Posted by
kdawson
on from the paging-frank-shoemaker-white-courtesy-telephone-please dept.
Saiyine sends word that the
mysterious code received at Fermilab, which we discussed last Friday, has been mostlydecoded, inside of two days, by two separate people. The poster at the second link seems to have constructed a more complete rationale for the message.
That was ridiculously quick
by
everyplace
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
One always conceptually understands the power of numbers, but in this case it is amazing, considering that this problem went unsolved for an extended period within fermilab. The second it is asked to the correct audience though, the gears start going and the answer exists!
Re:That was ridiculously quick
by
QuantumTheologian
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
From the original release by Fermilab, it seems to me like they had this sitting in a drawer somewhere. Sure, technically it went 'unsolved', but no one was really looking for a solution.
solved within 7hrs...
by
adam
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Just want to point out that 1st and 3rd stanzas were cracked WITHIN the slashdot thread. See wirelessbuzzers' post here and femtobyte's post here. Either of these two individuals may be the two people whose sites are linked in the summary for this current story, but since I can't be sure, I wanted to make sure credit was given to them as well. (The first stanza was cracked within 7hrs of the/. story going live)
Also, based on the "employee number" speculation in the second link especially, I want to point out that although I am the furthest thing from a "codecracker," I do believe the BASSE misspelling of BASE is intentional and is a clue. Likewise, the FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE stanza may be a reference to his work for fermilab (detecting signal that often hides amongst noise), but is probably a double entendre of some sort. If someone is methodical enough to encode this text and mail it to Fermilab, they wouldn't misspell such a simple word (BASE), unless for a good reason. Along these same lines of thought, I believe the "noise" comment is also a clue with multiple meanings. Also, from what I gather, the middle stanza can be assumed to be hex, so that makes the third stanza fairly insignificant, unless it has other meaning (hence looking at "BASSE" for a clue as to some other meaning).
-- I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
somersault
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Musical notes are mostly contained within hex too, though hex only goes up to F and musical notes go up to G. It would be cool if that's somehow related to the answer (after reading below, basse seems to just relate to someone's name/a building, how boring >.> ):) But I'm off to work now, I'm not about to spend all day decoding a mysterious letter!
-- which is totally what she said
Re:solved within 7hrs...
by
SQLGuru
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Maybe the double S is to show the hidden mapping for the S symbol.....as E.
Does EFC mean anything?
Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow
by
struppi
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
No, not really. This only shows that a lot of people will try to solve interesting problems, and some of them eventually will. It does not say anything about open source software and finding bugs or security vulnerabilities, which involves (among other things) reading tons of "boring" code.
Note: I did not say that open source is bad for finding bugs and vulnerabilities, I just want to mention that breaking this code does not say anything about open source software.
Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow
by
CarpetShark
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Well, the fact that you don't see the connection does not preclude the link. Many people would say that coding is boring, and yet others find it interesting just to browse code. The fact that people on slashdot (mostly coders and other IT people) are interested in these codes suggests an overlap. In fact, I doubt many people would argue with that (although I'm sure it'll be the few who would argue that will reply;). I stand by what I said.
Re:Many eyes make all bugs shallow
by
Builder
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
It might not preclude a link, but the parent is correct - the results of the public resolution of this problem have nothing to do with Open Source software.
Furthermore, many bugs do NOT make all bugs shallow - look at recent news, the 25 year old BSD bug, the Debian OpenSSL debacle. Why did the many eyes not make those bugs shallow? Partly because that isn't an interesting problem for nearly as many people as the fermilab stuff, and partly because code changes.
You see, I could fully audit some code tomorrow. My eyes would have made all the bugs shallow. But what is the likelihood of me going back and reauditing that SAME code time and time again, whenever a change is made? Far lower and far fewer people actually do that or enjoy doing it. That's how bugs creep in and stay, even in open source software.
Actually, this is more interesting than u realize
by
WindBourne
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I have serious doubts that what is coming out is the real message. For starters, fermilab placed this out and said that it was simply found. Yet, it is obvousily a test of some sorts.
In another post, I indicated that this was most likely either about our dealing with alien mesgs, or this was an experiment funded by NSA.
I see 2 issues here, The first is that it really was too easily "solved".
My guess is that the real message really is being missed (i..e keep looking).
But the second and more important issue is what group thought appears to do to dynamics. If fermi did this interesting, they have 3 messages in here and are watching us get focused on just one. IOW, group though leads to solutions (local maximas), but may end up having us miss the other messages (absolute maximas). It really shows that group thought needs outsiders to shake things up.
-- I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Anyone look up the Unicode for all these symbols?
by
omnichad
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I think it's pretty easy (big fat lie) to find Unicode for each of the symbols in the middle section. When you convert the hex to binary or ternary, is there a secret message??? 24 symbols * 4 hex digits each = 96 bytes or 768 bits, or 256 ternary-encoded letters! That's a long message.
Maybe you put them in order by the indexes printed below them?
Slashdot Mirror
One always conceptually understands the power of numbers, but in this case it is amazing, considering that this problem went unsolved for an extended period within fermilab. The second it is asked to the correct audience though, the gears start going and the answer exists!
Just want to point out that 1st and 3rd stanzas were cracked WITHIN the slashdot thread. See wirelessbuzzers' post here and femtobyte's post here. Either of these two individuals may be the two people whose sites are linked in the summary for this current story, but since I can't be sure, I wanted to make sure credit was given to them as well. (The first stanza was cracked within 7hrs of the /. story going live)
Also, based on the "employee number" speculation in the second link especially, I want to point out that although I am the furthest thing from a "codecracker," I do believe the BASSE misspelling of BASE is intentional and is a clue. Likewise, the FRANK SHOEMAKER WOULD CALL THIS NOISE stanza may be a reference to his work for fermilab (detecting signal that often hides amongst noise), but is probably a double entendre of some sort. If someone is methodical enough to encode this text and mail it to Fermilab, they wouldn't misspell such a simple word (BASE), unless for a good reason. Along these same lines of thought, I believe the "noise" comment is also a clue with multiple meanings. Also, from what I gather, the middle stanza can be assumed to be hex, so that makes the third stanza fairly insignificant, unless it has other meaning (hence looking at "BASSE" for a clue as to some other meaning).
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
No, not really. This only shows that a lot of people will try to solve interesting problems, and some of them eventually will. It does not say anything about open source software and finding bugs or security vulnerabilities, which involves (among other things) reading tons of "boring" code.
Note: I did not say that open source is bad for finding bugs and vulnerabilities, I just want to mention that breaking this code does not say anything about open source software.
Well, the fact that you don't see the connection does not preclude the link. Many people would say that coding is boring, and yet others find it interesting just to browse code. The fact that people on slashdot (mostly coders and other IT people) are interested in these codes suggests an overlap. In fact, I doubt many people would argue with that (although I'm sure it'll be the few who would argue that will reply ;). I stand by what I said.
It might not preclude a link, but the parent is correct - the results of the public resolution of this problem have nothing to do with Open Source software.
Furthermore, many bugs do NOT make all bugs shallow - look at recent news, the 25 year old BSD bug, the Debian OpenSSL debacle. Why did the many eyes not make those bugs shallow? Partly because that isn't an interesting problem for nearly as many people as the fermilab stuff, and partly because code changes.
You see, I could fully audit some code tomorrow. My eyes would have made all the bugs shallow. But what is the likelihood of me going back and reauditing that SAME code time and time again, whenever a change is made? Far lower and far fewer people actually do that or enjoy doing it. That's how bugs creep in and stay, even in open source software.
I have serious doubts that what is coming out is the real message. For starters, fermilab placed this out and said that it was simply found. Yet, it is obvousily a test of some sorts. In another post, I indicated that this was most likely either about our dealing with alien mesgs, or this was an experiment funded by NSA.
I see 2 issues here, The first is that it really was too easily "solved". My guess is that the real message really is being missed (i..e keep looking).
But the second and more important issue is what group thought appears to do to dynamics. If fermi did this interesting, they have 3 messages in here and are watching us get focused on just one. IOW, group though leads to solutions (local maximas), but may end up having us miss the other messages (absolute maximas). It really shows that group thought needs outsiders to shake things up.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I think it's pretty easy (big fat lie) to find Unicode for each of the symbols in the middle section. When you convert the hex to binary or ternary, is there a secret message??? 24 symbols * 4 hex digits each = 96 bytes or 768 bits, or 256 ternary-encoded letters! That's a long message. Maybe you put them in order by the indexes printed below them?