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."

It's not ROT13

[griffjon (14945)]

Which only turns it into "nrvrkgbfgcfnpternzdjsxnqczdm"

I checked double, triple and even quadruple ROT13, too! No luck!! ;)

I've solved it...

[dsginter (104154)]

The output is as follows:

All your case are belong to us!

It IS ROT13!!!

[Descalzo (898339)]

That's fhqwhgads' brother.

Coolest Judge Ever?

[propellerhead_prime (777032)]

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?

Re:Coolest Judge Ever?

[propellerhead_prime (777032)]

Actually, if you RTFA you would see that what's in the summary doesn't match the summary. So I see your 'Fucking retard' comment and raise you with 'stop being a total dumbass'

Re:Coolest Judge Ever?

[by Anonymous Coward]

So I see your 'Fucking retard' comment and raise you with 'stop being a total dumbass'

Woah. This is getting too rich for me. I fold...

Re:Coolest Judge Ever?

[by Anonymous Coward]

Then tell us which one he's making fun of.

Sorry, didn't mean to end a sentence with a prepostition.

Then tell us which one he's making fun of, asshole.

Smithy Code?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

The line in the summary "The full text of the code reads 'smithcodeJaeiextostpsacgreamqwfkadpmqz' if you want to have a go at cracking it." seems to be contradicted by the linked article

Italicised letters in the first few pages spell out "Smithy Code", while the following pages also contain marked out letters.

I would not have a go at cracking what's in the slashdot summary (if it's missing one letter who know's what else is wrong)

Offtopic: For those unsure about whether Dan Brown is a fool or a genius, I offer a quote from Digital Fortress: [wikipedia.org]

"We've got a five-tier level of defense," Jabba explained. "A primary Bastion Host, two sets of packet filtersfor FTP and X-eleven, a tunnel block, and finally a PEM-based authorization window right off the Truffle project. The outside shield that's disappearing represents the exposed host.It's practically gone. Within the hour, all five shields will follow. After that, the world pours in. Every byte of NSA data becomes public domain.

You cannot make this stuff up :-)

Re:Smithy Code?

[KE1LR (206175)]

Too bad the book sucked, though.

    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?

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Dan Brown uses basically the same plot outline for each of the three books of his that I've read.

Makes one wonder why you keep on reading his books if they're all the same...

Re:Smithy Code?

[Fred_A (10934)]

It's because those crafty marketing people at the editing house keep changing the book covers.

Re:Smithy Code?

[phong3d (61297)]

Oh, come on, name me one major hollywood movie with more realistic IT in it.

The First Wives Club [imdb.com]. At one point in the movie, one of the characters is in her husband's office. She opens up a document in Microsoft Word and saves it to a disk.

Re:Smithy Code?

[Minwee (522556)]

At one point in the movie, one of the characters is in her husband's office. She opens up a document in Microsoft Word and saves it to a disk.

Oh, come on. When is the last time you saw a Microsoft Word document that was small enough to fit on a floppy?

Re:Smithy Code?

[JWW (79176)]

Theres anothr movie that people have failed to mention that I think gets some aspects of IT better that any of these mentioned so far, and that would be.

Office Space

It certainly nails the office politics aspect of IT ;-).

It's "Smithy code"

[Creosote (33182)]

The first boldface italicized letters actually spell out "Smithy code"; you can see the 'y' in section A.1.3 of the ruling [hmcourts-service.gov.uk] (PDF).

I got it!

[jpellino (202698)]

d-r-i-n-k-m-o-r-e-o-v-a-l-t-i-n-e !

One Question

[Billosaur (927319)]

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.

I knocked something together...

[beady (710116)]

To grab single italicized letters from the document.
As far as I can see the letter list is:

smithycodeJaeiextostgpsacgreamqwfkadpmqzviMi

A Codesmith Exists

[digitaldc (879047)]

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.'

Partial Decryption

[Kinthelt (96845)]

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"

Re:Sorry

[chill (34294)]

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.

Re:too much time on their hands?

[OzPeter (195038)]

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>

Re:too much time on their hands?

[Foobar of Borg (690622)]

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.

Dan Brown, Artiste!

[by Anonymous Coward]

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.

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 ... It's really difficult to read. How I wish someone would write a dumbed-down version!

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

Re:More Clues

[tddoog (900095)]

What an asshole.

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:)