DailyDirt: Crack A Puzzle And Score Some Cash (Or A Cool Job)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

There seem to be plenty of seemingly unsolvable challenges that, once published openly, are completed successfully in an amazingly short amount of time. Clearly there are still a lot of unsolved mysteries left, but the strategy of publicizing problems as a way to get them solved faster is a fascinating phenomenon. Here are just a few more examples of some challenges that have been made open to the public.

• DARPA's Shredder Challenge has been solved, and the winner is the team "All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S." Now the companies that make shredders will have to create a challenge that'll make reconstructing shredded documents even harder... [url]
• If you have a good idea about how to augment a camera to capture more than a picture, submit it here. The deadline is December 8th, so hurry up! [url]
• The next James Bond is apparently supposed to apply online and solve a puzzle for the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Just don't break any laws to crack the code, or else you're disqualified (or worse?). [url]
• To discover more interesting business-related content, check out what the deal is on StumbleUpon. [url]  

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: cameras, challenges, james bond, shredders, spy
Companies: darpa, gchq

Documentary Filmmaker, Legal Spy... Or Both?

from the crossing-boundaries dept

We just wrote about a lawsuit involving a documentary filmmaker who was trying (but failed) to protect unused footage from being subpoenaed for a lawsuit involving Chevron's involvement in Ecuadorian pollution. It raised questions about whether or not a documentary filmmaker could be seen as an investigative journalist, and thus could be covered by a shield law. Apparently, documentary filmmakers involved in films in that general part of the world are expanding their job titles all the time. THREsq has the fascinating story of a "documentary filmmaker" who went to Nicaragua to interview people about pesticides used on Dole banana plantations, who recently admitted he was also on the payroll of a law firm that was looking to sue over problems with the pesticide:

"I decided the film wasn't going to change a lot in this world," Glaser said on the witness stand in a case involving six men claiming they were left sterile by pesticide exposure. "I decided to work with the firm and help with the legal process...I decided to use the film for that purpose."

So he was still making the film, it's just that he got financing from the law firm looking to use the evidence collected in a case. It's a neat trick, though the report questions if this will make people more nervous about talking to filmmakers. I'm not sure that's really true. If the film was being made anyway to "expose" problems with the pesticide, then the company was probably already afraid of talking to the guy, and those impacted by the pesticide are probably happy about both the movie and the lawsuit. Still, I find it an interesting type of "business model" for a documentary filmmaker to also be a law firm investigator...

Filed Under: documentary, lawsuits, spy