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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): Puzzles
[PUZZLE] Axons: Relative
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jmartenstein2
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 		internet topolgies?
I think it might help if we took a step back for a moment and examined the coordinates from a perspective consistent with the game's universe. As far as we know, the Queen is confined to the ilovebees.com server. She seems to be trying to escape by building roads (axons) out into the real world. But she can't possibly have any concept of what's at those physical locations. Why would she care about the actual location of the Sears Tower? In other words, the addresses themselves would probably be meaningless to someone without a corporeal form. If I appear to be making the "Numerical" argument, bear with me for a second.

We also know that, initially the Widow was building the "roads", and she screwed up by building one straight into the ocean. So the instructions consist of some other element, and the coordinates (which are occasionally wrong) are part of a report back from the Widow.

So, if the Queen directed the widow to build roads, she would HAVE to do it over the telecommunications network. And, following this through, the coordinates would come from that context. I envision to possibilities here: they're either addresses from whois lookups, or they're addresses parsed from web pages. So, maybe we shouldn't be looking at the building themselves, but what ip addresses reside in those buildings? Some people have had some strange results from geobytes, which I think lends some credence to the theory. Does anyone have a map of the US with the telecom backbones?

As an aside, what if those points don't all radiate from the castle? What if sets of coordinates are actually waypoints along a variety of paths searching for something, and they all got scrambled up? (Again, this should probably be put in the Numerical section) Maybe the places where there are a high number of points (Seattle, Sedonia) are "initial" jumps, and points in the middle of nowhere (Purcelville) are teminii. There are multiple references to the Widow being "broken up" so maybe she is following paths and branching.

I'm sure there are multiple problems with this theory. It doesn't address the lack of points in some major metropolitan areas, for example, but I felt that it was at least worth pointing out.

Somebody tell me why I'm wrong.

p.s. Apologies for this being anonymous. I tried to register for an account (jmartenstein), but I haven't gotten any confirmation email yet. What's the deal?

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 12:53 am
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vpisteve
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Joined: 30 Sep 2002
Posts: 2441
Location: 1987

 		Re: internet topolgies?
jmartenstein2 wrote:

p.s. Apologies for this being anonymous. I tried to register for an account (jmartenstein), but I haven't gotten any confirmation email yet. What's the deal?


Hmm, weird.

I activated your account, so you should be good to go now.
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:59 am
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Danzilla76
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Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 118

 		I have two points to make that it is not taking information from the IP addresses of people who sent emails.

1) It did not put any points in the Twin Cities, MN area, and that is where I sent my email from. I work for Target Corp., and sent my email from work. The IP servers are in the Twin Cities. The closest point is St. Cloud, which is 60 miles from where I work. I don't mind that it didn't give me a coordinate, but it is part of my idea.

2) The two closest points to the Twin Cities are in St. Cloud, and Austin, MN. We have had nobody on here besides me state that they live in MN, and especially that they live in either of those two cities. It also seems to be the same for Ft. Dodge, Iowa. Of course, these could be some of the "wrong roads", but this is part of my theory that I am going with right now.

That is why I believe that the coordinates are relative, because of what is located where they are, and literal, because I believe something will actually happen at SOME of the points (the correct ones).
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 2:18 am
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Grout
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 105

 		I just have to say... People are talking about how they think that maybe the widow (or the PMs) screwed up a LOT of the coordinates - and we just have to wait for the queen to fix them - then they will make sense... Has anyone been CHECKING if the coordinates on ILB have changed at all? Do they still match our lists?

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 3:25 am
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handfulofhoneybees
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Joined: 26 Jul 2004
Posts: 5
Location: Chicago, IL

 		Danzilla76 wrote:
Quote:
1) It did not put any points in the Twin Cities, MN area, and that is where I sent my email from.

Danzilla, I suggest you go back and read the other posts in this, as you don't seem to understand some elements of the IP hypothesis. We have established that the most likely means the PMs (or Queen, if you will) had of generating coordinates from IPs is an online IP address locator tool. The results from this locator vary drastically: sometimes they are accurate to within a few blocks of a person's true location, sometimes they are several time zones away. Until you look up your IP with one of these tools and see that it doesn't match exactly with an ILB coordinate, you have not contributed to the disproof of this theory. It could very well be that, in a stroke of chance, your email and IP were selected out of the thousands as coordinates for ILB -- only the locator tool mistakenly placed you in California or Missouri!

Locate your IP using one of these tools and see if it matches with any coordinates, regardless of your real-life location.

I'm sorry to see that no perfect hits have been reported back yet. If people continue trying and failing, we'll probably have to give it up. But it's such an EASY lead to follow, with tons of circumstantial evidence backing it, not to mention our pal Occam.

Oh, and Theorizer, star map theories have been described at length elsewhere. They have largely been abandoned. Nearly everyone agrees these numbers are GPS coordinates on the surface of the Earth.

also,
Quote:
Since we have know figured where exactly a lot of coordinates are, any actual adresses should be checked to see if they have access to the internet, I have no idea where I'm going with this, I have a second feeling, my first hunch might be wrong(check anyways), that internet, or connections have something to do with it.


Trout

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PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 11:26 am
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Samari
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Location: Notre Dame, IN

 		I highly doubt that the coordinates have anything to do with our IPs. those of us not in major cities usually don't have any points anywhere near us and those in major cities can't help but have points at least somewhere near them. I don't think i've seen anyone yet post that their IP is said to be located in the same place with all significant figures. It's a reasonable idea but it doesn't seem supported by evidence nor does it seem very practical given the number of people who have made contact. the information whould be far to spread out for the PMs to be sure that the problem would actually be solvable (remember there are a lot more people than those who post here working on the game, and if they happend to pick say 218 people who lost interest or are working alone the puzzle would be impossible).

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:26 pm
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Shad0
I Have No Life


Joined: 20 Jun 2004
Posts: 2180
Location: Southern California, USA

 		Re: internet topolgies?
jmartenstein2 wrote:
I think it might help if we took a step back for a moment and examined the coordinates from a perspective consistent with the game's universe. As far as we know, the Queen is confined to the ilovebees.com server. She seems to be trying to escape by building roads (axons) out into the real world. But she can't possibly have any concept of what's at those physical locations. Why would she care about the actual location of the Sears Tower? In other words, the addresses themselves would probably be meaningless to someone without a corporeal form. If I appear to be making the "Numerical" argument, bear with me for a second.

We also know that, initially the Widow was building the "roads", and she screwed up by building one straight into the ocean. So the instructions consist of some other element, and the coordinates (which are occasionally wrong) are part of a report back from the Widow.

If Melissa doesn't know or care what's at the physical locations, then why would she care about one of them ending up in the sea? You may still be right, but I wouldn't be comfortable writing off anything at the physical locations so quickly.

Incidentally, ladybee777's most recent e-mail -- if assumed to be accurate -- pretty much puts the final nail in the coffin of the numerical theory, at least in my mind. It clearly matters to Melissa where the roads actually lead, not just how long they are or what the numerical coordinates may be.
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These were the puzzles that would take a day, these were puzzles that would take a week, and these puzzles they'd probably never figure out until we broke down and gave them the answers. ... The Cloudmakers solved all of these puzzles on the first day.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 2:18 pm
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Grout
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
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Samari wrote:
I highly doubt that the coordinates have anything to do with our IPs. those of us not in major cities usually don't have any points anywhere near us and those in major cities can't help but have points at least somewhere near them. I don't think i've seen anyone yet post that their IP is said to be located in the same place with all significant figures. It's a reasonable idea but it doesn't seem supported by evidence nor does it seem very practical given the number of people who have made contact. the information whould be far to spread out for the PMs to be sure that the problem would actually be solvable (remember there are a lot more people than those who post here working on the game, and if they happend to pick say 218 people who lost interest or are working alone the puzzle would be impossible).


The point of the IP theory is to prove that the coordinates are NOT A PUZZLE, but simply a plot device. Melissa is trying to track down Dana. She doesn't have much info to work with... but she probably DOES have our IPs. So she can't find Dana, but maybe she can find US, and that's one step closer. So the PMs list the coords of 220 of us (or what they THINK are our coords, but they are highly fuzzy locations, at best)... and I think we are simply supposed to pretend to be freaked out because the queen found us! OMG!!11

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 2:39 pm
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Unbeliever
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Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 8

 		Re: internet topolgies?
Shad0 wrote:
If Melissa doesn't know or care what's at the physical locations, then why would she care about one of them ending up in the sea?


Off course she cares - but that don't say it is because of the physical attributes of the locations.

We have no evidence that Melissa has traveled anything but "virtual" roads in her life - either as electrons or light. I really can't se why she has any use what so ever for a real road and a real position in her present condition.

Both in a in-game and a meta context I don't se any other sollution than the positions being the result of an ip-to-long/latitude lookup, and that we'll have to reverse them. Unfortunately a proper ip-address-position database costs $$$ (Maxmind).

Remember; the SPDR choose the ilovebees site in the first place, and it probably would find sites based on similar criteria for its Queens next move.
As a result, the best bet may be to do a whois selection for all new sites registered after ... june 2004 (?) - (maybe only the ones including "bee", "honey", "hive" etc), then get the position from some of the ip-to-position locators and compare with our current list. (It's pretty close to brute-force, but hey - we haven't got anywhere the last week, so ....)

- u

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 2:54 pm
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Extrasonic
Decorated


Joined: 03 Aug 2004
Posts: 233
Location: Suburban Chicago

 		Re: internet topolgies?
Unbeliever wrote:

Remember; the SPDR choose the ilovebees site in the first place, and it probably would find sites based on similar criteria for its Queens next move.


As far as I know, we don't know who chose the ilovebees site or for what reason. In fact, we don't know if the ilovebees.com site was chosen at all or was just an "innocent bystander" that got burdened with the SPDR/The Operator by happenstance. Why all of this is happening to ilovebees.com in particular rather than any other arbitrary website is one of the ARG's core unsolved mysteries.

Also, from the sounds of the Friday 13th e-mail, the SPDR is dead and disassembled - I don't think it'll be picking anything for The Operator's next move.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 3:03 pm
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Clipped_Wings
Boot

Joined: 04 Aug 2004
Posts: 39
Location: Rugby, England

 		hey, finished my picture for GPS points<->SF, drawing lots of lines in photoshop is BORING.

Anyway, I noticed 3 things...

1. Points in important areas tend to be clumped

2. There are many instances where points lie on the same line

3. There are a few where that ISNT the case.

I now have a new idea...

The spider went out building roads and the coordinates are where he "popped his head up to see where he was".

Most roads keep going to the edge of america, but some stop around the middle, I think these are the ones that the spider found something of interest on.


(I'm going to post the results of both is and my next escapade both here and in relative, because I think it's relevant to both.)

I'm hoping this will narrow down the number of locations to look for stuff of interest in.

(About the Queen fixing the spiders errors, anyone think that the PMs didnt intend this to be a puzzle, and with the "queen's corrections" they are going to make it into one for us?)

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 4:25 pm
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usernameguy
Boot

Joined: 15 Aug 2004
Posts: 68

 		The listed addresses are wrong
Here's what I think: the addresses listed on the TWiki are wrong, and it's screwing everyone up.

Wishi-San probably ran the GPS points through a reverse geocoder or equivalent GIS system. Reverse geocoders guess at the address. They don't have a list of all possible addresses and their locations. Instead, they have a list of all street corners, their street numbers, and their location. A reverse geocoder extrapolates a street number from the street corner data it has.

You can see the error it introduces in the data. Graph a set of GPS coordinates in
Mapquest's Lat/Long mapper: http://www.mapquest.com/maps/latlong.adp, then graph the corresponding address listed by Wishi-San: http://www.mapquest.com/main.adp. Inevitably they're not on the exact same point. In fact, if you try out two different reverse geocoders, you get two different address.

I think the PMs pinpointed the GPS addresses by hand. The 4-place (.0069 mile = 36 ft) accuracy is a bit of a lie otherwise, because no address geocoding system is accurate within 36 feet. Often GPS address are inside a block a bit, off the street. Forward geocoders, like Mapquest, never do that to addresses. They put addresses right on the street. Often, it seems, the PMs have picked a business that's exactly on a street corner, maybe to avoid ambiguity on the address they picked.

The PMs screwed up a bit. They either assumed the players would understand all this, or they assumed that geocoders would always return the same address.

When you hand-correct the data you get different addresses, and these addresses point to different things. I've done a little investigation already, and it seems to point to different pantheons or historical eras:

Row-010 Col-02 | 37.4304 -122.1413 | Brahma Bull Indian Buffet | 151 N California, PALO ALTO, CA, 94301
Row-048 Col-01 | 37.8669 -122.2588 | Mars Mercantile | 2398 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, CA 94704 | http://www.marsmercantile.com/1.html, 209.104.34.5
Row-044 Col-02 | 37.4289 -122.1426 | Douglas and Moore Real Estate | 101 S California, PALO ALTO, CA, 94306
Row-012 Col-02 | 40.7699 -73.9847 | Fordham University Lincoln Center | 113 W 60th St, NEW YORK, NY, 10023 | http://www.fordham.edu/general/Graduate_Schools/Facilities_and_Acade8523.html

Maybe if you group the points by pantheon or era they spell something. Or maybe it's something else.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 4:54 pm
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Unbeliever
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Joined: 29 Jul 2004
Posts: 8

 		Re: internet topolgies?
Extrasonic wrote:
As far as I know, we don't know who chose the ilovebees site or for what reason. In fact, we don't know if the ilovebees.com site was chosen at all or was just an "innocent bystander" that got burdened with the SPDR/The Operator by happenstance. Why all of this is happening to ilovebees.com in particular rather than any other arbitrary website is one of the ARG's core unsolved mysteries.


Yes, despite all the honey/bee references in the texts, that is true. But as far as we know, the SPDR was the first of the entities interacting with our world, and except for the ILB-server feeling to small and primitive for them, it has looked like a suitable place for the Queen to recover.

Quote:

Also, from the sounds of the Friday 13th e-mail, the SPDR is dead and disassembled - I don't think it'll be picking anything for The Operator's next move.


No - but it also got the blame for the first set of cordinates - and thus it was the SPDR who chose the first locations.

- u

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 4:56 pm
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Grout
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Joined: 25 Jul 2004
Posts: 105

 		I'm with usernameguy.

It seems to me that there is a major accuracy problem with the GPS coords that is confusing everyone. I personally checked most of the chicago coords - GPS in hand - and they didn't exactly match wishi's list of addresses. But this then begs the question... do we follow the exact GPS coords? Or do we follow the addresses - (although depending on your source, the address for each coord can vary quite a bit). It seems to me that these coords were probably originally derived from addresses. So unfortunately, it is very possible that there are specific things the PMs want us to see at these sites, but we are missing it because of the discrepancies and terrible accuracy.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 5:02 pm
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Clipped_Wings
Boot

Joined: 04 Aug 2004
Posts: 39
Location: Rugby, England

 		I think I've narrowed down how many points are useful.

It came to me when I was thinking of that old phrase "it's always in the last place you look".

If the lines are roads then most lead to the edge of america, those that stop short would imply something was found there.

I think these points are the ones worth investigating.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 15, 2004 5:13 pm
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