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This topic has moved here: Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
  • Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
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Here is a good link to go to use on your post for people eho don't know the epic of gilgamesh. Almost everyone has to summerize the epic when they talk about it and I don't think thats neccessary anymore. just assume that everyone knows and include this easy summary link:

http://www.netpaths.net/gilgamesh/enkandgil.html

As far as cedar trees go, there is a strong connection to the epic and Lebanon (the country) The cedar forest in lebanon is where Enkidu and Gilgamesh killed the beast Humbaba. The beast of the forest was assinged as the gaurdian by the god Enlil. to get the beast's attention, Enkidu and Gilgamesh cut down seven trees (the magic bungie number = thr7h)

Historicly the cedar forest in Lebanon was a special place because it was a resource for ancient peoples. The wood was used only for special structures. Also from cedar a special preservative was made from the sap. this preservative's name has been translated into "Life of death" (flood reference?) Also, symbolicly cedars lrepresent eternity

  • 04.30.2004 9:43 AM PDT

Driven to distraction. ^_^

I just want to correct the guys who are thinking that the enkidu AI is broken because of the garbled messages. To explain why it isn't:

[b]From Enkidu[b]
Sorry for the lossy compression, but we are v[e]ry low on bandwidth and [a]vailab[l]e power after the accid[garbled]ing the best we can.


You notice that all of the errors are surrounded by [].
Enkidu is having to use 'lossy compression' to save bandwidth (NOT lousy compression as this is not an error).
Lossy compression is used in real-life reduce the size of files for storage/transmission. Its looses some of the information from the original file to reduce space. In general it is used on images/sound files (such as .jpg and .mp3) because our eyes and ears hardly notice the difference and fill in the gaps. Text files and messages can not be compressed in this manner because data is lost.

This explains the gaps in the message (not because Enkidu is broken).

some of the gaps have been fixed automatically because they only need single letters to replace them e.g. [a]vailab[l]e
others are too large to be fixed e.g. accid[garbled]ing.

Just thought I'd stop any speculation about these errors in the message.

Thal.

p.s. Actually, in real life, compressing a message using lossy compression would make it completely unreadable, not just the minor errors that we are seeing here.

  • 04.30.2004 10:09 AM PDT
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January 30, 2004 (Warthog's Day)
The Master Chief emerged from his code. After seeing his dynamically lit realtime shadow, he went back for 9 more months of development.


Behold the power of the Originals, the Gods Axeone-Neurone.

Posted by: Xennith Greywind
However, they CANNOT have survived this mission, that they are currently on, BEFORE Halo 2 takes place, because the UNSC intelligence only knows of ONE planet that the covenant did not immediately glass, Reach.


There is no reason for the Covenant to glass this planet. No humans only forerunner artifacts (probably?) which is what they want. Also Sigma Octanus IV was not glassed by the Covenant though the Spartans nuked the capital.

  • 04.30.2004 10:11 AM PDT
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Nice speculation boys (, keep it up! and, although i doubt it, girls - not being sexist just a realist :p) keep it up!

  • 04.30.2004 10:26 AM PDT
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I'm going to make a guess that it's from a AI like Cortana that gets captured by the Covenant and plays a part in the story of Halo 2. Maybe even being responsible for how they find Earth. Comments?

[Edited on 4/30/2004 10:56:36 AM]

  • 04.30.2004 10:55 AM PDT
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thats another possibility where this could go. Perhaps Enkidu ends up being the covie AI that cortana recognized as familiar on the Ascendent Justice (I think soemone else already brought this up, but not sure)

  • 04.30.2004 10:58 AM PDT
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at one point it says "I starved the gods" the halo's were designed to starve the flood and 343gs fired the halo(s) once before

  • 04.30.2004 11:05 AM PDT
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I believe Enkidu is good, at this moment, but whatever he is introduced to in the system may turn him.

  • 04.30.2004 11:11 AM PDT
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Who is Enkidu talking to anyway? Someone may have answered this already in an earlier post but i didn't feel like looking through it all. Is he/she/it talking to a spartan? spartans? Maybe that could figure out who this Enkidu is. . .

That's some input, not very good input, but it's and input anyhow.

  • 04.30.2004 11:27 AM PDT
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January 30, 2004 (Warthog's Day)
The Master Chief emerged from his code. After seeing his dynamically lit realtime shadow, he went back for 9 more months of development.


Behold the power of the Originals, the Gods Axeone-Neurone.

Posted by: Colonel Pachawk
Who is Enkidu talking to anyway? Someone may have answered this already in an earlier post but i didn't feel like looking through it all. Is he/she/it talking to a spartan? spartans? Maybe that could figure out who this Enkidu is. . .

That's some input, not very good input, but it's and input anyhow.


We have no idea who it is so for the time being we are calling him/her [color="gold"]JD for John/Jane Doe[/color].

  • 04.30.2004 11:40 AM PDT
Subject: Cryobay B?
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I have no idea what u guys are talking about, but if ur talking about the the sign, it looks like guilty spark 343 in way.

  • 04.30.2004 12:10 PM PDT
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I think the people of Bungie, are trying to give clues, or something about the series of Halo. Or whatever. Something is up.. Hmm.

  • 04.30.2004 12:14 PM PDT
Subject: A clue?
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I thought this was interesting, it is the header info for the index page of enkidu.bungie.org:

<title>Do I have to draw you a picture?</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
<meta name="generator" content="my_own_sweet_self">
<meta name="keywords" content="Marathon, Halo, Bungie, Enkidu, rampant AI, index, site map, cryptic messages, read em and weep">
<link rel="Stylesheet" href="http://enkidu.bungie.org/includes/e.css" type="text/css">

I especially thought the keyword, Rampant AI was interesting.

  • 04.30.2004 12:19 PM PDT
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Hmm...I'll bet that Bungie put this out as a puzzle that will have the answer revealed at E3.

  • 04.30.2004 12:25 PM PDT
Subject: More header info
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From the header of the page with Gilgamesh story:

<meta name="keywords" content="Marathon, Halo, Bungie, Enkidu, fanfic, rampant AI, awakening, dysphoria, epic poetry, Gilgamesh, ASCII art, embedded allegory, eye spy">

Dysphoria : n : abnormal depression and discontent


I looked at the header info from the other pages and only found one thing that caught my eye on the last page:

survival drive

What do you guys think?

  • 04.30.2004 12:30 PM PDT
Subject: Enkidu - Cortana Letters Revisted?
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I think this thread is kinda getting dry. No one is really paying attentiion to the last post on the Enkidu terminal and i think it is the most interesting because something is about to happen. So I'm going to analyze the last post and try to stir up some talk about it.

***AUTOREGRESSIVE ANALYSIS ROUTINES RUNNING***
***INTERPOLATING FOR BAD AND/OR MISSING PACKETS***


The lebanon's computer is trying to "fill in" missing parts of the message. i assume this is the parts between the brackets.

***INCOMING M[E]SSAGE FROM ENKIDU***

Sorry for the lossy compression, but we are v[e]ry low on bandwidth and [a]vailab[l]e power after the accid[garbled]ing the best we can.


Obviously something has been hard to over come on the surface where enkidu is. It is now three days after the last entry. Their power is low and they are unable to broadcast themselves on a larger bandwidth, hence transmittion problems. Something with accid is being described as a problem. Was there some kind of spill from some of their equipment or is it acid rain? If it is acid rain, and if it is giving them trouble, then this ice planet has also got a very toxic atmoshpere.

We are exploring the grounds of [a] large building, apparently very ol[d]. It is shaped like a very broad, split arrow head pointin[g]_ into the sky with a diamond-shaped gap in the face. It seems to ha[garbled]

Sounds like they are describing one of the structures that are on the second level of Halo (the level is called Halo and the structures appear after you crash land) So this place has what sounds like Forerunner technology on it. Could this forerunner structure have created pollution (evidence for pollution is the acid rain, if thats what is being described in the mesage) in the atmosphere that in turn created an ice age? Here is a link to explain http://culter.colorado.edu/~saelias/glacier.html - Basically pollution in atmosphere blocks the warming of the sun. In the source code of the latest entry, it mentions "generator". Perhaps this structure is a Forerunner power plant that has polluted the planet.

Though the atmosphere near the building is much richer in oxygen than the average on Frigid, the crew still require additional oxy[j]en to mai[garbled] [a]nd power is running low. We have no choice. We must enter the buil[garbled]r lose more crew to exposure and hypoxia.

Why would there be more oxygen next to the structure? Is it leaking atmosphere? I don't know nor do I have any ideas about this phenomenon, but it looks like the crew on the planet are in trouble and are going to have to seek refuge in the structure. I guess no heat is being put out with the oxygen it is releasing/making.

I am surprised to find that this building appears to house artifacts that still funct[garbled]e can see working indicator lights on the doors we have found. Corpor[garbled] hopes to salvage whatever codebreaking equipment we can from the wreckage of the Pelicans. Then we hope to rig a bypass circuit on the door locks.

So the Enkidu AI isn't like Cortana. Cortanan was an AI programmed to break just about any code. Many times in the book she infiltrated covenant computers and we also saw her code cracking work on the halo. Neither types of foreign tech were a match for her, yet Enkidu can't open the doors without some code breaking software from the Pelicans? mmmm? Those Pelicans i might add are wrecked so obviously they crashed and the team didn't have an easy landing. The only other thing to say about this is that all the doors and things are just like the things found on halo, in perfect working order. This has got to be a Forerunner structure.


There is some sort of RF network data hand-shak[garbled]![garbled]ere i[s] a functioning terminal inside Lieutenant Demarais will attempt to interface my mobile unit with it. They need me at full capacity if we are to continue on into this building.

I have no idea what an "RF" network is. Enlighten me if you know. Sounds like though that his Enkidu AI is about to link up with the Forrunner computer/door or whatever. Enkidu also mentions that her "mobil unit" is going to be accessed by a Lietnant. What do they mean by mobil? Is Enkidu like a robot right now. No matter what kind of carring case Enkidu is in, i doubt that the AI would refer to a Spartan as a "mobil unit".

Also, how wil this interface make her run at full capacity? Is she talking about being low on power? Perhaps they are going to try and charge Enkidu up. Or, something could have also been decribed where the text gets garbled and maybe Enkidu took on Forerunner information like Cortanan did. Perhaps this has made it hard to function with the memory banks full and now Demarais is going to try and purge something.

Wish me luck.

One more thing. This planet, called Frigid, is really cold and icy. Wasn't that second muilti-player screen with red and blue players on an icy cold environment? mmmm?

[Edited on 4/30/2004 12:46:04 PM]

  • 04.30.2004 12:41 PM PDT
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Who made this? I have no clue what it is or what its about.?????

  • 04.30.2004 12:45 PM PDT
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I think its human AI or something

  • 04.30.2004 12:47 PM PDT
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Posted by: Damocles Sword
Look at the source for the page.

<meta name="generator" content="wishing_will_make_it_so">
<meta name="keywords" content="Marathon, Halo, Bungie, Enkidu, fanfic, lossy compression, bad choice or worse, survival drive">

Bad choice or worse? This doesn't look good for those on the planet. Seems like the Pelicans didn't make a good landing. Their survival drive must be making them make a choice that they'll regret.



how do you look at the source for the pages

  • 04.30.2004 12:49 PM PDT
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Tartarus,

1. The words: the accid[garbled]ing. The word 'acid' is spelled with one c, however I think it is most likely that the word is accident [something]

2. You are likely correct, the structure is either leaking oxygen or generating it. Hard to say.

3. I think you are right about Enkidu not being the same as Cortana. AIs like cortana are pretty rare.

4. An RF network sounds like some sort of wireless network. The data handshake may refer to the computer inside trying to "Connect" to Enkidu. It seems Enkidu may be planning on using the Forerunner network for power/whatever else.

Just my two cents.

  • 04.30.2004 12:57 PM PDT
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NEO 117,

Right click on an empty spot (ie no graphic) of the page and hit 'View Source'

  • 04.30.2004 12:59 PM PDT
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Posted by: Texas Ben
the silmarillion is not the lord of the rings -blam!-! the silmarillion is 500% better, and has not been raped by the evil corporate empire! i liked the lord of the rings before the movie, and most people cant claim that! hahahahahaha im gonna kill you all!


I can claim that........

Will you let me live?

  • 04.30.2004 1:01 PM PDT
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I can't remember exactly, but I think Cortana was one of a kind designed specifically by Dr. Hanley for the purpose that the Spartans were about to invade a convenent cruiser to capture a prophet to negotiate a settlement....

Correct me if I'm wrong.

  • 04.30.2004 1:03 PM PDT
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Ahhhh X isle! "accid" as in accident, not acid. damn it! stupid! stupid! stupid! stupid! *throws head against desk repeatedly* thats sucks cause i had that whole really big and complicated explantion for the planet being icy. here I thought i was smart and yet, like everyone tells me, I'm an idiot.

anyways thanks for the correctiona and the other feedback.

  • 04.30.2004 1:10 PM PDT
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What if the first "Reclaimer" sent it?

and in the source code, the UNSC image is sourced from Marathon.gif

  • 04.30.2004 1:15 PM PDT