Alek's Christmas Lights: Humbug

g00set writes "Alek's Christmas lights story was previously covered on Slashdot here, however the Denver Channel is now reporting that it was all a hoax: 'The Lafayette man said he accomplished the trickery by taking 12 "base" photographs of the house with lights on and off and then constructed a Web page that appeared to show lights going on and off when the Web visitor clicked.'"

Season's greetings!

Ho ho hoax!

His explanation...

Who actually read his explanation? [komar.org] (Yes, I know this is Slashdot, but you can try to RTFA)

It seems like for all the trouble he went through to set up this hoax, it would actually have been easier to hook up the X10 to his computer and plop a real webcam outside.

What it took for the hoax:

• Taking 12 pictures for the various "on/off" states
• Taking those 12 pictures in varying amounts of snowcover
• Dynamically inserting airplanes overhead
• Dynamically changing the position of the garage door by superimposing the garage on one of the 12 pics.
• Dynamically adding stars in the sky that move over the course of the night
• Occasionally Adding "cars" driving by
• When the local news crew took him up in the helicopter, his wife stayed at home flipping the lights on and off.
• Putting a real (but disconnected) webcam in the neighbor's tree so snoopers would see the webcam.

For all that trouble, he might as well have just done it up real.

I guess at least now we know who is really responsible for the moon landing video.

Re:His explanation...

It seems like for all the trouble he went through to set up this hoax, it would actually have been easier to hook up the X10 to his computer and plop a real webcam outside.

Haven't you ever seen any Hollywood movies? Doing something like that only requires a few typed commands on the keyboard! You don't even need a mouse!

And, if he wanted to, he could zoom in on and "enhance" a single pixel until it looked like his christmas lights.

Re:His explanation...

For all that trouble, he might as well have just done it up real. ...but where's the challenge in THAT?

You, sir, need to turn in your geek card.

Oh, the humanity

Thank God the rest of the internet is hoax-free. Now I can get back to my penis enlargement pill popping and free ipod winning in peace.

Well...

How many times can you piss off the neighbors before the homeowner's association punishes you, coupled with the desire to please your audience?

Still though, oh the humanity Alek, couldn't you just leave one string of lights internet controlled next year? Wouldn't be too bad...

Re:Well...

We formed an HOA. It turned out that our cul-de-sac was owned by the property developer who built our housing development, and was never turned over to the city as an official street. He went belly up, and then went delinquent on the property taxes.

Then the snow stopped getting plowed. Nothing like incentive.

The seven of us homeowners purchased the lot for back taxes, and then we paid for snow plowing, garbage collection, insurance, maintenance and property taxes out of the dues we collect. We were able to strike a multi-family deal with a garbage hauler so that we actually pay less in dues for all of the above services than we did for single family garbage collection! Also, we haven't raised dues once in the 11 years since we formed the association.

When I wrote the association by-laws, I purposely omitted everything related to exterior appearance or maintenance. Sure, I wish the guy across the street would mow his lawn more often, but BFD. It sure beats having a committee decide on your house color, or painting your house then billing you.

Re:Well...

You might as well say, "why do we have zoning laws."

I hate my HOA, but do I understand why it's there. When I was 12, someone was given the land next to my parents' house and they immediately plopped a trailer home down on it. Never mind the fact there were no hookups or anything, they just cleared some of the brush, put up an outhouse, and plopped their shitty trailer home on their new land.

Needless to say, property values plummeted overnight. It took a determined group of neighbors to buy out the guy and return our neighborhood to normalicy.

HOA's just take that and zoning laws a little further. Basically, no one can do anything that might devalue your property. Many people see their home as an investment, not just a place to live, and they welcome this. Of course, it means that you have to give up a bit of your freedom as well. Good HOA's aren't that restrictive, and just make sure that you don't put a car up on blocks in your front lawn and never cut the yard. More restrictive ones might tell you how often you're going to paint your house.

The main problem with HOA's is that they tend to get populated with exactly the wrong kind of people. Who runs for the HOA offices? People with too much free time that like to stick their noses in other people's business. This thought pattern is really hard to overcome and root out once it gets in there, and most people don't realize who's running until it's too late. The busybodies will form a voting block, and the rest of the neighborhood will be just disorganized enough to not be able to get them out. That's when things go to shit. Not really, because the neighborhood looks nice, but neighbors start hating neighbors, and those (like me) who get disgusted with it simply move it. The busybodies like it too much to move, and the new blood takes too long to figure out the HOA isn't their friends.

Christ. I'm ranting. Look, I hate my HOA. However, I understand that it's a great idea corrupted by misguided people. As much as I hate it, I would have serious reservations about moving into a neighborhood without one.

In other words

By restricting your neighbors freedom of expression so you can get a neighborhood of houses that all look exactly alike you think your life is better.

Personally I'd like to live next door to someone who is creative enough to paint his house strange colors. I want nothing to do with the neighborhoods I've seen where every house looks the same, down to the flowers in the garden out front. To each his own I guess.

Oh no...

May he incur the wrath of thousands of angry slashdotters! He's in for a whooping!

No fooling

I discovered the same thing at 12 noon Denver time when a night time shot of the house was listed as "live".

Allright, you know the drill

You grab the pitchforks, I grab the torches.

And by pitchorks and torches I meant: Let's find this guy's adress and BURY HIM IN SPAM!

'tis the season of giving, after all ;-)

Re:Allright, you know the drill

Allright guys, be pissed at me, but whatever you do, don't sick the spammers on me! ;-)

Re:Allright, you know the drill

That being said... Alek, you suck. :)

I don't see it being nearly as bad as the millions of parents who lie to their children about Santa Claus. We teach our children not to lie in other circumstances, so why is it perfectly okay for parents to lie about Santa and the Easter Bunny? Lying during very significant events in the Christian tradition, no less!

Big Deal

So the guy said he did something on the web, and turned out he didnt. Isnt this the way most of the dot-com bubble companies operated?

Marketing/Management Material

Hmmm.

- Faked a demo of a cool concept.

- Lacked the geek talent and dedication required to pull it off.

- Reaped the benefits (web hits and publicity) by duping the users.

Yep, clearly the guy is made for marketing/management.

Re:Marketing/Management Material

- Lacked the geek talent and dedication required to pull it off.

Except that he didn't lack it - go read his web page. It explains how he pulled it off, generating the faked images on the fly from a few pre-shot photos and perl.

Personally, I think it's a cool hack. Glad someone out there is still doing this stuff...

Re:Marketing/Management Material

I agree....qualifies as a hack in my book. Required some techical skill, was harmless, and quite funny.

Too funny!

The whole christmas lights thing is out of hand anyway. WAY out of hand. Maybe this will serve to put a damper on some of the more retarded exploits?

NAH!

Re:LOL

Well, he lives about a mile from me, so I did consider driving by to play with it "live" before Christmas. Turns out, his house is in a gated community.

Heh...

I'm more amused than anything else. It wouldn't make sense to be indignant over an April Fools-style joke.

Hoax or not....

You really HAVE to give it anyone that can pull this off, especially to /.ers.

Bravo, bravo...
clap, clap, clap, clap

Not really

It's already hard to find someone who RTFA, imagine someone checking REALITY.

Re:Hoax or not....

Score one for old media. Maybe we should keep them around after all.

TW

Re:Hoax or not....

Score one for old media. Maybe we should keep them around after all.

And yet, most of us are reading this via the "new" media. For all I know,

1. The site doesn't even exist (I've never browsed it),
2. The site does exist and has web-controllable lights (and the apparent hoax is itself a hoax, perhaps no channel 7 either),
3. The site does exist and doesn't have web-controllable lights,
4. Slashdot is just a bunch of AI programs which mod each other up.

Re:Hoax or not....

How do you feel about Slashdot is just a bunch of AI programs which mod each other up?

Google ads on his page weren't a hoax tho

So I think Google should pay him with Monopoly money or something.

Sweet, Nice Hack

I think this guy deserves mad props for pulling this off.

I am not amused

Let's just say that I AM NOT AMUSED.

One would think that a tech/science-oriented site such as Slashdot would do a little bit of backround research before publishing articles that will eventually turn out to be hoaxes.

I am very, very disappointed at the current level of professionalism shown by the Slashdot crew. I mailed the article to several friends of mine and now, thanks to Slashdot, MY integrity is in question.

Would you like a tissue?

did you read the FAQ? [slashdot.org]

"

How do you verify the accuracy of Slashdot stories? We don't. You do. :) If something seems outrageous, we might look for some corroboration, but as a rule, we regard this as the responsibility of the submitter and the audience. This is why it's important to read comments. You might find something that refutes, or supports, the story in the main."

Re: I am not amused

> One would think that a tech/science-oriented site such as Slashdot would do a little bit of backround research before publishing articles that will eventually turn out to be hoaxes.

I think they're going to hire Dan Rather, now that he's free.

> I mailed the article to several friends of mine and now, thanks to Slashdot, MY integrity is in question.

You're not supposed to let your friends know you read Slashdot.

Newsflash: Santa ain't happy.

"I apologize to those people who may be angry with me, but hopefully most will see the humor in the whole situation ... and realize that my attempt to bring joy and a smile to people's faces was successful"

Personally I wasn't too impressed with the site to begin with, hoax or not. It didn't hold a candle to the likes of the Chaos Computer Club's [www.ccc.de] Blinkenlights [blinkenlights.de] project.

I did this...

... but on a much smaller scale. The idea was that it was a webcam in my kitchen, which you could click on to turn the lights on and off. One guy I know was fooled by it for a week. No-one had the heart to tell him...

Now I am beginning to wonder...

How much other stuff on the Internet is fake?

Devistating, simply devistating.

Someone didn't read the whole article! (Not Hoax!)

Someone obviously didn't read the whole article before posting. (Not a rare occurrance at slashdot)

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/holidays/4027215/d etail.html [thedenverchannel.com]

"I got a chuckle out of putting a clock up in the window and having the hands of the clock display the right time (it actually started out 3 minutes slow, but then gained a minute a day, until it was 4 minutes fast, and then reset itself) -- again, all computer trickery!" Komarnitsky said on his Web site Monday.

The Lafayette man said he accomplished the trickery by taking 12 "base" photographs of the house with lights on and off and then constructed a Web page that appeared to show lights going on and off when the Web visitor clicked, but after performing web server stress testing, he replaced the test images with real-time camera generated images for the holiday season.

Not everything on the internet is a forgery.

A Hoax about a Hoax

So you've got a well-deserved +3 Funny, and I've got no mod points, but I see no one has said "good job" and as such, let me:

Good job, man.

Alek Comments

Hey /.'ers ... it was all fun ... I'm SLAMMED ... will say more later ... but be SURE to read MY story of the events [komar.org] and also what Wall Street Journal guy wrote [wsj.com] ... and then if you want, go to that Channel-7 site [thedenverchannel.com] and cast your vote if I was naughty or nice!

Re:Alek Comments

It is indeed worth reading his version [komar.org] of the story, if not to pass judgment, then merely to see how he pulled it off. Its really quite interesting how much time he put into making the hoax believeable. With no less work, he probably could have made it actually work like it was supposed to...

Re:Alek Comments

The epilogue is great. The question arises about how the site being fake wasn't a hoax on the Wall Street Journal.

It's a hoot.

One "problem" when I talked to the Wall Street Journal is that Charles Forelle was concerned I was pulling a "double-dupe" - i.e. I claim to the world that there was a webcam, but to them, I said it was fake ... but maybe it really was real, so the WSJ gets eggs on their face - I hadn't thought of that, but WOW, that would be quite the hoax. Good skepticism - we need more of that in the media!
So then the issue was how can I PROVE to Charles that it really is fake since he is on the East Coast. I suggested he have a trusted person come by the house some night, and (while Charles was on the Internet watching the lights flash on and off), his friend could park in my driveway - not only would the car not be visible on the web, but the lights would not be changing. Charles said he would try "something" but would not tell me (again, good for him!) ... and another thing we did is I enabled the webcam dedicated to his IP address ... during the day! Needless to say, my house looked pretty dark on his computer screen despite it being 1:00 in the afternoon here. And then I did some stupid geek tricks like make tonsa cars drive by, lotsa people, have the garage door go crazy up/down, and have the entire United Airlines fleet show up in the sky over my house. While he got a good laugh out of all of it, I'm sure he independantly did some confirmation - yet another reason why I've been a WSJ subscriber for 20+ years - these guys do good news!


I hope he puts some of the airplane overload photos on his site. I would also think it would be fun to leave the "webcam" up 24/7.

Google Ads?

Alek, how much did you make from the Google Ad placement last year?

Revenge

Now the news guys need to get together and start calling him and saying how pissed they are that they lost their jobs for not checking the facts, and right after xmas no less. When he is finally reduced to a gibbering crying mess they can tell him, "Just kidding". I bet he would get a big laugh out of that lemme tell ya.

I bet the AdWords wasn't a hoax

So for three years running (and this Halloween?) this guy had millions of hits onto his site.
All the while he was raking in the dough from his Google AdWords banners.
I wonder how much money he has made.

Re:I bet the AdWords wasn't a hoax

BOY - you'd wonder if anyone reads the FAQ - good for you. First, Google Adsense hasn't been around for 3 years ... and I just added this to my hoax explanation [komar.org]

Several media folks are slamming me for running Google Adsense and saying I cleaned up on it. That is simply not true ... but unfortunately, I can not comment on this due to Google's Program Policies ... but let me just say that the Google Adsense Revenue for the month will just about pay for my wife's 40th birthday party and I would have made a LOT more if I had taken that Radio Station's $10,000 offer. I invite the media to contact Google for the actual numbers and they have my permission to release 'em.

Re:I bet the AdWords wasn't a hoax

I read the linked Adsense policy, and there was nothing there stating that you couldn't tell us what you made. Cough it up.

Oh, I know. If he tells us he'll have to pay taxes to the IRS. Didn't think about that, didya.

I'm surprised nobody noticed

I'm surprised nobody noticed. Camera images generally contain some noise. The noise changes even when nothing else changes. It can be especially pronounced in the dark.

Plus what about weather conditions? Plenty of local people must have seen the site. What about when it was raining or snowing and the webcam wasn't showing that?

kinda like kids & coin-op games

It's like when little kids in the 3-6yo range walk up to a video game that's in attract mode and start playing with the joystick - a lot of times they'll think they're actually playing the game when it's just the demo running.

How can you be mad?

Although it was a hoax. It's a clever one and very harmless. I just can't help but feel amused by this. Nice one Alex. Now I can't remember if he had any banners on the site but he could have made some good cash if he did.

Let's show him up

The BSD Daemon in me wants to code up a little project to do what his sight was supposed to do. Sure the neighbors would be annoyed. But something about really doing it and being able to prove it would be a little satisfying. Pride -- yup. Oh well. Maybe we'll see the Christmas Light project on Source Forge soon....

this is why...

you should always demand a girl be present in the webcast who will answer your live questions.

that way you can verify that she is actually there with the christmas lights...

in fact forget the lights... and the questions.

new perspective on my attempted visit

I tried to visit his house [slashdot.org] when he had the haloween lights up, but found it was in a gated community that was closed to visitors after 7pm. His house is a bit out of my way & I was a bit annoyed that this heavily-promoted house wasn't on public display, so I never returned. I wanted to see how often people where flipping the lights -- the webcam didn't refresh often enough to show that.

His response [slashdot.org] to my post was interesting.. it seemed legit and appropriately paranoid about strangers knocking on his door (which I would never do!!).

IMHO...

IMHO, the hoax (and how he did the hoax) is actually more entertaining than if it had been the real thing. It's interesting to see his attention to detail (right down to fiddling with EXIF headers to make it look like it was generated by a webcam, rather than photos he took earlier).

Does that make him a "Smart Alek"?

Thank you, I'll be here all week (except Friday, coz that's a holiday :)

cLive ;-)

The funny part is. . .

When I read the original story I thought to myself. . .

"Huh? 10,000 Slashdotters all jostling to flip half a dozen toggles on some guy's house lights? As if that could possibly work. Talk about bottle necks! So either this is a Fool's plan, or it's a hoax and anybody who believes it has been Fooled, --as well as demonstrating themselves to be immature enough to still believe that they are the center of the universe where all rules including band-width averages only apply to other people. (Bad things can't happen to me because I'm special!). --Either way somebody somewhere is playing the Fool, and how the heck did this rate being posted on Slashdot?"

I almost posted something to that effect, but then I figured, "Aww. Don't be a humbug. It's Christmas. I'm sure the editors are just being cute."

-FL

From Alek - thanx for the comment guys

I enjoyed reading reading through the comments from everyone - you guys were a bit tough on me, but I think that is partially because the referenced link was the Channel-7 one ... and whether you believe me or not (ummmm!), they STILL don't have the story right almost 24 hours later [komar.org] ... and this is also interesting reading [komar.org]

Interestingly enough, the FARK guys linked my Hoax page [komar.org] which includes a pointer to the WSJ article [wsj.com] and those FARK guys wrote some HILARIOUS comments [fark.com] - so I wonder how many comments above were biased by the original press report?

good point

also... there are protons decaying AS WE SPEAK!!!!

what of the protons!?