[nods]icekatze wrote:hi hi
Even if the Historian construct is just a chinese room, I would wager that the alien icon and the terminology were things that already existed in messages between crew members.
OK, fair enough!
CJSF
Moderator: Outsider Moderators
[nods]icekatze wrote:hi hi
Even if the Historian construct is just a chinese room, I would wager that the alien icon and the terminology were things that already existed in messages between crew members.
If it's true that the Loroi don't know about power-off intrusion, then the Historian just let slip a major secret of theirs. It can not guarantee Alex won't spill that knowledge to his "captors". If they know about it, the Loroi presumably have some way of negating or mitigating its effectiveness.GeoModder wrote:About the 'bucket', it looks like the Loroi assume a Historian construct cannot activate it from within, so neither the Loroi are safe from power-off intrusions. At least I assume the 'bucket' is a Loroi-made device.
True.icekatze wrote:hi hi
Assuming the Historian construct was telling the truth about the Barsam, and that it hasn't actually just contacted the Umiak to make the pickup, I don't think the Barsam have any way of effectively hiding information from the Mizol.
The Loroi seem to be reasonably suspicious about the Historian's capabilities. And the construct itself said that human computer technology, while being advanced (for their tech level, of course), still is behind the loop when it comes to power-off intrusion countermeasures. So it's reasonable to assume that Loroi computers do indeed have some counters in place.Werra wrote:If it's true that the Loroi don't know about power-off intrusion, then the Historian just let slip a major secret of theirs. It can not guarantee Alex won't spill that knowledge to his "captors". If they know about it, the Loroi presumably have some way of negating or mitigating its effectiveness.
It's also possible that the "will you allow me to install myself on your device" is an act of courtesy by the historian construct. Ie, here's a potential ally, let's not start off this relationship by hacking into their systems.novius wrote:The Loroi seem to be reasonably suspicious about the Historian's capabilities. And the construct itself said that human computer technology, while being advanced (for their tech level, of course), still is behind the loop when it comes to power-off intrusion countermeasures. So it's reasonable to assume that Loroi computers do indeed have some counters in place.Werra wrote:If it's true that the Loroi don't know about power-off intrusion, then the Historian just let slip a major secret of theirs. It can not guarantee Alex won't spill that knowledge to his "captors". If they know about it, the Loroi presumably have some way of negating or mitigating its effectiveness.
About that - it looks to me that the construct, despite its boasts, couldn't just simply fiddle around with the bits on the device's mass storage - else it could have simply overwritten the OS or completely installed itself. To me it looks like it was just able to bypass the switched off WiFi to connect to the device and deliver itself via mail.
Never know, it could at least have copied the name from some directory hidden several layers under the typical files. Or seen something similar on multiple data pads, presuming it was looking at more than one of them... not so much of a stretch, if that is the case.cacambo43 wrote:Unless and until we know more, to me it seems like a bridge too far for a Historian AI construct to get so familiar with human culture (at least those aboard Bellarmine) to understand what pornography *is* (which humans to our own point in history really haven't defined) and then to further abbreviate it to "porn" and then further associate it with a smiling pictogram of another seemingly human-centric and iconic depiction of an alien. But I'll trust Arioch has a direction and it isn't "merely" fan service.
CJSF
I was replying to Geomodder who seemed to be replying to Werra's statement about the Loroi not knowing about the Historians' power-off intrusion abilities.Errhile wrote:Then again, the Historian construct is likely to be well-versed in information security. And one of the primary rules in that area is "need to know".
Page 155.Werra wrote:How does the Barsam know what happens on the shuttle?
You can consider ship sensors out. Otherwise the Umiak divisions bearing down on Gora Relay (or what remains of it) has a better chance to pick up the Highland-7 shuttle.icekatze wrote:hi hi
Page 155.Werra wrote:How does the Barsam know what happens on the shuttle?
• The Barsam have sensors too. They know the shuttle is powered down to avoid detection.
• Assuming the construct is telling the truth, Captain Rigai Mozin of the Agumo courier vessel Prophet's Reason knows that the construct can securely deliver a message and provide location information, the secret in question, because he asked the construct to securely deliver a message and provide location information.
• This appears to be a capability that the Loroi and the Barsam do not possess themselves, or they would have done it themselves.
Why is that? If the Umiak can't see them, then the Prophet's Reason probably can't see them.GeoModder wrote:You can consider ship sensors out.
Actually their are other techno signs to look for. The search for extrasolar planets are finding planets rapidly now. Simple astronomy should have placed earth on their maps since ancient times and a spectrograph analysis of our atmosphere would point at air pollution, giving them a head start on the invention of the radio of a century or so at least. And long before then, a planet with an oxygen rich atmosphere is cause enough for a FTL capable civilization to pay us a visit. It is perfectly possible that they left a sentinel probe behind and the reason it stopped transmitting was that humanities technology where becoming advanced enough to detect it and the historians wanted it to remain secret for the time being.Errhile wrote:The Historians certainly have been around the local bubble for ages, but it is kinda difficult to intercept signals if there aren't any (first radio broadcast is dated in 1906, with first radio signals being transmitted in second half of the 19th century.
And keep in mind radio waves have limited speed: at interstellar distances, even if the receiving instruments are adequately sensitive to pick that up, that signal wouldn't be there for decades, centuries and even millenia (depending on distance).
Before that, well, Earth was a rather nondescript planet at the ass-end of space so unless a Historian vessel (or a vessel by someone who later passed the data to the Historians) happened to investigate it, and investigate cultures (not a single one, I guess) of the local intelligent species (not really doable via electromagnetic signal interception before 1906!) by more or less setting their own "boots on the ground" (I'd assume that at their TL, the Historians would have no problem with creating a scout that would pass unnoticed in a city of that era... or simply poaching some humans for questioning!), they simply had hardly a chance to learn that.
Of course, we have absolutely no idea what the Historians actually do know, apart from the fact they certainly aren't omniscient...
Nope, well not much. Imagine that you work as a security guard at the Pentagon, you work in highly sensitive areas with high ups around you gossiping about things that really shouldn't be publicly known. This does not mean you have access to sensitive materials. You may overhear talking but since you are such an able guard, that is all you register, people talking. Who these people are and what they talk about simply do not register in your mind since you are professional enough to not actually listen. In case you are captured, the only thing you can really give up is some now invalid security codes to doors you needed to be able to pass.boldilocks wrote:The barsam probably know because the Historians know.
Ie, the Historian construct on the Barsam vessel knew that his on-shuttle container hadn't been destroyed and the container has audio/visual capabilities that the historian construct could access to realize that the shuttle was fine.
The historian then informed the Barsam of this and they hatched this idea. Or didn't, and just contacted Alex on its own.