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!

[NormalVisual]

Ho ho hoax!

Oh, the humanity

[CodeWanker]

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.

Oh no...

[Xshare]

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

Allright, you know the drill

[Scrameustache]

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:over 20,000 people died this weekend

[Anonymous Coward]

9/11 a natural disaster? And even so, 3000 dead americans worse than 20000 dead asians? It's you who need to get your priorities straight.

Google ads on his page weren't a hoax tho

[melted]

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

I am not amused

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

good point

[pyrrho]

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

what of the protons!?

I did this...

[Gordonjcp]

... 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...

[NotQuiteReal]

How much other stuff on the Internet is fake?

Devistating, simply devistating.

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

[ugmoe]

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.

Revenge

[nizo]

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.

Marketing/Management Material

[MooseByte]

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:Hoax or not....

[noidentity]

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.

this is why...

[10000000000000000000]

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.

Re:Allright, you know the drill

[TheWickedKingJeremy]

Seriously guys, relax. Though this trick might have gone over better in early April, its not worth getting worked up over.

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

Re:Season's greetings!

[robyannetta]

I hope there was extra bandwidth charges brought on by the Slashdot Effect. That'll teach him!

Does that make him a "Smart Alek"?

[cliveholloway]

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

cLive ;-)

Re:His explanation...

[Anonymous Coward]

If he'd actually done it for real he would've deserved all the geek-praise he got. But because it was a hoax he's just a goddamn terrorist in my eyes now....

Re:over 20,000 people died this weekend

[Anonymous Coward]

But they're orientals. 20,000 orientals is like 5 Americans tops.

Re: I am not amused

[Black Parrot]

> 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.

Re:His explanation...

[arth1]

Who actually read his explanation? (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:

[Huge, long and well thought out list deleted]

For all the trouble you went through to research and type out all this, you could have set up your house with teeceepipped blinkenlights :-)

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:Hoax or not....

[Anonymous Coward]

ERR 301 Insufficient mod points, unable to complete "mod each other up" task

Re:His explanation...

[null etc.]

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:racist pig

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! How does the grandparent figure that eradication of the Jews he mentioned would be a blow to the human genome? He's nuts.

Re:Marketing/Management Material

[Scrameustache]

I guess you're unfamiliar with a small, mostly unheard-of school called MIT?

So you're telling me that they only pretend to pull off these pranks?

Re:His explanation...

[griffjon]

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.

Re:Hoax or not....

[MarcQuadra]

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