Cracking the Quicksilver Code

wka writes "Todd Garrison describes in detail how he solved the cryptographic puzzle promoting Neal Stephenson's forthcoming book Quicksilver, and the reward for his effort. Stephenson himself calls Garrison's story 'remarkable' because Garrison was completely unfamiliar with the system of writing (Real Character) used in the puzzle. Also, Stephenson notes that the system and its creator play roles in The Baroque Cycle."

Comments

Been there..

[User 956]

That's kind of like when I cracked the "stilted English" code used in Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.

Re:Been there..

[Anonymous Coward]

I hacked the gibson once, but forgot where I put my floppy backup.

Re:Been there..

[Anonymous Coward]

You misspelled 'Tolkien'.

Remarkable

[MisterFancypants]

I also think Garrison's story is remarkable in that you'd think just about anyone would have better things to do with his or her time than crack a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book.

Guess not!

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

I also think Garrison's story is remarkable in that you'd think just about anyone would have better things to do with his or her time than crack a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book.

Right, like posting to slashdot to belittle an effort to crack a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book.

Re:Remarkable

[syle]

... or post +4 funny comments on slashdot.

Re:Remarkable

[Saige]

But you might also think that just about anyone would have better things to do with their time than post messages to a website to do little more than comment on someone else's use of their time.

Some people have an insatiable sense of curiousity about some things, and you never know what or when will trigger that curiousity. Apparently his was triggered by the cipher and the obscure symbols.

And who knows, perhaps your message here will trigger someone else's quest to figure out just how much free time Garrison has in his life to devote to solving such puzzles.

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

glad this faggot who didn't RTFA got modded so high. It is a real historical cypher used by members of the Royal Society. Glad you gave nothing better to do with your time than post on a lunix website. Go back to wanking to Cowboi Bob DVDs, fruitloop.

Re:Remarkable

[dasmegabyte]

Hey! I participated in the "hacking" contest on the Swordfish website. Compared to that bullshit, on the waste o chronometer, solving this contest is akin to curing cancer.

Re:Remarkable

[MisterFancypants]

Your thoughtful post makes the +4 mod points I got all the sweeter!

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, like posting to slashdot deriding another poster's effort to belittle cracking a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book is a worthy endeavor!

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

Right, like posting to /. deriding another person posting to slashdot deriding another poster's effort to belittle cracking a fake cipher being used as a promotional tool for a book is a worthy endeavor!

Ha ha! I get the joke! LOLOL!!!!

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

NO, you get a life!

Re:Remarkable

[CapnRob]

o'course, it's not a *fake* cipher at all. It's a real one, in both the sense of 'it really encodes information that can later be extracted,' and 'it's a cipher that had actual use outside of this current context.' But thanks for playing.

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

He's from *EUGENE OREGON*.

I promise you, he has nothing better to do.

- inky

Re:Remarkable

[Anonymous Coward]

All he did was search google.

For those of you who didn't read the article, the remarkable part was that he realized that he needed to search by keywords from the excerpt because his keyboard didn't have the necessary character map to input the code directly.

What's that sound?

[NotClever]

Cracking the server code. /.'d already?!

Yet even more, more, more remarkable

[JasonUCF]

is Garrison's poor unwitting server, slashdotted to a smoking ruin within mere MINUTES of story posting. That is what I call a proper and most righteous slashdotting.

Here here!

If it ain't Baroque...

[killmenow]

why fix it?

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[zerOnIne]

that was horrible... this is worse:

Baroque: When you are out of Monet.

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[gidds]

I've never understood that line...

Maybe it's because I'm British; but 'baroque' and 'broke' sound quite different; they share no vowels, and don't even have the same number of syllables!

Do they sound much more alike in other accents, or is it just a very lame pun?

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a country where "aunt" and "ant" are the same word. A country where "aluminium" has one "i", and "nuclear" has two "u"'s. They could pronounce "baroque" and "broke" like normal people pronounce "braw key", for all we know.

Re: If it ain't Baroque...

[gidds]

Do tell. I'm dying to know - don't leave us all in suspense like this!

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[splattertrousers]

Maybe it's because I'm British; but 'baroque' and 'broke' sound quite different

In American English, the "roque" and "roke" of "baroque" and "broke" are pronounced identically. And obviously, the "b" is pronounced the same. The "a" is pronounced like "uh".

So they sound the same in English except for the addition of the "uh" in "baroque".

I imagine that in British English, "baroque" is pronounced "buh-rahk", sort of rhyming with "Bach" or "clock"?

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[killmenow]

Well, another response explains the pronunciation bit; but, it's still a lame pun.

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[kubrick]

Rock or roke, I guess. ba-roke... broke... heh. Not very.

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[Haeleth]

It rhymes with "clock", but not with "Bach". The "o" in Baroque and clock is a sound not found in American English.

Re:If it ain't Baroque...

[gidds]

I imagine that in British English, "baroque" is pronounced "buh-rahk", sort of rhyming with "Bach" or "clock"?

To rhyme with 'clock'. ('Bach' is pronounced completely differently, with the vowel of 'bath', and a proper Germanic 'chhh' final consonant.)

Or at least, to rhyme with how we say 'clock'... which of course doesn't tell you very much about how we say that word, either! (It's at times like this that I wish I knew the International Phonetic Alphabet...) In British English, 'rock' and 'clock' etc. have a low, short vowel that's not much like the long, open one I've heard in American English.

I've been looking forward to this book.

[Apiakun]

Stephenson has always appealed to me as a writer. His writing is eloquent, and he is able to tell a wonderful story. By the time I had finished Cryptonomicon, behemoth that it is, I was craving for more. I'm eagerly awaiting the release of this book!

Already slashdotted...

[Lane.exe]

Whew... mention Stephenson and the /. starts almost immediately...

::clutches his copy of Snow Crash::
It's my preciousssss...

Re:Already slashdotted...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the "Otherland" series by Tad Williams. Awesome books! I liked Snow Crash a lot.

The secret. SHHHHH

[AtariAmarok]

Here's the secret. Don't tell anyone. The password he uses is "neal".

Re:The secret. SHHHHH

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the secret. Don't tell anyone. The password he uses is "neal".

If that doesn't work, try prepending it with "Cowboy ".

BTW - I invented the Universe.

[teamhasnoi]

I explain my Law of Unified Fields on the /.ed page too. WTF good is an article that nobody can read?

I guess the only thing that is ontopic is dicussion of 404, 500 and timeout messages.

/waiting for inevitable mod point retribution - go gettim, Tiger!

Re:BTW - I invented the Universe.

[Agent Deepshit]

Tell me about it. I wish someone would slashdot slashdot for once.

Google Cache

[igabe]

Google cache of the Baroque Cycle site: http://216.239.39.100/search?q=cache:g7LhllA_h6YJ: www.baroquecycle.com/quicksilver.htm+&hl=en&lr=lan g_en&ie=UTF-8

No cache of the slipstream site, sorry :)

Slashdotted ...

[bigjocker]

I'm having trouble loading the page 3, that subscription thinguie should last a little longer .... anyways, here are the first two pages from Mozilla's cache ... if yo can post the 3rd page, reply to this message:

By Todd Garrison

This blow-by-blow account was created for all the Neal Stephenson readers who, in anticipation of his upcoming book, Quicksilver, took it upon themselves to try to solve the cryptographic puzzle they encountered at the Baroque Cycle Web site. If you had difficulty making heads or tails of it or are simply curious as to what it all means, what follows is an explanation of how one person arrived at the solution. Bear in mind that this narrative will reveal the translation of the code written in Wilkins's script, so if you are still interested in solving it for yourself, you may want to reconsider reading further.

Some time ago I received an email from HarperCollins's Author Tracker system, notifying me of some news relating to the publication of Quicksilver. I was directed to their promotional Web site, www.baroquecycle.com, where they had posted some information about its release date, an author bio and an excerpt from the book. Now sated, my attention was drawn once again to its strange introductory page. Without fanfare, nor any form of communication whatsoever, appeared this image of some parchment strewn with strange symbols. Added in the corners were little icons of what appeared to be oldish-looking glassware. What a strange way to welcome you to the site, I thought. In order to get to the Good Stuff, one must first pass through this page--an indication that it was meant to be noticed. Was this some sort of secret message? If this had anything to do with Neal Stephenson, I found it hard to believe it was all just window dressing. Sensing there was a mystery to be uncovered, I decided to dive in and see what I could come up with.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Page 2 (cont.)

I started with the assumption that if this was intended for a mass audience to figure out, there had to be a relatively simple solution lurking out there. My first thought was that this "code" was concocted out of thin air, designed to look old. Cryptonomicon had taught me some things about codes, and assuming each symbol stood for a particular letter of the alphabet, I knew that frequency analysis was a tool often used for decoding simple substitution ciphers. This is the process whereby one counts the occurrence of each symbol and compares it with a normal letter distribution for written English. Therefore, with the letter "E" being the most common, I should then be able to substitute it for the most common symbol; likewise for the next most common letter, "T," then "A," and so on. Unfortunately, this strange alphabet seemed to have well more than 30 letters and only a few of them were used more than once. Mr. Stephenson, one - Todd, nada.

I was still convinced the solution was a simple one, so my next thought was to try looking at TrueType fonts of ancient languages, reasoning that if I found the correct one, all I had to do was key in the ciphertext and change the typeface to say, Times Roman, and the translated message would magically appear. But more than a hundred or so unsuccessful attempts later, this line of thinking was also abandoned. It was starting to get ugly.

I needed to take stock of the situation; it occurred to me that there no longer appeared to be a simple solution I could arrive at with basic guesswork. The only clues I had to work with were derived from the excerpt, and it had to somehow be tied in with the people or ideas from that period. Therefore it was probably pretty old, had something to do with alchemy, Kabalism or the occult, and it might have been the product of one of the leading scientific minds of the 17th century, etc.

The key to deciphering the message seemed to be predicated on finding a real-life example of this strange writing. Once that happened, the p

Re:Slashdotted ...

[Donut2099]

Page 3 (cont.)

My biggest wild goose chase was a result of discovering some all-too-coincidental similarities between a biblical Enoch and Enoch Root, the casually ethereal character from Cryptonomicon, who, I discovered while reading the excerpt, appears in Quicksilver as well. Digging through such concepts as Enochian Magick, the Book of Enoch, and even an Enochian alphabet, the existing parallels were a little too spooky to dismiss without some serious fact checking. I'll spare you the grim details of every connection-based lead I chased down, but I will say that I learned enough about the prophet Enoch over the course of the next couple days to start forming my own conspiracy theories about the beloved Enoch Root. Be that as it may, my once-promising leads melted away, and in the end, I was left with only the salty taste of red herring in my mouth.

(time elapses as more leads fizzle out...)

After much cursing of the name Neal Stephenson and almost burning my own copy of Cryptonomicon on general principal, I returned to cross-referencing "codes" and "secret writing" with names and concepts mentioned in the excerpt. Strangely, it was a bizarre collision with John Hooke, another great mind from the 17th century, that propelled me into the final phase of my search.

While investigating Hooke, like a two-by-four to the stomach, I somehow stumbled upon a real-world, honest to goodness, graphic example of the writing I was looking for! I couldn't believe my eyes. Finally, proof that this ancient language existed! In one fell swoop, my quest had been validated, and I felt energized enough to see this damn thing through.

To make a long story slightly less so, Hooke was erroneously credited for the creation of this mysterious alphabet, and only through another sufficiently high number of wrong turns later did I make the connection to its true inventor, John Wilkins.

Once I found Wilkins, it soon became clear that what I was dealing with here was no ordinary code or simple system for secret writing, but an entire language.

This all led to An Essay Toward a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, of course, but to decode the message, I needed the book. Unable to find one, I did manage to find the next best thing--a Rosetta Stone of sorts--a scanned image from one of the pages from his book that used the Lord's Prayer as an example. He had written the prayer in his Real Character, and displayed beneath each symbol was the English translation. Using that translation, I was able to decode a few words of my text, but from this a couple of things became apparent: 1) each symbol represented, not individual letters, but whole words, and; 2) I would need the whole book if I were to have any chance at decoding the rest of the message.

thats as far as I got, wait 20 seconds... post!

Re:Slashdotted ...

[bigjocker]

And here is the rest .... reading from the beginning it seemed a lot more interesting ....

And hey, don't mod me up, I'm already posting this at two ...

Page 4 (cont.)

Now if I wanted to spend several hundred dollars, I'd be able to purchase my very own reprint from a specialty bookseller, but that seemed a little severe for the purpose of cracking a message that, for all I knew, contained the publishing equivalent of "Drink more Ovaltine." I looked into borrowing one from a nearby university's rare books collection, but one phone call made it quite clear that no self-respecting librarian was going to let my grubby hands anywhere near a 335 year-old book. Desperate, I scoured the Internet looking for online versions of Real Character. It turned up in bits and pieces, but those were invariably converted into plain text--useless if you want to view the original symbols and even worse if you wanted to decode anything.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, it appeared. One site that seemed to have an eerie fascination with Wilkins offered me everything I could have asked for. Not only was the entire book online, but it was in its original form too, scanned and converted into large GIF files. Displayed within the browser's window, the pages were too small to be legible, but I found that if I downloaded each page individually to my computer (there were more than 600), I could then read the document in its original size.

The Final Push consisted of trying to figure out how Wilkins went about creating this language, requiring a healthy chunk of the book to be actually read. As Mr. Stephenson pointed out, Wilkins was trying to create a universal language, and it was supposedly understandable by anyone as long as you knew how the system worked. He came up with a hierarchal means of classifying words, dividing the English language into roughly forty categories. These categories were then divided into smaller and smaller subsections, until every word would fit somewhere within.

In order to take the message and convert it back into English, I needed something that would give me the roadmap as to which category any particular word belonged. Once I had located this particular chart, I realized this was the key to using his "dictionary," from which I could then look up words. To make things easier, I began with a word I already knew (from the Lord's Prayer), and reverse-engineered it to better understand the system. From there, it became a pretty straightforward process to do the same with the remainder of the words.

Getting the hang of the language's subtleties like verb tense, adverbs, etc., was a bit stickier and required some extra reading, but in the end, every word found on the Baroque Cycle site was capable of being identified and translated. There were some liberties taken with words that didn't exist in 1668, like "fax" or "telephone," but Lisa Gold, the message's creator--and my greatest aggravation--found a clever way to work around these obstacles.

It turns out that the message was really a set of instructions to anyone who could read it, and the first person to do so would receive a reward for their efforts. For all of you who have waited patiently through all this, you'll find the complete translation taken from Wilkins's script below:

Quicksilver will be published in the fourth week of the ninth month
in the year of our Lord 2003. If you understand this, send
a fax to 1 (212) XXX-XXXX with your name, address, phone number,
and email address along with your translation. The first person to
accomplish this will receive a signed copy of the book.

See the image below for a literal translation:

Click image for larger view

I hope you enjoyed the story, and despite my protestations to the contrary, I really did enjoy the challenge of tackling Wilkins's system of writing. In fact, the whole process was an immense learning experience as well. If you have any additional questions or comments about any of the above, you are more than welcome to email me at todd@substream.com.

Cheers,

- Todd Garrison
June 2003

Re:Slashdotted ...

[Richardsonke1]

(Page 4 - Last Page)

Now if I wanted to spend several hundred dollars, I?d be able to purchase my very own reprint from a specialty bookseller, but that seemed a little severe for the purpose of cracking a message that, for all I knew, contained the publishing equivalent of "Drink more Ovaltine." I looked into borrowing one from a nearby university?s rare books collection, but one phone call made it quite clear that no self-respecting librarian was going to let my grubby hands anywhere near a 335 year-old book. Desperate, I scoured the Internet looking for online versions of Real Character. It turned up in bits and pieces, but those were invariably converted into plain text?useless if you want to view the original symbols and even worse if you wanted to decode anything.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, it appeared. One site that seemed to have an eerie fascination with Wilkins offered me everything I could have asked for. Not only was the entire book online, but it was in its original form too, scanned and converted into large GIF files. Displayed within the browser?s window, the pages were too small to be legible, but I found that if I downloaded each page individually to my computer (there were more than 600), I could then read the document in its original size.

The Final Push consisted of trying to figure out how Wilkins went about creating this language, requiring a healthy chunk of the book to be actually read. As Mr. Stephenson pointed out, Wilkins was trying to create a universal language, and it was supposedly understandable by anyone as long as you knew how the system worked. He came up with a hierarchal means of classifying words, dividing the English language into roughly forty categories. These categories were then divided into smaller and smaller subsections, until every word would fit somewhere within.

In order to take the message and convert it back into English, I needed something that would give me the roadmap as to which category any particular word belonged. Once I had located this particular chart, I realized this was the key to using his "dictionary," from which I could then look up words. To make things easier, I began with a word I already knew (from the Lord?s Prayer), and reverse-engineered it to better understand the system. From there, it became a pretty straightforward process to do the same with the remainder of the words.

Getting the hang of the language?s subtleties like verb tense, adverbs, etc., was a bit stickier and required some extra reading, but in the end, every word found on the Baroque Cycle site was capable of being identified and translated. There were some liberties taken with words that didn?t exist in 1668, like "fax" or "telephone," but Lisa Gold, the message?s creator?and my greatest aggravation?found a clever way to work around these obstacles.

It turns out that the message was really a set of instructions to anyone who could read it, and the first person to do so would receive a reward for their efforts. For all of you who have waited patiently through all this, you?ll find the complete translation taken from Wilkins?s script below:

Quicksilver will be published in the fourth week of the ninth month
in the year of our Lord 2003. If you understand this, send
a fax to 1 (212) XXX-XXXX with your name, address, phone number,
and email address along with your translation. The first person to
accomplish this will receive a signed copy of the book.

See the image below for a literal translation:

[Image was here]

I hope you enjoyed the story, and despite my protestations to the contrary, I really did enjoy the challenge of tackling Wilkins's system of writing. In fact, the whole process was an immense learning experience as well. If you have any additional questions or comments about any of the above, you are more than welcome to email me at todd@substream.com.

Cheers,

- Todd Garrison
June 2003

Re:Slashdotted ...

[orthogonal]

If you understand this, send a fax to 1 (212) XXX-XXXX

That fax number's in a strange code too. And it's really resistant to the character frequency analyses I've been trying.

I think it might be 555-5555 though, I heard that number in some movie.

Re:Slashdotted ...

[Viking Coder]

Here is that version of Wilkin's Lord's Prayer.

Re:Slashdotted ...

[Mike Schiraldi]

If you understand this, send a fax to 1 (212) XXX-XXXX.

That fax number's in a strange code too.

Nah, there's no code; it's just 212-999-9999.

Re:Slashdotted ...

[sahonen]

It looks like his "Real Character" wasn't the only thing he wrote in code.

Wait, people *actually* wrote like that?

Re:Slashdotted ...

[Placido]

Actually it's quite easy. The code is related to a language used by an ancient civilisation called the "ro - mans".

X in that language means 10

So the correct fax number is 1 (212) 101010 - 10101010. Easy peasy. Back in a sec.

Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Cthefuture]

I don't get it. Maybe I should go read up on Real Character, but it just sounded like a different way to write english.

I mean, the english language was broken down and made into a script of symbols to words. Like Chinese and other complicated languages except more ordered... I assume.

What's the deal? That doesn't sound universal or even particularly interesting. I mean, they had to "hack" the language to get things like "fax" and other modern concepts into it.

Maybe I'm just missing something (a healthly brain?) :)

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Dashmon]

What I think Real Character does is break up not the english language, but the ideas the words in that language represent. Those ideas exist in almost all languages for the largest part - so if you know what eacht "break up" means, you get a description of what the character means, in your own language.

The system might, for example, have a way of saying "this word is a noun, it's something abstract, it's something postive", etc., and you might end up with something that can only mean "good". "Good" in itself is an english word, but if you know the sytem, you could still apply it using another language, and come up with the meaning of the character in your language, or, if you're advanced enough, you might be able to understand the meaning without having to translate (that's how really knowing a language works - you know what is ment by words without having to think about/translate them).

That way, this system'd allow for people who speak totally different languages to understand eachother by describing the meaning of words using a universal system. At least, that's what I think it does. Can anyone confirm?

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good isn't a noun dumass, it's an adjective. Were you educated in the great California school system (motto: Where remedial is normal!)? I'm not surprised...

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Dashmon]

I'm sorry I'm not a native speaker.. jackass (even though I think I do an ok job at English, for a dutch guy) I was referring to "goodness", or the oposite of "evil" (noun OR adjective), anyway. Do you have *any* social skills at all? Where I come from, people correct eachother politely. Might be different were you live... And if you really want to know about my education, I'm a fourth year grammar school student. "Where remedial is unnecessary."

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Cthefuture]

I think you're on the right track but what's so different about this language versus any other language? You still need a translation table from your native language to this universal language.

I could just as easily say "English is the universal language". So the concept of "good" in German translates to the symbol "good" in my new universal language.

Some languages have concepts that can't be easily explained in another language. What would make Real Character any easier to translate to and from? It has a limited vocabulary just like any other language. Or does it?

I'm still baffled.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Dashmon]

This was a reply to the flame/troll/waddever in reply to my original post. Clicked the wrong link. Stupid Apple round mouse thingy.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Jonathan]

That way, this system'd allow for people who speak totally different languages to understand eachother by describing the meaning of words using a universal system. At least, that's what I think it does. Can anyone confirm?

Certainly that's what Umberto Eco seems to think in his non-fiction "Search for the Perfect Language" -- that is, it was in the same spirit as something like Volapuk or Esperanto, intended to transcend national language barriers. Of course, Wilkins was bit more mystical than the creators of those later languages, and also believed that Real Characters somehow captured the mystical essense of the things described.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm, hey retard: you clicked the RIGHT link. Are you still gonna blame it on the "Stupid Apple round mouse thingy"???

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Dashmon]

Well, what makes it truely universal is that you describe words with graphical properties rather than by having a word for each concept, so it's not really a language, but rather a way of describing parts of a language. What practical uses it has? I'm not sure, but I suppose it could be useful in some cases. Imagine a 17th century englishman trying to communicate with a chinese scholar who don't speak any other languages, other than their native ones. If they'd both understand this universal system, they could still write to eachother without having to learn another language, which is significantly harder than learning this system, judging by how quick that guy got the hang of it. I don't think it's any good anymore these days, though, now that everyone speaks a common language or two

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Dashmon]

Yes. It hooked on my mouse pad and I figured I clicked wrong. Dirty mouse ball. Cleaned it. No problems anymore. Are you still gonna call me a retard? Jealous you didn't get mod up +5? Get a life. Good to see you totally shut up about the other things you thought you knew about me. Ah well, suppose it all kinda got to hard for poor little frustrated you. Yes, life sucks. Uhm. Your life, that is. Retard.

(Mod me down for this, it's worth it)

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Cthefuture]

Yes, I think I get it now.

So rather than translating to something unorganized like English, you would use Real Character which breaks down the concepts into logical groupings.

So really it's just a more structured language that would hopefully be easier to learn than a complex native language. Interesting. There are tons of other languages like that too, this one is interesting because of the cool looking script though.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Anonymous Coward]

You dutch people sure do get defensive. Sheesh.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where I come from, people correct eachother politely

Where you are from, people also have no teeth and they like to watch hockey. You can keep the Great White North to yourself, hoser.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Mryll]

It's also sort of like the words become self-describing - the meaning has been abstracted into the sytem by which they are constructed. A word has "reflection" methods that reveal information about it's meaning. :)

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[BigBadBri]

It's a noun in my book, asshat.

From Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913) [web1913]

Good \Good\, n.
1. That which possesses desirable qualities, promotes success, welfare, or happiness, is serviceable, fit, excellent, kind, benevolent, etc.; -- opposed to evil.

There be many that say, Who will show us any good ?
--Ps. iv. 6.

It's obviously been a noun since the time of King James 1 (or 6 if you're a Jock), so stop beating up on the guy just beacuse he knows more English than you do.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Cheese Man]

I think you're on the right track but what's so different about this language versus any other language? You still need a translation table from your native language to this universal language.

A useful anology is the "universal language" of mathematics. If you go up to a Chinese person and say:
"Twenty-three times eleven equals two hundred fifty-three."
they won't have the slightest idea what you're talking about, whereas if you write down:
"23 x 11 = 253"
they can grok it no problem -- even if they might use a slightly different system (like * instead of x).

(Oddly enough, a couple years ago I read something about Wilkin's universal languages in a book picked at random while waiting in a library. Fascinating concepts...)

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[smithwis]

What I think Real Character does is break up not the english language, but the ideas the words in that language represent. Those ideas exist in almost all languages for the largest part - so if you know what eacht "break up" means, you get a description of what the character means, in your own language.

From what I can tell your mostly correct. Check this localy linked to index of the language for more insight:
ucsu.colorado.edu/~smithwis/real

Two other points worth noting.

1. A language is more than just a different way to write a word. For instance, many languages use a different word order than English(SVO). Meaning, this isn't quite a universal writing system. However, it is more universal than are phonetic based writing system.(On a side note, I beleive computer written in
2. So I was just trying to decipher the fax number for fun(not as difficult considering all the work has already been done) and I come into the following quandry. the number translate literaly into:
   uno, dos, uno, dos, dos, nada, siete, siete, dos, nada, nuevo (translated into spanish to prevent the casual abuser of this knowledge)
   which is one more digit than a normal number in Manhattan. Oh wait, I feel a little silly, with a one before the number thats the correct format. I'm gonna leave this point so that I don't have to erase all that work I did.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[smithwis]

However, it is more universal than are phonetic based writing system.(On a side note, I beleive computer written in

oops I was going to say:
in classical chinese computer is written as electronic mind(or so I've been lead to beleieve).

That should teach me to proof read more carefully what I submit.

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually they can grok it no problem because they are familiar with arabic numerals. I had a Chinese student once who performed calculations on an exam I was grading using a Chinese numeral system, rather than the familiar(to me, at least) Arabic system. I was still able to determine that the calculations were done correctly, even though the numerals were foreign to me. I was aided in this by quite a lot of context, I knew what the calculations were supposed to be, as well as the fact that the Chinese system used based 10 like Arabic. If I was looking at random calculations with no context, it would take significantly more effort to be able to decipher them. For example, I think 23 * 11 = 253 would be written as '2 10 3 * 1 10 1 = 2 100 5 10 3'(where all of the numerals are written using the Chinese characters).

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[evilviper]

or, if you're advanced enough, you might be able to understand the meaning without having to translate (that's how really knowing a language works - you know what is ment by words without having to think about/translate them).

Apparently, I don't "really [know]" the language spoken by most /.ers... Some I have to read 6 or more times... sound out each syllable, try to find relevant context, etc., all just to find out the person was only saying "me too"...

Re:Wilkins' "universal" language is English?

[i chose quality]

wow!

but can you imagine, that in my country they sometimes go and write '(2*10^1+3*10^0)*(1*10^1+1*10^0)=(2*10^2+5*10^1+3* 10^0)' instead of '23 * 11 = 253' ???

weird people, huh? ;-)

ovaltine

[theNote]

So he cracked the code and got a copy of the book he already owned?

Re:ovaltine

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Try reading again for content, moron...

sheesh

[autopr0n]

slashdotted already. Anyone got a mirror?

Tp xibu?

[k98sven]

Dzsup csfbijoh jt gps epslt.

Re:Tp xibu?

[Hank Scorpio]

cyrto breahing is for dorks? Wow, either your crypto is way too good for me, or your statement is incredibly profound, or possibly both. Just what the heck is "cyrto breahing" anyway? Is that some extremely advanced form of crypto breaking?

Thanks

Re:Tp xibu?

[k98sven]

Including typos is common method of increasing crypto security in substitution methods.

Or maybe I just fscked up.. :-)

Re:Tp xibu?

[sebi]

So what?
Cyrto breahing is for dorks.

As is orthography, it seems.

Re:Tp xibu?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is comedy gold, man. I wish I had mod points.

Re:Tp xibu?

[Anonymous Coward]

As is orthography, it seems.

As is being old enough to have taken an orthography class in high school.

Re:Tp xibu?

[sebi]

As is being old enough to have taken an orthography class in high school.

Aha! I suspected that they stopped teaching English quite a while ago.

and here you are sniping about it on slashdot

[autopr0n]

Yup, doing a puzzle is not interesting at all. We should immediately burn all puzzles and brainteasers immediately. In fact, even reading a book is a waste of time. So we should burn those too. And movies, television.

It's clear that human time is to precious to waste on anything. We must endeavor to eradicate time wasting from existence, in order to concentrate on important things. Like insulting people on the internet.

Re:and here you are sniping about it on slashdot

[JohnwheeleR]

That was just excellent! LMAO

Re:and here you are sniping about it on slashdot

[Suppafly]

We must endeavor to eradicate time wasting from existence, in order to concentrate on important things. Like insulting people on the internet.


And porn.. never forget porn.

Re:and here you are sniping about it on slashdot

[theTerribleRobbo]

Yup, doing a puzzle is not interesting at all. We should immediately burn all puzzles and brainteasers immediately. In fact, even reading a book is a waste of time. So we should burn those too. And movies, television.

At least the movies and the television. Please.

'Steel Magnolias' left me permanently scarred.

Re:and here you are sniping about it on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

You spelled 'too' wrong.

Re:and here you are sniping about it on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey puppy dog, are you still alive running around sniffing at crotches and licking your asshole clean? Go shit on the lawn and get ass fucked by your father you loser. We will get you.

TOTALLY DUDE

[Anonymous Coward]

word to that shit

Universal language sample below:

[nuntius]

0x110 0x157 0x167 0x144 0x171 0x041

A signed copy?

[imaginate]

That's IT???

Geez, cheap publishers...

'Tis a worthy story, though, even if there's not much in the way of cryptography to it...

Re:A signed copy?

[Thud457]

I know how you feel. At least in the old days, you'd find a case of Canadian Mist if you broke the code.

Re:A signed copy?

[0111 1110]

The real reward was getting the call from Neal. That must have been cool. Gotta wonder what they talked about.

Flyingbuttmonkeys!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm eagerly awaiting the latest SCO story!

What kind of stupidity will the pointy-haired boss get into today?!!

Ohhhhhh, I'm all aquiver!

WTF

[BlueSkyResearch]

Still trying to crack the /. effect!

Link to Wilkins Text mentioned in the solution

[mfago]

Not sure if this is the website, cut it does have the complete text on-line of Wilkins "An Essay Towards a Real Character..." Also see this summary.

Anyone find the "Rosetta Stone" chart that he mentioned on his website in the (600 page) essay?

Congrats to Todd!

Re:Link to Wilkins Text mentioned in the solution

[Darken_Everseek]

There's an image of his rosetta stone in the article,here:

http://www.substream.com/imag es/lords_prayer_big.gif [substream.com]

Re:Link to Wilkins Text mentioned in the solution

[Zan Zu from Eridu]

So it's on page 395, before we /. yet another poor bastard.

Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Gizzmonic]

Although he doesn't seem to understand a lot of the underlying technicalities, Stephenson seems to have a poking hard-on for crytography. The science of "hacking" has become the sexy niece of the more stolid scientific arts, validating anyone who's ever pushed a slide rule or logged on to a serial console.

Bestselling yarns from Stephenson, Tom Clancy, and others get a lot of praise from geeks. Geeks are usually notoriously persnickety about minutae, but it seems that beloved authors like Stephenson and the late Douglas Adams get a free pass.

What is it about the relationship between geeks and authors? The author takes a relatively mundane scientific field and uses it as a base for a typical hollywood story, usually betraying his interest and love for the scientific field (sometimes begun in his/her childhood).

In response, geeks buy the book en masse, and they don't pick apart the bad science (like they usually do in lesser books). They become fans-for-life of the author who has tipped the cap to them.

So there's like a symbiotic relationship at work. The author who's looking for new frontiers, new avenues of masculinity (a great race car driver is dull and trite, but a great hacker is new and sexy). And the geek who might not have the most exciting job in the world, but he loves it...and he loves his job being validating in a book or movie more than anything else.

Is this cultural phenomenon unique to the US? Or do the schlocky escapist maestros in Japan, Germany, or Italy mix so well with the taciturn gadgeteers of those locales? It's really an interesting parasocial relationships.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[nacturation]

I just finished reading the book Idoru by William Gibson. What an utter piece of cybertrash. While reading it, I thought I was learning impaired because the story was presented in such a disjointed fashion and the characters are all very one-dimensional. The writing was horrible! I've since started re-reading the novel Gai-Jin by James Clavell and oh, what a relief! Quality writing *does* exist out there and, no -- I'm not learning impaired. ;-)

I previously read Snow Crash by Stephenson and found the book to be very juvenile. There were some neat concepts in there, but the writing style is more appropriate for a thirteen year old boy. The characters were also relatively one-dimensional.

Maybe I've been spoiled by too much quality writing. :)

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[0111 1110]

Have you actually read Cryptonomicon? I think the writing speaks for itself. I don't mean the plotting. I mean the writing itself, his use of language. It's poetry in the form of prose IMHO. Pretty much all plots have been done by now. It's the writer's skill with language that makes the difference for me. I can relate to what you are saying here in general terms, but I just don't agree that it applies to our beloved Neal.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Anonymous Coward]

Where was douglas adams inaccurate, confused, wrong, or boring?

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Anonymous Coward]

NEVER! His Word is the Truth, immaculate and beyond all questioning! And he's not DEAD! He shall return to save us all from the onslaught of Terrible Hitchhiker's Movie Adaptations!

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[firewrought]

Sometimes the big three (William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Bruce Sterling) seem to be a little hit-or-miss. To read some of the hits, try out Holy Fire or Schismatrix (my gospel!).

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe in comparison to the more pulpish sci-fi, but the appeal of Stephenson's books is clearly how they take currently trendy scientific concepts, and imagine a society entirely organized recent trends and speculations on the subject.

His characters and dialogue are flat, uninteresting, and unrealistic, the plots are silly (and end poorly), and his prose barely even tries.

I know I'm being snooty, but waxing on about Neal Stephenson's skill with language demonstrates you need to vary your reading material outside of sci-fi.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[0111 1110]

Just keep in mind that Cryptonomicon really isn't even scifi. It's more like some kind of historical fiction. The fact that he uses "finux" in the story doesn't make it scifi. I actually don't particularly like reading scifi.

I happen to love Stephenson's writing style, which is very distinct, and he is actually one of the few serious writers that I find funny. I did read Snow Crash, and I did not particularly like it. I could almost see how you could come to some of your conclusions based on Snow Crash or some of his earlier novels, but they just don't apply to Cryptonomicon in my view.

I guess it just goes to show how different people's tastes are. I like the way that Stephenson writes so much that I could read almost anything that he would care to write.

I believe that he improved a great deal as a writer from his first books (about which I would agree with your criticisms) to Snow Crash (about which I would also agree to some extent), to Cryptonomicon, where he really seemed to figure out how to do everything well (except an ending of course). Care to name a still living non-scifi author who you think is better? Most modern authors that I see at my local bookstore are just so clearly bad and imitative that I can't read their stuff.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[evilviper]

That's just silly...

Did geeks embrase "The Net"? It was the first computer-related Hollywoed movie... By your reasoning, The Net should be more of a geek cult-classic than The Matrix, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. Hey, Sandra Bullock is better than Carrie-Anne Moss anyhow.

Speaking of the Matrix, Reloaded was quite lowsy. Do I get removed from Geekdom now? (and don't even mention Star Wars... As far as I'm concerned, George Lucas died a tragic and untimely death after the "Return of the Jedi" was completed.)

You really must not have put any thought into your theory... Either that, or you were just trolling, trying to get people upset.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Bob Uhl]

Hey, Sandra Bullock is better than Carrie-Anne Moss anyhow.

Just about anything is better than Moss. She's not at all attractive; her face is far too masculine. As far as I can tell, the fixation with her seems to be based solely on her Matrix character's habit of running about in tight plastic clothing. Pretty sad, really.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Urox]

Being a girl, I'll try to give an unbiased opinion in what I observe to be the Trinity effect (since most guys are going to associate her with the character rather than her actual personality) :)

She's athletic (which is more attractive than obese), intelligent, confident, witty (different from intelligence alone) aerodynamic (scenes from the first movie diving through the window), the pvc must be counted (as many geeks are attracted to shiny things), reserved in her demeanor (lots of guys are instantly attracted to the "mysterious" woman) and knows about computers!

So while still based on her character, there is more than the pvc to be attributed to the attraction.

Re:Deciphering and the hacker mystique

[Anonymous Coward]

What the fuck are you talking about? Trinity exists simply to hold guns and wear plastic.

She has no personality. Seriously, don't kid yourself. The keyboard I'm typing on has more personality (especially since I spilled some RC cola on it).

the cypher image...

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

Feel free to view said image here, until you kill my old school's servers. *evil grin*

Re:Slashdotted (5th and final page)

[nacturation]

Page 5 (cont.)

Addendum: After faxing in my information to the New York fax number stated, I sat back and hoped that I would get a runner-up prize. After all, it took me several weeks of effort to solve the puzzle and surely there were other more learned people who would have recognized the script system used and been able to decode it in a day or two. I feared that my signed copy of the book would never materialize and, instead, that I would be notified that I was correct submission number one hundred and thanks for playing.

Much to my surprise, I received a phone call from Neal Stephenson a day or two later congratulating me on being the first to solve the puzzle. We talked over the telephone for ten or twenty minutes and I recounted my story of how I went about solving it. He encouraged me to write up the story, the results of which you are presently reading. Three days later, I received a signed copy of the book as promised.

I would like to encourage everyone to at least attempt to solve the puzzle, if only to learn more about the ingenious writing system created by Wilkins. While you may not get a signed copy of the book, the learning experience will certainly be worth the effort.

The Davinci Code

[Flunitrazepam]

Reading this guy's thought process reminds me of the recent book 'The Da Vinci Code' by Brown. If you like this sort of thing you should pick it up, there are a lot of codes in the book that the main charactors are trying to solve, and it is quite fun to try to beat them to it.

It is also fun to follow their thought processes, which read like this guy's account of cracking the quicksilver code.

Re:The Davinci Code

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find funny is that what people keep calling "cracking the code" looks more like "googling for the answer" to me.

Re:The Davinci Code

[topologist]

I've read "The da Vinci code", and while it was superficially entertaining, almost every topic the book touched upon had a factual error, including the geography of Paris, some details about Leonardo's paintings, and several others. The subject matter (conspiracy theories involving the Holy Grail) is very exciting though, and a blitz marketing campaign made it a success. If you liked the subject, but prefer to get your facts straight, I recommend a novel by Umberto Eco (author of "The Name of the Rose", which was made into a movie starring Connery), called "Foucault's Pendulum". It's a hefty tome, but worth the read.

Re:The Davinci Code

[eidechse]

Perosnally, I'm starting to think that Eco used his semiotics background as a kind of schtick. He's a great storyteller and his attention to detail is amazing, but the conclusions to both "The Name of the Rose" and "Focault's Pendulum" fell flat for me. I don't want to wreck the endings for people who haven't read them by being too specific, but do you know what I'm getting at?

Arturo Perez-Riverte ("The Club Dumas", made into the movie "The Ninth Gate") is kind of similar; arguably not the same caliber as Eco, but I think more enjoyable overall. I get the impression that he is a fan of Eco's; he gives a subtle nod to him in "The Club Dumas".

Re:The Davinci Code

[Anonymous Coward]

I recall one direct, and one indirect reference to Eco, in _El Club Dumas_. Additionally, I got the feeling that the entire premise of the novel was somewhat influenced by Eco's writings on semiotics and writing. Also, I found Eco's storytelling to be more laid back and evenly paced in _Baudolino_ than in either FP or TNOTR, and I understand what you mean about the endings of the latter two.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by Eco using semiotics as a schtick. I think that it certainly shows through in all of his fictions, but I consider this to be a genuine benefit to the stories.

Re:The Davinci Code

[eidechse]

I recall one direct, and one indirect reference to Eco, in _El Club Dumas_.

I must've forgot one. I was thinking of the one at the meeting of the club (I think it was a meeting...).

I haven't read "Baudolino"...I'll try Eco again and pick up a copy.

I am not sure I understand what you mean by Eco using semiotics as a schtick.

That characterization is a result of my being a bit jaded after FP and TNOTR for the reasons I alluded to. I read FP first and was a bit disappointed at the end. Although I did, and do, feel that wanting a more "expected" ending misses the point. I could accept that for FP. But after feeling the same at the end of TNOTR, I'm starting to wonder if the stories aren't deliberately crafted in such a way that they make a case for the importance of semiotics. Specifically, in it's application to determining when one is reading too much in to something. It's a fascinating idea, and area of study, but I don't know that it makes all that interesting plot of a plot device. That aside, I quite enjoy the other aspects of his writing.

After reading the article, the funny thing is this

[SuperKendall]

Imagine being the guy so obsessed with Real Character that you have scanned in the whole book and made a huge website about it.

Meanwhile, someone just stumbling across the site uses all your work to get a signed copy of the book!

If the web site author had run across it, he probably could have just read the thing right there and solved it in about a minute. I wonder if they knew the site existed before publishing the puzzle?

Bugger it all...

[Darken_Everseek]

Read faster people; I've already read the first three pages, stop /.'ing the fourth!

Here is the code in Flash

[Microbomb]

<A HREF="http://www.baroquecycle.com/flash.htm>"Flash Version</A>

In case you missed it on the first page. It seems to not be /.ed yet.

Re:Here is the code in Flash

[Microbomb]

oops, sorry about that. You get the idea.

Cowboy Neal Stephenson?

[AtariAmarok]

Cowboy Neal Stephenson? Ah... That explains.... nothing at all.

A rather insightful comment, mod up please

[Anonymous Coward]

Are we giving Stephenson a free pass?

I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[Moderation abuser]

Starts off well, but loses it long before the fairly disappointing conclusion. It didn't make me want to rush out and get Cryptonomicon, which I've never bothered to read.

There are plenty of better writers out there.

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[redheaded_stepchild]

Having read both, I'll agree with your opinion of Snow Crash, but I found Cryptonomicon quite entertaining. At least give him a second chance.

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[Tackhead]

> Starts off well, but loses it long before the fairly disappointing conclusion. It didn't make me want to rush out and get Cryptonomicon, which I've never bothered to read.

Yeah, give Cryptonomicon a chance. After two or three novels, he's gotten to the point where he can end a novel in about 4-5 pages, rather than just a paragraph or two.

I'm a Stephenson fan, and Snow Crash is among my favorite reads, but I do feel your pain. It's as if the ending of most of his books is cut off in mid-

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[PenguiN42]

My girlfriend hated snow crash, but absolutely loved cryptonomicon. And she even hates math!

Snow crash is one of his earlier, less developed books. Like he had a cool idea but no story to go along with it. Cryptonomicon is from a much more mature stephenson, at least as a writer -- a very well written, deeply layered and interesting book. Give it a chance :)

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[Wandering Idiot]

Not really. If you think about it, the story in Snow Crash was essentially finished, and anyone with half an imagination could fill in the rest on their own. He gets the girl, they live happily ever after, etc. One of the things I liked about SC was that it had the restraint to know when the interesting part of the story was done with (Not unlike George Bernard Shaw's original Pygmalion [which My Fair Lady butchered], before public reaction forced him to write out an afterword

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[i chose quality]

It didn't make me want to rush out and get Cryptonomicon, which I've never bothered to read.

big mistake. you can't read one of stephenson's novels and conclude, that you won't like the other ones. his writing and storytelling varies big time from book to book.

how did you like diamond age? this was my entry into neal's works.

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[Anonymous Coward]

I really have to disagree with you there. His writing and story telling doesn't differ much across books. At least not "big time" (which few authors do; maybe Iain vs. Iain M. Banks would be a big enough shift to be described that way, although each set of books is homegenous within that). Sure, the settings may change a bit but theres a lot of commonalities. If you read the Big U, I suspect his reason for not wanting it out there are that he is constantly strip-mining the same thematic material thats in its most concerntrated form in that book (Jaynes/Geekdom/Analogies between information and memes etc.) Each one has something different in it, but sooner or later, the same stuff rears its head (look where the plot goes in The Diamond Age; it doesn't end up being about nanotechnology; we're back to the same old stuff again when the drummers and cryptnet have their covers blown).

Stylistically he remains rigidly the same thus far. Structurally he refuses to end stories properly. The characterisation is often weak. Contrast the hero of Cryptonomicon with the hero of Snowcrash. Despite ostensible differences of ethnicity and of course, the setting, they are basically the same person in terms of point of view. And yes, he makes women past puberty entirely one-dimensional geek wankfests (sporty, physical types who are none the less impressed with all that nerdiness. Wahey!). Most jarringly is the way he is generally always pandering to his readership telling them how clever/important they are. The incredibly unlikely Charlene/Information Highway scene at the beginning of Cryptonomicon a case in point, but hes forever ranting about Morlocks (and using the same tired metaphors repeatedly). Whats more seriously up with this is that the same character with the same world-view (identical to that of the Stephenson we encounter in In the beginning...) never encounters anything that threatens or contradicts how they see the world. Which has the unpleasant side effect that these characters end up annoying smug. And as result of that, unless its specifically the point of the story (so I exempt Nell in the Diamond Age from this who ends the novel indoctrinated into being Another Stephenson Hero) the characters reamain at the end of his novels exactly as they have begun albeit with the adventures behind them. Why should they change? They were right about everything at the beginning and right about it at the end. I think this is why everyone notices so much when he also fails to bring the plots to a tidyish conclusion. If character development was part of the plot as is usual, it wouldnt be so glaring perhaps.

You may wonder why I read him at all. This may sound a contradiction but I read him for the new ideas he has in each book (I never said they were identical btw). The plots can be interesting, theres normally quite a few laughs along the way and hes clearly an intelligent writer. For the future, I just hope he can find new hobbyhorses to ride before the signal gets swamped with the usual old noise.

Re:I found Snow Crash fairly weak

[Tackhead]

> If you think about it, the story in Snow Crash was essentially finished, and anyone with half an imagination could fill in the rest on their own. He gets the girl, they live happily ever after, etc. Yeah, but it's Stephenson's job to tell me about it. (Or rather, it's his job to tell me - even if it's just a few pages long - that they lived happily ever after, right up until the nanotech wars started. Or something different/new that I hadn't imagined. Ten more pages, Stephenson, that's all I'm asking!

Take Arthur C. Clarke's 2010 - OK, new star, yay, book's over. But he had the decency to tease me with an epilogue concerning the evolution of intelligent life on Europa.

Hell, even William Gibson did a better job ending his oh fuck it, I've typed enough.

Late Addendum (6th page, final?)

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine my surprise when I examined Neal Stephenson's signature with a
microscope and found microprinting in ancient babylonian. After
translating this, I was horrified to see:
You have never seen me and CowboyNeal in the same room at the same time.
This left me deeply shocked.

Too late

[Trelane, the Squire]

Al Gore already claimed that ;)

and the message read...

[greenskyx]

"drink more Ovalteen"

Re:and the message read...

[Anonymous Coward]

hehe, I get it.

"I want a Red Rider pump-action carbine BB gun with a compass in the stock and a thing that tells time" (semi-quote)

Re:and the message read...

[entrager]

Or for those that are anal about misquotes (like myself):
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine

He seems to beusing Internet Explorer...

[JeanPaulBob]

From page 4:
Not only was the entire book online, but it was in its original form too, scanned and converted into large GIF files. Displayed within the browser's window, the pages were too small to be legible, but I found that if I downloaded each page individually to my computer (there were more than 600), I could then read the document in its original size.

I think he wasted some time there. It sounds like he was using IE, which rescaled the GIFs to fit in the browser window. If he'd just held the mouse over the image for a couple seconds, the "full size" button would have popped up in the lower-right corner. No need to save the files and reopen them.

Re:He seems to beusing Internet Explorer...

[blowhole]

Actually the website has been found by a previous poster. And the page specifically states that it will NOT work in IE. The GIFs scale to the browser window in Moz Firebird.

Here's the plaintext

[prockcore]

Here's the plaintext:

"You have just violated the DMCA, our lawyers shall be contacting you soon. Have a nice day."

Re:Here's the plaintext

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. Someone should mod this one up as either funny or insightful. I never have mod points when something like this pops up.

There's also the fact

[devphil]

that Stephenson has submitted a bug to Debian. (Read his In the Beginning Was the Command Line, it's excellent.) A skilled novelist who also participates in the open source process?

That gets him the same free pass that /. gives out to Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall. :-)

Re:There's also the fact

[Anonymous Coward]

... has submitted a bug to Debian.

Heck, I submitted many a bug. Forget a free pass; I didn't even get some ass. What good's Debian if I can't get some ass for submitting bugs??

Re:There's also the fact

[devphil]

Dunno, I get plenty each time I submit a bug... are you forgetting the -ass parameter to reportbug(1)?

Re:There's also the fact

[Artifex]

that Stephenson has submitted a bug to Debian. (Read his In the Beginning Was the Command Line, it's excellent.) A skilled novelist who also participates in the open source process?

That gets him the same free pass that /. gives out to Linus Torvalds and Larry Wall. :-)

I don't know. Neal is excellent as a writer (except when writing endings for his novels; his article about the people who lay fiber-optic cable across oceans is one of the most interesting that Wired has ever published) but I don't consider this to be an even grouping:

Linus : Father of Linux.
Larry : Father of Perl.
Neal : Father of Debian bug report #...

Re:Garrison?

[Anonymous Coward]

Jesus Christ, it was Mr. Slave!

More crypto fun!

[bastion]

CIA Kryptos Sculpture

Located in the northwest corner of the New Headquarters Building courtyard is a sculpture by artist James Sanborn entitled "Kryptos." Dedicated on November 3, 1990, the theme of this sculpture is "intelligence gathering." "Kryptos" incorporates native American materials such as wood and metal. A piece of petrified wood supports a large S-shaped copper screen that looks like a piece of paper coming out of a computer printer. On the "paper" are inscribed several enigmatic messages, each written in a different code.

CIA Website

ABC News Article

Re:More crypto fun!

[An Tse]

Here is some more interesting information on the "Kryptos" sculpture for the really bored.....err......folks needing a challenge.

Elonka

More Kryptos with Cipher Table

not really

[autopr0n]

Actualy, it was an idiographic language, meant to reveal ideas, rather then hide them.

Re:not really

[Anonymous Coward]

Its all about application though. Think of the use of the Navajo language by the US military during WWII. The Navajo language was meant to reveal ideas (the same as Wilkins language) and was subsequently used to encrypt information (the same as Wilkins language).

So depending upon the application, it might be one or the other.

SCO

[Sheltim]

I heard SCO was trying to sue Wilkins because of his use of "code"...

Re:phone number

[Urox]

I have to say, once Garrison did all the leg work, it is quite simple to crack the phone number.

I won't put it here, but it is in fact the number to Stephenson's publisher. ;)

Re:After reading the article, the funny thing is t

[Anonymous Coward]

maybe the obsessed Real Character guy has more sophisticated literary tastes than juvenile fiction?

I'm scared.

[ktlyst]

He already takes ten pages to describe the taste of Kap'n Krunch without milk, and he's only now going baroque???

<shudders>

Nah

[The Creator]

It's just instructions for some wierd dance.

Where's the BN plug?

[ediron2]

Hey, slashdot, where's the obligatory/unavoidable 'you can preorder this for Sept 23 delivery from BN' link? C'mon, push those product links, make OSDN profitable!

deCryptonomicon?

[Doc Ruby]

I got a first-edition hardcover copy of _Cryptonomicon_. Its text was so full of typos that I stopped reading it. I could understand the words, but it seemed that the typos were more likely a code than a mistake. Have you heard of any decryption of that book?

Re:deCryptonomicon?

[hanmer]

Were the typos fixed in subsequent printings or the paperback edition?

I had a real problem with the typos. As a professional proofreader and copyeditor, I hereby apply for the job of proofing the new book. Mr. Stephenson, send it along.

Re:deCryptonomicon?

[cr0sh]

Yeah? I have two first edition copies - why two? Because one is majorly fucked up: about halfway through the book, it "repeats" itself - and not from the beginning, but from somewhere in the middle from the first half - when I was first reading it, I thought I was losing my mind when I got to that point, then when I realized the mistake, I was doubly pissed because I then had to wait for a replacement from Amazon (who replaced the book for free, but never asked for the old one back - thus I kept them both, the bad one for curiosity sake, and the good one which I completed reading)...

Oh yeah?

[TerryAtWork]

That's not a real cipher, just a secret writing with it's own font.

Here's some crypto on the net that you may find amusing (Note - this page is not work safe)

http://irresponsiblecybernetics.com/latexblue/ar ch ive.php?date=20030514

RC Player

[Anonymous Coward]

So when will a Free (or Open Source) RealCharacter Player be released so we can play text messages encoded in RC, such as the Lord's Prayer and Book Announcements, on linux? I would like to play The Lord's Prayer on my computer, but I don't have the bandwidth to download it un-encoded.

HUH????? I Submitted this FIVE DAYS AGO???

[Facter]

I would like to know why I submitted this story FIVE DAYS AGO and it was rejected, and yet now this guy posts exactly the same article as I did, and his gets ACCEPTED???

2003-06-27 05:23:19 Quicksilver and The Real Character (articles,encryption) (rejected)

Hay moderators - whats the big frikken deal here???? Not really fair huh???

I feel totally gipped - especially as I got to this story days before this one even got posted.

Pfff. Sending articles into slashdot is like russian roulette it seems.

Disappointing, moderators.

The telephone number

[zanderredux]

Duh... The telephone number is 1-212-207-7203

Gimme my book!

Re:The telephone number

[Peter Cooper]

One imagines that the guy who actually solved it was the first to fax in, kinda leaving you screwed. Nice to see the publisher is keeping in with old technology though.. the good old facsimile.

Re:phone number

[netsharc]

Yeah, interestingly it consisted of numbers that was already translated elsewhere in the message. They could've added 1, 5 and 8 into the mix to try to save their fax machine's life.

Lone Gunmen

[Builder]

Great... I hope they come something else for promoting the book in the rest of the world - we've not even got publication dates here yet (Well, neither books etc or waterstones have one).

Re:Slashdotted (5th and final page)

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear moderator of the above post, please check your facts as THERE IS NO PAGE 5!

The fourth page is the really interesting one...

[freeBill]

...Everything up to that point is a red herring or a dead end.

Re:After reading the article, the funny thing is t

[dmccarty]

It reminds me of the milk commercial where the gun museum curator desparately tries to call the talk show to answer the question about Aaron Burr, only to have his mouth stuffed with cookies and no milk! One of the best commercials ever!