Would be funny if somebody went overboard and actually rooted the box, deleted the other entries and changed the site so the problem couldn't be solved (or closed the competition).<p>Then I guess you'd have to give him the job by default :-)
Regarding whether or not it's too easy...that's something we wondered about. We decided we wanted a relatively straightforward initial screen rather than an complex brainteaser.<p>So I would by no means liken this to the Greplin Challenge, but we're trying to accomplish something different. We're hoping to eliminate the crappy applicants so we can spend more time on the good ones.
Waaay too easy...honestly, I'm not tooting my own horn.<p>But I guess it would keep the lazy applicant from applying.<p>EDIT: on second thought, maybe it is the right level. They aren't likely looking for $100k+ hacker geniuses, just guys who can think outside the box and know how to do basic digging and prevent your typical hack.<p>I retract my statement. Clever application process.
Fun challenge. It took me about 10-15 minutes using curl.<p>I think it's the right level of difficulty: Difficult enough that you're able to weed out a lot of really low quality applicants, but not so difficult that you run the risk of excluding high quality applicants.
That was fun. Personally I wouldn't make it any harder as it would already weed out a huge portion of the candidates I have interviewed in the past. I would perhaps add something that required a little JavaScript or something written though.<p>I wonder how many applications you get from people that don't actually want the job.
Not too shabby. Was pretty trivial to do with Safari's developer tools, actually.<p>I submitted this as my resume: <a href="http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/im-in-ur-office-earnin-ur-salry.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.russellheimlich.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/...</a>
I quite enjoyed this :-) Reminds me of an online game that I played through years ago which I'm having trouble digging references to now; hack your way through successive levels, starting with really trivial things like default passwords and working your way up through all the exploitation techniques through to the more interesting ones (buffer overflows, off by 1 errors etc).<p>I was well hooked on the writings of Aleph1, Mudge and Rain Forest Puppy at the time, and this game was an excellent tool for teaching developers about vulnerabilities and thus how to defend against them. I know that the game spawned a plethora of copy-cats later on of varying qualitites - does anybody happen to know the one I'm referring to?
Honestly they should not have made this announcement public, it should be a private message to anyone submitting an application, otherwise random people pick up the challenge and post the answers online.
Great idea! I thought I had it figured out last night but the blank screen I got when submitting kept bothering me. This morning I double checked the requirements and saw if I got a blank screen I had not done it right.<p>I went back and got it figured out - I think the barrier to entry for this is just right.