[KenWittlief]

people are taking this thread way to seriously.

before we inflict an absolute moral code on all the FIRST students, I wonder... what would Dean Kamen do?

ask Dean sometime about how his company got started, a little bending of the rules at a place called The Museum of Natural History in Manhatten.

Ask him about the time he send his parents away on vacation (while he was a teenager) and what he did to his parents house while they were away! (or borrow a copy of the book "Code Name Ginger" and read the first chapter.

to hack open the PDF files before saturday, you would have to be a genius. The real issue here is, IF you were able to open them, what would you do with them before saturday?

I dont see anyone here advocating hacking the files to get an unfair advantage over other teams - what I see is the natural curiosity that all geeks and nerdy people possess - put a challenge infront of them, and the gears start spinning - nobody can stop those gears from spinning

Fortunately!

we will have a much greater and important challenge infront of us on saturday, and all this will be forgotten. But if by some chance someone does have the ability to decode the files before saturday, NSA and the FBI will both have standing job offers for you. :c)