Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code (known in America as Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code) is the third book of Irish children's fiction author Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series. It is preceded by Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident and followed by Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception. The storyline follows Artemis Fowl and his companions as they struggle to recover the "C Cube", a supercomputer Artemis had constructed from fairy technology, when Jon Spiro manages to steal it. Critical response was generally favourable.
Artemis Fowl II, the 13-year-old criminal mastermind, has created a supercomputer which he calls the "C Cube", from the stolen fairy LEPrecon helmets confiscated by Butler in the siege of Fowl Manor. It far surpasses any human technology made so far.[1] Fowl meets Chicago businessman Jon Spiro in London to show him the Cube, in an attempt to buy a considerable amount of gold in exchange for keeping the technology off the market. However, Spiro ambushes and outwits Artemis and steals the Cube. In the process, Butler, Artemis' bodyguard, is shot by one of Spiro's staff, Arno Blunt.
Artemis' demonstration of the Cube inadvertently detects Fairy technology below ground, causing a shutdown of all equipment in Haven city. In response, Commander Root sends Captain Holly Short to London to find what the disturbance was caused by. She locates Artemis, who persuades her to revive Butler with fairy magic and the aid of cryogenics. The procedure saves Butler's life, but ages him approximately 15 years. Artemis reveals the Cube's existence to Holly and the LEPrecon's technical expert Foaly the centaur.
Jon Spiro, meanwhile, has commissioned a mob family from Chicago to capture Artemis to break the Cube's Eternity Code which prevents Spiro from accessing its software. One of its employees is the dwarf Mulch Diggums, who is sent along with the thug Loafers to Fowl Manor to do the job. Although Mulch is rumbled, Loafers is incapacitated by Juliet, Butler's little sister, who has just returned from a failed final test at Madame Ko's Academy, where Butler trained to be a bodyguard. After a discussion with Root, who gives them 48 hours before he sends in a full Retrieval team, Artemis comes up with an elaborate plan to retrieve the Cube from Spiro's office in Chicago, involving the use of Holly, Mulch and Juliet. Root demands a mind-wipe of the three humans after the job is done, so Artemis leaves Butler in Ireland to ensure their memories survive.
The heist is ultimately successful, with Artemis retrieving the Cube after tricking Spiro into entering a rival company's headquarters to steal their new products. The Chicago police immediately arrive to arrest Spiro and his associates, and Foaly wipes Artemis' movements from the CCTV. Holly and Juliet remove Artemis from the crime, and return with Mulch to Ireland. Although Arno Blunt escapes and tries to enter Ireland to kill Artemis, Butler has him detained and frightens him into confessing his crimes. Root then has the three humans mind-wiped, after Holly mesmerizes Artemis to see if there were any traces left to trigger his memories. Unbeknownst to all, Artemis has had Butler commission three sets of contact lenses to stop the process. Artemis' plan to retrieve his memories involves Mulch Diggums: Artemis has the date of the search warrant of Mulch's cave changed to the day after his first arrest, rendering all subsequent convictions null and void. Artemis then hands Mulch a gold medallion before his mind-wipe, which is actually a computer disc containing all of Artemis' memories. Although Mulch is incarcerated, he takes comfort in the knowledge that "together they will be unstoppable."
In European editions, the code on the cover reads "Think fairy, think again" the slogan for the original Artemis Fowl. The code is not written in Gnommish or Centaurian, instead supposedly written in the "eternity code" with which the C Cube is encrypted. [citation needed]
In the hardcover edition, the code for Eoin Colfer Artemis Fowl The Eternity Code Puffin is printed on the spine underneath the dustjacket, allowing the reader to decipher the code inside the book, which is a message from Artemis asking the reader to help him regain his memories by spreading the message that Artemis Fowl must find Mulch Diggums[2]
Alright, first thing I'm going to say is that I got this from a book. The book is called Artemis Fowl: The Eternity Code. By Eoin Colfer I thought I should get that out of the way before someone says I got this from a book and it goes off topic. Now, inside the book a kid creates a code based off of no language. In other words, a completely new language that no one could decipher without a key of some kind. My question is if this code is entirely possible or if it's impossible to create. As far as I know if someone tried to make one their subconscious might make it too alike to a certain language, but that's just a guess. This is all speculation, and I'm just wondering if people think such a code is possible.
You could do this with a completely invented language but it has the problem that it relies on "security through obscurity". And the problem with that is that it is always crackable somehow. Because the two people (at least) who are communicating have to know the language, there is the chance someone else will know it.
In the case of a made-up language, for example, there is a danger that one of the users might keep a written dictionary because they can't remember all the new words. If I wanted to write a story where someone countered Artemis Fowl's invention, I would plant a baby spy with them, as babies are really good at learning new languages with relatively little exposure!
It's pretty easy to create a unique language that nobody speaks. You could have a computer generate strings for you, and make sure those strings aren't related to anything in any other dictionary. You invent some grammatical rules that nobody thought of (probably because they are inconvenient... like you could have to have sign language incorporated into your speech, or hopping).
The problem with a consistent language, although perhaps very obscure, is that it's symbology is consistent and a pattern will eventually reveal itself, with scrutiny. A letter or number is assigned a sound or meaning. You have to dissociate this consistent connection between certain values and their equivalent interpretation,.into a language/code someone else can't understand. The associations must, therefore, necessarily be randomly generated with each message, so a key has to be produced just for that message. I think that's how encryption works.
The problem with a consistent language, although obscure, is that it's symbology is consistent and a pattern will eventually reveal itself, with scrutiny. A letter or number is assigned a sound or meaning. You have to dissociate this connection between certain values and their equivalent interpretation.into a language someone else can understand. The associations must necessarily be random with each message, so a key has to be produced just for that message. I think that's how encryption works.
The voynich manuscript nobody can decipher. It's a completely new language that nobody can figure out because it has no known base, making it next to impossible to "decode." If somebody made one that they knew how to read, and taught a few key people to read it, then it would be the world's most effective code for sending messages. Now I know that if people are involved it's bound to fail sooner or later. As time goes on somebody will be bribed and create a key or something, but if you can make one, it's entirely possible to make another. A code like this would be extremely useful, but I don't think anyone could make one. Anybody can come up with random letters forming words, and simple grammar, but making a complex grammar system like english would be extremely complicated in my opinion.
I have been working on an eternity code lately. I currently have 31 symbols and 44 words. But, as some of you guys have already said, an eternity code is theoretically uncrackable only by itself. If a person knows it, they can be forced to make a key.
In principle, as others have stated, any code with regular expressions is crackeable. An infinity code would have to be an evolving code, where the key changes over time, but the instructions to create the key would have to be included in the code itself to be useful. Reminds me of DNA, btw, though it doesn't fulfill these requirements, either.
If the key to the current transmission segment depended on the content of the previous transmission segment, that would certainly constitute an evolving code with a key included in the code. It would also seriously confuse code crackers, because the content of a message is pretty random, and cracking a 4096PGP encoded message is already sufficiently difficult to be considered secure communication. If you went even further and encoded every byte of information seeded with the previous unencoded byte, this would take it to an even higher level. But, in every case, you would still need to exchange the initial key somehow, because knowlege of the first transmission content would unravel the entire code, so no, this wouldn't satisfy an infinity code either. It's the closest my practical imagination can get right now
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