Virus marketing, error or just a funny footer? (Google Groups)

Niedziela, 04 czerwca 2006 :: 20:00:11

Virus marketing, error or just a funny footer? (Google Groups)

I participate in one of the (not so public, not Usenet type) Google Groups. Few weeks ago I noticed a strange footer in every post (sic!) sent to the group.

The footer is located at the end of each e-mail (two lines below user's signature) and looks always the same:

--~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
-~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

Disabling and enabling (even setting a new) footer option using the group management panel seems to have no influence on it.

I've even tried to google it, but there are no results at all! I mean *really* nothing! Any ideas?

For me, it looks like one of the advertising campaigns, when they make you curious about the product. You ask yourself: what does this strange pattern put on every website mean? and few days later you know that it's just Onet, celebrating its birthday...

Or, more likely with Google, all this is a parto of the recruitment process :-) So, engineers, go and crack the code!

UPDATE:

Some useful info:
The footer combines minuses with tildes only.
Each of 2 rows of the footer has 54 characters
Number of minuses (9 sets) -- first row: 2 + 2 + 9 + 2 + 4 + 12 + 7 + 2 + 4 = 44
No. of minuses (10 sets) -- 2nd row: 1+10+4+4+4+6+4+6+2+3=44
Minuses total: 88
There are 9 tildes in each row

It seems to be a pattern here...

• Następny post: Pomocy! Szukam strony dla dzieci...
• Poprzedni post: Bo mam ich po dziurki w nosie!

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Komentarze:

mcv Niedziela, 04 czerwca 2006, 20:12:15

Hmm… maybe it's just a new programming language? Like Brainfuck or Whitespace? ;-)

Piotr Konieczny Niedziela, 04 czerwca 2006, 20:17:44

...and "-~--~----(...)" is the shortest instruction that indicates EOF? ;-)

3. Andrzej Niedziela, 04 czerwca 2006, 20:27:15

it looks really strange ;) I will try to check it out later :)

4. ajuć Niedziela, 04 czerwca 2006, 20:34:15

Google shows no result for any question containing no letters or numbers, so you can't say if this string exist in any page indexed by google.

Still very interesting.

5. Wanted Poniedziałek, 05 czerwca 2006, 20:03:10

Those characters are standard Groups message separators. Easy to find, though not through major search engines, e.g. here http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/semantic-web/2006Mar/0077

It's a bug in footer code, which obviously shouldn't be enabled when footers are turned off in the admin panel. The bug report is filed, so a fix should come out soon.

The question remains if those characters actually mean something or is it just a random decoration.

6. daren brantley Czwartek, 13 lipca 2006, 20:00:18

Here's a guess..

It's a unique identifier to remove redundant footers from group threads.

Consider the case where you receive a post from Groups.. it contains the -~ sequence around the google footer. You reply with the original message quoted (lots of people do)... on a dumber list serve, the footer would now appear twice, once for your post, and once in the quoted text of the message you replied to. Google Groups is smarter than this. They strip out redundant footers based on the uniqueness of the ~ sequence.

As far as the pattern, I bet it's a mapping from the 32-bit unsigned integers to 53 slots choose 9 tildes... 2^32 = 4 294 967 296 while 53 choose 9 = 4 431 613 550. So the post-image is just large enough for the pre-image to map uniquely... underneath they're just a pair of ints.

-Daren

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8. zuzia Poniedziałek, 14 grudnia 2009, 21:10:38

WWW.MOJEGRY.LP
WWW.MOJEGRY.LP
XCYFB DUC SDDFFR FDDUFR 8FIFNB FF8UJFD FFFG UFJF UFCJF CBN SLKMN BYDKT5 NMK.LL;VFHV ODNF DISUDBV SUHD USHUD ZUZIUA DUYJD DJD SFN N FFCFJDF CJG ZUZIA
HXCB GX XXGGXVVC FSFSF GAGS ZUZIAJDJF FUHDB DSJDHD SJD DKDBDF DKF KFBDB DJF DKDB DND

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