04-01-2006, 08:00 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Happy April Fool's!
Happy April Fool's, everyone! Before you scream, this is it: there are no more joke posts to go around. We'll go back and tag the ones from this morning so you're not confused. Anything from hereon is "real news".
I'm really pleased to see some of the amazing work our news team did -- we put this news set together in less than 24 hours. I have to admit, I laughed out loud at the sheer brilliance of Darius's JAM post and Raphael's CPU-on-a-stick. Heck, almost every single one was outright funny. Which did you think was the best? 
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04-01-2006, 08:51 PM
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Pontificator
Join Date: Jul 2003
Posts: 1,468
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I have to confess I voted 'April Fools is lame...'. Not because I lack a sense of humour, and not because I don't recognise that the news posts were funny and well thought out. I've just grown to hate the whole April Fool thing.
Time was that each year there would be a real attempt to fool people in newspapers, on TV, online. Very clever, very subtle - with just enough clues to cause a 'oh how did I fall for that' at some point.
Some April Fools tricks have been stunningly brilliant (in the UK - people will perhaps remember the BBC Panorama programme - a highly serious news and current affairs series - covering the harvesting of spaghetti trees in Italy, or the Guardian newspaper producing a travel supplement about the island of San Serif). Problem is - nowadays it is largely given over to easy to guess fools - which have a an emphasis on being funny over being designed to fool - that are just way too prevalent. Thousands upon thousands of people doing several of them - with varying degrees of skill - to the point where you almost feel like screaming at the screen.
Sorry if that makes me sound like a party pooper. They *were* funny articles - I'm just not sure they quite hit the spirit of the day. I would have been happier with one carefully designed to fool post with plenty of people being taken in until the penny slowly starts to drop as they recall what the day is and pick up on the clues. As it was - clever as the articles here were - did anyone actually get fooled?
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04-01-2006, 09:07 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 147
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So I figured out the "CPU on a stick" was a joke pretty quickly...
But I have to be honest - I did go hunt for the 4GB and 8GB SD Cards!  ops:
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Clinton Fitch ~ MVP-Mobile DevicesPrincipalClinton Fitch (Dot) Com!
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04-01-2006, 09:39 PM
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04-01-2006, 10:43 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Duncan
Sorry if that makes me sound like a party pooper. They *were* funny articles - I'm just not sure they quite hit the spirit of the day. I would have been happier with one carefully designed to fool post with plenty of people being taken in until the penny slowly starts to drop as they recall what the day is and pick up on the clues. As it was - clever as the articles here were - did anyone actually get fooled?
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Well, if you look closely, we started with the more credible posts first, and then proceeded to become less credible as the day went on. I understand your idea of truly "fooling", but believe it or not, a lot of people get really, really angry at the good "fool", so the day has indeed generalized into a "not-for-real" kind of thing. We tried, at least, to keep them funny here. 
(BTW: if you may remember, we defaced our own logo about 2 years ago. It seemed obvious to me that it was an April Fool's, but we probably got 20 news submissions pointing it out to us and fearing the site was hacked. Believe it or not, people get fooled a lot more easily than you'd believe.  )
--janak
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04-01-2006, 10:54 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Duncan
Sorry if that makes me sound like a party pooper.
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Yup, it does. Lighten up! Life is short. :mrgreen:
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04-01-2006, 10:57 PM
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Sage
Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 800
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Thanks guys for the GREAT jokes. I would actually fail for quite a few of them if they aren't labled. I still can't believe how long I've visited this site, I still remember the OUTSTANDING iPOC (or something else) joke from last year. THAT WAS JUST AWSOME and I still can't get over how I fell for it. (damn you guys' the subtle photoshop skill!!) :evil:
Anyway, thank you guys for all your hard work and happy April fool's day!! :lol:
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04-01-2006, 11:40 PM
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Intellectual
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 137
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Yeah that 4GB and 8GB SD card actually made me go hunting! I noticed that a few other sites had linked to this story and then figured it out. At the Sandisk site I was almost convinced when I saw that they released a news item on March 31. I then read it carefully, didn't notice any mention of 8GB, and then went back to your post and noticed the date of April 1st! Absolutely brilliant!!! It's great that you can share a good joke like that! Well done, gentlemen and I will definitely be awaiting next year!
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Love those Flames!
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04-02-2006, 12:26 AM
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Thinker
Join Date: Jun 2003
Posts: 349
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If anyone can point out some of those sites that linked to our posts, I'd love to see what they said about it afterwards, or did they delete their posts?
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04-02-2006, 12:52 AM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 15,171
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Patrick Y.
Thanks guys for the GREAT jokes. I would actually fail for quite a few of them if they aren't labled.
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They weren't this morning, of course.
Quote:
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I still can't believe how long I've visited this site, I still remember the OUTSTANDING iPOC (or something else) joke from last year. THAT WAS JUST AWSOME and I still can't get over how I fell for it. (damn you guys' the subtle photoshop skill!!) :evil:
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Yeah, Darius's Photoshop skills are top-notch.
--janak
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