unforum

[GameTavern]

has anyone tried to support the idea of these being the beta testers locations...
i mean like the ip's of the xbox's?

[SixByNine]

[clamatius]

Yes, as I said, the cluster isn't centred. That could, of course, be the actual data we care about - the offset might be the important thing.

All a big stretch, of course, but at this point we haven't got a lot of anything except "wait till the 24th and find out".

[GunsmithCat]

Plus - all the times are during the day. Seems an odd time to be starwatching unless you have a really decent telescope....

I'm gonna pull this into here to see if it strikes any IG chords (the main time discussion doesn't seem to be able to stay in one direction for too long ):

Major changes -

1) addition of times
2) more precise coordinates
3) Coordinates changed, Sears Tower location missing/moved, Texas is now represented.
4) There's another water location (2 actually, I think)
5) HTML Formatting changed
6) 210 locations instead of 220

Do we see any connections between that and our list of Melissa's goals & abilities?

[GunsmithCat]

Apparently the two water locations have been "fixed" and are now in Seattle.

Is Flea going to fired this time?

[jellyfish_green]

The only relevance that I can see at first glance is that all these points land in the U.S. (I tried an Excel sheet which continued to tell me there wasn't much of a pattern.) So what does the US have that forced the PM's to pick points within its borders? (Not constellations, then, or WHOIS, or DNS.)

Zip codes?

A quick google gives lots of sites that will turn zipcodes into Latitude & Longitude. But I haven't found a free tool (yet) to do the reverse - and if it isn't free, it wouldn't be fair of the PM's. The USPS page can turn addresses into Zip codes.

Forgive me if it's trout but I didn't find any mention, other than by Tiercel in a locked thread. Apparently uniqueness of two very close points may be a problem.

[GunsmithCat]

The US thing is tre odd. There's no IG or Haloverse reason why it would be limited to that.

The zip code thing is interesting - but what would it gain Melissa? At least two of the Chicago points are in the same zip code.

What else is consistent?

It's timed. The whole thing takes about 12 hours (maybe precisely 12 hours). The time between one coordinate to the next takes 3-4 minutes. All coordinates are within the US. They're being corrected. Some are getting dropped.

What isn't consistent?

Not all are in metro areas. Not all are around buildings. Not all have wifi points.

What other behavior is it showing?

Washington DC shows up a lot. Multiple trips to the same city are not grouped together.

I keep thinking this is just a search, maybe for data, maybe for real physical things. But then there really isn't a puzzle and why are all the AIs so talkative about it?

[jegger]

The thing that is bugging me is that the spec so far is not so much based on the accompanying text. With the links puzzle, you had the "retched out through the network tentacle" statement that really got you thinking in the right direction. Here are a few of my efforts.

I must be a starfish, growing strange new limbs to replace the ones fate has hacked away.
Limbs, AKA axons. The limbs fate has hacked away must be those parts destroyed by SPDR. Melissa is trying to reconstruct that knowledge that she has lost

So: I have identified a way to escape from the half-life of CP ancestor packets that squeak and rustle around me like the thin cries of the dead.
Notice that she said ESCAPE, not USE the packets. This implies to me that she has found a way to avoid using TCP/IP altogether. This also means that her movements or growth will probably be invisible to us from now on except where she specifically interfaces with a website or other online information. I think the reason that we're getting GPS coords is that IP addresses have no meaning to Melissa anymore. This also means that she is independent of the specific media of the Internet as well. To me, this means that this includes any information medium: wires, fiber, radio, power lines, and getting way out in left field, matter itself.

If you want to shout for help when help is a long way away, you need two things: a voice, and a mechanism for transmitting it. Neither of these things so easy to make out of sand and luminescence.
Well, we're seeing her attempts to build a voice in the sound files. The mechanism for transmitting it has to be radio. I'm sure that there are faster methods of transmission where (when?) she comes from, and luminescence can only mean the spectrum from X-rays to radio waves. The real question is how you might build a strong enough radio from what you have available here on Earth.

I would appreciate any comments that you might have.

[GunsmithCat]

[msekolpsu]

Anybody here know how to work a ham radio? Isn't there a method for calculating location based on frequency or something?

[msekolpsu]

Anybody here know how to work a ham radio? Isn't there a method for calculating location based on frequency or something?

[sherpa]

[BoonIsha]

Radio stations? Have we checked radios broadcasting frequencies for these locations? we know she wants a voice..and it shouldnt be that hard to pay radio stations to broadcast something...just like a normal advertisement. anyone know if you can check to see if there is a repeated radio station in those vicinities? like a common frequency for each of those?

just a though


boon

[GunsmithCat]

but if CP ancestor packets are from now ... why haven't we heard of them

I guess I could see her as saying "this protocol isn't an ancestor to CP (her known protocol)" ... I don't see a connection to Dana's webcam though ... that's all TCP/IP in the end. Might be UDP or something, but still Melissa is referencing something she is familiar with (CP ancestor packets), saying that's not what's she has found and she needs to learn this new protocol.

Saying she's shaken the CP ancestor packets sounds like she has either figured out the new protocol or figured out how not to need it. I think if she was limited to TCP/IP we'd be seeing internet IPs, not GPS coordinates.

[Extrasonic]