Slashdot Mirror
Hacking Santa
Inigo Montoya writes "Josh McCormick outlines how he has hacked a 5-foot tall, $49.84 Wal*Mart animated dancing and singing Santa into saying and doing things his creator, Gemmy, just hadn't intended him to do. With some outboard electronics hacked into the right places, Josh has made this Santa sound and act like a drunken old mall santa on Christmas Eve.
There is also a video too."
...some people have a little too much technical know-how combined with too much time on their hands. And where's the penile mod? What good is a druken Santa that isn't a child-lusting perv?
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
"I saw Mommy slashdotting Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe last night..."
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
A mirror of the story can be found here.
A mirror of the video can be found here.
So I went browsing the isles of Wal*Mart and see if there were any good hackable items to be had there.
Yarrrr, sailing the treacherous Isles O' Wal-Mart... Harpoons at the ready, lads - thar she blows! Arrr, that's a fine shot, me hearties - ye got 'er right in the Nascar logo! Now heave to and bring her aboard!
Looked easy enough to trace... and all the smarts appeared to be in Santa's left shoe.
This sentence struck me as really funny for some reason.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I couldn't get it to load but while trying I thought of a few fun things for him to say:
"No kids, I don't really exist and all your toys were made in China."
"Happy Holidays to all and to all a good night!"
"Anyone seen my whiskey flask?"
"Remember kids, be good and don't pee on Santa's lap."
"Where are all the good lookin' Ho Ho Ho's?"
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It says right there:
(please do not link directly to video)
Did you miss that?
Wonderful. I wonder if this could be considered a DMCA violation? It would be interesting to find out.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
Wait for the first few trash pickup days after x-mas. 50 bucks is cheap enough for a lot of people to trash it rather than try to store a 5 ft tall corpse.
Then you have a year to come up with clever things for Santa to say and do.
"He sees you when you're sleeping,
He sees when you're awake,
He knows when you've been bad or good
And when you masturbate"
Those were the words when I was a kid, anyway.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
Apparently around 40 of them have already been sighted:
a s-run-amok-nz.html
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/18122005/80/drunken-sant
Drunken Santas run amok in NZ
WELLINGTON (Reuters) - Forty drunken Santas rampaged through central Auckland, stealing from stores and assaulting security guards, the New Zealand Herald reported on Sunday, in a protest against the commercialisation of Christmas.
Police said some of the Santas threw beer bottles, one tried to climb the mooring rope of a cruise ship and a security guard was punched during the fracas.
Buy Santa. Hack Santa. Return Santa.
To WalMart: Please, for the sake of the children, check those return Santas before putting them back out on the sales floor!
From what I gather, the head can just spin around endlessly... Am I the only one thinking "Exorcist Santa"???
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Who's the first to install Linux on Santa?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I've put together a school of Big Mouth Billy Bass, and have allowed them to describe how painful it is to be caught and placed on a wall. This work has been shown in art galleries in Washington, DC. Link: School of Fish Pain.
He knows when your are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
You better not breathe, you better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!
This Santa is just another crass example of the War on Christmas (TM)!
Hack A Day had this up on their site a few days ago here. In the comments on that page, there is a link to this really creepy hack that someone did with one of those Santas.
Oops! That wasnt programmed in the Santa. It was a bug .
-Lieutienant Obvious
You know, you've left the rest of us just hoping, for your sake, that there was no overlapping time period of when you began pleasuring yourself and when you stopped believing in Santa.
"No fair, you changed the outcome by measuring it!" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
Maybe they have changed the models, but the Santa I bought has an audio-in jack. Heck the box even advertised a Kareoke mode. Just plug in a mic, or any alternate audio feed, and you have the same thing.
I can't find ONE evil robot Santa from Futurama reference in this whole thread. For shame!
Really, the point is that it doesn't matter what you call it. If you came up to me first and wished me a Merry Christmas, I'd thank you and return it back to you. If I had been the first to approach you, I'd probably wish you a fantastic winter solstice or happy holiday. If some Jewish guy came up and wished me a happy Hannukah (about a week or two ago), I'd wish him the same in return. Not that I know almost anything about Kwanzaa, but if someone wished me a Happy/Merry/Whatever Kwanzaa, I'd thank them and do it in reverse.
See the trend here? If someone wishes you a $HAPPY_HOLIDAY, regardless of what it is, you thank them and do the same in return, regardless of how fucking stupid you may or may not think their religion or holiday is. All the same, though, demanding a business or person adhere to one particular holiday greeting is pretty pathetic, no? Let the people do whatever they want and take it as it is meant: happy whatever holiday you feel like celebrating, whether that is Christmas, Kwanzaa, Yule (as in the winter solstice), or Hannukah. Or, when it so happens to fall here, Ramadan (insert other holidays as applicable - I have no idea what Hindu, Buddhist, etc, etc follows). If someone wishes you Merry Christmas and you're Jewish, accept the well-wishing as it was meant! If someone wishes you a Happy/Merry/Solemn Ramadan, accept that as well! It's someone being polite! Stop being fascists about your season's greetings and go with the spirit in which it was meant!
Happy Holidays = "I hope things rock for you!"
That is why this whole thing is fucking hilarious. My hatred for Christianity runs high, but when someone tells me Merry Christmas, I don't get upset! Why? Because they're wishing me well! Regardless of the religious trappings or cultural overtones, it's the thought that counts, and it's the meaning that should be accepted, not the manner in which it is said!