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March 30  1999

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West staff
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Oh foolish April

BE PREPARED for an onslaught of misleading information from the Net on Thursday. It is April Fool's Day, and the ability of the medium to dress up fantasy in realistic packages, then distribute it at rapid speed to millions makes it the perfect place for pranks.

You may hear the one about Microsoft's 49-day bug. If a system powered by Windows 95 or 98 is operated continuously for exactly 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds, it will crash. Actually, believe it or not, this is true. Even though few users can remember their Windows systems going anywhere near this amount of time before crashing, someone with lots of idle time -- 49 days, 17 hours, 2 minutes and 47.296 seconds to be precise -- has proved it to be so. The bug stems from the nannosecond counter which runs out of figures after this amount of time, then gives up.

If that is true, then a lot of the April Fool's stuff you receive certainly will be hard to decipher. Reader Andrew Dare passed on the following compilation of urban myth-type blather often seen humming around newsgroups and e-mail discussion groups. It might help you sort fact from fiction on Thursday:

"I know this guy whose neighbour, a young man, was home recovering from finding a rat in his bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. When he awoke he was in his bath, full of ice, and he was sore all over.

"When he got out of the tub he realised that his kidneys had been stolen. A note on his mirror said 'Call 000'. But he was afraid to use his phone, because it was connected to his computer, and there was a virus that would destroy his hard drive if he opened an e-mail entitled 'Join the crew!',

"He knew it wasn't a hoax because he himself was a computer programmer who was working on software to save us from Armageddon when the year 2000 rolls around. His program will prevent a global disaster in which all the computers get together and distribute the $600 Neiman Marcus cookie recipe under the leadership of Bill Gates. (It's true-I read it all last week in a mass e-mail from Bill Gates himself, who was also promising me a free Disney World vacation and $5000 if I would forward the e-mail to everyone I know.)

"The poor man then tried to call 000 from a pay phone to report his missing kidneys, but reaching into the coin return slot he got jabbed with an HIV-infected needle. Luckily he was only a few blocks from the hospital - the one where that little boy who is dying of cancer is, the one whose last wish is for everyone in the world to send him an e-mail.

"I sent him two e-mails and one of them was a bunch of x's and o's in the shape of an angel (if you get it and forward it to 20 people you will have good luck, but 10 people you will only have OK luck, and if you send it to fewer than 10, you will have bad luck for seven years).

"The poor guy tried to drive himself to the hospital, but on the way he noticed another car driving along without its lights on. He flashed his lights at him and was promptly shot as part of a gang initiation. When the police inspected his car they found a knife taped to the passenger-side door.

"Oh, and it's a little-known fact that the Y1K problem caused the Dark Ages."

Thankyou Mr Dare. We are all prepared now . . . you better believe it.

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