Slashdot Mirror
Making The Case That Voynich Is A Hoax
DeadVulcan writes "The Voynich Manuscript, a mysterious book of uncertain age, is widely believed to be written either in an unknown language or a long-lost encryption scheme. Nature reports that computer scientist Gordon Rugg has demonstrated that it's possible to generate a text like the Voynich manuscript -- containing language-like regularities, despite being potentially meaningless -- using cryptographic techniques of the time. This lends some support to those who claim that the book is a hoax."
01001001011000110110100000100000011001000110010101 10111001101011011001010010000001110011011001010110 10010110111000100000011101100110010101110010011011 01011101010111010001101100011010010110001101101000 00100000011001010110100101101110011001010110111000 10000001010100011011110111000001100110001000000110 00010110111000100000010100110110001101101000011001 0101101001110111110110010100101110
"...all the labours of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness..." yada yada
... throughout history. "Meaningless" does not mean that it's a hoax.
Anybody who has ever read anything by Dostoevsky knows what I mean, unless you have proof that Dostoevsky is a 43 year old plumber and is alive, well and living in Wankers Corner, OR.
Somebody is laughing a lot.. Remember way back the Salamander Papers?
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Abdook artelly oppetrom uplocty?! Astenboorsley... af arcoolodople!
Bli, Fal.
Gordon Rugg has demonstrated that it's possible to generate a text like the Voynich manuscript -- containing language-like regularities, despite being potentially meaningless
That's funny. I thought Darl McBride had already proven that with all those open letters he's written.
Mod me down, hippies!
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
There are several other books that are also filled with undecipherable gibberish that no one can understand. Here is another famous example.
Sapere aude!
well after reading the post on this thread I think I shall retire my browser till tomorrow.
I think this report is missing the fact that if someone really wanted to make a hoax book, they could simply translate any other book (even the bible) into a made up language. If it's an obscure book the likliness that anyone would every figure it out is slim.
-Zibi
So kind of like a Microsoft press release then...
Sounds a bit like the Beale Papers.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
I'm sorry, but calling the Voynich Manuscript a hoax is unfeasible. Sure, could it have in theory been a hoax? Yes, but there is no point to this. The "hoaxer" creates this in 3+ months, with very accurate drawings, and probably hangs on to it till he dies, so that it can be sold to a king 100 years later and eventually make it to america? Then again, maybe Nostradamus wrote it.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
The technique really is interesting. We have techniques that can identify patterns that are meaningful (all of cryptology, most of number theory, graph theory) but this application is neat because it is an effort to prove--rigorously--that a given set of data is just total noise.
"Oh, the tragedy of math gone wrong. I can't even talk about it." -Wil Wheaton http://www.wilwheaton.net
Had Mr Rugg just used rot13 he would've cracked the code long ago. Want Crypto?
MoFscker
...but it's another thing to prove it.
Anyone can say anything is a hoax but it takes scientific evidence - actual empirical data - to prove such a claim.
For example, people once believed that the Earth was flat (some people still do) but the circumnavigation of the globe by explorers such as Magellan, lunar exclipses, etc provide evidence to the contrary.
Saying that just because something could be a hoax then it is a hoax is just plain stupid. Like Fermat's Last Theorem, it may be many years before Voynich is proved to be geniune or accurate, but the absence of proof of the former doesn't provide proof of the latter. Remember, even though TLF has been proved, we still don't have the "simple proof" that Fermat himself discovered.
Saying that the manuscript is more likely to be a hoax than not just because computer scientists have theorised that it could have been faked in the 16th century is like a 25th century scholar saying that the Wright Brothers flight, the atomic bomb and the Apollo missions are more likely to be hoaxes than not just because they could have been faked with 20th century technology.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Lets see - it turns out that the Voynich manuscript is likely a bunch of drivel that pictures of naked women. Looks like we haven't come that far since it was written, as this Filipino edition of FHM would suggest!
In case you're wondering what it looks like
http://www.voynich.nu/
There is a portion of Cryptonomicom by Neal Stephenson where a real book of coded intercepts is replaced by random number strings encrypted with a fairly simple scheme.
Does anyone know if this book is a seed for Stephenson's story? He draws an awful lot of information from the history of computing for his stories.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
Does anyone else get the feeling that these people are just saying "It's too hard. We give up" ?
IWARS.
People, in general, disappoint me. Politicians even more so.
contains pictures of unrecognizable flowers, naked nymphs
obviously a troll
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I've studied the Voynich manuscript before, and the possibility of a hoax seems just as unlikely as many of the theories that have been floating about. Yes, the language of the Voynich manuscript could be an elaborate hoax, but Rugg's analysis only proves what is already widely known.
The problem of creating such an elaborate hoax is that even Rugg's theory doesn't explain all the features of the Voynich manuscript. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that a sixteenth-century forger would go to the trouble of creating something that would have all the qualities of a real language and would include techniques that would deliberately resemble an actual document when viewed with analytical techniques that wouldn't be developed later. Occam's Razor makes it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns. Then again, there's no real way of knowing.
There are some images of the text of the Voynich Manuscript available here. Analysis of the text and the illustrations support the theory that the manuscript has defined sections on astrology, herbal medicine, and other subjects. There have been some serious and some rediculous theories about the manuscript from the intriguing notion that the Voynich text is mathematically similar to East Asian languages like Chinese or Vietnamese, or that the Voynich manuscript is written in an ancient form of Ukrainian. (I've read the supposed translation of it from the Ukrainian, and it hardly makes sense given that the manuscript's illustations don't match the text of the supposed translation.)
In the meantime, this site offers more information on modern translation efforts including a font for the Voynich script. (Which would make a lovely way of annoying co-workers by switching their default system font to Voynich text...)
You are a fucking moron, and your stupid, ill thought out points are not even worth rebutting.
Did you read any of the article? Do you have any capacity for reasoned thought?
Well, I read the article. In full. That's how I know the text is from the 16th century and mentioned it as being so in my post. Did you read any of my post? Do you have any capacity for reasoned thought?
No? Didn't think so.
Isn't it funny how the idiots who can't find the time to properly debate opinions that they disagree with can find enough to come up with hate-filled posts and hit the "Post Anonymously" button?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Prof. Rugg has a website about his methods and results, which may be of interest.
...pass it on.
"Well! We'll show him! Especially for that purple monkey dishwasher remark!"
- E. Krabapple, 2F19
To prove that the manuscript is a hoax, one would need to produce entire sections using this technique, says Pelling. Tweaking the grilles and tables should make this possible, reckons Rugg.
It's called a Xerox machine man.
No sig for you!!
It has a slow load due to java applets though.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Here
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Champolion cracked the Rosetta stone with much much less.
The 'true' examples of lost written languages/cyphers (do a google search) are mysteries because there exist few examples of brief length usually bereft of context (of grammar, history, linguistic evolution etc.).
The sheer volume of the Voynich manuscript, plus its origin in relatively modern Europe is what makes it so interesting to amateur cryptographers.
The Nature Paper is too brief to know how good Rugg's analysis is (and the Cryptologia site has been slashdotted), but if it holds up it is an interesting result, even if it is a conclusion that many "very smart cryptographers"(TM) have suspected for a long time
It'd be funny if it was an old Frankish family cookbook, and they wrote things in code to keep those other people from knowing how to cook fish with their secret sauce :).
Interesting stuff.. This Voynich Manuscript story could be great material for a fun book (a la Umberto Eco ?)
Let's just note that together with John Dee, Queen Elizabeth's court magician, Kelly "downloaded" what we have of the Enochian language and magical system, which folks who're into that sort of thing find pretty damn serious.
At that point, I'd be much more willing to believe that the manuscript is authentic: it might still be gibberish, but I'd bet somebody thought it was meaningful when they wrote it down, if you know what I mean.
Needmonduche, tragjookee. Disaster Zun Rhine. Vishan ut alan altah krumpeltok. Ralde ut topok, flog, tonne ebuch frem. Repetin. Vishan ut alan altah krumpeltok. Ralde ut topok, flog, tonne ebuch frem. Nee pudak poy Feelyat!
The rest of the sketch is here
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Come on, Mrs. Clinton, you're a United States Senator. Have the guts to say that without checking "Post Anonymously".
...the theory that perhaps whomever wrote the book as REALLY BAD HANDWRITING and wrote the book in dim yakmilk candlelight? to explain the nice drawings: he/she probably drew it in daylight sitting outside underneath a nice shady tree
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
'Well, Terry, as I always say, "we skipped the light fandango, turning cartwheels across the floor, I was getting kind of seasick, but the crowd called out for more!"'
'Why Jimmy, that's very profound! What does it mean?'
'Well, Terry, I'm fucked if I know!'
(From Alan Parker's The Commitments)
It *is* encrypted quite well. However, after viewing the pages, printing them out and alligning them just so I have discovered the message hidden over the ages:
YHBT YHL HAND
Those who read the article can take note of an interesting challenge: though Rugg has shown that it is possible to generate a high quality hoax using a Cardan grille, proving it to be a hoax may require producing a character grid that will actually generate large portions of the text. My question is, could that be done with a genetic algorithm, and are any Slashdotters up to the task?
Also, a few comments about formal analysis. Notice that if you took some arbitrary text, typeset it in a fixed-width font to force the characters into columns, and then skimmed it with a grille in order to generate a new text, you would automatically preserve such basic statistics as character frequency, including spaces and also punctuation if you used them in your grid. (Depending on how you applied the grille, you could actually be generating a simple permutation of the original text.) However, you would disrupt all the within-word correlations.
For example, in compound words derived from Latin there is a familiar pattern where ad C* ==> aCC* (where C is some arbitrary consonant), but that pattern would be completely obscured if the characters were read off a diagonal grille as shown in the photograph. You would still get the increased frequency for C, but not the common aCC pattern.
More subtly, there are some well known universals of syllable structure in natural languages, but those would be scrambled just as the aCC would be. You would have the right proportions of consonants and vowels, but not a realistic distribution within words.
Likewise, prefixes and suffixes would be scrambled. If it is a hoax generated by a Cardan grille, it should not have prefix/suffix patterns that occur commonly in many languages. (Ditto for suffixal inflections.) In fact, the letters appearing at the beginnings and ends of words should be a random sampling from the frequency distribution of letters in the whole text; this may be the easiest metric to check.
Also, by using spaces as characters in your grid you'd get the right proportion of spaces, and therefore the right average word length, but you would obscure any patterns in word length. Someone has already linked to studies of the word lengths in the manuscripts, but those assumed that the distribution of Latin word lengths word lengths would be preserved. However, only the average would be preserved. I suspect the distribution would be converted to a gaussian. Anyone got time for the experiment? (Notice that you may generate extra spaces with the grille, depending on how you use it. For example, what do you do when your grille starts running off the bottom of the page in your source text? Or, if your grille has 10 windows, do you transcribe to the first space and then move the grille, or do you transcribe everything in the grille and insert a "virtual" space for position 11? It looks to me like you might be able to generate the document's actual "word" lengths from Latin, given only some very basic assumptions.)
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What about Chines? From the little that I've learned, they often repeat a word for emphasis - e.g., Xie Xie meaning thank you.
Somebody call Jody Foster and that fake blind dude and they can put together that sucker in a 3D puzzle. It'll allow us all to spend $10 for a movie that was decent up until the point where she visits her dead father in space.
p.s. Sorry if I spoiled the ending for anyone, but you had 7 years to see the damn thing.
One definition of randomness, and one that seems quite reasonable is that a string is "random" if it cannot be compressed to smaller than it is, i.e. listing its characters itself is the most compact possible description. Formally, a string is random if there exists no algorithm generating the string whose description on some universal Turing machine is smaller than the string itself (this is the definition used in the field of Kolmogorov complexity). A string of a billion digits making up Pi, for example, is not random by this definition, as one can easily write a short program, whose length would certainly be less than one billion characters, whose output is the digits of Pi. Think of it this way: the most general form of pattern matching device that we know of is a Turing machine, and if the best device you can construct to match that pattern is as complex or more complex than the pattern itself, then well, you have total randomness. Unfortunately, rigorously proving that a particular string is random by this very strong definition is extremely difficult, as you run into undecidability everywhere you turn.
This is the sort of stuff that real theoretical computer science is made of. For a very good overview of the theory of Kolmogorov Complexity and algorithmic information theory, Gregory Chaitin's home page is a good starting point
To go back to the Voynich manuscript, if there is some sort of regularity that can be discerned from it, then perhaps a context-free or context-sensitive (or something in between) language may be found to characterize it. Once you have such a syntactic characterization, perhaps it might be possible to divine the semantics from context. The shape of the grammar that results may well prove whether the Manuscript is in fact a real language, a fabrication, an elaborate cipher, or just total gibberish.
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
"Now is the time to move to a larger key space"
So I've been getting spammed by Gordon Rugg?
The only firm circumstantial evidence we have to go on is Marcus Marci's letter to Anasthasius Kirchir, which mentions that the manuscript was sold to King Rudolph for 600 ducats.
:-)
I got Lyra's Oxford by Philip Pullman for Christmas, and while it's short (too short?) it contains lots of small but possibly significant little references and mysteries, relating to an Oxford in a parallel universe and to our own. There's a list of books for sale on the back of an included map, and included is 'Polymathestatos: A Festschrift in honour of Joscelyn Godwin' - edited by a certain Athanasius Kircher. I read your post, and the name sounded familiar, so I checked...
Pullman's book has an alchemical theme, and now I'm off to see what else in the book exists in our universe and not just Lyra's.
Hang on - I've found Joscelyn Godwin, and it appears that in our universe, he wrote a book about Anasthasius Kircher - in 1979. Heh.
I doubt I'm alone in that this article reminded me of the Codex Seraphinanus, an untranslated, if I recall correctly, book of sketches of imaginary flora and fauna. It's a modern work by a european artist, mostly in colored pencil.
There are only around 600 copies of the book, but I got a chance to see it recently via the marvelous university-interlibrary loan system. Worth a look!
We can neither love nor pity nor forgive. If you make a slip in handling us you die!
> "If it's a hoax Kelley is the obvious candidate," says Neal.
> But he adds that Rudolph bought many alchemical texts that
> are far cruder forgeries than the Voynich manuscript.
> "Rudolph was easily fooled. If the Voynich was a hoax by
> Kelley, it looks a bit like overkill," Neal says.
Good on you Rudolph, at least one of the forgeries that
fooled you, was a good one.
The site set up by the author of the paper has more information on his methods.
y ni ch/
http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/staff/g.rugg/vo
I'd say it's just a Perl script.
The post it answer to marked as "informative" or "insightful" isn't informative or insightful and completly misudnerstood science or scientific theory (aka : where lie the burden of proof). Whereas the parent hit it the nail over the head and to boot it up add also information on popular belief which turn out wrong (earth's form being well known).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Someone can send an amazon link to I buy a copy? Or where I can download a PDF version. ;)
It's a nice christmas gift.
If you and other purport it having a meaning then you should come forward with it. Unless you have compelling evidence, thern what you are presenting is no more no less than wishfull thinking or belief.
Indeed right now it isn't prooved at all that this manuscript has any meaning (encrypted or not) and a researcher prooved that you can reproduce most of the feature of the manuscript by using an encryption technic born a few year earlier. Furthermore the person selling it to the first known possessor was a forger. Yes not all feature are repdroduced. But this is a step forward.
The burden of proof is with you and "Then again, there's no real way of knowing." isn't an answer. At least none a scientific and a person interresed into knowing moer hold for enough. And, yes "Voynich manuscript. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that a sixteenth-century forger would go to the trouble of creating something that would have all the qualities of a real language and would include techniques that would deliberately resemble" Well I have news for you. 3.5 Kilogram gold (a prince wealth for the time) make it more likely than you wish to hold it.
You might have included a lot of link making people see your post as informative, but frankly it isn't especially your dubious use of Occam's Razor (The explanation needing the LESS number of new entity is the most probable). Sorry but to purport that the manuscript hold meaning is having one unknown new entity (from where that language come ?) more than purporting that using the clever trick aforementionned (available at that time) which hold no unknown new entity.
My final point is, Occam's razor only say you what is the most likely explanation. NOT WHAT IS THE CORRECT ONE.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
"Be sure to drink your ovaltine."
-- This void intentionally left null.
Gue sepak biji lu!
. SLASHDOT: Home of the vicious nerd.
Hmm.. with several years' of hands-on experience, I wonder if this one could potentially have been written by some drunk native Finnish speaker.
-el
As long as we're on the subject, could someone please do the world a favor and discredit the Protocols of Zion once and for all? It seems there are a few people in the world who still take this document seriously.
-- thinkyhead software and media
... is such an ancient and interesting enigma. Certainly this book hits the apex of 'what the frell is THIS!?!?!?' ... but why?!? If you're hoaxing why make it work??? What about the autopsied women drawn into the page corners??? Remember, the Voynich is heavily illustrated.
/.ers :)
Sure, it seems it's possible to create a meaningless language for a hoax
Thanx for keeping on track
Years ago I had a coworker who would blather on about the Urantia book and its 'answers'... but then he was an old stoner too.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Voynich plaguarised his work from a 1,000 monkeys who hadn't spent long enough in front of the typewriters
Here's a great little bit of information regarding Voynich:
y ni ch
http://rec-puzzles.org/new/sol.pl/cryptology/Vo
Mmm, strangeness.
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
Example, my house catches fire. Firefighters are unable to determine the source. The insurance company denies my claim on the grounds that the technology existed to rub two sticks together to generate heat and produce fire.
Of course, this is ridiculous. But there have been many who claimed that producing a hoax as convincing as the Voynich papers was virtually impossible. Rugg has shown that, at the earliest known date of "discovery," it was possible, and perhaps well worth doing for the price it fetched.
So, your analogy is incomplete. The insurance company's argument would have some relevance if you had previously been claiming that it was technologically impossible for you to light the fire. They just produced a counter-argument.
Coming back to the Voynich manuscript, it just means that the possibility of a hoax cannot be ruled out because of the effort required to produce it. Turns out it's not as hard as people thought.
Accountability on the heads of the powerful.
Power in the hands of the accountable.
She didn't visit her dead father in space. She was visitied by an alien that used her father's image to keep her calm and rational. What bugs me about people missing this point is that it is explicitly explained right in that very scene!
... a book from an alternate universe that somehow made it here.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
the seed is COMSTOCK.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
Maybe it's the long lost Namshub of Enki...
Flying is easy, just throw yourself at the ground and miss. -Douglas Adams
Some of the text is written in shorthand, and rather idiosyncratic and archaic shorthand at that, but documented. It makes parts of the manuscript look harder than it is. That and the assumption its much older than it's first appearance.
It's location of origin, date, and author are right there for chrissakes, as are none too subtle hints as to the two languages used.
Everyone keeps making this harder than it is.
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Nullam vitae mauris. Donec vel ante nec orci tempor pharetra. Phasellus posuere facilisis ante. Ut ultrices cursus mi. Sed dolor ligula, lobortis quis, tristique et, egestas non, diam. Phasellus libero lorem, aliquet nec, sodales vitae, tempor ut, urna. Fusce ullamcorper enim quis libero. Nulla facilisi. Sed eget wisi eget lorem imperdiet gravida. Quisque iaculis sapien in justo. Vestibulum varius mollis turpis. Vivamus eget lectus in nisl congue posuere. Praesent blandit. Integer ac odio. In metus. In sagittis, magna vitae euismod consequat, augue dui rhoncus sapien, vel tempus enim mi eget quam. Vestibulum elementum. Morbi eget turpis ut augue pellentesque rhoncus.
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What if it is just turtles all the way down?
What does this say about our ability to translate? I mean, theoretically, we'll have to do very similar things should we encounter an unknown race/species in space.
I do believe that there are "codes" in the Bible, but the reason is different than what the fanatics describe. My belief is that the Bible codes exist for only one reason: to ensure accuracy. Consider the following:
The cat in the hat caught a rat and that was the end of that.
Notice the rhyming. Now translated into spanish (courtesy babelfish):
El gato en el sombrero cogio una rata y ese era el final de eso.
Now translated back into english:
The cat in the hat took a rat and that one was the end of that.
Okay, so notice in the original that the rhyming words appeared in positions 1, 4, 7, 9, and 14 (zero based). In the retranslation, the rhyming words appear in positions 1, 4, 7, 9 and 15. This disparity alone is enough to determine that the retranslation is not accurate.
Supposing that one writes in such a manner that there is a definitive pattern to their sentences and word choices, it is easy to determine the accuracy of a text after having gone through many translations. For a book such as the Bible, this was of paramount importance. I believe the original purpose of the "Bible codes" was to ensure that the meaning of scripture was not lost as it was passed from one generation to the next.
Consider for example, the poem. If a poem is incorrectly copied, it no longer rhymes, or the meter is disrupted. This simple mechanism not only ensures easy memorization, but provides a security against unintended alteration. In much the same manner, the "Bible codes" have provided scholars a way of discerning the accuracy of a copy of scripture. In fact, some of scripture is indeed poetic, further reinforcing the confidence in the original scriptures.
I find it somewhat interesting that lossless copying was available long before digital electronics were invented.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Is that it was written in the 14th or 15th century by someone, perhaps an alchemist, who took some sort of psychoactive substance and wrote it all whilst in an extended fugue state, or series of such states. It just seems to be an amazing amount of effort to go through to be a hoax.
The chief suspect for producing the book is ... Edward Kelley ... a forger, mystic, alchemist, mercenary and wife-swapper.
Boy, I'd like to read a biography of that guy.
Use wikipedia for some background information here
Have they tried casting "Read Magic" on it?
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
You may be surprised, but rather than admit ignorance I'll just say that sentence is meaningless.
See Rugg's website about his "Voynichese" generation.
I be firs. Moven demosynizabell, Elin repecipts, juspeor farsilabold. "I holectowout hoax, reguougg, alchet ougg. II, narsibell, Romay." Hold, oblecievins lard lown ages. Phic, boutheoplexplarge yet, "Holy pled itorly." I hemons is unew imed loweal. Abought cell anarinsly, just. Buth reaspe evinverce known Unique giber, Eng hill," Nict, He 16000 tains unninve yearer. Nown regurn Rugg. Keet, nagainsly takily. Keliefeas.
You insensitive clod!
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Well now:
How very ENOCHIAN indeed this structure of Keys Be.
From: Agent 7617
I have studied these rediculous Earthlings for fifty years. My report follows. Recommend launching invasion fleet from our nearest base, which is 328 light years away. At top speed our fleet should catch the Earthlings unawares on or about January 4, 2004.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
you see, new suckers are being born every minute.
Clear, Dark Skies
There is a serious research project in progress which trying to get to the bottom of this mystery. If you can look past the occasional conspiracy-theorist-kook, there are actually quite a few thoughtful and intelligent folks participating. Here is the discussion thread for the project:
Voynich Manuscript Research Project @ AboveTopSecret.com
Note: Some of the other research projects are pretty interesting, also. In particular, the Yellowstone Super-Caldera Research Project.
SCO Chief Executive Officer Darl McBride claims Voynich Manuscript contains proprietary source code stolen from SCO UNIX. Significant doubt exists within the legal community concerning actionability since, if SCO's claims are validated, the offense occurred approx. 700 years ago. In response to this McBride responds "The statute of limitations for theft of intellectual property begins with discovery. We recently determined the presence of our code in the manuscript, so the clock starts ticking now." Speaking about SCO's chances in court, FSF General Council Eben Moglen responded that he believes Edward Kelley's rebuttal would not be as sucessful as Linus Torvalds' refutation of similar charges, primarily since the courts rarely accept postumous pleadings. McBride's company sued IBM Corp. in March, claiming that IBM's Linux contributions had violated SCO's intellectual property. Also, as in the IBM lawsuit, SCO has been reluctant to provide proof of its claims of plagerism within the Voynich Manuscript.
If this extensive book is really in another language -- as opposed to being a clever hoax -- then why is it the only example known of this language?
I'd understand it if it was a fragment a few paragraphs long of some lost dialect. But an elaborately illustrated book of 250 pages, and nothing else ever known? That alone argues for hoax.
And don't doubt that people 500 years ago weren't smart or clever enough to pull this off. Overall intelligence -- as opposed to knowledge -- has increased very little across the centuries.
It looks a little like Tolkiens elvish language...
In case you're wondering what it looks like
http://www.voynich.nu/
Hey, with a URL like Voynich dot Nu, I thought it would be a collection of those "naked nymphs". I've been duped!
On the other hand, maybe I should be glad there weren't any nymphes nus. That would be more like a Satyr, which is disturbingly similar to a certain Slashdot-related goat. Des nymphes nues, would be much preferable, though with my luck, there would be a tub involved [shudder]...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
1) Would decrypting this book violate the DMCA?
2) This is actually the code that SCO claims is infringing
This page accidentally left blank
....at least I hope so.
The key to unlocking this mystery is to decipher it via the sizzolator
No, this is slashdot. Most of us type like that.
My other car is a 1984 Nark Avenger.
I wonder if there is no body of evidence that similar hoaxes were pulled by charlatans around that time. People look at the Voynich MS and assume it was a lot of trouble to go to, or that it is incredibly elaborate. But it really *isn't* that elaborate. The calligraphy and the illustration could be nothing more than a child's writing practice and coloring book of the time. (People who were at all literate, in those days, tended to be *very* literate.) It represents a few months of work, at best. It's really crude, in comparison to the state of the art of the time.
Throw in the element of financial gain, and it is even easier to believe. It's probably hard to understand the situation of a Renaissance artist (or con man) if you regard it from a modern context. The hard part of the job was the discipline needed to avoid using real words.
Another possible way of looking at it. What if all we had of Tolkein's work, was notebooks of elvish writing and illustrations, with no codec, and nothing to indicate the meaning? What if, instead of being a family storyteller and published author, he'd simply been a recluse, and left us only an undecipherable notebook?
Well, something similar may have happened in the 16th century, but with a darker side -- the purpose was to present a strange and mysterious artifact to a benefactor, with good assurances that the hoax would not be discovered -- and live large in the Renaissance style until the money ran out and it was time to pull the next hoax.
I've marvelled at the Voynich and other mysteries for more than 30 years now. I don't have any problem believing it's a 1500's equivalent of a CO$ OT document. More so if you can demonstrate that money changed hands over the book.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
n/t
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Just like when I buy something the day after payday, and I pull out a hundred dollar bill, and they start to look at it to figure out if it's real, and I say, "It's real, I just made it this morning."
(Made it as in earned it? Or made it as in printed it? Kind of a double meaning kind of joke kind of thing, if you think about it...)
Source: http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/cs/staff/g.rugg/voyn
It is very, very, very unlikely that common words would be repeated again and again and again unless someone really, really, really wanted to.
so one guy claims that Occam's Razor forces the case to the people who want to claim it's not a hoax
and now you're using Occam's Razor to argue it's true.
I guess that's what happens when you use an old argument to excuse your brain from the discussion.
Is the argument:
The paper is a hoax.
In which case the negative is that it's not and by Occam's razor it can't be proven so the burden of proof is on those who think it's a hoax.
or is the argument:
The paper is legitimate.
In which case the negative is that it's not, putting the burden of proof on those who think it's legitimate.
Perhaps instead of using pointless razors to excuse one's brain from having to think, you should seek to prove your side no matter what it is.
Anytime someone mentions Occum's Razor substitute it with "I don't have to think, therefore"
For example:
"Occam's Razor makes it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns"
becomes
"I don't have to think, therefore it seem more likely that there some kind of language operating in the manuscript than a random system of patterns"
It's amazing how much is true when you don't have to think about it. That goes for the other guy who attempted to use Occam's Razor is well.
You can prove DNA doesn't belong to someone. You can prove DNA does belong to someone.
You can prove this is fake like the Salamander Papers. You can prove it's legitimate like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The fact is, there are many people working on both sides of the argument because they have to. There are a lot of people in the world who want to assume everything is false unless proven otherwise. And since they believe it's false it's up to everybody else to do the thinking for them to convince them otherwise.
Maybe hiding your brain behind Occam's Razor suits you but fortunatly the people working on this problem aren't.
Occam's Rasor only works when there are infinite possibilities and you can't do intellectual judo with the question.
Assume the universe is infinite. Prove it.
Assume the universe is finite. Prove it.
Both negate the other but neither are asking to prove a negative.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
%\w+
Isn't it funny how humans are so uncomfortable with the unknown? We assume this is a hoax because we do not understand it. Because (generally speaking, as a populace) we cannot accept the fact that there may be things beyond our understanding?
At the same time, we have a plethora of even more illogical constructs, the most obvious of which are spiritual and religion-related. We have a tangible document in front of us, which we don't understand so we are compelled to discredit it, yet we are surrounded by even more vaporous spiritual concepts that so many accept as real.
It seems to be a testimonial to our wholly self-absorbed nature that if we cannot identify "what's in it for us" out of any of these concepts, then they're either evil or bogus.
It looks like Art Brut to me. Check out the works of Adolph Wolfi - a man 'inflicted with the disease of consciousness'. Really beutiful stuff, but mostly repetitive nonsence resulting from a lifetime of trying to make sense of the surrounding world with a pencil and mental defect.
Some other good links for Voynich information:
Elonka :)
Surely it must have occured to somebody that this thing is just a fanciful work of art. For example, REM is one of my favorite bands, and I defy anyone to decipher all the lyrics by ear. Perhaps this is just a printed analog of what REM does.
If you are trying to "deciper" art, of course you'll fail. Maybe these cryptographers should just read between the lines.
Perhaps the artist and his patrons are laughing from somewhere in the great beyond.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
The "Cryptonomicom" has an obvious liguisitic similarity to the "Necronomicon" of H.P. Lovecraft. Colin Wilson later wrote sci-fi / horror stories that included Lovecraft and which stated that the Voynich Manuscript was actually one copy of the Necronomicon.
I have no idea if Stephanson knew this, but given the similarity of names, I would suspect so.
More details can be found here .
I work in a state psychiatric hospital (one of the few remaining) and I see these types of "manuscripts" all the time. Elaborate yet meaningless texts in languages only troubled minds can understand.
Most of what I see is scribble, but here and there you will come across a book that seems to be the workings of a brilliant mind. Yet, you know from their medical records that they have severe personality disorders (and chemically induced brain damage) and wouldn't know their mother if she walked in to say hi.
I do not know much about the system this feller worked on but, in my earlier days I did study the Voynich in hopes of translating it. Never got anywhere but the exercise was one step that eventually lead me to a career in computation. A study of the text of the document reveals it was composed in a unique script unlike any current European script of the day, transcribed by at least two separate hands and probably at separate times. The plant drawings accompanying the text (it appears to be an herbal or other similar manual) are unique and unlike any plants in Europe of that time, though some do look like American plants. One looks a lot like squash for example. Some of the studies and ideas on the document are pretty wild; I have one book from the 1920s who's author thinks the letters of the manuscript are actually whole words with each loop or whirl on the letter representing individual letters. Others have tried simple substitutions based on word order, and letter frequency. The Jury is still out. Now if someone can just DECRYPT THE BLASTED THING I would be very interested in reading the results. .
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
So a statement is gibberish if it cannot be restated in a shorter form?
So then restate it. Do it (n) times. As many times as possible. Now you have the shortest possible version of the initial statement (with the original meaning in tact). Either that or the initial statement collapses to nothing, which doesn't make much sense to me.
But now you cannot restate _this_ statement in a shorter form. So the new statement (which holds in tact the meaning of the old one) is gibberish...? Hence, everything is gibberish.
Maybe I'm on to something here.
it seems to me that where the burden lies is not so clear. If I found a 4+ century old manuscript in an unknown language, I would assume it to be real, unless proven otherwise.
Here is what is known about the manuscript
It is not a moden hoax, as old letters have been found after its rediscovery that refer to it.
It has 234 pages (plenty long enough for statistical analysis) and appears to have been copied by a professional. It also has a number of images of various sorts, with "labels" and the words used in the labels also appear in the text near the images.
(BTW, I do not see how you get that in a "grill" system hoax.)
There are, however, no apparent images of the usual alchemical signs, occult signs, etc. - the sort of stuff that might impress an occult minded royal buyer.
It appears to have been written in (at least) two langauges or dialects or jargons, based on word use, with each page being in only one "language"
Here is a plot showing the correlation of word usage between pages in the manuscript - color coded with red meaning more words in common, black meaning the fewest, with page one in the upper left hand corner.
I would expect a grill method to produce a random version of this image - which is clearly not random.
The text follows roughly the 1st. and 2nd. Zipf's laws of word frequencies.
The word length distribution is very different from Latin, German, English, French or Italian, and, in fact, is similar to various Asian languages like Chinese - words are uniformly short.
Again, I don't see why a grill method would do this.
The 2nd. order entropy is too low for an European language using a simple substitution cipher, and the third and fourth are too high. (Also, download this pdf.)
What does this mean ? It means that the second character of a word in the manuscript is more predictable than in a typical European language, and that the third and fourth characters are _less_ predictable.
It is very hard for me to see how this could come from the grill method.
So, regardless of where the burden of proof lies, I, for one, am not convinced.
I've cracked it and will gladly give over the translation for 600 ducats.
Dreams are better as dreams than reality.
but don't believe it.
The book only has to pass the 1912 criteria for a hoax. That's when the book appeared, not in the 1500s.
Yes, rhyme and rhythm are good tools for limiting the range of possible completions in order to restrict the sorts of errors that can occur.
But I've been a member of groups that have a substantial oral tradition. Even regularly reinforced community memorization, with the aid of rhythm, rhyme, and tune, can lead to plenty of spurious versions and confusion as to the "correct" version of a canon. I'm not denying that they make it much easier to remember huge amounts of material, just that they are in no sense proof against alteration, even over the extremely short term, let alone over centuries and centuries of repetitions.
As to the assertion that the Iliad and Odyssey probably changed very little before they were written, that's likely mistaken. First, large portions of the texts as we have received them were probably composed at the time of writing. Second, there's a lot of research that demonstrates that the oral poetic tradition relied heavily on improvisation accompanied with the use of stock phrases. There was probably a different version of the Iliad for every nobleman's house Homer visited, as he tried to flatter his current host, and used objects in the home as memory aids or as subjects in that particular telling of the poem. One might as well assume that Coltrane played the same solo every night.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
get_random_old_english_text is rather unlikely to produce any Shakespeare. Old English is far removed from the language of Elizabethan England, by numerous grammatical and vocabulary features as well as thousands of years.
More to the point, if there is an is_shakespeare function, then you're still trying to reproduce the texts. You're just reproducing them in a vastly more inefficient manner (BogoMonkeys) instead of an efficient manner (DecompressZip). The only reason you'd need a reference text is for reproduction purposes; if the algorithm were producing Shakespeare it wouldn't need to check whether it'd gotten it right.
Freedom isn't free; its price is the well-being of others.
The Solution of the Voynich Manuscript by Leo Levitov was published by the Aegean Press in 1987. Links to Amazon.com are left as an exercise to the Slashdot readership.
Levitov provides methodology for extracting the linguistic model that the book encodes. Many examples and translations are provided, and there is plenty of work for the reader to do if he wants to prove the system to himself.
Levitov proposes that his solution reveals a manual of heretical text regarding the ease and assistance of the mortally ill into death -- euthenasia, basically. To my knowledge, his work has not been discredited, only ignored.
For the definitive hoax-type artificial reality book, check out the amazing Codex Seraphinianus.
...just so we can point at this guy and laugh. Isn't that how all human progress works?
"Ain't no right way to do a wrong thing."
If you speak this sentence aloud you will reveal a hidden language. Sure it looks like english, just not the english you thought it was.
I am Sofa King we Todd did
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_U.S._Election_c
Maybe the text is the original version of the Necronomicon. We can't read it because its in the language of the Elder Gods.
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for the Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
This is my sig.
More likely he's flexing his knowledge of simple Latin, in which -icon is the suffix indicating a book or collection of scrolls gathering knowledge of the topic sufficted.
Necronomicon, literally translated, means "book of the name of the dead." This leans a bit on Latin; it's better phrased "book which names that which is death for you." This makes the name "cryptonomicon" a bit more obvious - it is that which represents the summation of, and therefore defines, cryptography.
Go bust out your AD&D stuff. Lots of books in there end in -icon and -nomicon. It was a repopularized phrasing thanks to Aleister Crowley's Order of the Golden Dawn stuff, and later for sarcasm by Ambrose Bierce.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
"Random" in the algorithmic information theoretic sense is not equivalent to "meaningless".
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
Personally, I look at censorship advocates the same way I look at spammers. Joe Lieberman is no more fit to be President than Alan Ralsky is.
Of course, if Lieberman doesn't get the Democratic nomination, you may feel free to write in Alan Ralsky's name.
The difference between Joe Lieberman and Hilary Clinton politically is that Hilary is easier on the eyes. BOTH are associated with the "centrist" (read corporatist) Democratic Leadership Council... which Bill Clinto n helped found. The word "Bush-lite" is an adequate description.
Go to opensecrets and check his political contributors for yourself. If you support Bush's political program, vote for him, don't bother with Lieberman.
Tech Public Policy stuff