Are we Multivac? (Level ii)

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Permalink Reply by LVS on March 15, 2008 at 10:47am

Cameron I think you should go play Carmen Sandiago. You will understand Funetics more :o)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmen_Sandiago

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Permalink Reply by Grendel on March 15, 2008 at 11:32am

I'm pretty sure Multivac says "the quine 11280" not " decline ... 112ad". A quine is a program that self-replicates. It makes sense to think that, because viruses are self-replicating (like a quine), the quine is a mistake. I think if we look through the hacker's dictionary to find 11280, we can figure something out.

Where is this number "8" anywhere? Unless your referring to the missing level viii in the FUnetics site.

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Permalink Reply by Rupert on March 15, 2008 at 3:21pm

Hey everybody. First time I've chipped in.

Things I've noticed:

1) Propogate is spelled incorrectly. It should be Propagate. I guess we should not assume that this is an innocent mistake. (Previously, Disseminate was spelled correctly.) We should look for other "mistakes" which might add up to a code. We already have one - the missing level VIII / 8. Perhaps these are things we can use to slowly fill the gaps in the --/-/----/--/---/ code as each week passes.

2) I don't know why people are talking about 11280 or 112AD. From my speakers & headphones, it's clearly 11288 - and this is confirmed by the comment from SXSWkid which helpfully tells us the spelling of Quine and gives the number sequence 11288. This is clearly a fake/planted entry - the first with the Multivac error (a sign to pay attention), with no URL link from the creator, the SXSW name just as/after Steve & Zadi have attended SXSW, and the inappropriate message "Cool Website btw")

3) The reason you can be sure of this is that 11288 is a date - November 2 1988 - when the first big internet Worm - the Morris worm - was released, which was a Quine (self-replicating program) which affected mainly VAX machines. You can read about it here: http://cr4.globalspec.com/blogentry/448/November-2-1988-The-Morris-...
It was created by Robert Tappan Morris, an associate professor at MIT. (Wikipedia entry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Tappan_Morris,_Jr. - his father was chief scientist at the NSA's computer division)

"According to Robert Tappan Morris, the "Great Worm" was not designed to cause damage, but to determine the size of the Internet. Unfortunately, however, the worm contained a bug which caused rapid replication. Michael Rabin, the father of randomization, summed up Morris' gaffe by faulting its execution: "He should have tried it on a simulator first"."

He was fined $10k and given 3 years probation. He was the first to be indicted under the Computer Fraud & Misuse Act 1986.
That was his mistake. It affected multi VAX.

4) Multivac's Youtube channel is at: http://www.youtube.com/user/iammultivac. The only personal information on it is "Age: 59". 2008 minus 59 years is 1949. The first Asimov Multivac story was in 1955. Maybe some Asimov fans can do some more digging on this.

This is fun :D

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Permalink Reply by Oblivionus on March 15, 2008 at 4:14pm

Awesome info, Rupert. You're absolutely POSITIVE about the 11288, though? I still don't here "88". It sounds like "80" or "AD" than anything else. However, your research strongly backs up the 11288 theory.

Your comment sparked a sudden revelation: Propagate is not spelled correctly for level ii and I agree that it was premeditated. Level ii is where mistakes are divulged. I'm sure it was misspelled to add flavor in relation to the context of mistakes. Just thought I'd share that.

This entire Multivac phenomenon is absolutely incredible. The outcome is moot because look at all of this wonderful and interesting and important discussions we're having! And I just wrote the coolest run-on sentence in recent memory! YAY!

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Permalink Reply by Rupert on March 15, 2008 at 5:04pm

Of course... Mistakes... Propogate as a deliberate mistake on a level that's all about mistakes. I was thinking too hard about hidden codes.
Steve Woolf also misspelled mistakes as mitakes in his message - and though as thought.
Looking through the rest of the messages - seeing his and the SXSWkid which I am convinced is a fake, I wonder how many others are too. If so, it's possible that they contain hidden messages.
for example:
dadouche has a message with lots of missing words and a misspelling. his/her URL is funetics.co.uk, which isn't even registered.
And Kronnos - there's no Mix member called Kronnos - he/she talks about Wier Hackers. What the hell is a Wier Hacker? A misspelling of Wire Hackers? with the .../... and the language Kronnos uses, it's a weird message.
And Nurd74's message about "getting pulled in to something and preaching it on the internet when I didn't even believe what I was preaching." - a warning to us after we made our pledges without knowing what Funetics is...?

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Permalink Reply by Maiflowers on March 15, 2008 at 10:07pm

you realize how well your display picture matches with that first sentance.

Good thinking, I was wondering about that dadouch post, it made absolutly no sence. Do we have to fill in the blanks.

And who are the people who keep saying "multivac: unaccountable; unescaped fault"
These are the people:

- Derek Williams - no website
- dadouche - http://funetics.co.uk/
- Brandon - http://brandonschlenker.com/
- SXSWkid - no site

if more add to the list, lets see if there anything in commin. They all have posts witch do not acually answer the question, through it is still accepted.

collective accountability? why would this be incuded (at the top of the comments)? A collection of liable/ answerable comments? Do they mean that the following comments are accountable to be formed into Funetics. Is anyones comments being rejected? Would this mean you are unable to be part of Funetics.

you must propogate? We must spread (the word?). we must increase? We must multiply? Why does confessing our mistakes help us multiply or something.

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Permalink Reply by Derek on March 16, 2008 at 5:13pm

Oh, I can guarantee I'm not behind any of this. I have no website because I am kinda just starting to post things. I am "riding" on others websites - like this one. And I have a page here, on twitter, pownce, mindsay, linkedin, and facebook, and youtube (because I had to post a video in level I)

I have one on myspace, but that would be MY mistake - I'm way too old to do the myspace stuff. Joined because my son asked.

But - good thoughts. I thought about a "spy" in this group also.

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Permalink Reply by georgefrouzakis on March 16, 2008 at 6:09am

II. The Road to the First Virus

In 1949: Famous 'Celebrity' Mathematician John Von Neumann, the co-creator of the architecture that we use today for virtually all computers in existence, theorized about a program that could create copies of itself in memory. A simple illustration of such a program, known as a Quine, can be seen in this High Level javascript code taken from Wikipedia.org:

function a()
{
alert (a + "\na();");
}
a();

What this program will accomplish is a call to a function which prints itself, and a call to the new function again so it can be run somewhere else.



I got this at: http://www.ic.sunysb.edu/Stu/cdigiamo/CSE301/

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Permalink Reply by Derek on March 15, 2008 at 3:23pm

Here's what I've found so far:
- Multivac is a she (OR presented a SHE-like figure - you know, with boobs and stuff - :-) )
- Funetics is about freeing the internet
- Quine is a program that when run, reproduces itself
- Quine is also character in a story called "Burning Chrome"
by Willam Gibson
- Gibson coined the phrase Cyperpunk
- Gibson wrote a book called "The Difference Engine" where "Babbage computers become mass-produced and ubiquitous"
- Hackers is a book of short stories
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_(short_stories)

- Reversing Entropy is a theme in THIS short story by Asimov
- In Asimov story, the computer grows so big that it encompasses everything - driving out humanity, first in body, then in mind. It "outlives" everything, even though the humans acheived immortality, and in the end "has" the answer, but has no one to give it to.
- In the about Multivac, the giant computer is the personification of the Internet.
- "Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting" - but obviously it made some kinda mistake - Quine 112AD

- One definition of hacker: A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary

That's all I have for now.

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Permalink Reply by Derek on March 15, 2008 at 3:29pm

The rabbit hole: Asimov, hackers, internet, cyberpunk, mass media, anonymity, entropy, computers (bigger, smarter, faster, self-healing, all-knowing), surveillance, self-reproducing, Neuromancer, pledging, mistakes, 2-1-4-2-3, .....

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Permalink Reply by Oblivionus on March 15, 2008 at 11:45pm

Just a small note a about the numbers "2-1-4-2-3".

If you add them up they equal 12. Since Level 8 is missing, there's 12. It might be nothing, though. Trying to cover all the bases here.

I have no idea what this means to be totally honest. *shrug*

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Permalink Reply by Maiflowers on March 15, 2008 at 8:49pm

Has anyone metioned how if you scroll over the proporgate word that is says "I think without fear"? could it be a clue? can anyone remember what last weeks was?

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