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.

No prank matters really

[Apoorv Khatreja]

All of us here are waiting for Google to do it's thing. Last year, it was very unimpressive, TiSP. I hope they come up with something better this year, probably something more real, related to the search engine or GMail.

MSOXML

[Citizen of Earth]

Presumably, ISO will announce that MS-OOXML has passed as an interna[tiona]l standard tomorrow.

10 fatal geek pranks

[jbeaupre]

A quick summary of the list (omitting details to avoid unwanted carnage).

10) Acid
9) Pringles
8) Explosives
7) Old Newspapers
6) Toiletries
5) Electricity
4) Adhesives
3) Feral cats
2) Dry Ice
1) Neutrons

Special mention: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Funniest_Joke_in_the_World [wikipedia.org]

All deadly funny, but do not try these at home. You have been warned.

Rick Roll defence tips every geek needs for 4/1

[josteos]

These guys have a good summary of stuff to do to protect you & your network from 4/1 shenanigans.

http://www.itprotips.com/defence/NoPrankZone/ [itprotips.com]

Re:I got Rick Rolled

[calebt3]

Oblig [xkcd.com]

the three stooges

[TheGratefulNet]

you must give credit, at least as far back as we can remember. for me, that's the 3 stooges.

writing a paper letter: "PS: if you didn't get this, let me know and I'll send it again".. or to that effect.

its not clear if the howards+1 invented this joke or not. but I'll give it to them, on the liklihood that its theirs.

(still a good one; just pointing out how old it is).

Re:Best prank

[gstoddart]

Obviously not a math geek are you? Otherwise, you'd realize that in order to have a 4, you'd have to be at least Base-5.

Hmmm ... 2^0 == 1, 2^1 == 2, 2^2 == 4.

It's the value, not the symbol. In this case, the sequence of integers which correspond to the power of two.

And, no, I'm not a math geek, I'm a software developer. :-P

Cheers

Re:Best prank

[Asmor]

What you should have said was powers of two, not base 2.

Re:For you EE people

[i_b_don]

i don't think that's true at all. The higher the frequency the more the sound waves bounce off of things and the harder it is to locate the direction of the sound. A high pitch sounds is very hard to locate directionally especially if it's in an enclosed room with lots of surfaces to bounce off of.

don

Re:and if past experience tells me anything

[Pig Hogger]

hat implies that it's worth coming to the other 364 days.

365. 2008 is a leap year, dear.

Re:I got Rick Rolled

[maxume]

Rick Astley approves in this video clip:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/03/rick-astley-kin.html [latimes.com]

with apologies:

http://www.ironicsans.com/2008/03/idea_the_wikroll.html [ironicsans.com]