Yet Another Software Challenge

[Richard Heathfield]

Keith Thompson said:

You're absolutely wrong! Where to start is clearly shown. Thousands
of people have succeed so far..

[...]

Ok, I think I figured out how to proceed from the first page. (I
won't post details, just in case anyone actually cares about solving
it.)

The resulting page shows an image, which I suppose might mean
something, but I have no idea where I'm supposed to go from there.

Maybe I'm missing something really clever, but the whole thing looks
boring and frustrating.

Incidentally, your Terms of Use page says, among other things:

By accessing or using this Site in any way, including, without
limitation, using or downloading any Content, or merely browsing
the Site, you agree to and are bound by the Terms of Use.

For the record, I do not agree to any such terms.

Likewise. Furthermore, that's an illegal contract, and has no legal
validity. It's okay to say "here are the terms of use - if you don't
like them, go away", but that's not what he's doing. He's opening a
shop on the High Street, waiting for people to come through the door
out of curiosity, and then saying to them "by coming through that door,
you have agreed to the Terms of Use for this shop", which might be
anything - e.g. Para 17) You agree to hand over ALL your money to the
shopkeeper, in return for a small plastic toy of no significant value
whatsoever.

I have no doubt that the OP will be eager to learn from this, and will
change his Terms of Use page forthwith.

 

[yanosc]

Keith Thompson said:

Likewise. Furthermore, that's an illegal contract, and has no legal
validity. It's okay to say "here are the terms of use - if you don't
like them, go away", but that's not what he's doing. He's opening a
shop on the High Street, waiting for people to come through the door
out of curiosity, and then saying to them "by coming through that door,
you have agreed to the Terms of Use for this shop", which might be
anything - e.g. Para 17) You agree to hand over ALL your money to the
shopkeeper, in return for a small plastic toy of no significant value
whatsoever.

You're TOTALLY WRONG ! I have not opened any shop! This site is NOT a
shop and there is NOTHING TO BUY there and if you don't like it, just
don't use it. I don't make any money from this site. Nevertheless,
this site is protected by copyrights and nobody is authorized to
infringe them.

I must say that I really don't understand the surge of violence for
such a matter. I've used Google Pages Creator for the home page of
this site. The purpose of GPC is to free the content producer from the
boring HTML. I have absolutely no control of the HTML generated. But
Mr. Hearthfield has consciously decided to insult me just because
there is a 1700 characters-long line of HTML (a markup language, not a
programming language) in a page.

Do you really encourage teaching by insult?

Do you really teach you kids by calling them fools?

Do you respect yourself if you don't respect others?

Skills without human values and respect for people are not valuable.

The Author.

I have no doubt that the OP will be eager to learn from this, and will
change his Terms of Use page forthwith.

The contract is governed by the Law of France, dear!

 

[Colin B.]

That site appears to be badly broken. Tried it in Firefox and Opera and
the only links (appart from the "Relevant Link" section) appear to lead
to jpegs.

I think the creator mistakenly believes this is part of a software riddle.

 

[dilbert1999]

You're TOTALLY WRONG ! I have not opened any shop! This site is NOT a
shop and there is NOTHING TO BUY there and if you don't like it, just
don't use it. I don't make any money from this site. Nevertheless,
this site is protected by copyrights and nobody is authorized to
infringe them.

I think you have to be more upfront.

Please let me explain:

You offer a service (game, riddle, whatever...) on the internet by
giving access to a single page with the address of
http://software.challenge.googlepages.com , whether you take money for
your services or not does not matter.

I could not find any terms of use on this page, but I found a hint
(which in effect is a riddle in itself) displayed somewhere halfway
down the page: "[...] To access riddles term, imitate salmons willing
to spawn [...]".

So I had to solve the first riddle before accessing the terms and
conditions.

I think your web site is a great idea and I liked the second riddle,
but you have to be upfront about the terms and conditions on the first
page.

 

[yanosc]

On Jun 8, 3:40 pm, (e-mail address removed) wrote:


Please let me explain:

You offer a service (game, riddle, whatever...) on the internet by
giving access to a single page with the address ofhttp://software.challenge.googlepages.com, whether you take money for
your services or not does not matter.

I could not find any terms of use on this page, but I found a hint
(which in effect is a riddle in itself) displayed somewhere halfway
down the page: "[...] To access riddles term, imitate salmons willing
to spawn [...]".

So I had to solve the first riddle before accessing the terms and
conditions.

I think your web site is a great idea and I liked the second riddle,
but you have to be upfront about the terms and conditions on the first
page.

Thank you for your comments.

The Terms of Use are of course accessible from the main page.

The link is located at the bottom of the page. This may be the reason
why you've not seen it. It's probably a matter of scrolling.
I've generally noticed that websites put their Terms of Use at this
location, but I've no problem to put it in first place of the page.

My intention is absolutely not to mislead anybody, but to make people
have fun through programming.

Kindly. Thierry

 

[yanosc]

On Jun 8, 3:40 pm, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

I could not find any terms of use on this page, but I found a hint
(which in effect is a riddle in itself) displayed somewhere halfway
down the page: "[...] To access riddles term, imitate salmons willing
to spawn [...]".

I think I've understood the confusion. When I've written "to access
the riddles term", it means to access the riddles specs and not the
Terms of Use of the site, whose the link is at the bottom of the main
page!

Thierry

 

[Joe Smith]

Not really. The line contains 114024 characters and it is impossible to
select it in the Firefox's source viewer.

It's more convenient to save it to a file and work from there.

perl -ne 's/(Yet)/\n$1/g and print' ignition.html > temp.txt

-Joe

 

[Joe Smith]

You're TOTALLY WRONG ! I have not opened any shop!

That does not change the fact that your "terms of use" is an
unenforceable contract, and illegal in most jurisdictions.

Because the content is publicly available to anyone (without
requiring a password or other contractual obligation), we can

reproduce, republish, display, frame, download, transmit, modify,
rent, loan, sell, assign, distribute, reverse engineer, adapt,
edit, or create derivative works

without fear of reprisal. We can also

store, reproduce, transmit, publicly display, publicly perform,
distribute, publish, broadcast or otherwise make available the content

if we so choose.

Section 8 is reasonable, all the others are null and void.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

(e-mail address removed) said:

You're TOTALLY WRONG ! I have not opened any shop!

Ah, you took me literally. That was not my intent. I accept that you
haven't opened any shop. It was what we call an "analogy" - a metaphor,
a word picture, a parallel.

I don't make any money from this site. Nevertheless,
this site is protected by copyrights and nobody is authorized to
infringe them.

Wouldn't dream of it, sunshine.

I must say that I really don't understand the surge of violence for
such a matter.

Violence? What violence? I see no violence. I see a bit of shouting from
your direction, but apart from that, it's all pretty quiet.

The contract is governed by the Law of France, dear!

No, it isn't, love, partly because I'm not *in* France, and partly
because there ain't no contract.

 

[Richard Heathfield]

Grzegorz Wróbel said:

In fact, any html browser that
crashes because it assumes anything about lines lenght is a poorly
written piece of software.

Certainly true, but in Konqueror's defence I must say that I have no
reason to suspect that line length was the reason for the crash.

If your pages are generated, not written by
hand, I wouldn't bother "fixing it" as long as they are valid html.

The W3C validator <http://validator.w3.org/> found eleven errors in the
page.

 

[Bart]

You're absolutely wrong! Where to start is clearly shown. Thousands of
people have succeed so far..

I give up. What do you have to do to get started? Solve the riddle of
the salmon then stick that on the end of the url?

By 'clearly shown' I would expect a big button saying 'Start Here'.

bart

 

[krakle]

If you're mad aboutsoftwareriddles, just have a look athttp://software.challenge.googlepages.comand challenge yourself or
invite your friends to join.

Be prepared to spend some nights there!

Enjoy!

Thierry

Wow... That is the crappiest website I have ever seen.

 

[Joe Smith]

I give up. What do you have to do to get started? Solve the riddle of
the salmon then stick that on the end of the url?

By 'clearly shown' I would expect a big button saying 'Start Here'.

There IS a big button for 'Start Here'. It's 200 pixels wide and 49 high.

 

[Joe Smith]

That site appears to be badly broken. Tried it in Firefox and Opera and
the only links (appart from the "Relevant Link" section) appear to lead
to jpegs.

Links won't get you anywhere; manually entering text on the Location bar will.

 

[Bart]

There IS a big button for 'Start Here'. It's 200 pixels wide and 49 high.

Thanks. That used to just show a bigger version, today it does
nothing. But finally I can see that ignition.jpg is not the same as
ignition.html.

Now I get a picture of a French chateau as you tend to do in
programming puzzles..

Bart