Frustrating thy tech savoir faire,

April 19, 2001 12:00 PM

Frustrating thy tech savoir faire, the 452 Tech Challenge is a real excercise for the noodles.
posted by tamim (12 comments total)

what's fun is that the very first sentence on the page is:

So you think your smart eh?

irony check anyone?

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm. ;)
posted by fuzzygeek at 1:04 PM on April 19, 2001

Go to http://www.452productions.com/challenge/tech/start.php" to actually start the challenge. I guess the first challenge is to figure out how to start the challenge, since they hid the URL in the source code. Then, to authenticate yourself, you have to read some PHP code. Who has time to do this crap?
posted by ktheory at 2:31 PM on April 19, 2001

Luser!!!

Can't you tell the difference between php and javascript!?!! Not that you could get at the php code by 'viewing source' anyway. Looks like you fail, my friend.

;)
posted by sonofsamiam at 2:38 PM on April 19, 2001

Uhm.. I do. It's not like messing around with this is much different from reading/posting to MeFi as far as time wasting goes. And telling people the answers to challenges kinda takes the fun out of it.
posted by zempf at 2:39 PM on April 19, 2001

k, if you're going to do something like that, at least mark it *SPOILER*. The whole point is to figure this shit out.
posted by jpoulos at 2:40 PM on April 19, 2001

Sorry. Yeah, I suck. These kind of "hacker" tests just seem like such a waste of time to me.
posted by ktheory at 11:05 PM on April 19, 2001

As always, it's entirely a matter of opinion. Personally, I enjoy fighting my way through challenges such as these, if only to gauge my own knowledge and abilities.

*SEMI-NON-SPOILER* I didn't expect it to be so calculus-heavy, however. I'm still stuck on part four of the calc section. Eek.
posted by Danelope at 11:10 PM on April 19, 2001

"Not real sure what you were thinking but I, the semi-friendly 452 Page-engine, am thinking that whatever your looking for is not here. It probably never existed and your imagining the whole thing."

I took a wrong turn somewhere....
posted by Zool at 12:04 AM on April 20, 2001

They fail _my_ tech challenge by expecting me to accept Javascript from an unknown site. Sorry, too big a security hole. They may indeed be fronting for someone trying to control the world--though I doubt it--but if so, I want a six-figure salary, a safe-house, and that Swiss passport *before* they get into my PC here and do who-knows-what.
posted by rosvicl at 7:33 AM on April 20, 2001

Actually the point is to run the JavaScript in your head in order to hack it, rather than turn it on in the browser!

Interesting site. Will definitely be going back should I manage to get some more of that 'time' to waste.
posted by BobInce at 11:15 AM on April 20, 2001

My brain hurts.........
posted by jpoulos at 1:46 PM on April 20, 2001

That was cool. This site would actually be a good test for net-engineer job candidates -- better, maybe, than the microsoft interview test style, since it requires deduction and web skills in the same effort.
posted by precipice at 6:52 PM on April 20, 2001