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Internet hoax hoodwinks McNealy

Summary

At Oracle confab, Sun's CEO inadvertently illustrates how easy it is to fall for a high-tech hoax.

Events

Microsoft MSDN/Developer Event
25 Mar 2010

One Marina Boulevard, Microsoft Singapore

IT Architect Regional Conference Singapore 2010
20 - 21 Apr 2010

Singapore Management University, Singapore

The Internet Show 2010
21-22 Apr 2010

Suntec Singapore

SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems Chief Executive Scott McNealy showed a photo during a Wednesday speech to illustrate how rapidly technology improves--but instead illustrated another computing phenomenon: how easy it is to fall for an Internet hoax.

At a keynote address here at the Oracle OpenWorld show, McNealy made fun of a picture supposedly from the magazine "Popular Mechanics" showing how people in 1954 envisioned the home computer. Alas, in reality it is a doctored photo of a nuclear submarine control room mock-up, according to the myth-debunking site Snopes.com.

The black-and-white photo, which has circulated by e-mail and Web postings, shows a man in an Eisenhower-era suit standing before a long panel studded with dozens of gauges and a single steering wheel. A bulky monitor looms above, and a keyboard is placed in front.

According to Snopes, the original image is a U.S. Navy photograph taken of a Smithsonian exhibit. The modified version was submitted to an image modification contest.

Hoaxes are nothing new for the Internet. There have been bogus MP3 viruses, virus repairs and e-mail taxes.

McNealy might be a hornswoggled high-tech CEO, but he showed some rightly skeptical instincts. "Being from Detroit, I have to wonder: What is the steering wheel for?" he asked the audience of thousands at the show.

And his next point certainly made sense: "It's hard to imagine where we'll be 50 years from now," he said.

McNealy shouldn't feel too bad about his gaffe; he has good company. Lotus founder Mitch Kapor posted the same bogus photo to his blog in November, later noting his mistake.

Talkback

Why aren't any of these news sites willing to list the origins of the photoshopped image? www.fark.com

Anonymous December 11th, 2004 Reply
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