Mystery Company Recruiting Talent With a Puzzle

An anonymous reader writes "Google has previously used coding competitions to locate top talent. In a new twist on the idea, an anonymous tech company is posting a help-wanted ad that challenges developers to find out who the company is. A little digging and text mashing reveals a website containing a Web 2.0 puzzle that makes notpron look like child's play. So, fellow developers, who is this company, and, well, what is the significance of the date '01-18-08?'" Update: 12/12 20:20 GMT by KD : Replaced link to a removed Craigslist ad with a mirror.

Comments

Viral advertising is my guess

[Scrameustache]

And a movie with a release date coinciding with those numbers would be the culprit, in my opinion.

Re:Viral advertising is my guess

[drakaan]

You do realize that it's EXACTLY the kind of thinking that Ron Paul has that has lead to our current problems, don't you? We've been giving people the the "freedom" to be morons and then dismantling the government agencies that would have allowed them not to be because we keep electing people who don't believe in government to run it.

I would have to disagree with that. We have not had a problem of too-small government for decades, if not a century.

Try this as a test. Write down on sheets of lined paper (one agency per sheet) each federal agency (link). Then, research all of the regulations, rules, laws, orders, and mandates that each of these agencies uses to exert control over the behavior or actions of US citizens.

The one thing our legislators are supremely good at is passing new laws, whether they're needed or not, because...well, because they have to look like they're doing something other than grabbing some pork for their supporters in the bill-du-jour.

Wanting a smaller degree of federal government involvement in the lives of US citizens doesn't seem to me to be a sign of someone not believing in government, it's a sign of someone who doesn't believe in bureaucracy, which is an altogether different thing.

You can start from one of two viewpoints (and most will eventually end somewhere in between them):

• Most people are idiots who make bad decisions
• Most people are smart enough to make better decisions than their governments

I don't believe that either of those are true, but I think it makes sense to lean towards the latter, if there's a question on an issue. Not doing so means that you stack law upon law until most every possible activity that a human could perform is regulated in legal fashion. I don't know about you, but I really, really don't want to live in a world (or even just country) like that.

Re:Viral advertising is my guess

[DuckDodgers]

So...in Ron Paul's utopia:
Can't afford medical care? Die.
Lots more toll roads, or unusable roads.
Get a bad batch of medicine or food? Hope your family wins a lawsuit against the manufacturer.
You want police or fire protection? Hire your own. If you can't afford it? That's too bad.
Can't afford home heat this season? Freeze.
Did you sign an abusive contract? Well, you're stuck with it.
Someone won't hire or serve you because you're black, hispanic, asian, or lack a penis? Sucks to be you.
Your employer forces you to work overtime, or refuses to pay you? You better have enough money saved to file your own lawsuit.
Your insurance company refuses to pay on a policy claim? You better have enough money saved to file your own lawsuit.
And last but not least, pay no attention to those millions of kids with nothing better to do but get into trouble because the public schools are gone and their parents can't afford private school.

No question, the US government - and most governments - waste money like crazy. But the libertarian solution is as naive as the communist one. Reforming the government by dismantling it just returns us to the days when railroad owners worked the immigrants to death, mine owners used mercenaries to beat workers that tried to strike, men were free to beat their wives, and blacks weren't welcome in certain businesses. No thanks.

Anonymous Coward?

[Crimsane]

I'll bet you dollars to donuts that that company creating all of this is the same one to submit the story.

Re:Anonymous Coward?

[Mex]

Agreed. This is just about that stupid movie.

Re:!Mystery

[cbart387]

Except when people discuss about not discussing it ... which is actually counter-productive to their argument ;)

Re:One word...

[weicco]

System.Globalization.CultureInfo.CurrentUICulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern returns "M/d/yyyy" No wonder I couldn't figure it out. There's no 18 months in the calendar. ;)

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[corychristison]

As I had figured... it indeed is an IP address.

1: dollar and daily universal register had the year 1785 in common. 1785%100 = 85
2: the date of transition (=>) between the two rulers was 512. 512/2-1 = 255
3: Sherman Anti-Trust and Van Gogh have the year 1890 in common. 1890/9 = 210
4: Tycho's supernova was in 1572. 1572/12 = 131

Going here: http://85.255.210.131/

Only reveals 'yes';

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[Anonymous Coward]

That's TinyURL's IP. At the bottom it says /* 34w4wa */

http://tinyurl.com/34w4wa redirects to http://groups.google.com/group/wanted-master-software-engineers

fordware??

[hoffmanbike]

a cached page (google rocks) at learn4good alludes to the company being fordware, based in delaware http://72.14.253.104/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4EGLC_enUS242US242&q=cache:http%3A%2F%2Fwww.learn4good.com%2Fjobs%2Flanguage%2Fenglish%2Fsearch%2Fjob%2F42067%2F the cached description of them on the same site http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:LVPBSirfWw0J:www.learn4good.com/jobs/language/english/search/company/33798/+fordware&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us

Re:Significance of the date "01/18/2008"

[Afecks]

Yet you probably still say it like "February third, two thousand and seven"... hypocrite.

Two words

[mrjb]

Nerd sniping

Re:Significance of the date "01/18/2008"

[corsec67]

ISO dates have one HUGE advantage:
They sort alphabetically into chronological order. Just as long as you add 0s before single-digit days/months, it doesn't matter what kind of field delimiter you use, they will all just sort correctly. Very, very useful.

"All Winners Get Free Software"

[svunt]

Look at the bottom of the page on the actual test "Top winners get interviews. All winners get free software", so this is just marketing bullshit, viral advertising for some software release.

Re:Here's the contact info (spoiler warning)

[Compuser]

And there is the quote from Charles Buxton Going. We now have two links to lame-ass long-forgotten technology writers from the end of nineteenth century/beginning of twentieth. Somebody spent a lot of time setting it up.

Re:Maybe...

[PCM2]

He must be very, very new here.

Au contraire. He just never left his mother's basement.