Those are some interesting numbers! Would you like to join our Kryptos brainstorming group? If so, send an email to kryptos-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
I can't speak for Elonka, but when I was helping (a little) with the codes book which is going to be published Real Soon Now, I got the extremely strong impression that, about Iraq at any rate, she was strongly in favour of robust, informed debate. She filled the book with quotes about the moral and pragmatic issues of war from multiple perspectives for precisely that reason.
I couldn't have put it any better myself. You got it exactly right, and I'm glad that that came through, at least to you, one of my contributors who saw an early draft . Unfortunately, the publisher edited out some of my stronger comments from the book's introduction (I may re-post them via my blog, I haven't decided yet), but all of the plaintext (and encrypted!) quotes are still there, so the opinions that I wanted represented, still are.;)
Elonka:)
(Answer to Cryptogram #52: "When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home." - Winston Churchill)
for Elonka in US not, but for Ilonka in Poland, yes. That is Helen if you are a native English speaker... E is just for correct pronunciation.
Yup, you get the prize for coming closest, though I got a kick out of the various anagrams, too.:)
For the record (and those not interested in genealogy or name origins can stop reading now), it's my real birth name, and is Hungarian. I was named after my maternal grandmother, Ilona Pazman. The "ka" is a diminutive suffix (like in Spanish, "Juan" will become Juanito or Juanita when used with a child), and the "E" was substituted as an Americanized spelling so that it would be pronounced correctly. And yes, it means "Helen" which is Greek for "light" or "shining", as in "Hellenic culture".
Ten to one says that the "anonymous reader" who submitted the article is none other than Elonka herself.
I'll take that bet.;) Wasn't me, and I didn't even know that the Whitedust interview had been posted, until the Simutronics CEO (David Whatley, another slashdotter) IMed me and said, "You are about to be slashdotted" (and no, it wasn't him either). A couple minutes after that, a bunch of other IMs flew in with similar warnings to batten down the web-server, and I've been dealing with the related deluge for the rest of the day. As slashdottings go though, it's been relatively light (only about 5000 visitors), probably because the Whitedust folks didn't actually put any links to my website in their interview. The traffic has been coming in from the secondary links in the/. thread, from my Wikipedia bio, and from Google.
If I would have started the thread, you can be sure I would have linked it better, to my site, my company, and my upcoming book.;) My guess is it was posted by someone from Whitedust.
Thanks Xenon.:) BTW, the Amazon listing is wrong and they haven't gotten around to fixing it yet. More up-to-date information on the book is here, and my current best guess as to publication date is somewhere between March 28 and April 26, 2006.
Heh. While it is indeed true that I have hidden other codes and puzzles around my webpages, this isn't one of them.;) As part of the most recent article, the folks at Wired simply made a graphic of my Kryptos transcript page. Any unusual pixels from there, occurred on their end.
Elonka:)
I saw this at the St. Louis Film Festival
on
Robot Stories Movie
·
· Score: 5, Informative
... last November.
First off, it was excellent. I also had a chance to meet the film-maker, Greg Pak, and was very impressed. He's a geek who's going out and making movies about geek things, but telling them in ways that everyone, both geeks and non-geeks, can understand.
If you're looking for a high-tech special effects thriller that's heavy on hardware, you may not enjoy Pak's stuff. But if you're looking for some moving stories that really nail some of the emotional truths about people and the way they connect with each other, I can't recommend this movie enough.
I think one of my favorite stories was the one about the mother whose son was gravely ill in the hospital, and she copes with his illness by lovingly restoring each one of his childhood robot toys (and yes, they're real toys -- the director understands!)
Pak already had somewhat of a name for himself by making a few quirky shorts which are already on the internet. And I'm pleased to see that he's turned that notoriety into a feature-length film. And I definitely look forward to seeing more stuff from him in the future! He deserves all the support we can give him.
clever criminals don't get caught so you don't hear about them
It all depends what kind of crime.
The Zodiac Killer was never caught, but was still extremely famous. He left encrypted messages at crime scenes, some of which the cops solved, and some of which remain unsolved to this day, even with the full attention of public cryptologists trying to crack them.
Personally, I don't see fingerprints or similar biometric checks as any more invasive than requiring people to display their passport, provide photos of themselves, and fill out the usual visa applications.
I've traveled the world, been to every continent, and through scores of different countries and border crossings. I've seen plenty of border hassles, especially in third-world countries. While on the road, I'd routinely have to carry extra photos of myself in case I was asked for one. I more than once was asked for bribes. I knew better than to wear khaki or camouflage clothing or accessories, because anything that would make a border guard suspicious that I might be military, could instantly cause problems, with or without proof. I accepted as routine that I'd be asked who I was traveling with, where I was staying, what my medical history was, and, during the height of the AIDS panic, I was even questioned about my sexual habits (one border guard told me that since I was from North America, he didn't want me having sex while in his country).
Compared with all that, I see a digital fingerprint scan as trivial. It's a simple check that says, "Yes, I'm the person that this passport was issued for." It makes forging efforts *much* more difficult, and I see that as a good thing.
And even better, it's a computer game where you can actually get some physical activity out of it! I love DDR.:)
As a side rant, every time I go to a gym and see one of those treadmills or stationary cycles with a video screen, I keep hoping that I'll find one that has an actual game attached. Like "pedal faster and steer to the right in order to get the powerup that'll let you skip the big hill so you can pedal to the other side of it to pick up the treasure coin which opens the door so you can pedal through the orchard maze and see pretty graphics," etc. But so far, no one (to my knowledge) seems to have picked up on that idea (of tying in mental stimulation to one of the stationary exercise machines). So, I'm usually bored to tears by most gym equipment.
If anyone on slashdot knows of such a thing though, please tell me so I can try and talk my local gym into getting one?:)
Okay, now I'm curious. Considering the DVD with 3.5 million names that has also now landed safely on Mars, how many people from the Slashdot community (aside from myself) are now officially Martians?
According to the mission factsheet, it's supposed to fly into the comet on July 4th, 2005, making a crater that's potentially "the size of a football field."
What gives me a giggle about the thing, is whether or not it will be successful. I mean, look at the multitude of Mars missions that have attempted a landing and then failed and crashed. So, since we seem to be so good at crashing things, will "Deep Impact" be successful at crashing too? Or will it fail with a spectacular, "Damnit, we missed!" as the probe goes sailing back out into oblivion?:) Or even worse, that it might land with a soft touchdown (chuckle).
I got my own name on the chip via my membership in the Planetary Society. This batch was collected back in 1998, and the probe launched in 1999. Among the 1+ million names, they also included all the names from the Vietnam War Memorial, which I thought was a nice touch.
There's a site that JPL maintains with information, but it's been tough for me to maintain a link to it because they keep reorganizing their file directories. As of the current nano-second, more information is available via the Stardust FAQ.
Also, if anyone would like to get their own name onto one of the next missions (or see if you're already included), here's where you can enter/search for your name aboard the Deep Impact probe, which is heading out to meet with a comet in 2005. Keep in mind though that January 2004 is the deadline for entering new names. For more info, check here for the Deep Impact fact sheet.
On my own list of Famous Unsolved Codes, the Voynich Manuscript is right up there at #2, just under the Beale Ciphers (which also have some pretty compelling arguments that they're a hoax).
Some other good links for Voynich information:
An excellent viewer which lets you quickly see thumbnails of all of the pages at once.
Great pics, thanks for posting them! I've shared them with the folks at the Kryptos Group too. Is it okay if I link to the pics from the Cyrillic Projector site, or would you rather that I mirrored them so as not to suck up bandwidth? The main slashdotting is over for now (about 50,000 hits over the last couple days), but other papers may be picking up the story soon, so traffic could get heavy again.
Slashdot Mirror
Elonka :)
I couldn't have put it any better myself. You got it exactly right, and I'm glad that that came through, at least to you, one of my contributors who saw an early draft . Unfortunately, the publisher edited out some of my stronger comments from the book's introduction (I may re-post them via my blog, I haven't decided yet), but all of the plaintext (and encrypted!) quotes are still there, so the opinions that I wanted represented, still are. ;)
Elonka :)
(Answer to Cryptogram #52: "When I am abroad, I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the government of my own country. I make up for lost time when I come home." - Winston Churchill)
Yup, I remember RAF Alconbury. :) I was at RAF Mildenhall, 1978-1981.
325x1
Elonka :)
Yup, you get the prize for coming closest, though I got a kick out of the various anagrams, too. :)
For the record (and those not interested in genealogy or name origins can stop reading now), it's my real birth name, and is Hungarian. I was named after my maternal grandmother, Ilona Pazman. The "ka" is a diminutive suffix (like in Spanish, "Juan" will become Juanito or Juanita when used with a child), and the "E" was substituted as an Americanized spelling so that it would be pronounced correctly. And yes, it means "Helen" which is Greek for "light" or "shining", as in "Hellenic culture".
Elonka :)
I'll take that bet. ;) Wasn't me, and I didn't even know that the Whitedust interview had been posted, until the Simutronics CEO (David Whatley, another slashdotter) IMed me and said, "You are about to be slashdotted" (and no, it wasn't him either). A couple minutes after that, a bunch of other IMs flew in with similar warnings to batten down the web-server, and I've been dealing with the related deluge for the rest of the day. As slashdottings go though, it's been relatively light (only about 5000 visitors), probably because the Whitedust folks didn't actually put any links to my website in their interview. The traffic has been coming in from the secondary links in the /. thread, from my Wikipedia bio, and from Google.
If I would have started the thread, you can be sure I would have linked it better, to my site, my company, and my upcoming book. ;) My guess is it was posted by someone from Whitedust.
Elonka :)
Elonka :)
Heh. While it is indeed true that I have hidden other codes and puzzles around my webpages, this isn't one of them. ;) As part of the most recent article, the folks at Wired simply made a graphic of my Kryptos transcript page. Any unusual pixels from there, occurred on their end.
:)
Elonka
First off, it was excellent. I also had a chance to meet the film-maker, Greg Pak, and was very impressed. He's a geek who's going out and making movies about geek things, but telling them in ways that everyone, both geeks and non-geeks, can understand.
If you're looking for a high-tech special effects thriller that's heavy on hardware, you may not enjoy Pak's stuff. But if you're looking for some moving stories that really nail some of the emotional truths about people and the way they connect with each other, I can't recommend this movie enough.
I think one of my favorite stories was the one about the mother whose son was gravely ill in the hospital, and she copes with his illness by lovingly restoring each one of his childhood robot toys (and yes, they're real toys -- the director understands!)
Pak already had somewhat of a name for himself by making a few quirky shorts which are already on the internet. And I'm pleased to see that he's turned that notoriety into a feature-length film. And I definitely look forward to seeing more stuff from him in the future! He deserves all the support we can give him.
Elonka :)
It all depends what kind of crime.
The Zodiac Killer was never caught, but was still extremely famous. He left encrypted messages at crime scenes, some of which the cops solved, and some of which remain unsolved to this day, even with the full attention of public cryptologists trying to crack them.
I've traveled the world, been to every continent, and through scores of different countries and border crossings. I've seen plenty of border hassles, especially in third-world countries. While on the road, I'd routinely have to carry extra photos of myself in case I was asked for one. I more than once was asked for bribes. I knew better than to wear khaki or camouflage clothing or accessories, because anything that would make a border guard suspicious that I might be military, could instantly cause problems, with or without proof. I accepted as routine that I'd be asked who I was traveling with, where I was staying, what my medical history was, and, during the height of the AIDS panic, I was even questioned about my sexual habits (one border guard told me that since I was from North America, he didn't want me having sex while in his country).
Compared with all that, I see a digital fingerprint scan as trivial. It's a simple check that says, "Yes, I'm the person that this passport was issued for." It makes forging efforts *much* more difficult, and I see that as a good thing.
As a side rant, every time I go to a gym and see one of those treadmills or stationary cycles with a video screen, I keep hoping that I'll find one that has an actual game attached. Like "pedal faster and steer to the right in order to get the powerup that'll let you skip the big hill so you can pedal to the other side of it to pick up the treasure coin which opens the door so you can pedal through the orchard maze and see pretty graphics," etc. But so far, no one (to my knowledge) seems to have picked up on that idea (of tying in mental stimulation to one of the stationary exercise machines). So, I'm usually bored to tears by most gym equipment.
If anyone on slashdot knows of such a thing though, please tell me so I can try and talk my local gym into getting one? :)
Elonka :)
What gives me a giggle about the thing, is whether or not it will be successful. I mean, look at the multitude of Mars missions that have attempted a landing and then failed and crashed. So, since we seem to be so good at crashing things, will "Deep Impact" be successful at crashing too? Or will it fail with a spectacular, "Damnit, we missed!" as the probe goes sailing back out into oblivion? :) Or even worse, that it might land with a soft touchdown (chuckle).
Elonka :)
The idea that the names of those fallen soldiers are mixing with stardust today, has been giving me a warm fuzzy feeling. :)
There's a site that JPL maintains with information, but it's been tough for me to maintain a link to it because they keep reorganizing their file directories. As of the current nano-second, more information is available via the Stardust FAQ.
Also, if anyone would like to get their own name onto one of the next missions (or see if you're already included), here's where you can enter/search for your name aboard the Deep Impact probe, which is heading out to meet with a comet in 2005. Keep in mind though that January 2004 is the deadline for entering new names. For more info, check here for the Deep Impact fact sheet.
Elonka :)
Some other good links for Voynich information:
Elonka :)
Great pics, thanks for posting them! I've shared them with the folks at the Kryptos Group too. Is it okay if I link to the pics from the Cyrillic Projector site, or would you rather that I mirrored them so as not to suck up bandwidth? The main slashdotting is over for now (about 50,000 hits over the last couple days), but other papers may be picking up the story soon, so traffic could get heavy again.