Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot:Mark 2
I, like all of you, am really sad to see the closing of
several of my favorite sites today. User Friendly
was a regular place for me, and Bedope often provided me
with a good laugh. So
I've decided to convert Slashdot to a pure humor site in
their abscense.
This is firstly because so many readers wrote in to flame me
about the lack of integrity in several of the stories
we've posted today. But mostly its just because Segfault
always stunk. Wesley Crusher. Bah. Rest in Peace.
Please have a sense of humor people. I can't
believe I'm actually getting flame over April Fools Day!
Some people just have no sense of humor.
At least they don't have my dogs name ... at least not yet.
How come none of the sites involved will name the mysterious party that they claim is threatening them with legal action? Doesn't it seem a little bit fishy?
Yes, that's a very good idea. Just filter it through ispell.
A-Yup. All you hotheads and gullible ppl can settle down now. You been had.
Of course not.
/. has an F+, along with UF... I won't see Dust Puppy again with same love :(
AFD is an Anglosaxon costume. Latin countries have Innocent's day -as called there- (Dec 28 th.) for same jokes. But most people is aware.
So, let's say next Dec. 28 th. some mexican guy releases a notice here that Gnome has been taken by mexican government and Miguel de Icaza is in jail, under charges of conspiracy against government?
Ok, GTK fans would cheer, but... perhaps someone can take it serious and even start a (stupid) international incident...
Some evident jokes (LUG riots, Linus' new employment) can be recognized as jokes at first sight, but a hoax so anticipated, so prepared and relating to speech freedom looks quite stupid.
And it wasn't an April Fools one, since the hoax started a week ago. It just culminated today.
Today
...
???
!!!
:) that is too funny
You had me for about 10 seconds, if you're keeping track.
Pahaha... that's the funniest thing I've heard all day.. thanks...
-D.Alphaeus
First off, Micro$oft is evil. Nobody disputes that (maybe Bill himself does, but that's another story). Second, nerds do visit here, nerds do read the news here, and nerds do argue over it all day (ever read the comments that go along with each story?). Third, the above was also meant to be a parody.
And I still cant log in...
LafinJack
"The best defense is a good offense, and I plan to start offending right now." -J. T. Kirk
after reading these comments, it seems that the "open minded" people are the ones that cannot laugh. It takes more then a card to believe in true liberty.
Aaaiiieee!!
This April Fools stuff is driving me mad!
MAD I tell you!
Sure there is go to UserFriendly now
it's back up.
Have you read the title bar of your browser?
Slashdot: News for Nerds: Stuff that Matters.
Does this not suggest anything to you? Have you fasiled to notice the regular articles on Star Wars, Lego, and MST3K?
Perhaps you are confusing Slashdot with 'The Register' or 'Linux Weekly News'.
On the subject of April Fools, since the Linus/E2K story is hosted on a genuine Russian computer news site, I guess that the tradition extends at least that far.
...all the flames you got over April fools jokes were themselves april fool jokes.
Well, there's the needle that broke this back. I think it's high time that slashdot evaluate it's goals. If it wants to be accepted as a legitimate source of information then it should realize that just because today is April 1st doesn't mean that legitamite businesses shut down. I think the lack of seriousness in a site like slashdot only reflects what many people have been complaining about during the whole Linux movement. In paticular that is the seemingly childness of its user base. I think there are certain things that shouldn't be sullied by this days events.
How, in good conscience can Malda post an article explaining how he would rather get emails about old news and unrelated news rather than flame on the comment list?
Isn't it time for the slashdot community to leave the jokes to segfault, the flame to script kiddies on irc, and invest it's efforts in some serious news?
It is one thing for a news site to propogate the jokes of others unwittingly. It is another to start them knowingly and allow them to interfere with the site and it's users as a whole.
On another note, I'm really curious to know if April Fools is celebrated all over the world? Are there people reading these articles and believing them because they don't A) know better, B) celebrate April Fools in there part of the world C) trust Slashdot as a news source and therefore have been duped by a confidante or D) couldn't smell a lie if it were a ton of tuna.
Joseph Elwell.
...moderating these comments! :-) :->
:-0
ROTFLOL!
YGTBSM!
I can just picture some guy sitting there
w/out a clue in the world thinkin' he's doin'
his job moderatin' the hell out of the responses
It's AFD fer cryin' out loud and we're responding to a joke! Hellooooh! Rob, you're complainin' to us but yer own moderators can't even let loose a little I guess
Excuse me, but the last time I checked, /. was a privately-run site made available because Rob, et al., wanted to. It is not a public company. It doesn't sell anything. It is *not* being run by journalists, nor is it a geek-equivalent of AP, Reuters, or Knight-Ridder. It's an interactive website run by a group of great guys because they feel like it!
/., you don't run /., therefore, you shouldn't be telling the /. operators how they should run their site.
/.?
If you want a news-oriented website that is always 100% serious, blah, blah, blah, then I highly suggest you start your own. Otherwise, shut up. You don't own
Furthermore, I recall an April edition of Car & Driver that did a full-scale review of a snow-plow! They did it in the same format as their writeups on exotic sportscars and the latest truck, including top speed (10 MPH), acceleration (0 to 10 MPH in ~65 sec.), braking distance (this baby could stop on a dime!), and slolom capabilities (instead of going around the cones, it pushed 'em out of the way.) The article even included the base price and the price fully-loaded with options (leather seat, CD player, heat, and a larger plow blade.) It was an interesting article, and it was also amusing because C&D was poking fun at itself. Those guys don't take themselves too seriously. Why should CmdrTaco, or Hemos, or anyone else involved with
SLASHDOT CAN POST WHATEVER THE HELL IT WANTS TO POST. THEN END.
These frivolous attempts at levity are disgusting! We the readers of Slashdot will NOT be distracted from our mission of holding Cmdr Taco (and Hemos/ESR/RMS/Scoop/Perens/Kernighan/Ritchie) accountable for EVERYTHING wrong with life, the universe, and the open source movement. It is the moral duty and great challenge facing every Gen X-er to ensure a safe future for Generation Y. By God, we must not and will not develop a sense of humor! These are grave and urgent concerns and flamage is the ONLY effective way to bring bring about positive change.
Yo! Taco! Check out what happened when the Motley Fool ran an April Fool last year. Some of the flamage they got (and posted) was just priceless...
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
All Hail Discordia!
Kallisti!
fnord
ttyl
Farrell
(another POPE, and Druid as well!)
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
The brilliant part of this elaborate prank is that it was _so_ well carried off, it had people taking it seriously, just like the War of the Worlds hoax! I myself wasn't certain that somebody hadn't sued Illiad. It's interesting to look at this in context and ask 'WHY was this wicked prank so very credible? You didn't have to be stupid to fall for it- there were some smart and sensible people who weren't ready to lightly dismiss the possibility that Microsoft was overturning amendments to the Constitution... indeed, MS suits reacted to the suggestion with a seriousness that implies they, too, were running around to see if it was TRUE, and they'd theoretically be the first to know it wasn't, right? Yet it fooled the MS suits as well, and yanked their chain. There was some scrambling going on in Redmond as Microsofts ran around going 'What did we do? Who did it? Get the lawyers, we want some answers! What are we sanctioning here?' :)
For this reason especially, I nominate the Siege of '99 as the Great Bastard Joke from Hell, or BJFH, not to be easily outdone. Brilliant, wonderfully evil, and ya got even Microsoft suits to run around in a panic trying to figure out what had gone so horribly wrong
*APPLAUSE*, and thank god it wasn't real!
We are talking Jape of the Decade...
At least I thought so. I really liked the Linux Riot and Salon peices. The User Friendly was the first I noticed this morning, and it elicited a distinctive, and quite vocal, "What the fuck!?" from yours truly. Neat way to start the day. I was focused on rotating my logs this am, so I completely forgot the AFD aspect. Heh, way to go Rob!
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Lighten up folks, it's not the end of the world!
Man, I can't wait until Y2K. I'm sitting on a tall mountain with a shotgun and a case of baked beans to watch the ensuing fun... ;>
On April 1, 1984, an announcement that kremvax now had a connection to the usenet, with a cleverly forged retuirn to kremvax. In a parody of typical soviet propoganda of the time, it explaind that this was a peace initiative.
1 225225&cid=1995
Many were taken in, in spite of april 1 or 4/1 appearing in several locations, and the silliness of the idea. Several of them became angry at the mocking of peace/lost opportunity/lost chance/whatever.
While UF wasn't *as* easy to detect, it is just as clearly a hoax; the legal positions cannot be real (without an even less probable coincedence of incompetence). I explained more fully at http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/04/01/
which the article states is used in the design.
On April 1, 1984, an announcement that kremvax now had a connection to the usenet, with a cleverly forged retuirn to kremvax. In a parody of typical soviet propoganda of the time, it explaind that this was a peace initiative. Many were taken in, in spite of april 1 or 4/1 appearing in several locations, and the silliness of the idea. Several of them became angry at the mocking of peace/lost opportunity/lost chance/whatever. While UF wasn't *as* easy to detect, it is just as clearly a hoax; the legal positions cannot be real (without an even less probable coincedence of incompetence). I explained more fully in another comment
sure, it fooled people at first (when the conspiracy started > 1 week ago with the 'litigation'), but then it became MORE than obvious that it was a joke yesterday when all three of them went down.
elaborate prank yes, funny no.
-Stu
C'mon, Rob, think about it: "Stuff that matters." That's what most people come here for. Sure, one or a couple jokes are OK, but there's something that you're forgetting and yet are plugging into users' arses: moderation. If people want jokes, they can always find other websites to satisfy their humour.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Freshmeat also ran its own AFD joke. The difference? It was more subtle, didn't run for so long, and was thus enjoyable.
Heh, who would've known, someone did actually register freshmeat.de and slashdot.de, and had them running...
^D
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Ok, so next time, nobody go to Slashdot, Segfault, UF, BeDope, etc...
So yes, it got me mad. But not the fact that they were just jokes, but because they went on for so long. I wanted real news, dammit!
^D
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Well, it is known where I come from, but just about no one does it, not daring to risk being pummelled to a pulp. You see, sometimes it goes too far off hand (a good example is here on /.).
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
AFD's jokes were:
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Cookies? You actually accept cookies? :)
We call it art because we have names for the things we understand.
Lucky. They got my dog's name and the dimensions of my Guinea Pig.
keep acting shocked and move slowly towards the cake.
Segfault should RIP, Tacohell is much funnier than anything I've ever read on segfault... Even with the typeos :)
I think you're missing the obvious point. Car & Driver did a review of a snow-plow, and *actual* review - as a joke. However that review sounds like it was still *real*. Slashdot is contriving news, and propogating lies. There is a difference between funny news and lies.
Anyways Malda and others have made it clear that they want user input, so asking someone to shut up is clearly out of line.
If slashdot wants to portray itself as a joke site to the world, by all means they can. But, we have been given the opportunity to submit our feedback and try to help shape slashdot into something it wants/isn't.
I think it's important to differentiate between taking yourself seriously and actually lying to people. I'm all for a good joke. I laughed when this morning I reached for my mouse and it didn't work - only to find that someone put a sticky on the ball that said "april fools".
Rob Malda, of all people, should understand that posting lies on the slashdot page could also be called "flamebait".
Joseph Elwell.
I also have mother's maiden name, IQ, and "income bracket".
Why not accept cookies? Its not like someone will try to jU&&^^&))
Lost Carrier
Yeah... absolutely right. While this was a carefully planned plot just think about how easy it would be for sites with an even bigger reputation than /., UF, segfault or whoever.
;)
We've been had by this prank and we could've been by anything else...
So we gotta be careful... but I'm still laughing. Man did they have us...
What's your problem then? I mean, it's just one day in a whole year where the keepers of a (after all) private site have a little fun with us.
I think we all should be able to think twice about the news we get in those 24 hours...
Who forced 'em to offer money? Was there a plea for money and/or legal help on the web page?
Think about what would happen if CNN suddenly announced that they had a source that reported that we had started dropping nuclear missiles on Serbia in response to the three missing Americans
That has got to be one of the most asinine statements I've run across in a while.
First of all, CNN would never do that, that would be equivalent to inciting a panic and they would get there a**es sued off.
We're talking about a friggin' comic strip here, not a war. It's just a couple of websites...I'd strongly suggest taking a walk outside and getting some perspective on life.
....is reading all the indignant flaming comments from people here about the April Fools jokes.
yikes! what a humorless bunch of folks. I pretty much expect most websites to have numerous April Fool's pranks, and bring an appropriately sized grain of salt to work with me on this day.
The thing that I didn't like about these April Fool's jokes were the fact they could have been true
uhh...isn't that the point? If no one believed it could be true, no one would be fooled. It's got to be believable enought to take you in. In fact, the more believable, the better the April Fools' joke.
April Fools jokes are meant to be light hearted and generally pretty obviously a joke
I disagree. If it was obviously a joke, you wouldn't be fooled, now would you?
it's kind of the equivalent of someone telling you they're dying from cancer for a few days, fishing for sympathy, and then telling you they were just kidding
Don't be so ridiculous. Cancer is a matter of life and death. User Friendly is a comic strip. There's a big difference in importance between the two.
...and what's even funnier is all the indignant postings whining about it.
one should always think twice about ANY news article, instead of just blinding accepting it as fact. Not just today, but any day.
PLAY the little shockwave thing and see if you still think it's real.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
uh, i wanted to post a simple comment only in subject (and puting the [NT] at the end in the subject) and /. told me:
:O)
Cat got your tongue?
--
"Science will win because it works." - Stephen Hawking
The thing that I didn't like about these April Fool's jokes were the fact they could have been true (well at least some of them). The whole bit about UF and segfault closing could have been very real. That would have not made me a happy camper. April Fools jokes are meant to be light hearted and generally pretty obviously a joke.
Historic sidelight:
I believe that April Fools day was started by the Christians playing a joke on the Celts. The tradition for the Celts was that April 1 was the new year and they exchanged gifts. Well, the Christians gave them all gag gifts since the Celts were obviously wrong. Thus began the first April Fools Day.
Gordon
This is a message I posted at Segfault in response to the whingers...
----
Christ, get a grip... The people who are getting do uptight about this really ammuse me... As April 1st drew close I was excepting that I would have my chain yanked by at least on of the sites I visit often, and at work - But I never expected this. It was brilliant...
But people have such trouble stepping over the ego to admit they were sucked in that they get all nasty about the whole thing... It reminds me alot of a 'Mockumentry' that was screened on New Zealand TV a couple of years back, made by Peter Jackson (Director of The Frightners and the upcoming Hobbit movies), about a New Zealand who developed a cine camera earlier than alot of other people and among other things caught Richard Pierce flying before the Wright brothers (A New Zealander, Richard Pierce was attempting to fly about the same time the Wright brothers were, and there are reports that he was infact first by a matter of days, however they are hard to prove), this had so many people sucked in that when it came out a few days later that it was a fake there were so many 'letters to the editor' about it and so on that it received huge (even some international) media attention.. He, I believe even got death threats...
The point was that people felt betrayed on issues they cared strongly about... If it had just been a thing about a crafty Kiwi that made moving pictures before on his on, then people would have felt ripped off, but still seen the humor, but the fact that it seemed to prove that Richard Pierce *was* the first to fly angered many, who obviously would have liked alot to have history re-written to accomidate a New Zealander in a role so pivotal...
Step back, review the whole thing, forget that you were ready to march in the streets, and admire Scott, Illiad, et al. for their staging of this trick...
It is funny... You can't always take yourself so seriously.
It's not necessarily the -UF prank- that was funny, it's the reaction to it that we see from people like you. Agitated, indignant, self-righteous, and serious, for absolutely no reason; no one was murdered, tortured, or otherwise harmed, only duped and misled. We're laughing at -you-, the people who cannot stand to admit that you didn't figure out what was going on till it was too late.
That's what April Fool's Day is all about: the Fools.
Just wait till next year, Charlie Brown!
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
It's amazing how many people can't handle having their noses tweaked. Suck it up and move on, and be glad they only do this to you once a year...
If there's childishness in the Linux 'community', it's all of the whiners acting like Rob and Illiad were torturing small children instead of playing a prank.
Heh, well.. I guess they are, after a fashion..
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
http://www.userfriendly.org/static/
Can we say, not funny?
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
When the ACLU stopped defending liberty and started demanding that the majority pay enough that all the poor could afford to go to circuses they lost my support.
As far as humor goes, who better than a humor site to play an April Fools joke? It's funny. Borrow a dollar people and go rent a clue!
Look around you people! The Constitution was written NOT to protect politically correct speech that was certain to never offend anyone, but rather to protect the speech that many did NOT want to hear.
In this day and age, we can't even say "Bitch, bitch, bitch!" without losing our jobs! I asked an attorney that was briefing our company on what we could say what the hell happened to free speech?! She said that this speech type (ie. "bitch" or anything that could be interpreted as negative) was NOT protected. End of discussion.
This was funny to some of us, not funny to others, and terrifying to a few. So which group is right? Doesn't matter! Because each of us is entitled to hear this or read this and to decide on our own whether or not we liked it. It is certainly okay to say you didn't like it, or to say it wasn't funny, but for the love of Pete, don't ask that it be stopped because YOU cannot pigeonhole this into a "funny" category!
Benny
I used to get pissed off when "serious" magazines etc. posted fake stories for April Fools Day (and I got taken in). But it's a GOOD thing, when you think about it. We should be questioning the news that's fed to us EVERY day, not just on April Fool's day. Maybe some of the people (like me) who got burnt will learn something. This is important, especially with the low quality of journalism in general, journalists' repeated failure to correctly interpret statistics, etc.
slashdot should have replaced there main page with one of the MS database query error pages that you see so often from sites running MS web server + database....
now that would have been funny!
--Rob
Which brings up a good point... because everyone knows hackers can't spell (or maybe it's just me?), It would be cool if slashdot had a spell checker for articles submitted.
--Rob
As I said, free speech protects all jokes, even really bad ones. All I meant was that this was an elaborate and _UN_funny joke about a matter that we might not be able to make jokes about someday. Chill, I can manage. Enjoy? It would have to be funny first. BTW, now that UF is back up, today's strip is a riot.
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
But there are still some things too important to make jokes about. At the least, they are too important to make jokes about in such a public forum. Whether you agree with me or not on that point, I do not care. It is my opinion, and you are entitled to your own. You may also purchase a copy of my opinion for the low, low price of either a BeOS or Open BSD CD for my next box.
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
You have a valid point. There may come a day, however, when we _CAN'T_ make jokes about freedom of speech/press because there won't be any. You know where I'll be then? Me and ESR and Jesse Ventura will be in a bunker with food, guns, and our families. And it may come to that sooner than we can imagine. That's what makes today's jokes a lot less funny. As far as your list of things we shouldn't joke about, making a list like that comes way too close to censorship for me. Self-imposed common sense about what is and isn't funny ought to work a lot better for what should be a fairly intelligent community like ours.
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
Oh don't be such an ol' stick in the mud. I got duped as well (until all three sites went down at once, on this of all days). Still...it was funny. It's good for slashdot to have a sense of humour...it'd be horrible if Rob & Co started taking all of this too seriously.
:)
:)
Two thumbs up to everyone involved with the joke. It was brilliant
- deb
Actually, I'm all for news sites celebrating April folls day -- I think it helps to illustrate the fact that far too often, we automatically accept what news sources tell us, be it from /., CNN, NYTimes, Uncle Joe Bob's House 'o' News, or .
Lighten up!!! It is April Fools. The only people who get worked up over pranks today are the FOOLS!!!!! Chill and enjoy!!
Sheeesh =)
Wit h all these obvious April Fools Jokes, it's like being bombarded with so much disinformation that you can't tell what's real and what's not, even though it should be obvious.
Uh, this happens everyday. You always should take the news with a grain of salt or silicon and use your best judgement. How many times have we had these 'disinformation' type discussions here at Slashdot alone on non-April Fool's days?
Treat the news as Flame Bait.
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I think it is a good sign for a "news" site like Slashdot to not take itself very seriously. Letting their hair down, so to speak (does that translate in the 90's?).
Evaluate it's goals? I don't really think it's necessary. I think Slashdot does a fine job of keeping its finger on the pulse of the geek community... and that includes everything including geek pranks.
I remember a fine geek-oriented magazine, Computer Language that dedicated its April, 1984 (is that the correct year?) to joke articles about programming... takeoffs of Jerry Pournelle's columns, amusing anectdotes and other stories... even a CENTERFOLD.
I, for one, had gotten used to searching the April issues of Byte for joke articles and reports (not always very obvious).
What happened? Well, Computer Language never did any more prank articles after that issue. And Byte started phasing out their joke articles after a time. And I think that this was/is a loss.
Remember, April Fools jokes are a real tradition here in the States. USENET has had its share of prank postings on this date (I've perpetrated a few of them myself). Even National Public Radio usually has one or two prank reports on this day (and you really can't get any more news-oriented than that source!).
C'mon, develop a sense of humor with the rest of us geeks and nerds and enjoy the day.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
I can't hold back....
Must.... Not..
Ah. Forget it.
Hail Eris. Fnord!
The Pope.
How anyone can hold any reasonable expectation of actually getting reliable news on April 1st is beyond me.
Let's remember, APRIL FOOL'S DAY is for playing practical jokes. Our favorite websites are run by people who will never see even a small fraction of the people who's lives they influence on a daily basis. Every one of these people also has a sense of humor, usually as twisted as our own. It is only natural that they indulge in a joke of their own on this day.
If you can honestly state that you would never play a joke on the public, were you in the position to do so (like those at UserFriendly, SegFault, SlashDot, etc...) Then you are either lying through your teeth, or you're someone who should never be allowed to BE in that kind of position.
Peace,
This message was sent using 100% recycled electrons.
I thought it started in France when they switched calendars?
its gone now =o)
APRIL FOOLS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
oops :) missed that part.
-lx
I said KIND of like. It's the closest thing I could think of. I just think it was kind of abusing people who bothered to voice their support, offered money, etc.
-lx
Thought yall might want to know.
-lx
That one didn't seem like a joke - it's on an official compaq site, and has a little shockwave thingy...I guess it could be, though. From someone inside Compaq. Lot of work to go through for april fools. :)
-lx
http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/99ap r/19990401.html
Please make a post saying what's real and what's
fake, thanks. Maybe make a filter for FAKE news.
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow...
Seriously, I don't come to slashdot for humour. I come here to see what's happening in the geek world. Sometimes I even read the comments. That's enough humour for a site like this :-) Wit h all these obvious April Fools Jokes, it's like being bombarded with so much disinformation that you can't tell what's real and what's not, even though it should be obvious.
I hope to die peacefully in my sleep like grandpa, not screaming like his passengers.
Ok, enough of the jokes.
Lets get something worth reading, eh? I must admit, the first 5 or so were funny (I really liked the one about the mouse by COMPAQ), but now it's getting a little old.
Of course, even if there actually was some real news, no one would believe it. That's the problem with overdoing it on April fools day.
Visa and SSN? Mine aren't in there! I do have my religion and my "sexual orientation", tho. I wonder what other ones are out there...
--
sharkyfour.com
*laugh*
It's the disinformation that makes this all so great. It just adds to the humor value.
-Rich
I guess I would feel better about it... if any of them were funny. Or believable. Or interesting.
:-)
I think the UserFriendly/Segfault joke was beliveable. If you look at User Friendly daily you know that they have been talking about this for about a week. UserFriendly readers organized a site for Illiad's defense, made logos to link to your web page, etc.. It was very well played out. Rob even posted a legitimate (or so we thought) link a few days ago discussing it. It wasn't until this morning that those who had been following it realized they had been taken, and it some of them still dont get it
And I dont see how anyone could have not laughed at the Linux Riot story.
-Rich
Nifty prank, Rob, but we can all tell it's you because things are misspelled. :)
Just like the Katz column posted earlier on the "demise" of UF's probably neither his nor yours: There are no spelling problems.
I've got as much of a sense of humor as the next guy, but, come on! Some people don't take matters like freedom of speech as a joking matter.
I'm sure Bill Gates doesn't find a pie in the face funny, either. Practical jokes are rarely funny to their victims.
But, you're right; we should make a list of all the things that shouldn't be joked about: the Holocaust, France, dead babies, freedom of speech, Jesus, Chernobyl, embarassing personal problems, etc. None of these things could ever be considered funny, not by folks with as much sense of humor as the next guy.
I admit, I didn't get all of the jokes right away. (I still think a gyro-mouse is a pretty good idea...). But it didn't make me mad when I found out they were jokes. So what, if you don't think it's funny, then move on! Don't flame Rob, or post some drivel about how you thought Slashdot was supposed to be a "legitimate" news site. Read under Slashdot in the title - it says "News for _Nerds_." Nerds used to have a sense of humour. Like the cruiser on the MIT dome, the USSR joining the (then-young) Internet, toplevel domains for other planets, and so on. It seems like there are a lot of whiny posts about "It's not real news! It's a travesty!" If you want real news 365 days a year, read Jesse Berst's Anchordesk Alert or something. If you have a sense of humour, then read Slashdot. I'm glad at least some nerds still have a sense of humour.
Photos of bits of the past hiding in the present: afiler.com
-- Word of the day: Percussive maintenance is the fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it wo
Ah, so you also noticed that nearly every article posted today are, to say the least, quite unbelievable :-)
Think of it this way: they have to hold back all the true stories of today, so we will get a double dose tomorrow!
"Fix it? It has been disintegrated, by definition it cannot be fixed!" - Gru in Despicable Me.
Not necessarily true. I agree, it went a bit far, but some organizations do like to have fun with April Fools. For example, the college which I attend, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, did up a remake of the web page for April Fools. However, they were smart enough to make it so that only IPs from within the wpi.edu and wpi.net domains actually were redirected to the parody page. Normal users still see the normal page (although they can get to the parody one).
For anybody who wants to see a whacked out college on crack for April Fools, check it out:
Make sure to reload many times, as the page actually changes when you reload it (the normal one does too). Also, the link on the left of the main image that is to a story about the college does work, and they are quite funny :)
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
I personally liked the User Friendly joke. The coordination effort involved was impressive and it had just enough panic about it to be believable. When you expanded it to other cartoons, though, it lost some credability. Nicely done. When I read it I was upset for a few seconds before I realized it was April Fools. I wonder how many more people would have paniced if you had said that Slashdot was closed due to legal actions brought about by the some anonymous user comments. Then again, that may have hit a little too close to reality. 8^)
Three popular sites just _happen_ to close all because of "litigation" and _all_ on April 1st? C'mon people...
The world could end on April Fools, and we'd all go down laughing. That's a beautiful thing, IMHO.
-- 'As it all washes away you know -- as it all is one, no one is alone.' -Cosmic Disorder
Hey after this story was posted the rest of the stories on the main page are now bolded... !?
if any of them were funny. Or believable. Or interesting.
The soul of a good AFD prank is that you believe, up to the point where you hit a wall and realize that you were taken in all this time.
Also, humor almost always involves something that is funny, and the soul of wit is brevity. Even the most banal of jokes, if it involves guts and originality and sheer hutzpah, can work, provided there is a herd of sheep just in your office, not in every single room you walk into all day.
Sorry, but 15 dozen very obviously fake stories, overdone and shoved in your face on april the first just seems like a waste of bandwidth. Now the soothing voice of an NPR reporter, explaining calmly as you slowly wake up, that Caregie Hall is now Amazon.com Hall, now that is more like it. (Admittedly being half-alseep helps).
NPR knows how to do it. Every year, they have 1, One, only a singular story which is fake, and -almost- believable. Their reporters are smooth, calm, and carry the full wieght of NPR newsworthiness, even while demonstrating the new silent keyboard to be used in Amazon.com Hall's seatback computer terminals.
I worry more about the sheer failure of humor, originality and ingenuity this AFD than I do about people confusing the real news for the fake. Is this the best we can do?
Its really depressing to know that the online linux community would do something as lame as this for the kicks of their webmasters.
I doubt anyone truly found this funny, i certainly didnt.
BOOOOOO to all of you who orchastrated this "joke".
And for anyone who missed it.. check the annoucement at userfriendly.
But i'll keep reading it, cuz im dumb that way.
CG
There seems to be a misconception that most people didn't get the joke, and therefore are miffed about it. While I can't speak for anyone else, I got it the first time around. I wasn't offended by it, I just thought it was pretty dull and pointless for an AFD joke. By the 5th or 6th time I had seen it, I was just ticked off that everytime I refreshed, I had the same bogus story reposted again.
Read "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" by Heinlein. He spends a whole lot of time on the difference between funny once and always funny humour.
If there had been an option to filter it, I wouldn't have minded. On the other hand, that would have been a dead giveaway for those who weren't sure.
Oh well, I got what I paid for, so I don't guess I can complain.
Check out Linux University
Didn't Altavista and Yahoo get shut down for links to porn?
Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis.
Nice!!
;)
I thought it was well done and hysterically funny.
People who can't take a well crafted joke one day
a year need to lighten up. After all, we have to
put up with Microsoft 360-some days a year and it
is not even well crafted
Looking forward to forgetting it is April 1st again next year.
I want my mommy.
*Sniff* these slashdot people are confusing me. I used to love microsoft, but they are telling me they are evil.. I don't understand. Wasn't this supposed to be a humor site all along. I mean news for nerds. Nerds don't read the news if they did they would end up spending their entire day arguing over the news they just read.
WHERE AM I? oh hold on I'm looking for some screensavers to put in my background. I thought this is where you find them. *cuddles up with his little stuff Bill Gates collectable*
^^ All the above was meant strickly in parody do not take it seriously
*SLAPS bonk with a large TROUT* Take a joke!
Mine brain has meditated on the spinning of the chao!
It is hovering o'er the table where the Chiefs of Staff are now!
Gathered in discussion of the dropping of The Bomb!
Her Apple Corps is strong!
Grand (and gory) Old Discordja!
Grand (and gory) Old Discordja!
Grand (and gory) Old Discordja!
Her Apple Corps is strong!
When I was able to do my own spam-armoring, you got a chance to email me. Now you can only hope I see your reply.
You are the greatest, people!
But for the ones who live out of the states the April, 1st means nothing, except for a religious festivity and non-working day which this year falls into the 1st a 2nd of April.
So, when you enter slashdot and see all that things you almost believe it!!!
You not only agreed with other three really big sites of the community to fuck us up, but also with metalab!
Love you, folks!
yadda yadda
In the immortal words of Holly from Red Dwarf: "We are talking April, May, June, July, and August Fools here..."
How appropriate that Holly was featured recently in User Friendly, don't you think?
Give an infinite number of monkeys infinite bandwidth and they'll eventually take themselves seriously and write /
Yes it's the Slashdot Mark II Progressives Jazz site! It has to share the dressing room with puppets, though.
The party's over
uh, my sexual preference is not there, but religion (misspelled) income_bracket, iq, last_time_you_brushed_teeth, mothers_maiden_name, visa_num (I use American Express, dammit!) soc_sec_num and high_school_gpa (dropped out) are all there!
:-) Funny stuff!
That's a riot!
;-)
visa, ssn, gpa, last time you brushed your teeth, it's all there!
Man its scary how much your privacy can be compromised just by surfing the 'net!
Here in Brazil today it's April's Fool too, but it's called simply April's 1st
Think about what would happen when Slashdot became CNN...
RedHat becomes Microsoft...
Transmeta becomes Intel...
And I won't come back.
If you want CNN, the address is www.cnn.com. HTH!
See http://www.userfriendly.org/static
Some of us don't wake up until noon on the west coast. That joke was totally spoiled for me. Well, not that I wouldn't have figured it out. I carry a backpack of salt with me on april fool's day.
Doesn't say News for Suits anywhere on this site. Who gives a rats ass if businesses are shut down or not? If you really want tech news, there are other, more serious, sources you should be visiting. It's the childlike nature of sites like Slashdot and the people that frequent them that make this a fun internet to be a part of, IMHO. All that stuffy, formal-dress, positive-spin, business bullshit is dying out anyway. Screw it. Have fun.
:)
I might be serious, I might not. Check the date. In fact, I think I'm going to extend my April Fools activities for the rest of the year. Just watch!
-just bein'
It seems that a lot of people are peeved today - perhaps some people don't like to be reminded that they lack common sense:)
Personally I think Rob is doing a service to the community - I mean if you can't tell at a glance whether an article is an AF or not, perhaps you need practice:)
Michael Warnock
-=Senior Bridge Sales Manager=-
April 1st means April Fools Day in the UK too... amazing how uninformed people are about other countries internet or no internet :)
Nobody's gettin' out of here alive..
Lighten up, people!
I can tell you the meaning of life,
I can tell you the meaning of life,
but you have to promise not to laugh.
We are very happy with Slashdot's coverage of today's technology news.
William H. Gates, Chairman of the Board, Microsoft Corporation
This message written using the Microsoft Alphabet(r) and displayed with the Microsoft Electromagnetic Spectrum (r)
All trademarks of everything whatsoever are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
I think the 4/1 idea was awesome....
:)
Humor is such a good thing...It helps put more perspective on the things that are serious and important. So everyone that is flamin and upset....just chill and smile
Peace
I actually can't wait to see how CmdTaco is going to use those cookies. I believe it could be very funny. However, I won't fall onto it because I set NC to confirm before accepting cookies.
With Segfault, User Friendly, and BeDope out of commission, I was hoping that Humorix would have a monopoly on the low-budget, not-all-that-funny Linux humor market. But now that Slashdot has become "Humor For Nerds. Stuff That's Funny", my dreams of world domination have been shattered. D'oh!
We would all be better off if our citizenry were equipped with functioning bullshit detectors. Celebrating AFD is a great way to install them. :-)
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Holy hijinks people! Lighten up, get into the spirit of things and start the annual flogging of the slashdot/segfault/uf/bedope teams!
Naa, but really. This ties in with ESR's recent writing "Understand-my-job-please". We need to find a organised and calm way to discuss matters rather than "HOLY SH|T F#@&* MICROSOFT and INTEL IS TAKING DOWN MY HAPPY WEB SITES." Ok? Lighten up. Go pull a prank somewhere. Dont break the law. Lets all just get along.
-- dieman - Scott Dier
I hope all this UF stuff isn't a coordinated joke - it's kind of the equivalent of someone telling you they're dying from cancer for a few days, fishing for sympathy, and then telling you they were just kidding. If this is a joke, UF has exhausted a good part of their support from its fans. If this were a joke, it would abuse all UFies' trust and concern.
-lx
Nifty prank, Rob, but we can all tell it's you because things are misspelled. :)
Just like the Katz column posted earlier on the "demise" of slashdot's probably neither his nor yours: There are no spelling problems.
Mr. Bill, you suggest that many of us may be mad about the UF April Fool's Day prank because we couldn't see through it. I didn't see through it until today, because until today all the data suggested that we were looking at a genuine Legal Problem.
:)
:)
Microsoft taking legal action against UF, while braindead and destined to backfire, is not inconceivable. The joke took so long to play out that I'm afraid I can't find much humor in it now that I know it for what it is. All I feel is a profound sense of relief that we aren't going to have to beat down Microsoft after all to get our cartoons back.
Sorry to rain on anyone's parade. For the most part I've enjoyed the 1Apr posts--the Katz parody had me rolling. I have no problem with news sites playing along with April Fools'--my only caveat is that it should be clear to anyone reading with half an eye open that they're being had.
Is a practical joke a tearse gag? Is it a lame cut-down or silly "Funniest Video's" kick in the crotch? Or is it something that is so terrifyingly real you're glad it's over?
;- ). So I thought, "hey wait a minute" checked the properties and found out that the author was my friend and the title was "April FOOL".
;->.
Practical jokes (no really they are "practical" aren't they?) have to be believable don't they? What is more real than getting your pants sued off for trademark infingement? (or whatever else this cockamame society has cooked up and called a crime)
Sometimes the funniest jokes are those that hurt like hell, but then in retrospect make you chuckle allong even if you are the victim!
Case in point, this morning I recieved from a friend an e-mail message "here's the document you asked for... don't show it to anyone" sent to myself and 49 others. I instantly freaked and replied to all warning about the "melissa virus" (this was on my work machine, which runs winblows
I chuckled allong and explained to him the available resources for smurfing someone's computer off the net (including his IP ripped from the header), just to give him something to chuckle about
Needless to say I got over it... and well that's the point of April Fools Day: some harmless practical joke, that you should be expecting anyways!
And I'll be bemoaning the fact that the efforts I was making to safeguard free speech, back in the 20th century, came to naught.
For all I know, you may be doing the same, so this is not aimed at you personally. But while planning what you'll do when civil liberties fall has its constructive uses, it's no substitute for actively working to prevent that fall from ever occurring. I hope everyone here who's commented that "free speech is not a laughing matter" is doing things to defend it. Even just sending some money to the ACLU or your equivalent organization in your country of residence is a great start.
Personally, I'm a card-carrying member of the ACLU (and proudly broadcasting that fact is another thing I do -- raising respect for the ACLU and its mission is something I think this country really needs, especially after Dukakis' sellout in the 1988 election!). I think freedom of speech is crucially important.
But I also think that when we designate something as "too important to joke about", that's also going too far. While it chilled me to the bone, this prank also made me chuckle, and it made me impressed with the amount of planning and coordination that had gone into it.
Kai MacTane: Web developer for hire in San Francisco
I'll admit, I was taken in as well. When I realized this morning that is was a hoax, I was relieved. But I had a smile on my face.
:)
The whole point of April fools is to 'fool' someone into believing something is real. When you find out that you were had, and look back, you realize that all the evidence was there in front of your face all the time. That is when you have to laugh at yourself for not reading between the lines.
Here are some of the things that I remember reading in the last while that should have told me (and anyone else) that this was a hoax:
- Why won't they tell us who it is
- These sort of things are public information, so the documents should be on record
- Parody is not illegal
- The negative publicity from this would be hell on MS or whoever else may have been behind it.
- UF is in Canada and Segfault is in UK (I think?)
- the fact that these sites deal with HUMOUR
There were probably many other tidbits of info that would have pointed to this being a hoax.
Anyway, I don't believe that Iliad or Rob (and everyone else involved) intended any malice in this prank. It's just that you have to be very devious to 'fool' a bunch of intelligent geeks that question everything they read (not that I consider myself an intelligent geek.) This is the only prank that had me fooled. The other ones that appeared on SlashDot were obvious (yet still funny) pranks.
I saw the reference to UF being shutdown on
Either way, it didn't occur to me that it was a joke given the kind of thing that's been happening to Dave's Classics and others lately.
The fact that I did not immediately dismiss this story as a hoax because of it obviously being totally against the laws and traditions in this country only demonstrated to me how jaded I've become to the erosion of those rights. I didn't think, "Holy Cow! That could never happen, we have free speech in the U.S", but rather "Yet another example of speech not really being free, especially when expensive lawyers or bureaucrats are around."
Far from being a silly and pointless prank, I saw the UF shutdown hoax as a grim reminder of how out of control some things are in this country.
On the other hand, the cold fusion story was hilarious.
Rick
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Oh foo! Go to CNN if you can't take one day of senseless siliness! Then come back tomorrow, for crying out loud. I fully expected not to read anything credible today on anything but CNN or Reuters.
All you who are crying foul at a pile of steaming AFD stories are too thin-skinned, or you take things too-seriously (which is rather the whole point, eh?)
So go get a coke, read the paper or get back to work. Maybe ponder a little why a few prank stories upset you so much. Gaze at your navel for a while and maybe you will finally get this whole thing.
Or don't - see if I care. Rob, don't change a thing, its great!
Those who haven't done it yet, please take a look at the slashdot entries in your cookies file.
:)
I don't think news sites should celebrate April fools day, because it makes even real news suspect for a day. Though I've really gotten a kick out of some of today's articles, I'm seriously concerned about User Friendly (who was (supposedly?) experiencing the leading edge of legal troubles before today happened to hit, and now this). I hope the UF stuff is just an incredibly well perpetrated coordinated joke, but there's really been no indication to me that it is. I hope you guys enjoy your AFD stunts, because those of us who are legitimately interested in unbruised information are certainly already displeased with how this news site is handling the holiday. Think about what would happen if CNN suddenly announced that they had a source that reported that we had started dropping nuclear missiles on Serbia in response to the three missing Americans.
Lest you all think I'm just a spoil sport, be assured that I'm celebrating AFD like crazy, but not with respect to news. There's a difference between practical jokes, and practicing improper journalism.
If all these site "shutdowns" are an April Fool's Day joke, it's in poor taste. I've got as much of a sense of humor as the next guy, but, come on! Some people don't take matters like freedom of speech as a joking matter. I'm all for freedom of speech on the internet as well as our day-to-day lives. But this kind of thing is _almost_ like the radio broadcast of "War of the Worlds." I nearly freaked when I hit my Daily Static bookmark, and there was nothing there but a legal statement. I was angry as hell. A good practical joke does not make people angry or scared about their own freedom! Granted, free speech allows really bad practical jokes, but if this is what Illiad and the other webmasters find funny.... Well, I'd be very disappointed. And /. is now a portal/news/communtiy/HUMOR site? heheh Methinks not. Rob's idea of funny is "Duckpins."
--- --- --- Don't just do something! Sit there!
Come on people, I can't believe there are this many tight-asses around... There were enough hints today (and in the last week) that this UF thing was a hoax. A joke is a joke, and this was a rather well-organized one. I think you guys are just mad because you couldn't see though this one.
And comparing a silly little cartoon disappearing with dropping nuclear bombs on a country is a little harsh don't you think. UF disappearing wouldn't be the end of the world you know (pun intended)
And anyway, it is up to Rob (and the other 'post'ers) to decide what appears on SlashDot. If I get sufficiently annoyed with what I see here, I will probably start up my own site (and anyone else here can do the same thing)
...is that it allows us to calibrate our bogometers.
A well-calibrated bogometer helps us get through life. People throw bogons at you day-in and day-out, and you have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Can you trust the news today? Can you even take Slashdot for gospel? IMHO, anyone who takes an uncorroborated report from a hacker bboard gets exactly what they deserve.
Then, one day a year, many of us take an opportunity to crank up their own personal bogosity, all for the sake of fun. Some think it's fun, others don't.
But we all come out of it wiser.
If you don't like AFD as a big set of jokes, think of it as a one-day challenge to your ability to separate fact from fiction. It'll help you out when the talking head on the 6:00 News is jawing off about our latest military endeavour or somesuch...
--The basis of all love is respect
Gang,
/. is even nice enough to let you filter out the topics you don't like. Web sites are like the people behind them, and you choose who (or where) you hang out with (at). Personally, I think it's one of the best info sites on the web.
Any source of information is filtered by the people that run it. CNN doesn't care about InstallFests, and CmdrTaco doesn't care about how much money went into 401(k)s nationwide last month. You, the reader, get to pick which sources you like, or make up your own if you wish. If you don't like how someone does their thing, don't read it. And
-- Spring: Forces, coiled again!