Nic gave Jonah the four numbers for the key code. He gave it to him as 2517.. and asked him to help him figure it out. Then Jonah immediately told him the correct order of the code to be punched in.. which was 7521.. How did Jonah know?
Did I miss something?
math stuff.
shareHe also gave the order to rearrange the numbers:
- Top-middle, middle-middle, top-left, bottom-left (mumbles: 2-5-1-7).
- Bottom-left first. Middle-middle second. Top-middle third. Top-left last.
Edited for clarity.
So he gave Jonah the numbers in a random order... and then told him how to rearrange the numbers??
Why not just give it to him in the right order in the first place..?
By spraying crumbs (or whatever it was) over the buttons, Nic can see what keys have been pressed, but not the order. So he gives Jonah the keys and gets the order of them back.
At least that's how i understood it.
Yeah, I know how he got the numbers from the keys. He sprayed something on the keys and saw the fingerprints.
But how did they figure out the order?
"So he gives Jonah the keys and gets the order of them back." - That's what I'm asking, how did Jonah give him back the order of the numbers..?
Oh! Sorry i misunderstood. Still pondering that one, maybe it's not Jonah he is talking to at all? I mean, why would Jonah think that Nic is *in* the duct?
shareHim answering the position back is very odd. Just about everyone knows the positions of numbers on a keypad....just like a phone. Just very weird. He gives the order of the numbers, then the positions? Huh? Really strange.
"Well, the world needs ditch diggers, too."
First of all, every lab technician(that are humans or may be alien anthromorphs) uses a biohazard suit, so how would you get greasy prints on the keypad?
If they are all aliens, why bother with biohazard suits?
If they are humans aboard a space ship, why engineer humans as weapons and keep them paranoid?
If they are using alien tech. on paranoid humans, why not fit them with killswitches so as prevent them from running amok?
If they are all aliens, why bother with biohazard suits?
If they are humans aboard a space ship, why engineer humans as weapons and keep them paranoid?
My thoughts on this are that the hazmat guys like Damon are androids constructed to run the environment and the tests on Nic. I liked a theory that suggested that the "broken" clock in the hall wasn't broken, but representative of a computer system processing millions of processes per second. Nic could have been inside a computer simulation designed by the aliens to monitor him. They wouldn't want to kill him, even if he was in danger of breaking out because they wanted to test how the more intelligent humans reacted to certain situations, and whether emotion would win over logic (in an interview with the director, Eubank explains that "the signal" is several things, one of which is Nic's realization that he has buried his emotions under a layer of logic, he lives his life in binary and the awakening at the end of the film is him understanding or letting the gray-scale of emotion finally surface in an act more powerful than rationality).
First, the "signal" in the movie's title is something the characters are searching for. Nick, the main character, is "in a place where he's putting up walls," says Eubank. "He wants to be more binary," seeing everything in black-and-white, or ones and zeroes. He believes "that's a stronger way to live your life."
Decoding The Hidden Meaning Of The Signal, The New Indie Film Sensation
But by the end of the movie, Nick "realizes the emotional, gray-area side of himself is perhaps more powerful than the logical answer," says Eubank. "When logic would say, 'Don't do this,' he's able to use emotion to make a decision that's stronger." So what's Nick is searching for, his signal, is probably his emotional side that he's buried.
Eubank quotes a great line from xkcd: "The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space — each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
And Nomad, the hacker they're searching for, is trying to lure smart people to his place in the desert — usually, when you see movies about people being abducted they're drifters who won't be missed. But what if you wanted to attract some of the smartest people in the world? That was one of the things that interested Eubank.
The second meaning of The Signal, for Eubank, is that "a signal is that moment that you catch something and realize something. When you get the signal, you can understand it."
http://io9.gizmodo.com/decoding-the-hidden-meaning-of-the-signal-the-new-indi-1587240681share
he did it via mathematical sequencing yeah 4 digit pins can have an insane amount of combinations but typically there are done in a pattern sequence similar to how missile guidance sequences work (there are dudes in the navy that do this all day ) even though the pin pad has a large number of possibilities they are able to narrow it down to the probability of patterns that the human brain typical uses based on the criteria of numbers used believe it or not its actually an exact science and is used in missles, guidance systems , security algorithms , and basic pin pads *beep* you hand your phone to guy from mit who specializes in probable sequences he can open your phone at least 3 tries
share"4 digit pins can have an insane amount of combinations"
If I go back in time to when I did my maths GCSEs, I'm pretty sure it's 'only' 24 combinations, using 4 separate digits. i.e. Factorial 4 = 4! = 4x3x2x1 = 24.
Just making it a 5-digit code would take it up to 120, whilst a 6-digit code would be 720 combinations!
So 4 is not a big deal at all, especially when you know the 4 numbers.
The film was worth watching. I like films that try to be different. The aliens have the technology to stop the humans from doing anything at any time. The whole complex, environment, and equipment was purposefully low-tech.
I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer!
Sorry, but you are wrong. You have 10 (numbers 0-9) possibilities for each of the four digits. So there are 10^4 (10x10x10x10) possibilities. That's 10.000 possibilities. That is not insanely high but a bit more than 24... ;-)
share@jnmayer
Sorry, but it is you who are wrong - in the context of this post!
Granted, if they were using all 10 digits in all 4-digit permutations, there would be 10,000 like you said (0000 - 9999) and I would be wrong!
However, the whole point of him doing what he did in this film (and as per my original comment), was to see what 4 digits were being pressed. i.e. he found the 4 digits so the code would be a permutation of those 4 DIGITS ONLY!!
Assuming the 4 digits were a combination/permutation of 1,2,3, and 4, I believe (unless you prove me wrong), the 24 combinations (4!) are listed below:
1234
1243
1342
1324
1423
1432
2341
2314
2413
2431
2134
2143
3124
3142
3214
3241
3412
3421
4123
4132
4213
4231
4312
4321
P.S. I appreciate I could have been a little clearer in my original post! I should have said, of the 10,000 combinations available (as you intimated), knowing the 4 digits used would reduce the attempts to a maximum of 24.
I will not fear. Fear is the mind-killer!
No, no. It's actually millions! No, no. It's a googol of combinations!
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!
If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure. - George W. Bush
Worth to mention, one of them thought about combinations with repetition, but we already know there are 4 different numbers, so it's a permutation... BUT only assuming the code has 4 digits.
Do we even see, even once in the movie, a passcode being 4 digits?
It's not like every time you use a numpad you enter a 4-digit code... think telephone numbers, bank account number, stuff like that...
I don't remember for sure, as I don't remember if they keypads made a sound when a digit was pushed (if they did he would know the number of digits as he was there when they entered the code), but he found that the code only used for of the numbers on the keypad, as was evidenced by the cracker crumbs. If the keypads didn't make a sound, he would have nothing else to go on and trying with four digits would be his first option.
If we don't succeed, we run the risk of failure. - George W. Bush
Whenever I see an instrument or a keypad, for some reason I always feel compelled to tap out the tune of "Mary had a little lamb.." - a compulsion that persisted until I was an undergraduate. One day I was passing the very secure, computer centre with a friend, when I saw a keypad. As usual, I paused to tap out the tune, while my triend looked on in resignation.
After six key strokes, the door went "bzzzt" and unlocked! Next thing, we were confronted by a very angry head of data processing, demanding Ro know who had told me the code. I told him the truth, and even showed him that the code sounded like "Mary had a little lamb" but he refused to believe me.
(In the end, the DP head said he was calling campus security and that we'd be in a lot of trouble. I said "Ok" and as he turned to reach the phone, we both just jogged off.)
____
"If you ain't a marine then you ain't *beep*
It was a test.
Spoiler alert:
I'm being circumspect here so as not to give too much away.
The whole thing was a test to see how far they would go to survive, and how willing they were to learn the truth.
Nic had already worked a lot of it out, including the part that he wasn't really talking to Jonah.
He realised it was a test, and he wanted to see how far the scientists would go to help him out.
And the whole thing was designed to see how willing Jonah was to learn the truth, because only someone willing to go that far could handle the truth.
They always intended to allow the cleverest people to escape, but the cleverest people had to prove they wanted to escape.
Thus they gave him the door code.
As he suspected they would.
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Going from the theory of this being a computer simulation, Jonah's voice would have been the aliens communicating with Nic to effect his escape. They wanted to see how he'd react, how he'd deal with situations that couldn't be enacted naturally in the facility, such as when they pull the truck driver out and Haley seemingly is about to shoot him, Nic intervenes. A test of empathy? It also makes sense this way that they placed Haley in the same room as him even though he'd just tried to escape with her. Why not separate them? Also testing to see if he'd leave her behind this time?
I think Haley and Jonah are also simulations modelled on the real Haley and Jonah who are in their own, separate simulations where they are the main character instead of Nic. Haley doesn't act like herself, and she cannot remember anything from before the abduction.
Anyway, that's just my thoughts. I'll probably change my theory later when I look into things again :p
This is an interesting analysis.
I like movies that make you think.
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