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An anonymous reader writes: It's that special time of year where sites around the net celebrate April Fool's Day with parodies of their own product offerings. Google Home announces a new companion service for smart yards called Google Gnome. Stack Overflow announces Dance Dance Authentication. The Russian foreign ministry changed their voicemail to include new menu options like "Press 2 to use the services of Russian hackers," and "press 3 to request election interference." And in what's either a really good prank or a horrific piece of bad timing, Phrack.org announces that they've been seized by the FBI.

Has anybody else noticed anything funny today?
The internet has a long history of April Fool's Day pranks, and it looks like 2017 is no exception. So use the comments to share what you're seeing around the web today. Seen any good April Fool's Day pranks today?

Peter Wayner writes "The book Creating Applications with Mozilla did not set out to capture the essence of modern open source software development in a few hundred pages, but it comes closer to that unreachable goal than almost any other book I can imagine. Everything is there: the proliferation of acronyms, the funky names, the endless layers, the earnest collaboration, the unstoppable yearning for customizability, and, of course, plenty of source code. The book is just supposed to be teaching us how to turn Mozilla into a front end for everything, but it's really a distilled exhibit of all that is hip and now in code creation." Peter's review continues below. Creating Applications with Mozilla author David Boswell, Brian King, Ian Oeschger, Pete Collins & Eric Murphy pages 454 publisher O'Reilly rating 9 reviewer Peter Wayner ISBN 0596000529 summary How to use the Mozilla APIs to do anything.

On the first and most obvious level, the book is just the typical, thorough treatment of the important APIs that we've come to expect from O'Reilly. There are chapters addressing all of the important layers of the Mozilla platform and plenty of examples that show you how to customize the platform. Some may want to change the icons and others may want to add more robust features. The range of possibilities is surprising and coders are creating one-to-one communications enhancements, add-on widgets, and even games. There are certainly some things missing, and some areas that could use more detail or more complicated examples, but the book is already 454 pages long.

On another level, this book is also one of the first finished documents that explains what the Mozilla group has really been up to for the past five years. Some have abandoned the project, and others have attacked it as fundamentally misguided. This book shows why it took so long by demonstrating all of the cool features added during the long march to a new, thoroughly extensible architecture.

Are the results enough to justify the time and the effort? Some note that the features may be a bit overhyped, because building your own browser with the Mozilla API is like making a pizza with $15 and a telephone. While there's a large part of the book devoted to the work you can do to change the look and feel of the buttons on your browser, the book and the project offer much more. The Mozilla project is one of the biggest threats to simple tools like Visual Basic to come down the pike in some time. The various layers offer many ways to provide good, customizable interfaces to databases, the web, and much more. I can see how many corporate development shops may want to start making Mozilla the platform for a license-free front-end, simply because it's a straightforward tool without extra costs or restrictions.

At the most abstract level, the book is a great way to get a taste of modern software development. Computer scientists sometimes fix problems by adding more and more layers of indirection. This may not solve anything, but at least there are hooks for a real solution to use some time in the future if some one ever does figure out how to make the box do it. The Mozilla browser is one of the most extreme examples of this philosophy to ever emerge. Emacs was something special, but this is even more insane. Everything can be changed around by rewriting some XML and Javascript and most people don't need to juggle the pointers in grubby C to do amazing things. I realize it's not as beautiful as Lisp to some, but it's got a clarity and level of abstraction that's stunning to behold. Lisp was just procedural, while XML is more like logic programming.

This relentless customizability embodies one of the deepest reasons for the success of open source. Technology is inherently complicated and the only way we can use it is if we can look under the hood. You can say all you want about CVS trees and bazaars filled with competing code, but opening up the interface is one of the most powerful themes of open source. It's not about teaching people to build their own VCR or PVR from scratch, getting the VCRs for free or even debugging the VCR's source code -- it's just about making them easy enough to program.

The book illustrates how Mozilla opens up the API to create a relatively easy language for people to use. The real open source is not the C in the tar ball, but the XML interface spelled out in the book. Many people feel that the most important thing that the first browser designers did was make it easy for people to see the HTML tags marking up the document in front of them. The new Mozilla takes this transparency to a new high.

If you look at the book at all of these levels, you can see that this is one of the most important documents to emerge from the open source community in some time. At first glance, it's just another set of APIs for us to wiggle. I realize it's not fair to credit the Mozilla team or the book authors with creating the browser or XML ex nihilio -- they just jumped on some of the most popular bitwagons propagating across the Net. But the result is a stunning completion of a very important and cohesive vision. The book doesn't crackle with bleeding-edge novelty, but shines with the certainty of a job well-done.

Peter Wayner is the author of Translucent Databases , Disappearing Cryptography , and a number of other books. You can purchase Creating Applications with Mozilla from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

It's obvious that Seanbaby.com is funny, weird and distinctive, a showcase example of how idiosyncratic personalities, viewpoints and sub-cultures can flourish on a free, non-corporatized Internet. It's not as clear why Seanbaby is important, a vital but endangered Web species that needs to grow and prosper in a world whose desktop is being shaped by Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner.

If there's a single trait most people who read Slashdot share -- maybe the only one besides an addiction to software -- it's a love of popular culture.

Culture has become a huge term, expanding by the week. It has come to include superhero comics, trashy daytime TV, sci-fi TV shows and websites, indie rock, rap and hip-hop, gaming, anime, cartoons, whatever. High culture -- the traditional, respectable, well-funded kind -- gets covered and criticized in the other media. But upstart culture, especially low cyberculture, can be wondrous stuff, an explosition of idiosyncratic voices that gives birth to this website and to Seanbaby.com. Interesting, valuable, fragile and endangered, Seanbaby.com is in its unique way, very significant.

In fact, for those working to maintain their sanity in the Disney/Sony/ AOL/Microsoft nation forming off and around the Web, The Seanbaby News Stupid Probe is a great place to start the day.

You won't get the world as presented by the Today Show there. Instead, you'll encounter what the site itself describes as news that will "kick your head's ass," focusing on frivolous lawsuits, exploding animals, chainsaws and chickenheads. You won't want to miss the Stupid Forum either. This is a look into the soul of the real America, at least a significant chunk of it.

Seanbaby is direct, if nothing else -- most media is not. It describes itself as intended for people over 18 -- only because, as we all know, kids will shoot one another if they hear or see dirty words. Seriously Seanbaby.com is what the late, lamented Suck really wanted to be but couldn't quite pull off. From the 20 worst NES games to Superhero Bios featuring stories, comics and videos about Aquaman, Lex Luthor and all their stupid friends, this site bristles with 'tude, shared cultural references, biting, anti-hypocritical humor. It rakes the moral pompousity that passes for discussion of digital and other culture in Washington, on campus and in much of the other press. It also manages to capture a lot of the lunacy.

The site's links and forms veer off in some strange directions, but Seanbaby.com is a great antidote to news, culture and the corporate entertainment machine as presented in the Corporate Republic.

Seanbaby is one of the reasons the Web's still-vibrant climate of individualistic expression needs to be preserved as Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner gather their forces like two giant and rapacious dinosaurs to plot out the future of the desktop. (Believe me, if either or both win, Seanbaby.com won't be there.) Seanbaby.com is the voice of the other Web, the "real" web, if you prefer. It understands that comics, The Simpsons, and Nintendo aren't just "entertainment" -- they're the basis of whole sub-cultures affecting and shaping people's lives. It suggests the promise of the medium to create original and outspoken content and link people with distinctive sensibilities, two things the AOL culture relentlessly destroys, no matter what it owns, buys or acquires (AOL/Time-Warner is now trashing up the snoozy CNN news network by adding -- what else? -- lifestyle, celebrity gossip, and health stories -- and by hiring the usual platoons of blow-dried airheads. That won't get younger viewers either. The money they're wasting could launch tens of thousands of Seanbabies).

"You should know that some pussies have been known to find sarcasm and bad words confusing and offensive," writes Seanbaby, whose bio also appears on the site. "If so, I, your sexual fantasy from the future, advise you to find a new source of free comedy, caveman. For those who stayed at the risk of face rockage, you should know that soon, like all Earth entertainment, this site will be replaced by Doctor Excitement's Fun Blaster, a peace-bringing combination midget generator and launcher."

Old fart media execs wondering what they have to do to get young people to consume mainstream media have only to log onto Seanbaby.com to understand why they never will, and don't really even want to. This freedom and voice and community and definition of culture will never enter a straight newspaper, pop up on a network newscast or, for that matter, appear on Slate or Salon. Yet it reflects its new culture as well as the New Yorker Magazine mirrors the old. For as long as it lasts in this parlous time of Web sanitation, may it grow and prosper, and spawn a thousand more just like it.

An anonymous submitter sends in: "Salon is reporting Automatic Media has run out of money, and Feed and Suck will be closing up shop. Sad news, especially for such high profile, established sites. What will you do on Wednesdays without Filler? Plastic will remain open, serving up some user generated content, which is apparently the cheapest way to operate on the net."

RebornData writes: "Suck is running a biting commentary on how the software industry could serve as a role model for the RIAA and MPAA as they look for new, draconian ways to keep control of their digital intellectual property after it becomes clear that litigation isn't going to solve the problem." And from another submission, we have an article in Slate about the same topic - information wanting to be free, or $0.27/pound, or something like that.

RebornData writes: "Suck is running a biting commentary on how the software industry could serve as a role model for the RIAA and MPAA as they look for new, draconian ways to keep control of their digital intellectual property after it becomes clear that litigation isn't going to solve the problem." And from another submission, we have an article in Slate about the same topic - information wanting to be free, or $0.27/pound, or something like that.

matt_blaze writes: "I've been part of a group of five security researchers invited by the Chief Technologist of the Justice Department to identify technical issues with the FBI's "Carnivore" Internet wiretapping system to be addressed by an "independent review". As Slashdot readers know, the contractor chosen to conduct the review, IITRI, recently released a draft report of its findings. We've studied that report and continue to have serious concerns about Carnivore. Our report, released today, can be found here." Telling stuff. Also, check out today's Suck regarding Carnivore as well.

omnifrog writes: "Suck has an interesting view on all of the legal cases that are currently in the geek media. Jokingly, they claim that, '... as galling as the verdicts have been, the judiciary -- with every curt dismissal of every nerd-approved argument -- is doing the plugged-in set an enormous favor. Because if anybody needs a lesson in the way the real world works, it's the geeks.' An interesting point of view." Excellent piece.

ParticleGirl writes "Suck has a great commentary today about the back-handed, back-stabbing nature of the software industry. The for-profit software industry, that is, of course... What kind of light does this sort of business ethic (or lack thereof) shine on the open-source community, and Free vs. free software?"

tetrad writes: "Suck admittedly isn't the most optimistic of sites, but more often than not, it's right on the money. Today's article is more of an obituary. 'Mozilla is dead, or might as well be,' says author Greg Knauss. While some might argue that Mozilla still has breath in it, Suck begs to 'pull the plug,' and points to Mozilla's decreasing market share, feature bloat, and failure to release a marketable product. It also jabs at the techies running the show: 'The Mozilla Project programmers repeatedly abandoned real-world progress and accomplishments for -- and this is the technical term -- cool shit.'" With the next MXX right around the corner, I have to disagree: besides that, I use Mozilla frequently and find that with a few minor exceptions, the latest builds are as good or better than Netscape under Linux (although secure transactions are problematic).

tetrad writes: "Suck admittedly isn't the most optimistic of sites, but more often than not, it's right on the money. Today's article is more of an obituary. 'Mozilla is dead, or might as well be,' says author Greg Knauss. While some might argue that Mozilla still has breath in it, Suck begs to 'pull the plug,' and points to Mozilla's decreasing market share, feature bloat, and failure to release a marketable product. It also jabs at the techies running the show: 'The Mozilla Project programmers repeatedly abandoned real-world progress and accomplishments for -- and this is the technical term -- cool shit.'" With the next MXX right around the corner, I have to disagree: besides that, I use Mozilla frequently and find that with a few minor exceptions, the latest builds are as good or better than Netscape under Linux (although secure transactions are problematic).

kisrael writes: "Today's Suck.com talks about how the freedoms designers now have in UI appearance-- starting with the the Web, moving to Skins for WinAmp, ending with the latest versions of QuickTime and the preview release of Netscape 6-- are ignoring visual and interface standards that users have come to rely on." A lot to think about and discuss here: personally I'm a big fan of skins and themes, but it only takes seconds to find countless awful themes. There are exceptions, but they're rare.

Julian Morrison writes, "An article on Salon shows the dark side of Napster (and implicitly, Gnutella and all the other clones). Artists say they can't make money from t-shirts and touring, and if sales of their CD drop on the auto-indexer, the label says goodbye. Can anyone come up with a distribution model that will work with the new tech rather than being swamped by it? " Also check out the recent Suck article about the "Zapster". Pretty funny.

ochinko writes, "This is an interview with the German programmer who wrote TFN and TFN2K. Basically he says that it's quite easy to launch such attacks but extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the initiators to be tracked." Suck.com has a pretty good article on the attacks, as well. Maybe I should take credit for the DDoS attacks and become an international superstar.

ochinko writes, "This is an interview with the German programmer who wrote TFN and TFN2K. Basically he says that it's quite easy to launch such attacks but extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the initiators to be tracked." Suck.com has a pretty good article on the attacks, as well. Maybe I should take credit for the DDoS attacks and become an international superstar.

Suck has apparently decided that they need to generate some revenue, and what better way to do that then create a really clever Slashdot parody that I can't help but link. With headlines like 'Red Hat Reports Income' and 'Impossibly Obscure Scientific Discovery Announced' its worth a read. My favorite is the references to my horrible HTML coding style, and the fake headlines in their 'Older Stuff' box. I wonder if I can steal their icons?

theGEEK writes "A friend came across this article on Suck yesterday. I actually know this guy... and his Anti-Bear Suit is actually quite impressive. Troy is a very interesting, if somewhat dramatic guy-so much so the National Film Board of Canada made a movie about him, and his project. You'll never believe your eyes when you see him repeatedly get hit by a truck at at 50 KPH or when he gets beaten by bikers wielding axes and baseball bats." So, if anyone wants to get me a Christmas present, I'll take one of these.

theGEEK writes "A friend came across this article on Suck yesterday. I actually know this guy... and his Anti-Bear Suit is actually quite impressive. Troy is a very interesting, if somewhat dramatic guy-so much so the National Film Board of Canada made a movie about him, and his project. You'll never believe your eyes when you see him repeatedly get hit by a truck at at 50 KPH or when he gets beaten by bikers wielding axes and baseball bats." So, if anyone wants to get me a Christmas present, I'll take one of these.

Occasionally someone submits a feature that really raises my eyebrow. Jack William Bell did just that by submitting 'Open Source as an Ant Farm'. Its a really interesting piece that talks about code as art, and much more. Its quite funny, and its got a lot to think about. Click now, you won't regret it. Open Source as an Ant Farm by Jack William Bell

Where Open Source is concerned, hyperbole from the digerteratti hype meisters proliferates nearly as quickly as the hyperlinks they hype. Let's face it -- Clapton has been deposed; Linus Torvalds is now God. And those pundits shouting his divinity the loudest can^Òt even tell a stack register from a walrus. I wonder if Jesus had the same problem?

This constant lionizing of Linus is getting on my nerves. I mean, he is probably a great guy and all (if you know what I mean), but a great man? Usually you wait until people are safely dead (and unable to further embarrass themselves) before heaping those kinds of laurels on their heads. If I was he I would start worrying about that strange human proclivity for taking our living idols down a notch once in a while. Or even nailing them to a tree. Not to mention burning at the stake, drawing and quartering and satirizin g on TV.

But I knew things were getting ridiculous this last week when I saw three different weblogs pointing to the same dumb article using variations on the same dumb caption: 'Open Source as an Art Form' . I mean come on, just because a bunch of nutzoid art types gives Torvalds an award for Linux doesn't mean that an operating system or a development model is art! Yeesh!

Not that I don't think of programming as art mind you. After all I am a programmer myself and I often like to compare what I do to the creation of art. A kind of raw industrial art perpetuated underneath the digital world by Morlo cks like myself while the Eloi cavort on the surface, unaware of the immense complexity (and fragility) of their world. In other words code is art, but it is exclusionist art. No more approachable to the everyday person than a Jackson Pollock work. And twice as incomprehensible!

After all if everyone could do it, it wouldn't be art, would it? It would be just another craft. And if everyone could appreciate good code the way I appreciate the Impressionists then it would be 'Classical' (read 'Dead') Art. Not something alive and thriving. Bubbling and fermenting and making funny smells the way the process of hacking out good code does.

But, you say, it is being appreciated just as you would like! After all, isn't that what the award was all about?

Well, no frankly. Not even close. In my opinion if you can't write good code you can't appreciate good code. At the most you can only appreciate the end result, the compiled program. And, while some programs are definitely 'art' in their own right, many others cannot be described as such based on their even visible-to-the-user external features. And Linux, while a work of art in my programmer eyes, is really just a kernel. A piece of code that, if everything is working right, the user will never see directly. Some of my peers would agree with this. Some will not. As always opinions are all over the map...

One poster on Slashdot tried to have it both ways when he opined "Which part of the programming is the art? Is it the code, neatly formatted, with creative comments and clever algorithms or is it the finished product? When you look at 'art' in a museum, all you see is the finished product . . . So which is the art? The code or the program? I personally think it's the program, and beautiful programs usually have very nice/efficient/clean code."

While another lamented "When the New Yorker compares Open Source to the Algonquin roundtable, the seventh seal will be complete and Microsoft will be free to release Windows 2000."

And another asks "So how is this art going to be displayed? Will art galleries have framed printouts of C code, or will they just give out Linux CDs?"

How indeed? Well, if you read the dumb article I mentioned above you will find the author's thesis is that neither the source code nor the compiled Linux kernel code is the issue, rather the art in question is the Open Source development model that built it! He bases this proposition the following facts:

• China Youth Daily used the Microsoft consternation over Open Source for propaganda purposes.
• The Open Source development model (as described by Eric Raymond) is about cooperation and participation.
• Indian Potlatches were about cooperation and participation.
• The Surrealists did some stuff that involved cooperation and participation.
• A lot of twentieth century art uses 'quotation' (like painting soup cans or sampling 1970's Rock and Roll for Rap music) and 'quotation' is kind of like Open Source, isn't it?
• John Myatt's art forgery scam was kind of like 'quotation' too! And it was kind of like art as well
• When some people share a pseudonym to do wacky performance art, and then someone else uses the same nom de plume to crack a web site or to write an on-line 'tag-team' novel you have cooperation and participation and quotation and propaganda all rolled into one, with an Internet connection as a sweetener!

My first thought on reading the article was "Huh?" Then I reread and listed the salient points above and reiterated "Huh?"

Clearly Harvey Blume isn't a programmer. If he was I wouldn't trust him to code a 'for' loop based on his demonstrated grasp of simple logic. Nonetheless if he had simply stated that Open Source programming with the Bazaar model is 'Art' because he says it was art I would have much less to quibble with. After all art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Only he didn't. Instead he chose to defend his allegation using arguments that indicate he doesn't understand anything about the subject. In other words, I cannot say Mr. Blume is wrong, but I can state with near certainty that he is the wrong person to make the claim. He might be right, but for the wrong reasons.

So, assuming you can call a development model an art form -- how do you hang it on the wall? I would argue that it is already there. The main point about Open Source is that it is (wait for it) . . . OPEN! Duh^Å Unlike 'Closed' development the source code is available for all to see. And often the discussions between developers are available as well, archived on one list server or another. In the Internet sense you can't get up against the wall any more that that!

But what does the average art lover see hanging there? Open Source as an Art Form? I think not. More like Open Source as an Ant Farm! At most they will get a glimpse of we scurrying workers as we toil underground. But they will never, ever understand. As I said before, I am OK with that.

Non programmer types can present art awards for Linux or even Sendmail if they like, but it doesn't signify to me. In my opinion these awards mean nothing until they are given by someone who understands why the jargon file definition of 'Recursion' is funny. Until then I would rather they just threw money. Wouldn't you?

Jonny Royale writes "Today's Suck has an interesting perspective on the Red Hat IPO, and the future of Linux in general. Warning in advance: It's not pretty. " Ouch-I think there's a lot of honesty in this article, particularly the attention to human nature. What do you folks think?

Things have been a bit crazy: server troubles, spent some quality time in the ER after the gf got in accident (she's fine), and unusually stressful 'biz stuff (note:in utopia everyone pays their bills ontime instead of leaving us with a nearly empty checking account, a massive looming bandwidth bill, and all these unpaid invoices? I seem to be balding at an accelerated rate :) As for the images on port 81 of flotsam, I'm sorry about that- those of you behind firewalls will be glad to know that the new server will be in soon and hopefully the dust can settle. Allright, some quickies already: Toddius Maximus wrote in to tell us that Performance Computing has started a bi-monthly Linux Section Anthony Fuentes sent us an Interview with John Carmack webslacker sent us a nice little article on Pixar if you're curious what Steve Jobs' other company is up to. Wouldn't be quickies without Star Wars: James McP sent us linkage to a wired story about a Star Wars fan site featuring toy based mini movies, webslacker noted the new 12" Star Wars figures, and Dave Lowe sent us Star Wars Parody Music More cool movie stuff: patowic noted that Bruce Cambell (of Army of Darkness/Evil Dead fame) has his own web page, which features a sound bite archive And some Slashdot media sightings: Duke of URL noted that the recent Katz/Littleton stories got a mention on Suck. RKemp noted that The Economist noticed too. nene noted that an article about Slashdot appeared in Der Standard (although, with a name like that, its no surprise that it ain't English :)

Dewb writes "The guys over at Suck.com, purveyors of all things snotty and true, have finally gotten around to taking on this Microsoft thing,, and they provide some interesting perspective."

Dewb writes "The guys over at Suck.com, purveyors of all things snotty and true, have finally gotten around to taking on this Microsoft thing,, and they provide some interesting perspective."