What was recovered from the wreck of the Bellarmine

[Suederwind]

@Michael:

I'm sorry, I sopped reading after "Well, I bed" and only started again when I saw "Loroi", dirty minded I know but.....SCIENCE!!

Posting shortly after work is not always the best idea...
Dirty minded? I had the exact same "problem" reading that post again. So put me on that list too.

[fredgiblet]

Not really - language should generally be obvious even when encoded into the proprietary formats. You will often be able to tell that something is language.

As you will generally get certain repeating patterns. Admittedly you will only have bit values as opposed to actual symbols or letters.

I'd say we can pretty safely assume that small scale computer devices like an ebook reader and similar would still work in a binary format and generally store stuff in binary formats in part because they are by far the easiest way of storing digital information we have.

Most likely all of the devices will have full-disk encryption (every military device should even now), that alone will be months optimistically. They will not have access to our cryptographic standards, so they won't have any idea of how to even start breaking it, their best hope is that there is a hardware decryption device (like the AES instructions on some Intel chips) that they can find and reverse-engineer, without that they're looking at brute-forcing an unknown system.

Once they figure out the encryption they then have to figure out the file formats, modern file formats are very complex, don't believe me, I just created a Word document containing a single letter a, it's 13kb. All the extra stuff is coding describing how the file works to the software, the Loroi would need to figure that out from scratch. Only plaintext documents would be easy, videos would be virtually impossible until they located and reverse-engineered the codecs, same with music, for documents they'd have to sift through the container to find the content, for pictures they would be facing the same challenge as video and audio unless it's a minimally encoded system like uncompressed bitmaps.

tl;dr, it's going to be a nightmare for whatever Loroi NSA agents get the job of digging through the files

[ed_montague]

tl;dr, it's going to be a nightmare for whatever Loroi NSA agents get the job of digging through the files

<link relevant>

[Mr Bojangles]

Not really - language should generally be obvious even when encoded into the proprietary formats. You will often be able to tell that something is language.

As you will generally get certain repeating patterns. Admittedly you will only have bit values as opposed to actual symbols or letters.

I'd say we can pretty safely assume that small scale computer devices like an ebook reader and similar would still work in a binary format and generally store stuff in binary formats in part because they are by far the easiest way of storing digital information we have.

Most likely all of the devices will have full-disk encryption (every military device should even now), that alone will be months optimistically. They will not have access to our cryptographic standards, so they won't have any idea of how to even start breaking it, their best hope is that there is a hardware decryption device (like the AES instructions on some Intel chips) that they can find and reverse-engineer, without that they're looking at brute-forcing an unknown system.

Once they figure out the encryption they then have to figure out the file formats, modern file formats are very complex, don't believe me, I just created a Word document containing a single letter a, it's 13kb. All the extra stuff is coding describing how the file works to the software, the Loroi would need to figure that out from scratch. Only plaintext documents would be easy, videos would be virtually impossible until they located and reverse-engineered the codecs, same with music, for documents they'd have to sift through the container to find the content, for pictures they would be facing the same challenge as video and audio unless it's a minimally encoded system like uncompressed bitmaps.

tl;dr, it's going to be a nightmare for whatever Loroi NSA agents get the job of digging through the files

YES!

File formats are non-trivial constructs, and encryption is just pure math. Trying to brute-force a current 512 bit key, even with Loroi computational power, will still take until the heat death of the universe to crack. Or at least long enough that it just won't matter anymore.

[bunnyboy]

Something put this on scale.
Antikythera mechanism has only 30 gears and we knew the culture, which had it builded, but it still took years to decode its function.
And it was only mechanical.


In some day Loroi researscher makes remarkable found.
"I'll be damned!"
"What?" Asks her collega.
"Those primitives still use magnetic memory!"
"You don't say?"
"Yes. We accidentally wiped them clean when we make deepscan."
"Oh no."
"Also. I suggest that when we find more of their artifacts, that they are picked up by hand instead of normal policy."
"But that endanger us to booby traps."
"We need to take that risk, if we wan't to know more of them."

[Hālian]

"I'll be damned!"
"What?" Asks her colleague.
"Those primitives still use magnetic memory!"
"You don't say?"
"Yes. We accidentally wiped them clean when we performed a deep scan."
"Oh no."
"Also, I suggest that, when we find more of their artifacts, they are picked up by hand instead of the normal policy."
"But that endangers us to booby traps."
"We need to take that risk if we want to know more of them."

You bitch, you just destroyed classic Doctor Who!

(( ))

[bunnyboy]

What? How? I have seen only couple of episodes so I have no idea what you are talking about.

[saint of m]

I can also see the look on their faces when they finally decrip some of the files.

Lieutenant Crying Storm.
Log report 1
Upon successfully decrepting the humanity's files, grudgingly with the aid of the historian emissary. Upon opening the first file, we were hit by a barrage or horrid noise. When looking up the translations Listel Beryl gave us, we found the translation: One Wing Angel, Nobu.

Apparently this was "music" to our guest's species. I wonder if it can be weaponized?


Log Report 2.
I am unsure if the technicians are doing the work they claim to be doing, or if they are goofing off and playing what apears to be a digital game. We have recreated an appropriate inpute device, and it appears they have spent 20 hours of "examining it." I have yet to determine if the main antagonist of that story is male of female.


Log Report 3.
I have put another team in charge of going through this, and now they are going through some of the videos. Judging from the special effects, this species is clearly archaic (I can see the peep hole in the monster suit).

Log Report 4. It's been three standard days and the original team has changed games, now something with less monsters and more projectile firearms. Primitives indeed.

Log Report 5. On fifth viewing of Hetalia, file report latter.

[Paragon]

What? How? I have seen only couple of episodes so I have no idea what you are talking about.

Many of the episodes of the first and second doctors' runs are believed to be permanently lost. Way back when the show started they only kept the original prints around for a little while before destroying them. Others were later found to have been improperly stored and damaged by the elements. It is considered a Big Deal whenever someone recovers a "Lost Episode".

So basically he's saying some Loroi are working for the BBC.

Edit: Oh and Tempo mentioned that they had recovered many bodies. I'm betting they focused on recovering war dead and small samples of tech. Gives them a good outline of what we're capable of as a species.

[saint of m]

I know the movie is more on the so bad it's good list, but what about a DNA scanner like what was used in the Lost in Space movie?

Could the Loroli have something like that that could simulate what the strengths and limitations of the human body?

[fredgiblet]

Probably. Though that assumes that their system is compatible with our genetics, which isn't guaranteed. Even if the chemistry is identical, which isn't 100% assured itself, such equipment might be sensitive to chromsome count changes or our genetics might use different coding. If our STOP codons are different from theirs then they might read the whole thing as one giant string, I don't know enough about genetics to know if that's a serious concern though.

[dfacto]

Hate to perv it up, but I'm betting that when the Loroi discover a "personal back massager" in the wreckage they'll know exactly what it's for.

[Karst45]

Hate to perv it up, but I'm betting that when the Loroi discover a "personal back massager" in the wreckage they'll know exactly what it's for.

And start reverse engineering the thing

[Trantor]

Hate to perv it up, but I'm betting that when the Loroi discover a "personal back massager" in the wreckage they'll know exactly what it's for.

Heh. Had to look this one up.

[Zakharra]

Arioch cleared it up for the most part with this:

I don't expect that there would be much printed material lying around the Bellarmine. I would guess that society in 2160 is pretty close to paperless, and especially on a deep-space starship, you'd want to keep the amount of required consumable supplies to an absolute minimum; prinouts would be an unnecessary luxury. Printed books still exist, but mostly as antiques, curios or collectibles; I'd think mass-market paperbacks will have been replaced by digital editions.

A crew on a deep-space first contact mission would be allowed to bring only the absolute minimum in terms of physical personal belongings, which would be carefully inspected and vetted prior to boarding. Crewmembers would be allowed a generous amount of personal data (music, images, books, software, etc.), but this would all be stored in encrypted ship systems; crew would have access to portable data appliances, but these would be "company" issued devices and not the crewmembers' personal devices, which would not be allowed on board.

Very few personal items. Probably mostly clothes, uniforms. Most entertainment would be electronic to save space and most importantly in a space craft, weight. The devices would be all military made and owned, so no kindles or any such privately made things like that. I imagine that everything was screened, check, checked and checked again before being loaded on the ship. On a mission this important, the military and government would not want to screw this up by someone smuggling aboard a personal stash of sex toys or porn.

[saint of m]

Arioch cleared it up for the most part with this:

I don't expect that there would be much printed material lying around the Bellarmine. I would guess that society in 2160 is pretty close to paperless, and especially on a deep-space starship, you'd want to keep the amount of required consumable supplies to an absolute minimum; prinouts would be an unnecessary luxury. Printed books still exist, but mostly as antiques, curios or collectibles; I'd think mass-market paperbacks will have been replaced by digital editions.

A crew on a deep-space first contact mission would be allowed to bring only the absolute minimum in terms of physical personal belongings, which would be carefully inspected and vetted prior to boarding. Crewmembers would be allowed a generous amount of personal data (music, images, books, software, etc.), but this would all be stored in encrypted ship systems; crew would have access to portable data appliances, but these would be "company" issued devices and not the crewmembers' personal devices, which would not be allowed on board.

Very few personal items. Probably mostly clothes, uniforms. Most entertainment would be electronic to save space and most importantly in a space craft, weight. The devices would be all military made and owned, so no kindles or any such privately made things like that. I imagine that everything was screened, check, checked and checked again before being loaded on the ship. On a mission this important, the military and government would not want to screw this up by someone smuggling aboard a personal stash of sex toys or porn.

Where there is a will there is a way. Soldiers on today's battlefields have their laptops, and many have a whole hard drive dedicated to porn. That and I'm sure, as with just about every war previously, there would be a few pinups here and there.

Also, they military has to have some entertainment (maybe more G to R in rating but you get the idea). US aircraft carriers were often called cities at sea, and in some of the meeting rooms often doubled as movie theaters. Some of the super carers are big enough to actually have their own library.

ANother thing would probably be video games. I saw a documentary a few years back where they were looking at the duties and lifestyle on a nuclear submarine, and some of them brought their video games.

Also given the advances in technology, I doubt space for holding all of this would be a problem. I can see a few thousand terrabites of media entertainment not taking much space,

[Count Casimir]

Actually, they might have brought movies and books and other such sundries just to show off human culture, too--say, for example, if they made contact and were then cut off from returning to Earth for the next few years for whatever reason. New allies will want to know stuff about you!

[DevilDalek]

Personally I think food will be a major issue, the Bellermine probably has a lot of dry store goods, and thats going to help Alex in the long run, as stated before the poor guy might break down crying when they hand over soem chocolate and coffee!

But at least they should be able to analyse it to give him something more digestable.

As for what workign out what stuff is, I think putting them in contact with Alex and just.. watching.. would probably shorten a lot of research time
on the flipside, Alex is a smart cookie and he might be able to do the noble thing and delete stuff he thinks they should not have.

[saint of m]

Personally I think food will be a major issue, the Bellermine probably has a lot of dry store goods, and thats going to help Alex in the long run, as stated before the poor guy might break down crying when they hand over soem chocolate and coffee!

But at least they should be able to analyse it to give him something more digestable.

As for what workign out what stuff is, I think putting them in contact with Alex and just.. watching.. would probably shorten a lot of research time
on the flipside, Alex is a smart cookie and he might be able to do the noble thing and delete stuff he thinks they should not have.

I just thought of something. They could probably put a pill or something in some of his food, and that pill could have a device that could scan Alex in much more detail. I'm sure they have the tech, and I'm sure it's cheap enough of gear they won't worry about retreaving it when Alex has to use the Little Male's room.

[Karst45]

Personally I think food will be a major issue, the Bellermine probably has a lot of dry store goods, and thats going to help Alex in the long run, as stated before the poor guy might break down crying when they hand over soem chocolate and coffee!

But at least they should be able to analyse it to give him something more digestable.

As for what workign out what stuff is, I think putting them in contact with Alex and just.. watching.. would probably shorten a lot of research time
on the flipside, Alex is a smart cookie and he might be able to do the noble thing and delete stuff he thinks they should not have.

I just thought of something. They could probably put a pill or something in some of his food, and that pill could have a device that could scan Alex in much more detail. I'm sure they have the tech, and I'm sure it's cheap enough of gear they won't worry about retreaving it when Alex has to use the Little Male's room.

try to hide something in the food of an alien that sample every inch of food to see if it edible? Am pretty sure he would notice.