It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!

January 28, 2004 8:35 PM

Cryptographever -- a secret message discoverer. Just type or paste in text from anywhere and the hidden messages are revealed...When I pasted in all of today's posts, it gave me: BUY NOW SHARE, but yesterday's reveals JOHN DREAMS. hmmmm....
posted by amberglow (32 comments total)

I pasted in my Netflix rental queue and got JOHN DREAMS. Coincidence?
posted by MsVader at 8:47 PM on January 28, 2004

Interesting. I cut and paste whitehouse.gov and get the secret message "hit target". This thingy is fun. Now I have to find out how to write my own secret messages into my client's websites... hmmm.
posted by hypnorich at 8:48 PM on January 28, 2004

uhh. Whitehouse.COM gives me "buy share now"
I think we've been had.
posted by hypnorich at 8:50 PM on January 28, 2004

Heh, I get "dog is blue" from the current contents of this page.
posted by NsJen at 8:52 PM on January 28, 2004

The State of the Union speech reveals: john dreams

Yep, it's a conspiracy
posted by jazon at 8:53 PM on January 28, 2004

i'm not sure--today's WH press briefing gave: EGG IS BROKEN
(it's fun, in a semi-paranoid sort of way)
posted by amberglow at 8:55 PM on January 28, 2004

britneyspears.com gives me another "hit target". No more fun to be had here, move along.
posted by hypnorich at 8:56 PM on January 28, 2004

all of drudge gives FIGHT GNU--maybe you have to believe in it? ; >
posted by amberglow at 8:58 PM on January 28, 2004

So, being one who loves to tinker, I tried another and got "the book is red" but I also noticed it missed a few obvious words like "bed" and "sax" that were in the message too, so... I'm thinking it's looking for some specific canned sequences of words and phrases (and that's why we've come up with so many similarities at once). Good night, heading off to sleep now. Hope I don't have John's Dreams.
posted by hypnorich at 9:05 PM on January 28, 2004

The text is too short. Please retry using a longer one.

I'd really rather not read a lot into that.
posted by namespan at 9:30 PM on January 28, 2004

I pasted in the first page of Moby Dick from this site and also got "egg is broken."
posted by synecdoche at 9:31 PM on January 28, 2004

Got 'egg is broken" as well. Looks like it searches for certain letters to fit a phrase... bla.
posted by tomplus2 at 10:10 PM on January 28, 2004

If it does, I found a few others: LET US MEET AT FOUR and THE BOOK IS RED. Now those sound like coded messages to me!
posted by rschram at 10:18 PM on January 28, 2004

Longest recent post on my blog was "we can begin."

I hate it when I'm a member of a conspiracy and no one tells me...
posted by Samizdata at 11:09 PM on January 28, 2004

GODDAMMIT PEOPLE, DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THAT IT ALL MEANS "Bush must be defeated at all costs"?
posted by mr_crash_davis at 11:19 PM on January 28, 2004

Oh. Really. Hmmmm. Have to look into that. Promptly. Sure.
posted by Samizdata at 11:52 PM on January 28, 2004

The comments page for MeFi thread #19 (oldest available) also results in "john dreams". This is serious. We must act now.
posted by skyscraper at 12:00 AM on January 29, 2004

Chalk up another one for John Dreams (or John dreams, depending), despite my attempt to find the best piece of literary material I could. Curse you, Cryptographever, and your fevered ways.
posted by The God Complex at 12:08 AM on January 29, 2004

The NYTimes article entitled Suicide Bomber Kills at Least 8 on Jerusalem Bus decodes to read "the plan is ready we can go"

Weird... Very weird. Just for fun, I ran it again and got the same results, so I don't think this is some joke site that randomizes the results.
posted by lockle at 12:11 AM on January 29, 2004

i put in the text of steve@linnwood's dean post and got "it is not ok". i'm not making this up.
posted by quonsar at 1:40 AM on January 29, 2004

I just double-checked and quonsar is not a liar. Well, he's not lying, at least.
posted by The God Complex at 1:42 AM on January 29, 2004

Bluetrain's latest MeTa post yields "dog is blue." I'm not sure what that means.
posted by Yelling At Nothing at 2:15 AM on January 29, 2004

I put in the text of this Denver Post article about Dean being a ski bum in Aspen in the early '70s. I also got "it is not ok".
posted by Shoeburyness at 2:46 AM on January 29, 2004

I pasted in a huge chunk of text I wrote yesterday and got...

"John Dreams" !
posted by troutfishing at 5:48 AM on January 29, 2004

I just tried this thread and got I NEED GUNS, so who knows?

K-Hello has some other fun things too.
posted by amberglow at 5:54 AM on January 29, 2004

I fed in a T.S. Eliot poem ("We shall not cease from exploration...") and got back "let us meet at four."
posted by Aaorn at 9:30 AM on January 29, 2004

hehehe, I pasted in Orkut's terms of service and got "My password is goal".
posted by dabitch at 9:31 AM on January 29, 2004

Gregg Dyke's (now ex-DG of the BBC) resignation speech reveals that he's unconciously saying "I am good."

Presumably Tony Blair's speeches on the Hutton Report, reveal him declaring "I am evil."
posted by Blue Stone at 10:47 AM on January 29, 2004

i tried text from several places and got "i am good" "it is not ok" "i need guns" and "let us meet at four". oh, and "the egg is broken" one too.
posted by centrs at 11:02 AM on January 29, 2004

Pasted in the text of a letter I recently wrote, got back "egg is broken."

Clearly this thing has a list of secret messages and finds the substitution pattern that makes it possible. Which is a nifty bit of computation, I suppose
posted by adamrice at 11:54 AM on January 29, 2004

Hmmm...I also did the State of the Union, but got something a little more ominous:

The plan is ready we can go

I guess it depends on which secret decoder ring you use.
posted by QuestionableSwami at 11:57 AM on January 29, 2004

I got the "I am good" secret decoder ring when I ran my advice column from today. But it's true I tell you, it's true. I am good!
posted by dejah420 at 2:10 PM on January 29, 2004