unforum

[ariock]

newbie with humble guess

[sherpa]

[miss tery]

hi all,new to this when it says go live maybe it means LIVE! as in xbox?

Damn it wish i lived in the us!

[Alzheimers]

[Dorkmaster]

I went to check the suburban Chicago location last night, and found it to be "Manny's", a ballroom/banquet hall you can rent for weddings, etc. There were only a couple of other things worth mention (and believe me, I looked):

There was a sign almost exactly where the waypoint would be, and it said "Warning: Fiber Optic Cable Route Buried Below! Contact Us Before You Dig! Norlight Communications: 1(800)XXX-XXXX (I'll check out the number, and I don't want 500 of us checking out a legitimate company 500 times saying "Do you know anything about this ILB thing?")

Also, there was a bus stop for Pace bus #332. That was it. Nothing else worth mention at all!

So I'm thinking one of three things are legitimate possibilities (from least possible to most possible):

(1) This, like others have brought up, has to do with the internet. The fiber optic cable line signifies it's extension. But that's quite a bit of work for us to say "OMG, it's extended all the way to Bensenville!"... And there's no real puzzle there, is there?

(2) The Bus stop connection. Now I really don't know what that would mean anyway, but it could be a puzzle. We need to see how many of these places have bus stops (cuz I was thinking most major cultural sites, colleges, libraries, etc. would have bus stops, and so could simple street intersections like this one...) But I still don't know what that puzzle could be...

(3) finally, what I feel to be the most likely connection, is the names of the locations have to make up a word puzzle. I have Manny's. We also have the Sears Tower. It's still as tenuous as any other theory, but there has to be a reason for all of this, right? So, what do you all think?
(*edit - what about the pairs having word associations?)

[Malrog]

OK, I've been thinking about this problem, and here are my thoughts:

• The coordinates all point to specific places, by their very nature.
  
• These specific places all seem to have some kind of item there (be it a shop, or a sign, or whatever), by which I mean that they aren't randomly in the middle of nowhere.
  
• Therefore, pictures created by the points on a map, or by an average of the points, or distances between the points, or any numerical manipulation of the figures is not going to be the answer, since if this was the puzzle, the coordinates would not point to specific items, they would merely be the correct numbers to make the puzzle work.
  
• I'm also not convinced that there's any puzzle in the letters from the towns to which the coordinates point, as if this was the case then the coordinates could point to any towns (across the globe), rather than the specifics that GPS entails.
  
• Therefore, the items at these locations must be important. (I hope you're following my logic here?)
  
• I have noticed, in my extensive reading of threads, that there does seem to be groups of commonality amongst items at the locations. Blockbusters have been mentioned, as have libraries, and various other things.
  
• [SPEC]These may be in groups of 7, much like the links puzzle. I'm inclined to doubt this though, because 220 is not divisible by 7.
  
• It would seem to me that each and every one of these sites needs to be visited and documented, as has been suggested by jbd here.
  
• I do think that the pairs may be important, but until some form of structured and regulated documentation can be implemented, we're all just gonna be swimming in too much information.
  

So that's my thoughts, for what they're worth, and I'd appreciate any input you fine people have to give. If anyone feels up to taking on the rather monumental task proposed by jbd, that would be awesome. I'd do it, but my knowledge of HTML/XML/Java etc isn't up to it, sadly.

I know it's been a long post, thanks for sticking with my n00biness

- Malrog

[keybsnbits]

[keybsnbits]

Check out all of these pictures and tell me what they remind you of.
http://www.accd.edu/sac/lrc/john/crl.jpg
http://www.accd.edu/sac/lrc/john/ibmback2.jpg
http://www.us.net/html/images/map_network.gif
http://www.007host.com/pics/Map.gif

Those are all maps of the internet backbone within the U.S. We've been looking at those specific places instead of what's lying underneath them (tipped of by the above post).

This one especially reminds me of our maps :
http://www.netrimedia.com/gfx/backbone-map.jpg

Of course, I could be wrong

[sherpa]

Malrog, some great thoughts.

[BoonIsha]

i think keybsnbits has it.....those maps and the distributions are just too similar to be coincidence.


boon

[blue_cup]

[sherpa]

It could be to do with the Internet (proper noun, folks) backbone, but surely the backbone connects high-population areas.. and our points include a lot of high-population areas.. so they're bound to look the same.

Still, it's worth investigating the overlap. Does the backbone have much to do with Sedalia, MO?

[Gatsu]

[keybsnbits]

[Speaker]

The lines map into the same area that the network backbone does ... but few of the points match up with the backbone - for example, we have no locations in TX, but multiple backbone locations in TX (esp. Dallas)....

I'd say its interesting but not compelling.