[Rand0m]

One for Boing Boing, this, I think...

[myf]

I think he knows what's going on. It's one thing torturing us lot with random stuff, but it would be a bit much to use a photo of someone, and risk them being badgered by strangers from the other side of the globe, without them knowing.

[mac_monkey]

Actually, I don't think it's a legal issue at all. If someone takes a picture of you in a public place, they can do what they like with it.

At least thats what I remember hearing

[poozle]

Curlytek wrote:

I wonder how 'elusive' Satoshi will be; has he been instructed to be hard to find....or does he even know that his photo is being used as a puzzle?

Well I think he will have to know because there are a bunch of legal issues with using someones picture without their prior knowledge.

[myf]

I agree that we probably need to track this fellow down. I reckon he's been given a question to pass on to whoever contacts him, and the answer to that will be the solve.

On a whim though, taking off from the six degrees of separation idea, I decided to try Karinthy, Milgram, and Stanley Milgram as possible solves. Not surprisingly, they didn't work. But hey, worth a try.

[mac_monkey]

As stated earlier his name is Satoshi there is no double 'i', I read it straight from the text.

Tsk those pesky cubehunters dont trust anyone these days

[Curlytek]

Quote:

It appears to be taken on a fairly modern digital camera looking at the colours (trust me), so we can't be looking at a photograph older than 3-4 years.

Yep, certainly a digital camera, as it is pretty hard to take a decent photograph of yourself using a normal (viewfinder) camera.

I wonder how 'elusive' Satoshi will be; has he been instructed to be hard to find....or does he even know that his photo is being used as a puzzle?

[Dranioth]

domroberts wrote:

I think this is a very clever marketing ploy! (call me cynical) What MC are doing in effect is using the players of the game to advertise Perplex City to (in theory anyway) every single person on Earth... You have to admire the cunning of it Dom

I'm almost horrifyed at the simplicity.

[domroberts]

Quote:

Can anyone confirm that this spelling of Satoshi is correct - it doesn't have a double 'i' at the end? .. Satoshii

Satoshi and Satoshii are in effect two different names. Satoshi is almost certainly his first name, and of course don't forget that in Japanese, the surname comes first in standard Kanji notation. For example, Satoshi Iwata would be written in Kanji as Iwata Satoshi, and in person he would be referred to as Iwata-san. (Mr Iwata)

Incidentally, if the name was Satoshii, that could well be his surname (sorry to confuse everyone utterly! I'm just helping out here, so if we do find him, we aren't rude to him )

The Kanji on the card is a rough translation of "Look for me" rather than "Look at me" but then the grammar can be somewhat ambiguous at times.

My view here is this is definitely a Japanese man (NOT any other Asian nationality), but he was probably not in Japan when the photograph was taken. Perhaps a holiday snap? It appears to be taken on a fairly modern digital camera looking at the colours (trust me), so we can't be looking at a photograph older than 3-4 years.

Oooo, a Japanese and photographic puzzle - Finally I might be useful!

Gokouun o inorimasu!

Dom

[domroberts]

I think this is a very clever marketing ploy! (call me cynical)

What MC are doing in effect is using the players of the game to advertise Perplex City to (in theory anyway) every single person on Earth...

You have to admire the cunning of it

Dom

[themandotcom]

Hey, maybe someone has some kind of facial recognition software, and we can run it against things like japanese movie stars, kung fu movie guys ect. Or maybe someone knows an FBI or the british version MI6(Or is it MI5??) to run it against the criminal database, or other supplied picture, because realisticly, we cant send it to someone, and they will say, " Ahh thats Uzamaki Santura!" or whatever.

[poozle]

Well I propose once we set this up we try getting this on slashdot, with the number of people reading that we should get some help, although there could be the problem with people emailing us with fake reports due to the number of people on here.

[mac_monkey]

Yeah I guess the best thing would be a simple message asking who this man (satoshi) is and where we can find him. We need to then have contact info (preferably a central contact like the email addy i set up).

One way to do this might be to have a standard email, and get people from the community here to email in. They will receive a reply with the standard email, so they can forward it on from there. (That way we avoid spamming etc.) as people will be sending it to their contacts. This is one approach. I believe the 6 degrees method is the one we're supposed to be using, but then again there's probably things we haven't thought about.

By the way (I don't think it's been said)..it looks to me to be the great wall of china in the background; it's quite blurry though.

[BBuck]

Arkai wrote:

I might be able to help. What would you like the message to say?

tc wrote:

I am new to Unforum. I thought I have to post my comment after reading this thread. I have a full access to Japanese fonts on my computer, so I may be able to help somehow. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

Thanks for the offers! I suggest we give it a little longer to discuss the best distribution method then write some text. I had in mind something very simple (as my Mandarin is probably not up to much more).

[tc]

Hi

I am new to Unforum. I thought I have to post my comment after reading this thread.
I am Japanese and I have tried googling "Satoshi" with many different combination of Kanji, but so far no luck.
Also I tried flickr.com, but no interesting result.

I have a full access to Japanese fonts on my computer, so I may be able to help somehow. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

tc