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EA Uses ASCII Billboard To Woo Rivals

Posted by simoniker on from the cheeky-so-and-so dept.

Lard writes "According to Canada.com, videogame maker Electronic Arts has posted a billboard using ASCII character codes in order to poach programmers away from rival Radical Entertainment's Vancouver offices - 'the billboard is only about 100 metres from [Radical's] head office' and reads 'now hiring' using ASCII, alongside an EA Canada logo. You can check out a better image of the billboard here ."

2 of 91 comments (clear)

  1. That's not what it reads.. by ottawanker · · Score: 4, Informative

    'the billboard is only about 100 metres from [Radical's] head office' and reads 'now hiring' using ASCII, alongside an EA Canada logo."

    Actually, it doesn't read 'now hiring', it reads 'Now Hiring'.

  2. Re:ASCII: a language? by cyb97 · · Score: 2, Informative

    It's just as much a language as ciphertext.
    ASCII is nothing but a way of transscribing text written with symbols that we like to call letters into text written with symbols that we like to call numbers...

    Deciphering that message (had it been a bit longer) is just as hard as dechipering a caesar-shift with a rotation of 13 (rot-13). ASCII is only a rotation of 65 for CAPITALS or 97 for minuscules.

    So I can't see why people have any more trouble with this than any other direct marketing.