On 23 Jan 2022, Ogg said the following...
Thoughts?
And yours?
I find it very intriguing, even if it is a hoax or gibberish. Somebody went through a lot of trouble to do that (although, in my opinion, they skimped on the illustrations). If it is a hoax or gibberish, how does one prove that?
I'm not sure, but I think that would be as successful a resolution as finding whatever message it contains (if any).
Having commited myself to read the wiki version of this thing,  
I would conclude that there is much ado about nothing and that  
it is either a hoax, complete gibberish with sophisticated  
doodles.
Fair enough. If it is a hoax, I wonder if it is really gibberish; is it truly random? Or is there some sort of pattern to the writing that might prove it a hoax?
It is astonishing how much professional and academic interest  
has been invested in studying that thing.  Yet, no one has been  
able to come close to presenting a compelling solution at all.
True. But there have been tantalizing clues, such as the carbon-dating
results. The thing, whatever it is, has been around for quite some time.
I, as a rule, never write in books if that was not their explicit intent (puzzle books, etc.) and one part of me is somewhat aghast that people over
the centuries would write in the VM. But then again, that writing becomes
part of the history of, as you say, professional and academic interest. Although none of the purported translations have been very compelling, I also enjoy studying the different approaches people take to tackling it, from the statistical and linguistic analyses on one end to the truly illogical on the other.
Jeff.
--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32)
 * Origin: Cold War Computing BBS (21:1/180)