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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).
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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
This isn't unheard of in the legal world. I don't have any references at hand, but my brother-in-law (who is presently in law school) has shown me several creative decisions like this: a judge who included hundreds of movie titles in his decision, decisions in rhyming verse, etc.
Yes, but funding doesn't always help you in the legal process. What we need is smarter people who can read betwen the lines and check out what is really being said. Why don't people realise that lack of intelligence is what the problem is actually about>
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Surely, it is about more than funding, but I don't think you can say its a just matter of intelligence, primarily.
I'd reckon it falls somewhere in the middle; that its mostly a management issue.
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."
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
Although, speaking of severe, horrific,ubiquitous legal forums, it remains to be seen which of the two well funded legal teams has enough capital to really win this case through successful legal obfuscation.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
To grab single italicized letters from the document.
As far as I can see the letter list is:
smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzviMi
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
The judge, who is 53 and lists some of his hobbies as reading military history and the sinking of the Titanic,...
I just can't respect a person who sinks cruise liners and kills thousands as a hobby.
That seems more like work to me:)
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)
Of course, there are good arguments against levity in court proceedings, but I can say that these cases have made the lives of countless law students at least slightly more pleasant.
A particular favorite is the wrongful appropriation case of Zim v. Western Publishing Co., 573 F.2d 1318 (5th Cir. 1978), which begins -- for no particular reason that I can discern -- in a mock King James style:
My guess is some law clerk won fifty bucks for getting Irving Loeb Goldberg (a great judge and perhaps even a great jurist) to do this.-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.
This is the UK. We can tell the difference between bias and humour over here.
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.
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