Microsoft leads the way in banning April Fools' Day pranks
Everyone hates April Fools' Day, and Microsoft is taking a stand against its own corporate pranks. Microsoft's marketing chief Chris Capossela has warned all employees to not participate in the process of annoying hoaxes on Monday. In an internal memo, obtained and verified by The Verge, Capossela explains that "data tells us these stunts have limited positive impact and can actually result in unwanted news cycles." He encourages all teams inside Microsoft not to do any public-facing April Fools' Day stunts.
"I appreciate that people may have devoted time and resources to these activities, but I believe we have more to lose than gain by attempting to be funny on this one day," says Capossela. That's probably a safe bet, as we've seen some April Fools' Day pranks backfire spectacularly in the past. Google was forced to apologize for adding Despicable Me minions into emails and muting threads a few years ago, causing email havoc for Gmail users. Microsoft has also participated in many April Fools' Day pranks over the years, including an MS-DOS mobile for Windows Phone and Google insults.
#FakeNews?
Also at BGR.
See also: Everyone Should Follow Microsoft's Lead in Banning April Fools' Day Pranks
(Score: 2) by SpockLogic on Monday April 01 2019, @12:49AM (8 children)
Should have posted this tomorrow, Monday, but somewhere it is tomorrow already so ..... nevermind.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday April 01 2019, @01:03AM (4 children)
It's April Fool's right now where I am, and fortunately I have not had to endure any "jokes" today.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 01 2019, @02:22AM (3 children)
Just go to http://stackexchange.com [stackexchange.com] for a geocities like style (actually my advice is "avoid if you can")
If you can't avoid it, find the "Time travel" very discrete button on the banner bar and press it once (it's toggle behavior) before you succumb.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Monday April 01 2019, @07:34AM (2 children)
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 01 2019, @07:39AM
Some of us can't afford NoScript in office environs. As a strange coincidence, that when one is most likely to land on stackexchange.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday April 01 2019, @09:53AM
Though the CSS-based ugliness is still apparent without scripts.
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday April 01 2019, @02:05AM (2 children)
It's always 5:00 somewhere.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 01 2019, @06:04AM (1 child)
That's not true. Time zones generally go in full hour steps; there are also some half-hour steps, but that's already rather unusual. There may be even more odd cases, but they are certainly not frequent enough that all 1440 minutes of the day are covered.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 01 2019, @11:05AM
Unless one disregards the time zone proper and one fractionates the time as a percentage of the day/night cycle such that you are 5/12ths of the cycle of sun zenith to nadir at any given location. In fact since one may also fractionate nadir to zenith it is actually 5:00 in at least two locations at once for AM and PM!
Then again, Khallow has convinced me that if we take the singular instant of 4:5999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999 PM repeating that this actually is also 5:00 PM. Thus we have two moments in time which are conjunctive and all time and space immediately stops infinitely and thus it is always 4:59 everywhere. [wikipedia.org]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Snotnose on Monday April 01 2019, @01:03AM (7 children)
Here's hoping /. and soylent don't flood their sites with stupid April fool's jokes tomorrow.
/ landing the Space Shuttle at Mongomery Field? That was gold
// Everything else? Give me a break, I don't have time for this shit
Of course I'm against DEI. Donald, Eric, and Ivanka.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 01 2019, @01:32AM (6 children)
Enough of us hate that crap that we don't do it. One story with everything worth mentioning, maybe two if wires get crossed. We're not doing any pranks of our own tomorrow unless the eds have something up their sleeves that I haven't heard about. I didn't have the time or energy (extreme amounts of hard labor most every day) to work anything up in time this year.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by c0lo on Monday April 01 2019, @02:36AM (5 children)
Thanks $deity for that.
Maybe you manage to transform this into a tradition... it's not that hard, you only need to try.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 01 2019, @02:50AM (4 children)
Laziness is my second favorite tradition but being a wiseass is still in the lead. Fear not though, I plan on putting an "Okay, I've seen it. Now stop doing it." button on any future site pranks. The Geocities-looking theme even annoyed me after a while and I'm the one who made it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 01 2019, @05:08AM (3 children)
OReilly? then why is my Soylent Blue?
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 01 2019, @06:10AM (2 children)
Go to preferences, select the Homepage tab, on "Select Theme" choose "Chillax", click "Save".
Actually that's my default theme because I like the blue more than the standard red.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Monday April 01 2019, @06:21AM (1 child)
Sorry! Fake News and false alarm! There actually is no emergency on the Southern Boarder! It was just an incomplete page load, a brain fart due to old age and pomposity. I should have known, since, if SN were to go April Prime, it would be, "OMG! Green New Deal!"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 01 2019, @10:31AM
We did green last year, didn't we?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Monday April 01 2019, @01:14AM (5 children)
What do you mean Windows 8 wasn't an April Fools joke?!
That's the exact problem. A lot of stuff they do these days is already such a bad joke, it's impossible to tell when they are really joking.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday April 01 2019, @01:40AM (4 children)
Came to wonder the same thing, but with ALL versions of Windows.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Apparition on Monday April 01 2019, @01:55AM (1 child)
To be fair, Windows 2000 Professional was a good OS. That was about it though.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:41AM
Yeah, I carried on using Win2k for as long as possible. Quite a few supposedly XP-only applications could be coaxed into running on it (usually just forgoing the installer that checks the OS version and manually copying the program files into place).
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday April 01 2019, @01:56AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @02:18AM
Windows 3.11 was pretty ok, not sure if it was an OS or an application. But it could play music and I could get on gopher. Also Chip's Challenge was pretty sweet as well as skiFree, which is the first game I decompiled and added more blood.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 01 2019, @01:17AM (3 children)
And, I actually believed (for a second) that MS was banning April Fool's jokes.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Monday April 01 2019, @01:31AM (1 child)
My first thought was the memo is itself an April Fools' prank. Which makes for an interesting liar's paradox problem. How would you really tell everyone not to pull any pranks if your notification will be taken as a prank?
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday April 02 2019, @02:45AM
At a guess, you don't. You just sack them if they do it and by next year it ought to be a non-problem. Although it could be replaced by a much bigger problem as every last talented employee quits for you being such a sanctimonious killjoy.
error count exceeds 100; stopping compilation
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @06:33AM
Every day is April Fool's day, when the Faux News dementia has infiltrated your amdygula as much has it has Runaway's. Three Mexicos, you sorry bastard! [rollingstone.com] There are three Mexicos sending illegal Muslim immigrants accross our boarders! Oh, the huge manatees! Thank Godless that we have the Cod-emperor Donald "Jey" Trumpf to put tariffs on these three Mexican countries. But then again, geography was never the Tea Party's forte. Or math. Or history. Or Law. Or cooking. Or science. Or anything else. Brain function loss is nothing to sneeze, or shake sticks, at. Dementia is a serious medical condition. If you have a Runaway that lasts more than four hours, consult a physician immediately.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 01 2019, @10:53AM (2 children)
Actual interference with services? No, not funny nor cool. (And, for example, since Soylent News functions as a news aggregation source, placing 'fake stories' is an interference unless that story is so over-the-top that absolutely no reader will buy into it for more than 5 seconds which is damned near impossible. That's aside from 'fake news' making such a play gauche).
Intended humor that does NOT interfere with service delivery.... that's called not taking oneself too seriously. Lack of humor is a disease the world has in such extreme form at the moment that there is no ass left for all the stick up it. And that's coming from someone who makes spare money from having his rectum logged out on an ongoing basis. (hopefully you understand but don't see what I meant there..... ;) ) We need nothing so dearly at this point than a good laugh and a really good April Fools joke does just that.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday April 01 2019, @01:51PM (1 child)
I prefer "weird but true" stories for April Fool's now.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Monday April 01 2019, @02:56PM
Those are good too - those ones where you actually wonder if you're being pranked or not yet brings a smile to one's face are best.
I've been going around today letting selective people (who will get it) personally know that our systems were upgraded over the weekend but some adverse effects were reported at other sites. If red, green, and blue smoke starts emanating from their computer, in that order and only in that order, then they need to get me right away. If black smoke pours out they should do nothing. Been getting some nice smiles and laughter.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 01 2019, @08:15PM
Here's an April Fools joke for you, Microsoft: Windows 98. It's been twenty years and I'm still pissed about it.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by sorpigal on Monday April 01 2019, @09:29PM
April Fools Day is one of the best things about the internet. For one day *literally everybody* takes the day off to have some fun. That's a holiday more meaningful to me than Christmas, New Years, or any other more traditional day of merriment.
Keep on pranking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 03 2019, @01:23AM
The pranks are lame, not funny.
Therefore they are just a pain in the ass.