Slashdot Mirror
April Fools Wrap Up
Thanks for the usual April Fools Day flame- every year people fall for it.
It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless
a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke.
Lastly, jfengel sent us the annual April Fools RFC: RFC3251 describes "Electricity over IP" and RFC3252 on "Binary Lexical Octet Ad-hoc Transport" reformulates IP to work over XML."
S:Dear CmdrTaco, I was wondering if you couldE EEEEEEEEEE EE!
T:What's the best High Tech Toilet?
S:AAAaaaahhh That hurt, please stop! I was just wondering if
T:Do programming languages affect your Sexual Performance?
S:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGHH! Did I do something wrong? I jus
T:IP replaced Avian Carriers! It's funny, get it!
S:AAHCGH gurgle, moan. Pleash, stop the pain, I can
T:AOL is buying up useless Blog sites! I'm important! Get it?
S:AAAAAAGH! No more! Kill me now, someone, please kill m
T:Google is ranking with pigeons! Get it? Pigeons?
S:AGAHAGHAGHAGAHGa gurgle. whimper. AHGHH I'll give you anything. I'll stop plea
T:Slashdot's advertisers have demanded that we run stupid stories!
S:Ok! Ok! You fiend, I'll never troll again, please, you can have whateve
T:Mac OsX is l33t!
S:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIEEEGGGH! No! No! Please just break my knees! Please, no don't..
T:Check out this Debian Rootkit!
S:AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE
S:(silence)
T:Yo, Hemos, did we kill all of 'em?
H:Ya, but better post a few more to make sure.
T:nVidia and AMD are gonna merge! Get it? MERGE.
S:(silence)
Cowboy Neal: I feel a great disturbance in the force, as if thousands of Slashdot posters
just comitted suicide. Get it? The Force?
...ya wanna turn on anonymous posting again?
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Or is it the last first post?
libertarianswag.com
Finally the madness ends.... or is this another april fools joke? *dum dum DUUMMM!*
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
"Free at last, free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
At least until next year.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Does this mean Wil Wheaton won't be in Enterprise?? Damn!
or is this some April Fools day joke?
*runs away in dispair*
Thanks to everyone for the freak-out articles :)
Good'ole April 1st, 2002!
The picture speaks for itself.
(CmdrTaco seen far right.)
The majority of the flaming during the day wasn't just for the 'slashdot' april fools post. It was because you posted so goddamn many april fools jokes in a row that it was annoying as hell. Yeah, that's great, the occational one is nice. maybe a 'wrap up' like a quickies or something. but not EVERY DAMN POST. Your marketing change, that was okay, and if you hadn't done any other april fools day posts, it might have truely fooled some more effectively. as it was, it was just dumb.
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Pretty much made my day . . . of course that goes a long way to measure the pathetic nature of my day . . .
\Drew National Data Director, John Edwards for President
And unlike MARCHFirst, we will be done with this steaming pile very soon...
You know what?
Otherwise all of CmdrTaco's stories would be at -1 after today from his karma being beaten to the ground for all the troll stories that were posted today.
Interestingly, I noticed one story (about the retiring carrier pigeons) that was a true story posted today. Any others?
Mmmm.. Donuts
I think it's little escapades like this that show us Rob Malda is all about Slashdot just for his personal enjoyment. Maybe that was acceptable when it ran on a Multia in his college dorm room, but now he has to answer to shareholders. Out of everyone I know that reads /., not even one person enjoyed the April Fools "jokes" that ran all over the site. Sure, Rob got to post a few "stories", but he seems to be the only one laughing. Maybe if we're lucky this will be the last year we'll have to subscribe to Taco's signature brand of humor. I enjoy Rob Malda's comedic stylings about as much as I enjoy his frequent spelling and grammar mistakes.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
...does this mean that you'll retract the Wheateon story if it turns out he's telling the truth?
Kudos Taco...
It really is quite amazing how down right IRATE people can get around here. Lighten up folks. It's just life.
Jason
He's totally creeping out the Great One, eh...
Dear CmdrTaco,
On Behalf of the Slashdot community, I would like to tell you how mad I am at you for putting all these April Fools jokes on Slashdot today! You really consused me and I thought Linux was going to retire from the Kernal!
I hope next year you won't have all these false articles, because I get really confused and don't know who to believe anymore!
Thanks,
Slashdot Users Everywhere
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
Important Stuff:
Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page)
"Thanks for the usual April Fools Day flame- every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke."
/. today. Somebody needs a lesson in humour. It won't be from me either because today's beating of a dead horse has bored me to tears.
They were repetive, unimaginative and unfunny. The best jokes are subtle - making it blatantly obvious makes it extremely unfunny. That is why you were flamed.
The BBC documentary way back in B&W TV days about spaghetti growing on trees is/was funny because it was original and completely unexpected. Unlike anything seen on
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Finally CmdrTaco has stopped drinking today.
Today, every story you posted was fake. There was no subtly. In addition, there was little originality; most of what's posted has been done already in one form or another. One subtle 4-1 joke, such as the advertized story of the day at /. , would have been good. Having a Slashback with a summary of 4-1 jokes around the web including the Google one and the Debian one would have been a nice evening wrapup. But having every single story for a 24hr period as fake is not funny, particularly *if* certain real stories happened today (I didn't see any, so consider yourself lucky).
Next time, take it easy. Make it subtle and find something that you *know* will get a humor-filled response by those that don't read the story, and you'll get much fewer flames and many more smiles.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Thanx for the stuff today. Really, man. In some small way I think we all needed that. Too bad it lead me to stop at the beer distributor on the way home, but that is another story...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
/. editors are just a bunch of fools themselves
They're not going to stop anytime soon. The next one will be the real whammy.
---
the pen is mightier than the sword, the sword is mightier than the court, the court is mightier than the pen.
Malda, the only reason people seem 'venomous and angry' today is because you repeatedly bludgeoned tens of thousands of readers with april fools' jokes markedly devoid of humor. Did Kathleen put you up to this? Come on, you can tell us the truth.
I'm guessing it'll get prolonged unintentionally for a few more days. Does anyone want to guess when the first repeated story shows up? (My guess is Thursday evening.)
Wouldn't it be nice of CmdrTaco to give a little prize in the form of karma to whoever's closest?
The one april fools post that I actually wanted to read, and it's the only one to really get slashdotted...
So, now that the absolutely hilarious Slashdot April Fools program is (finally) over, anyone have any FUNNY stories about April Fools jokes that they were on the giving or recieving end of?
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
it never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke.
Uhhh, hate to break it to you, but none of the "jokes" seemed to actually work this year. I mean, most people catch them each April 1, but this years' were even less successful than usual.
I think it was great!!
Heck, I racked up another 11 mod points without even having to put any thought or meaningful content into the effort.
The key thing you forget is that a joke needs to be funny. What was funny about disabling AC posts (something slashdot has defended vehemently in the past was basically thrown in the garbage today.) What's so funny about turning a service that people now pay for into a day-long shitfest of fake, dubiously humorous stories? A few here and there peppered throughout the day is one thing, but it was a nonstop barrage of crap today. So, yes, you got flamed for it. You deserved to.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
So Taco et all, keep up the great job!
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
It never ceases to amaze me how pompous and self-righteous, yet utterly clueless CmdrTaco can be despite the blatant lameness of his jokes.
That was the april fool right? Taco the troll?
Oh.
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
You need to make an april fool on an april fool, to somewhat negate the obvious.
Maybe next year Taco could try something genuinely funny. Perhaps a reversal is in order: instead of posting dumbass, obviously false jokes, post something outrageous but true. It would be just wonderful to see an update saying that yes, that hilarious announcement was really true. Sidenote: although I whine about the quality of the jokes, the "slashvertisements" were pretty funny. I want the damned AC posts back though. Where would slashdot be without 500 goatse.cx links at -1 on every story?
That's it. I'm no longer part of Team Sanity.
...the fake stories weren't too far from the usual sort of stuff you see here on a daily basis.
I've got to throw in a "yeah, what he said!" here.
/. readers), but I consider /. to be a news site. I come here for IT/geek news. Normally my attitude is if its important in the world of computing, it will be on /..
/. was the only one who wasted space with April Fools stories. Maybe /. just couldn't find any real stories today. But at the same time c|net, who /. seems to sometimes take great pains to point out its better than, managed to find a whole list of stories for today.
/. as THE geek news site.
Maybe I'm too old to understand (I'm 40, which probably makes me older than 95% of
Of all the sites I consider "news" sites, I noticed that
One was funny. Two was okay. Three was excessive. Ten was totally friggin stupid and a waste of time, and makes me want to re-evaluate my opinion of
And all of them were so lame and obvious that anyone who thought they were real stories should be forced to turn in their geek club decoder rings and go away.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
Yes, it's april's fools day, but every joke has it's time and place and this was not it. It doesn't reflect well on you guys when slashdot is your work, and you don't even bother to take it seriously. I don't go into my workplace and put some lame aprils fools joke into my code. It's not only not professional, but it's just outright lame. It's good to know VA pays your salaries and servers for your own little amusement.
I know you guys have done this in the past, but I'm pretty sure I saw CmdrTaco say he wouldn't do this in the future because too many people bitched about it. Oh well. His rep of not taking reader input is legendary. And to put the onus on readers for not getting the joke is just asinine.
This is what slashdot subscriptions are for? I can't say the quality or speed or anything else for that matter has gotten any better since it was implemented. It's really not like I can't take a joke, but not only was this whole thing painfully unfunny, but it was just a complete waste.
Damn, I had my application all filled out and everything...
: (
I wonder if AmVidia is still hiring...
Romana: "How did you know?" Doctor Who: "Ah, well, knowing is easy. Everyone does THAT ad nauseum. I just sort of hope"
Who are these cats and kittens and how will they be stopped?
You know what?
So let's recap:
We have seen the slashdot effect over HTTP, and most recently we've seen it over FTP, I would like to see Taco post a 1-800 telephone number so we can slashdot their switches back to the 70's!
All in the name of science of course...
"The scientist describes what is; The engineer creates what never was." - Theodore von Karman
...is wondering whether what the news was that was _not_ getting reported on Slashdot because its powers that be were busy running one joke story after another. I read Slashdot for many reasons--wasting time is probably the chief reason, but another reason is that I'm genuinely curious to know what important events are going down in the high-tech world, and what people think about them. I was hoping, for example, that there'd be an item about the HP-Compaq merger and HP's decision to kick Walter Hewlett off the board, but no--I guess reporting fake stories about Linus Torvalds quitting and Google using pigeons to rank their pages was more important. Hey, I've got an idea--instead of wasting everyone's time, why not post an item linking to several of these gag stories (you know, like a Slashback post) and then get on with the real news. The world doesn't grind to a stop because it's the first of April.
Not just a brief item either. They did a whole half-hour segment on the "news", including interviews with Reagan administration staffers (not actors or impressionists, real staffers who were in on the joke) and with "acting provincial Governor-General" Bruce Babbitt. Really over the top stuff. I've always wondered why it never raised more of a fuss than it did.
When you had that story about Parrot (Perl and Python merging) that was pretty cool, but this year's were rediculous. Nothing really stood out. An april's fool joke is supposed to actually try to fool you. The only one that remotely comes close is maybe the Wil Wheaton one because it could possibly be true. UPN has never exactly proven its judgement in such things. What's the deal with that too? Is he becoming the Open Source's answer to Danny Bonaduce? Will he be going on celebrity boxing any time soon? Wil Wheaton OS, etc, its all a bit much. Obviously they can't all be onion articles, but they could be mildly amusing. Perhaps you should have used the same critieria that keeps bad submissions off slashdot normally and applied it to the ones that you put up instead of just taking anyone and everyone's april fools day message.
If even one person does not know it is a joke, it is not a joke. It is hostility. Yes, it is low-level hostility, but it is hostility.
Bush's education improvements were
Get a life! At least Taco and Co. are trying to do interesting stuff. All you guys every talk about is how bad Slashdot is. Boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, boring, BORING!!!!!!
After all the obvious jokes, he is now giving us a false sense of security... so that when he posts the real killer we all fall for it!
Slashdot effect hits hard. :-)
Fetch hits harder
Electricity over IP
Status of this Memo
This memo provides information for the Internet community. It does
not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of this
memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2002). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Mostly Pointless Lamp Switching (MPLampS) is an architecture for
carrying electricity over IP (with an MPLS control plane). According
to our marketing department, MPLampS has the potential to
dramatically lower the price, ease the distribution and usage, and
improve the manageability of delivering electricity. This document
is motivated by such work as SONET/SDH over IP/MPLS (with apologies
to the authors). Readers of the previous work have been observed
scratching their heads and muttering, "What next?". This document
answers that question.
This document has also been written as a public service. The "Sub-
IP" area has been formed to give equal opportunity to those working
on technologies outside of traditional IP networking to write
complicated IETF documents. There are possibly many who are
wondering how to exploit this opportunity and attain high visibility.
Towards this goal, we see the topics of "foo-over-MPLS" (or MPLS
control for random technologies) as highly amenable for producing a
countless number of unimplementable documents. This document
illustrates the key ingredients that go into producing any "foo-
over-MPLS" document and may be used as a template for all such work.
1. Conventions used in this document
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "DO", "DON'T", "REQUIRED", "SHALL",
"SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", "MAY BE"
and "OPTIONAL" in this document do not mean anything.
Rajagopalan Informational [Page 1]
RFC 3251 Electricity over IP 1 April 2002
2. Pre-requisite for reading this document
While reading this document, at various points the readers may have
the urge to ask questions like, "does this make sense?", "is this
feasible?," and "is the author sane?". The readers must have the
ability to suppress such questions and read on. Other than this, no
specific technical background is required to read this document. In
certain cases (present document included), it may be REQUIRED that
readers have no specific technical background.
3. Introduction
It was recently brought to our attention that the distribution
network for electricity is not an IP network! After absorbing the
shock that was delivered by this news, the following thoughts
occurred to us:
1. Electricity distribution must be based on some outdated technology
(called "Legacy Distribution System" or LDS in the rest of the
document).
2. An LDS not based on the Internet technology means that two
different networks (electricity and IP) must be administered and
managed. This leads to inefficiencies, higher cost and
bureaucratic foul-ups (which possibly lead to blackouts in
California. We are in the process of verifying this using
simulations as part of a student's MS thesis).
3. The above means that a single network technology (i.e., IP) must
be used to carry both electricity and Internet traffic.
4. An internet draft must be written to start work in this area,
before someone else does.
5. Such a draft can be used to generate further drafts, ensuring that
we (and CCAMP, MPLS or another responsible working group) will be
busy for another year.
6. The draft can also be posted in the "white papers" section of our
company web page, proclaiming us as revolutionary pioneers.
Hence the present document.
4. Terminology
MPLampS: Mostly Pointless Lamp Switching - the architecture
introduced in this document.
Lamp: An end-system in the MPLampS architecture (clashes with the
IETF notion of end-system but of course, we DON'T care).
LER: Low-voltage Electricity Receptor - fancy name for "Lamp".
Rajagopalan Informational [Page 2]
RFC 3251 Electricity over IP 1 April 2002
ES: Electricity source - a generator.
LSR: Load-Switching Router - an MPLampS device used in the core
electricity distribution network.
LDS: Legacy Distribution System - an inferior electricity
distribution technology that MPLampS intends to replace.
RSVP: Rather Screwed-up, but router Vendors Push it - an IP signaling
protocol.
RSVP-TE: RSVP with Tariff Extensions - RSVP adaptation for MPLampS,
to be used in the new deregulated utilities environment.
CRLDP: for CRying out Loud, Don't do rsvP - another IP signaling
protocol.
OSPF: Often Seizes-up in multiPle area conFigurations - a
hierarchical IP routing protocol.
ISIS: It's not oSpf, yet It somehow Survives - another routing
protocol.
OSPF-TE, ISIS-TE: OSPF and ISIS with Tariff Extensions.
COPS: Policemen. Folks who scour all places for possibilities to
slip in the Common Open Policy Service protocol.
VPN: Voltage Protected Network - allows a customer with multiple
sites to receive electricity with negligible voltage fluctuation due
to interference from other customers.
SUB-IP: SUBstitute IP everywhere - an effort in the IETF to get
involved in technical areas outside of traditional IP networking
(such as MPLampS).
ITU: International Tariffed Utilities association - a utilities trade
group whose work is often ignored by the IETF.
5. Background
We dug into the electricity distribution technology area to get some
background. What we found stunned us, say, with the potency of a
bare 230V A/C lead dropped into our bathtub while we were still in
it. To put it simply, electricity is generated and distributed along
a vast LDS which does not have a single router in it (LSR or
otherwise)! Furthermore, the control of devices in this network is
mostly manual, done by folks driving around in trucks. After
Rajagopalan Informational [Page 3]
RFC 3251 Electricity over IP 1 April 2002
wondering momentarily about how such a network can exist in the 21st
century, we took a pencil and paper and sketched out a scenario for
integrating the LDS network with the proven Internet technology. The
fundamental points we came up with are:
1. IP packets carry electricity in discrete, digitized form.
2. Each packet would deliver electricity to its destination (e.g., a
device with an IP address) on-demand.
3. MPLS control will be used to switch packets within the core LDS,
and in the edge premises. The architecture for this is referred
to as Mostly-Pointless Lamp Switching (MPLampS).
4. The MPLampS architectural model will accommodate both the overlay
model, where the electricity consuming devices (referred to as
"lamps") are operated over a distinct control plane, and the peer
model, in which the lamps and the distribution network use a
single control plane.
5. RSVP-TE (RSVP with Tariff Extensions) will be used for
establishing paths for electricity flow in a de-regulated
environment.
6. COPS will be used to support accounting and policy.
After jotting these points down, we felt better. We then noted the
following immediate advantages of the proposed scheme:
1. Switches and transformers in the LDS can be replaced by LSRs,
thereby opening up a new market for routers.
2. Electricity can be routed over the Internet to reach remote places
which presently do not have electricity connections but have only
Internet kiosks (e.g., rural India).
3. Electrical technicians can be replaced by highly paid IP network
administrators, and
4. The IETF can get involved in another unrelated technology area.
In the following, we describe the technical issues in a vague manner.
6. Electricity Encoding
The Discrete Voltage Encoding (DVE) scheme has been specified in ITU
standard G.110/230V [2] to digitize electrical voltages. In essence,
an Electricity Source (ES) such as a generator is connected to a DV
encoder that encodes the voltage and current, and produces a bit
stream. This bit stream can be carried in IP packets to various
destinations (referred to as LERs - Low-voltage Electricity
Receptors) on-demand. At the destination, a DV decoder produces the
right voltage and current based on the received bit stream. It is to
be determined whether the Real-time Transport Protocol (RTP) can be
Rajagopalan Informational [Page 4]
RFC 3251 Electricity over IP 1 April 2002
used for achieving synchronization and end-to-end control. We leave
draft writing opportunities in the RTP area to our friends and
colleagues.
7. MPLampS Architecture
7.1 Overview
In an LDS, the long-haul transmission of electricity is at high
voltages. The voltage is stepped down progressively as electricity
flows into local distribution networks and is finally delivered to
LERs at a standard voltage (e.g., 110V). Thus, the LDS is a
hierarchical network. This immediately opens up the possibility of
OSPF and ISIS extensions for routing electricity in a transmission
network, but we'll contain the urge to delve into these productive
internet draft areas until later. For the present, we limit our
discussion merely to controlling the flow of electricity in an IP-
based distribution network using MPLampS.
Under MPLampS, a voltage is equated to a label. In the distribution
network, each switching element and transformer is viewed as a load-
switching router (LSR). Each IP packet carrying an electricity flow
is assigned a label corresponding to the voltage. Electricity
distribution can then be trivially reduced to the task of label
(voltage) switching as electricity flows through the distribution
network. The configuration of switching elements in the distribution
network is done through RSVP-TE to provide electricity on demand.
We admit that the above description is vague and sounds crazy. The
example below tries to add more (useless) details, without removing
any doubts the reader might have about the feasibility of this
proposal:
Example: Turning on a Lamp
It is assumed that the lamp is controlled by an intelligent device
(e.g, a (light) switch with an MPLampS control plane). Turning the
lamp on causes the switch to issue an RSVP-TE request (a PATH message
with new objects) for the electricity flow. This PATH message
traverses across the network to the ES. The RESV message issued in
return sets up the label mappings in LSRs. Finally, electricity
starts flowing along the path established. It is expected that the
entire process will be completed within a few seconds, thereby giving
the MPLampS architecture a distinct advantage over lighting a candle
with a damp match stick.
Rajagopalan Informational [Page 5]
RFC 3251 Electricity over IP 1 April 2002
7.2 Overlay vs Peer Models
As noted before, there are two control plane models to be considered.
Under the overlay model, the lamps and the distribution network
utilize distinct control planes. Under the peer model, a single
control plane is used. A number of arguments can be made for one
model versus the other, and these will be covered in the upcoming
framework document. We merely observe here that it is the lamp
vendors who prefer the peer model against the better judgement of the
LSR vendors. We, however, want to please both camps regardless of
the usefulness of either model. We therefore note here that MPLampS
supports both models and also migration scenarios from overlay to
peer.
7.3 Routing in the Core Network
The above description of the hierarchical distribution system
immediately opens up the possibility of applying OSPF and ISIS with
suitable extensions. The readers may rest assured that we are
already working on such concepts as voltage bundling, multi-area
tariff extensions, insulated LSAs, etc. Future documents will
describe the details.
7.4 Voltage Protected Networks (VPNs)
VPNs allow a customer with multiple sites to get guaranteed
electricity supply with negligible voltage fluctuations due to
interference from other customers. Indeed, some may argue that the
entire MPLampS architecture may be trashed if not for the possibility
of doing VPNs. Whatever be the case, VPNs are a hot topic today and
the readers are forewarned that we have every intention of writing
several documents on this. Specifically, BGP-support for VPNs is an
area we're presently eyeing with interest.
8. Multicast
It has been observed that there is a strong spatial and temporal
locality in electricity demand. ITU Study Group 55 has studied this
phenomenon for over a decade and has issued a preliminary report.
This report states that when a lamp is turned on in one house, it is
usually the case that lamps are turned on in neighboring houses at
around the same time (usually at dusk) [3]. This observation has a
serious implication on the scalability of the signaling mechanism.
Specifically, the distribution network must be able to handle tens of
thousands of requests all at once. The signaling load can be reduced
if multicast delivery is used. Briefly, a request for electricity is
not sent from the lamp all the way to an ES, but is handled by the
first LSR that is already in the path to another lamp.
Rajagopalan Informational [Page 6]
RFC 3251 Electricity over IP 1 April 2002
Support for this requires the application of multicast routing
protocols together with RSVP-TE shared reservation styles and the
development of MPLampS multicast forwarding mode. We are currently
studying the following multicast routing protocol:
o DVMRP: Discrete Voltage Multicast Routing Protocol - this protocol
works over existing voltage routing protocols but the danger here is
that electricity is delivered to all lamps when any one lamp is
turned on. Indeed, the switching semantics gets annoying - all lamps
get turned on periodically and those not needed must be switched off
each time manually.
Other protocols we will eventually consider are Current-Based Tree
(CBT) and Practically Irrelevant Multicast (PIM). An issue we are
greatly interested in is multicast scope: we would like support for
distributing electricity with varying scope, from lamps within a
single Christmas tree to those in entire cities. Needless to say, we
will write many detailed documents on these topics as time
progresses.
9. Security Considerations
This document MUST be secured in a locked cabinet to prevent it from
being disposed off with the trash.
10. Summary
This document described the motivation and high level concepts behind
Mostly Pointless Lamp Switching (MPLampS), an architecture for
electricity distribution over IP. MPLampS utilizes DVE (discrete
voltage encoding), and an MPLS control plane in the distribution
network. Since the aim of this document is to be a high-visibility
place-holder, we did not get into many details of MPLampS. Numerous
future documents, unfortunately, will attempt to provide these
details.
9AM: Roomate wakes me up to tell me that he just got a call in from the hospital that my parents were killed in a car crash, then yells April fools and laughs his way out of my room.
Play it cool...
9:30AM: Urinated on roomate's razor blades.
He doesn't know yet.
-- I'll cut you up so bad, you'll wish I'd never cut you up so bad!
Given What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org), I don't think submitting it to Slashdot as an article is even worth the e-mail.
I'll post it here just for reader enjoyment. I think it's better than many of the stories which WERE posted!
______
Spam "protection" - a modest proposal
by Seth Finkelstein
April 1 2002
The problem of Spam, i.e. junk e-mail, has been plaguing the net for years. This article makes a modest proposal for spam "protection", in terms of a novel economic analysis leading to the benefit of all concerned.
In economic terms, let's consider why there's profit in spamming (sending large numbers of unsolicited emails). This is due to the "cost-shifting" nature of the spam process. It takes very little effort to send a large number of e-mails. But e-mail is not free (as in beer). In effect, the spammer shifts the expense of the advertising campaign, from the seller, onto ISPs and users:
- The ISP must pay (in resources) to distribute the spammer's ads
- The user must pay (in time) to delete the spammer's ads
So this is, literally, the price of free (as in speech) speech - the ISP and the user must bear the costs of the spammer's ads. Now, a frequent "technological solution" is that, once the ISP has paid to handle the spammer's mail, the user can avoid the further payment of time, by paying cash to another organization, which will perform the task of sorting out the spam. This approach is exemplified by services offered by, for example, Brightmail Inc. or SpamCop Email SystemBut what does this sorting organization do? Its only task is to try to identify spam from real mail. That is, it is paid to try to identify mail sent from spammers. However, since it is in an adversary relationship to the spammers, the spam-gangs have every reason to try to avoid such identification.
There have been some proposals to facilitate identification of spam by legally requiring labels. But that involves government and law. In fact, it's compelled speech! Instead, since the free market is the solution to all problems, the only proper course of action is to provide spammers with an economic incentive to identify themselves. After all, spam identification is the exact product being sold by third parties, so why pay a middle-man? If one is going to pay, for maximum market efficiency, why not pay the source?
In this scheme, the user pays a mailbox "protection fee" to an umbrella group, let's call it the "Spamafia". In return for this "protection", the "Spamafia" provides the user with a simple mailbox checking system which can be run over mail messages. Because this system works in a manner akin to passing items over a net barrier, it might be termed a "racket". So, the "racket" tests each piece of mail. Those mail messages which originate from members of the Spamafia each contain a certification token. In the process of testing the mail, this token is sent back to the Spamafia, and so redeemed to the individual spammer for a small fee, say a penny or so. In return, the user is given assurance that this message is certified as spam, and so can be automatically deleted without fear of losing legitimate mail. In essence, the spammer is given an incentive to also obtain a small amount of money from each smart user by being straightforward, rather than only trying to obtain a larger amount of money by fooling just a few suckers (and annoying everyone else).
The beauty of the system is that everyone has an incentive to participate. The spammers get more money, as the spams can generate income now from both the suckers, and the nonsuckers paying mailbox protection fees. There's no reason to evade spam-detection, in fact the opposite. The more people signed up to the protection racket, the more certification tokens are redeemed. The smart users get to have a workable mailbox, rather than one filled with junk. And they have the "peace of mind" that the mail being deleted is not important. It's the magic of the market at work.
People become "angry and venomous" because you have a dreadful sense of humor, pumping out the same, lame, unfunny joke over and over again, you stupid fuckwit.
Too easy a target?
Usually they stick an April Fool's joke in their morning or afternoon news show, but I missed it. Did anyone catch it this year?
The world's gotten so flakey these days, it's getting increasingly hard to tell the difference. Or to say much of anything except "so it goes". Let's face it, the digital protection legislation would have been an April Fools joke 3 years ago. You guys are getting too much competition from the real world.
You couldn't fool your mother on the foolingest day of your life if you had an electrified fooling machine!
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
The lameness filter sucks.
1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
This document describes the Binary Lexical Octet Ad-hoc Transport
(BLOAT): a reformulation of a widely-deployed network-layer protocol
(IP [RFC791]), and two associated transport layer protocols (TCP
[RFC793] and UDP [RFC768]) as XML [XML] applications. It also
describes methods for transporting BLOAT over Ethernet and IEEE 802
networks as well as encapsulating BLOAT in IP for gatewaying BLOAT
across the public Internet.
1.2. Motivation
The wild popularity of XML as a basis for application-level protocols
such as the Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol [RFC3080], the Simple
Object Access Protocol [SOAP], and Jabber [JABBER] prompted
investigation into the possibility of extending the use of XML in the
protocol stack. Using XML at both the transport and network layer in
addition to the application layer would provide for an amazing amount
of power and flexibility while removing dependencies on proprietary
and hard-to-understand binary protocols. This protocol unification
would also allow applications to use a single XML parser for all
aspects of their operation, eliminating developer time spent figuring
out the intricacies of each new protocol, and moving the hard work of
parsing to the XML toolset. The use of XML also mitigates concerns
over "network vs. host" byte ordering which is at the root of many
network application bugs.
1.3. Relation to Existing Protocols
The reformulations specified in this RFC follow as closely as
possible the spirit of the RFCs on which they are based, and so MAY
contain elements or attributes that would not be needed in a pure
reworking (e.g. length attributes, which are implicit in XML.)
The layering of network and transport protocols are maintained in
this RFC despite the optimizations that could be made if the line
were somewhat blurred (i.e. merging TCP and IP into a single, larger
element in the DTD) in order to foster future use of this protocol as
a basis for reformulating other protocols (such as ICMP.)
Other than the encoding, the behavioral aspects of each of the
existing protocols remain unchanged. Routing, address spaces, TCP
congestion control, etc. behave as specified in the extant standards.
Adapting to new standards and experimental algorithm heuristics for
improving performance will become much easier once the move to BLOAT
has been completed.
1.4. Requirement Levels
The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT",
"SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this
document are to be interpreted as described in BCP 14, RFC 2119
[RFC2119].
2. IPoXML
This protocol MUST be implemented to be compliant with this RFC.
IPoXML is the root protocol REQUIRED for effective use of TCPoXML
(section 3.) and higher-level application protocols.
The DTD for this document type can be found in section 7.1.
The routing of IPoXML can be easily implemented on hosts with an XML
parser, as the regular structure lends itself handily to parsing and
validation of the document/datagram and then processing the
destination address, TTL, and checksum before sending it on to its
next-hop.
The reformulation of IPv4 was chosen over IPv6 [RFC2460] due to the
wider deployment of IPv4 and the fact that implementing IPv6 as XML
would have exceeded the 1500 byte Ethernet MTU.
All BLOAT implementations MUST use - and specify - the UTF-8 encoding
of RFC 2279 [RFC2279]. All BLOAT document/datagrams MUST be well-
formed and include the XMLDecl.
2.1. IP Description
A number of items have changed (for the better) from the original IP
specification. Bit-masks, where present have been converted into
human-readable values. IP addresses are listed in their dotted-
decimal notation [RFC1123]. Length and checksum values are present
as decimal integers.
To calculate the length and checksum fields of the IP element, a
canonicalized form of the element MUST be used. The canonical form
SHALL have no whitespace (including newline characters) between
elements and only one space character between attributes. There
SHALL NOT be a space following the last attribute in an element.
An iterative method SHOULD be used to calculate checksums, as the
length field will vary based on the size of the checksum.
The payload element bears special attention. Due to the character
set restrictions of XML, the payload of IP datagrams (which MAY
contain arbitrary data) MUST be encoded for transport. This RFC
REQUIRES the contents of the payload to be encoded in the base-64
encoding of RFC 2045 [RFC2045], but removes the requirement that the
encoded output MUST be wrapped on 76-character lines.
2.2. Example Datagram
The following is an example IPoXML datagram with an empty payload:
3. TCPoXML
This protocol MUST be implemented to be compliant with this RFC. The
DTD for this document type can be found in section 7.2.
3.1. TCP Description
A number of items have changed from the original TCP specification.
Bit-masks, where present have been converted into human-readable
values. Length and checksum and port values are present as decimal
integers.
To calculate the length and checksum fields of the TCP element, a
canonicalized form of the element MUST be used as in section 2.1.
An iterative method SHOULD be used to calculate checksums as in
section 2.1.
The payload element MUST be encoded as in section 2.1.
The TCP offset element was expanded to a maximum of 255 from 16 to
allow for the increased size of the header in XML.
TCPoXML datagrams encapsulated by IPoXML MAY omit the header
as well as the declaration.
3.2. Example Datagram
The following is an example TCPoXML datagram with an empty payload:
4. UDPoXML
This protocol MUST be implemented to be compliant with this RFC. The
DTD for this document type can be found in section 7.3.
4.1. UDP Description
A number of items have changed from the original UDP specification.
Bit-masks, where present have been converted into human-readable
values. Length and checksum and port values are present as decimal
integers.
To calculate the length and checksum fields of the UDP element, a
canonicalized form of the element MUST be used as in section 2.1. An
iterative method SHOULD be used to calculate checksums as in section
2.1.
The payload element MUST be encoded as in section 2.1.
UDPoXML datagrams encapsulated by IPoXML MAY omit the header
as well as the declaration.
4.2. Example Datagram
The following is an example UDPoXML datagram with an empty payload:
5. Network Transport
This document provides for the transmission of BLOAT datagrams over
two common families of physical layer transport. Future RFCs will
address additional transports as routing vendors catch up to the
specification, and we begin to see BLOAT routed across the Internet
backbone.
5.1. Ethernet
BLOAT is encapsulated in Ethernet datagrams as in [RFC894] with the
exception that the type field of the Ethernet frame MUST contain the
value 0xBEEF. The first 5 octets of the Ethernet frame payload will
be 0x3c 3f 78 6d 6c ("
-->
7.2. TCPoXML DTD
-->
7.3. UDPoXML DTD
-->
8. Security Considerations
XML, as a subset of SGML, has the same security considerations as
specified in SGML Media Types [RFC1874]. Security considerations
that apply to IP, TCP and UDP also likely apply to BLOAT as it does
not attempt to correct for issues not related to message format.
So let me see if I have this right, If the jokes are over the top, they are unfunny, and /. will get flamed. If the jokes are subtle, and people believe them for awhile, and then find out they're false, they'll flame. I personally found the jokes today to be either hit and miss, a couple were funny, a couple were not. I think that some people at /. need to remove their funny bone and beat the flamers about their head and asses.
Please for the love of god, moderators of Slashdot.. Moderate me up out of karma hell! I'll never troll again if you just help me out of this abyss! Time to suckup: These April Fool's Day jokes were so funny, blah hah hah! I have a pain in my side from laughing all day!
April 21-27-- Slashdot Blackout: Do your duty.
... every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke. Doesn't surprise me at all. But please don't describe them as "gullible", that's not even a real word. If you don't believe me, look it up. =brian
Coming so soon on the heels of the controversial subscription policy, the Slashvertisement story was a really well done April Fools gag. It was built up to ahead of time, they disabled anonymous posting -- Good Lord, that was some funny shit! And the people who fell for it!
... um ... stuff. :-)
Okay, maybe they could have gotten more mileage out of the Slashvertisements thing if they hadn't posted links to other AF gags, but on the whole, making all the stories part of April Fools while not commenting one way or another with smileys or "It's funny laugh" left the readers to decide whether any of it was real or not.
Overall, I found this to be quite the amusing day, and a somewhat welcome relief from normal, day-to-day
Way to go, guys!
Does anyone remember the first year all of the major geek-sites got together for a April Fool's joke? I barely remember what happened (AKA: This account maybe somewhat off from what really happened). I think Segfault annouced that Microsoft was bascially shutting them down through legal action. So Freshmeat (I think) and Slashdot played along. I couldn't believe it, because they pratically fooled everyone. They lead up to it over the course of a week or so. Quite funny and original.
It's wha...that's for real...ohh.....
You know what?
The key thing you forget is that a life needs to have humor. What was funny about disabling AC posts (something slashdot has defended vehemently in the past was basically thrown in the garbage today) is that it was part of the joke, moron. What's so informative about writing a post that people have to read into a paragraph-long shitfest of fake, dubiously intelligent insults? A few here and there peppered throughout the post is one thing, but it was a nonstop barrage of crap in your post. So, yes, you got flamed for it. You deserved to.
;-P
Special thanks to AdLibs!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Thanks for the usual April Fools Day flame- every year people fall for it.
Only one flame? Didn't you READ the comments atached to your stories?
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
How the hell are we supposed to moderate all this stuff?
Thank the diety-of-your-choice that it is coming to and end!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
How is it that real news, the "Stuff that matters", as it were, seems to completely dry up on April 1? What real, interesting stories were eschewed to bring us all this "fun" April Fools entertainment? Where is the News?
I know I kept coming back to check for the next post. I laughed my ass off more than a few times at both the stories and the posts. A number of the post didn't move me to laugh but its hard to knock `em all out of the park. All in all I liked it and hope it becomes a sucessful tradition.
Federally Funded Flea Dips for Fluffy
And there it is!
hey, you, fucking moderator, do your job, moderate me. I know your brains are redundant, since you think with your asshole, which produces pukes of flameb*
Dexter: "I'm confused."
Dee Dee: "GOOD!"
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
It never ceases to amaze me how boring and utterly inane the April fools articles get year after year.
I mean, come one. Nvidia and AMD merging? I could have pulled a better prank out of my ass with whipped cream and a cherry on top.
It wasn't that people fell for the pranks despite the obviousness. In fact, it was the other way around. No one fell for the pranks because they WERE too obvious. They lacked any imagination or creativity.
All you did today was waste bandwidth.
"Adequacy.org: Where congenital stupidity is not an option, but a requirement."
I want to say Thanks for all the great April Fools jokes! The only thing you guys missed is the awsome (hehehe) revamp of freshmeat.NET hehe
:)
Very amusing day though
I'll add a "ditto". I was expecting 4/1 on slashdot to be snarky, devious, and a riot. Instead, it was like a late night TV show... slapstick, and with a fake laugh track. The only thing that could've made it worse would've been a blinking DHTML "LAUGH" flying across the page when you load a 4/1 /. story.
Seriously... if you wanted to be funny, you should've done something snarky and "HUH!?" like DaveZilla (Not gonna link because it'll be gone, but he turned his website into a mirror of FuckedWeblog, with it's top blog being his, and the quote, "I quit!") or the Met4filter/Kuro5hin "merger".
I'm dissapointed. Don't try as hard next year.
--
Vote for your hopes, not for your fears - Vote Third Party
Though in all seriousity, there have been an awful lot of mods done today... Arrite, how many editors have been whipping out modpoints today??? And, why don't I ever get them? :)
--pi
Anyone who has been around the internet, or at this point we can include the newbies and say the web, for a few years expects hoaxs on 4/1. I appreciate that slashdot brought many of them together today.
As was already pointed out, this was the editors chance to troll. And so many of you were hooked. Next year if you don't like it, don't post. You all bunch of crap flooders really can make the place miserable sometimes. And I include every arsehole that posted something about this is awful, this is boring, this sucks, and whatever else was negative. Too bad I didn't have mod points today.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
This just out
It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be...
CmdrTacoThe /. potentate nefariously plays across the collective psyche of his readership in a vain attempt to hang onto a wanning membership while leading a salesteam intent on selling /. to AOL as the web's greatest blog.
....Thaaaaaaaaat's All FOLKSheuristic algorithm seeks stochastic relationship
Who's with me on this? I need someone to help hold him still.
After he's done, we'll move on to the rest of the /. crew. (Except JonKatz, for obvious reasons.)
And to think, none of the jokes were funny!
/. holiday on 4/1. I did end up surfing other sites today for news, which was prolly a good thing.
I think next year, I'll take a
Hint: read the HTML source of that link. Things will be clearer. The CVS $Id$ is a bit of a giveaway as well :)
I guess it's too late to get my obligatory mod points? Uhg, damn work. Curses, foiled again. Speaking of which, anyone see the previews for Scooby Doo? God it looks bad. It looks like "Dude Where's My Mystery Machine."
---- The one good thing about music: When it hits you, you feel no pain.
Maybe I'm too old to understand (I'm 40, which probably makes me older than 95% of /. readers), but I consider /. to be a news site. I come here for IT/geek news. Normally my attitude is if its important in the world of computing, it will be /..
on
The thing I find ironic about all this is that so often people complain about Slashdot having old news and stuff they already knew about. Today (it's still April 1st for me) we got probably the freshest set of stories seen on Slashdot for a long time - none more than 24 hours old. Yet now people are complaining for a totally different reason.
I look at it this way:
Slashdot only played one April fools joke themselves today (the stuff about ad-stories). Aside from that, Slashdot did what it's supposed to do - it reported the news for nerds. Today because of this day's nerdy nature it just happens that the news consists of jokes.
The question is, then, do jokes == news? From the looks of it, most people say no. Actually I'd probably agree with them - I'm not an April Fools Day fan, and I don't believe in so-called "practical jokes". But I respect the importance of April 1st in the traditions of "nerd culture", so I don't bitch about it.
In fact, I admit I even had a few chuckles today. All in all I actually found the whole thing quite interesting. It was different, if nothing else!
Just so long as things gets back to "normal" now that it's over...
Agreed. I get the impression most of the "it was funny, you just have something up your ass" posters are between thirteen and twenty, and think of Slashdot as more of a social outlet than a news site. No way of proving it, of course; it's just the way the posts read to me.
Damnit, April Fools is over, so stop it, you unconscionable bastard! Honestly, I was chuckling merily when I read:
/. to be a news site."
:
/.."
"I consider
Jolly good joke, ol' bean! A slap on the back for an April Fool's joke well done. And that should have been the end of it. But then you had to go on and say
"Normally my attitude is if its important in the world of computing, it will be on
Now, I was taking a sip of water when I read that, and when I burst out in uncontrollable laughter, I sprayed water all over my monitor and keyboard! The monitor seems fine, and my keyboard is a Model M and hence indestructable, but nevertheless spraying water all over electronics isn't a good thing. And it's your fault, with your verbal irony and such. I hope you will take more care next time, lest the person induced to laughing be carefully balancing a vial of nitro glycerin atop other carefully balanced tubes of nitro glycerin at the time for some reason! And how bad would you feel then?
The enemies of Democracy are
It's funny. Laugh.
No it's not. Flame.
[this text inserted to avoid the also-hilarious lameness filter]
It never ceases to amaze me how people can actually whine about the content of this site instead of actually surfing for the news themselves. How lazy can you get? Point, click, repeat...!
If you don't like what they post, don't read it! Don't pay for it! Or even better, do your work instead!! (I know, that's not even funny).
I mean, the news on this site is almost always the same, "Big company buys another big company", "MS Sux", "Coders can't get laid"...
That's what actually made the posts today funny; they actually sound a lot like the normal news!
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
Ebay had a funy front page.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
You don't like them, then don't post about them. I didn't want to see all your bitching about the stories. And next time, try acting like your 40 instead of 4. Darn shame I didn't have mod points today, they would have gone fast.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
While we were all sitting here screwing around, Senator Hollings CBTABFASDADAFSB was passed and signed into law by president Al Bush!!
This gives a new meaning to April FOOLS day...
After getting chocked up with /. nonsense and other similar stuff today, I decided to give up and use my computer for some playing. I wanted to play some oldie, so I reinstalled Master of Orion 2. A few turns into the game, I read into the turn summary:
Citizens demand a stadium. (There is no stadium building in MOO2, so I was puzzled). And more cream of celery soup. I stared for a while at the screen, and then laughed.
Still unsure if this was some 4/1 joke, I checked google and found a page saying that there's actually that easter egg in the game that shows that message.
That was the only thing today that left me with the jaw open. I hope there are still some places where I will be off guard on next April Fools... Slashdot hasn't one of them for a long while.
someone mod this idiot down! what? AC isn't working? crap!
This was the 50s. No one ate pasta at the time. It would be like me telling your average American that rambutans grow in the ground like carrots or potatoes. It is only obvious in retrospect because in the 70s pasta was the nouveau cuisine and has now become a deeply entrenched part of our culture.
God man, take a JOKE!
This was funny and very enjoyable... I pulled quite afew Pranks today, none of which effected 1 million readers... but what the hey... CmdTaco! I salute you!
Well I've finally reached my limit. How many years of bad jokes have I put up with? Slashdot is turning too much like newsgroups there is just way too much noise to bother with anymore, and since slashdot doesn't have any porn like newsgroups I will not be visiting here anymore. Maybe just maybe if the editors were more professional, run spell check, check over their posts before posting it on the front page I wouldn't mind so much. I don't really think the ads have anything to do with me leaving. Slashdot has to make money some how. Heh. And I even have 5 mod points saved up. Oh well. See you all later, its been fun(well not really lately).
Slipping Away...
after the scare left me. But isn't that what a good tease is all about.
/. Gee, maybe you can't {que picture of girl with geek) ...ahh that's better ...see you can do it for one day! (Geeze with that girl you may never come back to /. oops /. won't like that one)
For the all to serious....Lighten up!
You can go one day without
Actually I almost forwarded the story about Linus to 1000 people (my mega list) before I picked up on the joke. Damn it brings a new meaning to ROFLMO!
See ya next year.
Gizmos Gagets For Ninjas
It was kinda fun to see some of them, the Warcraft one was pretty cheesy and had that immediate fake feel to it. NVidia/AMD, well, that wouldn't hugely surprise me, but when I got down to the BeOS bit, well, that'd be wishful thinking at best.
The best April Fools, like the one that caught me this morning, are the ones which are plausible and executed with care. I've been working a new check designs for a couple months and the fellow I work with came in and said, "Well, they changed it again, but they want to go back to the smaller form", which immediately made me cringe after putting days of effort into expanding the design to a larger form. Then he says but they want to make it wider, which was clue my chain was being yanked. Good one, that.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Good one! h0h0
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
... the news is still going to be around on April 2nd. Don't be a victim to "now" culture. Cultivate some patience.
The majority of the world has already passed april 1st, but he still makes jokes at this hour. When is the "real" wrap up going to be?
In Hienlein's _Stranger in a Strange Land_ the mentor of the human-raised-by-Martians ("Smith") spends quite a bit of time trying to explain humor. One of the breakthroughs occurs when he divides jokes into funny-many-times and funny-once.
Funny-once jokes: Tell it once, you're a wit. Tell it twice and you're a half-wit.
Smith responds: "Geometric series?"
Today's Slashdot seems to support Smith's Conjecture.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Scroll back to 1995, or the like
Dude, how does your browser cache handle that much data?
Come again partner.
Fried ice cream is a reality. - George Clinton
*mods todays stories -1 Flamebait, -1 Troll.*
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
Microsoft PR Machineh tm l
See how Microsoft automatically generates press releases
http://www.valleyofthegeeks.com/News/PRMachine.
Recession Cancelledh tm l
So a few hundred thousand lost their jobs?
http://www.valleyofthegeeks.com/News/Recession.
Software Qality Study
Find out the best way to eliminate bugs
http://www.valleyofthegeeks.com/News/Bugs.html
More Banner Ads We'd Like to SeeA ds 2.html
Microsoft Windows: Where Quality is Job 1.1
http://www.valleyofthegeeks.com/Features/Banner
Bwahhahahahahahah
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Hey, this is great. I get to weed out all the humorless whinny posters in one day! I must've foe'd 15 people today.
What's really not funny about today is how little a sense of humor most slashdot readers have. Maybe you didn't think the stories were funny, and sure, some of them weren't, but that doesn't mean you should yell and scream at Taco and the rest. If you're so worried about tech news that you can't go a whole day without it, you've got issues.
Whoa, davmoo
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Here is a mirror.
Alan Thicke's Journal
My Slashdot ads say "
I agree wholeheartedly with this poster.
In the past Slashdot has managed to mix the jokes with real stories. But it seems that as Linux becomes important, it seems to have been declared completely irrelevant one day per year.
The thing that pisses us off isn't (just) the remarkably lame stories, it's the deliberate decision to suppress all other stories.
But life doesn't play by our rules, and some news is too important to ignore.
As a horrific example, imagine some stalker killed Bill Gates today. Or Sen. Disney (Fritz Holling) died in plane crash. It could happen, and the universe is perverse enough to make it happen on April 1st. This would certainly be newsworthy enough to warrant breaking the "jokes only" rules, yet imagine the inevitable response as many posters mistook this news as a joke.
In fact, I'm not absolutely sure some of these "jokes" were intended as such. The Debian rootkit, in particular, is a reference to a very real problem that both Red Hat and Debian developers have been struggling with for some time - how do you protect users from compromized binary packages? Get a compromized core package on the Debian or RedHat website and the automated installers will install that rootkit on a *lot* of systems. If this doesn't keep you awake at night, you don't understand the problem.
Yet now most people will be unable to see any discussion of this issue without thinking of the April Fools submission.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
this is the first time i've ever felt the need to reply to any of the storys on /.
i must say all these people posting and saying it was a waste of time and such like posting all the april fools, need to lighten up and get a sense of humour.
anyways, thats my twopence worth...
"lack of quality control is one of the pillars of slashdot"
The world doesn't grind to a stop because it's the first of April.
April's Fool, right??! You had me going there for a second. Like /. gives you an all-encompassing view of the tech world.
I am stunned with how upset people are about the nonsense that made the front page today. Stop gnashing your teeth and turn on TechTV or something...
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
I heard Gates made Ballmer wear that for one week after the MonkeyBoy video got out.
"...and generally behaved in a manner one can only describe as despicable." - February 27 2001, Michael Sims
On 1 April 2004, Kathleen Malda receives letter from the Holland, Michigan, "divorce court". The letter, however, is completely blank, except for a single line:
April Fools! Get it? GET IT???
On 2 April 2004, Rob Malda receives a letter from the same court. The letter is not blank, however...
Rob, things are funny only up to a certain point. I hope you've been reading the comments.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Thanks for the usual April Fools Day flame- every year people fall for it. It never ceases to amaze me how angry and venomous, yet utterly clueless a few people can be despite the blatant obviousness of the joke.
Ohhhh, I see. You posted one April Fool's story after another, abondaoning all subtlety and thus destroying all the humor intentionally? You did it just so you could sit back and watch people flame you?
Internet culture has a word for people like you. The word is "troll."
TheFrood
If you say "I'll probably get modded down for this..." then I will mod you down.
GameFAQs did a funny April Fool's joke where they turned themselves into GameFAXs (with the X being the X-box X), claiming they went all X-box, since "it's the only system that matters"
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Yes, yes, this post is also a flame. Time to go do something real.
It's the joke that slashdot has become.
http://209.61.162.98/1999/LAW/12/2/gates.murder.01 /
my favorite april fools joke this year
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
Yes, the rumors are true...
The moon has apparently expired.
The RFCs are available on x42.com here and here. As linked to by the RFC slashbox...
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
The point of an "April Fools joke" is to make someone look like a fool for the purpose of humor. This is accomplished by presenting something that is clever such that it looks believable but is fake under closer examination. Today's Slashdot fiasco only succeeded in making you and your editors look like a bunch of morons, without the joyful side effect of creating laughs. Nothing clever. Nothing believable except to complete idiots.
If you are presented with X pieces of information and you know for a fact that out of those X pieces, ALL of them are fake... well, you won't be fooled. Now if maybe one or two believable stories were injected into today's article, there might have been comedic value.
You're getting tons of flames and pissed off users because IT JUST ISN'T FUNNY. Once or twice, maybe, but not every single story! If I spent my entire day doing nothing but pulling April Fools jokes on my girlfriend, I'd have my balls kicked by now. Do that to half a million Slashdot readers, and you WILL get flamed!
Maybe next year you'll get it... probably not. But this bullshit probably resulted in a lot of good story submissions getting tossed out. What a waste.
Why bother.
Ended for me 12 hours ago.
Sorry! i forgot that only the US counts. my bad. Hrmm i wonder if there was ANY tech news for April 1, i guess it wont be found on slashdot.
All AF jokes are supposed to be ended by 12 noon April 1st traditionally.
1 or 2 stories are funny. but for fucks sake, a whole fucking page of bullshit. It is called TIRED or LAME. Hell i suppose we will have next year the effort to move slashdot from linux to a phat unisys box running Blackcomb.
Do the following really mean anything? SCSA MCP CCSA CCNA
--I'm not actually after an answer!
http://rfc1591.com/
http://annotated.rfc1591.com/
http://new.rfc1591.com/
Need Mercedes parts ?
By using flags in the tcp/ip header, it should be possible to specify if you want the packets to be 110V or 220/230V, if it should be AC or DC. It should even be possible to request various other forms of electricity like, 1.5V, 3V, 6V 9V etc. If you add this to a wireless system, electrical cars would never run out of juice. Billing would easily be solved using GPS coordinates, so that you would receive a bill from the county, state, country you are currently driving in. Ahhhhh... I love April... It smells soooo good!
If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!
I usually use my moderator points within a few minutes after I notice that I have them. Not today. I think I'll wait until tomorrow and moderate posts about a real story. Maybe I'll even moderate some AC comments.
Ralph
I missed out on the free mod points.
- 13 Updated Slashdot Advertising Policy by CmdrTaco with 320 comments on Tue April 02, 0:13
For anyone ahead the US AF "pranks" clog up everything for about 48 hours starting from our April 1st.Seriously, limit next year's AF coverage to one internal /. admin related post plus a "Quickies" that reports on other pranks. Having a homepage full of stupid lies does not a happy surfer make.
Oh, yeah, much of the rest of the world doesn't "get" Halloween either, but at least the Simpsons Halloween specials are actually funny. Even if they are played around xmas.
Likewise -- I didn't realise most (if not all) the day's stories were April-Fools until the 3rd or 4th one, but somehow that made it get funnier every time I'd check back and find a fresh one!!
As to the people it upset -- Chill, guys. Sometimes it's more fun to just go with the flow, rather than getting your knickers in a twist because it wasn't what you expected.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
This is sooo on-topic, oh mighty moderators
/me does happy naked dance while anonymous
"Kathleen Fent, will you marry me?"
No wait, that wasn't today...
Don't worry, I'm not going to get all corny and weepy. Yeah, the guy really was born on April 1st. If you met him, you'd know how well it fits. Happy Birthday, Kurt!
<rant>
For the groaners: waah. Slashdot isn't Democracy Now, The Progressive, and sure the hell isn't CNN, NPR, MSNBC or whatever "hard news" site you've been looking for. It's a pretty cool blog - it keeps me (and you) coming back.
</rant>
Anyway, at least there's one day a year everyone can act a fool - even better if it's your birthday!
As for the other 364 days...
Last year there were MORE april fools jokes on the /. frontpage as I recall. . . .
:P
bah. Just more whiners this year.
The net was actualy pretty slow for april fools stuff, and A LOT of it has come down early (excuse me folks, uh, 4 hours to go. . . . at least here on the west coast). Last year was better. ^_^
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
A former contractor at my place of work, in a rare moment of insight, said, "XML is one thousand bytes of markup for 10 bytes of data."
There ain't no rules here; we're trying to accomplish something.
Disabling anonymous posts was kind of interesting actually. (It had better just be one day though!) Wonder how many new accounts were created today vs other days?
The whole thing was different this year. In the past there have been a few mixed in with the regular news, but today nothing but crap. If the plan is to do this every year then it is the beginning of something lame. If the plan is to do something different each year then the whole thing is the beginning of something interesting to look forward to.
I did wonder about what I was missing when I realized that every story was going to be a joke, but then realized that perhaps I should take a day and just miss out! Probably got more work done today than usual. Hmmm...
My favorite was the change in ad policy. Actually was pissed for a moment until I realized what day it was.
The editors should post a best of the clueless collection for comment. After the load of crap today, I'll bet they have some pretty good and totally useless rants to show off.
Blogging because I can...
The worst -- and funniest -- abuse of the clueless is AOLiza. Take the oldest and lamest online shrink, hook it up to a well-known message system, and you will laugh until you have trouble breathing.
God, I'm cruel and arrogant...
Maybe I'm igrnorant or just slightly dumb, but do you think that when you announce that the April Fools joke is over that you should give a list of stories which fell under the April Fool umbrella? I know some of them are fake, but others I'm clueless.
We'll look back and see that CmdrTaco accomplished in one day what T(H)GSB could not accomplish in a week. Wooha.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Angry and clueless? OK, now that I know what CmdrTaco thinks of me, I won't post anymore. This just goes to show how ignorant some web site operators can be. (Read the linked editorial. As a media organization, Slashdot undermines the trust it has worked to build.)
/. today: it is idiocy to place fake stories. They don't fool, at least not me, and they don't amuse. They just annoy and get in the way. Then CmdrTaco insulting his users, well, that takes the cake!)
(My take on
You've got a very limited idea of "news" sites, then, at least IMHO. Most of the news sites I've passed today had a few April Fool's jokes. It should also be noted that the ONLY jokes that Slashdot created were the "Slashvertisements" which actually did take me a (split second) to realize that it was an April Fool's joke, and the two Ask Slashdots (the first one I'm still not sure about - maybe it was serious? ).
All of the other ones were propagated from OTHER sites. Tom's Hardware, Stepwise, the LKML, Google (!), The Register - all Slashdot did was report them. Whether or not you consider them news sources, I do.
Don't blame Slashdot. Slashdot doesn't create much news or research much news - it's a summary site - it grabs content from OTHER sites, in general. Lots of IT/geek sites had April Fool's jokes today, so, by extension, so did Slashdot.
Where everyone with Mod points got so fed up they started modding all the trolls and first posters to +5 :)
Now *THAT* was funny!
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
*CmdrTaco'sWife'sNameHere* we've only been married for a short time and well..the dot com boom has gone to bust..we're charging for subscription to Slashdot just to provide material people can find other places for free. I can't afford you anymore. I want a divorce!
April Fools!
Hmm... I was expecting flamebait or troll. Heh.
"Derp de derp."
the MIB actually does compile (parses 100%) and I bet a real application could be written to it, along with an agent.
hey, mixing snmp and mp3 playing gives me a double-win for my time investment.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
A lot of people at UIUC got this message this morning, disguised as a "Massmail" (read: pointless drivel from the administration). Note the name of the doctor and the lot number on the condoms.
k mail: 2.05
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 07:36:04 -0600
From: "Dr. Ivana Fukalot, MD Asst Dir.McKinley Health Center"
Subject: MASSMAIL - Emergency Condom Recall
To: postmaster@your.smtp.com
Precedence: list
Reply-To: ivanafuk@uiuc.edu
X-Massmail-Tag: 20020401097950-543798
X-URL: http://www.cso.uiuc.edu/services/massmail/
X-Bul
X-UIDL: j3*#!%g:"![aO"!UHH!!
To all University students:
It has recently come to the attention of the McKinley Health Center
Staff that a recent batch of condoms purchased and already in partial
distribution on campus may be defective. According to Trojan, the
manufacturer of the condoms, several thousand condoms distributed to the
University of Illinois may have inappropriately passed the quality
control tests at their production facility.
The recall affects all Trojan brand condoms of the normal, non-ribbed,
variety. If you have received such condoms from McKinley or the McKinley
Resource Center since February 3rd, you are strongly advised to take the
following actions:
If you have used such condoms there is small probability that
microscopic holes may have prevented the condom from performing
effectively. To determine if your pack of condoms was part of the batch
that inappropriately passed the quality control tests, please take the
following steps immediately:
1.) Remove an unused condom from its wrapper.
2.) Fully unroll and stretch the condom and rotate it looking for the
lot numbers imprinted near the base of the condom.
3.) Alternatively, place your mouth on the condom and gently exhale,
inflating the condom to reveal the lot numbers.
If the beginning of the lot numbers starts with:
31337-H4Ck
you may have a condom from the defective batch.
Trojan has requested that we collect all unused condoms from this batch and
return them immediately for testing and disposal. If you are unsure as
to whether the condom pack you possess is affected or not please follow
the return instructions below.
Drop points have been conventiently setup at McKinley Health center and
the McKinley Resource Center. For your convinience we have also arranged
for the tuition drop boxes both in the Illini Union and the Henry
Administration building to be opened for condom collection.
We deeply regret this incident and we realize this situation may have
many serious implications. If you have any further questions we urge you
to contact the McKinley Health Center.
Sincerely,
Dr. Ivana Fukalot, MD
Asst. Director of McKinley Health Center
This mailing approved by:
The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs
--
This message sent via MASSMAIL.
ahem ???
Anonymous posting? I don't understand.
S
n/t.
I think that was quite possibly the very worst poetry in the universe. Good thing for me this Lazyboy isn't a PAC (Poetry Appriciation Chair)!!!
~Me.
exactly do you mean? I still see a checkbox
Before Linux, there was ... Amiga.
... Unix.
... the mainframe.
... ENIAC.
... life.
... humor.
... well, I don't have a solution, because that is very sad. :( -- Like this guy here.
/. I laughed hard at some, smiled at others, and groaned at the rest. But I'll be damned if I'm going to criticize someone for being human.
Before Amiga, there was
Before Unix, there was
Before the mainframe, there was
Before ENIAC, there was
Before, during and after life, there was
To flamers (MAN, there's a motherlode of different directions one could take that term): If you REALLY insist on a 24/7/365.25 feed of news related entirely to machines that have no ability to function until deranged programmers feed them instructions
One day. One day out of an entire year (for most of us), the rest of the days of which are spent in relentless pursuit of 100% uptime and the utopia of open-source, completely cross-platform applications, that we've dedicated to enjoying our tenure on this blue and green rock and remembering that the one significant advantage we enjoy over the objects of our affection is a sense of humor, and people do what? They analyze it and pick at it and place a number score on it and do any manner of things that suggest that their lives are devoid of sex, food, national basketball championship triumphs (or heartaches) -- in short, everything except quantum algorithms or recursive databases or (insert malformed computer adjective/noun combo here).
If what happened today is truly not humorous to you, fine. But those of you who whined and complained and had to be too cool for those who run this place and refused to acknowledge that they might want to enjoy themselves for ONE DAY, then go ahead and obtain your cybernetic implant and your serial-number plate on the back of your neck, because you're one step from mindless enslavement to digerati.
Being a Linux newbie (yeah, heaven forbid) and a relative newcomer to the world of serious programming, I didn't understand many of the April Fool's posts initially, but it doesn't take a retard to recognize the attempt, or the necessity of said attempt by the aforementioned admins of
Life happens. Enjoy the ride.
how about next year they don't post ANY AFD jokes and fool us that way?
When travelling, it's ok if the airlines lose your emotional baggage.
Maybe some people did, but hell, it was so obvious that it wasn't even funny. Maybe you should spend some time next year thinking of one big funny joke. Maybe then people will actually congratulate you.
a 10 year old autistic kid in Arkansas laughed 2 whole times.
Let's be kind and just say the timing of THAT announcement is highly suspect. In the "Spirit" of AF'sD, I hope those producers at Paramount get an earful and he really does reprise his role on ST-E. I'm hitting his site now ... just to make sure!
"Citizens demand a stadium" sounds like a reference to the original SimCity game (not sure whether it was in later version such as 2000 and 3000, I only played the first version).
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
How do you get a job like the guy on the right?
During the employment interview.
- "Hi, we'd like you to be the most annoying feature in the whole Windows world. The guy that everyone would like to shoot, stomp on, mutilate and do other nasty stuff to.
So, what do you say? Are you ready to join the high tech industry? Minimum wage of cause!"
- "Umm, sure. Why not?"
Or perhaps they just get an MCSA to do it? I hear that they are cheap and plentiful.
Atleast thats my boss reason for not using Unix.
Euro-Football: Hattrick
Do something that counts. Team 249.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
... if i remember correctly any april fools done after mid-day give you a years bad luck so here's my prediction of the future; Advertising doesn't bring in enough money so you have to bring in subscription Many people dont like this so quit /. and goto another news site
CowboyNeal goes ill with worry and quits the /. team
Without CowboyNeal to guide you fights break out in the /. team and you self combust
All this because you took april fools to far... now the joke's on you
{TheT3chfreak}
Would you like me to:
* Fuck the spelling up
* Post this multiple times as different people
* Add a stupid opinionated comment at the end
* Forget to close a HTML tag
-Yarn - Rio Karma: Excellent
They should have just reposted the story on Microsoft focusing on:
/. April Fool
"Security, Security, Security"
That would belatedly be the best
Thats one true story (according to Micro$oft) that sounds like an Aprils Fool....
Should I have known? Yeah, the site was down, then up. I knew the date and all, and I was wracking *my* brain for a AF joke for my friends.
What lent it plausibility after all that?
Berman and Braga.
After last week's pre-TOS Ferengi episode, I'm not surpised about anything they do with the show.
(Besides, acting gigs are good for Wil, an actor, y'know?....)
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
It is wonderful to see /. poking fun at itself and the industry in general -- thank for the April Fool's jokes yesterday - some of which were just barely plausible to make me stop and wonder.... hey, maybe this is a real story, nah, no way... Anyway, I think the best part of yesterday's /., aside from the unleashed umagination, was the bajillions of postings of irate, irrational, and (as usual) horribly misspelled responses.... again, thank you!!!
(anon due to office response...)
...at how childish and stupid web site operators can be by posting this crap, and how "amazed" they are at people getting pissed off. It wasn't funny five years ago, it's not funny now. It's gotten so bad that I don't even bother reading anything but CNN on April 1st since /. and everyone else screws up the dayly newsfeeds with crap.
Humor is on rec.humor.funny. Please get a clue.
I am sorry for doubting you, who called it like it is.
Blatant = Obvious
You can apply a modifier of up to -6 to anonymous posts. This assures that even if an AC were to post a comment that was moderated up to a 5, there's still no way you'd see it.
Let's be honest - this is a website for people that are wasting time - either by not studying, or by not working. It has semi-interesting articles, but it is most definitely not NPR, the Washington Post, or CNN. It's a geek site, run by a few guys who thought it would be a cool idea. I don't even understand why they stick around (CmdrTaco and Hemos) because quite frankly, I would think that they'd be tired of all the flames they get day in and day out. Do you get as attacked at your job as they do everyday?
If you don't like the site - don't come to the site. If you don't like the site on AFD, don't come to the site on AFD. It's one day. (Ok, kindof two days, but there are now legit articles up, so I'm still going to count it as just one day.)
And furthermore (as I stand a little straighter on my soap box) I don't understand all of the flames about spell checking stories and whatnot. It's not like Taco was a BETTER speller 3 years ago! Nothing has changed. If you didn't like it then, you shouldn't have set up camp in the first place. It hardly makes sense to flame away for flaws that have been here since the beginning.
I know I may well pay painfully for this post, but so be it.
Attention, folks:
The Great Slashdot Blackout will now be held on 4/1/2003. Put it on your calendars now! Even the chance of being exposed to this kind of soul-sucking lameness again is frightening. Don't risk it!!
Also, I move to make it an annual event, do I hear a second?
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
LAST POST!!!
Try it! Library of Babel
A bit overly sensitive to trivial things? Get over it
I have to agree with some of the other posters - the April Fools' Day jokes just weren't that funny. A few might've been funny, but Taco, beating a dead horse is BAD. After the first few, we got the idea - yeah, it's April Fools' Day. Ok, ok, we got it already.
/. wants to be a serious news source, and actually have people pay for subscriptions though, this kind of stuff just won't fly. Do this enough times, and your subscribers will abandon you like rats from a sinking school bus. Or something.
If
Sorry, but when you beat people upside the head with the same joke over and over, it loses its humor after the first couple (thousand) times.
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
As if you take adequacy seriously.
Oh, and *BSD is dying. Don't forget.
(some flamebait and troll for your ass.)
Games Magazine is still going strong, and still has the fake ad in every issue.
Speaking of them in the past-tense is a bit unfair ...
Chivalry is not dead, it's just frequently misspelt. - M. Langley
Imagine trying to explain electron tunneling to a non-scientist. It's blatantly obvious to him that an electron cannot go from here to there without being in the middle at some point in time.
And what was so blatant about what you did? "Here's how Google ranks their articles..." does not appear to be a joke, you have to actually waste your time reading the article you link to to find out. But you've still wasted the time of those who read the summary you wrote.
I think it is you who needs a clue. April Fool's jokes that destroy your credibility, and that you've now got people PAYING you for, are not funny, and there are enough fools playing them that you need not.
If I want humour, I know websites that provide it. When I want REAL information, I know where not to come anymore -- who knows that you aren't playing a REALLY funny April Fool's joke by posting a fake stories all year long?
pretty funny shit.
FIRST POST!!!
If there's any money in it, I claim prior art.
While working on the source code of the new Swedish fighter, the JAS39, about 10 years ago, one of the other two members of our 3-man team (after translating 100's of comments pertaining to the 'laddning' [loading] of software modules) translated the Swedish 'batteriladdning' as 'loading of batteries,' which captivated my imagination, as virtual batteries were a totally new concept for me at the time.
When I pointed it out to him, he simply groaned, saying that he had _obviously_ meant 'charging' (also 'laddning' in Swedish).
At the time, I was on the verge of replacing my old Bondwell (Z80, CP/M - I _still_ have it and yes, I do need to download new batteries) with a new portable. But without the attraction of soft batteries stored on the hard disk, none of the hardware available at the time seemed worthwhile so I never got around to it.
Question: has anybody seen an equation relating amp-hours and GBytes yet?
relax dude. you should take slashdot about 5x less seriously.
I'm over 30 and thought it was hilarious. So there.
Well, of course, we have been trolled. And I found it fucking hilarious.