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 Forum index » Archive » Archive: The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!) » The Haunted Apiary (Let Op!): General/Updates
[QUESTION][SPEC?]What happens if Melissa is shut down?
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Secretariat
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
Posts: 9

 		[QUESTION][SPEC?]What happens if Melissa is shut down?
Hi! Been lurking awhile, haven't posted much, registered just now. Haven't seen a thread dealing with this issue, so I figured I'd post and see if someone else knew better.

Putting together references from the Operator's Monologue and the new 404 error pages, what do we know about the physical location of these programs?

1.) The SP says she is in a "glass coffin in a hidden crypt under the floor of the deepest dungeon of the castle".

So, the glass coffin probably means a dedicated chip; hidden crypt probably implies encryption. What does "under the floor..." mean? Probably not physically under the magnetic storage medium; this probably implies that she's resident in memory somehow, possibly on a read-only chip, where "under" means that the Queen functions on a higher level, in the same way that magnetic storage devices function on a higher level than ROM chips.

If she's on a read-only chip, she can't be modified by outside processes (encased in a glass coffin?)


So, how did a chip from several hundred years in the future get inside Dana's computer? And what happens if the power is cut off to her building, shutting off her computer and terminating all processes currently running?


2.) It's important to remember that all of these processes are on Dana's server, stored on the hard drive.

Did they come in through the network connection? Not likely. So how did they end up on Dana's computer?

I'm wondering if the "chips of ruby" and "chips of sapphire" have anything to do with this. There's more than one meaning to the word 'chip' here, both a piece of a ruby and a ruby computer chip (perhaps using optical storage?)

Finally, ruby and sapphire are the same material, Al2O3, with various impurities in it that change the color.

Anybody have any insight into these things? Please have patience with me, it's my first time. Thanks!

PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:08 am
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Secretariat
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
Posts: 9

 		Also, where is the Tower?

It's high, presumably high in priority; it's linked to everything else by a spiral staircase (probably a pair of wires) and I assume it's a type of magnetic storage medium.


Also, on a completely unrelated note, has anybody tried putting together a list of all the commands the SPDR/Flea has used to date, and the syntax of how to use them?

It's always <toolname>!<command>, but what options do we have for commands, and how can we string them together?

PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:15 am
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HitsHerMark
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Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1521
Location: Austin, TX

 		I don't think we can assume that all of these places are just "pet names" for the interior parts of a computer...

The Sleeping Princess told a story about the relationship between the Widow (SPDR) and the Queen (Malissa). As an example, she said that the Queen told the SPDR to build a road... and she did build a road... Out into the ocean.

At first I thought it was a metaphor for creating a link out into the chaos of the Internet.

But when we got the list of Axon coordinates, one of the point was, in fact, out in the Pacific Ocean. (Off the coast of San Fransisco if I remember correctly.)

Then the Queen killed the Widow, and started taking care of building the "roads" herself, and a number of the Axon coordinates moved, including the one out in the ocean.

Secretariat wrote:
Also, where is the Tower?

It's high, presumably high in priority; it's linked to everything else by a spiral staircase (probably a pair of wires) and I assume it's a type of magnetic storage medium.


Well, let's look at the SP's description of it...

The 404 page on 8/27/04 wrote:


The Tower is a tricky place for me to go. The only way up there is a pair of spiral staircases that wind around one another, with no rail and a very scary drop down the middle. Plus there's nowhere to hide, really, on a staircase.


I'm afraid I also can't agree that this staircase is just a pair of wires.

(SPEC- Probably rather wild.)
I was rather disturbed by this, because it sounds to me like the double helix of a DNA strand. And in my mind, it implies that there's some "wet-ware" involved now.


The queen considers herself to be "wide awake and physical" now. Or, at least, those was the phrase she was using while she was counting down to the 24th... How physical are we talking here?

On the other hand, I could be totally off on that mode of thinking and a tower with a HUGE mirror at the top of a big spiral stair could just be a BIG F'ING telescope looking out into space...

Yeah, come to think of it... I like that idea better.
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 11:57 am
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truegent
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Joined: 21 Aug 2004
Posts: 101
Location: CO, USA

 		The problem with DNA (see the picture) is that there is no 'very scary drop down the middle'. DNA chains are cross connected (think of a twisted ladder). I would count this as inconsequential if it where not for the fact that the 'scary drop down the middle' is explicitly stated. In things such as this things are rarely ever explicitly stated without a reason.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 2:54 pm
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t-toe
Boot

Joined: 27 Aug 2004
Posts: 47

 		yeah, I've been pondering the physical locations of all these allegorical descriptions myself. to me the whole "steps to the tower and the queen up in the tower looking out the window" thing seems to be either a spinal chord/brain/eyes (which would fit with the description of "wide awake and physical"), OR the queen is actually residing in Dana's computer and looking out through the webcam, OR the window is implying the outgoing data from the ilovebees server.

but what is the mirror?
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 3:23 pm
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ABoxInABox
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Joined: 10 Aug 2004
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Location: The Future

 		It depends if input and or ouput in stored in the memory (temporary) or hard drive (semi-permement to permement storage). As soon as the computer is turned off, memory is wiped, but the hard drive stays the same.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 4:03 pm
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Secretariat
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
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 		...at least until you demagentize the hard drive.

PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 5:07 pm
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HitsHerMark
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Joined: 22 Aug 2004
Posts: 1521
Location: Austin, TX
truegent wrote:
The problem with DNA (see the picture) is that there is no 'very scary drop down the middle'. DNA chains are cross connected (think of a twisted ladder). I would count this as inconsequential if it where not for the fact that the 'scary drop down the middle' is explicitly stated. In things such as this things are rarely ever explicitly stated without a reason.


True... That's one of the reasons I thought of the whole telescope thing. If it's not a DNA strand, it would be light waves. I just don't know enough about those to know what kind of light would look like that... But I could tell you all kinds of things about Subtractive Color Theory. Very Happy
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 28, 2004 5:47 pm
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Stone
Boot

Joined: 25 Aug 2004
Posts: 12
Location: UK
HitsHerMark wrote:
True... That's one of the reasons I thought of the whole telescope thing. If it's not a DNA strand, it would be light waves. I just don't know enough about those to know what kind of light would look like that... But I could tell you all kinds of things about Subtractive Color Theory. Very Happy

It's possible to polarise laser light such that it doesn't have a Gaussian profile (bright spot in the middle, decreasing with intensity as you get further from the centre of the beam) but has a 'corkscrew' profile instead, with a void in the centre of the beam and two beams corkscrewing around a common centre. I can't remember what it's called though Wink [note: this is new research that was only published a couple of months ago. Kudos to the PMs if they've been keeping up with the literature in this detail!]

I get the impression this is a bit of a dead end...I'm happy to accept that Melissa is used to a completely different architecture, with photonics a real possibility, but it doesn't really seem to me to be germane to the plot.

I was thinking along the lines of the long staircase pair being a set of co-ax cable, with the 'scary drop' in the middle a reference to packet loss/packet drop, but again I'm unsure...

Apologies for coming to no firm conclusions Smile

Stone

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 6:33 am
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aliendial
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Joined: 29 Sep 2002
Posts: 3438
Location: Far Far Away. Nowhere Near You. Really.

 		Not obvious from the titles of either thread (indeed I see NO discussion of shutting Melissa down), but this conversation about the imagery is also going on over here -- don't start from scratch!
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 7:18 am
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Secretariat
Greenhorn

Joined: 28 Aug 2004
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 		Over where?

...ah, never mind.

PostPosted: Sun Aug 29, 2004 12:18 pm
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