You’ve been Rickrolled!

Christopher ''Moot'' Poole is the founder and operator of the popular web site known as 4chan. As you may remember, during the last presidential election someone cracked the password to vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's yahoo email account, and posted it on the anonymous message board at the 4chan site. The FBI got involved and 4chan provided server logs showing the ip address and the time stamps for the user who posted the password. Poole was in court a few months back to explain these logs to the jury.

In between explaining how timestamps and ip addresses work, both the prosecutor and the defense attorney took what appears to be an entirely irrelevant side road down the path of internet slang. Poole was asked to define such terms as ''lurker'' and ''b tard'', but the most amusing portion of his testimony centered around the term ''rickroll''. So important was the court's understanding of rickrolling that he was asked about it on direct and again on cross examination. Here's a snippet from the cross examination:


Q: And the term ''rickroll'' you said it tries to make people go to a site where they think it is going to be one thing, but it is a video of Rick Astley, is that right?
A: Yes.
Q: He was some kind of singer?
A: Yes.
Q: It's a joke?
A: Yes.

If you've never been rickrolled, the song used is always the same.

In another bit of amusing (to me, at least) news from the week, in San Francisco the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is commissioning a $5 Million dollar net for the Golden Gate Bridge in the hopes that this will deter people from jumping off the famous bridge. The net will presumably be stretched out beneath the bridge to prevent suicides, which is an ongoing problem for the city. The amusing part is not that the city is taking proactive steps to prevent suicides, a laudable goal. The amusing part is that they think this will cause fewer people to make the jump. As anyone who has turned on late night cable in the past 10 years will immediately tell you, a net under the Golden Gate Bridge will be an instant magnet for thrill seekers and amateur daredevils. Talk about your attractive nuisances...