[volvox]

Rorx wrote:

After a pretty confusing and long conversation about why I wanted to know if she knew him, my girlfriend came to the conclusion that she thinks she works with him. I doubt it but I may just invade her work-place to find out... Apparently he smiles alot... EDIT: Forgot to mention she wont ask him if he's a One in a Billion incase he thinks she's comin' onto him. Damn. /Rorx

I kept meaning to post and ask what the results were. I must say I was hoping for something better than that.

[YahwehTzVaoth]

I thought that maybe since you have to be a billion to one to get him, he might be a member of the Giga Society, but he isn't. They're a crazy high IQ organization. By "organization," I mean six dudes. Anyway, I sent them an email seeing if they have any bright ideas. It reads:

"I was doing a research project on the history and effectiveness of IQ tests and I came across a Wikipedia article that listed the Giga Society as the most exclusive high IQ society. I though, rightly so have looked through your website, "They must have four guys, if that." Pretty close to the mark.

The reason I am contacting you is that I play a sort of game called Perplex City. In it there are a number of puzzle cards to solve. One of the puzzles is entitiled "Billion to One," the approximate odds of someone having an IQ about 190 (on most tests). I became fairly excited that the answer would be in your organization.

This is one of the very few puzzles that have not been solved in the game. It essentially is a picture of an 25-40 year old asian gentleman with Japanese text which, when translated, reads "Find me." It has also been revealed that his name is Satoshi. More can be found at http://billion2one.org/.

I was very disappointed to discover that Satoshi-san is not amongst your group. That being said, the reason I am sending this message is to enlist your aid. Thus far the project to find this person have relied upon the basic premise that eventually someone will hear about the search that who knows the man. What procedures would you recommend to help answer this question. In other words, how would you conduct the search?

There is a reward, but that is not really my drive in being involved this finding this solution. I just get a kick out of there being a chanllenge issued to players which is increasibly simple describe, yet almost insumountably impossible to achieve. In addition to helping do the impossible, your society would gain a great amount of fame in the alternate-reality game community if you could hepl develope an effective protocol.

A final comment is that I think you have a great logo. How did you come up with it?"


Maybe this'll work. To meta out the answer, Satoshi probably lives in England and knows the Mind Candy people....or some guy doing a socialogy study in Japan. Maybe he's reading this right now. But, if its the former, if anyone lives around Mind Candy, feel free to stalk the people who were in the company when this card was released. You might just see him or her having drinks with Satoshi.

[Rorx]

After a pretty confusing and long conversation about why I wanted to know if she knew him, my girlfriend came to the conclusion that she thinks she works with him. I doubt it but I may just invade her work-place to find out...

Apparently he smiles alot...

EDIT: Forgot to mention she wont ask him if he's a One in a Billion incase he thinks she's comin' onto him. Damn.

/Rorx

[volvox]

I submitted a request to MAKE magazine's site (www.makezine.com) and BoingBoing.net to put findsatoshi.com in their blog links. Don't know if anyone else had tried that yet, but hopefully they will find it intriguing enough to do it.

[poozle]

cmlobue wrote:

poozle wrote: Third, the start point... I wonder whether the start point is scarlett's myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/thescarlettcode), maybe it has more of a purpose than we realised... What I propose is that we need to go six people away from scarlett on myspace to find satoshi... unfortunately there are almost 600 people on JUST scarletts friends and even if everyone down the chain just had a couple of friends there would still be an insane number of people to check. What do people think about this? The only problem I have with my own theory (strange, I know) is that the scarlett code only started about a month and 1/2 before wave 4, making it a bit soon for creating a card. There's nothing to say that the card wasn't planned long before that, with Scarlett's MySpace page going up on a schedule. Still, doing a brute-force search through the friends netwrok would be a pain. I'm not too familiar with MySpace, but can you tell when someone friends you? If so, I'd focus on the people who did so first, and those who did so closest to the wave 4 release date.

You can tell who invited you to become a friends when they invite you, but once you've accepted that person you lose the invitation and so cannot find out again (well, this is what I understand).

Also with this you get the problems of what if someone destroys a link (canceling the friendship with someone) it would ruin the 6 degrees and make the task virtually impossible to solve in this method.

[cmlobue]

poozle wrote:

Third, the start point... I wonder whether the start point is scarlett's myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/thescarlettcode), maybe it has more of a purpose than we realised... What I propose is that we need to go six people away from scarlett on myspace to find satoshi... unfortunately there are almost 600 people on JUST scarletts friends and even if everyone down the chain just had a couple of friends there would still be an insane number of people to check. What do people think about this? The only problem I have with my own theory (strange, I know) is that the scarlett code only started about a month and 1/2 before wave 4, making it a bit soon for creating a card.

There's nothing to say that the card wasn't planned long before that, with Scarlett's MySpace page going up on a schedule. Still, doing a brute-force search through the friends netwrok would be a pain. I'm not too familiar with MySpace, but can you tell when someone friends you? If so, I'd focus on the people who did so first, and those who did so closest to the wave 4 release date.

[Tarim]

Testing Six Degrees

[poozle]

Ok, this is a small stab in the dark based on various things I've seen and heard recently.

First, I'm almost certain this is based on six degrees of separation (I think we all do now).

Second, I think it could be based on social networking (so 6 "degrees" from a point on a social networking site). I know this has been mentioned before as well but mine came from a job interview (well, chatting to the guy before the interview) when he mentioned six degrees with relation to social networking, just struck a chord with me.

Third, the start point... I wonder whether the start point is scarlett's myspace page (http://www.myspace.com/thescarlettcode), maybe it has more of a purpose than we realised...

What I propose is that we need to go six people away from scarlett on myspace to find satoshi... unfortunately there are almost 600 people on JUST scarletts friends and even if everyone down the chain just had a couple of friends there would still be an insane number of people to check.

What do people think about this? The only problem I have with my own theory (strange, I know) is that the scarlett code only started about a month and 1/2 before wave 4, making it a bit soon for creating a card.

[rose]

Quote:

Blimey... and he admitted to it?

Hey we are all proud to know you.

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

[<Jey> Satoshi was surprisingly easy to convince. In fact I’d say he jumped at the chance. Wouldn’t you want to be famous (on the internet [sort of famous, not really]) So... an old mate of Jey's then, perhaps from university?

I spoilered this because Rand0m did - but I'm not sure why it is a spoiler?

Anyway, I may have spent way too many hours in the unfiction chatroom with wishi before he went to work for Mind Candy, but I'm pretty sure that would not be a correct guess -at least as to where they might know each other from.

[Rand0m]

findo wrote:

And just to show billion-to-one isn't a long shot, I phoned a friend yesterday and told him about reading Rand0m's story and how interesting it was and he said: "actually, I know him."

Blimey... and he admitted to it?

Here's a very meta, cheaty thing to consider once we finally get sick of working on this card properly:

Spoiler (Rollover to View):

From the Mind Candy web chat: <Ollie> Bookmore asks: “What did it take to convince Satoshi of being the target for a worldwide manhunt ?” <Adrian> The babes <Adrian> He knew he’d get them <Adrian> Actually, I don’t know <Adrian> I’ve never met him <Jey> Satoshi was surprisingly easy to convince. In fact I’d say he jumped at the chance. Wouldn’t you want to be famous (on the internet [sort of famous, not really]) So... an old mate of Jey's then, perhaps from university?

[The_Cube]

Thaks you saved 46 minutes of my life....too bad that's all that's left...nah just kiddin thanks...

[rose]

If you start watching around 46:00 minutes you will get the discussion.

[poozle]

This sounds like where it is must be relatively irrelavant to who we are trying to find.

[The_Cube]

Ermmm cudn't watch it....2 long......really an hour?come on!!!!!!!

[aliendial]

Ha! He says the background was "nondescript" when in fact the architecture was quite distinctive to the region. They should have chosen an anonymous office building. THOSE are hard to find.