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ICFP Contest Releases Codex
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."
Next: It's a reference to a game centered around the film A.I. and refers to a society called the Cloudmakers.
Next: The phrase "so dark the con of man" is actually a religious blog.
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.
My work here is dung.
first post se ma se poes
So if I am able to crack this from looking at it, they'll have to declare my brain the "programmers tool of choice?" Or would it go to notepad?
stuff |
come on, QBASIC don't fail me now!
FP?
How tantalizing.
using "strings"... I've only found interesting strings at the beginning and end of the file.
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
If you look at the end of the file, it seems that Rose managed to plant "Bad Wolf" in there. So I wonder when Rose and the Doctor are going to show up and stop the alien monsters from crashing the contest? :P
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Did anyone notice the "paul is dead" backwards in the codex?
Perhaps image processing? Starting at offset 0x1a74: GIF89a Starting at offset 0x0620: Looks like some sort of bitmap?
Damn. Too bad I'm going to be traveling all weekend. This looks like a fun contest this year.
I might even noodle around after the fact and just not enter it in the contest.
-30-
Here's the gif.
Have a look to this blog post dated 2005-08-08: it tells about ICFP, codex and Slashdot.
The WebArchive 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 by the post author himself. The alternate reality game is just starting...
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 careful study of computation, over two millennia before the invention of the digital computer.
While the Monroeville scrolls make reference to computing machines made of sandstone, most researchers believed this to be a poetic metaphor and that the "computers" were in fact the initiates themselves, carrying out the unimaginably tedious steps of their computations with reed pens on parchment. A few have conjectured a city-sized machine powered by falling sand, but no physical evidence of such a device has been discovered.
Among the documents found intact in the Monroeville collection was a lengthy codex, written in no known language and inscribed with superhuman precision. It is believed to be the masterwork of the Cult's scholarship, and as such it carries immense potential to advance our understanding of historyand possibly of computing as well. Unfortunately, the codex eluded interpretation, and over the decades, study of the Monroeville scrolls has slipped into obscurity. Since 1978, the codex has been stored in the basement of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Two weeks ago, during a visit to the excavation site for a new computer science building at CMU, workers discovered a set of inscribed tablets that proved to be the Rosetta Stone for interpreting the Monroeville codex. The tablets precisely specify the Cult's computing device, known to initiates as the "Universal Machine." Although there is still no evidence that the cult succeeded in constructing their machine, it is a reasonably simple task to emulate it on modern hardware.
We can now say with certainty that the codex is in fact a program, intended for execution on the Universal Machine. Our initial exploration of the codex suggests that the Cult's ideas about programming were very sophisticated, if somewhat peculiar to the modern eye. One cannot help but wonder what the Cult might have achieved had they had access to modern electronics and type theory.
I have enlisted the help of the CMU Principles of Programming group in creating a venue for study of the codex. We invite you to participate in this investigation. The codex and a translation of the Universal Machine (UM) specification are available for download from our web site. We encourage you to implement the UM and begin your own exploration of the codex.
The Cult's scholarly publications are of particular interest to us. Because the Cult's journals were circulated on sandstone tablets, editors imposed very strict length limitations. Consequently, authors aggressively compressed their articles. A typical publication would have the following form:
PUZZL.TSK=100@1001|14370747643c6d2db0a40ecb4b0bb65
Should you encounter any such publications, we humbly request that you submit them to us via our web site. Our server will track all submitted publications, ensuring that every participant is given appropriate credit for advancing our understanding of the codex. Publications are of varying value; some will represent a greater contribution than others, and we will take this into account when assigning credit.
On a personal note, being inspired by the scholarship of the Cult, I have decided to dedicate the remainder of my days to a solitary study of computation and programming languages. However, before embarking on my monastic transformation, I wish to see that the world is well on its way to uncovering the secrets of the Codex.
Therefore, I ask that you submit as many publications as you can by