VMs: Re: All quiet on the VMS front

[Nick Pelling <incoming@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:41 24/06/02 -0400, John Grove wrote:
>         This is one of the benefits from EVA for me - at least I can 
> visualize the
> patterns as similar to one another: The rare '@' looks like 'in' looks like
> 'iin' looks like 'iiin' and the rare 'b' looks like the rare 'cb' 'ccb' and
> 'cccb'...

The reason I'm suspicious of *all* transcriptions is that I'm far from 
convinced we understand what the intentions of the author were: and the 
closer I get to the VMS, the more I feel that it's a multi-layered cipher 
designed partly around steganography, but mainly around *misdirection*.

For sure, EVA isn't perfect, but insofar as it allows for the kind of 
cipherbet-agnostic pattern matching that John describes, I think it's 
pretty much good enough. Perhaps we might be able to catch a glance of a 
numbering-system through these kinds of patterns - or perhaps see some kind 
of non-obvious internal structuring within a page.