[Aadarsh]

So, the age-old question goes, "If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make any noise?"  Well, I have a new variant: "If you flush out the GTI in holospace and nobody notices, does it do any good?"  Are my transmissions truly going to make a difference, or am I just feeding myself a placebo?

Not that the GTI is anywhere close to being flushed out.  In my last message, I said that I'd be back with proof.  Well, it turns out the GTI are far too clever to leave behind any smoking guns.  You have to gather evidence, slowly but surely, over a great period of time.  Having become convinced of the GTI's corruption over the past few years, I forgot that anybody getting on at the ground floor has a long way to climb before they reach the same conclusion.

So it looks like for the time being I'll be restricted to bread crumbs.  With that in mind, I'm sending a crumb that should be big enough to chew on for several days.  I don't want to give too many details about how I found this, in case the wrong people are listening, but I've become convinced that the following password...

hUj-Ge!ru_AraS-e?ewrE=e3e+uru9r5w*he+u=W=yetAju9puCRe@ume$EwResT

...is somehow associated with a routine geological survey mission that took place earlier this year.  Unfortunately, I can't spare the time to figure out how.  Here are the orders, in case anybody wants to puzzle it out for himself:

GALACTIC TERRAN ALLIANCE
HEADQUARTERS GTA RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT COMMAND

ORDERS 059-11                21 DEC 34

Attention GTA science vessel EINSTEIN (GTSC37E8A).

The following organization or unit action is directed.
You are reassigned and deployed as shown below and are to return to your permanent station upon completion of duties in support of this operation.

Assigned to: GTI RIVIERA ROSS 128
Mission: Geological survey of star system ROSS 128. The GTSC EINSTEIN is to inspect stellar formation ROSS 8Y-9914 (76NM) for resource deposits that may be utilized by the GTA. Priorities include:
  Water
  Refinable gas
  Minable ore
Evaluate stellar formation for installation of geothermal and solar energy collectors.

SECONDARY - Evaluate star system ROSS 128 for continued and expanded colonization in 2336 and beyond.
TERTIARY - Calculate optimum intrasystem subspace jump routes between outpost GTI RIVIERA and locations of interest.

Duration: 30 days
Effective date: 1 JAN 35
Project code: 18TN


Attachment:

Please note, this was the last operation that took place in Ross 128 before the Shivans attacked.  I don't think that's a coincidence.

[Polpolion]

Let's get started cracking' this code!

So, what we know:

- hUj-Ge!ru_AraS-e?ewrE=e3e+uru9r5w*he+u=W=yetAju9puCRe@ume$EwResT has something to do with the geological survey in Ross 128.
- Said geological survey possibly has something to do with the arrival of the Shivans.
- GTI involvement is highly likely.
- The dates are messed up. (See when Aadarsh posted)

What we need to know:

- What "hUj-Ge!ru_AraS-e?ewrE=e3e+uru9r5w*he+u=W=yetAju9puCRe@ume$EwResT" is a "password" for.
- How exactly the GTI is involved.

and ultimately

- What "hUj-Ge!ru_AraS-e?ewrE=e3e+uru9r5w*he+u=W=yetAju9puCRe@ume$EwResT" means and how the GTI did it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So since this is apperantly some kind of password, I'm guessing that it's some kind of encrypted text in some insane sort of formatting. Anyone have any knowledge of possible encryptions ow whatever?

I think the ='s more significant than most other random symbols, because they actually are repeated several times. Then I think comes the other mathematical operators, then random symbols and punctuation, and finally the letters. If that helps anyone...

[Droid803]

Also, the URL of the picture is often the source of a secret website in web riddles and stuff like that.
Maybe "hUj-Ge!ru_AraS-e?ewrE=e3e+uru9r5w*he+u=W=yetAju9puCRe@ume$EwResT" has something to do with the logon there...

[blowfish]

Goober himself has said that that is the correct password (EDIT: not entirely sure what to make of this though).  He also said that the thread title has some significance.  Not sure what though ... I've tried a number of usernames (Einstein, Aadarsh, etc) with no success.

[ShadowGorrath]

Gotta keep watching this. Maybe someone will accidentaly crack it? I tried a lot of usernames, and nothing. Conclusion: I shouldn't mess around with intelligence.

[Polpolion]

I WIN.

[Mars]

We need to determine if this is actually cryptographic, or if in fact it's not as it appears.

[blowfish]

What annoys me is that when we figure it out it will look glaringly obvious, like 162

[Mongoose]

That's kind of part of the fun, though, since we get to hurl insults at Goober and Galemp for making us feel stupid.

*took an inordinately long time to check the URL of that image*

[Droid803]

I WIN.

I take it to mean that you've cracked it.
So...it IS possible.

[Polpolion]

Umm...

Yeah, it's possible.

EDIT:

Hey, Why would the R&D command be sending orders for a geological survey? Do they normally do things like that?

[Mongoose]

So...no spirit of share-and-share-alike, then?

[Mars]

It's an IQ test... 

And I fail. 

I'm thinking "Not as it appears" is highly significant, but I can't figure out how

Could it be phonetic?

hUj-Ge!
Huge G = G?
ru_AraS-e?
*r-u-aras-r* = ???
ewrE
ure

Nah

_________________________

Both posts are probably important, but how?

"But I'm an engineer, not a philosopher, so if I see a pattern, I recognize it. " He would have recognized a pattern, so this must be philosophy?

_____________________

The date has to be significant.

Anybody got some bright ideas?

[blowfish]

Somehow I feel like we're thinking too hard about this...

[Mongoose]

Just on a whim, I tried brute-forcing every iteration of "aken_bosch" I could think of into that name field, with that whole massive string as the password, but that failed about as completely as one would expect.

Edit:  So...nothing doing on this?  Do you think it's merely the result of some sort of text encryption, or is the answer supposed to be buried in that text string itself?

[Polpolion]

I've been informed to think laterally. Everything that we need to solve this puzzle is supposedly here, it probably just requires some extrapolation to get.

I tried "like a million billion things" in Programming class, so I'm exhausted for the moment.

[Mongoose]

So you didn't exactly win, then?

I tried separating out the capital letters from that string up above, and the results are...rather interesting.  I managed to draw out "SECRET" and "WAR," as well as what might be an extraneous "U G A."  Could be just a fun coincidence or red herring, but who knows.  The whole thing keeps reminding me of part of the URL of a YouTube video, which is throwing me off.

[Polpolion]

So you didn't exactly win, then?

Yeah, it's not an exact win. It's a win within a tolerance of +/- 7%. 

[Mongoose]

Okay, so I don't see much the lower-case letters could make by themselves, other than a crap-load of e's and u's.  Maybe this isn't exactly the right track.

[blowfish]

Probably true