickens--a BBC.com story claimed that during the Cold War, military planners considered regulating the temperature of a nuclear landmine by filling it with chickens.

• Driving Drunk on the Internet--an April 1994 article in PC Computing magazine by John Dvorak said that Congress was considering a bill that would make it illegal to surf the Internet while drunk.

• Britney Spears not so young--in 1999, Wallofsound.com ran an item reporting that Britney Spears was 11 years older than commonly reported. This followed a Rolling Stone cover in which the star had appeared in a sultry pose while looking very young.

Regardless of the fear of humiliation, some Internet junkies look forward to April Fools' Day as a chance to savor the smartest of the jokes.

"They're funny," said Chris Taylor, a senior editor at Business 2.0 magazine. "They're pranks played on the unsuspecting, which is even funnier. (And) they keep you on your toes (and) they wake up the uninformed to how much blind trust they place in a single source--and hopefully they'll be wiser next time."

To Baio, however, the coming of Internet Jackass Day is a clarion call to the gullible to be a little more wary than usual.

"Don't believe anything you read for the next few days," Baio cautioned.

[Microbreak]

My Favorite April Fools Joke...

Ambrosia Software developed a great new application and
released it on April 1:

"Over time, your LCD or CRT monitor will gradually fade in
brightness and contrast. This fading is inevitable, because the
backlights for LCD screens eventually fade, and the photo-
reactive substrate on CRT monitors eventually degrades.
ScreenCleaner Pro rectifies this situation by altering the gamma
of your monitor to compensate for monitor degradation, so it
will look as good as new. Don't toss out that old monitor, just
run ScreenCleaner Pro on it, and watch your old monitor gain a
new life."

What it really does is dim your brightness very slowly over a few
minutes, then changes back to what it was before...Many people
fell for it, even MACWORLD!!

[qazwiz]

My favorite...

happened back in early 80's, back when to use a computer you had to login and logout. (some of you have systems that share a computer... back then EVERYONE shared)

I was working for the University of Michigan (Flint Campus) at the time and the Computer Center in Ann Arbor always put five or six "fillers" in the first issue of April(but they could be anywhere from a single paragraph to a full article taking half the front page with a continued on page (whatever) for the other half.(consistent with their style of publishing major articles) a middle sized "side bar" article had a build up something like this:

CHANCELLOR PRESSURES COMPUTER CENTER TO CATER TO NEW USERS
Due to the complaints of some new users that the login and logout procedures are sometimes confusing and mixed up, the chancellor has requested that the computer center cater to their confusion. Since the budget crunch has no money set aside for user instruction it has been decided to change the login and loguot procedures to fit these users beliefs.

Therefore starting tomorrow the logout command will log you in and the login command will log you out.

Since this is a major change for those of us who have been using MTS{stands for Michigan Terminal System) all along, the computer center has decided to phase this in in a two step process. Phase one will be implemented tomorrow and consists of changing login to logout. then, if all goes as planned, phase two will commence on April 7th, consisting of changing logout to log you in.

-------

They had more detail making it seem plausible explaining why it is the only solution... until you remembered the shortcut...

the login and the logout commands on the MTS could be shortened to the first three letters of each which is LOG for both... the system just assumes that weather your status is in or out, you want the other when you type log.

[djysrv5]

Dolphins Surfing the Net with Opera Mini

http://my.opera.com/djysrv/blog/show.dml/203690

[matt6331]

Windows Vista April Fools Story

Here's a good April Fool's news posting about the recent delay of
Windows Vista:

Windows Vista Delayed
Indefinitely

[matt6331]

Windows Vista Delayed Indefinitely

Here's an April Fool's news posting about the recent delay of
Windows Vista:

http://www.sharpened.net/

[palcalls]

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