HE IS ON TO US
ACTIVE PLAN BETA TWELVE
BETA TWELVE
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Mostly yes, and the Angel Cartel.
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It was a joke, and I got a chuckle from your response. Lightened my mood a bit. Thank you
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I thought it was plan Omega Mike Golf Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
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. . . I think you mean Oscar.
Freakin’ people, mixing two phonetic alphabets. IS THAT YOUR IDEA OF SCIENCE?!?!?!? 
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We should observe it for 2 full days to be sure.
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Honestly, most of the time I try to generate new phonetics for each fleet. My favorite tends to be ‘types of cake,’ but there are only so many types in the cluster.
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My idea of science is mixing absynthe with ice and observing the effects on my brain when imbibed. Occasionally I do some of the quantum hand wavey stuff too.
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We’re codeologists, not letterologists. /s
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Seriously though, how did you figure out the cipher?
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By looking at it, and not spending this entire time arguing about the ethics of pulling the trigger.
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We used our squishy brain meat, which views the shapes through our eyes and then, with our fingers or potentially other extremities, we wrote things down.
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By matching symbol occurrence patterns with known galnet address structure. Just how thick are you?
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This is some good science right here.
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It’s rather difficult to go through the backlog at the moment, but if the string cipher has already been decoded, I think we’d all be interested in the result.
Successfully decoding one will undoubtedly decrease the time to decode further strings, and possibly allow us to reverse the process and attempt proper communication.
Assuming they want to listen.
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I have no idea why I attempt to answer your question, given how contrarian you are at every given turn… perhaps it may offer explanation for those who are genuinely curious…
Cryptography is an art-form that has been practiced for generations. During the Gallente-Caldari war, rumors spread of secret messages being attempted through ciphers, and best practices on how to decrypt them spread.
I will not give every technique - such would require a thread in itself - but here are a few common practices that were used:
In the commonly translated language we used to communicate even on IGS, one common occurrence is the use of double-letters (ss, ll, cc, etc). These are easy to find in any cipher, and they were easy to find in the text found in the datavaults. As there are only so many variations of double letters that can be used to form words, these offer an important clue in how to translate the symbols.
Next, is the use of special characters. These will only ever be used (in our language) to denote a specific function. Periods, commas, apostrophes, slashes, etc… As these occurred frequently in the text that was found, it became readily apparent that they formed a ‘directory’ or ‘hierarchy’ of sorts.
Several other common practices were used (vowel-consonant structures, vowel placement, etc) which eventually led to a barrier of sorts. When we found letter arrangements that made no sense (they would form words that do not exist) we then looked into the usage of numbers, and soon after that we overlooked sensical wording altogether. From that point, we utilized brute-force measures.
Within a few hours, we decrypted the cipher, and catalogued results for future use.
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I would like to make it known that despite the constant admonishments of our contenders here in this thread, the violence will likely not stop. As this language was discovered in datavaults that were not previously discovered through traditional means (ship scans, cargo scans, etc), and only upon destruction of the Drifter vessels, it is absolutely clear that the only way we can begin to decipher and catalogue results is through further destruction.
In essence, Killing Is A Means Of Communication. As the Drifters will not readily share this language or any means of obtaining it otherwise, we are therein forced to destroy the vessels and pull the datavaults from the wreckage. Only when we have found enough to decipher and essentially ‘reverse-engineer’ the language can we even begin to attempt communication.
At that point, I would hope that the many antagonists that would oppose our efforts and yet do nothing themselves would finally cease their constant bickering… but I doubt it.
Edit: For the record, I will likely not be paying much mind to responses. I am supposed to be on vacation in Intaki Prime, but my skills were required for this. I would kindly ask to respect this, at least for a few more days, that I may be able to relax.
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While it may not have been directed my way, I nonetheless thank you for the in-depth explanation. You should go back to enjoying your vacation time.
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Altrinur, Olbra gate. Another large fleet of Drifters. Seen by my corpmate Celqueen Hekard. I am there, confirming.
Posting here, so that everyone can get ready and proceed with any communication attempts or other means they view as necessary.
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Know what time it is ladies? Show time! Lets go wipe out more of these freaks, yeah?
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