Slashdot Mirror
Geeky April Fools' Day Prank Roundup
An anonymous reader writes "April 1st is the ultimate holiday for a geek — a little hands-on DIY, a little hacking and a lot of sub-par humor. Popular Mechanics and Instructables have teamed up for five pranks you can build in the office (including a stripped-down version of Gizmodo's CES TV blackout), while Wired has its top 10 practical jokes for nerds, Lifehacker is toning it down with 10 harmless geek pranks, and Slate gets you ready for the receiving end with an April Fools' defense kit. What's your best prank?" Be safe, head for the bunker on 4/1 and just assume everything you hear is a lie. Everything.
I love those things - I bought three of them, some of the bets money I've ever spent. The first two were simple pranks - One in my fathers car right before a 12 hour journey (he nearly killed me when he found it) and another an a co-workers backpack before we went to evening classes.
The third, though, was a masterpiece of evil, lasting several months. I snuck it in a VP's office, but I'd only leave it on for a day at most - and then turn it off. A week passes, I turned it back on for another day or so, then off again - but making sure there wasn't really a consistent pattern. After a few months of this, I found him in his office, with a pen and a notepad, and almost everything turned off... He was writing down the time of each beep, and turning off a device in his office each time until he was finally sitting there in the dark, with nothing left to make noise, and a notepad full of timestamps.
No, most organisms have difficulty locating the source of high frequency noise. That's why the "emergency, hide" call of blackbirds (and lots of other songbirds) is a single high pitched note; their chicks and other blackbirds can hear it, but the attacker doesn't know where the blackbirds are.