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Quantum fluctuations in space, science, exploration and other cosmic fields... served up regularly by MSNBC.com science editor Alan Boyle since 2002.

Alan Boyle covers the physical sciences, anthropology, technological innovation and space science and exploration for MSNBC.com. He is a winner of the AAAS Science Journalism Award, the NASW Science-in-Society Award and other honors; a contributor to "A Field Guide for Science Writers"; and a member of the board of the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

Check out Boyle's biography or send a message to Cosmic Log via cosmiclog@msnbc.com.



April foolery on the Web

Posted: Friday, March 30, 2007 7:45 PM by Alan Boyle

• Archaeology: Pyramid in New England | Bigfoot shocker!!
• Gizmodo: U.S. military considers UFOs; Cylons next?
• Duke: Feeling red-faced and foolish? That's a good sign
• Wired: April Fool's pranks for nerds 

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Here is one I enjoyed using on officers a lot during my time in the Army:

Screenshot their desktop, then paintshop a Windows error message onto it, saying something like 'Fatal error at kernel: 2K18:G3.234. Computer has encountered an error and processes are locked. Do not attempt to press any buttons, contact customer support immediately at such and such *phone sex* number. Make sure you use the right fonts and such for this. Then make this the computer's background and hide their desktop icons (and turn off the screensaver). Have fun.
This is a good one! I've done similar things to friends in the past. Another good one is to change the auto correct in MS Word so that when a person types a word such as "document" it auto corrects to read "dickument" or something as equally childish.

Another great one is to screenshot somebody's desktop, install that screenshot as wallpaper under their network profile, hide the taskbar and delete all the icons.  User logs in and can't click anything.  Help desk person comes by, logs in with his profile, finds everything working.  Original user logs back in, the wallpaper kicks in, and nothing is clickable again!

I knew a guy who did this to a work enemy -- work enemy got so frustrated, he quit!



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