Halo 2 Trailer Gets Subliminal, Halo Done Quick

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Halo 2 Trailer Gets Subliminal, Halo Done Quick

Posted by simoniker on Friday July 23, 2004 @07:19AM from the cloud-construction-reconstruction dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The Halo 2 movie trailer hit theaters last week and rabid fans have been passing around 'cam' versions since then. A lower quality streaming version went up on MSN and Xbox.com yesterday, but today GamePro.com premiered a high definition 1920x1080 5.1 surround sound version of the trailer for the home theater purists. More interestingly, a Halo.bungie.org newspost reports on subliminal messages within the ad, when 'the Xbox logo changes, for a frame or two, from www.xbox.com to www.ilovebees.com', an apparently legit website where 'some very, very strange stuff is going on' - there's already speculation and a little evidence this could be from the same Microsoft group who stealthily made the AI web game?" Elsewhere, an anonymous reader writes "Remember Quake Done Quick, the effort to complete Quake as fast as possible? Well, halo.bungie.org recently wrapped up its Going Nowhere Fast contest, which was an effort to do much the same thing for Halo. You can view the results and download the videos, though some are still being posted, at the Going Nowhere Fast contest page."

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Subliminal Messaging? by bnewendorp · 2004-07-23 07:24 · Score: 3, Interesting

Its a common misbelief that having something change on a screen for a few frames is subliminal messaging. If you can actually see what the message is, it is NOT subliminal. Subliminal messaging is when the message they are trying to show you isn't noticed by your senses, but still makes it to the brain anyway.
Looks like old style Bungie sense of humor... by CaptMonkeyDLuffy · 2004-07-23 07:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

Frankly, Bungie has a history of hiding details you need to search for and research... Both in their game stories(primarily Marathon, the semi-parent of Halo), and also in their 'buzz generation' for games.

A long time ago, back in the pre-Halo release days(in fact, before the anouncement of exactly what the project that wound up being Halo was made official), there was an entire series of quirky odd referenced 'fake e-mails' to the person who runs an important fansite... You can see some details here.
Hoax by Giant+Ape+Skeleton · 2004-07-23 07:37 · Score: 4, Funny

What a bunch of KILLALLHUMANS rubbish.
Everybody knows there's no NUKE MARS such thing
as subliminal messages.

--
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
ilovebees.com by volteface · 2004-07-23 07:42 · Score: 4, Insightful

The ilovebees business is intriguing.

Anyway, here is a (barely distiguishable, but whatever) image of the aforementioned frame I found; http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/xboxilove bees.gif

Also it appears that for some reason, people have set up a whole forum dedicated to the event.
1. Re:ilovebees.com by Pluvius · 2004-07-23 08:41 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Also it appears that for some reason, people have set up a whole forum dedicated to the event.
  
  That's probably because the chances of this being the sequel to the AI game (aka "The Beast") are pretty high. The Beast is still the most well-known alternate-reality game (ARG) in history, so the possibility that this Halo game could be "The Hive" (the long-rumored sequel to The Beast) is creating quite a stir in the ARG fandom.
  
  Rob
Bittorrent? by Sandman1971 · 2004-07-23 07:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

A slow site.... 50 meg download. When will these so-called publishers realize that for stuff liek this, Bittorrent is the way to go? You save on some badnwidth and allow ppl to grab the files much more quickly.

--
It's better to burn out than to fade away
Re:Firefox... by Smidge204 · 2004-07-23 07:49 · Score: 2, Interesting

I just tried it with FireFox 0.9.1 on Win2K. Apparently they use some CSS or something to pop up some faux error message:

HALT - MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE

Control has been yielded to the
SYSTEM PERIL DISTRIBUTED REFLEX.

This medium is classified, and has a
STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION.

In 4 days, network throttling will erode.

In 18 days this medium will metastasize.

COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:

Make your decisions accordingly.

My bet is the code to do this borked FireFox on ya.
=Smidge=
Ob Simpsons Reference by servognome · 2004-07-23 07:52 · Score: 3, Funny

Pretty soon they will go to superliminal advertising.
Bill Gates will be running around with a bullhorn yelling "HEY YOU! BUY HALO 2"

--
D6 63 0D 70 89 81 BB 8E 7B 7C 5F 5D 54 EA AB 73
Re:Countdown? by TheOnlyCoolTim · 2004-07-23 08:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

There's no lady that runs ilovebees. It's just a particularly vile form of marketing that lies to you that it isn't.

Tim

--
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
torrent by musikit · 2004-07-23 08:01 · Score: 2, Funny

anyone have a torrent to the game? :P
That's a LOT of bees by Satan's_Tool · 2004-07-23 08:10 · Score: 3, Informative

> DiG 9.2.1 > ilovebees.net
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.136
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.140
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.141
ilovebees.net. 69.25.27.172
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.135
ilovebees.net. 69.25.27.171
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.134
ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.133
and
ilovebees.com. 69.20.126.147

For a little ol' lady that doesn't have the computer skills....that's a lot of servers to be running your little website and NOT have an actual ad in the local Yellow Pages.

--
Yes, I'm an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
1. Re:That's a LOT of bees by Blofeld · 2004-07-23 12:10 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  A netcraft query shows the following:
  
  July 13
  OS: Windows 2000
  Server: Apache/1.3.19 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_perl/1.24_01
  
  July 16
  OS: Windows Server 2003
  Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0
  
  July 17
  OS: Windows 2000
  Server: Apache/1.3.19 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_perl/1.24_01
  
  What's up with that?
2. Re:That's a LOT of bees by BlueFashoo · 2004-07-23 13:12 · Score: 2, Interesting
  
  If you look at the whois, the registration date is June 14, 2004. The earliest entry on the ilovebees.blogspot.com blog is June 13, 2004. Oops, they jumped the gun a bit. Ilovebees.net does have the same June 14, 2004 creation date as the dot com address, though it is registered to NAMESDIRECT.COM, INC.
  
  --
  Nice Marmot
I'm happy by 88NoSoup4U88 · 2004-07-23 08:31 · Score: 2, Funny

at least Tyler Durden didn't insert -his- , er, *cough* message.
Re:lame by potatostategamer · 2004-07-23 08:41 · Score: 2, Funny

Stupid?! That chicken knows how to "do the cabbage patch" and "do the roger rabbit"! That's a damn smart chicken by my reckoning.
Ladybee777 “odd behavior cry for help” by Jammer@CMH · 2004-07-23 09:33 · Score: 2, Informative

This interesting page is linked to from the front page of www.ilovebees.com:
Ladybee777 "odd behavior cry for help"
Woke up Tuesday to an alarming email from Aunt Margaret. (Apparently, so did quite few of you, as evidenced by the many "I think your aunt has completely lost it" messages I received.)
It took several hours to finally get a hold of Aunt M on the phone. Before I could say a word about the "odd behavior cry for help," she had her own email question for me:
Did I have any idea why all of her Hotmail would disappear overnight?
I logged in as ladybee777 to check out the damage. Old password worked fine. But no mail in any of the folders...? Weird. (Where was the concerned reply I had sent her that morning?)
Wrote a quick test message and sent it off to myself. Nothing shows up in my gmail inbox. Try again, this time to an older account. Check there: Nothing. Again. Rinse. Repeat. Nothing. Like a little Maxwell's Demon siphoning off all ingoing and outgoing messages. (And apparently sending out its own.)
So Aunt Margaret's email appears to have gone the way of the China countdown. Hijacked. Repurposed.
My first instinct: ask Hotmail to kill the account entirely. But then someone calling him (her?) self "xnbomb" sent me a very persuasive email that made me rethink things. Read for yourself:
It seems that snippets of various emails that have been sent to you by my colleagues have been reassembled and sent back, apparently originating from your aunt's hotmail address. I'm not really sure what it means at this point. But it tells us that we can communicate with these entities using email. In the absence of having a clear idea of just what is going on, the first priority is to communicate, that is how we can learn more. It's at least possible that we've stumbled across something extraordinary here, and our first priority must be to learn all that we can about it.
It's for that reason that I'm going to suggest that you take no further action that interferes with what's going on at ilovebees.com. There's another reason too, one slightly more disturbing. Consider this passage from the end of the tale hidden in the images:
"The day will break and the sun will rise when the Queen returns to rule, and further let it be known that retribution on any who hinder the return of the Queen will be swift and terrible.
This is a significant warning, namely that any interference with that process will be regarded as a hostile act, and will be responded to accordingly. I don't know what the SPDR is capable of, but I'm not sure I want to find out.It's for this reason that I suggest that you don't do anything else to get in the way of this business. If your aunt's business needs a functioning web site immediately, purchase her a new and similarly named domain and get her web site going there. But let this follow its course... while it could just be some hackers being jerks, there is at least a chance that this is something unique and important and wonderful, a window on a world that we may have never seen before, nor will ever see again.
Optimistic and curious, yet with the good sense to be terrified. This seems like a pretty good fix on the situation -- thanks, xnbomb.
I am, of course, wildly nervous about letting the bug(s) continue wreaking havoc entirely unimpeded. But nothing, and I mean nothing, I was doing on the tech side seemed to make a damn bit of difference anyway. So it seems like a good plan to switch gears from active damage control to... well, what?
(ideas?)
P.S. Have decided to try to shield Aunt M from the latest development, so for now I'm telling her it's a widespread Hotmail glitch. I hope I'm doing the right thing.