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Vikings' Secret Code Cracked
sciencehabit writes "What may look like mere scratches is much more. A 900-year-old Viking code known as jötunvillur has been cracked. The code-cracker, runologist Jonas Nordby from the University of Oslo, deciphered the system after realizing he needed to replace the original runic character with the last sound used to pronounce it. For instance, the runic character 'k' is pronounced 'kaun,' so k becomes n. Nordby believes secret messages were created by the Vikings for entertainment. One piece of wood reads: 'Kiss me.'"
The real story is at http://www.thisiscolossal.com/...
Ok, dove through the reference-pit and found this as the apparent root story.
Please, either mod this up or edit the Slashsummary to actually link to a useful article in the chain.
Fuck the Beta. And Dice.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
More likely kiss my ass....
h, y. How disappointing.
For Commonwealth nations, you may add 'z' to the list.
What is the secret code for "Fuck beta"?
As far as I could make out the cypher is something like, the letter I is pronounced "eye", so replace I with E. The letter K is pronounced "kay" so K will be replaced with Y. Obviously the hash is many to one. Both B and I will map to E in English. Not sure it would be one-to-one in runes.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Yeah so that big far bikini it soars!
(Missed first post by this much!)
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
.......
Back tatami scratches scratches
Loom funny
Beta scratches scratches
..young peoples skills and abilities needed in the 21 century.
"...other translated inscriptions turned out to be playful taunts at the person doing the decoding."
Remember to drink your ovaltine!
"Be sure to drink your ovaltine."
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
No, this longer piece http://www.forskning.no/artikler/2014/januar/379474 in Norwegian seems to be the source (by Ida Kvittingen). Oddly the photo credit links there.
Oooyay Otgay Isthay?
Why bother cracking Vikings' secret code? You obviously don't need it to defeat them
There's no point in cracking the code.
Everybody knows it's going to be a handoff to Adrian Peterson, who will run the ball.
1. Invade
2. R@pe
3. Plunder
4. ???
5. Profit!
Table-ized A.I.
Damn.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And I thought I was clever...
It looks more like a Tally Board for stock keeping to me.
They sure are r@ping this beta interface.
who missread the headline as "Victoria Secret Code Cracked"..?
Disssssapointing....
You've heard of Pig Latin? This is Pig Norse.
So it turns out to be a simple substitution cypher - but in Norwegian.
Of course - an easy thing to miss. Norwegian substitution cyphers can only be read by the light of a moon of the same shape and season as the day in which they were written.
So it's a monoalphabetic substitution cipher? How the fuck was it not cracked until now?
you know how everyone comes to slashdot for the comments? Well, you also know what's killing slashdot faster than dice? The fucking "fuck beta" crowd ruining every comment thread. You guys are making the comments section even worse because instead of it just being a crappier system, now the content is 50% about how bad beta is.
Time to trademark that.
I imagine that 1000 years into the future some 20th century English runologist will crack the code of pig latin.
eir eru að tala um rúnir en myndin er bara rispur á spýtu. Hvernig ýðir maður rispur á rúnir?
He's the sort of person who would sell the Red Cross to Dracula.
From the description it sounds like a simple substitution cipher (from their examples, /e/ for /f/, and /n/ for /k/). How hard can that be to decode if you have enough of the text? Yes, neato that we can now read certain notes that have been encoded for 900 years, but were they really only undeciphered that long because no one had a proper, scholarly look at them?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
So they had a form of Pig Latin back then too? "issKay emay Iyay'may ikingVay"
"A m00se once bit my sister...."
Have gnu, will travel.
Bloody Swedes
pillage is traditionally in that list.
The amount of change the internet will see this year will make your life miserable if you continue to over think things instead of making like water and adjust to the new reality.