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First Person Shooters (Games)

Halo 2 Trailer Gets Subliminal, Halo Done Quick 71

Posted by simoniker from the cloud-construction-reconstruction dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The Halo 2 movie trailer hit theaters last week and rabid fans have been passing around 'cam' versions since then. A lower quality streaming version went up on MSN and Xbox.com yesterday, but today GamePro.com premiered a high definition 1920x1080 5.1 surround sound version of the trailer for the home theater purists. More interestingly, a Halo.bungie.org newspost reports on subliminal messages within the ad, when 'the Xbox logo changes, for a frame or two, from www.xbox.com to www.ilovebees.com', an apparently legit website where 'some very, very strange stuff is going on' - there's already speculation and a little evidence this could be from the same Microsoft group who stealthily made the AI web game?" Elsewhere, an anonymous reader writes "Remember Quake Done Quick, the effort to complete Quake as fast as possible? Well, halo.bungie.org recently wrapped up its Going Nowhere Fast contest, which was an effort to do much the same thing for Halo. You can view the results and download the videos, though some are still being posted, at the Going Nowhere Fast contest page."
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Halo 2 Trailer Gets Subliminal, Halo Done Quick More

Halo 2 Trailer Gets Subliminal, Halo Done Quick

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  • Subliminal Messaging? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by bnewendorp ( 764839 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:24PM (#9782623)
    Its a common misbelief that having something change on a screen for a few frames is subliminal messaging. If you can actually see what the message is, it is NOT subliminal. Subliminal messaging is when the message they are trying to show you isn't noticed by your senses, but still makes it to the brain anyway.
    • "Its a common misbelief that having something change on a screen for a few frames is subliminal messaging. If you can actually see what the message is, it is NOT subliminal. Subliminal messaging is when the message they are trying to show you isn't noticed by your senses, but still makes it to the brain anyway."

      I agree. However, the word "subliminal" + "Microsoft" = a bunch of people angrily trying to find out what it's about. Subliminal + Microsoft = EffectiveMarketing();.

      Part of me thinks they did th
      • My guess would be that this is entirely from Bungie, not Microsoft... It's the sort of thing they'd do as a joke, and simply to get people to scratch their head and think a bit more about their games... They've done similar things before(note my post about the Cortana letters that predated the first Halo... bunch of cryptic e-mails sent to a major Bungie fansite in order to drum up interest).

  • Looks like old style Bungie sense of humor... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CaptMonkeyDLuffy ( 623905 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:28PM (#9782661)
    Frankly, Bungie has a history of hiding details you need to search for and research... Both in their game stories(primarily Marathon, the semi-parent of Halo), and also in their 'buzz generation' for games.

    A long time ago, back in the pre-Halo release days(in fact, before the anouncement of exactly what the project that wound up being Halo was made official), there was an entire series of quirky odd referenced 'fake e-mails' to the person who runs an important fansite... You can see some details here. [bungie.org]

  • Hoax (Score:5, Funny)

    by Giant Ape Skeleton ( 638834 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:37PM (#9782758) Homepage
    What a bunch of KILLALLHUMANS rubbish.

    Everybody knows there's no NUKE MARS such thing

    as subliminal messages.

  • I tried to checkout www.ilovebees.com to see what the story was. But visiting it with firefox 0.91 on gentoo linux causes firefox to crash and burn. Anyone else have a problem?

    • Re:Firefox... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 )
      I just tried it with FireFox 0.9.1 on Win2K. Apparently they use some CSS or something to pop up some faux error message:

      HALT - MODULE CORE HEMORRHAGE

      Control has been yielded to the
      SYSTEM PERIL DISTRIBUTED REFLEX.

      This medium is classified, and has a
      STRONG INTRUSIVE INCLINATION.

      In 4 days, network throttling will erode.

      In 18 days this medium will metastasize.

      COUNTDOWN TO WIDE AWAKE AND PHYSICAL:

      Make your decisions accordingly.

      My bet is the code to do this borked FireFox on ya.
      =Smidge=

    • Works fine for me using Firefox 0.9.1 on Gentoo.
    • works for me with firefox .9.1 on gentoo. I'm using all x86 packages except for firefox .9.1 which is still ~x86. I was having random firefox crashes a few days ago; I synced and -uD'ed world and have had no crashes since.
    • Comes up fine under Firefox on WinXP - but the "error message" is missing the counter on the second last line.

      The counter is visible under IE however.

  • ilovebees.com (Score:4, Insightful)

    by volteface ( 798935 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:42PM (#9782819)
    The ilovebees business is intriguing.

    Anyway, here is a (barely distiguishable, but whatever) image of the aforementioned frame I found; http://forums.unfiction.com/forums/files/xboxilove bees.gif [unfiction.com]

    Also it appears that for some reason, people have set up a whole forum [unfiction.com] dedicated to the event.

    • Re:ilovebees.com (Score:5, Informative)

      by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday July 23, 2004 @03:41PM (#9783656) Journal
      Also it appears that for some reason, people have set up a whole forum dedicated to the event.

      That's probably because the chances of this being the sequel to the AI game (aka "The Beast") are pretty high. The Beast is still the most well-known alternate-reality game (ARG) in history, so the possibility that this Halo game could be "The Hive" (the long-rumored sequel to The Beast) is creating quite a stir in the ARG fandom.

      Rob
    • Yeah!! This is AWESOME they set up another forum for the exact same thing at www.immersionunlimited.com. Thay have chat rooms and people are just starting out there, so no spoiled information for people who are just coming in.

  • Bittorrent? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Sandman1971 ( 516283 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:45PM (#9782858) Homepage Journal
    A slow site.... 50 meg download. When will these so-called publishers realize that for stuff liek this, Bittorrent is the way to go? You save on some badnwidth and allow ppl to grab the files much more quickly.
    • The files were originally offered with Bittorrent, but the seeds were replaced with a direct download after a few days. I assume demand for the movies had dropped off to levels where Bittorrent didn't have a huge advantage over direct download (until now).
    • Because with BT you can't have exclusive deals with Fileplanet and such for ad dollars.

  • Anyone else guessing the countdown on ilovebees counts down to the Halo 2 release?
    • There is always hope, what I am curious about is how much the lady who runs ilovebees is being paid to let this happen to her site.
    • Bungie has officially placed the Halo 2 release date as November 9th, 2004. When it comes to any information direct from Bungie, fans often count it as canonical. So the ilovebees countdown must be referring to something else.
      • The blog also has a mention of august 24th.. the same date the count down is goign to, so my guess is that august 24th something significant and halo related will happen, if not release.
        • Maybe August 24th is the day Bungie finally turns on the marketing machine. (The game is being released in November, its July now. I doubt they're begin advertising THIS early.)
    • Duke Nukem Forever is like Godot. Just wait for it!

      A: What are we doing?

      B: We're sitting here waiting for a game to play.

      A: Why can't we find a different game?

      B: Because we're waiting for DKF.

      Oh, the absurdity.

  • I tried to pull of a "Go Nowhere Fast" and I did...at 0.3 frames per second. Halo code is rubbish. I will not let my new Geforce 6800 even touch that code.
    • Not to be persnickety, but the rules of Going Nowhere Fast required that the runs be completed on Xbox, not Halo PC. Thus making it much more likely that all runs would be comparable based on the same hardware running the show.

  • Ob Simpsons Reference (Score:4, Funny)

    by servognome ( 738846 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @02:52PM (#9782946)
    Pretty soon they will go to superliminal advertising.
    Bill Gates will be running around with a bullhorn yelling "HEY YOU! BUY HALO 2"

  • torrent (Score:2, Funny)

    by musikit ( 716987 )
    anyone have a torrent to the game? :P

  • That ilovebees.com site is almost stupid as Subserviantchicken [subserviantchicken.com]

  • That's a LOT of bees (Score:3, Informative)

    by Satan's_Tool ( 224845 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @03:10PM (#9783204)
    > DiG 9.2.1 > ilovebees.net
    ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.136
    ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.140
    ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.141
    ilovebees.net. 69.25.27.172
    ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.135
    ilovebees.net. 69.25.27.171
    ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.134
    ilovebees.net. 66.150.161.133
    and
    ilovebees.com. 69.20.126.147

    For a little ol' lady that doesn't have the computer skills....that's a lot of servers to be running your little website and NOT have an actual ad in the local Yellow Pages.
    • Just look at the meta keywords in the site. honey, bees, Margaret, small busines, beekeeping, hives, retail, market, Operator, bug, buggy, virus, infestation, WTF is going on with this damn thing, parasite, strong intrusive inclination, medium, messages, shipwreck, network throttling, SOS, hoax, game, bee hoax, bee game, survivor, survive, evade, resist, escape, a little help would be appreciated, thanks and tip your waitress, sleep, is, good, install, reinstall, re-reinstall, re-re-reinstall, I, love, bee
    • A netcraft query shows the following:

      July 13
      OS: Windows 2000
      Server: Apache/1.3.19 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_perl/1.24_01

      July 16
      OS: Windows Server 2003
      Server: Microsoft-IIS/6.0

      July 17
      OS: Windows 2000
      Server: Apache/1.3.19 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_ssl/2.8.1 OpenSSL/0.9.6 DAV/1.0.2 PHP/4.0.4pl1 mod_perl/1.24_01

      What's up with that?
    • If you look at the whois, the registration date is June 14, 2004. The earliest entry on the ilovebees.blogspot.com blog is June 13, 2004. Oops, they jumped the gun a bit. Ilovebees.net does have the same June 14, 2004 creation date as the dot com address, though it is registered to NAMESDIRECT.COM, INC.
      • No it's june 8. Current Registrar: NAMESDIRECT.COM, INC. IP Address: 69.20.126.147 (ARIN & RIPE IP search) IP Location: US(UNITED STATES) Lock Status: ACTIVE DMOZ no listings Y! Directory: see listings Data as of: 08-Jun-2004
    • In response to parent... The query you used is for ilovebees.net which is a domain placeholder. The actual site ilovebees.com is only one IP. Which is owned by rackspace.
  • When I was younger, I used to have really bad asthma. My mom would make me something similar to this [ilovebees.com]. However, she didnt use sugar. She used lemon and garlic. It really worked, too. It was a big time expectorant and anything that didnt belong was coughed up quickly. In fact, once I dried out my sinuses good and proper. It felt horrible!
    Anyways, the site is pretty cool. Good marketing tool.

  • I'm happy (Score:3, Funny)

    by 88NoSoup4U88 ( 721233 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @03:31PM (#9783512)
    at least Tyler Durden didn't insert -his- , er, *cough* message.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Reorax ( 629666 )
    I checked out some of those links, and they reference "dropped A's and I's" and "the Beast." Anyone wanna fill me in on what this means?
  • I think the site is trying to hint at the new race that will join the covenant. The trailer talks about how the Earth is in the way of the covenant. I think this new race has a "hive" and the words Phasmidia Elegans(type of worm) hint at their physical structure. I think the excerpts that allude to loneliness taken from Gulliver's Travels and Shakespeare's The Tempest are hinting at "the monitor" from Halo 1. He is in an unknown planet.
    • That sounds like a good theory for now. I saw the references to Gulliver's Travels and The Tempest too . One of the passages says "hold your self together girl" so mabye we're getting a little of Cortana in there too? or mabye another AI?
  • Ok.. so I admit.. my computer won't play the darned thing. The resolution is too freaking huge! In fact, none of the computers we tried it on at the office managed to play the file (both windows and mac). So.. Anyone know how to go about converting a wmv to a smaller mpeg? It looks sweet and I get the gist from watching it, but I'd like to see more than 5% of the frames...

  • Ladybee777 “odd behavior cry for help” (Score:3, Informative)

    by Jammer@CMH ( 117977 ) on Friday July 23, 2004 @04:33PM (#9784195)
    This interesting page [blogspot.com] is linked to from the front page of www.ilovebees.com [ilovebees.com]:
    Ladybee777 "odd behavior cry for help"

    Woke up Tuesday to an alarming email from Aunt Margaret. (Apparently, so did quite few of you, as evidenced by the many "I think your aunt has completely lost it" messages I received.)

    It took several hours to finally get a hold of Aunt M on the phone. Before I could say a word about the "odd behavior cry for help," she had her own email question for me:

    Did I have any idea why all of her Hotmail would disappear overnight?

    I logged in as ladybee777 to check out the damage. Old password worked fine. But no mail in any of the folders...? Weird. (Where was the concerned reply I had sent her that morning?)

    Wrote a quick test message and sent it off to myself. Nothing shows up in my gmail inbox. Try again, this time to an older account. Check there: Nothing. Again. Rinse. Repeat. Nothing. Like a little Maxwell's Demon siphoning off all ingoing and outgoing messages. (And apparently sending out its own.)

    So Aunt Margaret's email appears to have gone the way of the China countdown. Hijacked. Repurposed.

    My first instinct: ask Hotmail to kill the account entirely. But then someone calling him (her?) self "xnbomb" sent me a very persuasive email that made me rethink things. Read for yourself:

    It seems that snippets of various emails that have been sent to you by my colleagues have been reassembled and sent back, apparently originating from your aunt's hotmail address. I'm not really sure what it means at this point. But it tells us that we can communicate with these entities using email. In the absence of having a clear idea of just what is going on, the first priority is to communicate, that is how we can learn more. It's at least possible that we've stumbled across something extraordinary here, and our first priority must be to learn all that we can about it.

    It's for that reason that I'm going to suggest that you take no further action that interferes with what's going on at ilovebees.com. There's another reason too, one slightly more disturbing. Consider this passage from the end of the tale hidden in the images:

    "The day will break and the sun will rise when the Queen returns to rule, and further let it be known that retribution on any who hinder the return of the Queen will be swift and terrible.

    This is a significant warning, namely that any interference with that process will be regarded as a hostile act, and will be responded to accordingly. I don't know what the SPDR is capable of, but I'm not sure I want to find out.It's for this reason that I suggest that you don't do anything else to get in the way of this business. If your aunt's business needs a functioning web site immediately, purchase her a new and similarly named domain and get her web site going there. But let this follow its course... while it could just be some hackers being jerks, there is at least a chance that this is something unique and important and wonderful, a window on a world that we may have never seen before, nor will ever see again.

    Optimistic and curious, yet with the good sense to be terrified. This seems like a pretty good fix on the situation -- thanks, xnbomb.

    I am, of course, wildly nervous about letting the bug(s) continue wreaking havoc entirely unimpeded. But nothing, and I mean nothing, I was doing on the tech side seemed to make a damn bit of difference anyway. So it seems like a good plan to switch gears from active damage control to... well, what?

    (ideas?)

    P.S. Have decided to try to shield Aunt M from the latest development, so for now I'm telling her it's a widespread Hotmail glitch. I hope I'm doing the right thing.

  • If anyone wants to check out the speed runs, start with the Silent Cartographer. That one is a masterful speed run, full of interesting tricks and creativity. If you want to see another one, see Assault on the Control Room, that one has some pretty good tricks too, including one doozy. The rest I wouldn't really bother with, I didn't think they were worth the time. Basically they read just like normal play throughs, with nothing in particular interesting about them.

    Funny how it is, but the long (maybe tedi
  • just as extra incentive, we've had 3 confirmations
    that "www.ilovebees.com" is tacked to the end of the Halo 2 xbox
    trailer appearing before movies at Loews Theaters across the US and
    Canada. We're still trying to capture a good screen shot.

    What if there was no digital version of this trailer (i.e. it was theatre only)?

    I have no problems with government bans on filming movies. But they also then ban sumliminal messages, or allow unobstrusive filming of snippets lasting 2-3 minutes.
  • I think I saw a titlebar change!
  • Here's the meaning of the countdown..

    "Well, this is a wierd one... Remember the theatrical trailer for Halo 2 (look back down a few posts)? Well, someone discovered that in the very end, the Xbox.com logo actually changes for a split second into another url - ilovebees.com. Now, let me tell you that what you are about to see will confuse the living hell out of you... If you go to http://ilovebees.com/ , A message pops up that something inside the system is degenerating it - a virus or other proggie. But, i

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