What's *this all about?

http://www9.rankorder.com/

Very strange. How'd you come across it? The domain is registered to the ansme.com folks. Promotion for their web search engine? All the ads are in English when I view it. Doesn't seem to be more than two or so pages. If you search on individual words you only find this site itself.

so is this just some funky lorem ipsum?

so is this just some funky lorem ipsum?

I don't think so. I feel that it's probably some silly code, but haven't grokked it yet. The weird thing is that they set up a whole bunch of servers, or at least aliases, which are probably there for load balancing, but why? Maybe it is just greeking until they launch the site and replace the content. Or maybe it's a Valentine message from some another dimension in the language of the Voynich MS transliterated.

Aside: I love how the de facto greeking these days is a piece of ciceronian Latin, transmungified.

Voynich MS transliterated

now you're probably getting somewhere...

http://www.lipsum.com/
I'm sure you've seen this, but it's fun anyway...

I'm sure you've seen this

I had not. Thanks for the link.

you're welcome!

GAH--I've gone cross-eyed, looking at that so hard! Wofa, see if you can suss it out, will you?
I thought it might be a substitution code, but if it is, then it isn't for every word. When it comes to I and a being used as single letters, there are no substitutes. I did notice one thing, though--and don't take this as 100% for all of it: as I said, I finally had to quit looking at it (I hesitate to say "reading" it)--except for 'the' and 'oof' (and the single letters, of course), every made-up word consists of vowels alternating with consonants, which would be why it's so tantalizingly almost readable. I think this holds true even going from word to word. Now--can't computers be programmed to make up text acc'g. to whatever rules the programmer wants? Is it possible this is just what somebody told their computer to create, dividing the letters every so often?

Faldage, I also thought the key might be in the pronunciation, like that fake Latin you're so good at deciphering. But nothing I tried in this worked. Speaking of tantalizing: one word was 'ifuc', and I got all excited thinking, "if you see"; but I couldn't make any sense out of the surrounding "words".

Neat, eta--I've never heard of that. Thanks!

I'm pretty sure it can't be a simple code. I've noticed that virtually every possible 5-letter word of the form CVCVC or VCVCV will hit some of those pages. Also every word in them (except 'the') is neatly CVCV... or VCVC..., with no clusters, and that's not a real human language just transposed. I haven't counted but I'd guess each letter occurs equally often too. So it's almost certainly randomly generated syllables.

We use this text when designing labels and packaging. It is useful filler that the graphic artist puts in the place where text will appear on finished product.

The basic design of a label or box can be redone countless times, so we wait until that is done to create the real text since the size available to write the text may vary drastically from one design to another.

I wonder if it is a substitution thing, where certain letter combinations are used. Or else a random generator using two-letter codes. Almost all of the q's in the text are followed by a u, the only exception being where the q is at the end of a word.

Also, though I've not done a count, there are probably fewer a's than there are the other vowels. U comes up moch more frequently.

Or it could be that this is the result of that thing where people turn over the spare computing power on their computers to people doing SETI. If it is, then the I in SETI might not be as high as we had hoped.

No idea about the actual site, but it drills down to an extraordinary resource in one link:

http://dir.ansme.com/science/297.html

In the sections I have looked at, there seems to be a lifetime's research or casual reading in the links proferred...

(just a random sample:)

5. A Short Presentation and Overview of the Rune alphabet, the Futhark
Contains a good discussion of the changes in the Norse Runic alphabet (the Futhark) over time.
http://www.luth.se/luth/present/sweden/history/viking_age/runes/overview.html


6. A Study of Chinese Writing Systems
Academic paper which examines Chinese orthography .
http://www.humboldt.edu/~cllc/writesys.htm


7. African Writing Systems
An examination of the writing systems of Africa, including Amharic (Ethiopian).
http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/Writing_Systems/Amharic.html


8. Alphabets of the World
Information on over 200 of the major languages of the world. Includes orthography, background, sample texts, your name in many languages, and more.
http://www.alphabets-world.com