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April 1, 2002 was an April Fool's Day. Hoaxes for this year included:
- The Register: reported (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/24652.html) AOL buying up weblogs
- The Open Directory re-branded (http://www.microsoft.com@dmoz.org/April-01-2002_GOD_PR.html) itself as the 'Microsoft Directory Project'
- Kuro5hin acquired (http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/1/05035/09001) MetaFilter, renaming it to met4filter.org
- Slashdot announced (http://slashdot.org/articles/02/04/01/1452256.shtml?tid=124) that is will start posting advertiser-sponsored news stories, and disable anonymous posting.
- Google described (http://www.google.com/technology/pigeonrank.html) its PigeonRank system.
- The Guardian profiled (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4385266,00.html) Harmony Cousins
- CPAN renamed (http://www.cpan.org/) itself the 'Comprehensive Java Archive Network'
- The annual spoof Linus Torvalds post on the Linux kernel mailing list announced (http://www.cs.helsinki.fi/linux/linux-kernel/2002-13/0063.html) his resignation from the Linux effort
- IETF published April 1st RFCs RFC3251 (Distribution of electricity over IP) and RFC3252 (Encapsulating IP in XML).
- MIT changed (http://www.mit.edu) its home page to a spoof of the Google home page.
- a spoof Yahoo News story was circulated (http://news.yahoo.com:PK%20Interactive%20Receives%20Funding%20from%20idealab@216.150.6.36/Yahoo!%20News%20-%20PK%20Interactive%20receives%20funding%20from%20idealab.htm) stating that PK Interactive had received funding from idealab! [1] (http://www.idealab.com/) (note: check the URL above closely)
- The TidBITS newsletter offered (http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-623.html) a spoof issue
- The Tom's Hardware website reported (http://www.tomshardware.com/column/02q2/020401/index.html) that AMD and nVIDIA were to merge.
- The BBC reported (http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_1905000/1905790.stm) more April Fools' pranks including the announced 'flotation' of Harrods.
- CNN reported that two Montreal disk jockeys managed to phone Bill Gates on the pretext that one of them was Canadian prime minister Jean Chrétien wanting to set up a meeting with Gates. What CNN didn't mention is that these two have a reputation for their audacious prank calls. Previous recipients of their attention have included Queen Elizabeth II and Pope John Paul II.
- Blizzard Entertainment, the computer game company that produced Warcraft III, announced they would be adding a fifth playable race to the game: the Pandaren, a race of bamboo-eating, sword-wielding warriors.
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