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I don't think it was a fair play again this year. Hiding url for the registration codes in images etc was not a very smart idea (although it was fun for a while

by suyash 13y ago

I don't think it was a fair play again this year. Hiding url for the registration codes in images etc was not a very smart idea (although it was fun for a while), people hacked into it as well and some people got multiple codes while others got none. Being an Android developer, I was disappointed, at least only registered developers should have been allowed in the lottery fist or better yet confirmed tickets. Apple was much smarter and it allowed only registered iOS/OSX developers to sign up for the lottery.

mbernstein 13y ago
Why only registered Android developers? There's a lot more to I/O (and Google) than just Android.. What do you mean by "hacked into it"? Do you mean people used wget -r on the developer docs and grep'd out codes to try?
- suyash 13y ago
  "Why only registered Android developers? There's a lot more to I/O (and Google) than just Android.." - Ofcourse, I was just eliciting a contrast to Apple's registration system for developers, Android dev was just 1 use case I'm pointing too. "What do you mean by "hacked into it"? Do you mean people used wget -r on the developer docs and grep'd out codes to try?" - Did you read the blog in full before asking this? In the blog, this is what Stan mentioned: "By this time several HTTP crawlers had been created by individuals looking to secure a ticket to Google I/O ahead of today’s lottery. The crawlers used various tools and libraries to download images, web pages, and Youtube video annotations looking for more codes."
  - theelfismike 13y ago
    I think they absolutely wanted people to write crawlers and scrapers for codes. Google was created by creating web crawlers that indexed the content to rank pages. This exercise was a tribute to those algorithms.
  - mbernstein 13y ago
    Of course I read it. I just consider hacking into something to be a different sort of activity vs. crawling and doing what Google likely intended. "Hacked into it" to me implies someone circumvented the server that was able to determine which codes were still and open and just took them, not writing a crawler. You didn't even need to write a crawler - you could wget -r the android dev docs and grep through for goo.gl and try them all.
  - bookwormAT 13y ago
    I think being able to write a web crawler is a better test for your development skills than opening a $25 developer account. And don't forget that most Android developers do not publish their work on their own private accounts. Anyway, the easter eggs were just that: a small game for promotion and fun. There were around 300 of these - the Google+ I/O community alone has 43000 Members (Disclaimer: I got one 3 days after they started the easter eggs). If Google's I/O team is smart they secretly check for peoples public activity through their Google+ account when they select winners in "the lottery". If they favor people who follow Google Developer pages or who liked some of the tech videos on youtube, they would already filter out a lot of the civilists.

by suyash 13y ago

mbernstein 13y ago

Why only registered Android developers? There's a lot more to I/O (and Google) than just Android.. What do you mean by "hacked into it"? Do you mean people used wget -r on the developer docs and grep'd out codes to try?

suyash 13y ago
"Why only registered Android developers? There's a lot more to I/O (and Google) than just Android.." - Ofcourse, I was just eliciting a contrast to Apple's registration system for developers, Android dev was just 1 use case I'm pointing too. "What do you mean by "hacked into it"? Do you mean people used wget -r on the developer docs and grep'd out codes to try?" - Did you read the blog in full before asking this? In the blog, this is what Stan mentioned: "By this time several HTTP crawlers had been created by individuals looking to secure a ticket to Google I/O ahead of today’s lottery. The crawlers used various tools and libraries to download images, web pages, and Youtube video annotations looking for more codes."
- theelfismike 13y ago
  I think they absolutely wanted people to write crawlers and scrapers for codes. Google was created by creating web crawlers that indexed the content to rank pages. This exercise was a tribute to those algorithms.
- mbernstein 13y ago
  Of course I read it. I just consider hacking into something to be a different sort of activity vs. crawling and doing what Google likely intended. "Hacked into it" to me implies someone circumvented the server that was able to determine which codes were still and open and just took them, not writing a crawler. You didn't even need to write a crawler - you could wget -r the android dev docs and grep through for goo.gl and try them all.
- bookwormAT 13y ago
  I think being able to write a web crawler is a better test for your development skills than opening a $25 developer account. And don't forget that most Android developers do not publish their work on their own private accounts. Anyway, the easter eggs were just that: a small game for promotion and fun. There were around 300 of these - the Google+ I/O community alone has 43000 Members (Disclaimer: I got one 3 days after they started the easter eggs). If Google's I/O team is smart they secretly check for peoples public activity through their Google+ account when they select winners in "the lottery". If they favor people who follow Google Developer pages or who liked some of the tech videos on youtube, they would already filter out a lot of the civilists.