[inforoots] Internet April Fools Jokes

Tue Apr 3 15:11:59 PDT 2007

The $64 question is "How did you get all the paragraphs to line up
exactly at the same margin without double-spacing even once?"

Van Snyder

On Tue, 2007-04-03 at 14:33 -0700, Michael Hart wrote:
> =======================================
> 
> Posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org is information known to or the opinions of the poster.  All posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org are archived.  By posting to this list you grant a license for use of this material to the Computer History Museum located in Mountain View, California, USA. 
> 
> =======================================
> 
> 
> My Nomination For Best April Fool's Computer Joke
> 
> 
> This one was done by substituting our own book floppy
> into the victim's computer, then running the autoexec
> without actually rebooting, so the computer was fine,
> it just gave the strange kinds of IBM error messages,
> probably something on the same thought process as the
> previous mentioned note to which I am replying.
> 
> In this case we [in]judiciously copies IBM's lingo at
> the time, along with their ASCII borders, beeps via a
> CTRL-G imbedding, and various loops in a batch file I
> took days and days to write.
> 
> The upshot of it all was to pretend to send the April
> Fool computer into a diagnostics mode, completed with
> various "1701" error messages and the like, then into
> a variety of "Disk Tests" that would start with "OK",
> then gradually appear to build up errors until a made
> up limit of errors was reached.
> 
> This took several minutes, and thrashed the harddrive
> appropriately, yielding "Bad Sector" reports, beeping
> and all the appropriate mumbo-jumbo taken from my old
> IBM dark blue Diagnostics Disks, Norton's etc.
> 
> Once the limit was reached, the "Operating System" in
> question would declare the harddrive unusable, advise
> the user to request an FRU/Field Replaceable Unit and
> give them an 800 number to call.
> 
> Meanwhile by redirecting the output from the "dir" we
> could give a very real listing of the "Bad Files" and
> make it appear they were being deleted as corrupted--
> with an accompanying beep and WARNING:  message every
> time one was "deleted."
> 
> The prompt was overwritten at the very beginning with
> a very official looking IBM Diagnostics Prompt saying
> the user should not interrupt or interfere with these
> ongoing maintenance processes, as data could be lost.
> 
> On and on, and on and on. . . .
> 
> Next time you are fact to face with a book floppy you
> might think about this one. . .hee hee!
> 
> 
> The Phantom
> 
> 
> On Tue, 3 Apr 2007, Carl Baltrunas wrote:
> 
> > =======================================
> >
> > Posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org is information known to or the 
> > opinions of the poster.  All posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org are 
> > archived.  By posting to this list you grant a license for use of this 
> > material to the Computer History Museum located in Mountain View, California, 
> > USA.
> > =======================================
> > Probably the best April Fool that I was aware of occurred at Tymshare.
> > There were two separate ones that were memorable, and I'll leave it
> > up to you to decide which was "better".
> >
> > The first joke had an important amount of planning and setup, as we were
> > geographically distant from the recipient.  In the 1980s, we had 5 data
> > centers, Cupertino, Dallas, Fremont, Houston and Valley Forge. My boss,
> > on a trip to the Dallas data center took a styrofoam cup that had coffee
> > in it and let it dry while lying on it's side.  He secretly placed it on top 
> > of
> > one of the memory bays for our DEC PDP-10s during his visit.  Our custom
> > operating system, TYMCOM-X used the console only for startup and
> > diagnostics, so any messages that were typed out were important for the
> > operations staff to record and deal with, often calling our OS support group
> > for anything they had never seen before.
> >
> > On April 1st, he used a little program he had written to send output to the
> > console, to print out several warning messages, about memory problems
> > on the system in question.  Over time the messages became more and
> > more urgent, and more and more specific, finally pinpointing the specific
> > memory box in question as having a problem.  Eventually the message
> > indicated that something had dripped into the box and asked the operators
> > to have a Field Engineer check the top of the memory box, to look for the
> > source of the problem.  Of course, they found the cup with the dried
> > coffee stain and were so amazed with the diagnostic capability of the OS
> > to be able to find the problem and the source, and did all of this without
> > crashing.
> >
> > Our offices were an aisle or two away from the IBM OS group so we had
> > access to console output from their systems as well as our own PDP-10s,
> > and this helped set the stage for the next joke.
> >
> > The 2nd joke was also played on the staff in Dallas.  The center manager
> > was a stickler for rules and tried to be on top of everything, so he was a
> > prime subject.  The majority of systems in the center were IBM 360's and
> > so the skill set was geared for those systems, and the PDP-10s were
> > often considered an after-thought.  Using the same situation, where our
> > console output was only used during timesharing for diagnostic output,
> > and the same program as above for displaying messages on the console,
> > my boss sent a series of messages that made the system look like it had
> > a serious problem and needed to be rebooted, and then went through
> > an auto-shutdown and reboot.  This, in itself was odd, because operator
> > intervention was usually required.  The second part of this was that we
> > had a feature that would display a different user prompt depending on
> > what mode the user had set upon login, so that a user in PDP-10 mode
> > would see the normal dot (.) prompt, and a user in TYMIX mode would
> > see a dash (-) prompt.
> >
> > During the "reboot" process, the messages that appeared on the console
> > were different than normal.  Instead of the TYMCOM-X startup messages
> > the console displayed the TYMCOM-360 startup messages that the
> > operators normally saw on the IBM mainframes.  At the appropriate places,
> > as the system displayed information about the hardware configuration,
> > number of disk and tape drives, there were some warning messages that
> > the staff had never seen before.  The system was complaining about 4 extra
> > bits in the processor, and in the memory boxes.  (For those who don't know,
> > the PDP-10 data word has 36 bits, 4 more than the IBM system with 32 bits).
> >
> > The last part of this trick was to add a patch to the system to display a 
> > user
> > prompt that looked like a prompt the operator would get if they had logged
> > into the IBM system.  Of course, the patch was set to only display this 
> > prompt
> > for the data center operators and operations manager's login ID.  So, when
> > the operators brought this weird re-boot to the attention of the center
> > manager, he had to come out on the floor and look at the console himself.
> > He then ripped the console output off and took it back to his office where
> > he called my boss to tell him what he saw.  Simultaneously he logged into
> > the system and saw the IBM prompt, and thought that somehow the system
> > had actually gone down and came back up as one of the IBM servers.
> >
> > He was on the phone with my boss for an hour and a half, describing
> > the events and what he had discovered so far.  Tymshare also ran a
> > custom operating system on the IBM systems called TYMCOM-360
> > which had similar commands for the operations staff, so it was not so
> > obvious which system you were on, other than the prompts.  My boss,
> > of course, played dumb, and strung this manager along for all he could.
> >
> > The best part of this joke was that at the end of the system startup
> > messages, the last message, with an appropriate IBM numeric error
> > code said, "April Fool!".  Apparently the event was so unusual, and the
> > coincidental user prompt was so convincing that the PDP-10 had
> > actually shutdown and rebooted as an IBM server, the manager never
> > really read every line of the output.  Near the end of the 90 minute
> > call, my boss couldn't take it any longer, and had the center manager
> > read to him the error messages from the startup log, one by one.  He still
> > hadn't seen the last line until he read it aloud on the phone, at which point
> > my boss couldn't stop laughing.  I'm not sure if that manager ever forgave
> > us for pulling that prank.  My boss kept telling him that if he had just read
> > the entire output, he would have figured it out.  The center manager was
> > so convinced because of the user prompt, that he overlooked the obvious.
> >
> > So, my vote for the best April Fool joke would have to be the 2nd one as
> > it was able to be played out for so long.
> >
> >
> > -Carl
> >
> > On Apr 1, 2007, at 9:01 PM, Bill Selmeier wrote:
> >
> >> =======================================
> >> 
> >> Posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org is information known to or the 
> >> opinions of the poster.  All posts to inforoots at computerhistory.org are 
> >> archived.  By posting to this list you grant a license for use of this 
> >> material to the Computer History Museum located in Mountain View, 
> >> California, USA.
> >> =======================================
> >> Google's great TiSP April Fool's Joke today, such a tradition on the 
> >> Internet, made me wonder what was the best Internet April Fool's Joke. It 
> >> you haven't see the Google joke go the the web search page, www.google.com, 
> >> and try their Beta test offer, before they take it down.
> >> 
> >> ************************************************************************
> >> Bill Selmeier		voice  (408)655-3400
> >> 4441 Six Forks Road 	Suite 106-136		   Raleigh, NC 27609
> >> Internet Developer    http://www.inetdevgrp.org     bills at inetdevgrp.org
> >> or RightNet, Inc.      http://www.right-net.com      bills at right-net.com
> >> 
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> inforoots mailing list
> >> inforoots at computerhistory.org
> >> http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/inforoots
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > inforoots mailing list
> > inforoots at computerhistory.org
> > http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/inforoots
> _______________________________________________
> inforoots mailing list
> inforoots at computerhistory.org
> http://mail.computerhistory.org/mailman/listinfo/inforoots