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Judge Creates Own Da Vinci Code
xmedar writes "The BBC is reporting that the judge who presided over the recent Da Vinci Code plagiarism case used steganography to embed his own code in the judgment using italic text in random places throughout the text. The full text of the code reads 'smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz' if you want to have a go at cracking it." From the article: "Although he would not be drawn on his code and its meaning, Mr Justice Smith said he would probably confirm it if someone cracked it, which was 'not a difficult thing to do'. In March, he presided over a High Court case brought by authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who claimed Dan Brown plagiarized their own historical book for The Da Vinci Code."
Which only turns it into "nrvrkgbfgcfnpternzdjsxnqczdm"
;)
I checked double, triple and even quadruple ROT13, too! No luck!!
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
Anybody who puts that kind of stuff in their formal documents is clearly too cool to be a judge. Anybody know where you can find info on what the italicized letters are?
Offtopic: For those unsure about whether Dan Brown is a fool or a genius, I offer a quote from Digital Fortress: You cannot make this stuff up
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
What if they are markers and the character count between italics is the true code (for example)? He said it isn't difficult so the italics might suffice, but still...
The first boldface italicized letters actually spell out "Smithy code"; you can see the 'y' in section A.1.3 of the ruling (PDF).
smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz = "Can't we all just get along?"
Having a bookmark to Google does not make you an expert on everything.
I see in the news how our Justice system is overwhelmed, they have too much work to do, they need more people, more funding, etc...
I can't understand this... OK, so they have the time to do these sorts of things now?
I know that if I attempted such shenanigans in, oh I don't know, reports that got sent to customers I'd likely be reprimanded if not fired.
More
Do you have to stand up to type--what with the giant pole up your ass and all?
do note that the summary forgot at least 1 letter...
I'm sorry, but a Judge should not be playing games in a judgement. If I were the plantiff or prosecutor, I'd be pissed the he might not be taking the case seriously.
The plaintiff's premise for suing was "Dan Brown wrote about the same stuff we wrote about" followed by their lawyer's logic of "Dan Brown is rich" and "this pays better than the lottery". They deserve not to be taken seriously.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
in which case you'd probably be taking yourself much too seriously
Maybe, if you were the plaintiff, you would take a hint as to how serious he felt your case was?
- Sig files: contemptibly familiar the second time around.
I was poking about at it earlier, it's not monoalphabetic, but that's as far as I got.
This court case was in the UK...
Read my blog posts on usability.
How about reading the fucking article before getting up on your high horse.
This was a UK judge, retard.
Um .. just to let you know .. it wasn't a US court.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
There are plenty of examples of both hacks and decent writers being successful. As successful -- maybe there you have a point -- but the question was whether he's a genius or a dork, and the "dork" clicker on my geiger counter just went off a ton during that excerpt.
John Grisham is putridly bad in terms of the legal setting he sets his pop schlock in, whereas Scott Turow is pretty danged good and gets his stuff close to plausible. Turow's novels are far superior to Grisham's as a result -- but Grisham's dumbed-down idiocy does get cranked out faster and make somewhat more money, that's true. John Lecarre, especially early on, was writing his espionage thrillers based on personal experience in British Intelligence; Ian Fleming was writing pop nonsense. They've both had their commercial successes. James Bond is an easier franchise to cash in on in those Hollywood movies you talk about -- but give me "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" any day.
The question was whether Dan Brown should be taken seriously. Looks like he's a trash pop fiction writer to me, that being the parent poster's point. There are much better examples of what he does. If you want the whole grand-conspiracy-across-history thing, Umberto Eco turned it inside out in Foucault's Pendulum in the 1980s, and Eco's about 700 times the novelist Dan Brown is...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Oh, look! Look at the repression inherint in the system!
Cry me a river, build me a bridge, and get over it.
I'm suprised nobody seems to notice that they both are linked to the same publisher, the book has been in existence for 3 years already, so why now?, and suprise, suprise, the film is about to come out. What better than a pointless media frenzy and "cool judge" to get everyone talking about it? So transparent...
The BBC is reporting...
...Mr Justice Smith...
...a High Court case ...
In other words, this case is from Britain!
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
It's just rotating clear text...
A telephone is ringing in the darkness -- a tinny, unfamiliar ring. I fumble for the bedside lamp and turn it on. Squinting at my surroundings I see a plush Renaissance bedroom with exquisite Louis IX furniture, hand-frescoed walls, and a mahogany four-poster bed with a person in it, who is me, Dan Brown, the master storyteller and a bestselling author whose talent for dialogue and depth of characterization exceed even Tom Clancy at his finest. The jacquard bathrobe hanging on the bedpost bears the monogram: HOTEL RITZ PARIS.
... It's really difficult to read. How I wish someone would write a dumbed-down version!
Where the hell am I?
The cobwebs in my head blow away, like candles in the wind. Oh, that's right, I am in my New England bedroom recovering from a trip to the world renowned city of Paris, where I attended a lecture given by world renowned Harvard religious symbologist Robert Langdon, who gave me an idea for a novel about religious symbology. On my bedside table I see Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum
Hello?
I pick up the phone. "Monsieur?", says the voice. "Sir, an important man is here to see you, s'il vous plait?" I wish Juanita would stop putting on a French accent. "A very important man," she pressed. That could only be my friend, Sir Leigh Teabing, the Royal Historian and Ambassador-Plenipotentiary to the Exchequer. He was awarded a knightency by Queen Elizabeth the II for his amazing volume on the House of Percy, in which he revealed for the first time the ninth earl's involvement in a Rosicrucian-Illuminati-Masonic conspiracy to do, er, something or other.
"Good evening, old fruit!," he exclaimed as he shimmered in, his monocle popping out. "I say, how the devil are you, old bean? Lawks-a-mercy, had a spot of bother getting up the apples and pears, don't you know! Good lord, is that settee kosher or wot? Must 'ave a knees-up round the old Joanna, eh!" (Did I not already tell you my research skills are second to none?: I based this dialogue on The Code of the Woosters, a useful compendium of contemporary slang). His manservant, Rémy Legaludec, stood by, menacingly. I don't trust him. Rémy, I mean, not Sir Teabing, who is as straight as a piece of string.
But who was the femme fatale (fatal woman) accompanying him? She looked familiar, like a beautiful Jacques Saunière, world renowned curator of the Louvre (the Louvre), the world renowned art museum in Paris. "Ah, 'alo, 'alo, monsieur (Mister), my name is Sophie Neveu," she said in flawless English, "I studied at the Royal Holloway." There is a sadness about her, as if she were about to find out her grandfather had been shot by a psychotic albino assassin working for Opus Dei -- hey, it happens -- but on the outside she smiles enigmatically, like Amon L'Isa.
Sophie took off her glasses, the ones that made her look like the renowned French government cryptographer she was. "My God," I said, "you're beautiful." "Thank you," she said, tossing her mane of thick burgundy hair playfully. Her playfulness disguised the haunting memory of witnessing her beloved grandfather participating in a bizarre sex ritual, but I wasn't to know that, though I thought I'd mention it now to keep the narrative tension at fever pitch. See, that's what good writing is all about.
Sir Teabing was also a sight for sore eyes. I wanted to pick his brains about an idea I'd had for a new bestselling book. "Sir Teabing," I said to the Royal British Knight of the Realm, "I'd like to pick your brains about an idea I've had for a new bestselling book."
"O, Jubilate!," Sir Teabing said. "Fire away!, as we used to say on the hunting-fields of Eton College, the world renowned school for the British upper-crust."
"From my researches at the Institute of Historical Review, and with the help of world renowned scholar David Irving, I've discovered the existence of a secret cabal -- known as 'Jews' -- which controls the destiny of the world through its factotum, an entity called 'Israel' that worship
d-r-i-n-k-m-o-r-e-o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e !
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I wondered whether 'smithycode' might be a Vigenere keyword, though it doesn't seem to be the case. Seems there is good reason to consider this, as the judge mentioned he used codes found in both books which were in the case. Vigenere cipher was an important part of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail", one of the books in the court case. The other, Brown's obscure novel, used a number of codes including the Atbash and other simple substitutions.There's a few random thoughts here: Smithy Code. No solution though. :/
Can we get this guy on the US Supreme Court? It's gotten way too stuffy for my test. Mr Justice Peter Smith might just bring some much-needed humanity to court deliberations.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
The summary is missing one, and this morning everyone thought there were 25. There must be a more geeky way to figure this one out than sitting there for hours on end reading boring legal stuff.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
it might have escaped thy notice that the judge is not from the US.
we are slightly non-amused that thou fortakest UK for US.
cultured justices should be capable of creating such fine art as inline
cryptography at the blink of an eye. especially in a courtly environment.
thou should be thrown in the tower for such assumptions.
yours sincerely,
HRM Anonymous Coward
From another article
, e,a,m,q,w,f,k,a,d,p,m,q,z.
Mr Justice Smith confirmed Mr Tench's suspicions when he said the pattern was "something more than a typo". The judge, who is 53 and lists some of his hobbies as reading military history and the sinking of the Titanic, said that paragraph 52 of his judgment would give readers a clue to the puzzle.
That paragraph reads: "I have set out at some length what in my opinion is an overall analysis of HBHG [The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail]. I have done that and will do the same further in this judgment in respect of DVC [The Da Vinci Code] because that is essential in my view to deciding this case."The paragraph ended: "The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC."
In Mr Justice Smith's coded judgment, the first nine digits obviously spell Smith Code:
s,m,i,t,h,c,o,d,e,J,a,e,i,e,x,t,o,s,t,p,s,a,c,g,r
Beyond that is anyone's guess.
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Of course they shouldn't be wasting their time writing judgments while sitting on the bench. ;)
That's why they have clerks tucked away in the back room to bang these things out
Technology, the cause of and solution to all of life's problems.
Rebellion is always cool. Besides, it was probably an "after the fact" thing which might have taken all of 10 minutes. Not to mention, even if it were the U.S. court system, I would venture to say that it has already all but choked to death from frivolity on the side of the litigators, it's not like this act would seriously affect the integrity of the system.
When did the future switch from being a promise to a threat? -C. Palahniuk
Amazing. Only 30 minutes after I submitted this anonymously (with a Reg link), somebody else submits it for credit...
Is it just a subsbitution ciper with the letters "smithcode" being the first ones?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Mr Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I've ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response was there anything that could even be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
To grab single italicized letters from the document.
As far as I can see the letter list is:
smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzviMi
Does Anyone else feel like, merely having which letters he italicized, if it is really sternographically encoded shouldnt help SO much, that you would also need the position of each letter, and well, context?
i'm pretty sure it has something to do with those numbers in Lost...
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
That's fhqwhgads' brother.
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz
Reverse the first part to get 'codesmith' and take away the word 'a' & 'exists' from the next few letters
This leaves you with 'Jaeotpcgream' which you will use later.
Take letters on the keyboard next to 'qwfkadpmqz' to get 'asriseonas' which is then combined with 'Jaeotpcgream' to form 'jaeotpcgreamasriseonas'
You take out the words 'to raise a scam' then throw away the rest of the letters.
These words are then rearranged to form the sentence:
'A codesmith exists to raise a scam.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
It's probably just another quote from Idi Amin...
Well there are two q's and no u's so I don't think it's a simple jumble. Also, I wonder what the significance of the capitalized J is. If it were just a matter of rearranging the letters then the J would either be the first letter of the phrase, or a name; but what would a capital letter signify amongst lower case letters?
Maybe it could still be a jumble with odd words like 'qasida' and 'qere'. Maybe it's a simple substitution cypher where each letter points to another, and a J represents the same letter as j, just capitalized.
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
I take it you have never been to court or that your DUI was tried by Chief Justice Data.
I have seen judges belittle all categories of person in the courtroom including; Witnesses, accused, spectators, Attorneys and bailiffs. Even Lower court Judges, Legislators and the law are fair game.
I know a Judge who wrote a book of courtroom humor. Justice Carl Harrison of the Jamaican Court of Appeal. If anyone can find a reference for this book, post a link.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Eh, I thought it would be funny if a judge used something really simple and well known for his code... oh well, the output is below:
With smithycode:
BEOSRJAZJTVCNQOJHIIIEXQNNRBNEPLAHCMFVJCMS
Without:
BEOSRJAZJTVCNQOJHIIIEXQNNRBNEPL
I just don't get... eh, ugh... never mind. This post wasn't worth the research I put into it.
Oh, please, mod parent informative :)
Well, using "SMITHCODE" as the key to a Vigenere cipher, I managed to get a partial decryption:
ISALQRAPPXGSJZPQNIYKXRTBBJMH
As you can plainly see, the first three words are: "Is All Crap"
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
S o this is what al l these judges do in their free time. It was my impression th a t they sh oul d be more intrested in the case, n o t working on secre t codes.
Bryan
Sorry, sometimes we Americans forget about the rest of the world, could we have a "Not about USA" tag please for all three of those articles?
Seriously, the fact that something cool was happening in a court should have tipped us off. My ass anything like this would ever happen in the US.
The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it. - William Gibson
Fry: Can you translate it?
Farnsworth: Of course. But only into Beta Crypt 3, a language so complex there's even less chance of understanding it.
Fry: I didn't ask for a completely reasonable excuse. I asked you to get busy.
Doesn't matter that the plaintiff didn't have a case to start with - what matters is whether the plaintiff got a fair hearing.
7 1,00.html Of course, if the judge had kept his mouth shut, he'd be taking the blame for Vista not shipping.
The grandparent is right - the judge is jeopardizing the case by screwing around like this. The plaintiff now has the point that the judge may not have been impartial.
It's not the first time where a judge's impartiality was called into question. See http://www.wirednews.com/news/politics/0,1283,420
Using the original code, taking the previous character to each letter and then the next character to each letter:
Original : (smithycode) j a e i e x t o s t g p s a c g r e a m q w f k a d p m q z v
Previous character : (R L H S G X B N C D) K B F H F Y U P T U H Q T B D H S F B N R X G L B E R N R A W
Next character : (T N J U Z D P E F) H Z D G D W S N R S F O R Z B F Q D Z O P V E J Z C O L O Y U
Words found in 'next character' string : YOU LOSE NOW
Possible?
Cruising the internet on my TI-99/4A @ a whopping 300 baud!
'the butler killed him, with the lead pipe in the scullery`
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
If one of his hobbies was sinking the Titanic, there's no telling what he'll do if he decides to 'throw the book' at you! Still, how did he manage that if he's only 53 years old?
--
Sig monde
Brown liked to use those anagrams all through his books. Maybe the judge decided to do one himself?
i dont think that smith(y)code is a key, clue or anything else... i think of it more of an intro. this "puzzle" its a code by justice smith. i beleive that smith code is simply stating that "here is a code from smith" an intro so to speak
(But the point was that success isn't limited to crap pop fiction, and that more realistic material than Dan Brown's "shields are almost down" IT drivel could work.)
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Here's a few more:
And yeah, they're pretty bad.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
Disclaimer: a) I am not a lawyer. b) I am of the opinion that those suing Brown did not have a valid case.
Does the Judge putting this stuff in the judgement show that he is a fan and could be used by the lawyers to indicate they did not get a fair trial?
Not that their case has merit though. Even though the earlier book is based on a total hoax, they said it was factual, and therefore they cannot claim to have come up with an original story. Besides, I thought you could copyright the text, but not the plot of a book?
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
that there is welsh for "decrypt this suckers"
Talk about being born for a job!! That's some pretty fucking amazing foresight on the part of his parents, naming him Justice. Or did he get it done by deed poll in order to improve his hiring prospects? Inquiring minds want to know!
Yeah, it's about as interesting as, say the judge in the Martha Stewart trial wrapping his/her decision in a pretty silk bow and carrying it in on a pink, tassled pillow.
House is really an example of what happens when something really rare comes in the door that's being masked by another condition. If your real doctor requires that much testing, you've either got a very rare disease (like first time at that hospital), or a doctor who's way out of their comfort zone.
My wife's a doctor, and she's usually telling me the next wrong diagnosis they're about to make. As far as the medicine is concerned, they seem to be very accurate.
And yes, patients lie. A lot. It's why she went into pediatrics instead of adult medicine. Kids don't lie nearly as much, and they're usually very bad at it.
I stand corrected on jurisdiction.
I still think it's a dumb idea, however, regardless of which legal system in involved.
Transistors and Beer!!
It doesn't appear to be a Caesarian shift. The "smith(y)code" implys a Vignere, but if that's the correct key it's using a non-standard table. The length is prime if you take out smithycode (31), and with it (40/41) depending on if there is a y. I haven't found a column layout that does anything special.. anyone else have any ideas?
Just realized there are several mistakes in the version posted.
Actual: smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv
Posted: smith codeJaeiextost psacgreamqwfkadpmqz
The y has already been pointed out.
Missing g
19. All of the films therefore centred on Rennes-le-Chateau. However HBHG was a follow up as he says when he closed the last film with "something extraordinary is waiting to be found.... and in the not too distant future, it will be" . HBHG is said to be what the somethin g is and how extraordinary discovering of it had been.
Missing v
43. ...
before (possibly through contacts with the wife of Septimius Severus who was from
Syria). This religion it is said harmonised with the cult of Mithras which was
pre v alent in Rome (especially in military circles) at that time. Thus for example the
Christian religious day of Sunday was taken from the cult of Mithras and both
celebrated a major birth on December 25th. Mithraism also stressed the immortality of the soul and a future judgment in the resurrection of the dead (there is not
necessarily anything original in that as a faith).
It is walish and a short form of the meaning "EOD".
In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
My highly simplistic statistical analysis doesn't get me very far.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
I don't know if this is useful or helpful, but I noticed that the character sequence past smith(y)code has the same number of characters from the phrase to abbreviate both books:
Jaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz
HolyBloodHolyGrai lDaVinciCode
Prove it.
You're all falling for his trap. He just wants to get intelligent people interested in the field of law.
If he really wanted to reach the Slashdot audience he should have used Steganography to hide his ruling in a porn picture. It certainly would not have taken this long to someone to cum up with the message.
A handful of things, actually.
The books always start with a random NPC dying in a creative but gruesome manner, and ends with the villian dying in a dramatic fashion. At the very end of the book someone will get thoroughly laid.
Oh, and the merciless killer is also removed from humanity in some physical trait (skin colour, addiction, physical disability)*.
In fact, the entire Brown bookwriting process isn't even formulaic, as that implies some variation. It's just a collection of constants with minor cosmetic changes.
*The one exception here is the stone cold killers in Deception Point, who are not physically unique, but are instead made to seem so by being dehumanized by the author.
so the riddle when solved will be a latin saying, not english.
I favour something along the lines of
Ceasar si viveret, ad remum dareris
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
There were tons of italicized spaces.
Just thought you wanted to know (something useful)...
We have here a textbook example of irony.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
"The key to solving the conundrum posed by this judgment is in reading HBHG and DVC."
I have not read either book, but don't they both contain cyphers as part of the story? Wouldn't it make sence for the cypher he's using to be one present in the books? Maybe even with the same key.
e-a-t-m-o-r-c-h-i-k-i-n !
3.243F6A8885A308D313
I checked the PDF, and the actual characters (with their paragraphs) are:
1:s, 2:m, 3:ithy, 4:c, 5:o, 6:d, 7:e, 8:Ja, 9:e, 11:ie, 13:x, 14:t, 16:os, 18:t, 19:g, 20:p, 21:s, 23:a, 25:cgr, 26:e, 27:a, 29:m, 30:w, 31:f, 34:k, 35:a, 37:d, 38:p, 40:m, 42:q, 43:z and I didn't bother reading to the end.
which makes smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamwfkadpmqz
Maybe "smithycode" is just an identifier and J is some kind of key; that leaves the letters "a" and "z" with 26 letters in between...
If the key to solving the conundrum is in reading HBHG and DVC, then why isn't it the atbash cipher, which is discussed in both?
I think you've go him confused with someone else.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Perhaps you misunderstood the phrase. The "key" to solving the conundrum...
I'd crack this... but I'm afraid I'd be prosecuted under the DMCA.
I did some quick searching, and in one of the books a code was deciphered using a knight's journey around a chess board and the Vigenere cipher and there was aslo something about MORT EPEE as the key. For what it's worth. The Atbash cipher was also used in some way.
I'll bet the NSA already analyzed the code .. just call them and ask for the decryption for i(NO CARRIER)
= Grow a brain...
Call me blind, but I've reviewed the actual report and I continuously come up with a slightly different sequence of letters.
I did some quick searching, and in one of the books a code was deciphered using a knight's journey around a chess board and the Vigenere cipher and there was aslo something about MORT EPEE as the key. For what it's worth. The Atbash cipher was also used in some way..
The judge's hidden string and the titles of the books have the same length.
smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzvTheHolyBloodandtheHolyGrailTheDaVinciCode
Anybody here who can make something out of it?
My other post is a First.
"Be sure to drink your Ovaltine."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_B._Kent
Even if you are not a lawyer, this guy's opinions are generally hilarious without any special coding.
As the BBC story did not contain the ciphertext I copied it from another story at Reuters if you look at the bottom of that page the paragraph reads-
He said Smith told him to look back at the first paragraphs. The italicized letters scattered throughout the judgment spell out: "smithcode Jaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz".
So actually it was Reuters or the BBCs mistake not mine.
I have used Google news and from the reports it seems there is not a consistant agreement on the ciphertext for example-
smithycode JaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzviMi
Smithycode Jaeiextostgpsacgreaamqwfkadpmqzv
I don't have time to go through the whole pdf, so I'm not going to guess which one is correct. And yes, I added spaces to get round the lameness filter, ignore them.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
compared to Neal Stephenson. If you like the schlock put out by Dan Brown, just know that Dan Brown is Neal Stephenson's Ashley*.
*Ashley - n. Less talented younger sister.
Six score characters.
Brevity being wit's soul
I have enough space.
My favorite part of Digital Fortress was when the encryption key was cracked because it was "3" and the computer automatically ran the message as an executable instead of printing it out somewhere.
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
Too obvious?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
YOur high school class is a class on communication style and what is "good style." The confusion comes from an older age when social class was seen as synonymous with a certain form of communication style.
The whole argument over something like Ebonics occurs because we are not really honest with ourselves over what we are trying to teach-- this is not about learning prescriptive language rules in the same sense that you have them with, say, Perl, but rather a way of learning some accepted stylistics that are considered helpful in earning respect as a writer and speaker. We ought not to lose sight of the difference.
To someone in linguistics, areas like Ebonics are actually quite fascinating. For example "I be going to the store" in Black American English does *not* translate exactly into any phrase in Contemporary Standard American English. Indeed the tense is closer to the imperfect tense in Spanish than to any CSAE tense. But people have a problem teaching this sort of thing in high school because they confuse the issues of language study and communications style.
The rules of natural language are descriptive, rather than prescriptive. In essence, use defines language. Philologists, for example, can use their study of how language has changed to effectively date wording in documents (for example, we know that the Codex Regius is probably a transcription of poetry that was composed at least a few hundred years earlier).
But these areas of language study are extraordinarily technical. As someone who is not making my living in those fields, I can never be more than an informed consumer of these ideas.
For a good "introduction" to this field of philology and linguistics (and in particular the subfield of poetics), I would recommend "How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics" by Calvert Watkins (Oxford 1995). However, it is not exactly light reading.
BTW, the above book recommendation is more on-topic than the rest of this post. It is absolutely amazing to me how many codes were apparently presented in works of oral traditions, and how some coded poetic devices were transmitted verbatim across centuries even as languages diverged (we see complex poetic formulas with identical root/morphology structures in differnet branches of the IE poetic traditions, for example, and I would not be surprised if other oral culturo-linguistic groups had similar techniques).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I haven't bothered to read any of Dan Brown's books, but he's far from the only formula fiction author, although perhaps he takes it to the point of guaranteed boredom. Michael Crichton, who I find very engaging and entertaining and even pretty good on technical details if you keep in mind that he writes a form of sci-fi, also employs a level of formula not too different from your summary:
A group of the top experts in their field achieve a major breakthrough/discover something really cool. They bring in a guy or two with expertise in a related field to cover some of the miscellaneous details in advancing the project and serve as the story's protagonist, who then realizes they're ingoring/missing a really important detail and things are about to go to $h!7. Things go to $h!7, the lead expert's obsession with success gets in the way of fixing the problem but he gets killed in some ironic fashion, and the protagonist figures out the inherent problem just in time to save everybody's life/the world. There's usually an attractive and intelligent woman or two involved, but the protagonist never quite hits it off.
That pretty well fits Jurassic Park, Congo, Timeline, Sphere, Prey, and to a lesser degree State of Fear. I think he does a really good job of changing up the story though, to make the same plot interesting.
This type of stuff happens all the time, There was a case where the judge gave the verbal ruling in the form of a rap in a case between two rappers, "Bailey thinks he's entitled to some monetary gain,/ because Eminem used his name in vain./ The lyrics are stories no one would take as fact,/ they're an exaggeration of a childish act./ "It is therefore this court's ultimate position,/ that Eminem is entitled to summary disposition." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3204318.s tm
3 001.shtml said "Before proceeding further, the Court notes that this case involves two extremely likable lawyers, who have together delivered some of the most amateurish pleadings ever to cross the hallowed causeway into Galveston, an effort which leads the Court to surmise but one plausible explanation. Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact -- complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words -- to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed. Whatever actually occurred, the Court is now faced with the daunting task of deciphering their submissions."
And dont forget our favrote Federal Judge, Samuel Kent in Texas who in BRADSHAW v. UNITY MARINE http://www.nationalreview.com/document/document07
Judge Kent wrote in Smith v. Colonial Pen, http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/skent1.html, "...Alas, this Courts kingdom for a for a commercial airport! The Court is unpersuaded by this argument because it is not the Court's concern how the Plaintiff gets here, whether it be by plane, train, automobile, horseback, foot, or on the back of a huge Texas jackrabbit, as long as the Plaintiff is here at the proper date and time" Earlier in the order he talks about the three week long covered wagon trip from Huston to Galveston being free of bandits.
Judge Kent also wrote a great one in Republic of Boliva v. Philip Morris http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/obiwan4.html
"Drink more Ovaltine"
I would like to take the opportunity provided by this nitpicking thread to request that the powers-that-be here at Slashdot kindly provide us with collapsible threads. That way, next time I see a preposition joke (and a good one too, GP) attacked by the grammar impaired, I can safely collapse the thread and relax, knowing I won't miss anything of any substance whatsoever.
Plus, I'm lazy and don't like to scroll.
Thank you.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
This would be an ideal place for a fully randomized
collection of letters. Make the conspiracy code crackers
real crazy! A true cryptographer would identify the
randomness quickly but the wackos would just assume
he is part of the conspiracy.
I thought that perhaps the italicized letters weren't the actual letters of the code, but markers for where to find the actual letters. Some ideas that I came up with for the words containing the italicized letters, that would seem reasonable for someone to implement as a code, were:
+only the first letter of the words
+only the last letter of the words
+the two letters directly to the left and right
+the first or last letter of the sentence
The latter choice I can't possibly see working out, since most of the sentences begin with a T. However, I tried the first three and ran them through some Caesar and Vigenere programs, but didn't get any real results. I did spot the words 'shit' and 'nato', a few times, though.
Heh. House himself uses his walking stick in the wrong hand all the time.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Even though the message is too short to really do any statistical analysis, I would argue that since there is only one repeating digraph it was encrypted with something other than a substitution cipher.
The odd number of characters rules out a lot of other cuphers, assuming the judge is a kind man.
A stream cipher, perhaps?
According to the post below, it read's
e s/2006/04/27/can_you_crack_i.html
"Never waste the time of the high court"
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/culturevulture/archiv
---
"Never waste the time of the high court"
I cracked this with http://www.secretcodebreaker.com/scbsolvr.html
The italicised letters in the judgment are: Jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv
Entering this into the programme generates: kneverswastlandthenyofminglyouc
which is not a clean crack but enabled me to guess the code.
Dr Daren Kemp
www.Christaquarian.net
Co-Editor of the "Journal of Alternative Spiritualities and New Age Studies" www.asanas.org.uk
Author of "New Age: A Guide" (Edinburgh University Press 2004) and "The Christaquarians?" (Kempress 2003)
Posted by Christaquarian on April 27, 2006 05:16 PM.
Sure, the Da Vinci Code is a work of fiction, but Dan Brown prefaces it with a Fact page that calls the Priory of Sion a real organization founded in 1099. The truth of the matter is that the Prior of Sion was a Hoax, originally started in 1957. (See Priory of Sion for the evidence of this.) He also makes this generic claim: All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.
The book goes on to make laughable errors -- Gospels in the Dead Sea Scrolls!? (There are no gospels or any Christian or New Testament material in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Jesus had thousands of followers in his lifetime? Jesus was of no consequence at all in his lifetime -- an unknown rabbi in an obscure part of the Roman Empire. 5,000,000 witches burned!? No. More like 200,000 and all after 1400, and mostly by local governments. Constantine made Christ A God?! -- Constantine was pro-Arian (the losing side) in that fight. All he cared about was the unity of the church for political purposes, not its doctrine. Mithras was called the "Son of God" and "Light of the World" and was raised after three days!? All wrong. Sunday worship started by Constantine -- again wrong -- history shows it is predominant back int the 2nd century (Constantine is fourth century).
The book is schlock, both as literature, and in its research.
which this comment is too small to contain.
Jae + i + ex
= J i x. Wouldn't this most likely be the key, whatever the encryption form?
Well, here's what I've come up with, using the code breaker posted previously:
Jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzv=>
Ineverywaystandsmenofplungtofch
In Every Way Stands Men Of ____ Of __
Problem is, the last part is just gibberish.
Also tried
On Every Way Stands Men If ____ If __,
but still generates gibberish at the end. Thoughts?
Has anyone taken into account that smithycode could be a mixed word?
this my code
my hot dices
dice shot my
hide my cost
theres a few more
I have been messing around with with code and it 'could' say something like "sales are up with this code."
Speaking as someone who has to use one sometimes, I find it far more comfortable to use it the "wrong" way.
I saw that the article was quoted as saying that there were "an additional 25 jumbled letters" after smithycode. As I and others have found, there are actually 31 letters that follow the same bold and italicized formatting. So, did the judge make some mistakes in displaying his message??
It would have been humour if he would have encrypted all of the sentence!
Why can't
In any other language/country, ebonics would be considered a dialect, and knowing how to speak it would be an advantage. In the US, it's just another thing to have counterproductive arguments over.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Is this the same guy that made sodomy legal again in Texas?
Maybe the letters are pointing to others in the document? What I mean is, the letter BEFORE or AFTER might be the letters to be decoded. If this was the case, the code could be just a simple trick! Somebody mentioned this being "Kryptos all over again". Maybe if you take the table from the Kryptos (http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/tour/kryptos_c ode.html) and apply it to this code, it might reveal sometihng interresting.
As a rule of hiding things, hide it where nobody will look: in the open.
Cheers, DH.
A part of the settlement suggests the key to it lies in the two books. I have read the Da Vinci Code and no aspect of anything they did is reflected by this.
SPOILER WARNING
My guess is it is scrambled somehow, like 'So Dark the con of man' and 'o, draconian devil' 'oh, lame saint', '13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5'
but without knowing the other book I don't know what else to think about the code and how it would be related to this.
The other puzzles in Da Vinci Code I don't see as being applicable here..
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm nuts and forgot about the nature of another part of the story, oh well.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
The solution is Jackie Fisher who are you dreadnought. Explanation in the solution secion at smithycode also here
"The real judgement is being held in locker 13 at the Illuminati HQ."
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,17635 33,00.html
It's a substitution cipher based on the Fibonacci sequence. The solution is: "Jackie Fisher who are you dreadnought."
Details are here: http://www.thesmithycode.com/
Or, looking at the characters after the marked ones: "cashicyremebassterhsesuearraui?" (no word shown after (f) in above comment).
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,17635 33,00.html?gusrc=rss
Fibonnaci
"JACKIEFISHERWHOAREYOUDREADNOUGHT"
Jaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzvz -- You guys have been missing the final 'z'
..
JackieFisherwhoareyoudreadnought
or, Jacke Fisher, who are you dreadnought?
1) Extend the fib sequence out: 1 1 2 3 5 8
2) Advance the leter of the cypher by that many letters minus 1: J + 1 - 1 = J, a + 1 - 1 = a, e + 2 - 1 = f, i + 3 - 1 = k
3) Ignore the fact that the first e comes out wrong.
There ya go.
Doesn't seem to be a Vigenere cypher with the key "in reading HBHG and DVC".
You will note that my post referred to "ebonics" also under the formal name of the *dialect* as "Black American English." However, dialects can and often do contain fascinating linguistic structure. Scot's English, and other dialects too have a great deal of interesting gramatical structures.
BTW, if you love etymology, you might find the derivations of the following words at least somewhat amusing: inertia (littlerally "inertness"), Electron (lit. "Amber" in Greek), Gravity (lit. "Weight"). Makes physics more interesting when we have Newton saying that things are inherently inert and hence non-automotive, and that the force of weight brings objects together... The electron/amber connection is more of a historic relic though (electric charges were first experimentally observed in amber, so "electricity" was coined, letterally meaning "pertaining to amber").
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The code has been solved. It was a substitution code based on the Fibonacci sequence. The judge gave a few clues: that it had something to do with what was on page 255 of the British version of Da Vinci Code (which deals with the Fibonacci sequence), and that it had something to do with his own Who's Who profile (in which he mentions his affinity for Jackie Fisher, former British Admiral.).
The sequence originally was:
SMITHYCODEJAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ
Removing "SMITHYCODE," what was left was:
JAEIEXTOSTGPSACGREAMQWFKADPMQZVZ
To decode, you go apply a substitution, based on the first eight Fibonacci numbers:
J A E I E X T O S T G P S A C G R E A M Q W F K A D P M Q Z V Z
1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21 1 1 2 3 5 8 13 21
Then, you find that letter in an alphabet starting at the fibonacci number given. So, "J" and "A" are the same. "I" is the ninth letter of the alphabet normally. The fibonacci number associated with that "I" is 3, and the ninth letter of an alphabet starting at the third letter (C) is "K."
There were two twists: The twos mean to count backwards two instead of forward (so the "E" becomes "C"; this quirk was drawn from one of the books in the litigation, Holy Blood, Holy Grail), and there is an intentional (at least he claims intentional) typo: The first "T" should be an "H."
The resulting message was:
"Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought"
Kind of a lot of work to get to what turned out to be a tribute to a military hero from 1920. Nonetheless, the judge confirmed that this decryption was correct.
Dumb.
You know, as someone who actually works in an ER (actually, the American Board of Emergency Medicine would rather you call the "ED" for Emergency Department, sounds more grandiose you know. I still call it the ER or affectionately "The Pit" as many actually practicing ER/Pit Docs call it : ), I haven't been able to sit through more than like 15 minutes of the dammed show "ER".
It's not that the show isn't factually accurate (I hear that they do indeed employ many actual ER Physicians as consultants so it may very well be quite accurate). It's that the whole premise of stuff made for TV is that you have to pack as much drama/excitement/anger/fear/humor/comic relief/social commentary/indignation/etc. into one 40 minute program with good enough cliff hangers ocurring before each commercial break to keep the audience coming back (and thus endure the commercial). As a result, things get a bit cartoony/distorted/exaggerated.
Suffice to say that while the individual scenarios may reflect real cases, if all of these very dramatic/disruptive/upsetting cases that you see in one episode were to happen in any given week, much less all in one shift, I would be quitting my job in the ER as would any other sane individual.
Oh yeah, all that prolonged emotional hand holding you see happening on TV, that won't be happening in real life (or at least not that much time will be alotted to you for dwelling on the squishy emotional stuff). The staff of a real ER have jobs to do and need to move on quickly to the stuff that can and needs be fixed and addressed in a timely manner. Remember, there are other patients to care for, resources/manpower can be scarce.
That many bad things just don't happen in one place in one day...unless you happen to have an exceptionally bad day at a really crowded inner city County Hospital ER, then anything pretty much goes. Then again, that's almost 3rd world medicine sometimes...
Dave
There are no stupid questions...just stupid people.
Solution: Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought.
c ode.ap/index.html
From CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/04/28/vinci.
"At one point Brown's cryptographer hero Robert Langdon explains the Fibonacci sequence -- a mathematical progression that involves adding a number to the two numbers before, so that 1 is followed by 1, then 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. That sequence, when repeated and substituted with letters from the alphabet, spells out the cryptic message.
"The first letter is identified by rewriting the alphabet stating at the first letter in the alphabet, i.e. for the first letter A When 21 is reached the code reverts back to 1, etc., and repeats that until all the letters are substituted," Smith wrote.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
For my money, Umberto Eco is about 800 times the writer Dan Brown or Arturo Perez-Reverte is. I've read "Name of the Rose" maybe six times over the years. It's deeply satisfying. Brown's just a Michael Crichton-level pop writer. He's disposable.
And boy, did I enjoy Alec Guinness in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" more than any James Bond movie ever. For entertainment, for any quality you care to name. That's a low-budget BBC miniseries against some of the priciest Hollywood products around, and it's clear which one's more entertaining for me.
It's great you want to be entertained. It's great that kids read Harry Potter, which is pretty poorly written (and in the last three books, execrably edited). We don't have to choose between entertaining and intelligent, though. It's not that sad a world.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Jill Lawless from Associated Press reports: "The code has been cracked.
M .20060428.wdavincicode0428/BNStory/Entertainment/h ome
London lawyer Dan Tench and The Times newspaper on Friday both claimed to have solved the riddle of a code embedded in a judge's ruling in
The Da Vinci Code copyright lawsuit.
It reads: "Jackie Fisher who are you Dreadnought.""
"Tench, who brought the code to the world's attention last week, said the key lay within the pages of Brown's thriller.
At one point Brown's cryptographer hero Robert Langdon explains the Fibonacci sequence -- a mathematical progression that involves adding a number to the two numbers before, so that 1 is followed by 1, then 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. That sequence, when repeated and substituted with letters from the alphabet, spells out the cryptic message."
"The message reveals a significant but now overlooked event that occurred virtually 100 years to the day of the start of the trial."
"John "Jackie" Fisher, is a 19th-century admiral credited with modernizing the British navy and developing its first modern warship, the Dreadnought."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGA