Top 10 April Fools Tech Pranks

[DevilAlumna]

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/t...08/03/pranks08

I almost titled this top 10 pranks to pull on BillyBreen, but figured he'd find a way to hack my webcams and post the videos here.

[YmoBeThere]

Hmm, you left out the for Nerds part of the title?????

[Channing]

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/aprilfool/P20/

Every April fools I look over some of these - they are really hilarious.

One of my favorites:

#7: Alabama Changes the Value of Pi
The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the 'Biblical value' of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.

[billybreen]

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/t...08/03/pranks08

I almost titled this top 10 pranks to pull on BillyBreen, but figured he'd find a way to hack my webcams and post the videos here.

Good lord! What are you doing on your webcam?

Back in my intern days, my favorite prank to play on my fellow summer employees involved the old 'net send' command on Windows NT. Now disabled by default for security reasons, 'net send' allowed you to send a message to a specific machine that would be displayed in a Windows alert dialog. They look very scary and official, so it's easy to trick someone into believing they are messages from HR / corporate compliance / IT.

My typical message was something like 'Unauthorized Internet usage has been logged from this machine. Please report to the HR representative in your department.' Send one of those and watch your co-worker sweat. Good times.

Once the fun of 'net send' for malicious purposes was exhausted, I wrote a little pseudo-IM client around 'net send' (AIM and the like being outlawed by IT) so I could chat up this one girl. 8 years later, we were married. If I hadn't picked such a nerdy way to woo her, it probably would only have taken 4.

[hc5duke]

All pretty good. I'm sticking with a more low-tech solution of switching two adjacent desks completely (except computers) for tomorrow, and I'm going to attach a cordless mouse to a third co-worker's computer. A Colombian co-worker is getting a line of powdered sugar and a rolled up dollar bill as well.

Last year I copied the Office with mouse-in-jello platter, and I taped down the switch on all their phones, so when they pick it up, it would still be ringing. It helped that all three of them arrived at different times.

[OZZIE4DUKE]

I was going to comment on my favorite April fools jokes, but I'm going to wait a couple of days before I do!