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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: Perplex City » PXC: Questions/Meta
[LOCKED] Questions - Ask them here
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WebPillar
Boot


Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 14
Location: Terminal Dogma

 		Questions - Ask them here
Right, to save different topics being opened up, this topic shall be opened solely for answering questions.

Couple of rules:

- You must Search first, everyone here is not prepared to be your servant and do the reading for you, we'll help with stuff you can't find, but if it's covered elsewhere it doesn't make you look good.
- If there is a topic already covering the subject, then post your question there, this is for miscellaneous or uncovered areas.
- Do not chat in this thread, it's only for asking/answering questions, and nothing else.

- Wishi-san (the first question continues below)

------------------

My deepest apologies if either of these questions are answered elsewhere. I have read through each topic in the perpex city area of the forums and still have a couple of questions.

1. from my limited knowledge of html I can easily recognize the a href command as a link in the source code of a website. However, on the Perplex City website source the only type of command that seems to be similar to this is an href one. Are the other parts of the command not always needed? What are all the ways to tell that there is a url hidden in a web page? I had previously thought that the only way to tell was to find the comman that included a href.

2. So far I have been able to follow most of what has been found/happening. The two things I am still a little confused about are the
cache files and the "autoresponse" e-mail. Where/how were the cache files (one of my favorite parts of this ARG so far) that were talked about in the two wikis found? I understand that there numbers have something to do with the number e from... where? The original site perhaps? And what was the autorespomse e-mail? This was sent to players who e-mailed the dinah e-mail... right? How would I get it? Is it too late?


Sorry all, I know my post isn't the best. I tried hard to understand everything after litterally reading for hours.

PostPosted: Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:47 pm
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PillarNumber7
Boot


Joined: 28 Dec 2004
Posts: 64
Location: right behind you

 		In HTML the general command for a hyperlink in
<a href="pagename.htm"> This is a link </a>
or
<a href="www.page.com/whatever.htm"> This is another link </a>

Now in the PerplexCity.com code an image map is used.
<MAP NAME="letter"><AREA SHAPE="poly" COORDS="61,18,54,29,50,40,55,52,67,58,84,56,98,48,103,38,105,25,101,15,91,9,72,10" HREF="indexB.html"></MAP>

The coordinates in the source code defines the poly around the logo on the sente letter and the "HREF=" links the defined area to the next page.

The other link (sort of a link anyways) is the form where you enter your email. The only thing you'll see in the source is the path to the .cgi that runs the form. As far as I know you can't hide a form on a page.


Secondly, the cache files were found by following the hidden links to "http://perplexcity.com/2718281828/"
and printing the document (or hitting print preview) to see "http://perplexcity.com/assets/sitewide/spacer.gif"
this says that the errors were logged to /tmp/httpd/errorlog/
so goto "http://perplexcity.com/tmp/httpd/errorlog/"
and there you have it.

Sorry, don't know about the autoreply.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:22 am
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yanka
Fickle


Joined: 06 Oct 2003
Posts: 1214
Location: undesirable

 		Re: [Question] basic html and cache files
WebPillar wrote:
1. from my limited knowledge of html I can easily recognize the a href command as a link in the source code of a website. However, on the Perplex City website source the only type of command that seems to be similar to this is an href one. Are the other parts of the command not always needed? What are all the ways to tell that there is a url hidden in a web page? I had previously thought that the only way to tell was to find the comman that included a href.

I think the best way to ensure that you haven't missed a url in the source is to search it (the source) carefully. The url doesn't have to be enclosed in the tags (in fact, I've seen case[s] where the tags have been ommited/broken on purpose). Usually, people scour through the source, and anything that looks suspicious ends up being tried as a url. I'm not sure that I understand exactly what you're asking, but in many cases, the url is hidden/"puzzled" to the point of being unrecognizable: for example, I'm reminded of the /blueline.html in MU that ended up being an answer to a bunch of commented-out stuff in the source; or of the dremflash in our tribute trail that represented /dream.swf.

WebPillar wrote:
Where/how were the cache files (one of my favorite parts of this ARG so far) that were talked about in the two wikis found?
They were found here.

WebPillar wrote:
I understand that there numbers have something to do with the number e from... where? The original site perhaps?

Again, I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but you can see what the cache files have to do with "e" in that thread. To recap: so far the filenames are strings of 10 consecutive digits in e.

WebPillar wrote:
And what was the autorespomse e-mail? This was sent to players who e-mailed the dinah e-mail... right? How would I get it? Is it too late?

Er... ok, there were autoreplies sent to people that e-mailed the "dinah at projectsyzygy" account. I'm not sure if that account is still set to autoreply, but you can try Smile The other autoreponders were:

from sente:
__________
Hello

This is an autorespond to say thanks very much for your email and interest in PS.

We'll be reviewing all the applications over the coming weeks and setting up a series of interviews.

Don't worry if you don't hear from us within the next month or two though. Due to the enormity of the project we'll be establishing a network of several hundred people around the world to assist in a wide variety of different ways. We'll be putting this in place a little closer to launch (early 2005).

Yours enigmatically,

The PS team
_______________

and from curious:
_______________
Hello

This is an autorespond to say thanks very much for your email and interest in PS.

As promised we'll be back in touch on the eve of the launch (early 2005) and we'll be able to go into much greater detail then.

Yours enigmatically,

The PS team


_____________

As far as I know, there have been no autoresponders from perplexcity.com.

All of that said, I would like to express some hope that this doesn't become a trend of people making new threads to ask questions about what has happened, and how. All of this information can be found in the old threads, and whatever "can't" can be addressed in this thread, or other existing threads.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:49 am
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SilentAvenger
Boot

Joined: 23 Oct 2004
Posts: 44

 		About finding URLs.... there are several options.

Pages can link to other pages in many ways:

1. Simple <a href="">, an html link. The URL is contained within the href/
2. Imagemap. Has a similar HREF field.
3. Javascript: document.location, or a new window command, it will usually have a full URL, can also have a mime encoded URL (details later).
3.a: VbScript - not used alot, I dunno how they do it.
4. Applet/Flash/ActiveX: You have to dissassemble the binary file - harder to do. You can also sometimes open it in notepad, and find the URLs.
5. Forms, and submittance. These are defined in <Form action="">, where action = the url.
6. Server-side URL redirection via PHP/ASP/JSP. Cannot be broken (not without bruteforcing, or cheating)

To find URLs, you should look through the source, for any of the following:
"Http://", ".js", ".html", ".cgi", ".php", ".php4", ".asp", ".swf", ".class", ".jsp", ".htm"

That should probably cover all the options of the page to link to anywhere.
The easiest way it usually just to read it over by human eyes, and tag anything that looks like a URL.

About Mime encoding, remember how, if the URL has a space, it turns into %20? Well, thats mime encoding. It has a %- symbol for every character.
You can also encode IPs as a single number, which is rarely ever used.

This should cover most ways a page can link to somewhere.
Have fun Smile

PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:25 am
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mr_good_trips
Boot

Joined: 23 Dec 2004
Posts: 37

 		Re: Questions - Ask them here
Quote:
in the two wikis found? I understand that there numbers have something to do with the number e from... where?


Not sure if I misunderstand what you are asking here but will answer anyway. E is a mathematically derived number, and a constant.
For all the info you could ever want, and much much more, refer to the thread on this forum.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:19 pm
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario

 		SilentAvenger, you said all I was going to say... I'll just answer one point
SilentAvenger wrote:
3.a: VbScript - not used alot, I dunno how they do it.

VBScript uses the same DOM engine as javascript, but the language syntax is VB. So for instance, document.location is still used just as with javascript to set a url. The main difference is strings are enclosed only by double quotes, and commands aren't appended by ';'. So finding a URL in VBScript is about as easy as finding one in javascript.

Quote:
To find URLs, you should look through the source, for any of the following:
"Http://", ".js", ".html", ".cgi", ".php", ".php4", ".asp", ".swf", ".class", ".jsp", ".htm"

sometimes also "https://", but mainly probably as used as .htm, .asp, or .php, I would also list ".css" - one of the first file references I look for when scouring source.

Mainly, don't assume urls will always be external. When scouring code, you'll be wanted to look more towards local references, to the same site, in other word urls that don't start with http:// or https://.

The tricky part is when the links become dynamic or generated in includes. Sometimes a developer may write links through scripted code, or by a function that writes variables where the url string is generated elsewhere. A lot of developers now also include separate script code files in the html, to clean up the html source.
Usually, when I see a .htm, .css or .js file reference in an html, I copy the file path reference, and append it to the domain. Most browsers should open the file you enter as best it knows how. IE opens .js files as text, so you can read over the javascript code; same with .css files to check the stylesheet source; the same may happen with other various text source files (like php, though ASP is a server-side script, so chances are you'll never see an .asp file source code, except the resulting html)

If you want to get really deep, make sure you check any and all .css files, as there's now the ability to add scripted behaviour to html objects through applying behaviours which can be defined in CSS. So again, just look for file references (local or external - with or without http://) in the .css file source. Generally though, in .css would be more commonly found references to background images. CSS file references generally take on the form url(fileurl) in a property.

Ok, so that was more than one point. Smile quick recap:

1) VBScript = Javascript with some inherent syntax differences - same document object model, generic object/scripting functions
2) also look for "https://" and ".css" references
3) dynamic scripting may refer to files or urls indirectly
4) open up text-based referenced files to check for files or urls listed, such as in .js, .css, .php, .htm, .cgi, etc
5) .css file references or urls are most commonly in the form url(fileref) - likely referring to images, or possibly even more layers of behavioral scripting
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 4:00 pm
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WolverineFan
Decorated


Joined: 30 Dec 2004
Posts: 192
Location: Michigan/USA
SilentAvenger wrote:
About Mime encoding, remember how, if the URL has a space, it turns into %20? Well, thats mime encoding. It has a %- symbol for every character.


I only bring this up since we might encounter some MIME encoded stuff later. The %20 stuff is actually URL encoded, not MIME encoded. It's % followed by 2 hexadecimal numbers that represent the character within the US-ASCII [20] coded character set (see the section 2.2 in http://www.cse.ohio-state.edu/cgi-bin/rfc/rfc1738.htm). For an ASCII chart see: http://www.lookuptables.com/ (or google for one). You'll notice that 20 HEX corresponds to SPACE.

MIME encoding is a slightly different beast. It's a way to convert binary data into ASCII characters (similar to UU encoding), which make it safe to email, send to a newsgroup, or whatever. The MIME encoded message can be decoded to re-create the original binary data. MIME encoding has also been used to obfuscate passwords. There are actually two different encoding schemes used with MIME, one very like URL encoding called quoted-printable (it uses an = instead of %), and the the other called Base 64. For more on MIME: http://www.hunnysoft.com/mime/rfc2045.txt

PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:15 pm
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ArtherEld
Veteran

Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 85

 		Question - How popular are the words "Syzygy" and "Perplex City"?

Because I thought Perplex City was just a play on words. And syzygy was made up word by the puppetmasters. But I did a search on yahoo and found several sites that most likely aren't ingame (though I could be wrong, I could post them here, though they've probably already been discussed) but use these words.

One website actually is "Welcome to Perplex City"

Found a couple websites with syzygy in the web address and the website looks like the error log website.

Then there's a syzygy music website.

These websites don't look ingame, again I could be wrong.

I ask because I wanna know just how reliable a search engine like yahoo is in finding ingame websites.
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What don't we do."

PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:12 pm
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Jay
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Joined: 09 Nov 2004
Posts: 130
Location: Roswell, GA, USA
ArtherEld wrote:
Question - How popular are the words "Syzygy" and "Perplex City"?

Because I thought Perplex City was just a play on words. And syzygy was made up word by the puppetmasters. But I did a search on yahoo and found several sites that most likely aren't ingame (though I could be wrong, I could post them here, though they've probably already been discussed) but use these words.


Well, syzygy is actually an established word; I believe an earlier thread talks extensively about this.

Quote:
I ask because I wanna know just how reliable a search engine like yahoo is in finding ingame websites.


Well, if you know what you're looking for, a search engine could help, but most ingame sites will have in-game clues or links to get you there.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:35 pm
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ArtherEld
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Joined: 09 Jan 2005
Posts: 85

 		Okay but how about my opening question? Is there some other meaning to syzygy than just some word the PMs made up? Because I found quite a few websites with that in its url.
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PostPosted: Mon Jan 24, 2005 10:52 pm
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Daffy889
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Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 493
Location: South Australia
ArtherEld wrote:
Okay but how about my opening question? Is there some other meaning to syzygy than just some word the PMs made up? Because I found quite a few websites with that in its url.


syz·y·gy
n. pl. syz·y·gies
Astronomy.
a. Either of two points in the orbit of a celestial body where the body is in opposition to or in conjunction with the sun.
b. Either of two points in the orbit of the moon when the moon lies in a straight line with the sun and Earth.
c. The configuration of the sun, the moon, and Earth lying in a straight line.

From Dictionary.com

PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:22 am
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Daffy889
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Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 493
Location: South Australia
thebruce wrote:
Usually, when I see a .htm, .css or .js file reference in an html, I copy the file path reference, and append it to the domain. Most browsers should open the file you enter as best it knows how. IE opens .js files as text, so you can read over the javascript code; same with .css files to check the stylesheet source; the same may happen with other various text source files (like php, though ASP is a server-side script, so chances are you'll never see an .asp file source code, except the resulting html)


Actually, php is server side too. You'll never see anything but the generated html (unless there's an error).

PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 12:25 am
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thebruce
Dances With Wikis


Joined: 16 Aug 2004
Posts: 6899
Location: Kitchener, Ontario
Daffy889 wrote:
Actually, php is server side too. You'll never see anything but the generated html (unless there's an error).

this is true Smile I just listed it to be safe, and it was listed first...
but there still may be the off chance that you might be able to get a hold of asp or php files if the server isn't setup right at a certain point. *shrug*
But yes, PHP and ASP are serverside, along with a number of other languages, like .CF (Cold Fusion) and .PL (Perl)
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PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 10:07 am
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Seej
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Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 614
ArtherEld wrote:

One website actually is "Welcome to Perplex City"


That's the site for the Hutto Family. A search for them will take you to various posts discussing their relation to the game but basically they used to own the perplexcity.com domain IIRC.

There's various other sites that seem to be out of game (e.g. the newsletter - again, search for previous posts) that mention it just out of conincidence. There's also blogs like Nik_Doof's, the Wiki, the tranZed primer, etc. that'll all come up in searches. So whilst searches may turn up something relevant you'll have to wade through some noise to get to it. Best bet is to search on this forum before you post your amazing new lead, just to check that it's not already been explored ad infinitum by others as well as getting a better feel for what's in game and out of game (yes, I know, it's a mistake I made early on so I get where you're coming from). In fact, I think I'll compile a list of all sites we're confident aren't in game and add them to the beginners look here thread just so people know....

PostPosted: Tue Jan 25, 2005 11:16 am
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Mike213
Guest


 		Most pages of Perplex City don't contain the following in their source code, but some do. It stands out. I am wondering if it is just computer code, or if it MEANS something . . .

In all the sites branching off of tmp except the error logs and such contain this in their source code, including the quotes:

"-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN"

And then the Marchant page contains, including the quotes:

"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"

And, most importantly, the "spacer image" is given the div id (is this a name?) furniture. Does any of this mean something? I am pretty sure the furniture thing does, for it is out of the ordinary (it seems like a name, for the marchant pic is given the nickname marchant)
This furniture thing could, however, be a term that is similar to the term spacer, but I don't want to believe that.
Mike

PostPosted: Fri Jan 28, 2005 8:35 pm
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