They haven't unlocked anything. At best, they've gained confidence in the type of lock.

The title on the site is bad ("unlock more secrets of ancient script"), especially for a place called "science daily". The title here is atrocious. The end of the first paragraph is "researchers are using mathematics and computer science to try to piece together information about the still-unknown script."

Google should create a translation module for dead languages. Why stop at scanning old books? Scan some ancient tablets Sergey!

I think the researcher here has confused Bayesian inference with Markov chaining? I'm doubtful this is an effective approach to unlock any kind of -meaning- from the inscriptions.

If this isn't an article for PG's comment, I don't know what is :)

such an approach might teach them everything about the language's syntax but nothing about its semantics.. but i guess deciphering that would be a lot easier once they can identify the structural components of the sentences

Hmmmm... colon, open paren, close paren... curly brace... I think I've got it!

:(){ :|:& };:

...now to run the script!

NO CARRIER

the paper be found here: http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0901/0901.3017v1.pdf