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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Puzzles
[LOCKED] [PUZZLE SPEC] Possible ingame/meta explanation for coords
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keybsnbits
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sherpa wrote:
peeveen1 wrote:
I just wrote a quick Java app to fire all the coordinates at www.indo.com (the site referenced on Dana's blog, which she uses to calculate the distance).


Looks good -- didn't have the ILB distances before -- 'though I'm worried about the 0-value distances...


In the context of the distances to letters theory... we should be making sure that the digits in the distances are 25 or less, not 26 or less. With 0-value distances, that would make 0 = 'a' or 'A'. So that would be 0-25 for a-z
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:03 pm
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Zedix
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 		0 could always designate spaces in between the words, in case we have a number=letter situation in the puzzle.

We're also faced with the measures in Miles/Kilometers/Nautical Miles. Which measure would a Navigation AI most likely use ?

Also, Xnbomb pointed out that maybe we should calculate the distance from the ILB server in Texas instead (thus explaining why there is almost no points in texas, since it's branching out from there. See this part of the gigantic thread for the post (damn cross-threading going on Shocked ).

(edit: typos)

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:06 pm
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Varin
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Zedix wrote:
We're also faced with the measures in Miles/Kilometers/Nautical Miles. Which measure would a Navigation AI moste likely use ?


Good question. Well Dana chose to use miles in her blog post, which might hint that we are supposed to stick with that. But on the other had it is tempting to go with Nautical Miles simply because of the Navigation AI.

Quote:
Also, Xnbomb pointed out that maybe we should calculate the distance from the ILB server in Texas instead


Ew, I hope not. That would be a real immersion breaker.

/me crosses her fingers and hopes the PMs are smarter than that
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:09 pm
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jegger
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Mukaikubo wrote:
One point of curiousity-

The distances are fairly smoothly rising. What I mean is, if you sort them by length and plot them so that you have a point at x=1 y=(shortest distance) on up to x=110 y=(longest distance), you get something that fits pretty well into a smoothly rising power curve. It's not a group of short distances and long distances.


Unless there is some very complex manipulation of the numbers, I would think that the distances would cluster around discrete values, because if the distances represented letters, each distance would map onto 1 of 26 values. It seems that it would be very hard to make them increase smoothly artificially.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:11 pm
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xnbomb
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 		Where oh where can our server be?
Varin wrote:
Ew, I hope not. That would be a real immersion breaker.

It doesn't have to be. Nothing in the story has said that Dana runs a server for ilovebees.com on a system at her home or at Aunt Margaret's. It seems a lot more reasonable for me to think that she purchases a web server service from someone, somewhere else. Has Dana ever said she served ilovebees.com from her own computer?

Her brush with Melissa before the Phase 2 update could have been in the nature of her logging in to the server from a computer in San Francisco and trying to replace the files. Every message from the AIs has been communicated in the form of changing files on ilovebees.com, and that doesn't tie down their location other than residing in whichever server those web pages reside. The only thing that has happened that has definitely involved a computer in San Francisco is tapping into the camera, and you could suppose Melissa accomplished that by following the trail of Dana's packets back from the server back to the computer where she was actually sitting, and then accessing the camera output.

I'm not saying this is certainly the case; to me, this issue has never been clear. I don't find it so unbelievable that Dana wouldn't run the web server at home. I actually find that possibility a little less likely. And this might actually explain why Dana was so freaked out by the images of her. Until that moment, she could have supposed that the AIs were not aware of her or the location (i.e. IP) of her computer, because everything that happened to ilovebees.com files happened on another computer.

If you accept the idea that Dana has purchased web serving service from someone for ilovebees, and the files reside on a server elsewhere, having the server be the one that we actually find serving ilovebees.com reinforces the immersion for me Smile . And it potentially provides an explanation of why there are so few location points in Texas, a geostatistical anomaly based on the nature of the pattern of the other points.
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:31 pm
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Dorkmaster
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xnbomb wrote:
It doesn't have to be. Nothing in the story has said that Dana runs a server for ilovebees.com on a system at her home or at Aunt Margaret's. It seems a lot more reasonable for me to think that she purchases a web server service from someone, somewhere else. Has Dana ever said she served ilovebees.com from her own computer?


No, and it is extension, but when Melissa took the "killer.jpg" pictures using Dana's webcam, we were assuming (at that point) that Melissa wasn't strong or coherent enough to go outside of that serving computer, right? (I mean, she couldn't access home controls or pharmbots or anything, and if on the web, she would have found SOME home controls, even if not for Dana's house...) So I think we are to assume, in game, that Dana personally hosts the site. (It's tenuous, but it's the only in-game leg to stand on.)

edited for poor punctuation - DM
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:37 pm
Last edited by Dorkmaster on Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:49 pm; edited 1 time in total
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sherpa
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 		Didn't killer.jpg appear at the same time as the sets-of-links puzzle? So Melissa could use some form of networking ("network tentacle") at least. Perhaps looking at the text describing the killer.jpg would be of some hint here. I've thought all along that it was "Dana's" computer, but the externally-hosted idea makes sense too.

Edit:

Okay, the Monologue says:

Quote:
Whoa. Not CP ancestor packets. This is something different. Quick quick quick quick - parse this protocol and find some kind of eyeball out. Sister you just made a mistake because this is my *meat* this is what I do and you are - GOT IT. I'm not asleep this time, /// sweetheart. Holding the eyeball gently but firmly in your right hand, say the magic words and: ///

SURPRISE! Look up and smile, honey. Bang! Bang! Bang!


This could well be Dana connecting to the server via FTP or SSH (to fix it), the Operator noticing a new type of connection (she would only have had HTTP requests before) and latching on to it to find an "eyeball" into Dana's house. She refers to a "stupid BOX" later - when trying to access Dana's house - but calls it "the" rather than "this", implying it's separate to the one she's trapped in.

Hmm.
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:42 pm
Last edited by sherpa on Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:48 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Dorkmaster
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 		I'm definitely not saying my theory is anything conclusive, or anything, but I just say we tend to have a smidge more in-game evidence, IMHO, that the site was served by Dana... Although I wouldn't bet my firstborn on it either.
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:46 pm
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Varin
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 		Re: Where oh where can our server be?
xnbomb wrote:
It doesn't have to be. Nothing in the story has said that Dana runs a server for ilovebees.com on a system at her home or at Aunt Margaret's. It seems a lot more reasonable for me to think that she purchases a web server service from someone, somewhere else. Has Dana ever said she served ilovebees.com from her own computer?


Good point. I had always assumed that Dana just ran it herself because of the webcam incident.

Although a counterpoint...

If someone else was serving this for Dana, wouldn't she have asked them for help in figuring out what happened to the site? Wouldn't they be concerned seeing as it would be on their server? I would think they would shut it down. Dunno Also, the whois only shows the one site. Would that be an oddity for a non-personal server?

edited to add that there is only one site on the server
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:58 pm
Last edited by Varin on Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:08 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Zedix
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 		Re: Where oh where can our server be?
Varin wrote:

If someone else was serving this for Dana, wouldn't she have asked them for help in figuring out what happened to the site? Wouldn't they be concerned seeing as it would be on their servers, probably with other sites? I would think they would shut it down. Dunno


Following that line of thought, I'm sure the entity would have been able to propagate to other sites. Considering a small honey farm wouldn't really be able to afford a dedicated server (or have a use for a dedicated server) for the website, there must be other websites hosted on that server. So the entity would see the rest of the traffic, not only Dana's computer and could propagate quite fast. Thus, I'm leaning more towards Dana hosting her own site...

(Of course, we might just be pushing too far Wink)

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:02 pm
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xnbomb
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 		Re: Where oh where can our server be?
Varin wrote:
If someone else was serving this for Dana, wouldn't she have asked them for help in figuring out what happened to the site? Wouldn't they be concerned seeing as it would be on their server? I would think they would shut it down. Dunno Also, the whois only shows the one site. Would that be an oddity for a non-personal server?

I do agree that if Dana was using a commercial provider, the first thing she should have done would have been to contact them and say "hackers have been defacing my site ... we have a security problem, please fix it". She couldn't tell a story about AIs, they'd think she was nuts. So, I think the response would be based upon ensuring the security of the web server. Of course, since all the weird stuff is happening inside the server, there'd be no logs of unauthorized access, and no apparent security problem. The provider might conclude that she was a victim of some new digital variant of Munchausen-by-proxy Very Happy . Of course, Dana never mentioned any correspondance along those lines, so this is pure conjecture.

As to the exact nature of serving arrangements, I think we need to apply some suspension of disbelief there. What we know about RackSpace tells us that someone like Dana would not be buying her server space there, as they are a little 'big league' for ilovebees.com. There's no clear way to reconcile the reality of the bandwidth requirements for ilovebees.com in this ARG with a totally convincing reality of how Dana's server arrangement works. You just have to decide which parts of the reality you choose to overlook.

At best, the way we are meant to interpret the location of the server is unclear. I merely suggest San Antonio, Texas because it can further a hypothesis about the locations. Other than that, I have no reason to believe that we should view things in that way.

EDIT: Spelling!
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PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:13 pm
Last edited by xnbomb on Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:30 pm; edited 2 times in total
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 		Re: Where oh where can our server be?
Varin wrote:
Although a counterpoint...

If someone else was serving this for Dana, wouldn't she have asked them for help in figuring out what happened to the site? Wouldn't they be concerned seeing as it would be on their server? I would think they would shut it down.
Counter-counter-point... if she was serving it from a system in her home, wouldn't she have just unplugged the whole thing and thrown it in the basement once it took her picture? Why leave it up and running when she left for China?

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:19 pm
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Qad
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 		So now we have a few nice tables of distances between coordinate pairs. But I don't think that's enough yet. What else is the distance calculation page giving us? Direction!

So my suggestion is to gather distance and direction, in degrees, from the first point in each pair to the second. Then we'll have a new set of coordinates, in POLAR notation!

Once we have that, we can try plotting them on a circle graph or linearly with degrees as the x-axis.

This may be nothing, but I think it's worth a try.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:22 pm
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jbd
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 		Re: Where oh where can our server be?
Guest wrote:
Counter-counter-point... if she was serving it from a system in her home, wouldn't she have just unplugged the whole thing and thrown it in the basement once it took her picture? Why leave it up and running when she left for China?


Blame xnbomb?

Recall this bit from the blog
My first instinct: ask Hotmail to kill the account entirely. But then someone calling him (her?) self "xnbomb" sent me a very persuasive email that made me rethink things...

The same logic would apply to the web site itself.

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:28 pm
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Zedix
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 		I think suspension of disbelief is the key here. Obviously, the PMs can't think of everything, and if Dana shut down the webserver... well...there wouldn't be any ILB Razz

PostPosted: Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:33 pm
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