Codebreaker scores success in search for the Holy Grail
315516
For 250 years, the cryptic inscription has exercised the minds of Britain&#39;s finest theologians, historians and scientists, including Charles Darwin, Josiah Wedgwood
432225
Nick Halstead has announced a contest on his blog today for PHP developers everywhere to participate in - a programming competition surrounding a challenge he's created.   It has been a lot harder than I thought to come up with a fair programming challenge that would not take too long or require lots of knowledge in any particular framework or other associated technology. It could have been to make use of a whole host of currently available API's and to make a useful mash-up but these again require other external knowledge beyond just PHP. I finally settled on a logic problem that is hopefully not too hard to solve but will test a range of PHP skills.   The problem he's worked up involves changing a word, one letter at a time, into another word using user-defined lists and choice of word. There's several requirements you'll need to follow an d rules for things like the submission process and what server setup can be used.   So, what's the motivation? First prize is a copy of Zend Studio Professional and a year of support, second prize is a Zend t-shirt, and third is a Zend Pen. For full information on participating and on all of the rules you'll need to follow, check out Nick's full post.
492350
InfoWorld - A hacker claims to have discovered a cryptographic key that can be used to circumvent copy restrictions on HD DVD and Blu-ray movies.
40560
Editors: Shlomo Reifman and Samantha N. Wong Researchers: Joshua Brandt, Fei Mei Chan,  Andrew T. Gillies, Soo Jeong, Edward Knudsen,  Artie Kwok, John Ray and Jody Yen Programmer: Carl Subick
430661
Cdodewalkers.com has announced their latest PHP Coding Contest...
601540
If you thought cracking "The Da Vinci Code" was tough, try unscrambling "The Provenzano Code", the cryptic cipher the Mafia's "boss of bosses" invented to rule the mob for years when he was Italy's most wanted man.
37251
If you weren't able to make it to this year's just passed php|works conference in Atlanta, you missed out on the keynote that Marco Tabini, founder of php|architect gave at the start of the conference. Fortunately, he's posted the video of it on his blog:   What they didn't tell me, however, is that they had arranged for a simple (but, as you will see, very effective) web-based system that allowed members of the audience to submit "captions" to the screen as I was speaking. The results were, of course, hilarious - mostly because they "forgot" to tell me about the idea until a few days after.   Be sure to check out the video of the video for some great one-liners.
575074
Years to develop; days to break A lone hacker has unlocked the master key preventing the copying of high-definition DVDs in a development that is sure to get the entertainment industry's knickers wrapped tighter than a magnet's coil. What's more, the individual was able to defeat the technology with no cracking tools or reverse engineering, despite the millions of dollars and many years engineers put into developing the AACS (Advanced Access Content System) for locking down high-definition video.â¦
169337
A technique originally designed to analyse DNA sequences is the latest weapon in the war against spam. An algorithm named Chung-Kwei (after a feng-shui talisman that protects the home against evil spirits) can catch nearly 97 per cent of spam.
394098
The much anticipated results for one of the larger coding contests have been posted - the Zend PHP5 Coding Contest results.
605168
Security researcher Christopher Soghoian reflects on the hard work that comes after finding a vulnerability.
692444
PHPEverywhere has a new posting today concerning a few criteria of a "great developer".
769015
Felix Geisendorfer shares, in this new post to the ThinkingPHP blog, some of his experiences with writing his code using test driven development.   So far I've had tons of fun trying to create php code using test driven development. It caused my code to become a lot more structured/consistent because writing the tests shows you interfaces problems right away. This is because the process of writing the test forces you to think a lot more about *how* you want to use some class / piece of code vs. your traditional "how can I get task x done"-thinking.   He also points out another benefit - it makes refactoring the code even easier (so there's more of a likelyhood that you'll use it again and again). He talks specifics about a library that he's been working on and the processes he's gone through to make things work with the testing versus his normal development cycle.
25593
Review Waitrose's QuickCheck scanner a real time-saver
183024
Topix.net cooks up a geolocating algorithm that rounds up regionally relevant write-ups. In Epicenter.
443243
Planning and carrying off a hackers conference is an interesting process.  We learned a lot last year as we ran the 2007 MountainWest RubyConf, hopefully we&#8217;re able to put some of that experience to good use as we come up on the 2008 MountainWest RubyConf.read more
639937
A recently released tool that allegedly was designed to help al-Qaeda supporters encrypt their Internet-based communications is a well-written and easily portable piece of code.