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TWC ranks comics in it's top 100 based on the number of votes and you're correct that it will only take a single vote, per device, per day.
However, the vote count resets on all comics at the start of every month. This is generally an opportunity to get a ranking in the top 100 for those comics without a huge audience, until the other comic audiences rally in or the authors post the next set of incentives. Just means Leaving The Cradle could get some attention now that it's back from hiatus.
Instructions about instructions. To be fair, if its a video it likely had details about digital video formats and translations of those videos by computers. May also have been some encryption if they're keeping this from the general public.
I'd be surprised if Quantum couldn't have cracked the encryption easily and if it didn't already know the various video formatting from investigations of the Earth networks.
Honestly, after all this time, part of me is waiting for a fakeout and discovery that its not Nea or anyone she's assisted but a whole other group on Earth that has discovered their existence and is attempting communication.
Its less about introducing the aliens to the concept than it is about giving the aliens details on the formatting, etc. There are over 30 different video formats (not even taking old versions into account) and trying to read one with the codec of another is like trying to watch a VHS cartridge in a Betamax player. Simply won't work.
So the first set of instructions might have been in VERY simple format such as those they've transmitted into space with a format so basic that almost any species possessing the technology to receive signals should be capable of figuring out the patterns and deciphering it. Likely expanded into a whole slew of detail designed to lead up through the alphabet and the English language before detailing any encryption and video format details. Considering how much instruction and data that would take I can easily understand why the majority of the signal is just instructions despite the final signal being video.
But Nea left when the fleet still didn't have information on the language and Quantum was only analysing signals from their probe in a higher orbit rather than directly accessing networks. Even then it's not part of her expertise as a soldier and easily something she wouldn't be across or necessarily know if her fleet would be aware of.
Interesting thoughts on signals from Jupiter though. I presume that for Quantum to be sending and receiving signals from the probe that they must have a communication method outside of radio signals they're confident couldn't be detected. Otherwise there's plenty of equipment on earth, monitoring for such signals, which would likely be pointed close enough to Jupiter, over the time period, to pickup such signals. Alternatively, Quantum is slowed down even more by communicating with radio waves in such a way that it could be mistaken for random background "noise" in the radio spectrums rather than artificial signals.
Come to think of it... If Nea's communicator operates in any kind of a similar fashion I imagine the military analyst riding with them may have picked it up and given them a chance to listen for Quantum's signals or even responses from their probe, meaning humanity might know they're being investigated.
Well, at least those nations that were allowed to the UN presentation know that there's an alien fleet in orbit around Jupiter, so the number of antennas pointing that-a-way will not exactly be controlled by random chance anymore. Though if the fleet were intent on making themselves hard to detect, there's still stuff like spread spectrum ...
A lot of the complexity of the signal encoding on VHS/Betamax/... media comes from the requirement to handle the storage media (magnetic tape, helix-shaped tracks, ...) and the requirements of real-time processing (sync signals), terrestrial TV signals have auxiliary content (Videotext, alternative audio, EPG, ...), in both cases you want to use the spectrum in as economical way as you can, etc.. In the case of a recipient recording the transmission and poring for however-long-it-takes over it afterwards, the parameters will be quite different ... as in, the "screen resolution" in the signals we sent to distant stars uses prime numbers for the two dimensions of the pictures, so that from the total number N = x*y of pixels signalled, you can guess x and y.
Considering that primary intership comms in the Alliance are done by IR lasers, I'm not sure humans are even equipped to pick it up even if a stray laser happens to be directed exactly at Earth once in a while.
We can detect laser/IR signals and I imagine that with knowledge of the fleet, every detection device feasible would be pointed at them.
I'm not sure it's even physically possible to keep a laser/IR beam narrow enough that Quantum could be hitting the probe and not Earth from space, but they are significantly more advanced so we can likely presume they might have discovered some methods well beyond human understanding let alone technology. You could even argue some sort of theoretical communication method such as Superluminal communication.
Whatever the case, Quantum has a good idea of humanity's technology level and has assured Zane that everything they're doing with the probe has an incredibly small chance of being detected so it's likely a case of simple suspension of disbelief and putting it down to "They are incredibly more advanced".
Of course... That doesn't mean it's beyond the capabilities of another highly advanced race, such as these "Ghosts", to pick up such communications.
Laser beams are very focused as long as they travel through vacuum. Once they arrive someplace, be it hammering a ship's hull or dispersal in a planet's atmosphere after failing to hit (the bug sitting on) a satellite, ...
Of course, if we are to consider "more advanced than ours" tech, we could theorize that the bug sends a stream of entangled photonstowards the fleet, thus being nigh undetectable, and the actual communication happens - again essentially impossible to detect - by using those entangled states.
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Comments (12)
so, taking the human signal and the evidence of Ghosts in the order they were received?
It's a new month so don't forget to vote on Top Web Comics!
https://topwebcomics.com/vote/25462
(... doesn't TWC allow one vote per person/device and day?)
TWC ranks comics in it's top 100 based on the number of votes and you're correct that it will only take a single vote, per device, per day.
However, the vote count resets on all comics at the start of every month. This is generally an opportunity to get a ranking in the top 100 for those comics without a huge audience, until the other comic audiences rally in or the authors post the next set of incentives. Just means Leaving The Cradle could get some attention now that it's back from hiatus.
Instructions about instructions. To be fair, if its a video it likely had details about digital video formats and translations of those videos by computers. May also have been some encryption if they're keeping this from the general public.
I'd be surprised if Quantum couldn't have cracked the encryption easily and if it didn't already know the various video formatting from investigations of the Earth networks.
Honestly, after all this time, part of me is waiting for a fakeout and discovery that its not Nea or anyone she's assisted but a whole other group on Earth that has discovered their existence and is attempting communication.
Quantum would, and Quantum did, but how would the humans know that? =)
I wouldn't put it past mankind to
a) point directional antennae at the fleet (that they now know about),
b) find that they do communicate by radio as well,
c) encrypting the data in the process (good crypto looks totally random (white noise), cleartext does stuff like Etaoin Shrdlu), and
d) deduce from the amount of data sent whether the communication is 1D (audio), 2D (video), 3D (holo) or ... ,
and thus deduce that "OK, yeah, they do know what crypto and video are, no need to introduce 'em".
Its less about introducing the aliens to the concept than it is about giving the aliens details on the formatting, etc. There are over 30 different video formats (not even taking old versions into account) and trying to read one with the codec of another is like trying to watch a VHS cartridge in a Betamax player. Simply won't work.
So the first set of instructions might have been in VERY simple format such as those they've transmitted into space with a format so basic that almost any species possessing the technology to receive signals should be capable of figuring out the patterns and deciphering it. Likely expanded into a whole slew of detail designed to lead up through the alphabet and the English language before detailing any encryption and video format details. Considering how much instruction and data that would take I can easily understand why the majority of the signal is just instructions despite the final signal being video.
But Nea left when the fleet still didn't have information on the language and Quantum was only analysing signals from their probe in a higher orbit rather than directly accessing networks. Even then it's not part of her expertise as a soldier and easily something she wouldn't be across or necessarily know if her fleet would be aware of.
Interesting thoughts on signals from Jupiter though. I presume that for Quantum to be sending and receiving signals from the probe that they must have a communication method outside of radio signals they're confident couldn't be detected. Otherwise there's plenty of equipment on earth, monitoring for such signals, which would likely be pointed close enough to Jupiter, over the time period, to pickup such signals. Alternatively, Quantum is slowed down even more by communicating with radio waves in such a way that it could be mistaken for random background "noise" in the radio spectrums rather than artificial signals.
Come to think of it... If Nea's communicator operates in any kind of a similar fashion I imagine the military analyst riding with them may have picked it up and given them a chance to listen for Quantum's signals or even responses from their probe, meaning humanity might know they're being investigated.
Well, at least those nations that were allowed to the UN presentation know that there's an alien fleet in orbit around Jupiter, so the number of antennas pointing that-a-way will not exactly be controlled by random chance anymore. Though if the fleet were intent on making themselves hard to detect, there's still stuff like spread spectrum ...
A lot of the complexity of the signal encoding on VHS/Betamax/... media comes from the requirement to handle the storage media (magnetic tape, helix-shaped tracks, ...) and the requirements of real-time processing (sync signals), terrestrial TV signals have auxiliary content (Videotext, alternative audio, EPG, ...), in both cases you want to use the spectrum in as economical way as you can, etc.. In the case of a recipient recording the transmission and poring for however-long-it-takes over it afterwards, the parameters will be quite different ... as in, the "screen resolution" in the signals we sent to distant stars uses prime numbers for the two dimensions of the pictures, so that from the total number N = x*y of pixels signalled, you can guess x and y.
Considering that primary intership comms in the Alliance are done by IR lasers, I'm not sure humans are even equipped to pick it up even if a stray laser happens to be directed exactly at Earth once in a while.
We can detect laser/IR signals and I imagine that with knowledge of the fleet, every detection device feasible would be pointed at them.
I'm not sure it's even physically possible to keep a laser/IR beam narrow enough that Quantum could be hitting the probe and not Earth from space, but they are significantly more advanced so we can likely presume they might have discovered some methods well beyond human understanding let alone technology. You could even argue some sort of theoretical communication method such as Superluminal communication.
Whatever the case, Quantum has a good idea of humanity's technology level and has assured Zane that everything they're doing with the probe has an incredibly small chance of being detected so it's likely a case of simple suspension of disbelief and putting it down to "They are incredibly more advanced".
Of course... That doesn't mean it's beyond the capabilities of another highly advanced race, such as these "Ghosts", to pick up such communications.
Laser beams are very focused as long as they travel through vacuum. Once they arrive someplace, be it hammering a ship's hull or dispersal in a planet's atmosphere after failing to hit (the bug sitting on) a satellite, ...
Of course, if we are to consider "more advanced than ours" tech, we could theorize that the bug sends a stream of entangled photons towards the fleet, thus being nigh undetectable, and the actual communication happens - again essentially impossible to detect - by using those entangled states.