donald@incompar (10/25/84)
Please help us! We have recently been carrying out a series of experiments to investigate the hypothesis that the mechanism of ESP and similar phenomena is electromagnetic. In order to study this possibility, one experiment required a subject (chosen for high ESP ability by a previous screening process) to "think" digital messages onto magnetic tape. Those familiar with parapsychological research will be aware that the area is bedevilled by charlatans and by poor experimental design and control. We believe that our experiment renders cheating almost impossible; however, the world will be able to judge for itself when we publish our results in a few months time. We had found one subject who consistently performed well. We passed tapes at which he had thought through an A-D converter, and after trying to decode them in many ways, we discovered that some of them could be passed through a few simple Unix utilities (including rev, tr, dd [for byte-swapping], and crypt [using either the subject's first name "Albert", or his surname "Hall" as key]) to produce intelligible messages. No two tapes were the same, and we had to try many possibilities, often guided by Bert's own intuitions (he was an experienced Unix systems programmer). Unfortunately Bert passed on 3 weeks ago, suffering a heart attack during an experiment. Before he died, though unable to speak, he pointed at the still-running tape with a look of desperate pleading. We have digitised the tape and tried innumerable ways of decoding it without success. Perhaps someone out there can succeed where we have failed, so I attach an octal dump of the digitised tape. Please help us: it was Bert's last wish, and these are Bert's last words. -------------------------------- CUT HERE ------------------------------ 0000000 000040 012006 110070 040540 021600 107020 134060 060620 0000020 103503 020417 046022 050250 142101 011610 063055 134324 0000040 020761 105306 013434 002142 111071 042644 022617 023045 0000060 134504 162622 111700 040455 112114 111471 046546 033633 0000100 163161 034724 142023 113307 100473 012406 012072 047547 0000120 030630 023211 135125 123264 114121 120514 022506 172352 0000140 052247 053653 051155 104545 065625 105127 136507 112606 0000160 072652 054245 045663 121311 135474 064166 111332 107442 0000200 162706 131370 041052 073671 151065 125335 067422 107337 0000220 076452 132756 113753 044160 060300 037417 056115 125767 0000240 135542 145601 013056 114334 055661 075222 037443 126106 0000260 030731 144745 043626 053142 034453 163663 120322 145101 0000300 036504 172127 117133 043620 157277 012334 165666 125640 0000320 133067 076655 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