Judge Creates Own Da Vinci Code 463
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."
Coolest Judge Ever? (Score:5, Insightful)
italic letters may not be useful by themselves (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Sorry (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sorry (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Smithy Code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Dan Brown uses basically the same plot outline for each of the three books of his that I've read. (Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and Digital Fortress). Here it is in a nutshell:
Egghead professor-type gets sucked into something Really Important To the World (tm) with the help of a very intelligent woman who happens to be an expert in the Really Important Thing (tm) but STILL needs him to explain everything to her anyway. While they try to make it to the end of the book they are pursued by a merciless killer who wants to bump them off before they discover the Big Secret (tm). Did I forget anything?
Re:Smithy Code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Makes one wonder why you keep on reading his books if they're all the same...
Brown's a hack. Other pop writers less so. (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
Media circus (Score:2, Insightful)
More Clues (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Smithy Code? (Score:2, Insightful)
You forgot that the apparent bad guy is the good guy in the end, and the helpful good non-hero character is the criminal mastermind.
Re:Smithy Code? (Score:5, Insightful)
Office Space
It certainly nails the office politics aspect of IT
Re:Smithy Code? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tron, of course
beginning of code (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You've missed the point (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Smithy Code? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Coolest Judge Ever? (Score:4, Insightful)
Any person who assumes he knows what the meaning and intent of a secret message is, without bothering to actually decode it first, must be retarded. Or at least lazy.