Linux Powers Controllable Christmas Lights for Charity

Santa Claus writes "Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier's recent article at Linux.Com tells the hilarious story of Alek's Controllable Christmas Lights. When he out'ed himself to the Wall Street Journal, saying that it was a simulation/hoax in 2004, the mass media howled at being fooled while Slashdot simply said Humbug. Alek claims that he went legit in 2005, as confirmed by the Rocky Mountain News. Brockmeier did an on-site visit to actually see and report in detail how the system really works ... for real! For 2006, there are three D-Link DCS-6620G webcams providing live coverage of 15,000 Christmas Lights, plus giant inflatable Elmo, Santa, and Homer Simpson. X10 power technology allows web surfers to turn stuff on & off with a click of a mouse. You can also type in text for everyone to see on a laptop in Santa's Workshop Cam. This year over $15,000 has been raised for the University of Maryland Center for Celiac Research, as a result of the lights. Brockmeier and the Christmas FAQ says it is load-balanced across four dedicated 100 Mbps Apache/Linux servers running mod_perl." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by OSTG.

Re:Alek says HO HO HO ... ;-)

[Jeng]

It's actually really annoying, because Digg visitors almost never stay for more than ~5 seconds (slashdot readers appear to at least read part of the story).

I think you just said why a site that lets you play with Christmas lights is much more dangerous on Slashdot, than on Digg.

Linux powers the lights?

[proxy318]

Wow! All these years I've been wasting my money using electricity to power my lights. Wish someone had told me about this earlier.