Ron 10 #101 January 12, 2004 QuoteAardvark Geeze...are you a skydiver? AAD"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Papers, 334 Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kallend 2,027 #102 January 12, 2004 Quote2 minutes. Not bad at all. Eel, uulation, oophorectomy... The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #103 January 12, 2004 Perhaps an important message to America's youth about the potential consequences of loud, unprotected bestiality? Brent ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 4 #104 January 12, 2004 Yeah, there are a couple of pattern attacks you could do on the code, but you'd still need to know the bits per character. In the actual coded DVD message I had found that if you use Murray code you get a nice clean space at character #10 with the pattern "••|••" So I started thinking of 9 letter words with repeaters for characters 3 and 7. My candidate first word would have been "planetary" followed by a space and then another 5 letter word. Unfortunately, there simply wasn't enough of the code available to do this sort of attack. Then, the first clue comes out . . . eeek! Some folks have made hay over the first five bits following the commas. "---ll" I have a -real- problem with the first ten bits in the first sentence. of the first clue. Check them out! "-llll-llll" If it is a 5-bit code, what words start with a double letter? EERIE, EERILY and LLOYD are about the only ones I've come up with. Just one of many problems with the clue. The original coded message on the DVD gave me hope of finding an answer. The "clue" makes makes it obvious to me that it's a lot more difficult than it at first appears.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zyne 0 #105 January 12, 2004 Clue no. 2, January 12, 2004: The text in clue No. 1 is from Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. Can you solve it now? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #106 January 12, 2004 "Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves." EDITED TO ADD: OOPS - this last one has 3 commas, not 2. Can you fit this to the first clue? Or this: "The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. " Or this: "There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. " These are quotes from Pale Blue Dot that I found on the web that contain the punctuation pattern of sentence with a period at the end followed by sentence with two commas. I figured it would be a famous passage of the book that they encoded, so here are a few passages that people quoted on web sites. FWIW. Brent ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
zyne 0 #107 January 12, 2004 I think you are close on that but I believe this is closer ... The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Errr .. scratch that, their stupid site wont accept something that long ... cuts me off at "harbor" so .... maybe its just coding error on their behalf, who knows .... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #108 January 12, 2004 Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #109 January 12, 2004 two more: It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. Note that this quote is a little different from the one above. ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #110 January 12, 2004 The planetary society has excerpts from the book on their website here:http://www.planetary.org/html/society/advisors/sagandot.html Surely it is from this page. ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #111 January 12, 2004 The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. These are the only sentences that fit the syntax in the portion of the book quoted on the planetary society web site. ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jerry81 10 #112 January 12, 2004 The second sentence of the clue begins with this sequence; •••ll•••lll••l•••••l. (number of symbols in it irrelevant for my point). So does the part after the first comma. This either means the first word of the sentence and the first word after the comma are the same, or that they're different, but begin with the same letters. That might make finding the text easier. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #113 January 12, 2004 >>In our obscurity, in all << >>•••ll•••lll••l•••••l.<< >>---ll---lll--l-----l<< It is safe to say that this is two letters plus a portion of a third. It is 20 characters long. So a character has to be at least seven bits? (If a character were five bits, then we would have more than three full characters repeating). Maybe it is 3-bit with a shift. Or maybe it is 5-bit without leading zeros? ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scottbre 0 #114 January 12, 2004 QuoteOur planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. I have a feeling this is the quote that is encoded in the first clue. The ratio of letters to bits is very close for each "part" of the message. "Your mother's full of stupidjuice!" My Art Project Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #115 January 12, 2004 >>Errr .. scratch that, their stupid site wont accept something that long ... cuts me off at "harbor" so .... maybe its just coding error on their behalf, who knows .... << Site accepts guesses for what is on the dvd. This is actually Clue #1. ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #116 January 12, 2004 What is the approximate ratio of letters to bits, and by how much does it vary in the 297 bit sentence? ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scottbre 0 #117 January 12, 2004 -llll-llll-----l-ll-lll-l-l-l-ll--l---lll-------ll---llll----l----ll-l-l- llll--l---lll-l-ll-ll-----llll-ll-l--lll-ll-l-llll--l---ll---lll--l----ll--- -ll--ll--l---l-l-lll----l-l-ll---------lll--l-l-llll-----lll-l-l-lll-ll- lll---lll--l-l-l-ll---ll-ll--llllll-l---ll---lll-ll----ll-l---l-l--l-llll-- |.---ll---lll--l-----llll-llll------lll-lll-lllll-ll-ll-llll--ll---lll----l- ll--,---ll---lll--l-----l-ll-l-lll-l-l---ll----ll--llll---llll---l-llll---- l-lllll----ll--l---lllllll,---ll----ll--ll--ll----l---ll---llll---ll--l-- ll---ll--llll---lll--l-ll-------ll----ll--ll-l-ll-------ll--ll--lll-l-ll- ll-l---l-l--lll---lll-l-lll-l-l---ll-ll--lll-l-----l---l-l-l-l---lll-l----- ---lll-l-llll--ll-l--lll--ll--ll----l---ll-----ll---lll-l-l-llll-----l--- ll-llllll---l-l-l-l---lll-l-------llll-llll--lll--lll-l-ll-llll-----llll. Quote Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Seems like ---ll---lll--l---- or possibly the same thing with less that 4 dashes at the end translates to "in". "Your mother's full of stupidjuice!" My Art Project Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
jerry81 10 #118 January 12, 2004 If that passage is indeed the clue, we have "in" "our" and "the" shouldn't be too hard to guess. Also, s can only be this ||| (double s in vastness). Which would mean letters are variable length. This doesn't feel completely right to me yet... Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scottbre 0 #119 January 12, 2004 Code count: 297. 78, 96, 339. Letter count: 53. 14, 17, 63. ------------------------------------------- Ratio: 5.6. 5.6, 5.6, 5.3. None of these match exactly, but that is still pretty close. I'm guessing the differences are because there are groups of bits that represent something other than letters, that are also made up of fewer bits. "Your mother's full of stupidjuice!" My Art Project Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
indyz 1 #120 January 12, 2004 Could be based on a binary tree, a la Huffman. Edit: Link Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 4 #121 January 12, 2004 Ok, just a little analysis of the sizes of the phrases we're looking for. If the length of the first sentence in the first clue is 297 bits, and the length of the first phrase of the second sentence is 78, then that's a length ratio of about 3.7594:1. Let's check that against some candidate quotes from Pale Blue Dot Quote The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Sentance 1 = 54 characters with spaces and 43 without spaces. Phrase 1 of sentence 2 = 80 with and 65 without. I don't really have to do the math to figure out that this isn't a very good candidate quote. How about: Quote Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. First sentace = 64 with and 53 without. Phrase 1 of sentence 2 = 16 with and 14 without. Hmmm . . . 4:1 with and 3.7857:1 without! That's pretty damn close. Let's do some others Phrase 2 of sentence 2 = 20 with and 17 without. Giving us 3.2:1 with and 3.1176 without. Phrase 3 of sentence 2 = 77 with and 63 without. Giving us 0.8311 with and 0.8412 without. All four sections are -extremely- close in ratio to the coded first clue and I think it makes a pretty good candidate quote.quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #122 January 12, 2004 -llll-llll-----l-ll-lll-l-l-l-ll--l---lll-------ll---llll----l----ll-l-l- llll--l---lll-l-ll-ll-----llll-ll-l--lll-ll-l-llll--l---ll---lll--l----ll--- -ll--ll--l---l-l-lll----l-l-ll---------lll--l-l-llll-----lll-l-l-lll-ll- lll---lll--l-l-l-ll---ll-ll--llllll-l---ll---lll-ll----ll-l---l-l--l-llll-- |.---ll---lll--l-----llll-llll------lll-lll-lllll-ll-ll-llll--ll---lll----l- ll--,---ll---lll--l-----l-ll-l-lll-l-l---ll----ll--llll---llll---l-llll---- l-lllll----ll--l---lllllll,---ll----ll--ll--ll----l---ll---llll---ll--l-- ll---ll--llll---lll--l-ll-------ll----ll--ll-l-ll-------ll--ll--lll-l-ll- ll-l---l-l--lll---lll-l-lll-l-l---ll-ll--lll-l-----l---l-l-l-l---lll-l----- ---lll-l-llll--ll-l--lll--ll--ll----l---ll-----ll---lll-l-l-llll-----l--- ll-llllll---l-l-l-l---lll-l-------llll-llll--lll--lll-l-ll-llll-----llll. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Quote -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Seems like ---ll---lll--l---- or possibly the same thing with less that 4 dashes at the end translates to "in". Awesome. Now, look at the first 15 bits of the message: -llll-llll----- They would be "our" Now look at the fifteen bits after your second "in": -llll-llll----- They are the same. So perhaps this sequence "-llll-llll-----" is "our". The place where this theory breaks down is at the end of the second sentence. The sentece ends with "ourselves". Note that the first part of what I proposed as "our" appears "-||||-||||" but not the next five dashes. -llll-llll----- ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
scottbre 0 #123 January 12, 2004 QuoteThe place where this theory breaks down is at the end of the second sentence. The sentece ends with "ourselves". Note that the first part of what I proposed as "our" appears "-||||-||||" but not the next five dashes. Does it break down if we assume that --- is used to mark where a space should be....? hmmm. Thus: --- = ll---lll--l- = IN --- = -llll-llll-- = OUR --- = -lll-lll-lllll-ll-ll-llll--ll---lll----l-ll-- = OBSCURITY "Your mother's full of stupidjuice!" My Art Project Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
quade 4 #124 January 12, 2004 Quote Does it break down if we assume that --- is used to mark the end of a word....? How do you reconcile it with the beginning of the second sentence? I mean, how would you know it's the end of a word or part of a letter?quade - The World's Most Boring Skydiver Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmcd308 0 #125 January 12, 2004 Excellent point - that comes at the end of both "in" and "our". ---------------------------------- www.jumpelvis.com Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
