Secret Code or Utter Retardation?

esper · Fri 09/12/2005 08:13:43

I just got this in the body of an email sent from a Ms. Liz Titor (apparently mother of internet phenomenon and time-traveller, John Titor)...

Does it actually mean something, or what? Is there a secret code hidden in this, or did someone just smoke too much pot last night?

Hello timothy.hendricks@bigfoot.com, (This is not my email adress, or even close to it... )

In this new season, new hoty stuff has come up.

THE PARENT arrived back on the scene. She gave me a tape by Dr. Laura Meyers
from UCLA. I listened to that tape eight times. I listened over and over and
heard the same thing again and again. Ms. Meyers said, 'These kids may need to
hear a word many times (perhaps 72 times) before they ever say a word. A
computer can be patient and say it the same way every time.' Now I understood. I
was not patient enough. I did not allow the student to hear the words over and
over. I was interrupting their learning by interjecting, when they were totally
engrossed in what they were doing. I was asking questions they were not ready to
answer. They were just learning language. They didn't have the answers yet..

Do those gardners regret walking carefully?.

today i need to goto the store. .

I made my original programs available to the teachers around me. They were
getting the same kind of success. I finally decided I had to make my noun
program available to teachers and parents around the nation. We have been
working on it for over 2 years. Many of you have waited patiently. Thank you for
your patience..

EDWARDS: ... more negative attacks -- aren't you sick of it?.

The musicians have missed playing since a few days ago..

I could go on and on, but I won't. We have many programs the children love. But
I would give them ALL up to keep my BORING noun program. I thank THE PARENT
daily for her insight..

That farmer is not missing reading..

That flight attendant is not missing playing below the bridge at this exact
moment..

She has disliked cooking for a day or two..

10. Ninety six bottles of beer, three a's, three b's, one c, two d's, thirty six
e's, three f's, two g's, seven h's, eleven i's, one j, one k, six l's, one m,
twenty n's, twelve o's, one p, one q, six are's, twenty eight s's, nineteen t's,
seven v's, seven w's, six x's, and five y's on the wall..

lets goto mcdonalds soon. we can get a hamburger or too..

Those janitors aren't missing sleeping right now..

Lawrence had already liked dancing..

Some store clerks like working in London..

Have you practiced jumping yet?.

Get back to you later,
Dr. Brown

WTF?

? Does this mean something in an alien language suspiciously close to English?

Al_Ninio · Fri 09/12/2005 08:31:38

Looks like regular ol' spam to me.
Plenty of spam mail has random paragraphs of text to get past spam filters and whatnot.

esper · Fri 09/12/2005 09:20:34

But see, that's the thing... No links to anything, no idea of what they were trying to sell.... JUST PLAIN SPAM! No purpose to it, they seem to have been just spamming.... spam. Everything else is for something... Home loans, p3n1sh enlargement, drugs, warez.... not this... Just random sentences of uselessness. What you see here is what you get.

Which was literally nothing at all.

SpacePirateCaine · Fri 09/12/2005 14:47:37

Almost looks to me like a transcript of a conversation with a HAL program - often they are pretty damned tough to decipher. That, or someone was relying on a translation program to get their point across, 'coz they don't speak English.

For a month or two a few years ago, I recieved sporadic messages from someone I'd never met before in English not entirely unlike that one. I attempted to carry on conversations (Because I had nothing better to do at the time), but apparently the person on the other end (If it wasn't some sort of weird internet chatbot) seemed to have no clue what I was talking about either. It was like having a conversation with someone who suffers from Wernicke Aphasia.

I suggest just deleting the e-mail, running a virus scan (just in case) and getting on with your life. Now, if you get more mails from Ms. Titor, it might be worth looking into.

Scavenger · Fri 09/12/2005 15:03:47

I do believe this might be a secret code. Of secrecy. Let's start with the facts.

It was sent from Ms. Liz Titor, but is signed by Dr. Brown.

THE PARENT is a recurring theme.

People don't seem to be missing things, or are missing things.
-That farmer is not missing reading..
-That flight attendant is not missing playing below the bridge at this exact
moment..
-Those janitors aren't missing sleeping right now..
-The musicians have missed playing since a few days ago..

Repetition and numbers are also an important point in this email.
- Listened to the tape 8 times.
- A child must hear the word 72 times.
- Working on it for 2 years.
- The Ninety Six Bottles of Beer paragraph.
All of these relate to 8 in some way - 8, 8x9,8/4,8x12

Other notes that could be useful:

"I thank THE PARENT daily for her insight."
THE PARENT is female. THE PARENT is depicted as some kind of deity?

Noun Program
What is this Noun Program? Let's see, it is boring, the writer invented it.

Take one down, pass it around...
It is either a sequence of numbers, or a sum.
"Ninety six bottles of beer, three a's, three b's, one c, two d's, thirty six
e's, three f's, two g's, seven h's, eleven i's, one j, one k, six l's, one m,
twenty n's, twelve o's, one p, one q, six are's, twenty eight s's, nineteen t's,
seven v's, seven w's, six x's, and five y's on the wall.."

All that equals 288, which is 72x4. See the correlation between all the numbers thus far?

All these eights... they're reoccurring.

The Names
We know a few names are involved with this:
- Dr. Brown (the author of the letter)
- Ms. Liz Titor (the sender of the letter)
- Ms. Laura Meyers (Creator of the repetition tape - she does exist, and is of the UCLA. She works with children with Down's Syndrome, says nothing about 72.)
- Lawrence (Likes dancing.)
- Timothy Hendricks (The person who was supposed to recieve this email.)

Also of note:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2005/11/msg00004.html
Contains what looks like a phone number. Weird, huh?

And:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-lint-maint/2005/11/msg00003.html
At the bottom is the REAL gibberish. Not like we're seeing here.

Hmm. 72.

Squinky · Fri 09/12/2005 15:55:18

I used to get crap e-mail like this all the time....I used to wonder and worry about it, until the day I walked around a corner and was stabbed in the eye by my internet stalker.....So, no worries right?

Miez · Fri 09/12/2005 16:54:15

Also: Liz Titor ... could she be a relation of Jonh Titor? (http://www.johntitor.com/) Hmmm ... intriguing crypto-spam!

SSH · Fri 09/12/2005 17:29:46

http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/D/Dissociated-Press.html

esper · Sat 10/12/2005 11:13:25

Wow, Scavenger... Deepness incarnate...

I brought this to everyone's attaention because I had excessive amounts of fun trying to decrypt it. There was a lady in my homwetown who used to go into Starbucks with a magic marker. When she left, every newspaper had been "decrypted" a' la' "A Beautiful Mind." It was very odd. We used to look over all the newspapers and try to figure out exactly what she thought was going on. Thus, I figured this could prove interesting as well.

Scavenger has totally torn it apart.

wow...

I figured the numbers had something to do with it as well, and noticed the multiples you mentioned.... But what? And what exactly are the numbered letters referring to?

futonrevolution · Sat 10/12/2005 15:54:32

Bravo, Scavenger!

To carry it one step forward (if it is, indeed, a code), it could be a double-encrypted code. The "Ninety-six bottle of beer" paragraph might be a code used to figure out what number is used to decrypt the rest of the message (read every eighth word, for example).

...if my hunch is right about that, however, then there's a major problem. If someone is paranoid enough to double-encrypt a message but flaky enough to send it to the wrong address, then it's rather likely that it's triple-encrypted or worse. So even if the right number was used for the cypher, the resulting message still wouldn't make much sense.

Anything we should know about your situation, esper? {wink} Unmarked helicopters in your neighborhood? A black box on the back of your television that you hadn't noticed before and a new overwhelming desire to obey authority without question? Neighbor's dog telling you to do bad things? Reverberating chants of "Ia, Ia, Shub-Niggurath!" in your dreams? Oh well... the truth may be out there, but it's a bit too cold to go check. {grin}

Incidentally, I googled Timothy Hendricks and came up with only a suspicious unsolved murder in North Carolina and the Fire Weather Program Leader of Guam. No hits on a timothy.hendricks@bigfoot, though.

Paper Carnival · Sat 10/12/2005 16:10:41

I have reasons to believe that this mail is from the satanic heresy Esper belongs to and Timothy Hendricks is his satangiven nickname.

QuoteBut see, that's the thing... No links to anything, no idea of what they were trying to sell.... JUST PLAIN SPAM! No purpose to it, they seem to have been just spamming.... spam. Everything else is for something... Home loans, p3n1sh enlargement, drugs, warez.... not this... Just random sentences of uselessness. What you see here is what you get.

In web-based e-mail applications pictures in junk/bulk mails are hidden. That's because by viewing them, accessing them somehow validates your e-mail in the spammer's list or something like that and then you get bombed with a lot of ad-spams (I read that in hotmail help). I got a spam email some time ago and so that there was a blocked picture on it (they appear with a gray color) of like 2x2 pixel size which had no reason of being there.

So... my point is that maybe there are some kind of spam bots that get random text from random sites online but also put a tiny picture or something to validate your email to them or get your IP to bomb you with spyware. Bleh.

Speaking of that, I just thought of something. A lot of chain mails come with a picture! And every time they tell you to forward the mail but not copy paste it, maybe that's so the picture can spread. So maybe this is the reason behind chain mails. If so it can be very convinient for spammers (they come from buddies so they don't get filtered as spam and spread more easily).

TheYak · Sat 10/12/2005 16:14:13

Message received vicariously, according to plan. Thank you.

futonrevolution · Sat 10/12/2005 16:19:10

Quote from: Guybrush Peepwood on Sat 10/12/2005 16:10:41I have reasons to believe that this mail is from the satanic heresy Esper belongs to and Timothy Hendricks is his satangiven nickname.

It's fairly easy to be a Christian heretic, but how exactly does someone become a Satanist heretic? And... uh... what do they lose as a result (ex-ex-communicated? "Take your soul back; we don't want it anymore"?) Heh...

Paper Carnival · Sat 10/12/2005 16:36:55

Quote from: futonrevolution on Sat 10/12/2005 16:19:10
Quote from: Guybrush Peepwood on Sat 10/12/2005 16:10:41I have reasons to believe that this mail is from the satanic heresy Esper belongs to and Timothy Hendricks is his satangiven nickname.
It's fairly easy to be a Christian heretic, but how exactly does someone become a Satanist heretic? And... uh... what do they lose as a result (ex-ex-communicated? "Take your soul back; we don't want it anymore"?) Heh...

Well... it's possible to be a Satanist with or without believing in God. A satanic heresy of a religion (in this case christianity) is someone who believes in the God of that religion but glorifies Satan instead, I guess.

IM NOT TEH SPAM · Sat 10/12/2005 16:55:14

I just want to assure you that this is total bull-honkey. If it's some kind of encrypted messege that means "pumpernickel" or "42" or whatever, what the hell does that mean anyway? It's not worth it. Chances are it's just some meaningless crap. And if it's not, there's nothing really you can do about it.

Ninjas · Sat 10/12/2005 20:59:30

Really, this seems a lot like the kind of wierd stuff on your webpage. Maybe you are the originator of this email, or had someone target you because they thought you would like it.

The message breaks into two parts:

part one is culled from this...

http://www.csun.edu/cod/conf/1998/proceedings/csun98_039.htm

I suspect there are many different sources.

EldKatt · Sat 10/12/2005 21:34:06

This is the kind of randomized quasi-coherent text (Markov chains or whatever) that spam is filled with to prevent spam filters from detecting them. That's why it looks like a MegaHAL transcript. Since there are no links, it's not advertising. So what other reasons are there to attempt to bypass a spam filter? The only thing I can think of is to distribute a virus. That might be it. And by the way, I merely skimmed this thread, so there might be some magical mystery conspiracy that I've missed. My apologies, then.

esper · Sat 10/12/2005 21:40:13

I'm not a conspiracy nut. But I do think it's fun to decrypt messages that aren't there...

Funny, you should mention it. If you search this site for "Ia, Ia, Shub Niggurath" or "Cthulhu fthagn," 99% of the posts are from me........

COINKYDINK? I think not.....

futonrevolution · Sun 11/12/2005 00:40:26

Oh, I wasn't calling you a conspiracy nut - sorry if that offended you. I was pretty much just asking if something happened recently that would have an actual conspiracy nut try contacting you in a particularly obtuse way. ...well, that and pushing the code theory as far it can go. {grin} I definitely agree that over-analyzing random acts of weirdness is fun - drives my friends nuts, though.

Still, I wouldn't worry about it on any more than an academic level unless some internet stalker pops up demanding that you do your part to make John Titor's predictions come true or something.