Peace And Love Incorporated (Information Society) Easter Egg - Final Track

Having sharing this egg with many friends, I have found that most of them eventually come back to me in frustration, unable to see how to get the data into their computer. It is, however, possible to translate the datastream without having to hunt down an old accoustic couple-type modem. HINT: If you leave the telephone off-hook for a while, an annoying alert tone eventually begins, letting you know that you haven't hung up properly. Given time (usually a minute or two), this tone goes away, allowing you to use the telephone as an intercom to any other phone _or _phone-like_device_ on the line. 'nuff said.

if you want to know the surprise, go to http://www.pathetic-caverns.com/hidden.html or http://www.macnet.org/~jesiek/insoc.html I'm not telling what it is!!!!! here's a hint: -i-d-n m-s-a-e try to fill in the blanks.

The track wasn't meant to be especially hard to decode; it was meant to make you think about the relationship between data and music, or because he likes the sound of modems, or... well, Kurt's given a few different explanations. The official story is in the Texts section at www.insoc.org, as is the text that you get by decoding. The cool thing is that, unlike the modern "enhanced CD," this works just as well on vinyl, or cassette, as it did on CD. (A bit of trivia: The first "enhanced CD" that used the "CD-ROM data encoded on track 1" trick was Penal Colony's "5 Man Job," released by Cleopatra Records, who later signed InSoc.) According to Kurt, you should be able to get all but the last character of the text. I've never gotten past his signature. When Kurt came up with the idea in 1991, and any self-respecting geek in 1991 (which includes most real InSoc fans--hence the InSoc floppy) would have no problem understanding what "300baud 8-N-1" meant. If you had a modem back then, it probably wasn't to get on the Internet; it was to call BBS's or online services or hack, and you usually got the numbers in a form like this: "The Fallen Kingdom---818.501.5186---9600-8N1---24h." Additional information from Paul Robb (although when I asked Kurt for confirmation, he said something like, "Well, that might be true, but I don't remember, and I sincerely doubt that Paul does either"): Kurt originally wanted to leave the track untitled, figuring that real geeks would recognize the sound of a 300 baud modem (the 8N1 would be easy to get by trial and error--it would be the first thing most people would try, or maybe second after 7E1 for certain online service junkies). Then Kurt changed his mind and decided that he wanted non-geeks asking their geek friends what the title meant. So this wasn't supposed to be the tricky part. The tricky part was supposed to be figuring out how to get the audio data into your modem. For those of us who still had acoustic coupler modems or an Apple //e with an AppleCat (which had an audio input) it was pretty easy. Others just plugged a telephone into their modem (much easier than leaving both plugged into the wall and waiting for a dead line!). Someone even wrote a 300 baud modem decoder program for DOS. Nowadays the easiest way to get the text is to go to www.insoc.org, but that's no fun. (And unlike "White Roses 1.1," decoding this track in 2001 won't lead you on a scavenger hunt that's no longer possible to complete.) P.S., Kurt will not be impressed that you know what's on track 12, even if you're a cute girl with "SO WE'RE SUPPOSED TO PLAY IN CURITIBA IN 18 HOURS" written across your chest on a homemade t-shirt. (Not my story, but somebody wanted me to mention this.)