unforum

[tsioc]

[QUESTION/OT] Stegging: can I help/is it OK?

[CorSorei]

Sitting back and watching for a while is a good idea, it's what I did. It allows you see what's been figured out, what needs to be, and what may have been missed. All I really have to say is I hope you have time to spare and don't mind thinking yourself into a massive headache. Glad to have you along! I say just contribute freely if it's something new, or if you're elaborating on something you get but others don't. Just my opinion. Or you could always read my sig if this doesn't help

[number8]

It's always nice to see someone that have more sense and doesn't just post the first thing that comes to mind. There's a lot trouting going on and though I know everybody meant well, it's becoming a nuisance (strictly my opinion).

I agree at this point it is very hard to keep up because there's just so much information. I sugguest going to the Wiki and read up on what's been happening. If you think there's something you can do, then go for it. We don't really assign stuff to people here, rather we just pick our own forte and see if we can come up with new stuff.

Nice to have you with us. All the best!

[Giskard]

Hiya tsioc, and welcome to uF!

When it comes to helping out while playing an ARG, there always a few things you can do. Either hang back and watch from a little distance, until a puzzle comes by that is right up your alley, meanwhile just following the storyline along, or join in speculation about the possibilities and meaning of the game thusfar.

As far as the above things go, ilovebees is almost literally being spec'ed to death at this moment, I think we may just need to wait and see what happens a bit longer before any spec can be proven or unproven at all.

As far as puzzles go, the game hasn't really started full-swing puzzlewise yet, but the Wiki still has a list of some unsolved puzzles, to be found here. Join the solving if you like, there's also a lot of info on them in our Haunted Apiary / Puzzles section.

Enjoy!

[Deidre]

[-M-]

Agreed, it was there, But For stenography, I think exceptions can be made. People were trying to brute force hotmail accounts and the ILB server...

And you know, that no matter how much you try to tell people not to do something, it'll make the immature ones do it more.

I have a similar capability in that I have 3 CPUs (2 fairly powerful) that could work on it. But I'm thinking that when we need it most, the answer will fall in our laps.

[Macavity]

[Wolf]

As both a player (Beast) and a puppetmaster (Lockjaw and Project_Mu) I can tell you that you will be given everything you need to solve a puzzle or advance the story without using brute force methods as a general rule.

And if you're supposed to run a dictionary script or brute your way through in any fashion at all, the puppetmasters will find a way to make it as clear as they can that in this specific instance it's what you'll need to do.

Anybody can brute force a solution. The fun of it is actually thinking your way through the puzzle/problem/issue/dilemma.

[BrianEnigma]

As far as brute forcing goes, I think it is generally accepted that anything that harms the experience of others is frowned upon. This would very obviously include things like brute forcing servers. The more you (or an automated process) slams the server, the more server resources it uses up (CPU and bandwidth). This makes the server slow for others and can cost the people running the game lots of money because of the bandwidth.

When brute forcing something on your local machine (stegbreak or any other program to try all the answers to a puzzle solve), it does not eat up any bandwidth or shared-CPU. It may adversely effect others if you prematurely get a solve that we were supposed to puzzle through.

At any rate, use your own judgment. I do not see any harm in running stegbreak. We do not really have anything directly from the plot that points to stegged data, as I recall, just a stegdetect output that says something might be hidden (and false-positives are pretty common looking for hidden data).

[aliendial]

First - if you can help try to desteg the killer.jpg images, they can use you; they may be running out of ideas. Run a couple searches to find the threads here and the wiki to see who's working on them and what they say they have tried. May not be stegged but they are still not sure.


Second, brute forcing became an issue in the Beast when someone tried to do it in a way that soaked up most of the bandwidth the puppetmasters had available, and in effect got very expensive, as well as making it hard for other players to try more specific solutions. The solution ultimately was developed from in-game sources, but only after the PMs took down the website and took actions (in-game and outside) to make clear what the problem was. That's actually the chief concern about brute forcing.

That's different than brute-force desteg attempts on your own computer. As Brian says it kinda sucks the life out of the game if you brute force the solution instead of figure it out from in-game sources, but it's not a no-no.

But if you do it, don't ruin it for people who are looking in-game. If you must post, spoiler it so people can avoid reading if they want.

[tsioc]

thanks for all the kind words!

I agree about brute forcing servers and such, I was thinking of the possibly stegged image. I too enjoy a good puzzle, and have been trying to think of possible solutions.

Heck, I'm having a great time just speculating for hours on what's actually going on. Being a Halo fan, I at first thought that it was basically going to be setting the story for Halo 2 over the next few months... get the invasion started, etc...

But the deeper it seemed to go, the more my interest was peaked. I just woke up and headed straight for the wiki to what was new!

So, I'll watch, listen, and offer ideas when I think I have an original one.

Thanks!

[Road]

I must say these responses are great...

Being absolutely new to these, and not having the time to sit down and decipher some of these puzzles as quickly as everyone else did, it seems like there's not a lot I have to offer. So I've sat back (for the most part) and started just messing with the text to see if I can come up with something similar to what others did.

It doesn't seem like much is happening. Does that mean we're missing something? Or that there's just nothing going on? Do you have to hit certain 'triggers' before the game will continue (so used to that in gaming, it feels like we're missing a trigger), or does the game continue and you have to catch up?

Sorry if this isn't the place to ask, but it just felt right

[aliendial]

I would imagine if we are missing something we are intended to find, the PMs will kick our asses at some point by posting a big blinking red arrow saying "OVER HERE, YOU DOPES!"

Otherwise, there does indeed seem not to be anything at the moment, unless those killer.jpg images are stegged. Or we get a professional sound engineer who can definitively prove there's something in the bee .wav

Nothing wrong with a little down time; nothing wrong at all with lurking. One of the nice things about how this community approaches these games is we do not require everyone to contribute - lurk, follow along, learn a few things. Pipe up when something drifts into an area you actually know something about (as long as 5 other people haven't already posted the same thing of course), and don't worry if that doesn't happen. Come along for the ride!

[Samari]

[CorSorei]

I just pictured a big blinking red arrow saying "over here you dopes" pointing to that theroretical piece of important but missed info. Gotta say, that had to be one of the funniest mental images I've had in a long time. Thanks for making my day.