Are dead pixels really dead?

Mike in his sidebar had a post about a dead pixel fixing program which "works" by rapidly changing the colour of the pixel that is dead which makes it unsticky. I thought this would be great to run on the dead pixel on my screen only to find that when I went to look at the pixel it was already fixed. Here I was, thinking that dead pixels were final, my screen had snuffed it, it was no more - to (badly) quote a famous sketch.