ICFP Contest Releases Codex 38
howie writes "The ICFP Programming Contest begins on Friday and organizers have released the first part of the contest, the "codex". Contest organizers haven't (yet) given any details, but there's been lots of speculation on the discussion list -- the file contains some suggestive strings like "i love bees" and "MKULTRA". The organizers promise more information by noon (ET) on Friday."
My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:4, Interesting)
Next: It's a reference to a game centered around the film A.I. [cloudmakers.org] and refers to a society called the Cloudmakers.
Next: The phrase "so dark the con of man" is actually a religious blog [timboucher.com].
A funny thing about the first three phrases I picked out is that they are all blogs online if you google them. Is this a coincidence or are all of the phrases here blogs? They seem to refer to direct blog entries, perhaps the html or text from these blog entries can be used as a hash encryption for the "junk" binary loaded in between each of the entries.
Again, this is just speculation. MKULTRA refers to the CIA's mind control program in response to rumors of the Soviet, Chinese and North Korean programs of the smae nature
Perhaps the purpose is to develop a blog scanning program that will accurately identify blogs and retrieve information and try to figure out a way to crack this document? It's very large so I am guessing automation would be necessary as opposed to human googling by hand.
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:1, Informative)
Is Doctor Who scheduled to make an appearance? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:1, Interesting)
- Open the file in your favourite text editor (that doesn't mess up binaries), like emacs
- Search for GIF and delete everything that appears before it
- Save with a
Voila! instant mysterious picture!
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:2)
(by the way AC is right there is an image.)
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:2)
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:1)
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:1)
which, when backwards is
. You can get a longer list at http://rapidshare.de/files/26473525/codex.tar.bz2. html [rapidshare.de]. Here are the highlights:
Re:My Speculation is They're All Blogs (Score:1)
programming with brain (Score:3, Funny)
I can't wait (Score:2, Funny)
FP?
Interesting things I've found (Score:1, Interesting)
Beginning of file:
ignoti et quasi occulti
welldonedaed si luap
5Evan Chan was murdered
fnord
tsarogy
apply
MKULTRA
abracadabra
evalso dark the con of man
__VFD__
h__CBV__
dustsolomon
GIF89a@
|%equo
rakoczi
novus ordo seclorum
telluric
o,5:>n
plbndetibh u ou rvcofalt ea
templar
tycon mismatch
apply
5raimundus
societas_eruditorum
End of file:
1lambda
anbaric
Tga'G
abulafiabad wolf
lambda
roswell
area51
i love bees
__42__
lullus
surmount
currents
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:2)
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:2)
After "abracadabra" and "eval", it counts from 0-256 in big-endian 32-bit words.
Right before "abracadabra", there's 4096 bytes of weird looking patterned data. I opened it as "raw" 64x64 indexed in Gimp and got the same mysterious "GBV"/"CBV" image as can be extracted from the GIF a little later in the file!
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:1)
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:2, Interesting)
After MKULTRA and before abracadabra......using Notepad (the best programming tool ever?)
Basically, take that chunk of text and put carriage returns after every 64th character. A pattern that matches the GIF image appears using text. [I tried including it, but of course filters killed that idea]
BTW, the text looks more like a GBV than a CBV.
Layne
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:2)
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:1)
So, my thoughts:
- the file contains many dividing tokens (i.e. MKULTRA and abracadabra)
- each block between the tokens represents the same image in some format (GIF, BMP, Text, etc.)
- the goal will be to decode as many different versions of the same image as possible
- I'm sure there is some link between the dividing tokens and the encoding method (this is purely guessing)
(If I'm right, then the portion of t
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:2)
More likely, the codex implies that contestants will be asked to do some kind of ciphering/deciphering of languages and conspiracy theory.
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:1)
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Interesting things I've found (Score:2)
Image Processing Perhaps? (Score:2)
Re:Image Processing Perhaps? (Score:2)
Re:Image Processing Perhaps? (Score:2)
Re:Image Processing Perhaps? (Score:1)
Re:Image Processing Perhaps? (Score:2)
Here's the gif. (Score:3, Informative)
Damn (Score:2)
I might even noodle around after the fact and just not enter it in the contest.
Codex book ? (Score:2)
The WebArchive [archive.org] does have a recent archive of the site to check is this is was recently created.
This indicate there may be a relation with the Codex book reviewed last year on Slashdot [slashdot.org] by the post author himself. The alternate reality game [wikipedia.org] is just starting...
Re:Codex book ? (Score:2)
Rules released (Score:1)
Dear Colleague:
In 1967, during excavation for the construction of a new shopping center in Monroeville, Pennsylvania, workers uncovered a vault containing a cache of ancient scrolls. Most were severely damaged, but those that could be recovered confirmed the existence of a secret society long suspected to have been active in the region around the year 200 BC.
Based on a translation of these documents, we now know that the society, the Cult of the Bound Variable, was devoted to the care