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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."
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
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
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
...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.
...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.
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!!!!!!
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.
They were repetive, unimaginative and unfunny. The best jokes are subtle - making it blatantly obvious makes it extremely unfunny.
Good points. Ever read the old Games magazine? Every issue had one fake ad buried in amongst the genuine adverts. That's another element of a good fake: you bury it in among the genuine articles. In that context it has a much better chance to fool people - and to amuse those who are alert enough to get it.
The RISKS Digest is now publishing an entire issue devoted to this April phenomenon, and has for several years. But it was much funnier back when Mr. Neuman published just one fake item in the issue.
But the blatantly obvious can be funny. Spaghetty growing on trees is pretty bleeding obvious, but it's still funny. Like the foolishness over at Freshmeat today: the new color scheme "inspired" by the X-Box. Obvious, but still funny.
--Jim
Well, especially for this occasion I had two big hunks of /dev/zero, freshly dumped with dd(1). Of course, these files are now gone. 180 MB of binary zeroes is kinda wasteful dontchathink? I recycled them now by putting them back in the bitbucket.
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.
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.
Don't turn on anonymous posting!
My god, there is so much less crap in the threads, even in spite of all the whinging-on about the so-called jokes.
I *like* Slashdot non-anon.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
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
Taco, Hemos and Neal were laughing at you and the folks like you who got so pissy about this whole thing.
The joke wasn't the stories - it was the comments to the stories! You were the April Fool's Day joke!
It's akin to Beavis and Butthead. The show wasn't all that funny, but the people who reacted, positively or negatively, to it were hilarious!
Hallelujah, I'm not alone in thinking a slashback was the best way to handle this (hint: try this next year guys; you might get less flames). As others have pointed out, having a joke in amongst the real stories is the best way to go. The silliness hit rock bottom way too early yesterday.