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Post by legion on Mar 9, 2012 8:04:49 GMT
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Post by Max on Mar 9, 2012 8:16:08 GMT
For reference. Welp, I think we found out what Annie meant by "didn't make any sense."
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Post by SpitefulFox on Mar 9, 2012 8:22:40 GMT
Seems like an awful lot of work just to remind Annie to pick up some milk at the grocery store.
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Post by hal9000 on Mar 9, 2012 8:32:55 GMT
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madragoran
Full Member
"If he trully does hurt you, I will rend the flesh from his bones on your word"
Posts: 232
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Post by madragoran on Mar 9, 2012 9:09:12 GMT
I am not so sure I'd be happy if this turned out that daddy was absent all those years not because he is a bad father but because "they" made him do it. (Whatever "they" might be. Work, research into keeping Anne alive after having kids, evil mushrooms wanting to suck his brains out with a straw).
And cryptography seriously rocks! For anyone wanting further reading I recommend The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
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Post by Alexandragon on Mar 9, 2012 10:13:52 GMT
Hm... Cryptography rules!)
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Post by Serenissima on Mar 9, 2012 10:27:29 GMT
Let's hope that they have the other side of it, or else it's impossible to break...
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jaen
New Member
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Post by jaen on Mar 9, 2012 10:28:25 GMT
Funny, that was exactly how I wanted to start this thread when there was none, before I realized it would be a faux pas for a lurker to steal the thunder ; D
Cryptography is awesome. Especially how the online Stanford cryptography course starts with exactly one time pads ; )
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Post by mikeymikemikey on Mar 9, 2012 12:33:20 GMT
You know what I really like about this? The fact that Donald off-handedly mentions that he and Anthony used to pass encrypted messages to each other. And to me it seems that he speaks of it with fondness, so maybe it started out as some sort of childhood game.
Hell, I remember when me and my elementary school friends made up our own code just for laughs. Good times.
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Post by q3 on Mar 9, 2012 14:53:16 GMT
DONALD: Huh. Are you sure that was the entire message? I decrypted it but all it says is "The Game."
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Post by TBeholder on Mar 9, 2012 16:54:11 GMT
What's with this love for the secondary product? As if there wasn't a lot on this issue. Concise practical article. Historical perspective article. I am not so sure I'd be happy if this turned out that daddy was absent all those years not because he is a bad father but because "they" made him do it. (Whatever "they" might be. Work, research into keeping Anne alive after having kids, evil mushrooms wanting to suck his brains out with a straw). Will you be unhappy if it turns out that Anthony was absent because he didn't want to be a bad father? You know what I really like about this? The fact that Donald off-handedly mentions that he and Anthony used to pass encrypted messages to each other. And to me it seems that he speaks of it with fondness, so maybe it started out as some sort of childhood game. I'm unsure whether right now Donald tries to pass what he does as less serious than it is or more. This comes across as too tricky for their mutual safety either way. Hell, I remember when me and my elementary school friends made up our own code just for laughs. Good times. I remember how during a visit to relatives in another town i cracked my cousine's collection of love letters (plain substitution cypher, what did she expect, really? ) merely out of boredom. Good times.
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Post by Fhqwhgads on Mar 9, 2012 17:53:03 GMT
Also if you *reeaalllly* love the topic you can go listen to Steve Gibson's podcasts with Leo Laporte: www.grc.com/securitynow.htm or twit.tv/show/security-now . You will know enough to render you completely socially incompatible with the rest of your species if you listen to them all. *protip: get all the pdf's and read them, it's waaay faster
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Necropaxx
Full Member
The natural choice for a shoulder to cry on.
Posts: 135
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Post by Necropaxx on Mar 9, 2012 18:40:04 GMT
Donald Donlan is... a NERD!
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Post by Tierra Y Libertad on Mar 10, 2012 0:53:46 GMT
I wonder how the page would be if the second panel had no text box in it.
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Post by Georgie L on Mar 10, 2012 2:06:45 GMT
The text would be floating in mid air of it's own accord. Defying the laws of physics.
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cass
Junior Member
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Post by cass on Mar 10, 2012 4:44:53 GMT
I'm amazed Annie can remember it if its been properly squishified with the OTP.
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Post by TBeholder on Mar 10, 2012 5:37:35 GMT
I'm amazed Annie can remember it if its been properly squishified with the OTP. Why? This depends on the alphabet in which it was put in the end. The text is meaningless, but it may be decimal numbers, and may be whole words.
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Post by Tierra Y Libertad on Mar 10, 2012 9:42:50 GMT
No, no. I meant what would the panel be like if that panel was silent? I thought if I said "what if there were no words?" then someone would say "Well then there'd be an empty text box there for no reason" and of course offer a Photoshop version of the page or panel doing precisely that to be filled in with whatever most amuses the reader in the "I saw an opportunity" thread. There was no way to win. Either way would be ambiguous. Thus are the limits of language.
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Post by KMar on Mar 10, 2012 13:59:25 GMT
What's with this love for unnecessary elitism? "Concise practical article" is practical only if you happen to know Perl or C, the meaning and the usage of the logical operator XOR and why radio-active decay card provides truly random numbers. "Historical perspective article" is listed as "External reading" in the Wikipedia article. The basic definition of one-time pad is about the same in any possible article one can imagine anyway: Anyone not satisfied with explanation "It's like a key that decrypts a coded message", could google one-time pad themselves. (All the articles mentioned in this thread are listed on first search result page, and there's even more articles!) Or consult local library.
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Post by mikeymikemikey on Mar 10, 2012 15:22:51 GMT
Ugh. Let's please, please, please not use the term elitism. I really don't like how that's thrown about, and it never ends well.
Some people like primary sources, and some don't. No need to turn it into a "so you think you're better than everyone else?" accusation, even if indirect or even if that's not your intention. It's one of those terms that's become so loaded over the years with that insinuation that using it is guaranteed not to end well.
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cass
Junior Member
Posts: 58
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Post by cass on Mar 10, 2012 22:27:00 GMT
Why? This depends on the alphabet in which it was put in the end. The text is meaningless, but it may be decimal numbers, and may be whole words. Because it won't form a coherent narrative, which is important to remembering things given the highly re-constructive nature of memory. (People don't seem to directly encode all the information they have on events so much as they encode enough of events that they can combine them with pre-existing schemas to come up with a rough idea of what happened.) If I pull ten semi-random words out of the air, 'responsible, my, admiration, won, barrel, rock, driving, mythopoetizing, chop, emulator,' then pretty much the only way I'm going to be able to tell you what they are in half an hour is if I write them down straight after and read them back. On the other hand, if I remember 'The tramp steamer went down the river and headed around the cove.' (12 words) and then someone asks me tomorrow what happened to the tramp steamer I used in my example, they'll get more or less the same words back. Smaller sequences you can use visualisation tricks I suppose - but for most people reciting strings of gibberish, whatever alphabet you're using, doesn't seem to be something we're good at. So unless the message is very short. (Like, 'Hint: Coyote is evil.') -shrug-
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Post by legion on Mar 11, 2012 6:52:44 GMT
Ugh. Let's please, please, please not use the term elitism. I really don't like how that's thrown about, and it never ends well. Well I, for one, happily call myself an elitist! Cass > I was thinking about that, and I thought however that you could, not too uneasily, take a string of crypted letters, convert them into numbers, and use those numbers with a table to *generate* seemingly normal, meaningful language (which granted wouldn't make much sense, but would still look like English, as opposed to random letters).
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Post by atteSmythe on Mar 11, 2012 7:52:46 GMT
I wonder how the page would be if the second panel had no text box in it. It'd definitely work, but I don't think it would convey quite the same feeling. Certainly not the same information. We haven't seen Donny in a while, so he probably deserves a recap for the less...forum-bound.
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mariposa
Full Member
Hi, I'm Elise!
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Post by mariposa on Mar 11, 2012 13:56:43 GMT
Seems odd that Donny would just have that on him...
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Post by Georgie L on Mar 11, 2012 17:14:04 GMT
No, no. I meant what would the panel be like if that panel was silent? I thought if I said "what if there were no words?" then someone would say "Well then there'd be an empty text box there for no reason" and of course offer a Photoshop version of the page or panel doing precisely that to be filled in with whatever most amuses the reader in the "FI saw an opportunity"thread. There was no way to win. Either way would be ambiguous. Thus are the limits of language. That was me. I knew you meant text and textbox, I was just being a bozo cause I thought it would be funny. I think it would add a dramatic silence (which would still fit in the scene rather well), but I think it is more in-character for Antimony to be quietly surveying the situation when she is sad, frustrated or confused (or to lash out, but her friends calmed her down enough for that not to happen anytime soon.) And since we are getting this event narrated from Antimonys' thoughts, we get to hear her surveyings.
Seems odd that Donny would just have that on him... He seems to me the kind of guy that would always have a notepad on him, just to write down his thoughts or to figure things out. My main theory is that he just has really good memory and wrote down the decryption code from memory as he was talking to annie. My other theory is that it is the same notepad as from high school.
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Post by Per on Mar 11, 2012 20:45:54 GMT
Seems odd that Donny would just have that on him... They probably knew Annie had received a call from Anthony before they assembled in that room. This might have been enough to guess the message was meant for him to decode.
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Post by TBeholder on Mar 12, 2012 10:30:01 GMT
Ugh. Let's please, please, please not use the term elitism. [...] It's one of those terms that's become so loaded over the years with that insinuation that using it is guaranteed not to end well. Well I, for one, happily call myself an elitist! Why not? It's just a subjective term. Which by definition place things, ah, relatively to the used point of view, and thus tell about the latter at least as much as about observed subjects. In this case, the minimal hygienical requirement of not reaching into the drain while picking up things lying on the street was judged "insufferably high" and "unnecessary" on top. The only way it can end worse than it started would perhaps be if someone picked a quote on the general principle from Evangelion Ripoff TM, but that's about it. Seems odd that Donny would just have that on him... They probably knew Annie had received a call from Anthony before they assembled in that room. This might have been enough to guess the message was meant for him to decode. Also, it may be Donlans' house in the first place.
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Post by mikeymikemikey on Mar 12, 2012 12:16:52 GMT
@ Legion and TBeholder: I just don't like how it's often used, because most of the time when someone uses the term to describe someone else, it's in the "Hey, this guy thinks he's better than us because of <insert political/scientific/academic/etc. opinion that's supposed to be smugly superior here>. Have at 'em!" context that I really despise. Maybe I should cut down on watching political news.
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Post by jasmijn on Mar 12, 2012 15:57:35 GMT
Nice, cryptography. Seems both Mr. Donlan and Mr. Carver are cyphernerds.
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madragoran
Full Member
"If he trully does hurt you, I will rend the flesh from his bones on your word"
Posts: 232
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Post by madragoran on Mar 12, 2012 21:27:03 GMT
Will you be unhappy if it turns out that Anthony was absent because he didn't want to be a bad father? He was/ is a bad father. Diverting this by saying he did not communicate with his only daughter for all those years because some extraneous factors obliged him is a cop out imo. He could send a card or a short note. If you want to communicate anything is better than nothing... Tbh I do not like him at all. Also if he knew and or cared he is a crappy dad that would imply he could try to change it.
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