Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Moore
Adam,
Agreed, Joe has either pulled off (or has tried to pull off) a number of hoaxes on this website. He has reached the point where he needs collaborators to accomplish these.
First, it is posted in "Extra Discussion" rather than in a real forum. Joe knows better than to post his hoaxes in a real forum. Also, why of all people was Joe (a noted prankster) the very first to receive this misdelivery?
Second, all the initial collaborators seem suspiciously close to Joe or to his team. Perhaps a case of "You lie, and I'll swear to it." But the circle of folks claiming to receive the phantom FIRST Email Blast has grown beyond Joe's influence. Either the Blast is real, or we have folks jumping on a "Me Too!" bandwagon.
The PDF document appears to come from the FIRST website. I doubt that Joe would take a chance by spoofing the FIRST site, so he would need some inside help to upload the document. NOTE: The document author is not fully named, it only lists the name "kpilotte", which was assumed to be Kate Pilotte. It is not difficult to change the "author" of a document, and lack of a full name brings this document into question.
But, to further cloud the question, the board that Joe has photographed, and the board on the PDF document are not the same. (Or some Photoshopping has taken place.) The "quality mark" on Joe's board is positioned slightly different than the one in the PDF photo. You also have to wonder why three fonts are used on the circuit board; one for the URL, one for the component layout, but the final part of the copyright text (FIRST") is in a slightly larger font than the beginning part. It would seem that when putting a copyright symbol onto a board design they would know who holds the rights.
Finally, Dave loves to see these things mushroom, and he will gleefully post his most devilish laugh as he watches all the lemmings rush over the cliff!
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Statistically, the bigger in scope a hoax becomes (specifically in the number of people required to carry it out), the harder and harder it becomes to successfully pull it off. This rabbit hole just goes too deep, and involves too much, to be a simple hoax.
1. Extra Discussion is the defacto place where all threads started about photos from CD-Media are located.
2. Unless someone hacked FIRST's TIMS system, how would you be able to spoof a FIRST Email Blast to every team?
3. The "Author" on Word/PDF documents is usually the person's username. Since her email address is the same name, this is the most likely scenario.
4. One was an initial prototype board (PDF image) and the other (the one teams receive) is the final version.
5. We may not be lemmings running over a cliff, but we certainly must make Dave's day with these threads. If I was on the GDC, I know I would find anything involving a game hint in a thread to be really amusing.
