Re: VMs: A big shock

["Larry Roux" <lroux@xxxxxxx>]

OK, You are correct - except that we are mostly (yes, mostly, not 100%) sure that the Voy is NOT in some heretofore unknown language.  It could be in a made-up language, but I doubt it.

The original posters' point was that it was written in "plain text" and we just don't understand the character set.  He argued that made it not a ciper and I argued that under that definition it would be.  That was all I tried to say.



******************************
Larry Roux
Syracuse University
lroux@xxxxxxx
*******************************
>>> jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 12/07/03 04:13 AM >>>
7/12/2003 1:58:41 AM, Arqy0plex@xxxxxxx wrote:

>   In a message dated 12/6/2003 12:15:05 AM Eastern Standard Time, lroux
>   writes: 

>>     Just the fact that the Voy is unreadable "as is" implies a code of some
>>     fashion.

Well the Isthmus Zapotec inscriptions are unreadable. Does that make
them a code of some fashion?

Etruscan was "readable" only insofar as it was written in the
Greek alphabet. But until very recently the meaning was "unreadable"
Is Etruscan a code. Ditto the Indus Valley writing. Ditto for
Meroitic. And Maya until the around 1975. And closer to home,
ditto for the rongorongo tablets of Easter Island. Are they
codes? Now I pick up a Malayalam magazine. Can't understand
a word of it. Can't even read it aloud. Malayalam is a code.
QED.

Answer: yes. Think of the "Navaho code" used in WWII.

> And because almost everybody since Newbold has approached 
> the VMs as a 'code'  means that it is? 

> Other than the VMs symbols themselves (strange and 
> 'unreadable' though they may seem), on what basis do 
> you believe that the information in the VMs is 
> 'encrypted' at all? 


Navaho was a "code", and so is every language unknown to
me, or you. That's a lot. About 6000 of them.

Even real codes, in the cryptographic sense, are 
equivalent to languages. A cipher encodes a message
letter by letter. A code word by word or phrase
by phrase. Which is exactly what languages do,
with a bit of added complexity: word order, and a 
cunning check called grammar. You could almost call
it a cyclical redundancy check: has the message
been "encoded" according to the rules? 



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