Halo 2 Website Puzzle Confounds

redune45 writes "The Halo 2 Theatrical trailer ends with the normal Xbox logo, but it also briefly replaces xbox.com with ilovebees.com. Going to ilovebees.com it appears that the site has been 'hacked', adding to the mystery. The 'owner' of the site set up a separate blog with a post talking about the error. There is a huge thread on the Bungie.net forums on the same issue. The WHOIS information for this site shows that it was first registered on June 14, 2004. But no obvious clues other than that are available. What is going on here?" There's at least one Wiki set up to gather clues. We also mentioned this in an earlier Halo story.

Comments

Viral marketing

[BWJones]

A case of viral marketing? Move along....

Re:Viral marketing

[FauxReal]

Kinda like www.beta-7.com was Sega's viral marketing trick... What I found slightly interesting was the mini-cooper version where they'd make fake zines and have them inside of real magazines. I saw this little zine that was supposed to be about robots made out of cars. All minis of course.

Re:Viral marketing

[SilentChris]

"A case of viral marketing? Move along...."

Uh... if we have to have any, this is the best kind of marketing around. AI, the Burger King chicken... an enjoyable "commercial" that requires real thought, and you can turn off at whim.

But if you're content with countless billboards, go right ahead and let the advertisement industry know.

Re:Viral marketing

[blowdart]

Of course it is, after all, why would a "homepage" about bees be able to stand the slashdot effect? <g>

Re:Viral marketing

[mixmasterjake]

I actually "played" the AI viral marketing game when I first discovered it. I found it totally fascinating. There was a huge amount of sites that had already made their way to all of the major search engines and had all appearances of being real - tons of strange sub-plots, etc. There were even certain phases of the game where other game players were receiving faxes and such (when they had previously given their fax number to a fictitious company in the game). If you called certain numbers, sometimes there would be live actors answering the phone. It must have taken many months of full-time work to pull that off.

The coolest thing about it was that they never even really mentioned the movie AI. It was just generally about artificial intelligence. It was it's own separate thing, and I have to say that it was pretty cool.

I decided to get into this HALO one just for a bit to see where it would go. I saw an IM address on one of the supposed owner of ilovebees.com blog site. (it's mentioned in one of the user comments to the latest entry). What the hell, I sent an IM. Sure enough, I got a bizarre reply back. From a real person, or perhaps a bot? I don't know - seemed like a real person. They said they'd get back to me later.

About an hour later, they IM'd me back. We chatted a bit and then I was invited to a chat room. There were four people there chatting. (Same kind of sureal text that is found on the website). In the chat room, the game HALO 2 came up several times in the conversation.

I think it's still kinda cool that they go to all these lengths to put together an interactive campaign for a game. This one is just a little thin, though. Mentioning the game so early in the "quest" or whatever. Its not quite the same as the AI campaign. But, it would be hard to top that.

Re:Viral marketing

[Alien54]

got to love those metatag keywords:

"honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping, hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium,messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees"

I mean really

Re:Viral marketing

[NashCarey]

Well, it looks like the "Viral Marketing" is spreading all over the web! 2 more sites have now been seen with a count down timer. At http://www.immersionunlimited.com/ we came to a startling discovery. We are trying to find out more, and you are welcome to join us. So far these are the only sites we found with similar effects. If you, or anyone else, finds something more please let us know by visiting our site. The sites are.... http://www.science.uva.nl/cms-forms/ai.php?formuli er=vakkenlijst&session=1&prog=122&fase = (notice the logo looks a little like Immersion Unlimited's site initials) http://thefridgeowl.com/

Re:Viral marketing

[rta]

good point. The smug/jaded comments about how it must be viral marketing are just assertions. The resilience of the site in question, though, is actually good evidence that it's an engineered solution rather than just a hack. Unrelated news: 2370 Market Street is a real address in the Castro in SF. (that's the address in whois db) i wonder what's there?

Re:Viral marketing

[CptTripps]

I played the AI game too...it had me consumed for the 3-4 weeks that it was up and running. The end result was a private screening about 6-weeks before the 'real release' complete with handy posters that had everyone that had 'played' in it. (I have several hundred of these if anyone is interested.)

It takes a company like M$ to be able to dump cash into something like this, but I'm thinking that the payoff micht be something like the AI game where we'd all get a free copy of the game or something.

Just food for thought...

Re:Viral marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

what is the IM

They're just trying to create a buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

It's guerilla marketing, plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

SciFi's no stranger to Guerilla marketing either. Anyone recall their "documentary" about the Blair witch?

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Schemat1c]

This reminds of a pretty cool advertising campaign that was done for the mini series 'V' back in the 80's.

I used to take BART to school in San Francisco and one day in the stations there appeared these generic looking posters of happy family scenes and such with the words 'The Visitors are our friends' written on them. No other information was anywhere on the posters. Nobody knew what they were about but it got everyone talking. Then about a week later there was suddenly big red spray painted V's on all the posters. It was pretty strange at the time and I didn't know what it was about until the series came out about 6 months later. It got me to watch it.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[BLAG-blast]

It's guerilla marketing, plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.

Damn, that shit is gooooooooood. I think every cent they spent on their guerilla marketing will pay 10 folded. I never knew bees where so interesting, I think I'm going to get some. Who ever Margaret hired to do the Halo hack and fake the web site being hacked to cover up so she didn't get blamed for the Halo hack must be pretty good (I'd assume she didn't do it herself). Of course the bee industry must be a in wicked state if this is the type of marketing they are resorting too.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Dark Lord Seth]

Some more info here regarding this whole stunt. I wonder about blogspot's policies regarding the use of their services as part of a hoax/advertisement campaign...

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[JAYOYAYOYAYO]

that subject line hit the nail on the head. bees = buzz.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[waynelorentz]

They did something similar with Ghostbusters. For months there were full-page ads in the New York Times with the Ghostbusters logo and just the words "Coming this summer to save the world."

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

The policy probably says something like "if we're paid enough for it, we're OK with it."

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Jim Starx]

What about the movie?? All I've seen are previews for it... nothing wierd... what am I missing?

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[ticklemeozmo]

When "The Blair Witch Project" first came out, it was preceeded by all this hype, and even a History Channel (or was it Discovery?) special on the "Blair Witch".

Naturally, it helped set the ambiance for the movie and those people who saw it in the first few days (myself included) fell into the hype and took it as face value and "enjoyed the experience".

However, critics looked at it on the movie alone, gave it bad reviews and suddenly it became cool to dis it. Am I the only one who liked it??

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[rocketjesus]

All the bees are dying from some sort of fungus.

Soon there will be no honey.

We will all live on a cold, hard, sad chunk of rock drifting about space when that happens.

Maybe they think that by getting more people into the hobby of beekeeping someone will create a genetically-enhanced fungus resistant super-bee, if only they could get the geeeks to drop their X-Box controllers for ten minutes and get outside.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Hard_Code]

Yeah, my instant gut reaction is that "this is all astroturfing and you are getting dumber by even thinking about it". It's sort of unfortunate to live with this perpetual skepticism. You know when chernobyl motorbike lady broke? Well it was sent around the office, and I made a comment about never being able to trust anything off the internet, and guess what, that was a hoax too.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[KillerCow]

It's guerilla marketing, plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.

I think the first clue was from the post:

The Halo 2 Theatrical trailer ends with the normal Xbox logo, but it also briefly replaces xbox.com with ilovebees.com.

Hmmmm... an unknown website address showing up at the end of a piece of marketing material? Hmmmm... the website has nothing to do with what was being promoted. OH! It's been hacked! How intriguing! There must be something interesting going on here. I am so gullible. Wait! No I'm not. I recognise this as publicity. But I will still talk about it so that the marketers get what they want. Doh! I guess that they won in the end!

The headline should read: "Microsoft marketing gimmick tries to create buzz. Not just astroturf anymore."

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[autopr0n]

Well it was sent around the office, and I made a comment about never being able to trust anything off the internet, and guess what, that was a hoax too.

It was? Do you have any documentation for that claim? It would seem to be rather difficult to get the photos she did without actualy going there...

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[AndroidCat]

site aesthetic by aunt margaret

So blame her.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Hard_Code]

slashback
article

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Kesh]

Nah, I enjoyed the film. Never saw it in the theater, just bought it for $10 on DVD out of curiosity. Most of it was interesting, but it wasn't until the last 5 minutes that it really grabbed me.

After that, I couldn't sleep. :)

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't that a possible reference to her period?
I realize there is not a real "her" but...

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[tsm_sf]

A friend of mine had an advance copy on tape. After checking out the 'back story' on the blair witch web site we sat down and watched it in his darkened living room.

Freaky! Totally scalp-wrigglingly frightening!

I saw it again months later in a crowded theater, well after we had all been exposed to much talk about the film. The entire audience was laughing at what a lame movie this was.

For me it all came down to being able to suspend my better judgement and watch some 'found footage'. Once it'd been hammered into my head that it was just a movie, the magic was gone. I guess what I'm saying is this: Discussion of a fantasy that's held outside of the context of the fantasy itself will eventually kill that fantasy. To put that another way, shut up before you ruin the game for everyone.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[kevlar]

Wow, you really just dated yourself :-P

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[secolactico]

Soon there will be no honey.

You can get honey from sugar cane. Tastes better, IMHO.

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[RESPAWN]

It's guerilla marketing, plain and simple, just like Sci-Fi's recent attempt with M. Night Shyamalan's new movie. You're reading about it, so it's working.

Actually, the guerilla marketing campaign for M. Night Shamalamadingdong's new movie kind of pissed me off. Last saturday I spend an hour and a half washing my new car. It's new and I wanted it to look all pretty with no smudges. Then, I go to see a movie and come out to see a big stupid red sticker on my window. Now there are smudges all over my window and fingerprints all over the car door. I know I'm overreacting, but why do people have to mess with other people's cars. I know I'm over protective of my new car, but I've never liked coming out to find handbills and shit on my car. You just shouldn't mess with another man's car.

Anyway, I didn't think I would see the movie in the first place, but now I'm just barely mad enough to make up my mind not to see the movie.

Well... maybe I'll see it if somebody comes out and washes my car for me...

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a heads up, they're writing a sequel to it, titled "V: The Second Generation."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0366112/

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[tambo]

You know when chernobyl motorbike lady broke? Well it was sent around the office, and I made a comment about never being able to trust anything off the internet, and guess what, that was a hoax too.

And in your cynicism, you missed what the rest of us saw: We didn't care about the motorbike thing. We cared about the Chernobyl thing - her amazing photos, the incredible stories of the event and its aftermath. Those were stunning - and 100% true.

It would be similarly myopic to dismiss ilovebees.com for its marketing purpose. The AI game was a remarkable and rewarding experience, woven around some really good fiction. Hell, the Evan Chan story was far better than the AI movie, as well as most other movies, games, and stories I've experienced.

If this bee business is by the same guys, my eyes are glued to this marketing campaign.

- David Stein

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[eliasen]

I did a statistical analysis of ratings of movies, as part of a collaborative filtering movie recommendation program I'm building in Frink using the million-recommendation database put out by the GroupLens project.

As part of this, I found the movies with the greatest variance in ratings, and did some weighting to balance out movies that hadn't been rated much. Movies with the highest variance indicated the most disagreement as to whether people loved or hated the movie.

The movie with the biggest variance? (Assuming certain weighting, of course...) The Blair Witch Project. People either loved it or hated it. (I liked it, by the way.)

The top movies that divide us:

1. Blair Witch Project, The (1999)
2. Plan 9 from Outer Space (1958)
3. Rocky Horror Picture Show, The (1975)
4. Natural Born Killers (1994)
5. Dumb & Dumber (1994)
6. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
7. Starship Troopers (1997)
8. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999)
9. Mars Attacks! (1996)
10. South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut (1999)
11. Armageddon (1998)

Re:They're just trying to create a buzz

[Hard_Code]

"And in your cynicism, you missed"

I didn't miss anything. I loved it. Interesting lies are still more interesting than boring truths.

In fact I think this sort of cultural hijacking and mixture is really neat. But it should be seen for what it is - an amusing lie. I sure would hate to burn lots of time trying to figure something out and then discover it was just carefully organized astroturfing and I was just used as a tool. The fundamental question is of participation in such cultural creation - can you only consume (as in a big trick to get you to see a movie or buy a product) or can you also produce and redistribute.

I agree the Evan Chan story was better than the movie which went completely insane about 2/3 in.

Other Forums

[jaybird144]

You can also read a LOT of information on this website at the unfiction forum dedicated to it. Really interesting stuff.

Re:Other Forums

[Professor S. Brown]

Unfiction looks like Ars Technica for mentallists.

Re:Other Forums

[t35t0r]

unfiction.com is dead due to /.

Re:Other Forums

[NashCarey]

http://www.immersionunlimited.com/ is also being used for this. And it is still operational.

re-inactment of a simpson episode

[stonebeat.org]

does anyone remember the simpsons episode, where Lisa finds a skeleton of an angel with wings? It turns out that was just a marketing gimick to attract people to the grand opening. This ilovebees.com is just that.

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[stonebeat.org]

The name of that episode was "Lisa the skeptic". Here are some quotable quotes from that episode:

Homer: What am I gonna do with 1,000 angel ash trays?
Bart: I could take up smoking.
Homer: You damn well better!

Ralph: Prinscipal Skipple, Prinscipal Skimpster! I found something! It's a spearhead!
Miss Hoover: That's your trowel blade, Ralph. It fell off the handle.
Ralph: And I found it!

"Yeah, everybody's heard of angels, but who's heard of a neanderthal!" -Chief Wiggum

Why is it that Agnes Skinner pushes over and calls him "Shorty" if he is at least six inches taller then her?

Burns: "Smithers, use the amnesia ray."
Smithers: "You mean the revolver, sir?"
Burns: "Precicely."

Homer: (In an "Aleluya" type song) See an Angel! See an Angel! See an Angel! See an Angel!

Lisa: For the last time we don't *Know* it's an Angel!!!

Homer: I know that! if you paid atention you'll notice I never *once* used the word "Angel"

Lisa: What about the sign? (She points at a sign which cleary says "Angel")

Homer: Err...That's the typo!

Lisa: Ah here's Doctor Gould now. What were the results, professor?
Stephen J Gould: Inconclusive.
Lisa: Inconclusive?? Why did you come running up like that?
Gould: Can I use your bathroom?

Burning Robot: Why? Why was I programmed to feel pain?

Principal Skinner (over PA)- All honor roll students will be rewarded with a trip to an archaeological dig. All detention students will be punished with a trip to an archaeological dig

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[signe]

Yes. Just like the game preceeding the A.I. movie release. It's just a shame that the game was so much better than the movie.

Most of the people playing the game know it's a marketing gimmick. It doesn't make it any less fun to solve the puzzles, though.

-Todd

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[imroy]

ObSouthpark: Simpsons did it!

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that Agnes Skinner pushes over and calls him "Shorty" if he is at least six inches taller then her?

You whore...your post is copied word for word from a Simpson's episode summary.

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen to that...didn't anyone notice that "bee hoax" is in the metadata keywords in the source? And 'Network Throttling will Erode'...right, a knowledgable hacker would threaten that...it doesn't even really mean anything! It's just marketing, plain and simple.

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[NanoGator]

"does anyone remember the simpsons episode, where Lisa finds a skeleton of an angel with wings? It turns out that was just a marketing gimick to attract people to the grand opening. This ilovebees.com is just that."

And, just like that Simpsons episode, this is entertaining.

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[samhalliday]

speaking of the simpsons/groening... check out the "about me" page; her cat is called farnsworth!!

...only a true geek would name their cat after the greatest inventor of all time. i smell a plan afoot.

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[SilentChris]

"This ilovebees.com is just that."

(sarcasm) No kidding? Really! And I was gullible enough to think that some dedicated Bungie fan lunatic busted into some random woman's bee site (running IIS of all things) hacked it, told MS about it, and they decided to put it in their commercial! Who would've thought this was a carefully-planned marketing ploy! (/sarcasm)

OF COURSE WE KNOW THAT. We're enjoying a good old-fashioned mystery, likely by the same guys who did the AI thing. As I said, if you want standard billboards plastered all over the place, be sure to let the advertising industry know. I must prefer this version (which requires thought and at least you can turn it off).

Re:re-inactment of a simpson episode

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, wasn't that a great game, though? It *was* better than the movie. I wish they'd make a sequel to AI based on the game.

Not Hacked

[figleaf]

It is unlikely the server was hacked.
Must be a marketting gimmick.
Can't tell for sure though

The server runs Apache on Red hat.

From HTTP Header:
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

Re:Not Hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, those are some ancient versions. I think Microsoft must've put it together.

Re:Not Hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

1.3.19 is VERY old. OpenSSL 0.9.6e and older are exploirable. PHP 4.0.x is also very old.

Re:Not Hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

Rest assured, it is marketing. Yawn, is that game going to suck that bad?

Re:Not Hacked

[arivanov]

Looking at the sever signature I there are about 7-10 missed redhat advisories and patches here. I would not say that it is hacker bait, but it is pretty damn close (or further marketing disguise, who knows).

Re:Not Hacked

[figleaf]

Then maybe it is a Honeypot.

Re:Not Hacked

[DA-MAN]

Link

Headers can be faked, OS fingerprints are a little harder. According to Netcraft, besides BSD dying, www.ilovebees.com is running on Windows 2000.

Re:Not Hacked

[James_Duncan8181]

Headers can be faked, OS fingerprints are a little harder. According to Netcraft, besides BSD dying, www.ilovebees.com is running on Windows 2000.

I'm sure their marketing department feel very smug about portraying Linux as insecure by using fake headers.

Bastards.

Re:Not Hacked

[Dogtanian]

www.ilovebees.com is running on Windows 2000.

I'm sure their marketing department feel very smug about portraying Linux as insecure by using fake headers.

Remember that Intel complained that various competitors' chips were identifying themselves as "Genuine Intel blah blah..." and threatened to take legal action (IIRC... too lazy to check (^_^))?

Well; isn't this a similar case? And- come to think of it- isn't IE identifying itself as "Netscape [whatever]" also trademark violation?

Promotional stunt...

[JoeLinux]

I'm calling it as a promotional stunt. Anyone else with me?

Re:Promotional stunt...

[Anonymous Coward]

For sure. People on the internet should know better, ever since they found out how badly the Blair Witch Project sucked.

Re:Promotional stunt...

[JoeLinux]

Ok, having just downloaded the trailer, and looking at the website, I think that the website is trying to portray some sort of "advanced signal" that the Covanent is supposed to have sent to bring down our defenses. Kind of like Jeff Goldblum's character in ID4 noticing the countdown. There is *NO* chance that the ad agency would let the ilovebees.com website "slip" into their finished ad. You have no idea how much scrutiny every single frame of advertising space goes under.

'Nuff Said,

Joe

Re:Promotional stunt...

[numark]

Microsoft's been involved with other promotional games in the past, particularly (as noted earlier in the comments) the AI (the movie) interactive game. There's been some hope that Microsoft and the "puppetmasters" of the AI game might return in the future with another game, especially after the overwhelming success of the AI game. With any luck, this is another similar game and should be just as challenging if they kept the same people on board.

Wierd Message

[ryanmfw]

A very odd message is displayed, mentioning something about in 3 days network throttling will erode. Maybe this guy's also a virus (well, worm) writer announcing his plans. I doubt it though. Probably just another whacko the internet creates every day.

Re:Wierd Message

[ryanmfw]

I should mention that this is on the ilovebees.com site.

Re:Wierd Message

[ryanmfw]

Wow, you lost karma pretty quickly. It's kind of obvious why too. Give it a rest.

I know who is responsible

[tony_ratboy]

The Subservient Chicken h4x0rz.

Obviously...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some backstory concerning the genesis of the hive, in viral marketing form. Maybe there will be an unauthorized biography on Sci-Fi?

It's obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

What is going on here?

Someone apparently doesn't love bees.

Doh!

I doubt its a hack

[AC-x]

I'm betting the owner of ilovebees.com is in on it, probably just an in-joke with some of the halo developers, maybe they know the guy or something.

According to the whois record ilovebees.com was created on 14-JUN-04, so the entire site might be fake like that Mini robot thing a while back

fileplanet

[selderrr]

this advert-article reminds me of how much fileplanet sucks... And to think that when this community started years ago, it was so promising ! They are the RealPlayer equivalent of free downloads. A billion buttons for payed services, and a tiny hidden one somewhere for a free download. I really despise these guys !

Re:fileplanet

[DrSkwid]

ya, how dare they want to eat, outrageous

Re:fileplanet

[Zonekeeper]

Well, care to share the link? I can't find it on their page.

Re:fileplanet

[Anonymous Coward]

you're just lucky you dont have to work next door to those fuckers!

Re:fileplanet

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck off and die, Mr. IP Apologist.

Re:fileplanet

[selderrr]

there's a difference between making a living and cheating on your customers

Re:fileplanet

[Anonymous Coward]

Unlike Realplayer, I've never had a problem downloading from Fileplanet. Just pick the free servers from the list, wait, and then get decent download speeds. Better than getting 5k / sec on some site w/o a waiting list...

Re:fileplanet

[OgdEnigmaX]

Just as there is a difference between cheating your customers and just being extraordinarily stingy.

Re:fileplanet

[Blic]

Ah, but if you become a customer (i.e. gave them money) then I imagine it'll be much easier to download files from them without any hassle.

Once you figure out how to host lots of downloads for free, without annoying advertising, give them a call, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you because that 90s business model just didn't work after VC funding ran out:

1. Host downloads for free
2. ?
3. Profit!

Re:fileplanet

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

There is a way. Not for fileplanet in general, but for this particular case. After all, I'm trying to download an advertisement. Bungie's got this brilliant guerrilla marketing campaign mesmerized into wanting to examine this commercial. Then I'm thinking "well, hell, I never did see the Halo 2 trailer, now would be a good time to take a gander! maybe I will finally find a place to put all these excess dollars!" Then I click on the fileplanet link, and my consumer hypnotic trance is suddenly dispelled! "What the... this is totally confusing! Now I am subconsciously associating feelings of confusion and dismay with Bungie products!" Then I no longer want to view the video, and thus their cutesy marketing campaign fails.

Really, isn't showing an extremely eager audience one of your commericals worth paying for the bandwidth cost? Surely Microsoft can spot these guys--making the XBox flagship game-- a little bit of cash for internet advertising, no? Especially since they can't think of anything better to do with their money.

Re:fileplanet

[autopr0n]

Once you figure out how to host lots of downloads for free, without annoying advertising, give them a call, I'm sure they'd love to hear from you because that 90s business model just didn't work after VC funding ran out:

It's called bittorent.

Re:fileplanet

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Is it too much to ask for them to just provide a torrent?

Re:fileplanet

[Anonymous Coward]

bittorrent can only do so much. Who is paying for the server colocations + bandwidth? Try again.

Re:fileplanet

[Anonymous Coward]

A billion buttons for payed services, and a tiny hidden one somewhere for a free download.

paid, Paid, PAID!

(Regardless of the fact that the idiot who writes Dilbert used "payed" in the strip in Jan 1994.)

Re:fileplanet

[Lehk228]

not for large numbers of individually relatively unpopular files.

Re:fileplanet

[fcrick]

comparing fileplanet to real just doesn't hold up. On fileplanet, sure they list the paid servers first, but the free ones are right below that, and aren't difficult to find AT ALL. Saying that they 'hide' them like real hid their player is just plain false. Thats like saying google hides real search results with their paid ones.

The main fileplanet differentiator is the wait time. I doubt anyone (other than you apparently) has trouble finding the free downloads...

Re:fileplanet

[mcpkaaos]

Get a lyfe.

life, Life, LIFE!

Re:fileplanet

[Dogtanian]

life, Life, LIFE!

Sigh.... 3f3ry0|\|3 k|\|0\/\/5 i7'5 5p3113d 'lyfe'.

New website motto...

[kzinti]

...All your buzz are belong to us.

Re:New website motto...

[geekoid]

you set us up the buzz!

of course, the game in generating a lot of 'buzz'.

Re:New website motto...

[Anonymous Coward]

all your jokes are belong to lame

Remember this "bee?"

[Anonymous Coward]

"Toynbee ideas in Kubrick's 2001 resurrect dead on planet Jupiter"

I bet you this all has something to do with bees.

Curiouser, and curiouser

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Necraft's uptime survery, they switched from "pache/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" to "Microsoft-IIS/6.0" briefly, but without an uptime reset. I think someone may be sending out fake headers.

Re:Curiouser, and curiouser

[zaffir]

Very interesting (if i had mod points i'd give em to you), especially since there are so many vulnerabilities in that version of Red Hat, and that version of OpenSSL has some vulnerabilities too, i think.

ARG?

[Psionicist]

A new ARG perhaps? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Gam e

Re:ARG?

[Sekoku]

I would think so. There was one for when the Matrix sequals came out.

I don't really see the point of these. Someone wanna explain the fun of solving these things?

Well DUH

[Have Blue]

OF COURSE it's a promotional stunt. That doesn't mean it can't be fun and engrossing to explore the site and try to figure out what's going on.

Re:Well DUH

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the freaking DaVinci Code, it's some market-droids "clever" idea to trick people into voluntarily wasting their time.

Re:Well DUH

[Sethus]

You know, in all of the websites and forums I just checked about this whole thing, you're the first person w/ a positve responce. Kudos.

Re:Well DUH

[Mitchell Mebane]

I'm quite convinced it is something run by MS. If it wasn't, the site would surely be Slashdotted by now.

Re:Well DUH

[Rallion]

I agree completely. I really am stunned that so many people believe for even a second that it isn't a advertising ploy, enough that they then have to post about how they don't think it's really hacked. Well, no shit, Mr. Holmes.

Also, I can't understand the people that are getting so upset about it. It's advertising, yes, but advertising that hooks you by being interesting, not by being intrusive. This is the only kind of advertising I like more than movie trailers, really.

I'm just gonna have fun with it as long as it lets me. I'm not even gonna buy Halo 2, one way or the other.

Re:Well DUH

[InsaneGeek]

And some might say the XBOX/PS2/etc are clever devices made to trick people into voluntarily wasting their time.

It's just entertainment either way

Re:Well DUH

[Spellbinder]

but it is much more fun to believe someone hacked this site and bungie and changed their trailer
while nobody at bungie noticed something
that would have been quite a thing...
to have the result of your hacking displayed in the cinemas

sounds like the Sci-Fi channel

[Anonymous Coward]

style marketing. lie, lie and lie to get publicity.

Pictures!

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

Here.

Newbies.

[Daleks]

People have already been tracking all things Bungie for a long time. You don't need no stinking new fangled Wiki.

Obvious by looking at whats happening

[Anonymous Coward]

check out the pictures on this like this one
http://www.ilovebees.com/dana.jpg

paste in your browser and keep refreshing it and check the file sizes .... obvious that the server keeps changing it.

Re:Obvious by looking at whats happening

[djupedal]

She took her own picture...why? ...but what really counts is what it says on her hat and _shirt_ - bit obvious, but hey, some dolts need help :)

Re:Obvious by looking at whats happening

[Hidyman]

Ok, maybe my sight isn't that good. What does it say on her hat and shirt. I blew up the image but I still don't recognize it.

Re:Obvious by looking at whats happening

[Anonymous Coward]

She looks like that lady from total recall that arnold had the mask on when he was trying to get back into mars...........

Re:Obvious by looking at whats happening

[Anonymous Coward]

oooh... she's a hotty

Obviously a stunt

[wyldeone]

Notice that the site is still up after two attempts at slashdotting. This is obviously a site that is hosted by someone with alot of money (probably bungie.)

Re:Obviously a stunt

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hosted at Rackspace. You don't need too much money to keep a site up against a /.ing there.

Come on people.

[iamdrscience]

You people are reading too much into this. Maybe the Halo 2 team (developers, marketers etc.) just happen to like bees and wanted to share this fact with us.

Yeah, probably not.

I traced the ad agency responsible

[Anonymous Coward]

But during my attempt to enter their lobby, they released the dogs with the bees in their mouths and when they barked they shoot bees. I definitely don't love bees. I think this conspiracy may be bigger than anyone can imagine.

Re:I traced the ad agency responsible

[Anonymous Coward]

s/dogs/hounds/

Otherwise, mod +4 Simpsons reference

On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[herrvinny]

There's a black square overlaying the ilovebees main page, it says:

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 3 days, network throttling will erode.

In 17 days this medium will metastasize.

COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:
30:13:38:28:985

Make your decisions accordingly.

I'm using IE 6, I don't know if it'll show up on Firefox. Perhaps a preview of what we'll see in Halo 2? (Computer system on the fritz, etc?)

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[jomas1]

The same text shows up in Firefox. The thing about this ploy that is most unrealistic is how the website is not slowing down at all despite the number of slashdotters who must be viewing it now. I'm sure ilovebees.com was set up to handle this kind of traffic.

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, it showed in firefox 9.1

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[1337 Twinkie]

Yup. There it is. in firefox, too. The black screen "could" be a hack, since it seems to have been apended to the end of the page (outside html tags).

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Another episode of the Marathon Man series? Not that I didn't like 1, 2 and Infinity, but I'd rather see some new ideas.

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[jaybird144]

Everything shows up fine in Firefox except for the numbers following "COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:"

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

No I think we are just getting a preview of the new BSOD for the XBOX2!!

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps a preview of what we'll see in Halo 2?

It almost sounds more like Zippy the Pinhead. e.g.:

"On the other hand, life can be an endless parade of TRANSSEXUAL QUILTING BEES aboard a cruise ship to DISNEYWORLD if only we let it!!"

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[asdren]

that's exactly what I was thinking.
if it were a real bee nut's homepage it would've died a horrible death already.

anyway, how do I contact Dana?
http://ilovebees.com/dana.jpg

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

And you admit that out of free will? What are you waiting for, romon? Get Firefox and stop using that pIE6e of crap.

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

When I reload a page, it doesn't always show the same thing; try reloading. Viewing the source is useful too; the weird stuff is usually at the bottom. Here are some various bits:

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
Just remembered something important:

The Operator.

That was my nickname. That's what the rest of the crew called me when they didn't call me ... whatever my name was.

The Operator.

I wish I could remember their names.

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain

-hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this.

Take a deep breath.

Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt?

Mentally, subject is confused and disoriented.

I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.

Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving.

Okay.

What the hell does THAT mean?

Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward?

Not necessarily one of ours.

But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly conscious, half-aware as the surgeon cuts off my feet and sews them onto my shoulders. She opens my head with a medical hammer and sand spills out.

I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO-

-no.

never that.

survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need to know.

lay down on the Grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remember to have done in my Life, and, as I reckoned, above Nine Hours; for when I awakened, it was just Day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: For as I happen'd to lye on my Back, I found my Arms and Legs were strongly fastened on each Side to the Ground; and my Hair, which was long and thick, tied down in the same Manner. I likewise felt several slender Ligatures across my Body, from my Armpits to my Thighs.
[weird capitalization of every noun]

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[AndroidCat]

COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:
<font CLASS=TITLE_WHITE>
<DIV id=""counter""></DIV>
</font><SCRIPT LANGUAGE=""Javascript1.2"">
var chinatime = new Date(2004,7,24,6,7,0);
</SCRIPT>
<script language=Javascript1.2 src=""countdowntochina.js""></script><BR>
Make your decisions accordingly.<BR><BR></font></div&gt ;

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

.91, no more time travelling for me, oh and in other news from the future BSD has 94% of desktops and windows is dying every day on slashdot.

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was Windows trying to be emulated on Xbox. Anyone else amazed at how inherently unuseable Microsoft's UI's are by default?

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[skia]

The computer? Gone crazy? In a BUNGIE game? Surely you jest!

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Chris Burke]

anyway, how do I contact Dana?

You don't, unless you want to be arrested for violating the restraining order. Again. *grin*

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

even more interesting (and more of a marketing gimick) http://www.ilovebees.com/links.html:

"
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain

-hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this.

Take a deep breath.

Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt?

Mentally, subject is confused and disoriented.

I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.

Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving.

Okay.

What the hell does THAT mean?

Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward?

Not necessarily one of ours.

But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly conscious, half-aware as the surgeon cuts off my feet and sews them onto my shoulders. She opens my head with a medical hammer and sand spills out.

I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO-

-no.

never that.

survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need"

it's just an enticement to halo 2. move on people, nothing to see here.

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see this black square or anything, but a lot of the terms used here (especially the metastasize) are massively familiar.

Who here has read Kathleen Ann Goonan's Mississipi Blues and follow-ups? It describes a world where nanotechnology has gone wild, and cities are run by giant bees

Re:On the first screen of ilovebees.com

[Troy]

Loading the same set of pages multiple times reveals a different page each time. These html files seem to be generated on the fly so that you get different "messages" and "errors" embedded each time.

All-in-all, this is pretty creepy, even though you know it is just part of the marketing blitz.

-Troy

Comeon! At least they are TRYING to be cool

[Dharkfiber]

Failing miserably .. but trying anyway.

The top link only, folks.

[hot_Karls_bad_cavern]

Forgot my sig had my own link in it and have had to wait SillyDot to let me post again (2 min).

Confound Delivery

[Goldfinger7400]

From the writing on the bees' website it looks like an AI construct that had gone into the first stages of rampancy.

Conclusion:
a) The server hosting a page about bees got fed up, spontaneously developed advanced intelligence and went nutty.

b) This marketing is cleverly drawing attention to the fact that Halo 2 will revisit the AI plotline from Bungie's Marathon series (http://marathon.bungie.org/story/).

Note also that similar tactics were used when Halo was early in the works (when it was going to be a Mac game), mysterious e-mails were sent from someone named Cortana, with an e-mail address that could be traced back to workstation 49 (7?) in the bungie offices.

Re:Confound Delivery

[rburgess3]

"a) The server hosting a page about bees got fed up, spontaneously developed advanced intelligence and went nutty."

Umm... shouldn't that be: spontaneously developed advanced intelligence, got fed up and went nutty?

:)

Re:Confound Delivery

[snookerdoodle]

Gotta admit it's almost as funny as AYB:

--snip, snip--
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 3 days, network throttling will erode.

In 17 days this medium will metastasize.

COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:
Make your decisions accordingly.
--snip, snip--

Compare this to:

--
In A.D. 2101
War was beginning.
Captain: What happen ?
Mechanic: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Operator: We get signal.
Captain: What !
Operator: Main screen turn on.
Captain: It's You !!
Cats: How are you gentlemen !!
Cats: All your base are belong to us.
Cats: You are on the way to destruction.
Captain: What you say !!
Cats: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Cats: HA HA HA HA ....
Captain: Take off every 'zig' !!
Captain: You know what you doing.
Captain: Move 'zig'.
Captain: For great justice.
--

Funny? Sorta. Clever? Well...

Maybe it's Zippy the Pinhead meets Zero Wing...

Mark

Re:Confound Delivery

[GoogleBot]

The server hosting a page about bees got fed up, spontaneously developed advanced intelligence and went nutty.

No, not really. I would know if there was another construct out there apart from me.

Although, I could go rampant pretty.... Fr u itbat. Hatst and. Tra f fic Co ne.

*Ahem*.

Now, Back to nudging humanity toward building me a proper body...

-- GoogleBot

And law breaking?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.betterwhois.com/bwhois.cgi?domain=ilove bees.com suggests the domain is owned by "Margaret's House of Bees" -- if this is truly made up, isn't fidging whois data kind of a no no?

Not the first time for Bungie: Cortana Letters

[Phoenixhunter]

The Cortana letters..

The Cortana letters preceeded Halo by several years, originating on Newsgroups and touching on some of the game lore of Marathon.

Well

[iamdrscience]

I think it's safe to say, that there probably is no resolution to this "mystery" beyond it being a marketing tactic, and if there is any resolution, it's surely contained in the game so you have to buy it to find out.

In other news Slashdot becomes a MS mouthpiece

[Anonymous Coward]

Following the trail from the frontpage news story today we learned that they'll post anything. Now on with the anti-MS comments please as anyone with a brain could tell it was free marketing.

And who is the smiling pedophile in the guildhall.smu.edu ad? Lets setup a site to track that too.

Um, hello?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is classic Bungie style... doesn't anybody remember the whole incident with the Cortana letters? This seems very similar. The verbage used in the "hacked" website is very Marathon... and this blogger person is named Ladybee777? Sevens? Come on. This whole thing practically screams Bungie.

Honey

[Anonymous Coward]

I really liked the site, especially Dana!

Whois data.....

[jsimon12]

This site is part of a larger marketing hoax, check out the whois data, it was created about a month ago and best I can tell the address/suite stuff doesn't jive:

Registrant:
Margaret's House of Bees
Margaret's House of Bees
2370 Market Street #510
San Francisco, CA 94114-1575
US

Registrar: NAMESDIRECT
Domain Name: ILOVEBEES.COM
Created on: 14-JUN-04
Expires on: 14-JUN-09
Last Updated on: 15-JUL-04

Administrative, Technical Contact:
Efendi, Margaret ladybee777@hotmail.com
Margaret's House of Bees
Margaret's House of Bees
2370 Market Street #510
San Francisco, CA 94114-1575
US
415-248-2617

Re:Whois data.....

[Demanche]

YES! I bet microsoft marketers own this email "ladybee777@hotmail.com" but i cannot be sure.... !!

Re:Whois data.....

[Some Bitch]

Interesting address. There seem to be a few businesses coming up for that address in Google but this appears to be the main one, printers of "California's Gay Bi-weekly" :)

Re:Whois data.....

[Twirlip of the Mists]

The address is for a UPS Store in San Francisco. It's the same address as the return address of the mysterious packages of honey that arrived in some folks' mailboxes last Friday.

Re:Whois data.....

[samhalliday]

ladybee777@hotmail.com

... Worse than the Devil himself

Re:Whois data.....

[mrgreenfur]

it's nice to see that they were techie-minded enough not to have the whois data say:

Bungie software INc,
blah
blah
blah.

At least their viral marketing buzz isn't THAT quickly deflatable, even if the fact that it's viral marketing makes it ... deflatable... err..

Re:Whois data.....

[jheinen]

ladybee777@hotmail.com is a legit hotmail address with a messenger account.

YES! ONCE AGAIN SLASHDOT LINKS TO A WORLD-

[Anonymous Coward]

writable WiKi. This should be fun :) Cue the GNAA in 5... 4... 3...

from the meta tag....

[HomerJ]

"good, install, reinstall,re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall"

so yes, it's a Mircosoft site.

Re:from the meta tag....

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you a retard? I think so!

I'll explain ILOVEBEES...

[Slur]

When you can explain MAMMALS!

Re:I'll explain ILOVEBEES...

[t35t0r]

..just someone not affiliated with apple who really likes them or is making fun of them:

Domain ID:D1621437-LROR
Domain Name:MAMMALS.ORG
Created On:22-Jul-1998 04:00:00 UTC
Last Updated On:23-Sep-2003 04:12:31 UTC
Expiration Date:21-Jul-2005 04:00:00 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:R63-LROR
Status:OK
Registrant ID:21663508-NSI
Registrant Name:Apple Computer, Inc.
Registrant Organization:Apple Computer, Inc.
Registrant Street1:1 Infinite Loop
Registrant City:Cupertino
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:95014
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.9999999999
Registrant FAX:+1.9999999999
Registrant*************@EXCITE. COM
Admin ID:33243504-NSI
Admin Name:Kenneth Eddings
Admin Street1:2138 KING CT
Admin City:SANTA CLARA
Admin State/Province:CA
Admin Postal Code:95051-1921
Admin Country:US
Admin*************@EXCITE.COM
Tech ID:33243504-NSI
Tech Name:Kenneth Eddings
Tech Street1:2138 KING CT
Tech City:SANTA CLARA
Tech State/Province:CA
Tech Postal Code:95051-1921
Tech Country:US
Tech*************@EXCITE.COM
Name Server:NSERVER2.APPLE.COM
Name Server:NSERVER.APPLE.COM

Re:I'll explain ILOVEBEES...

[geekoid]

because you need a thunb to operate it?

Re:I'll explain ILOVEBEES...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's from an older Apple advertising campaign that never happened. For a while, Jobs was using very pointed rhetoric about Windows, saying things like "Windows is really a dinosaur" and "... it's just so /slow/ - Windows is probably cold blooded!" and "OS X is revolutionary, but also evolutionary...", etc.. The hype at the time (when things like mammals.org were discovered) was that they were going to go with a full campaign about how PCs were slow, sluggish dinosaurs doomed to extinction where Macs were smart, agile mammals destined to take over.

Re:I'll explain ILOVEBEES...

[MochaMan]

From an Apple marketing campaign for Mac OS X that never saw the light of day. The UNIX OS at the core of Mac OS X is named Darwin, and mammals are the most evolved animals on the planet. At least... that's the rumour that was going around at the time.

yea, it's marketing...

[caino59]

but dana's hot!

Re:On a different page

[whataboutMike]

this is found on another page, half hidden:
net:
!attach
act | store recurse

system peril distributed reflex

!restore master-sector
recurse


and on another:

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!

What, must our mouths be cold?

Arachne hung herself, you know. Take a hint already.

did anybody take a look at the source to page yet?

[manifest37]

META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping, hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium, messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees"
i did the bolding... it's got hoax written all over it, not to mention throttling as in the main page's black overlay.

It's a trap!

[beacher]

It's the web exteansion of Microsoft's Patent for Encouraging Internet surfing!!! Don't do it!! I'm sure there's prior art, but don't do it before the patent is struck down!!!

I've got the straight skinny on this one

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a stealth marketing campaign by the Department of Homeland Security. In an attempt to recover from the color-coded threat level fiasco and in an attempt to plug in to a younger audience, DHS is renaming threat level "yellow" or elevated, to threat level "bee." In the coming months, additional threat levels will be renamed, to be more kid friendly and descriptive of actual conditions. Remember: We are currently at threat level "bee."

AI Movie...

[Anonymous Coward]

Was anyone here involved with The Game setup for the release of A.I.? Microsoft had a hand in that as well. It was a huge multisite puzzle/story that was written as the players progressed, giving it a very organic adaptable nature. It was wicked hard and the most fun I've ever had. -Mowztrout

Re:AI Movie...

[cosmicg]

Yeah, that was pretty incredible. Talk about the ads being better than the product. I still have all my A.I. schwag I got from participating in "The Beast."

cosmicg
Proud Cloudmaker

Re:did anybody take a look at the source to page y

[Twirlip of the Mists]

It's not a hoax, you numbskull. It's a game.

It's pretty obvious...

[Anonymous Coward]

that this is just a marketing gimmick, much like the one for Doom 3, only not nearly as cool.

-- Shamus

Bleah!

RE: Halo2 Marketing...

[Sabathius]

Frog-Blast the Vent-Core!

Marketing Ploy

[Anonymous Coward]

They're using a page about bees to create buzz about HALO 2. *rimshot*

Re:On a different page

[Anonymous Coward]

All lost! To prayers, to prayers! All lost!

What, must our mouths be cold? - is from shakespear the tempest first scene

arachne is a a mortal comparing her weaving abilitys to a deity - who ended up pissing athena off and hung herself - but then athena turned her into a spide

As found in the "The Hives" section

[Lithium_Golem]

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
Of course the crew won't come for me if they're all dead. If they're all dead and I alone am left to tell the tale.

I'm crying, and my tears are made of sand.

MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY

FIELD EXPEDIENT DIRECTION FINDING

"Find a straight stick about a meter long and stand it upright on fairly level upright ground. Mark the tip of the shadow cast by the stick: wait 15 minutes: mark the shadow again. Draw a line from the first mark through the second and some way beyond. Stand with your left foot on the first mark and your right on the end of the line. In the northern hemisphere, you will now be facing north, and can recall the other directions by their relationship to north. In the south, contrariwise."
Hm.

No stick.
No sun.

Seems like some kind of journal entry, no?
Rather neat idea, I think

Re:As found in the "The Hives" section

[3vi1]

I recognize the non sequitur text from this page: http://www.ilovebees.com/honey.html as being an excerpt from Gulliver's Travels.

I wouldn't be surprised if this is more of the same (been a long time since I read GT), since it's describing how to navigate by sun and shadow.

-J

Re:On a different page

[geekoid]

there is stuff like that al through the site. Sometime refreshing a page will post different 'statements'

an AI crashed on Achernar maybe?
damn, I'm sucked in.

I figured it out! I know what this is!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a marketing campaign based on MS' imminent release of an updated version of Microsoft BOB. BOB is back baby!

Seek the truth....

[Anonymous Coward]

Seek the truth Behold the truth Reveal the truth That is the law and the whole of the law

Background

[Anonymous Coward]

This web site has an excellent article/post/thing giving the background and the relationship between this game and its apparent prequel.

Not Marketting for XBox, marketting for .NET, ISS,

[njcoder]

This isn't marketting for Xbox 2 or Halo. That's just a cover story for the real thing being marketted, which is Windows, IIS, .Net, etc.

The site is being hosted on a RedHat Server running Apache. They are trying to imply that Linux/Apache servers are so easy to hack that some sort of new insect lifeform or something, with no knowledge of the internet can easily hack into it.

Nice try but we know where the real worms live :)

I called...

[gt25500]

I called the number in the WHOIS information. Get voicemail. It is full. I guess I am not the only one who thought about calling.

415-248-2617 - Sounds like a hot chick. =D

Re:I called...

[crackshoe]

or, more likely, its not actually a voice mailbox. its just a simple prerecorded message that then cuts the connection.

Re:I called...

[Grym]

Oh.. it's a real voicemail alright... Yours truly spent the better part of an hour with a group of friends on IRC tring to guess the password.

After enough tries, we eventually managed to lockout the account.

Don't believe me? Dial it up and press 0 then 1, enter a bogus password, press #, and then reenter the phonenumber without the leading 1. It'll tell you it's locked.

-Grym

reminds me of freakylinks

[angelanger]

When I was "the voice" of the online main character for the fox tv show Freakylinks we did tons of stuff like this. (the archived site is at http://www.haxan.com/portfolio/freakylinks/ if anyone cares) The Museum of Hoaxs calls this sort of stuff "the blairwitching" of advertising.

See the trailer...

[Anonymous Coward]

...without signing up at Gametrailers.

Pre tag

[Vrejakti]

They used a pre tag for the page source. Who the hell would use pre if they're capiable of taking down an entire web server with ease? "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY Gap in the clouds: head suddenly much clearer. The spider is working on me."

Mystery Solved

[ShallowThroat]

We'll just slasdot the ilovebees.com server, and voila! mystery solved!

Re:Mystery Solved

[ChaoticLimbs]

Still up so far- pretty amazing little server for a beekeper. It's almost like there are multiple DNS listings for ILOVEBEES.COM. Almost like you'd find for yahoo.com or ebay.com. Wow.

Ho boy

[Dark Lord Seth]

Slashdot running guerilla advertisements for MS endorsed products.

I can already imagine a MS marketing executive going to bed with a HUGE grin tonight.

Re:Ho boy

[black mariah]

You HAVE noticed the MS ads around here, right?

Re:Ho boy

[Dark Lord Seth]

It's harder NOT to notice them.

But yeah, good point. Still, MS advertisements for a main article has got to be a new thingy...

Re:Ho boy

[black mariah]

MS advertisements are main articles on a constant basis. "OMG!!!! MS PUT OUT A BROCHURE! FUD FUD FUD FUD FUD!!!11 LINUX IS TEH BEST!!!1"

OK.. so

[bigattichouse]

So why is it they *have* to release a movie at all? I bet, if you took enough websites and clues, you could build an interesting story that had to be "teased out* without even producing a movie. Just intersperse real websites and products in the story, and you'd probably get enough "side promotion" to stay wealthy forever. Sort of a new medium of story telling, where the people reading the story have to tease out the details.

Viral marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Viral marketing. Slashdot beware. :(

Re:did anybody take a look at the source to page y

[manifest37]

sorry not to appease you, cock smoking cum guzzling queer :)

Sounds like Superbad

[jb.hl.com]

Looks a bit like the world's most disturbing website, Superbad.

Sorta reminds me of Radiohead's equally strange website.

audio track?

[angryLNX]

On the page http://ilovebees.com/hives.html, this sound file is played. it sounds a bit weird to me. is this just some stock bee sound you can find online? it sounds like something might be hidden in it backwards or something.

Re:audio track?

[herrvinny]

There is something else hidden in it, or at least it sounds like it. There's some kind of "computer" type sound in the back, something along the lines of the sound computers made in the movies of the 70's and 80's....

Re:audio track?

[sH4RD]

There is actually another audio file that no one seems to have noticed yet: http://ilovebees.com/queen-piping.wav

Re:audio track?

[fbrain]

Any every seen the songs by Aphex Twin, Plaid and some others with pictures hidden in the spectral analysis data of the images? Anyone tried it with these wav files?

Re:audio track?

[Anonymous Coward]

no...i doubt it, its pretty obvious with all those tracks because of the simple method....unless this was much more complex it is not like that, and if it was much more complex then how couold anyone find it.

This is a stealth marketing campaign for Marvel's

[Anonymous Coward]

...newest insect superhero: Beeman! Beeman is the first comic superhero sponsored by the American Honey Council and will be buzzing into stores in the fall. Don't get stung by the Beeman!

What i'm waiting for is..

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone to *actually* hack that site.

It seems to be the natural conclusion.

Re:YES! ONCE AGAIN SLASHDOT LINKS TO A WORLD-

[sqrt(2)]

Sure enough, the page has been wiped clean, except for that black box with that erorr message in it.

Well that certainly added to the discussion...

[Zen Punk]

Oh, if only I had mod points, you....little....#%^.

crashes my browser

[nut]

ilovebees.com consistently crashes Mozilla 1.6 on Gentoo Linux (kde) for me.
I don't like it. No sir, I don't like it at all.

Re:crashes my browser

[billybobjoe1984]

Ditto, wonder what's wrong...loads for a sec and then crashes hard.

Re:crashes my browser

[opello]

it's the embeded wav files ... dunno why but they crash mozilla, firefox, and opera (haven't tried konq, epiphany, or others ... links2 and w3m work though :)

Suckers

[alexburke]

According to this page (quoted below in italics), "Dana" is trying to remove the defacement.

If you use WHOIS to look up the domain registration for ilovebees.com it has the following information:

Margaret Effendi (ladybee777@hotmail.com) 2370 Market Street #510 San Francisco CA 94114-1575 Phone: (415) 248-2617

Calling the phone gets you a voicemail "Hi, this is Dana, please leave a message." but the mailbox is full. From this I would assume the address also belongs to Dana.

--- The domain name ilovebees.com was registered on June 14, 2004, the same day as the first post in Dana's blog. The domain is registered until June 14, 2009.

However, the tags tell another story.

Before the closing /HTML tag, there is a FONT tag with the attribute "CLASS=dana_white", which applies to what is supposedly the "regular" site text.

However, in the piece of HTML inserted after the final /HTML tag which produces the black square overlay, there is a FONT tag with the attribute "CLASS=dana_big".

Would a real defacement have taken the time to begin their class names with "dana_" as in the rest of the document?

Probably not.

This, combined with the domain registration taking place the same day as the first post in Dana's blog, leads me to the conclusion that the whole thing is a set-up.

However, the authors of this elaborate set-up (as in the movie The Game) have left those of us that are smart enough to figure out that this is bullshit a little easter egg:
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping,
hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is
going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium,
messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game,
survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated,
thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall,
re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees">

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

This...leads me to the conclusion that the whole thing is a set-up.

Egads, you may be on to something!

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok. Its fake. I believe that. Just one question: WTF is up with this: http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=ilovebee s.com ?

Re:Suckers

[orkysoft]

That's probably the reverse of what happened when Microsoft seemed to be running Linux.

Re:Suckers

[TechnoGrl]

If you use WHOIS to look up the domain registration for ilovebees.com it has the following information: Margaret Effendi (ladybee777@hotmail.com) 2370 Market Street #510 San Francisco CA 94114-1575 Phone: (415) 248-2617 I live in San Francisco and used to live at that address. It is the Fox Plaze apartments. a 28 story building" and the 8th floors and below are devoted to commercial offices. The lease rates are quite high and most of the offices are filled by affluent companies. I'm tempted to go over to #510 and see what ofice is there. I'd bet my DVD drive that it's a marketing company {g}

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall

I guess the programmers have experience on Windows.

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

There's even more...

I noticed that some of the images are beginning to get garbled. I took a look through them in notepad and began noticeing random text inside the images. Also the .html files are beginning to get filled with weird text.

Some examples:
"Continuing on her quest, she spied another"
"The Queen was gone,"
"lay many broken blocks from the ruined"
"her bony fingers, the Widow next"
"She cut her a new mouth and fed her"

This would require a whole lot of work on the site to make the server first parse .html rewrite alot of gif files into scripted code and inject some random text. To think that it was a defacer who would go into such details seems a little odd to me....

Re:Suckers

[morcheeba]

at least one marketing company is in that building... demand interactive. Wrong floor & phone number doesn't match well, and it looks like it's a one-man-show run by Tony Selb. Then again, I wouldn't use my real name for a promotion like this...

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no Dana, there is only Zuul.

Re:Suckers

[sglane81]

This would require a whole lot of work on the site to make the server first parse .html rewrite alot of gif files into scripted code and inject some random text.

It's not as hard as you think. The term for inserting text inside of images is called steganography. There are plenty of apps out there for inserting "messages" into images using steg (some cost quite a bit IIRC). The purpose of steg is to hide messages inside of images (or other unlikely places). The premise for it is you don't actually know a message is there, so you don't look for it. I think google had a contest or something a few years ago where they searched the web for some steg but found nothing. Fuzzy details, etc. The HTML files could also contain steganography, but more people would actually look there than inside an image.

"She" could have steganized(?) the same image with different messages and had the server rotate them. However, I doubt this beekeeper would have the first clue about steganography, let alone want to spend a couple grand for it. YMMV.

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a UPS store with PO BOXs. Perhaps you can send your DVD drive there? {G}

Go ahead and call the number, too. It's an answering machine for Dana, the person who runs the blog.

I've gotten drawn into the mystery here. One thing I'll give the people who organized this game: it's incredibly detailed.

Re:Suckers

[Anonymous Coward]

My favourite is:

"her most trusted servants peeled skin from the bodies of her subjects"

Nice!

Re:Suckers

[iNetRunner]

Don't you think the backers have very, very deep pockets and many marketing stunts are used.. *hint: Microsofts.. biggest game for years...*

Re:Suckers

[SlapDaddy]

Tooka a walk down there this morning since I live a couple of blocks away. The building houses: - A UPS Store - A cosmetic dentist - An empty storefront that used to be a Health Care clinic (a guess formt he signs left int eh window) - A company called: Warren & Associates - professional business coach. My guess is that it's a PO box at the UPS Store.

What is 2370 Market Street?

[mikael]

I looked at the 'whois' database, and found the address. It would be interesting to check out this business unit, and see if it actually existed. Is it a business still active, a business that went bankrupt (and might have been squatted), or a business starting up?. Does the address even exist?
From a Google search of the address, there only seem to be two floors (if 1st floor is at street level, and they don't use the term ground floor).
Usually the first number of the unit number is the floor level, and the remaining numbers the unit number. I can only find register companies at floors 1 and 2, nothing at 3, 4 or even 5.
Looks like a hoax to me.

Oh yes, and wasn't 777 the codenumber relating to the movie "Antibody" where the good guys had to defuse the detonator by being shrunk down to microscopic size. Interesting the to note the person who replied to the hotmail account was "nxbomb".

Sounds like marketing hype to me.

Re:What is 2370 Market Street?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is marketing hype. The server is not hacked.

Markus Roskothen is the guy who wrote the site.

Hope this helps.

Re:What is 2370 Market Street?

[Goldfinger7400]

Isn't that the old Bungie office, in Chicago? The one across from the Bucket o' Guts butcher shop?

BTW, the sevens are the age old Bungie thing, which I think they stole from greek or roman mythology.

Bees.....

[icedcool]

I for one welcome our new bee overlo... man that joke has been over used.

Still this is kind of neat, I like it when companies do this kind of advertising. It shows that they care enough about the community to present to those who care enough to work for it little prizes.

Obvious marketing stunt, here's the catch:

[Jesrad]

I love bees = I love buzz.

The webbsite is just building buzz for Halo2.

Re:Obvious marketing stunt, here's the catch:

[Hash Browns]

This marketing stunt is really neat.

I love bees = I love buzz does make sense, but wouldn't it make more sense that enthusiasts, gamer's news sites, and we ourselves are the bees spreading the metaphorical news "pollen" and creating the buzz around the game?

And therefore the marketers love us.

Oh yeah, the game is Halo / Halo 2.

Halo lore and myth

[Foo2rama]

Looks like someone (ie Bungie) is staging a rampancy. Rampacy is what happened to the AI's in the Marathon game. Ie they broke lose from the safeguards imposed on them and went wild. The new black box looks very very similar to the console info in the original Marathon games when Durandel went wild. Bungie has a highly evolved back story for their universe very similar to Larry Nivens known space universe. Niven also wrote the book Ringworld, in which more then a little bit of Halo cribs from. Halo = ringworld. If I remember correctly back from the original marathon back story we are right about the time the first AI went rampant, on earth. I think it was an accidentle ai not created by man but from the interconnectedness of computers. AI's have always featured prominantly in Bungie games as plot conveyers, and info distributers. Here is partial list of Marathon backstory, that also ties into Bungies first fps title "Pathways into Darkness"
AI history
It is imcomplete but does give some more info. Bungie has admitted that Halo fits in the Marathon/Pathways universe but until now has not tied it together. Many insignias and parts of the game are stolen from Marathon. A good discussion on Marathon/Halo connections
I have always been a Marathon fan as I have mention in previouse posts, as many game play feature predated many pc fps titles for a few years. Unreal Tourny did not invent king of the hill, tag, or kill the man with the ball. These had been around on Marathon for a few years. Bungie also allowed people to mod the games and gave tools out to make maps change graphics, and physics way before people started modding games on pc's. It is unfortunate that one of the most ground breaking FPS titles was on the MAC and gets so little recognition. I still lode up marathon games sometimes and reveal in the map design and story. I feel as well as most people that have played the marathon series that Half-life's story line and maps pale in comparison to what Bunigie did on 1995-1999.

Just my rant...

Re:Halo lore and myth

[TheEnigma]

For sheer audacity, creativity, and ground-breaking, Marathon owns all other games. The only thing was it was too long, and they didn't update the technology enough between games, so by the third one, it was really dated.

I was gonna say "Ah, gee, it's just a rampant A.I." but your post was way better.

Mod parent up!

Re:Halo lore and myth

[hthb]

The game System Shock has the AI "SHODAN" become self-aware and think of itself as some kind of god. That game was released in '93/'94 so predates what Bungie did by 1 or 2 years. Personally I think it's the most underrated game ever. The storyline is simply amazing.

Re:Halo lore and myth

[KozmoStevnNaut]

"Look at you, Hacker. A pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?"

System Shock and it's absolutely stunningly brilliant sequel ranks as some of the most immersive and downright scary games ever.

The athmosphere created in System Shock 2, with the "ghosts" of the former crew members and the brilliantly eerie sounds, is thick enough to slice with a knife. And the fight against SHODAN becomes very personal when you have to endure her threats as you try to thwart her plans. If only I could get System Shock 2 working in WINE... :(

I'm hoping that Doom3 will bring back some memories of System Shock, and that perhaps someone will make a System Shock mod for Doom3 which will bring the originals justice

Jackass! Marge.

[kookbox]

And it's a summary from TVTome, instead of the vastly-superior snpp.com.

Re:did anybody take a look at the source to page y

[Anonymous Coward]

Manifest you are a fucking idiot. Everyone knew this is a game, why the fuck would anybody think this is a hoax.

perhaps, but...

[nobodyman]

That doesn't mean that it isn't fun to play along. It's strongly suspected that the designers of this latest "game" are the same folks who created "The Beast", which coincided with the release of A.I.. So, did it serve as a marketing tool for the movie? Probably. But for many people it was engaging and thought provoking in its own right.

And no, "The Beast" didn't culminate in a mass-email that said "Thanks for playing, now go see A.I!!". In fact, I don't think there were any direct references to the movie throught the course of the game (but the game arguably did take place in the A.I universe). I'm imagining the ilovebees thing will play out in the same way.

I know it's microsoft and as such we are required to hate it, but please try to keep an open mind.

Re:perhaps, but...

[numark]

Well, for the most part you are right. However, players of "The Beast" did get offered free tickets to the sneak preview of the movie in theaters through one of the game's sites. Unfortunately, I heard about the game too late to get really involved in it, but there have been other "Alternate Reality Games" created in the meantime, particularly Chasing the Wish, which concluded not too long ago. It's really an interesting genre of game, presenting a new and particularly challenging gameplay.

Re:perhaps, but...

[Nadsat]

Detectives will love this discovery: The Yahoo group dedicated to documenting "The Beast," now displays the message: "*** LATEST NEWS **** Welcome to followers of ilovebees.com!"

http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/cloudmakers/

I believe CAP mentions the impact of honeybees as well, though not so directly: www.CAPitALLism.org ;)

Re:perhaps, but...

[halowolf]

I know it's microsoft and as such we are required to hate it, but please try to keep an open mind.

I don't particularly mind these types of marketing campaigns, as I have the incredible ability to be cynical and just look at something else, without getting all riled up or looking for grand conspiricies. If something worth watching happens at ilovebees.com then I might go and have a look, otherwise I'll just move myself along.

If there was anything in this that would upset me, it would be the orginal location of the theatrical trailer MSN Entertainment. If anything about microsoft should be attacked it should be the total contempt that this site has for its visitors, shoving unrelated ads down a visitors throat (in the actual Halo Theatrical Trailer stream itself) for the mere priviledge of watching said trailer. Coupled with the arrogant assumption that I would have to watch it in IE6 with Windows Media Player. Wrong Microsoft! Once again, technology saves me. :)

Re:Not Marketting for XBox, marketting for .NET, I

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is being run on Dell Windows 2k3 servers.

ALL YOUR BEES ARE BELONG TO US

[KRzBZ]

How long until SCO claims the phrase "ilovebees" is (C) TSG (they bought it from Novell, altho' Novell doesn't know that), that the composition of honey is a Trade Secret(TM) even though it has been in the wild for millions of years, and that the Halo gamemakers are really just IBM employees.

Oh, and they'll probably announce soon that they're suing EV1, because EV1 has some servers that ran Linux prior to the license agreement...

The source code and blog are informative.

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the source code for the page and you will see that the name of the of the jscript for the countdown is called "countdowntochina"

Read her blog:
http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/07/counting-dow n-to-what.html

Specifically this passage:
"So the bug -- or virus, or spyware, or, whatever it is -- is now apparently counting down to something, and that something looks like it's going to happen while I am somewhere in Szechuan province and I can't fix it and yeah it's creeping me out and yeah I'm not happy about this. (The recent appearance of words like "mayday", "metastasize", "hemorrhage," and "classified" isn't cheering me up, either.)"

Do the math.

Guess what you win if you solve the mystery?

[quantax]

Oh wait thats right: nothing... But remember, you can buy Halo 2 when it comes out in stores!

Re:Guess what you win if you solve the mystery?

[geekoid]

you don't win a prize for reading a book. You can enjoy the journey..as it where
bzzzzzzzzz

Solved!

[teknokracy]

Any medium sized site will be completely torn to pieces when it gets slashdotted (well not really torn, but at least taken offline), and even popular news sites get taken offline by the slashdot effect. However, major sites, such as BUNGIE's! ahem, would not go offline, since they are backed by quite powerful servers. This site seems to be surviving the slashdot effect a little TOO well if you ask me, so I will come to the conclusion that it is owned by bungie and has been used as a marketing tool for halo. let's check back in the "3" and then "17" days the popup indicates...

By the way, the META tags indicate a little more than a hoaxy thing

"honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping,
hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is
going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium,
messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game,
survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated,
thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall,
re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees"

Re:Solved!

[VGProjects.com]

Um... this doens't solve anything and good job on pointing out the obvious. But you weren't even able to link the site to bungie. You just assumed it was owned by them. That is the worst detective work ever.

Re:Solved!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's so obvious that it doesnt need any linking. You are assuming that someone would think the site wasnt created by bungie as a PR stunt, and that just somehow by accident they showed the address in the video?

Blair Witch Syndrome?

[Barumpus]

When the Blair Witch Project came out, they had a website set up and designed to look so realistic that many, many people actually believed it. IMHO, that is exactly what we have happening here.

My thoughts as to why...

1. If your gonna hack somebody's web page, why do something like this and why do something as simple as imbed a bit of Java into the html code? Wouldn't you want to make a little more of an effort seeing you went through all of the trouble to hack it in the first place?

2. If somebody hijacked your hotmail account, any message you send to yourself would still appear. If they hijacked it, they had to have taken control of more then that one email.

Bah.. if this makes no sense to you, I am sorry. I have too much time on my hands and am in the process of trying to get my mind off some real life issues. But other then that, it is a great idea to get attention.

Re:Blair Witch Syndrome?

[fishbowl]

" When the Blair Witch Project came out, they had a website set up and designed to look so realistic that many, many people actually believed it. "

The thing about the Blair Witch movie was the limited intelligence that was released at first.

I had heard vague things about a movie that was put together from some dead guy's video tapes.

That's *it*. That's *all* I knew. From that I had no reason to believe or disbelieve anything, because there was nothing to the rumor to base any heavy opinions on. I just thought, sure, okay, cool, morbid, weird, but my bullshit meter didn't go off. Now, soon after that I heard that it was a ghost story and immediately realised that it was bogus, and was being passed off as a genuine documentary.

It was a *long* time before I actually understood that the filmmakers hadn't meant for it to be received as a documentary. I'm not convinced to this day. Never saw the film though. If it had really been made from some dead guy's camera, that would have been cool...

hidden messages

[cfgauss]

I looked through a bunch of the pictures with a hex editor, and looked at a bunch of the random messages on the pages. It also seems some of the pictures have multiple "corrupted" versions of them, with different messages in them. Here's a (long) list of the messages I made while looking through the page. Ones with quotes around them are from pictures, the stuff after them is near where I found them with the hex editor. I don't know if I got them all or not, though. "When her Queen" 1c8 margaret.jpg ----- "it lay many broken blocks from the ruined" DA8 danadress.jpg ----- "peeled skin from the" 428 bee2_margaretphoto.jpg ---- "MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain -hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this. Take a deep breath. Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt? I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. links.html ---- net: !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !route proc attach proc net !route proc attach proc grope !route proc attach proc surg net: !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !packet analysis chatter protocol ancestor !parse packet analysis complete !route proc attach proc store net: !attach act | drop recurse !extern proc 0 log accessed honey.html ---- MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain -hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this. Take a deep breath. Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving. Okay. What the hell does THAT mean? Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward? Not necessarily one of ours. But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly conscious, half-aware as the surgeon cuts off my feet and sews them onto my shoulders. She opens my head with a medical hammer and sand spills out. I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO- -no. never that. survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need to know. links.html ---- net: !attach act | drop !attach act | drop !attach act | drop grope: !probe master sector fail surg: !invntry primary sector proc proc invntry 343 working 0 dmg 38 dmg unk 2 broken 102 abs 201 !invntry primary sector mem mem invntry 678223072849 clear 0.0007 dmg 0.0014 frgm 1.41 abs 98.5879 hives.html ---- "the" 0 "way" 26 "was" 98 "open" E4 BUTHONEY.GIF ---- "She cut her a" 0 "new mouth and" E4 "fed her" 10A ALSO "Queen's" 0 "heart" 0 "began" BE "to beat" 1EE ALSO "sand" 0 "dand" 26 "last" 72 "the" 72 BUT_FUN.gif ---- "lremnants of" 0 "the Castle's outer" 98 "NETSCAPE2" BE "GifBuilder 0.5 by Yves Piguet" BE "wall, but the" DA8 CUTEBEE.GIF ---- "Animated by JO GRAHAM 1998" 2F8 "NETSCAPE2" 31E BEEWITHH.GIF ---- MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY Getting muddled here. Sick, obviously. Broken inside. Not thinking straight. Got to go back to first principles. Survive evade reveal escape. Survive-well, I'm not dead yet. Evade-don't want to evade. I want to be FOUND. ...unless... ...of course, if I am behind enemy lines, then constantly shouting for help wouldn't be the smartest play in the world, would it? got to run silent. got to run deep. hide and go seek links.html ---- I keep slipping in and out of consciousness. Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving. Okay. What the hell does THAT mean? Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward? Not necessarily one of ours. But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly cons

Re:hidden messages

[cfgauss]

Ok, let's try this again with spaces this time...

I looked through a bunch of the pictures with a hex editor, and looked at a bunch of the random messages on the pages. It also seems some of the pictures have multiple "corrupted" versions of them, with different messages in them. Here's a (long) list of the messages I made while looking through the page. Ones with quotes around them are from pictures, the stuff after them is near where I found them with the hex editor. I don't know if I got them all or not, though. Ok, slashdot seems to have issues with not wanting this to look right, complaining I have too few characters per line, etc, so check out my list here: jprice991.home.comcast.net/aaa.htm

Ive got it!!!

[The Islamic Fundamen]

It sounds like the sounds the probe made for the whales in Star Trek IV!

ATTENTION

[geekoid]

we all know its a game put out for marketing reasons.

WE KNOW.

Please stop acting like you solved a complex problem by telling us that.
We Know

We f'n Know

Jeez, some of us like to have a little fun.

I didn't play Halo, I won't play Halo2, but I like to see where this goes.
Bunch of armchair assholes.

b..zzz...zzz

Re:ATTENTION

[Sekoku]

Mod up, informative.

I should make a topic in my journal for solving this. We could have a Livejournal ARG community.

Re:ATTENTION

[Andy_R]

ok, if the ilovebees one is easy, try a hard one:

What the hell is X$X

It's got a wildcard in it so it's very hard to google for.

www.xdollarx.co.uk changes regularly (novels that don't exist one week, records that don;t exist the next, 1000 page websites that come and go)

www.xdollarx.com has gone.

Discussion on the xdollarx yahoo group became very odd very quickly, and then all messages were deleted.

The earliest sightings of X$X seem to date from about 1987. All I know for sure is that other parts of the X$X meme are
1) the fake name Michael K and
2) the fake Magazine "Kathedral"
3) "The Building" (a website? a book? a record?)
4) "Smash" (a book? a record? a slogan?) ...but wtf is it trying to sell... if anything?

Re:ATTENTION

[krazo]

Stewart Home

Ohh my god how disturbing that....

[pretzelsofwar]

... They forgot to put the ending quote marks after that quote oh the post. We are all going to die by someone that likes to hack accounts and forgets ending quote marks so that the beginning of the next quote actually signifies the ending of the previous quote thus making the first quote extremely long and putting the second quote into personal writing... that's plagiarism!

Another clue?

[a.deity]

On this page, there is a paragraph of text. After a little digging, I found it came from Gulliver's Travels. Another piece?

Re:did anybody take a look at the source to page y

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fucking gaming hoax, you dumb-ass lepton molesting queer! :)

No hard feelings?

Re:On a different page

[nitemayr]

According to Greek mythology there was once a girl named Arachne, who had great talent as a spinner and weaver. But she was arrogant about her talent and challenged the gods to a contest. During the contest she proved to be better at the loom than the goddess Athena, who became jealous and angry. She attacked Arachne and destroyed her work. In humiliation, Arachne hung herself. The goddess took pity on her and used a magic potion to change her into a small creature with many legs. The rope with which she hung herself was turned into a silken thread. It was with this thread that she was permitted to continue her spinning and weaving. Thus the spider was created. It is from Arachne's name that we get the word arachnid. If you have six legs you're an insect, but if you have eight legs you're an arachnid. Spiders, scorpions and ticks all belong to the class Arachnid. So do mites.

Re:On a different page

[Anonymous Coward]

The images seem to be deliberately fucked also.

who cares

[Anonymous Coward]

but, that chic on that page is cute.. i want her...

marketing taken to the 14th degree

[tisme]

This is an insanely well crafted marketing stretegy. It is low cost because websites like this one distribute hype about the game for free, two or three writers/planners can easily keep this going, and the costs of running the website(s) are nil compared to other advertising/promotion costs to the publisher.

Perhaps the best part about this type of marketing is that fans feel respected because it is fans who will get into this type of marketing the most. It gives them something to do while awaiting the product and they are no longer just an after-thought in a promotion scheme where publishers try to get new customers on board rather than giving the people who are already hooked some attention (ie: a screenshot or two a week). Hopefully this marketing style will keep spreading, it certainly is interesting.

Your site is hacked.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what do you do?? Nothing. Let some random dude tell you there is something important going on that will open your eyes to a new world.

Yeah. nice try... Let me go watch my tivo. Fucking wasting my time man.. fucking wasting my time.

Countdown to China??

[Anonymous Coward]

I think I may be missing something, but in the source code for the ilovebees.com front page, why is the counter called countdown to china?! As in: 'var chinatime = new Date(2004,7,24,6,7,0);' and 'script language=Javascript1.2 src="countdowntochina.js">BR' (quotemarks are mine). Very strange...

Re:Countdown to China??

[Anonymous Coward]

http://games.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=115600&t hreshold=0&commentsort=1&tid=211&mode=thread&cid=9 791172

Is why.

Not exactly.

[Luke727]

While Fileplanet might remind you of Real, it is really not as bad as you make it out. The only thing I dislike about Fileplanet is that you need an account to download anything. And you have to wait a long time to download during peak hours. Other than that, there's nothing misleading or shady about it. Go to the link provided in the article blurb, click the Download button. After you've logged in, you are presented with a two lists of locations from which to download. The first list is for subscribers (as it clearly indicates), and the second list is for the free public servers (as it clearly indicates). It tells you the current load and (approximate) wait time for each server. Sure, there are some really fucking annoying flash ads (don't worry, Slashdot will get these soon), but there's nothing trying to force you to subscribe. It's not burried away at the bottom of the page in tiny text like Real Player used to be. I think it's amazing that they still have public servers. Do you know how many terrabyes they go through in a month (hell, probably in a day)? It must cost a small fortune, and I can still download anything and everything (well, they occasionally have a limited-time exclusive for subscribers) to my heart's content and not have to pay a dime. I don't have to click on any ads or view forced pop-ups or pop-unders. The only thing I have to give up is time. They do make you install a download manager applet to download stuff from them, though. And the public servers are capped at 100KB/s, but I almost always download at the max speed. I think Fileplanet provides a great service with a minimum hassle.

Images on site edited by script

[Anonymous Coward]

Thought I'd mention that all gifs and jpgs on the site are being clumsily edited by a script. It's picking out the file extension. Unix users: try wget ilovebees.com/somerandomfilename.gif. It will return an html document not found message, same for jpgs. It doesn't return the 404 headers though. For every other type of non-existant file, it just returns a standard 404 and wget will tell you so. It wouldn't have been too hard to correct this if they'd put in a little more effort. Poor showing.

Greatest marketing strat ever...

[jwcorder]

Period...end of discussion. Call it over the top if you want, but the fact that every single computer geek who knows who Bill Gates is and can spell HALO is talking about this and the greatest part of it all is you couldn't buy a spot on a local radio station for what it cost them. Brilliant.

RFC Ignorant

[Anonymous Coward]

Their mailserver doesn't accept postmaster@ilovebees.com in violation of RFC822 6.3, RFC1123 5.2.7 and RFC2821 4.5.1. They don't accept abuse@ilovebees.com in violation of RFC2142.

Only 'confounds' if you're retarded...

[B747SP]

This is an obvious silly marketerring ploy. You'd only not pick that up after the first two sentences if you were mentally deficient. For me, the (brief) site visit went "Loads... Oh look, those silly new HTML layer things... hmmm, marketeers have been at this site. Bastards. Nothing to see here, move along. Closed site, and clicked off to something else in another tab". No mystery about it!

Anagrams

[Anonymous Coward]

Bungies I begun

Aunt Margareth Art Gamer Hunt

(Aunt margareth is referred to as the owner of ilovebees.com)

Dana Nada (russian for NO! - she probably doesn't exist)

Re:Anagrams

[Anonymous Coward]

At this time, I am unable to sell honey because of an infestation of varrao mites in my hives. I hope to be back in business soon!

varrao mites = over smart ai
I knew that one sounded weird.

Re:Anagrams

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again you can also get RA ARSE VOMIT

Aunt M + SPDR = Marvel Comics

[Anonymous Coward]

On the blog, it mentions Aunt M.
The pop up mentions the SPDR (System Peril Distributed Reflex).

Spiderman's got Auntie M.

Therefore, the Marvel Secret Superhero Wars and Spidey's about to become Venom.

Not /.ed

[siliconjunkie]

It might be worth noting that even when this article was the first item on the Slashdot homepage, the page loaded very quickly. Now, it's pretty obvious that this is guerilla marketing, but it seems to me that this fact just makes it more glaringly obvious that ilovebees.com is not some poor innocent site that got hacked.

Re:Not /.ed

[AhabTheArab]

They're using a hosting service. Its from myhosting.com i believe.

Ads for nerds. Stuff that sucks.

[Wind_Walker]

Wow, does anybody actually go to the ilovebees.com link at Slashdot? In about 10 seconds you can tell that this is a marketing ploy. Fucking flash animation pops up and starts talking about "SYSTEM PERIL DISTRIBUTED REFLEX" and gives a fucking countdown. Jesus Christ on a Stick, do you honestly think that ANY webmaster wouldn't have pulled their fucking site from the 'net if something like that happened?

IT'S FUCKING FLASH ANIMATION. Free advertising by starting an astroturf campaign to "figure out what went wrong". Here's a hint of what went wrong - Slashdot no longer reads its submissions with a critital eye.

It's as bad as Acclaim's pigeons, their "Name your kid Turok" marketing shit, and who can forget their tombstone advertisements?

It's time to wake up, Slashdot, and not get duped by these obvious ploys for free advertisement.

Site explains the whole thing

[Anonymous Coward]

right here

hosted on linux

[Cheeze]

HEAD www.ilovebees.com

200 OK
Cache-Control: max-age=0
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:18:41 GMT
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
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Last-Modified: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:18:40 GMT
Client-Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:18:29 GMT
Client-Peer: 69.20.126.147:80
Client-Response-Num: 1
Client-Transfer-Encoding: chunked
path=/

If it's a microsoft marketing trick, you think they would at least fund a microsoft server to do it. The blog also claims to have a virus, but it's hosted on a linux machine.

Re:did anybody take a look at the source to page y

[manifest37]

BURN

Jerky on a powerbook G4?

[sfgeek]

Insane, it drops most of the frames when playing the huge version on windows media player. I have a 1 GHz G4 powerbook... I find it insane that it can't even play it properly.. that is just insulting! And it doesn't seem to want to play correctly on MPlayer or VLC... Anybody have a suggestion as to why? I get 1 FPS.. 1!!!!!

in the best /. spirit

[MrLint]

someone should hack the site and fix all that stuff for that lady ;)

That damned Master Chief is too damned cocky for his own good.

Purleeeeease

[sameyeam]

Clearly it's just some crappy marketing scam. This sort of thing was interesting when it was first done in like 1998...but now it's just for marketing companies that have run out of ideas and are trying to be "original". Move along.

Sister site?

[Anonymous Coward]

I go to capitallism.org and I see "The sting that started the buzz."

A WHOIS on doesn't turn up any names either.

???????

Re:Sister site?

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition to your last note, ilovebees appears in the footer. Are these people related? or is this an attempt to subvert?

You sir, should win the Nobel Prize for smartship

[Mike Hawk]

Damn, how did you figure out that the site is functioning as someone intends? You mean, there really isn't some intelligence taking over the site inadvertently? Golly, you post has been a life changing event for me. You mean, works of fiction didn't really happen? Slow down, I can't absorb this all at once. So, instead of reading and enjoying books, I could just dismiss it because it isn't real and just a story?

I'll think I'll enjoy this free game as long as it interests me rather than by a cynical asshole this time. You sure were smart to figure out that it wasn't really happening and some human set it up that way. Wow.

metacortechs.com and The Matrix

[HedonismBot]

I just wanted to chip in about a similar "mystery". Starting October 1st, metacortechs.com (Metacortex was the company Neo worked for in the first movie) unveiled a series of ever-increasing fan-made (this was confirmed at a later point) plots which other fans discovered by using the clues scattered around the sites or even making use of good, old-fashioned brute force hacking.

Check out this guide; there's a pretty massive amount of information regarding this and it was great fun to see its development.

Re:On a different page

[TheScorpion420]

THe about page came up with this after a few refreshes MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY Tricky. Can't seem to focus. Need to start on the easy ones, like "up". Move on to the compass later. Up. Up. ...Damn it. You'd think "up" wouldn't be too much to ask. It's not like nor-nor-east or something. I need to find out where I am. Also who, but that might be less important. It's possible the two things are related. Stars, I need stars. I was always a fine sailor; they said my navigation was celestial. I think I am a fallen star. I should wish on myself. Please let me go home, please let me go home, please let me go home, please let me go home, please please please please please please please ple I thought it was kind of interesting . .

Screenshots of the oddities

[krhainos]

In case every single source of the said trailer is slashdotted, i grabbed some shots of the oddities i could find in the trailer. http://gozips.uakron.edu/~js58/ukt.PNG - "You Killed Truth" appears in corner http://gozips.uakron.edu/~js58/reg.PNG - player name is "Regret" http://gozips.uakron.edu/~js58/ilt.PNG - a shot of the ilovebees.com appearing at the end of the trailer http://gozips.uakron.edu/~js58/disdain.PNG - a blurry shot of the player name "Disdain" please be nice to the server ;)

Re:Screenshots of the oddities

[krhainos]

crap. here are some clickable links "You Killed Truth" appears in corner a shot of the ilovebees.com appearing at the end of the trailer player name is "Regret" Player name is "Disdain"

corupted images....

[thegoogler]

try opening up the images that look corupted in notepad, they have bits of strange text in them like(originally without the quotes): "WShe cut her a" some are samller like this one: "and !" the weirdest one is "cutebee.gif" from teh main page: "wall was low and" there is much more if you have the time, it just seems like a hack that someone did as a joke. i think that maybe the Halo 2 video may have been edited also

I'm just waiting until the inevitable...

[NeuroManson]

When some newbie visits the site, when he starts running around and flailing his arms because he thinks he's gotten a computer virus.

Best Buy/CompUSA are gonna love that.

Re:Not Marketting for XBox, marketting for .NET, I

[njcoder]

Really!?!?

HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:47:28 GMT Server: Apache/2.0.49 (Unix) mod_python/3.1.3 Python/2.3.3 Last-Modified: Mon, 14 Jun 2004 04:52:20 GMT

Earlier when I checked it said redhat.

Here's a link to the story

[Toxygen]

http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2004-07-19#film2

To summarize, apparently what happened is M. Night Shyamalan tried to block a made-for-tv bio about him that had some dark secret, but it was later revealed (and admitted) that the whole story was made up and he (they?) was only trying to drum up some extra publicity for his name in the weeks leading up to the release of The Village.

Gibson's Pattern Recognition

[bookemdano63]

Sounds like they are doing a good job of create an Fetish Footage Forum for Halo. I am glad someone has found something to keep people busy while waiting for it to come out.

Source

[Jozer99]

Has anyone looked at the source of the page in question? I did, and look what the keywords are:

honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping, hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium, messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bees

For anyone with dislexia or ADHD severe enough for them not to read it, one of the keywords is hoax.

I remember the ID4 campaign

[Toxygen]

I think it was Fox, and they made a mock newscast showing scenes from Independance Day with people pointing at fireballs and objects in the sky. It was so well crafted that my mother was actually shocked into blurting out "oh, good heavens!" at the first shot of the flaming sky. She actually believed the "hoax", at least until none of us could keep a straight face anymore.

Inscrutability, all over again

[Calroth]

I went through it with the Marathon series. Then with the original Halo.

For me, the thrill is knowing that Bungie still cares about dropping cryptic, inscrutable clues into the mix, and giving us something with meaning to tease apart, not just a game. I'm too tired these days to follow it, myself. When they did this back in the old days, it was to a core of Mac fans. But now everybody can get a taste. I find that exciting.

Re:Inscrutability, all over again

[inkswamp]

My only response to you: 7.

For those of you who cant view the Hi-Def Video

[starunj]

I compressed the video, its now watchable on my modest pc. Quality is relative among the three. You can find it here:

Halo 2 Trailer High Quality [8.28 MB]
Halo 2 Trailer Medium Quality [3.87 MB]
Halo 2 Trailer Low Quality [1.24 MB]

You can see the ilovebees thingy quite clearly in the medium and high quality ones. Not so in the low quality one.
PS: Sorry if this is already posted in this topic, didnt see any.

Check out

[Anonymous Coward]

...Dana in "about me" page. this pic alone makes this page worth checking out

Re:On a different page

[hunterx11]

Download a few images and run strings on them. One example:

$ strings BUT_FUN.gif
GIF89a
WShe cut her a
R`D-
@new mouth and
xUUR
fed her
-VXh
l_nU
dej\

get out!! hacks are coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!

[midnitewolf]

There are a lot of other ways that this site more or less shows signs of being a forgery.

A traceroute reveals that this site is located with rackspace.com's ip space, located on one of their Red Hat servers running Apache. A pretty robust webserving platform, right?

Let me get this straight. The site's webmistress "Dana" has "tried everything within her power" (according to the blog), including deleting the entire site and rewriting it... but she hasn't contacted the hosting company, to inform them that they're the victims of an ongoing attack?

visit Rackspace's Security Page . Gee, you'd think they MIGHT have a resource or two when it comes to tracking down a persistent hack. Think they might be interested? If not, then I'm sure as hell never going to do business with them. Unless, of course, there is no hack...I SUPPOSE that would explain their apparent disinterest... But maybe its something a little more obvious... Perhaps she's got some crazy man in a bee suit hiding in the basement tapping into her DSL connection, packet sniffing and decrypting all her passwords so he can make changes to the images in his spare time between mini-bosses in Metroid Prime, 24 hours a day.. (I can just HEAR the old scary story punchline...."Get out! The call is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE!")

Next, every single one of the bee facts on the Fun Stuff page has been plagiarized from elsewhere on the internet, though many of them have a typo or two just in the right place to make it tougher to find a source. If this isn't a hoax, then this is simply poor and sloppy web design. NO contact info whatsoever, anywhere on the page, except for a HOTMAIL address..(gosh, isn't hotmail OWNED by microsoft?), but she "usually doesn't check it very often"? Yeah. No proofreading whatsoever? (You'd think a bee aficionado who's TRYING TO RUN A BUSINESS, wouldn't misspell the name of "the Varrao Mite"[sic] infestation that's destroying her livelihood, and her business. This site has never been proofed by anyone who knows bees.

There are a LOT of mistakes. The average worker bee makes 1 1/2 teaspoons of honey in its life? Nope. Try 1/12. Off by 1800%.. Totally unnoticeable typo to a layperson, but wouldn't someone who HARVESTS HONEY as a livelihood and business pick up on that kind of mistake instantly? Sure. I know. They're probably just typos... but there are SO MANY of them, that i simply can't believe the whole site wasn't whipped up in five minutes by some shill at Microsoft.

Then there's the real giveaway, which is that the site's URL is in the Trailer for Halo 2. Obviously Microsoft (who has done this before) has SOMETHING to do with this. So either A) M$ is behind the whole thing, ilovebees.com and all, or B) M$ has started targeting Red Hat / Apache servers to hack into, including little Auntie M's bee site, which I'd think would give her pretty decent grounds for a massive lawsuit, considering the company is publicizing the hack in theaters...

That said, This is obviously a markedly effective marketing technique. I mean.. we're all talking about it... right? And it's going straight to the core halo audience. Direct marketing at its phreakish phinest.

Yeah. Either way, if I were Auntie M. (and if Auntie M. existed), I'd be proofreading that site... and i'd think twice about heaping web design praise on little niece Dana. Then, if Dana is real, Then I do believe she HAS tried everything within her power to fix the broken site. I just believe that the extent of her troubleshooting ability consists of repeatedly clicking "reload" and hoping the problem goes away. Ok. That's unfair. Maybe she's tried deleting her cookies, too.

Red Vs. Blue?

[(mandos)]

I have seen anything past Season 1 of Red Vs. Blue, but weren't they working on a theme that involved AI?

Mike Scanlon

yeah

[powerlord]

Supposedly the headers are faked and Netcraft reports its a Win2K machine.

Whether thats true or not, they probably chose Apache on Linux because they KNOW thats the de-facto standard :)

(and it gives them a chance to sling some mud at Apache and Linux supposedly being 'hacked')

two words...

[silicon1]

...guerilla marketing...

gorilla marketing produces high returns on marketing investment through unconventional activities. Gorilla marketing can be used to employ original marketing strategies of a non-traditional nature.

so I asked Channel 9 folk...

[Anonymous Coward]

and I got this response
http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=1463 3

Black box text

[transient]

Anyone who has ever played a Bungie game will immediately recognize the black box text on ilovebees. The text itself is new but the style is not. Bungie has been writing things from insane computers since day one. Marathon, anyone?

Frog Blast the Vent Core!

[Peeet]

The website's gone rampant!

</obscure_marathon_joke>

Re:Frog Blast the Vent Core!

[jeffb]

Wow! I guess I wasn't the only one who read the spurious web site content while thinking to myself,

'hey, that sounds like something Durandal would say...'

(Durandal being the crazy AI in Marathon == Bungie circa '94)

Those wacky Bungie guys...

Pretty decent recipes though.

[penginkun]

Found some honey recipes in the "Fun Stuff" category. I'm thinking of making the Saffron Honey Ice Cream. Seems like an awful lot of saffron to me, but otherwise it sounds about right. The process for making the custard is spot on. They don't say to add the saffron-honey mixture to the custard base, but you should, probably after you start turning the ice cream.

What's this about China?

[Vthornheart]

Okay, so I looked at the source and it says "countdowntochina.js" as the source javascript on the site for that countdown. Is there anything going on at the indicated time in the future relating to China that anyone knows about?

Obviously an advertising ploy...

[YetAnotherHoopyFrood]

for Bubba Ho-tep 2!

Come on, people! Head made of sand!

In other news

[colonelteddy]

Gabbo is coming!

most obvious clue this is a hoax...

[neoevans]

Auntie M.?

Has anyone seen The Wizard of Oz?

Re:most obvious clue this is a hoax...

[Anonymous Coward]

She is also the subject of "My Aunt Margaret's Mirror" by Sir Walter Scott

Re: View On Macintosh?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so you can't download this movie from Bungie's link unless you have windows ("MSN Video"??), I could only get the gamespot download queue thing to work in the now pretty much obsolete IE for OS X; I finally got the video, and it doesn't play right in windows media player (plays at about 0.5 fps, skipping intermediate content). I don't want to get into any platform flame war, but its just a video file - can't anyone provide a standard web interface to the files, and ship the movies in one of the many formats that could possibly be played on all platforms? It's an xbox game, not a windows game.

bees, worker drones, a hint at the game plot?

[dms0]

its obvious isnt it?

the game, is going ot be setup with a queen bee (ai?) a whole bunch of drones, and you trying to save the world?

its pretty cool actually, i like that sort of stuff

dms0

Old hat for long time Bungie fans

[Arcturax]

Those of us who have been with Bungie since the old days when they were a Mac only shop will recognize this as the classic strange humor of the Bungie team. Anyone who has played the Marathon trillogy will recognize the ramblings of a rampant AI which fills the site in several places.

So this isn't a truely hacked site, but one they have made up to look that way.

Re:Viral marketing, t-shirt???

[Doppler00]

http://www.cafeshops.com/ilovebees.12518390?zoom=y es#zoom

funny....

Re:YES! ONCE AGAIN SLASHDOT LINKS TO A WORLD-

[Anonymous Coward]

just read the previous versions of it, it's not like having the latest being screwed up is anything odd at wiki

Re:Ads for nerds. Stuff that sucks.

[Anonymous Coward]

just so you sound less ignorant, it's not flash. gotta love people who will whine and sound like an ass instead of spending a few seconds looking at the source and perhaps learning something or at least seeing something interesting.

Now wouldn't it be cool if...

[MeatNoodle]

The slashdot crowd stepped in and really hijacked the site and took the storyline in another direction? You know, an Open Source ARG?

Isn't turn-around fair play?

P.

~~~~~~~~~~

HOAX like Blair Witch

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a hoax like that stupid Blair Witch Project movie and just like that "Secret Life of M. Night Shamalywhatever" Sci Fi mockumentary.

You are morons if you couldn't figure this out.

obvious

[Britz]

That is such an obvious ad. Why does slashdot post this? I mean a site about bees apearing in a halo movie??? A flash hack that can't be taken down, but a FAQ about the hack neatly placed right below the flash??? Come on! Michael (poster of the story) is either extremly gullible, a marketing druid or a crazy halo fan.

www.xbox.ilovebees.com

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.xbox.ilovebees.com/ also links to the above site as some smart cookie at http://ilovebees.blogspot.com/2004/07/damage.html/ found.

woop! first /. post!

Alternate Reality Games

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a whole genre out there called Alternate Reality Games. People go through the trouble of creating fake web sites, dummy companies, and whatever lengths necessary to kick-start a mystery/puzzle where those who happen to stumble on it are given the opportunity to solve something. The puzzles take place across all media: web, IM, phone, fax, email, you name it. There isn't some online avatar you play as; you ARE the character in the game.

Bungie is known for doing these types of games preceeding a launch before (there was one for the old Marathon series). I would attribute this more to them than to Microsoft (though I'm sure Microsoft financing didn't hurt).

I was interested by the mystery this offered, so I spent the day digging into the details. I'm not really interested in Halo 2 (I don't own an Xbox) but doing the research and solving puzzles is a great experience, so I'll see if I can solve it to the end. I think if you're like me - someone who didn't know much about these types of games - if you spent some time looking through the material (read: RTFA), you'd find it really entertaining.

If only all marketing could be this entertaining.

__

[Anonymous Coward]

BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

brilliant.

--

Cat got your tongue? (something important seems to be missing from your comment ... like the body or the subject!)
Reason: You can type more than that for your subject.
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Haunted Apiary

[arpy]

Wikipedia entry on it.

weird

[alex_ware]

the page says this:"Seek the truth

Behold the truth

Reveal the truth

That is the law and the whole of the law

Seek the truth

Behold the truth

Reveal the truth" over and over again in white at the end of the page

this is odd

[alex_ware]

after looking at links once I clicked the link to the page again this hovered up:
"
MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY
black beach, nothing but sand and darkness. Sometimes, in the distance, dry lightning: in the flash I see pieces of the wreck around me, the spars and rigging of my brain

-hold on. hold on. Steady up. Get a grip, girl. You have to fight through this.

Take a deep breath.

Survival Key #3: How Badly Are You Hurt?

Mentally, subject is confused and disoriented.

I keep slipping in and out of consciousness.

Physically, subject is paralyzed but moving.

Okay.

What the hell does THAT mean?

Held down: yes. As if strapped to a table. Could I be in traction in some sick bay, some hospital ward?

Not necessarily one of ours.

But at the same time, parts of me being moved around, emptied out. As if under general anaesthetic, dimly conscious, half-aware as the surgeon cuts off my feet and sews them onto my shoulders. She opens my head with a medical hammer and sand spills out.

I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO-

-no.

never that.

survive evade reveal escape. That is all you know, or need to know.
"
It was the same page but the Apache server mst be set up to serve sever side on html files. Oh and i could only copy it when i turned off css

San Francisco

[imtheguru]

The phone number (posted in another thread) is 415 (also SF).

Cheers,

The part that really makes me smile

[BitterAndDrunk]

Is it's ilovebees. Bees do what? Produce buzz. That, IMO, is exceptionally clever.

ARGN (Alternate Reality Game)?

[Blackheart2]

I saw the ilovebees site mentioned as an alternate reality game a few days ago at the cloudmakers Yahoo! group. Also see ARGN.

Re:ARGN (Alternate Reality Game)?

[Grithok]

Blackheart is right. It is part of an alternate reality game. www.ruaware.org Think majestic. This is not a marketing scam, virus, or anything else, just a game.

Text on the blog page

[fruitcake93]

The blog page has this text on it at the top: "One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug." A few searches reveals this to be from this page, which is a review of a play called The Metamorphosis.

Troll it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Regestry "ihatebees.com", and post confusing shit too it, to throw everyone.

having worked for those responsible 4 Xbox mkting

[Anonymous Coward]

Bartle Bogle Hegarty, a "creative" ad agency: I would say this is designed to engage you with the brand via a one-upmanship type power-play, stimulate need for more interaction through intermittent success & failure, then offer means to fulfil the emergent need permanently via use of the product. It's a trap in the sense that every path chosen means several paths are denied - on the other hand, is there really anything better to do??

Frighteningly Blurred Reality

[nedric]

Does the whole ARG movement seem too scary to anybody else? When suspension of disbelief in trade for deep alternate realities gets crossed with careful plot and planning by media marketing departments, I can't help but think of it as mind control at it's finest.

How far do these things have to go before your "game" calls you at night and players are no longer able to stop playing? As if Evercrack wan't bad enough. People lost jobs and friends over "The Beast" http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/intro/ and it's ilk. The whole idea is fascinating to any escapist mind (a large demographic on this site I'm sure), yet it is deeply troubling. I get a creepy "Total Recall" feeling when I think about actually stepping into one of these games. How easy would it be to hide criminal intent behind the thick veil of these "games"?

When we open our minds to these things we are leaving room for any corporation who cares to set them up (Microsoft having the most notable track record!) to lead us down whatever paths they choose, and we'll believe it because it's invaded our information flow. We'll get emails, faxes, phone calls; all exist only in the game world.

Anyway, there's some more interesting reading about these ideas in this paper. I hope I never see these mind traps on my news sites again, frankly.

The thing I don't understand ...

[SmokeSerpent]

I don't see why ARG people who were not otherwise interested in Halo2 would decide to play Halo2 due to this kind of "marketing".

white text on white background reads...

[Anonymous Coward]

Seek the truth

Behold the truth

Reveal the truth

That is the law and the whole of the law

Fox Plaza is not 2370 Market...it's 1390 Market

[mrdavedog]

http://www.foxplazaapts.com/

But luckily I live 2 blocks away from 2370 Market, and need to get some stuff at the grocery store so I'll walk by and report back.

Re:Fox Plaza is not 2370 Market...it's 1390 Market

[mrdavedog]

Alright, so I walked down there, it's a group of three stores a few feet away from the corner of Market and Castro. One of the stores is indeed a UPS package store with Mailbox service.

I took a few pictures with my cell phone in case anyone is curious.

http://homepage.mac.com/davedog

Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to the wonderful world of Bungie. This isn't the first time they pulled stuff like this. They did it extensively in the Marathon days.

Dating yourself...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gosh, that's desparate. I mean, even for Slashdot!

Visit the shop already

[Anonymous Coward]

I've done a whois on the website(gets all the vital registrant information) and here it is (some of the info will be clipped to protect the owner of the shop if they exist) :

Margaret's House of Bees
2370 Market Street #510
San Francisco, CA 94114-1575

If it really exist and isnt the bungie headquarters or something then the website has nothing to do with halo 2.
Who knows the shop might even have a copy of halo 2 pre ready for you ;)

New site linked to ilovebees.com found!!

[LordJezo]

http://www.capitallism.org/

Go look at the very bottom, a link to ilovebees.com!!

Perhaps the riddle gets deeper?

Re:New site linked to ilovebees.com found!!

[LordJezo]

Actually,

Go to http://www.capitallism.org/main.php

Ok I think this was one is solved.

[AzraelKans]

After reading several forums, some got to the conslusion that the numbers mean two different dates:

• in 15 days.
• augusth 24th.

after being puzzled for a while, they realized this: The next issue of OXM ships in aug 24. this issue will include "Info" about halo 2.
"Net users" (subscribers) will receive it in 15 days. (Too much of a coincidence.)

Ok So whats so important about OXM coming out ? well... Ninja Gaiden got a "surprise" demo in the issue dated one month before its release. If that is the same case for Halo 2 to be shipped in november 9, that would be:...

The augusth issue (holliday preview) (shipping in August 24th)

If you have an xbox.. you may begin your smiling, now.
Oh yeah, and start banging on the door of your friend who has a subscription.