The guys at Google sure were in a mood for a joke today, as these two stories show:
I’m just guessing that the webmail story is a joke, although a very well executed one at that. They don’t seem too convinced that it’s a joke over at Slashdot either, and lots of major news sites have the story, including CNN, BBC News and New Scientist. Anyhow, joke or not – it sure is an excellent publicity move, and might be a sort of meta April-fools joke, i.e. they fool people into thinking it’s a joke, and it actually turns out to be true!
Another geek joke of the day is the latest in a long line of prank RFCs, entitled Omniscience Protocol Requirements:
Since the evil-doer may have control of a local firewall or NAT, the OP must be able to communicate with the OP server, even when the firewall or NAT has been configured to block all unused ports. Also, since the evil-doer might try to hide his or her evil-doing by disconnecting the computer from the network, the OP must be able to continue to communicate, even under these circumstances. Meeting this requirement may require that the OP client be able to reconfigure the user’s machine into a cell phone …