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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.'"
Ho ho hoax!
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
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.
"Wow. Now THAT'S a lot of angry Indians." - Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer
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...
...in bed
May he incur the wrath of thousands of angry slashdotters! He's in for a whooping!
I discovered the same thing at 12 noon Denver time when a night time shot of the house was listed as "live".
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
You can't take the sky from me...
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?
NAH!
Is it fascism yet?
With wireless and what not, how fucking hard would this be to fact check?
I'm more amused than anything else. It wouldn't make sense to be indignant over an April Fools-style joke.
You really HAVE to give it anyone that can pull this off, especially to /.ers.
Bravo, bravo...
clap, clap, clap, clap
So I think Google should pay him with Monopoly money or something.
I think this guy deserves mad props for pulling this off.
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.
"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 Blinkenlights project.
also... there are protons decaying AS WE SPEAK!!!!
what of the protons!?
-pyrrho
It's already hard to find someone who RTFA, imagine someone checking REALITY.
... 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...
Devistating, simply devistating.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
it's not in question any more.
now they know!
-pyrrho
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/holidays/4027215/d etail.html
"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.
IANAL(tm), but I would imagine that with no commerce involved, no parties have any actual damages, and therefore no cause against him. Except maybe chopper 7, I guess, for the cost of the ride they were duped out of. But IMHO going after him would be bad form on anyone's part. Let's chalk it up to a good practical joke at our collective expense, figuratively speaking. He got us but good, and that's that.
I'm an animal lover -- they're delicious!
Hey /.'ers ... it was all fun ... I'm SLAMMED ... will say more later ... but be SURE to read MY story of the events and also what Wall Street Journal guy wrote ... and then if you want, go to that Channel-7 site and cast your vote if I was naughty or nice!
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
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 Am My Own Worst Enemy
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.
Read what Alex himself has to say about the hoax. Pretty interesting to hear it from the man himself instead a news agency ticked off at him for fooling them.
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?
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.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
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.
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.
Specks
Batteries not included
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....
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Alek, how much did you make from the Google Ad placement last year?
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.
I tried to visit his house 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 to my post was interesting.. it seemed legit and appropriately paranoid about strangers knocking on his door (which I would never do!!).
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
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).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
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.
Thank you, I'll be here all week (except Friday, coz that's a holiday :)
;-)
cLive
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
Downloaded 3 images. Found out the fixed noise patterns were the same.
You'd think that, as a camera would operate, the temperature would change and some of the random noise would be different.
Sad to say, it wasn't.
Conclusion: Either he had a very good noise removal algorithm... or he was faking the images.
Proof: None. Just smile, snicker, and keep loading his pages until his bandwidth exceeds his heating...
Uh, not only was 9/11 not a natural disaster, less than 20,000 people died in it, so it would be "since" something before 9/11.
That said, you may notice at the top of the page that it says "News for Nerds." Anyone can go to one of the hundreds of world news sites to find out what is going on in the world.
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.
For the past number of years I have had computer controlled Xmas lights at my house in Edmonton, Canada.
Although not controlled via the internet it would be relatively easy, just some software mod's and a web server required.
The computer is a Pentium 90 stuck out in the garage, running a hand coded C' program to sequence the lights. The program checks the state of the real time clock in the computer and the light show is automatic between 18:00 - 22:00 nightly.
The C' program runs under DOS (although this year it's now under Win98, because I was going to use VNC for control over the house LAN.)
The program controls the printer port which is connected to 4 solid state relays, I currently have 4 channels with 4 strings of 5W bulbs on each channel (4*4*5*25=2KW) all these strings are strung around a 20' spruce tree. The lights fade in/out and the sequences have variable delay times and some random sequences so each time it runs the output is slightly different each time.
Sorry no video or stills of this yet.
Considering how much coverage this thing had, the numbers of visitors would have been huge. It's ridiculous to think that a display like that would be stable with the large number of visitors/hits/controllers he 'would' have had. 1500 people trying to control one webcam simultaneously is a ridiculous thought.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
"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
http://www.x10.com/pressroom/pressroom_history.htm
and in greater depth:
http://www.hometoys.com/htinews/oct04/articles/rye /history.htm
Ah yes...the Subservient Chicken. Even funnier was the list of stuff it would actually do!
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.
(AdSense policies span more than one page.)
Actually, he may not be able to disclose the dollar amount he received, although I'm not sure how to interpret it and I don't feel like making the effort. Here, check out Item b from Google AdSenseTM Online Standard Terms and Conditions:
-j.
Uh, yeah. Try this... have 1500 people use the same yo-yo at the same time. Does it work? Is there a special principle that would make it work?
Wanna know what simultaneous control of a camera for 1500 people would look like? Just take a webcam and mount it on top of a spring then whack the spring. 'Democratic' camera control? perhaps, but it wouldn't be true control, but that's another concept entirely.
This item surrounded 'expectations' by the viewers. I'm sure there were many that 'expected' it to be a real item. I have no doubt there were those here on Slashdot that went to the site and thought "this is really cool" without realizing that their sole control of camera and lights was a technically laughable 'expectation' given the number of simultaneous users. The expectations arise out of the lack of most basic understanding of the technology. That's what seems to have pissed people off about the whole thing. Those that think they are 'l331' got sucked into the whole thing, which I find extremely hilarious. I saw the story and just rolled my eyes because it's immediately apparent to the technically skilled that the whole sole control concept of this kind is not physically possible. One person controlling one cam, yes. Many controlling one cam, no. Those that have protested this the most are most likely those that got sucked into it the hardest. Just look at the posts here on Slashdot. There seem to be some really upset people that this whole thing was hoaxed while others find it extremely funny. The mission, if you choose to accept it, is to pick out the ones that went to the site and 'wondered' at it.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
Interestingly enough, the FARK guys linked my Hoax page which includes a pointer to the WSJ article and those FARK guys wrote some HILARIOUS comments - so I wonder how many comments above were biased by the original press report?
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
How very unprofessional of you to post Alek's email address, and also his place of employment. In your quest to take the wind out of Alek's sails, you dragged Lockheed Martin and CSC into this situation. Did you stop to think about how that might reflect on you, or these companies? So Alek pointed out our gullible humanity--big deal. He said he wanted to spread some Christmas cheer and I believe him. There are worse things to be than a wanna-be elf....like an anonymous coward, perhaps. Good luck to you. I hope your anonymity holds tight.