pulkk
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May 11, 2011 0:53:01 GMT -5
Post by pulkk on May 11, 2011 0:53:01 GMT -5
Has anyone else tried to open these .jpgs as text files in TextEdit (which I think only Macs have)? Doing that reveals what I think is the source code for the image, and it looks very similar to what's in the .rtf files.
I'm guessing that there is some direct connection between the .jpgs and the .rtfs we have. My theory is that the character strings in the .rtfs provide some sort of code or key to unscramble the source code of the .jpgs. Presumably once we unscramble all the .jpgs, we can concatenate them to get the full letter. ("Contact," anyone?)
Anybody who owns a Mac want to check this out?
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jman
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May 11, 2011 0:55:26 GMT -5
Post by jman on May 11, 2011 0:55:26 GMT -5
As a tech person, I'm 99% sure that the images do not have any "secret" hidden inside them.
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pulkk
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May 11, 2011 1:11:04 GMT -5
Post by pulkk on May 11, 2011 1:11:04 GMT -5
I'm no tech person, but why not? I know that you can make images look weird -- the same kind of weird as these letter fragment files -- by chopping up and scrambling them, as text. Makes sense to me that the images were deliberately obfuscated via this method, and thus our puzzle is to change the text back so that the letter fragments are fully legible again.
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May 11, 2011 11:13:53 GMT -5
Post by meowth on May 11, 2011 11:13:53 GMT -5
I did this and ruined the image. But changing the text does change the image although what i did jsut made most of it go away.
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May 11, 2011 12:34:50 GMT -5
Post by dreamskyboner on May 11, 2011 12:34:50 GMT -5
i'm going to go ahead and agree with the fact that we're suppose to work something out with the scrambled image and text from mf. we pretty much skipped ahead and missed some crucial elements that were given to us from the start, so I don't think it's going to work out if we just skip this part
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May 11, 2011 13:19:59 GMT -5
Post by gamegirl42 on May 11, 2011 13:19:59 GMT -5
Are these .jpgs related to the string of numbers in "The improbable is possible" email? Are people working on this puzzle together? Any progress.?
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pulkk
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May 11, 2011 15:17:05 GMT -5
Post by pulkk on May 11, 2011 15:17:05 GMT -5
the mediafire link was on some buttons that we've found, either under a glass globe on campus, or in a room in stuart on monday.
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pulkk
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May 11, 2011 15:23:13 GMT -5
Post by pulkk on May 11, 2011 15:23:13 GMT -5
hey guys: looks like the program you use to open the images matters. the text is more or less obfuscated depending on which program you use.
opening fragConv1-6.jpg with Windows Photo Viewer or Paint, you can see "Pw 2: v0v" in the lower right hand corner.
opening fragConv2-6.jpg with either of those programs, you can see "Pw 1: Xib" at the bottom.
i'm not sure if this adds at all to what we already know -- these seem to be related to the password for the omeostat website, XibvOvdiX, which i sort of "cheated" to find by looking at the source code of the website. anybody who found the password by legitimate means want to chime in?
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May 11, 2011 16:54:47 GMT -5
Post by lysander on May 11, 2011 16:54:47 GMT -5
Where was the "dIX" supposed to come from? We haven't found the source of that yet, have we?
Also, is it possible to work backwards from the rtfs to the jpgs? I know meowth posted that messing with the text just made the image unopenable, and I don't know enough about file types to figure out how one might backwards-convert the rtfs to images or if that's even possible. However, could some of the smaller text fragments be pasted into the jpg files in TextEdit? Might they correspond to each other somehow in that sense? I might just be BSing, I don't know if that can even be done.
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May 11, 2011 17:11:27 GMT -5
Post by gamegirl42 on May 11, 2011 17:11:27 GMT -5
I don't have a Mac. That could work tho. The .rtfs could be a key for the .jpgs. Are there any matches between the .rtf and the .jpg source code?
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jman
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May 11, 2011 17:11:47 GMT -5
Post by jman on May 11, 2011 17:11:47 GMT -5
the diX comes from inverting Pw 1 based on everything being symmetrical. The .rtf files look different in different text editors because it is not a simple text file, it is a document file similar to .doc, and as such you need to use a real document program to view it, not a text editor like gEdit. I am pretty sure the point of those codes was to let us get through the password on the omeostat website, which many people got past by simple source-code inspection.
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May 11, 2011 17:18:44 GMT -5
Post by lysander on May 11, 2011 17:18:44 GMT -5
the diX comes from inverting Pw 1 based on everything being symmetrical. The .rtf files look different in different text editors because it is not a simple text file, it is a document file similar to .doc, and as such you need to use a real document program to view it, not a text editor like gEdit. I am pretty sure the point of those codes was to let us get through the password on the omeostat website, which many people got past by simple source-code inspection. Good call on the symmetry. But I still don't understand why the "please" rtf would place so much emphasis on opening the files in TextEdit if that was the only point of those images. Especially when all it took was a little right-clicking to find that password. It's totally possible it's a red herring, though. Maybe we'll find out on Thursday...
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May 11, 2011 17:19:37 GMT -5
Post by seren on May 11, 2011 17:19:37 GMT -5
did anyone else notice that "the improbable is possible" is visible in the beginning of fragConv1-6.jpg ? do you think these puzzles are related to each other? maybe there was more to the .jpgs than just the pw for omeostat?
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jman
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May 11, 2011 17:39:45 GMT -5
Post by jman on May 11, 2011 17:39:45 GMT -5
I think they are telling us to open them in textedit because many people have started looking at them in other programs, since they look like gibberish even in textedit. I have looked at the contents of the files as plaintext, and have done some research on the .rtf format, and I can assure you that their plaintext contents are DEFINITELY textedit documents, and not related to the nonsense you get from opening a .jpg in notepad or whatever.
Also, I don't think they are expecting us to find hidden messages in something as technical as the text view of an image file. If they were sloppy enough to lett the password for omeostat be accessible through the source of the web page, they aren't expecting the technical prowess to find codes in file formats. Unscramble codes in text, sure, but not weird stuff deeply hidden in images.
tl;dr: the .rtfs are definitely meant for a document viewer, and the .jpgs are not. Don't try to unscramble .jpgs.
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May 11, 2011 19:57:35 GMT -5
Post by seren on May 11, 2011 19:57:35 GMT -5
How do we know that they didn't expect us to find the password in the source code?
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