[Toad King]

I ask this because of something that happened a couple days ago on another message board that I go to.

One of the users there (Let's call him Bob) made a topic titled 'H4x0ring challenge! Crack this 'encryption' function!'. The post inside was:

Bob said:

er honh uscra e av h It.hoREMOVEDus ieylske. zylat us jIm. don caI t es bhe tntiss hi Tt. iid dlyabobpro whe one ths ihed an, isthk accry blbaro pan cannmKe! ieddkit ipcr s a'mI! ite ad m Is?recao Wh! llweh out bs,ndcose6 4.t ouabn iedckra cben cat Ir!ve eontincfun ioptrync estbee th, ar fbys iisTh

Part 1: Tell me how you did it
Part 2: Create something that will duplicate it. Go.

(I removed the part that has a word that I don't think is allowed here.)

The first reply was from a user (lets call him Billy):

Billy said:

You do realize that it's pretty much impossible, right?

It's obviously not a real method of encoding, but rather one you wrote. Therefore, without numerous samples to reverse engineer, there's no way you can create a correlation to figure out the general algorithmic relationship.

Billy is known very well for his programming skills, so he knows what he's talking about.
The next response (Let's call the user Jenny):

Jenny said:

er honh uscra e av h It.hog inckfus ieylske. zylat us jIm. don caI t es bhe tntiss hi Tt. iid dlyabobpro whe one ths ihed an, isthk accry blbaro pan cannmKe! ieddkit ipcr s a'mI! ite ad m Is?recao Wh! llweh out bs,ndcose6 4.t ouabn iedckra cben cat Ir!ve eontincfun ioptrync estbee th, ar fbys iisTh

This is by far the best encryption function ever! It can be cracked in about 4.6 seconds, but oh well! Who cares? I made it! I'm a scriptkiddie! Kenman (An infamous user on the boards) can probably crack this, and he is the one who probably did it. This isn't the best I can do I'm just lazy. Kelsey is REMOVED hot. I have a crush on her.

1. You just wrote it backwards and switched around letters and spacing, noob.

2. kolot am e!

As you are thinking, Billy just got pwned.

After that was a long argument about how that Bob's 'encryption' wasn't an encryption at all, but an encoded string. After about 50 posts into the topic, Bob said:

Bob said:

If you don't like it here, then leave.

If it was impossible to decode, I wouldn't have made this topic.

Billy replied:

Billy said:

Bob said:

If you don't like it here, then leave.

k

And he left. He signed off right then and hasn't logged on since. I tried contacting him on AIM for the past couple days, but he never responded. Either he isn't on today or he blocked me and/or all the people he knew from that board, because it says he's offline, and he keeps AIM on all the time (He's always either on or idle). I was good friends will Billy, and I feel kind of depressed that he left. I wasn't on at the time this happened, when I came out about an hour after it, there were dozens of threads about it.

I guess I'm just asking if it's wrong that I feel sad about it.

[Luna]

... It has happened MANY MANY times to me <<; I sometimes felt sad and I sometimes just went like "He'll come back <<;"

Eventually, the person came back.

BUT, it depends on how they come back.

If you were good friends with "Billy" then, you shouldn't be worried, because good friendsh can solve problem easily, right? o.o Just give him some time <<;

[Sea of Time]

That's sad. I will miss Billy and all the work he has done. :(

[Nick Presta]

I miss Billy.

And yes, ToadKing, it's ok.

I was sad when I was banned from gamefaqs a couple years ago and I lost all ties with friends (Celestial Wrath, X Ven0m X, Dream Phoenix,), so yes, it's ok.

Try to get in touch. Send emails. That way, they can reply to you when they feel like it and don't have to have real time conversations.

[Bekita]

It makes sense that you're sad I mean lol you can stil be good friends with people even online so it's not unreasonable to think that if something happens you'd be affected emotionally.

[Mewt]

It's a very sad business.

It also goes to show that people are as emotionally fragile on the net as in real-life. I think that's something I tend to overlook sometimes ... =(

[Venus dude 21]

It's ok Toad King. It happens to everyone, some person shows no care for emotions and then one person is hurt and goes to heal. I've done it before, it's natural.

I think...

[Toad King]

Well, Billy came back! (Only because someone hacked his account though.) He's not on as often, but I'm glad he's back. The board's just too dull without him around.

[Elliott]

If it's just text I see no reason to get emotional, of course different mediums like audio and video can have some effect though, it really depends on the situation.