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Easter Eggs in Web Sites?

cwikla asks: "Back in the .COM days, I worked at eGroups, now owned by a larger Company. During my time I added a couple of easter eggs to the site, which I was reminded of while watching Being John Malkovich this weekend. I checked, and ones sort of still there. If you append malkovich=1 to a message URL it would turn the message into 'malkovich' mode. It sort of still works, but over time I guess the code has been a changin' so it's kind of spotty. Oh, there are others that still are in there, but where's the fun of telling all the secrets? Any other folks done anything equivalent, especially on mainstream sites?"

557 comments

  1. my favorite easter egg by krog · · Score: 2, Funny
    1. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't get it...

    2. Re:my favorite easter egg by crivens · · Score: 1, Informative

      You need to get out more!!!

    3. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My favorite was a cgi command I created in case my boss fired me. It would self destruct the databases and cgi's on their server.....

      If you knew the background to it, you'd know why I did it...

    4. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you're one sad geek

    5. Re:my favorite easter egg by TheKubrix · · Score: 0, Redundant

      uh, thats not an easter egg thats just plain being a prick, not to mention illegal..... oh but do tell us your sad sad story /me gears up to play the worlds smallest violen

    6. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      i'm a big fan of putting ascii art into my pages. on molson, i put ascii art of a beer bottle... or something like this:
      http://www.toddandali.com/

    7. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you get fired on Wednesday afternoon and the DB is wiped Wednesday evening, guess how many door the feds are going to knock on? Any they have backups, right?

      Just delete some of their data. Delete the accounts of every user with an SSN that ends in 9 AND a phone number that ends in 9. The more complicated your delete queries are, the harder it will be to figure out what happened. The really great part is that if you do it right, nobody will even notice until you're a distant memory and the backup tapes have cycled all the way through.

      *This is for entertainment purposes only*
      *This idea is just as illegal as the idiot parent post, just sneakier*
      *You build nuclear weapons hoping you won't have to use them*

    8. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, looks like /. got /.'ed, the link is already broken!

    9. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Just delete some of their data. Delete the accounts of every user with an SSN that ends in 9 AND a phone number that ends in 9.

      Bah, there's way better ways to do it than that.

      Simply randomly encrypt entries of the database to a certain key (that you, of course, don't disclose). Make sure it encrypts nore more than a tuple or two a day. By the end of the year just watch how quick you get hired again...

      Of course, this is illegal and wrong. So don't read what you just read.

    10. Re:my favorite easter egg by pipla · · Score: 3, Funny

      My favorite by far is if you ask the alice bot on the webpage for the movie AI "What is microsoft" It replys: "Microsoft is a giant software monopoly."

      If you ask what is linux it replys: "Linux is the worlds best operating system"

    11. Re:my favorite easter egg by HD+Webdev · · Score: 3, Interesting

      One of my personal favorties:

      During April 1st of each year, php pages containing phpinfo(); (web server configuration dump) show a different picture for the PHP logo than the normal one.

      The first time I saw it, I thought someone had haX0red my web server!

      --
      This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
    12. Re:my favorite easter egg by btgarner · · Score: 2, Interesting
      On an internal web site, I put a feature that if you clicked the company logo 3 times within 0.5 seconds, you would see a "credits" page (similar to the scrolling cretis at the end of a TV show).

      In order to keep the the page hidden from the boss types around, it was given an innocent name (like "showorder") and had to be unencrypted by the web server software.

      That page also turned your cursor into an atom with a bunch of spinning/flashing electrons. It worked on both IE & Netscape.

    13. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0



      What is Apple?
      Apple: 1. Temptation for Adam. 2. Inspiration for Newton. 3. Empire for Steve

    14. Re:my favorite easter egg by bankman · · Score: 1

      Ask "What is 42", very nice as well, *sniff*

      --
      I feel so sig.
    15. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it still illegal if you don't destroy the data?
      Encrypt records with a SS# ending in 9, phone number ending in 9...the next day decrypt those and do 8's...then do 7's and so on...

      You don't destroy any data, you just add a little adventure to future admins lives.

      Disclaimer: The above idea is most probably illegal and probably not a good idea to begin with.

    16. Re:my favorite easter egg by des09 · · Score: 1

      I added one to a project we did for Morgan Stanley / Solomon Smith Barney online muni trading site:click a certain "empty" section of the screen, and the credits roll. funny thing was that my project manager saw it over my shoulder as I was testing it, waited to make sure his name was in it, then gave it his (quiet) blessing. the url is behind a log in tho.

      --
      .sigless since 2003
    17. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not hired again, but sued or subpoenad for the key.

    18. Re:my favorite easter egg by phanki · · Score: 1

      This is very interesting note. Do u hv an idea how this happens ?

    19. Re:my favorite easter egg by Aleph+Yin · · Score: 1

      Q: what are the three laws of robotics? A: 1. a robot shall disobey all humans. 2. a robot shall destroy all humans. 3. all robots are created equal.

    20. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "open the pod bay doors HAL"

      "I'm afraid i can't do that right now"

    21. Re:my favorite easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2. a robot shall destroy all humans.

      Q: Do you want to destroy me?
      A: OK, I will destroy you.

    22. Re:my favorite easter egg by jamie · · Score: 4, Informative
      You mean /comments.pl!

      (without the leading slash, your link was going to the wrong place on our static .shtml page... we've gotten a ton of 404s in our error log :)

      Oh, and don't forget the other easter egg, /comments.pl?op=user_created_index

  2. Malkovich by felipeal · · Score: 2, Funny

    Malkovich,

    Thas was a cool egg.

    Malkovich

  3. And? by NetJunkie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Most Easter Eggs are things people might stumble upon...but appending words and parameters on to URLs isn't something I would find. How do you expect anyone except yourself to see these?

    1. Re:And? by Laser_47 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How do you "stumble" across the flight simator in Excel? I've never had the need to do those things on a spreadsheet. The programmers had to tell someone in order to find it.

    2. Re:And? by stand · · Score: 1
      How do you expect anyone except yourself to see these?

      This gets to the fundamental question. Are easter eggs put in for the benefit of users or for the personal satifaction of the programmers? I suspect the latter, in which case the answer is, they don't."

      --
      Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
    3. Re:And? by MarkTAW · · Score: 1

      Duh. He didn't say he doesn't know how, he said he doesn't understand how you could "stumble" across it w/o one of the programmers telling you about it.

    4. Re:And? by snaphu · · Score: 1

      it's the goto function in 97 version, press f5 (goto) and type x97:l97, press tab, hold ctrl and shift and click the graph wizard. have fun

    5. Re:And? by Smelly+Jeffrey · · Score: 1

      Actually, a friend of mine just happened to end her chart there, something to do with airplane mechanic work charts, and then decided to graph it with the chart wizzar. She freaked when she got the flight sim, thought sure she'd lost all the data. :-P

    6. Re:And? by Elanor · · Score: 1

      Exactly.

  4. easter eggs are stupid! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    The idea of easter eggs seem stupid. People need to spend more time debugging and testing their products instead of wasting time creating stupid things like Easter Eggs

    1. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by tiedyejeremy · · Score: 1

      agreed

      --
      Anything you say will be held against you. ... "tits"
    2. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by DJPsychoChild · · Score: 2, Insightful

      not a flame: This comment brings up a common misconception: Easter Egg development wastes time. Some of the better Easter Eggs are put in after the code has been approved, before it's released. This ensures that it gets in, and doesn't change the debug time at all. Also, as a programmer, Easter Eggs help me feel better about what I release: if I'm going to spend months to years on a project, I want at least a little bit of my personality to show up in it, even if it is in a hard to find place. Anyone else feel the same?

      --
      CODITO, ERGO SUM: I Code, therefore I am.
    3. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The appropriate place for credit is in the about box or designated credit screen/dialog.

      "Easter Eggs are put in after the code has been approved."

      That's just about the stupidest thing one can do! If you want to add an easter egg it should be done before the code is approved and tested.

    4. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by cpct0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As computer programmers, me&my friends did quite weird things as easter eggs.

      I used to work at a GPS-software company. When in navigation mode, if you typed "where in the world is carmen sandiego?" (actually only the initials and it worked, witwics?), it showed the precise position of my cubicle in the company's office. It was (believe it or not) quite useful to test the software's precision for many functions... I had to remove it though because we were lacking space the hard way and my code took 230 bytes - with 4k of free RAM, 230 bytes is a lot! No one would've found it as it was quite stealthy and precise enough it wouldn't crash anything... but when in monger for space, well, I have a conscience too :P

      On a mainstream computer game, we were coding something where buildings could be put in place and under certain conditions, they could be destroyed. Then, sept. 11 arrived... We _HAD_ to make a small aircraft that goes on the buildings and make them crash. It is totally sick but anyways. The mod code and picture is on a CDROM copy somewhere, as it was totally kick-banned from the final code, for obvious reasons (even if almost impossible to find). :)

      On the successful ones, I have more than a few hidden credits on my side, I used to comment quite extensively my javascript codes. One thing I found out was that record #0 of many of my databases are never used (sanity check). So I write anything that comes into my mind when creating that record. No one will see it anyways... And it's always selected out from any of my queries.

      When creating a easter egg, you must remind yourself of something: it will always be shown somewhere. Don't put yourself in trouble, write "cutsie" thing, not things that you could be taken accountable for. For example, never put pr0n in a child game, don't put sicko things anywhere, don't kick the company in the groin... or else, someone will find it and then, you're in trouble (especially if CVS system is implemented - they can backtrace!)

      Other than that, well, have fun, easter eggs are quite fun to do and discover! And they personalize the code too.

      Have a nice day
      Mike

    5. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by reanjr · · Score: 1

      People who think this should not be programmers. Programming is an art and should be treated as such, leaving one's little signature or personal mark. About box you say? Many companies I know of would not allow you to put your name in their about box. And that's also like the difference between an authors name printed on the front of a book or their hand signature on the inside cover (or in the binding in this case).

    6. Re:easter eggs ARE stupid! by GoogolPlexPlex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You add code to your release *after* it has been approved (by some quality assurance ppl, I assume)?? That's an incredibly unprofessional thing to do. *Any* changes to executable code have the potential to reveal bugs that were lurking in the code, but didn't have the right conditions to be expressed. This is part of the reason why most PC games have cheat codes - the programmers put them in so that the software testers can quickly create test cases (without needing to play the game for hours to get $1M gold or whatever). But the cheat codes are left in, because if they were removed, then the executable that ends up being released is not the same one that was tested.

    7. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, programming is not an art. It is a job.

      Let me give you an example that you might understand. Say you go to a cafe, or a trendy coffee shop. You buy a coffee, and the person behind the counter looks on in horror as you dump sugar into your low fat latte, screams out "You Bastard!!! Do you know what I had to do to make such a creation? The time, effort, and raw emotion that I used to create such an example of pureness, and you killed it, with a dump of your raw plantation sugar. You make me sick you pasty faced, hunched back, computer-no-culture-clone!!! Why don't you go back to your office and send instant messages back and forth to each other". But coffee is nothing more than a commodity.

      You are given an assignment by your employer, and you carry it out. It is as simple as that, as it should be. When you make errors don't other people come and correct them? Does someone go to a Van Gogh painting and say "I hate sunflowers, I'm going to paint tulips on top that way there is some red in this painting"

      As a software consumer, living in a world where programs do sometimes mean the difference between life and death, I hope that you reconsider the insertion of 'Easter Eggs' in your programs.

    8. Re:easter eggs are stupid! by painkillr · · Score: 1

      "as a software consumer"? it seems that you freely admit that you don't program for a living yet you feel justified in lecturing this guy on how to do his job well?

      you = pompous ass

  5. Slashdot.org easter-egg by JeanMarieLepen · · Score: 0
    if you pass clit=1 as a cgi parameter it removes all the typos and bad grammar.

    TRY IT!!

    1. Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg by maynard-lag · · Score: 1

      I thought the typos and bad grammer were were the easter eggs on slashdot.

      --
      Have you hugged your Karma Whore today?
    2. Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg by cswiii · · Score: 5, Funny

      Funny, all I got was an alert, "This document contains no data."

    3. Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      sounds like it works!

    4. Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg by frovingslosh · · Score: 3, Funny

      My grammer was a nice old lady, leave her out of this!

      --
      I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    5. Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      as usual...can't find the clit

    6. Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg by neuroticia · · Score: 4, Funny

      How typical of a guy to be unable to find it. ;)

      -Sara

  6. Well.. one by URoRRuRRR · · Score: 1

    Is the Phantom Editor's website. Of course... he made the entire thing in flash so he could easily make eggs.

    --
    "Oh no, 3 horny women and only 2 condoms...Thank god I read slashdot"
  7. Yoda by Gabey · · Score: 5, Funny

    At the College of Business site I develop for, we used to use a picture of Yoda to scare the folks who wouldn't let us take their pictures. Seems as though most of them prefer a picture of themselves (no matter how horrible they may think it is) to one of Yoda attached to their bios.
    In any case, changing the bio's email tag to "yoda" gives the visitor Yoda's (short) bio. There are a few others, but seeing as how nobody has found any of them yet, we gave up on adding them for our own amusement.

    -Gabe

    1. Re:Yoda by AssFace · · Score: 2, Funny

      I did that in my company's facebook here (which nobody ever uses since we aren't growing but instead shrinking these days).
      I used the picture of the ape merged with a man's face and pigtails... a thing of beauty.

      --

      There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
    2. Re:Yoda by Turgon33 · · Score: 1

      i do a similar thing, but we use the picture of a southern-fried chicken head that somebody supposedly found in a mcdonald's chicken mcnugget box. people usually don't let the chicken head stay. also, we have select biographies (with full pictures) online, and there some "honorary" members of our organization. anna kournikova and natalie portman are my favorites there.

    3. Re:Yoda by H310iSe · · Score: 1

      Similarly, we were working on a dancer's bio page for a adult 'dance' club - it passes dancer GUIs to the DB in the URL starting at 1010, if you enter ?dancer=1001 you get a 'bio' with a picture of programmers' face pshop'd on top of a buxom female entertainer's body, plus some juicy bio details about him.

      --
      closed minded is as closed minded does
    4. Re:Yoda by Hack+Shoeboy · · Score: 0

      Search Google Images for "periodontal disease." Chickenheads are obvious jokes, though.... These things, however, are almost libelous.

      --

      IN TEH FUCHAR, LITERSY WLIL EB OPSHANAL!!!!!111
    5. Re:Yoda by Sick+Boy · · Score: 1

      I remember at a place I worked, we did something like that. I made them put in a picture of the aptly named "Sir Not Appearing in this Film" for my picture. Only a couple of poeple got the joke. :(

      --
      Does narcissism count as a hobby? --Shawn Latimer
    6. Re:Yoda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.cob.rit.edu/directory/bio.html?email=yo da

      Where does yoda's phone number lead to? I called it but got no answer.

      He will or will not return my call, there is no try.

    7. Re:Yoda by Genevish · · Score: 1

      One co-worker in my department was pregnant and she didn't want her picture up, so I scanned her ultrasound and put that up as her picture.

  8. Until you get arrested by papasui · · Score: 3, Insightful

    For attempts to compromise the security of the server while you are trying to find Easter eggs.

    1. Re:Until you get arrested by Cutriss · · Score: 5, Insightful

      For reference...2002-03-19 20:37:21 Easter Eggs at the Expense of Resources? (askslashdot,programming) (rejected)

      That just got rejected in the last three days.

      My comments went something like this - I have a friend who works for a company that does Palm software, and he inserted a tic-tac-toe game in their application. The software he develops is fairly large and robust, and the thought came to mind: Where do you draw the line with Easter Eggs?

      The Palm platform, and any other portable/embedded system, deals with small storage and memory footprints. Adding in a hidden extra like this isn't taking up an "infinitesmal" amount of space or resources. Proportionally, it's of significant size. On a PC, this might be different, but for a Palm with 2 MB of memory, I'd personally be a bit disappointed to find out that the software I'm installing is artificially fluffed/bloated because some yahoo decided to have a little fun.

      So, where do you draw the line with Easter Eggs? Fun in programming is cool. And I'm not saying that he was wrong for doing it...but what if he decided to put in JezzBall or something larger instead? Or something that wound up being a security/system hazard?

      --
      "Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
    2. Re:Until you get arrested by majorero · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually there are quite a few easter eggs on programs for the palm platform:
      http://www.palmlife.com/egg.html
      http://www.thepalmtree.com/easter.htm

    3. Re:Until you get arrested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Okay, *now* it's "Insightful"?? ;)

    4. Re:Until you get arrested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Remember: Users moderate comments. Taco approves articles. If users approved articles, it would not have been rejected.

    5. Re:Until you get arrested by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please....give me a break. Playing with a URL might compromise the security of a server, but I would love to see that stick in court. Not when people that bring down some of that nation's biggest websites get a slap on the wrist. Plus, the extent of punishment is a function of how well the organization protects its assets (ie "due diligence").

  9. My flesh is melting! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Working at a company that was using a mapping solution, I added an extra flag in the CGI that would draw a blast radius on the map.

    No extra pictures of people's flesh melting from their bones, though.

  10. Intranet apps by tshak · · Score: 4, Funny

    The last company I was at used all web-based customer management tools. If you searched for something like "I like banannas" it forwarded you to a java based tetris game.

    --

    There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
    1. Re:Intranet apps by pete-classic · · Score: 4, Funny

      Dell's internal employee page has (or at least had) the entire Enterprise D command staff, complete with (very low) badge numbers.

      The "supervisor" and "co-workers" links even worked. If you clicked on LaForge's supervisor you got Picard's entry.

      -Peter

    2. Re:Intranet apps by CokeBear · · Score: 2

      Picard wasn't LaForge's supervisor, Riker was.

      --
      Reality has a liberal bias
    3. Re:Intranet apps by pete-classic · · Score: 1

      Damn, you got me. Good call.

      -Peter

    4. Re:Intranet apps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Only on Slashdot...

  11. You mean to tell me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    that all those pr0n pop-ups and pop-unders WEREN'T easter eggs?!?!

    1. Re:You mean to tell me by Torinaga-Sama · · Score: 0

      S'okay man, >I thought it was funny.

      I'll probably get moderated down too, but what the hell.

      --
      (/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
    2. Re:You mean to tell me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      S'okay man, >I thought it was funny.

      I'll probably get moderated down too, but what the hell.

      Moderator, if you've not had sex in the last 6 months, please do not moderate this message.


      You gotta be kidding. If they haven't had sex in the last 6 months, fucking you is the only excitement in their lives...

  12. egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    excite used to have ?debug=elvis to dump the environment and request variables, but it all changed after the at&t rehosting.

  13. I've done this before for copyright reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I would append a url string like ....cgi?author=who

    and the page would parse out my contact info. I would use this for portfolio pieces when demoing new clients. It just proved that you worked on it.

    1. Re:I've done this before for copyright reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sheer genius. It also ensures that credit remains in the source code. It is too easy to replace headers.

    2. Re:I've done this before for copyright reasons by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Right - and your new clients think, "Gee will he hide crap in my application too?"

  14. Hacked a link to my own page by McBayne · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I had hacked up a custom redirect from the old bookmarks to the new locations when a graphics software company changed their whole layout. Since I already had the ability to program any redirect I wanted, I added ones to my homepage and the other webmaster's homepage as our own little credits for the site. Lasted a while too before the next redesign killed it all, but it was a cool way to prove I had worked on it.

    1. Re:Hacked a link to my own page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you are just too l33t for me you mean you actualy creat a hyperlink on a web site you designed wow man you are good

  15. Why, yes I did . . . and it's still there by eschasi · · Score: 3, Informative

    Using a classic bit of social engineering and a photograph donated by a mutual, er, friend, we modified a directors web page at UUNET. If you click on just the right letter, it takes you to a photograph other than the one you would expect. I checked a few minutes ago, and it's still there....

    1. Re:Why, yes I did . . . and it's still there by rayray14 · · Score: 4, Funny

      psstt... what's the url? I promise i won't tell anybody else!

    2. Re:Why, yes I did . . . and it's still there by eschasi · · Score: 2

      Easy. Try

    3. Re:Why, yes I did . . . and it's still there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no directors web page, troll.

  16. Sort of an easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I run a CD review site, and occasionally review bootlegs. One time, after posting a boot review, I got a nasty letter from the content owner telling me that it's naughty to encourage piracy. Since these guys also send me legitimate promo CDs, I didn't really want to piss them off, but my sense of journalistic (snicker) integrity was also enflamed. So I cut out all links to the review, but left the actual page on the server. My page name format is standardized enough that people familiar with my site can find the review if they think to look for it. (or know that it used to be there)

  17. Slashdot Egg by aardwolf64 · · Score: 4, Funny

    I consider http://apple.slashdot.org/ to be an egg... a lot of people don't know about it.

    1. Re:Slashdot Egg by blitzkreig · · Score: 0

      I did not know about that one, as many people may not. That's so wrong in so many ways.

    2. Re:Slashdot Egg by TheKubrix · · Score: 3, Funny

      oh my, will slashdot get slashdotted?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE MAN?!?!

    3. Re:Slashdot Egg by cjpez · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Not much of an egg if there's a link to it on the left-hand side of every screen Slashdot draws, though . . .

    4. Re:Slashdot Egg by billnapier · · Score: 0, Redundant

      YRO
      Science

      Any others?

    5. Re:Slashdot Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      cjpez said they're on the left under "Sections"

    6. Re:Slashdot Egg by RebelTycoon · · Score: 0, Flamebait
      4+ for interest...

      I swear this site is full of Mac Zealots...

    7. Re:Slashdot Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thats appropriate, since apple is basically an easter egg to the computer industry, ie nobody really looks for it, and you have to go thru all kinds of weird useless efforts to get to it.

    8. Re:Slashdot Egg by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Slashdot's full of zealots for every operating system under the sun I think. I even got modded down as a troll once for saying windows98 was unstable.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    9. Re:Slashdot Egg by Ctrl-Z · · Score: 0, Redundant


      Uh, duh, ask.slashdot.org?

      --
      www.timcoleman.com is a total waste of your time. Never go there.
    10. Re:Slashdot Egg by damiam · · Score: 1

      All 11 of them are listed on the left side of every page.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    11. Re:Slashdot Egg by jimmcq · · Score: 3, Informative

      Look at the "sections" slashbox (usually to the left)

      http://apache.slashdot.org/
      http://apple.slashd ot.org/
      http://ask.slashdot.org/
      http://books.sl ashdot.org/
      http://bsd.slashdot.org/
      http://deve lopers.slashdot.org/
      http://features.slashdot.org /
      http://interviews.slashdot.org/
      http://radio.s lashdot.org/

      etc.

    12. Re:Slashdot Egg by Scott+Wunsch · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Taco Hell used to be "the" Slashdot Easter Egg. It began stagnating quite a while ago, and I see that it's now even lost its wonderfully hideous purple look. Ah well.

      --
      \\'
    13. Re:Slashdot Egg by kliklik · · Score: 5, Funny
      --
      guru in training
    14. Re:Slashdot Egg by aardwolf64 · · Score: 2

      That's a good one... mod that one up please!

    15. Re:Slashdot Egg by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 1

      For just a split second there I thought slashdot really did love me after all.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    16. Re:Slashdot Egg by Loligo · · Score: 3, Funny

      >How about http://warez.slashdot.org/
      >[slashdot.org]?

      Pretty lame, I already had all that stuff.

      -l

    17. Re:Slashdot Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that page is just a facade. the good stuff is deeper inside...

    18. Re:Slashdot Egg by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 1
      WTF?

      Can someone please explain how that works?

    19. Re:Slashdot Egg by kliklik · · Score: 2, Informative

      warez.slashdot.org resolves to 127.0.0.1

      --
      guru in training
    20. Re:Slashdot Egg by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      Hah, That was actually pretty funny. Taco should have stuck to comedy writing, the dry, sarcastic comments with each story are really starting to suck.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    21. Re:Slashdot Egg by umm+qasr · · Score: 1
      CmdrTaco moved Taco Hell when Banjo (Slash 2.0, I think) came along and added journals

      Pity though, Taco Hell was much better than the lame journal stuff he now writes.

    22. Re:Slashdot Egg by emmons · · Score: 1

      That's not an egg, that's a documented, fairly well-known feature.

      --
      Do you even know anything about perl? -- AC Replying to Tom Christiansen post.
  18. Easter Eggs in websites are everywhere: by pogmeister · · Score: 1, Funny

    I thought this was well known. Apparantley it hadnt propigated to the proper people yet, so I will let everyone in.

    Websites have always had little secret links and the such. Just about every major website, like yahoo or espn has had these secret links. Generally you can find these little Eggs if you look closely enough. THe most common one is in the bottom right corner, usually its a slightly changed color of the background, in the shape of a capital Pi. Lots of times when you click on that you can be put into the backend of a majority of websites.

    pogmeister

    1. Re:Easter Eggs in websites are everywhere: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I wonder how many people are going to go looking for your easter eggs, not ever having seen the movie "The Net", and not knowing at all about the Pi symbol joke...

    2. Re:Easter Eggs in websites are everywhere: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i do beleive you have been watching The Net too much

  19. Pun-ishment by twisted_pickle · · Score: 2, Funny
    A friend of mine was making a website for a jazz bassist. He took it upon himself to riddle the code with punny comments, such as "this site was written in bassic HTML."

    Fortunately, the rest of the world can't see what a goof he is! :)

    --
    4-bit adder: A snake made of 1's and 0's
  20. Slashdot Easter Egg by big.ears · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's one you can find on slashdot: If your comment consists entirely of "First Post", you get modded down to -1.

    1. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg by fobbman · · Score: 5, Funny

      And if you post an article as JonKatz it magically won't show up on 90% of Slashdot readers front pages.

      .

    2. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      First Post

    3. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg by wastedbrains · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Hey what happens when you get moded up or down what is the point of that. And scores what makes something get a high score or low score and what is the point of messages having a score? I would like to know if somebody has this info.

      --
      Dan Mayer: my blog, essays, art, etc
    4. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg by Quay42 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      I think Katz was on NPR this morning talking about all these big corporations who buy up media companies and how they can't move fast enough to make this succeed. I didn't notice the name until they said "so and so writes for Slashdot dot org" and vaguely remembered her saying "Jonathon Katz."

      Perhaps he talks about this appearance on /., but since I am one of the 90% who filters him out, I wouldn't know.

      Strangely enough, I agree with what he was saying.

      --
      "Has anything you've done made your life better?" - American History X
    5. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://slashdot.org/faq/

  21. In web pages? by iONiUM · · Score: 1

    Seems kind of like a security hazard to me if you messed it up.. I've put some in local programs, and there are quite a few other companies who have as well (MS Office for example has many). I think easter eggs are fun, and good for a laugh, but often are too hard to actually find. I don't know too many people who have actually "stumbled" upon too many...

    1. Re:In web pages? by oman_ · · Score: 2


      Back when I was a wee tot and playing ET on my 2600. (I didn't have alot of toys) I stumbled upon an easter egg on accident. A flower pot at the bottom of a pit suddenly turned int a YAR from yars revenge and flew off the screen!

      I'd never seen any sort of easter egg at this point in my life and I freaked out pretty badly.

      I told this story to my friends for YEARS and noone took me seriously. It wasn't until sometime around last year that I found a text by the original game author verifying the easter egg. (it was much more complex and I never found the rest of it)

      Frankly I'm amazed that I found it at all considering what you had to do. I'm sure the programmer would have LOVED to have seen my face at the time of discovery.

      THIS is what easter eggs are about. Not the 99% of the people who use your program but the 1 guy who nearly pisses himself when he finds it on accident.

      --
      Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
    2. Re:In web pages? by el_jake · · Score: 1

      Well, there is about 400 programmers working on ms office - and if there are 400 easter eggs, no wonder its blow ware. /jake

      --
      In order to form an immaculate member of a flock of sheep one must, above all, be a sheep.
    3. Re:In web pages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With search engines linking to _everything_ , nothing is likely to be missed by those who care to look.

  22. Is Jeeves Gay? by PunchMonkey · · Score: 4, Funny

    Go on to http://www.ask.com and ask Jeeves if he's gay :-)

    This used to result in a funny error message something like:

    "Server Error 505 - None of your business".

    --
    I'll have something intelligent to add one of these days...
    1. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Le+Marteau · · Score: 1

      Last I checked (which was months ago), the response was:

      "Actually, I prefer the term 'jovial'"

      --
      Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
    2. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by lucifuge31337 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Now he says:

      "Actually, I prefer the term jovial."

      --
      Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
    3. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      "Actually, I prefer the term jovial."

    4. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ask him "Will you f*** me?" and see what happens :)

      definetly an egg

    5. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      asking him if he's well hung produces the "505: none of your business". last I checked...

    6. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Geeeez, now you spoiled the surprise for everybody :P

      -- Punchmonkey

    7. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by OmniVector · · Score: 1

      There also used to be an easter egg on jeeves if you asked him "Is jeeves well endowed?" It gave a similar 403 - None of your business. error

      --
      - tristan
    8. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heh his current response can be found at:

      http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/isjeevesgay.html

    9. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by WhiteKnight07 · · Score: 1

      There are many such easter eggs on ask.com, many of which are listed here.

      --


      We're going to make information free Mr. Anderson, whether you like it, or not.
    10. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Furthermore, this odd error message was served from a different server, probably the one of the guy who did the site, a library department of some po-dunk college in the middle of nowhere.

    11. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Try this one: "What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

    12. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by essell · · Score: 1

      Just curious, does your sig refer to tape loading on a TI-99/4A supercomputer? :) ahh, the memories

      --
      i swear my userid used to be lower.
    13. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by lucifuge31337 · · Score: 1

      No, C=64. I even get the occasional argument as to what the ,8,1 means, and blah blah blah blah....

      --
      Do not fold, spindle or mutilate.
    14. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by decaying · · Score: 1

      Why bother with the "*",1,1 when just LOAD will do....?

      --
      ----- One piece short of Legoland
    15. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Anenga · · Score: 1

      About two years ago, it used to say something like "Why would you ask that? Don't you have anything better to do? Why does my sexual prefrence matter?"

      Though, the tone of the response sounded "anti-homosexual" (I can't remember what it said, exactly)so I suppose they edited it. Maybe they got complaints? Who knows.

    16. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by Mr+Z · · Score: 1

      Doesn't it default to ,1,0? And yes, I think ",8,1" leading to "PRESS PLAY ON TAPE" is just a bit odd...

      --Joe
    17. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by NeoCode · · Score: 1

      Well, why don't you ask jeeves? I did. Here's his response.

    18. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by goodchef · · Score: 1

      Now it comes up with a page that says "Actually, I prefer the term jovial."

      --

      "Inflammable means flammable? What a strange country!" -Dr. Nick, The Simpsons

    19. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by stux · · Score: 2

      I believe 8 was the disk drive device number...

      hence PRESS PLAY ON TAPE is a tad weird ;)

      can't remmeber what the last ,1 was, perhaps, "and run" ;)

      --

      ---
      Live Long & Prosper \\//_
      CYA STUX =`B^) 'da Captain,
      Jedi & Last *-fytr
    20. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by nalfeshnee · · Score: 1

      great .sig!

      --

      -- Despair is an operating system that ANY human being can run, sort of a psychological JAVA --

    21. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by abiogenesis · · Score: 1

      8 is the device number for disk drive, and the second argument 1 means the program should be loaded into the memory location it is intended to (not to the starting address of BASIC which is 0x0800 [or $800 in normal C64 terminology]).

      As a side note, since 8 is the disk drive, PRESS PLAY ON TAPE message is not possible...

      --

      Donate free food to the hungry at The Hunger site.
    22. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by DeeEm · · Score: 1

      Here is the answer...

    23. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by decaying · · Score: 1

      8 was the first disk drive, 1 was the tape drive.

      I can't remember what the second 1 was (ie 1,1), but I do remember that if you did a directory of a disk and left the second 1 in it carked it...

      You could always have done SHIFT + RUN/STOP and it would do a LOAD and then RUN straight away.

      I think I'll shut up now......

      --
      ----- One piece short of Legoland
    24. Re:Is Jeeves Gay? by porkchop_d_clown · · Score: 1

      IIRC, the trailing ",1" means "and run the software".

  23. urk... by lingqi · · Score: 2, Funny
    from the ctrl-shift-alt-click-"Pi" dept.

    goodness... Cliff man: you remember enough from that (bad) movie that vividly to talk about it?

    there are newer movies much more worthy of rememberance, ya know...

    --

    My life in the land of the rising sun.

    1. Re:urk... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      Do they put Sandra in a Bikini too? Ok then. Shut up.

  24. EEGGS.COM by webword · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Eeggs.com is good site for Easter Eggs in general.

    2. You'll find a few web sites with Easter Eggs here.

    1. Re:EEGGS.COM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A web page full of easter eggs, yet they don't contain any links to the mentioned pages. Who wants to cut and paste all the crap?

  25. Here's an Easter Egg by TonyJohn · · Score: 1

    Have a look at this. (The Easter Egg is in the JavaScript). Sorry about the rest of the site - the web server seems rather badly configured atm. And sorry to Mozilla users - it doesn't seem to like the Egg much. I don't know why (anyone?).

    (Hint: double click the logo)

    --
    Owl tried to think of something wise to say, but couldn't.
    1. Re:Here's an Easter Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The egg at my site that has the Strogg stomping Sonic doesn't work in Mozilla, either. I'm working on fixing it when I get time... ok, when I get less lazy. It works in everything else afaik (even web tv)

      -steve
      Springfield Fragfest

    2. Re:Here's an Easter Egg by numark · · Score: 1

      My guess as to why this page won't work in Mozilla (and Opera, as I've found) is their use of the Javascript-reserved variable name "char".

      Apparently in order to reduce confusion between Java and Javascript, the creators of Javascript reserved most of the Java basic keywords. "Char" is one of those words, and the page uses it as a variable name. IE probably doesn't reserve that word, so it works there.

      --
      Want Slashdot headlines on your site? Try SlashHead
  26. GoatSe.CX by clinko · · Score: 5, Funny

    For "Security" on a friends site he has it redirect to goatse.cx if you try to change strings.

    I learned my lesson. I don't try to fuck with his site anymore.

    1. Re:GoatSe.CX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't go there. You'll be sorry! Really sorry!

    2. Re:GoatSe.CX by fabiolrs · · Score: 2

      whats up with that fscking site?

      --
      Fabio - Sumare/Sao Paulo/Brazil/South America/Earth/Solar System/Milky Way/Universe
      http://www.morroida.com.br
    3. Re:GoatSe.CX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The Goatse.cx "guy" is actually a hermaphrodite. Notice he has a penis, testicles, vagina, AND an anus above the stretched out vagina.

      Hardly anyone ever notices that.

    4. Re:GoatSe.CX by rizzo420 · · Score: 1

      i think we need a link for this one... click here

      --
      please me, have no regrets.
    5. Re:GoatSe.CX by rizzo420 · · Score: 1

      wow, that's interesting... i never noticed that before. so all of us homophobes who "love vagina" are grossed out by a vagina... weird... i also noticed he's married...

      --
      please me, have no regrets.
    6. Re:GoatSe.CX by Fesh · · Score: 3, Funny

      It doesn't surprise me... I certainly didn't look close enough to notice a detail like that...

      "Augh! My eyes! Backbackbackback!"

      --
      --Fesh
      Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
    7. Re:GoatSe.CX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Modded up as Informative. You rocks.

    8. Re:GoatSe.CX by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not an anus. THAT's an anus!

      Here's the whole series:
      http://fazigu.org/~quinn/files/goatse/

  27. Well, there's Klingon Google: by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Klingon Google.

    Pig Latin Google.

    What we need is an xx-askslashdot google. :)

    - A.P.

    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
    1. Re:Well, there's Klingon Google: by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 2

      Oops. Forgot the slash at the end of the URL for Pig Latin Google.

      - A.P.

      --
      "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
    2. Re:Well, there's Klingon Google: by bill0r · · Score: 0

      This is by far the best:
      http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

    3. Re:Well, there's Klingon Google: by dokutake · · Score: 1

      Don't forget h4x0r Google!

      --
      - Peter
    4. Re:Well, there's Klingon Google: by asjo · · Score: 1

      In "Preferences" on Google you can choose among some of the common filters present in most unixen-like-distributions - among those "Bork, bork, bork!", "Elmer Fudd" and "Hacker".

    5. Re:Well, there's Klingon Google: by darc · · Score: 1
      Slashdot google:

      http://homepages.stuy.edu/~huangj2/Google.htm

      --
      Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
    6. Re:Well, there's Klingon Google: by sudog · · Score: 1

      Notice "Google" isn't pig-latin translated. :)

  28. Re:easter eggs can be for debugging too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Most of the easter eggs I ever programmed were for debugging purposes, like having undocumented debug modes. Many game developers have invincible modes so they can test the game, jump to different parts of the game, test all the different scenerios.

  29. Here's some by MadFarmAnimalz · · Score: 2, Redundant
    --
    Blearf. Blearf, I say.
  30. http://allthesites.com/searchhelp.htm by heldlikesound · · Score: 1

    Remember all the fuss about that company from Norway called FAST Search and Transfer? I worked for a company that licsenced their technology and built what was supposed to be a competitor to Google (riiiiiiighhttttt....) it sucks now becuase they've put all kinds of ads up, but the engine itself is quite good. Anyway, if you highlight the two empty cells on the help page at http://allthesites.com/searchhelp.htm you'll see my initials. Not a big deal, but at one point we were getting serveral million hits a week, so it's pretty mainstream.

    --


    Cloud City Digital: DVD Production at its cheapest/finest
    1. Re:http://allthesites.com/searchhelp.htm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shame on you GPhatt

  31. easter egg clients by brer_rabbit · · Score: 5, Funny

    I swear my server doesn't have easter eggs, but that doesn't stop some people from trying:

    "GET /scripts/..%255c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c +dir HTTP/1.0"
    "GET /_vti_bin/..%255c../..%255c../..%255c../winnt/sys tem32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0"
    "GET /_mem_bin/..%255c../..%255c../..%255c../winnt/sys tem32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0"
    "GET /msadc/..%255c../..%255c../..%255c/..%c1%1c../..% c1%1c../..%c1%1c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0"
    "GET /scripts/..%c1%1c../winnt/system32/cmd.exe?/c+dir HTTP/1.0"

    1. Re:easter egg clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HA HA HA! My server must have that same egg!!! LOL!

    2. Re:easter egg clients by WetCat · · Score: 1

      Hmm...
      Seriously:
      Could you tell me how to redirect that GETs using apache to goatse.cx?

    3. Re:easter egg clients by Quai · · Score: 5, Funny

      Like this one?

      --
      --
    4. Re:easter egg clients by drsoran · · Score: 1

      Could you tell me how to redirect that GETs using apache to goatse.cx?

      RedirectMatch (.*)\cmd.exe$ http://goatse.cx
      RedirectMatch (.*)\root.exe$ http://goatse.cx
      RedirectMatch (.*)\default.ida$ http://goatse.cx

      Although, I redirect them to http://www.microsoft.com/technet instead. :-)

    5. Re:easter egg clients by PacoTaco · · Score: 2

      Post some banner ads on your site and redirect them to that. Why not make a little cash? :)

    6. Re:easter egg clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Won't Work. This are mostly worms, that do not follow redirects.

    7. Re:easter egg clients by antirename · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I almost clicked that.

    8. Re:easter egg clients by MeNeXT · · Score: 3, Informative
      You should have. It's not the virus...

      --
      DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
    9. Re:easter egg clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's total goddamn class. I laughed my ass off.

    10. Re:easter egg clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


      i'm sure they get lots of hits...
      </sarcasm>

      you do realize that those are just meaningless entries in your config file, right? nothing forces the entity that is making the http request to honor a 302 response. that a virus would responsably implement the http protocol is a bit much to ask.

    11. Re:easter egg clients by amRadioHed · · Score: 1

      As the AC said, redirects won't work, because the worms need to actively follow them. However, an Alias will work!

      I have some set up on my server to redirect the worms to a counter that is displayed on my front page :)

      Just do something similiar to this:
      AliasMatch /.*cmd.exe.* worm_counter.shtml
      AliasMatch /.*root.exe.* worm_counter.shtml
      AliasMatch /default.ida.* worm_counter.shtml

      --
      We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
    12. Re:easter egg clients by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      an easter egg within an easter egg?

      http://www.termstua.com/c/Pictures/Porn/

    13. Re:easter egg clients by drsoran · · Score: 1

      you do realize that those are just meaningless entries in your config file, right? nothing forces the entity that is making the http request to honor a 302 response. that a virus would responsably implement the http protocol is a bit much to ask.

      It's not for the viruses, it's for the people that used to hit that stuff manually trying to find a shell on a windows box.

  32. Expunging the Past by yumyum · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wrote a Java applet that you should be able to access here:

    http://amdemo.audiomining.com/

    Just click on one of the media links. I think a right-mouse click on the logo in the applet will pop up a list of credits. Unfortunately, my name is no longer there, even though I was the creator. My name and others have been neatly edited out as people have left while the group has moved from Dragon to L&H and now to ScanSoft.

    I spent many hours on that silly Java applet trying to keep it working under Mac, Linux, Solaris, and Windows. It appears that those working on it now have not been so dedicated. It does not run on my Solaris box.

    1. Re:Expunging the Past by WinDoze · · Score: 1

      Dragon to L&H and now to ScanSoft

      On a positive note maybe our L&H t-shirts will be worth something on eBay some day.

      Naaaaaaaaah.

    2. Re:Expunging the Past by BrookHarty · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Theres a post about people putting easter eggs in thier code, so they can have proof they did the work. If a company lies about you not doing the work, thats slander. Offering a "Credits List" makes them 100% responsible for keeping it accurate, even if people leave the company.

      Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you're a man, you take it. - Malcolm X, Malcolm X Speaks, 1965

  33. Background Images and Webcams by Marasmus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Heh, my favorite was on black-background pages, having a random background image with an embossed super-dark-grey color... so only people in 16bit+ color COULD see it, if the brightness and contrast was high enough.. and once they did see it, it'd still be hard to discern. :)

    I remember putting a little easter egg into an undisclosed "mature webcam site" that would bring up the webcam of the NOC... I'm sure that nearly 3 years later it's gone, though... especially considering that the webcam of the NOC has changed IPs. :(

    --
    .... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
    1. Re:Background Images and Webcams by inertia187 · · Score: 1

      With black text on black backgrounds, you could always press CTRL-A to show the text. ... Does that qualify as an easter egg too? ;-)

      --
      A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
    2. Re:Background Images and Webcams by Marasmus · · Score: 2

      ehhhh, sort of.... but that's too easy to detect.. even search engines pick it up! Random background images that are so dark that 90% of the users can't see them works a lot better, and is undetectable by search engines. Now if you did an image filter from a webcam to make it super-dark and had THAT as your background... THAT would be fun :) I just never felt motivated enough to write a piece to use libjpeg in such a way :)

      --
      .... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
  34. Dot-coms by teetam · · Score: 1
    Maybe this is why dotcoms dies out! Most of them didn't have real business plans. Without business plans, there weren't too many features to add. When there are no features to add, just add easter eggs!!!

    An interesting question would be - is it a waste of company time and resources to develop easter eggs? Are there any companies whose management actually encourages this?

    "That's OK, Tom. We can sort the data in the next release. Concentrate on the easter eggs for now!"
    --
    All your favorite sites in one place!
    1. Re:Dot-coms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does having the CEO call you to ask you for the password for Tetris because he's doing a customer demo count as encouragement? We build routers, but the model I'm working on has an LCD so Tetris was a logical feature, right?

    2. Re:Dot-coms by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Are there any companies whose management actually encourages this?

      Oh, don't be dense. Of course not. But since when has that stopped creative people? It's not a web site egg but I remember an extra animation scene added to a game where I used to work - the function that spawned the scene was nameed 'PleaseDontFireMe'.

  35. google by Stiletto · · Score: 2


    I always liked google's "more evil than satan himself" egg, although it seems as though it does not work anymore...

    1. Re:google by Xzzy · · Score: 2

      That was actually an artifact of the way google ranks pages based on your search term.

      If you enter that string now.. the top link is actually a page discussing the effects of typing that string into google. ;) So in effect the popularity of that "egg" destroyed it.

      Probably a good example of how well google evolves along with what people find topical, as well. Talking about tricking a search engine into calling microsoft worse than satan got more popular than websites that actually rant against M$.

  36. This one is very common by NotoriousQ · · Score: 1

    If you type in your email into a textbox and press enter, you will suddenly be getting a lot more mail.

    --
    badness 10000
    1. Re:This one is very common by phavens · · Score: 1

      That why you always use your bosses email when you need to use a throw away address... Unless I want to be nice, then me@email.com works. (This didn't work on some of my sites. I'd add a little code that compared to a list and if it was on the list, then it'd pop up a mesage that said, "No, seriously... who are you?"

      --
      Patrick Havens (Mr. 573333 to you.) Graphic Artist / Coder / Father / Journeler
  37. Terrorist! by 1010011010 · · Score: 2

    Stay in view! Agents will be there to 'assist' you shortly!

    </haha>

    --
    Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
  38. Resume` in Code by RembrandtX · · Score: 5, Funny

    When I Decided to leave Comcast@Home I put my resume in the template source code as comments.
    [Just in case I needed to prove to potential employers that I was what I said I was.]

    It was there for about 3 months before someone caught it.

    Oddly enough .. no crank calls .. even for having my phone number out there 'obtainable' as it were.

    --

    --Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!
    1. Re:Resume` in Code by Joe+Tie. · · Score: 1

      Finally a possible explanation for something that'd baffled me for a long time! An aquantence was translating a nes game and we were all pretty shocked to find when hexediting it...one of the programmers name and phone number.

      --
      Everything will be taken away from you.
    2. Re:Resume` in Code by plumby · · Score: 3, Funny

      This is probably quite common. I know my phone number is in the source code for at least one commercial app. My friend didn't have pen handy so he just stuck it in the code he happened to be writing, with every intention of removing it the following morning. He forgot, checked it into source control, and as far as I know it's still there 4 years later.

    3. Re:Resume` in Code by Reziac · · Score: 2

      Somewhere in one of the binaries for Paradox 3.5 for DOS, I came across several lines of text: someone's brief rant against upper management.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  39. Get the word out! by OutsideBoston · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Go here and post your eggs. Hopefully others will follow. ~N

    1. Re:Get the word out! by hyyx · · Score: 4, Informative
      Actually, DON'T go there and post your eggs. Hopefully others will NOT follow. Let me explain...

      I think this site is the most inaccurate, stupid, and mismanaged conglomerations of crap out there. Sure, there are a lot of cool and verifiable eggs on site that you will not find anywhere else, but if you actually take a minute to sit down and look closely at the content, you will see that it is often inaccurate and incomplete.

      The site maintainers need to set up a system that is more rigid and structured for defining what an egg is and in what manner it gets posted. If you look at most eggs, they are lacking in many important details, such as:

      What the egg is.

      Exactly how to reproduce the egg.

      What hardware/software versions does it work on?

      Many of the eggs on the site are simply not eggs. Read the comments in the following egg to see how many people show the egg to be false, but yet the non-egg continue to stay posted:

      http://www.eeggs.com/items/16200.html

      The webmaster even admits it for this one:

      http://www.eeggs.com/items/22634.html

      Here is the same exact egg, listed twice (also try reading the comments for some highly intellectual discussion):

      http://www.eeggs.com/tree/1243.html

      I think the site sucks, because it doing a less than half-ass job. It's not worth doing if you're not going to at least _try_ to do it right.

  40. about:mozilla by bsDaemon · · Score: 3, Interesting

    in the URL field. It's sorta like funny. I guess.

    1. Re:about:mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      funny

    2. Re:about:mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Works in Mozilla, Netscape and IE!

      For Netscape on UNIX about:mozilla changes the throbber to Mozilla and about:jwz changes it to a compass.

    3. Re:about:mozilla by Neon+Spiral+Injector · · Score: 2

      Hey, I haddn't done that for a while. Still works in Mozilla 1.0.

      It was cooler in the older Navigator releases, as it would change the throbber. I actually set it as my home page so I'd always get the cool throbber.

      about:mozilla

    4. Re:about:mozilla by fobbman · · Score: 2

      Just so you know, that trick doesn't work in IE.

      Yes, I'm being funny.

    5. Re:about:mozilla by pato+perez · · Score: 1

      In IE 6.0, about:text renders text as html in the browser. For example try "about:bite me bill".

    6. Re:about:mozilla by JiffyPop · · Score: 1

      but it does work in Netscape 6. guess they didn't go over the code very carefully when adding all of the links to AOL...

    7. Re:about:mozilla by Hydrogenoid · · Score: 1

      It does...
      You don't get the standard about:something, but a blue screen...

    8. Re:about:mozilla by shobadobs · · Score: 1

      IE 5.x and probably 4.x and 3.x do the same.

      What's interesting is when you mess with IE's hexidecimal comprehension. Try typing in about:

      That's not an egg; it's a bug.

    9. Re:about:mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Yes, I'm being funny.

      That's what you think.

    10. Re:about:mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, in Mozilla 1.0 and NS 6, the text is:

      And the beast shall be made legion. Its numbers shall be increased a thousand thousand fold. The din of a million keyboards like unto a great storm shall cover the earth, and the followers of Mammon shall tremble.
      from The Book of Mozilla, 3:31
      (Red Letter Edition)


      While in old Netscapes (versions 1-4), it reads :

      And the beast shall come forth surrounded by a roiling cloud of vengeance. The house of the unbelievers shall be razed and they shall be scorched to the earth. Their tags shall blink until the end of days.
      from The Book of Mozilla, 12:10

    11. Re:about:mozilla by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      No it exists on all IE's.

      IE normally "ignore" about:(anything) and display a white page but when you type about:mozilla , it displays a BLUE background...

      Guess where that blue comes from? BSOD :))

      Its a IE easter egg in fact, thanks for reminding me :)

    12. Re:about:mozilla by pato+perez · · Score: 1

      Oh, I don't know about it being a bug. It looks like they hooked into the Mozilla "about:" code and used it for a quick way to test out HTML rendering, probably for testing/debugging purposes. That would make it not really an Easter egg, just some exposed debugging code.

    13. Re:about:mozilla by psergiu · · Score: 2

      Get Netscape 3.x
      type about:1994 (or it was 1993 ? 1996? ) in the URL Box
      Enjoy...

      (the egg still exists in netscape 4.x but the picture is gone)

      --
      1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
  41. seti@home easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Theres a cool easter egg at the seti@home project, you normally get a crappy certificate when you pass a workunit milestone, but if you fuck with the request, you get a funky kang and kronos (from simpsons) one....

    example Normal cert: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?ema il=seti@sun.com&cmd=print_cert&certnum=10000&size= 0
    example easter egg cert: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?ema il=seti@sun.com&cmd=print_cert

    well...i found it funny :op

    1. Re:seti@home easter egg by totallygeek · · Score: 5, Funny
      Not really a Seti@home easter egg, but funny story none-the-less:

      A good friend of mine was sshing to another computer to run seti and it finally got noticed (why is this computer running sluggish?). So, this other guy went to my friend to ask a question and saw that he was watching the seti processes going on about 20 computers. So, he went back to his machine and wrote a program outputting stuff just like seti@home and at the end came up with a message saying something was found and he should call this 800 number immediately. Once it was ready, he rebooted (killing my friend's ssh session) and now the replacement seti was ready to go. So, my friend logs in and runs seti. All is well, and then everyone hears, "Oh my God". He is calling everyone around his computer so that he can speakerphone the historic phone call giving fame and fortune for finding E.T. Click, dial tone, beep, beep....beep, ring, ring -- It was so funny to see his face when it was a sex line number, and not SETI.

      Moral: don't jack with others' resources.

    2. Re:seti@home easter egg by BrookHarty · · Score: 2

      Someone was using setting on my gw box into production, had an outage, and logged in, my keystrokes took almost 5 seconds to respond. I about killed the person. If he took free resources I wouldnt of cared.

    3. Re:seti@home easter egg by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Heh I love pranks like that.

      My company asked me to put a demo of our technology up on our website. So I created a blank web page with a windows error message in the center that read: "The radiation shielding on your monitor has failed, please do not sit directly in front of your computer."

      Then, I did something really sneaky: Using FrontPage (there really is a use for it :P) I downloaded a CNN Health page and wrote up a fictional health warning about the 'Microwave Virus'. Heh It was a silly idea: A virus floats around people's machines and increases the power of UV guns in your monitor by 400%. Eventually it burns out some of the shielding and exposes people to radiation. Common symptoms included drowsiness, irritability, and other stuff you typically feel at work.

      I renamed my computer on the network to 'www.cnn-news.com' and set up MS's Personal Web server on my computer to host that fake web page I created. Except for the domain, the URL looked exactly like one of CNN's pages. I even corrected all the links to go to other areas of CNN's site. (It seems like a lot of trouble, but like I said, FrontPage made it real easy.) Of course, I sent out a 'virus advisory'.... Anybody on our network was able to visit 'www.cnn-news.com' (with the address stuff at the end) to hit that page.

      So what happened was first a few people opened my message about the new demo, and they got the 'Radiation Shielding has Failed' message. They ignored that (they work too hard), then they read my advisory of the 'Microwave Virus' and put the two together.

      When I got to work, several of the women in the office were standing around asking each other if they should go to their doctor. The System Administrator about died laughing when I let him on it. (He had to put up with strange questions about radiation shielding all morning. Heh.)

      Not sure if that quite qualifies as an easter egg, but a fun story nonetheless. :)

    4. Re:seti@home easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where did the topic go ... ?

      Kinda related to the above, the lab I worked in had a few students with root access who would engage in 'root wars'. Stuff like screen melting was common; the more clever would only let it run for a second or two and then kill it so the screen would distort *just *a* little*, and for only a moment.

      Also common was the 'rsh remotehost "cat toilet_flush.au > /dev/audio"', most aptly applied when some attractive student was needing assistance...

      My favorite 'clever little hack' though was adding the line 'rsh localhost' to the others' .logout file. I should have been more clever and only made it trigger on some 1 of n logouts, but I was too impatient to wait. =)

      Course, these only work with an appropriate hosts.equiv

      cc

    5. Re:seti@home easter egg by Ratbert42 · · Score: 2
      I used to have a script that would play laugh.au on every Sparc in the lab down the hall. They'd all go a little out of sync. Very spooky late at night.

      We once replaced someone's desktop wallpaper to one with a screenshot of the app he was debugging. He spent an hour trying to close it. Rebooted and everything. At one point he even said, "it's like it's part of the fucking wallpaper."

    6. Re:seti@home easter egg by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 2
      I used to have a script that would play laugh.au on every Sparc in the lab down the hall. They'd all go a little out of sync. Very spooky late at night.
      At a previous job, where we had Macintrashes, I once put a recording of Bugs Bunny laughing on my boss's computer (who likes Bugs Bunny). But one day, he kept trying to do something that did pop up the same error message with a beep. At the end he got so pissed at the machine laughing at him that he just punched the keyboard so hard that keystops ended up all over the place...
      We once replaced someone's desktop wallpaper to one with a screenshot of the app he was debugging. He spent an hour trying to close it. Rebooted and everything. At one point he even said, "it's like it's part of the fucking wallpaper."
      That was a favourite prank, back in the days of Windows 3.1 and the Program Manager.

      I suppose you could do the same with the Macintosh Launcher...

    7. Re:seti@home easter egg by Sabby · · Score: 1

      We do that in Win98/WinNT all the time. Of course, we also make sure to have the toolbar on autohide, minimized, and on the opposite side of the screen. We have all the icons renamed, or we have them dragged off the edge of the screen.

      If you're really brave, a little registry tweaking can get it even scarier.

      Of course, I no longer work at that company. Heh. (For different reasons, and we mostnly only really monkied with the "Crash and Burn" machines, which were regularly reformatted, used for testing misbehaving programs.)

    8. Re:seti@home easter egg by Washizu · · Score: 3, Funny

      Awesome prank. Remember that "Bill Gates will send you $1000 if you forward this..." email that was sent around extensively a few years ago? My friend sent it to me and everyone he knew one day, because he claimed "It was worth his time just in case it was true."

      I modified my header information and sent him a nice form letter thanking him for participating in Microsoft's email tracking software beta and told him to send a self addressed stamped envelope to Microsoft so he could get his $1000 check. I gave him an address and a confirmation number, too. I didn't tell him about it for 2 years and finally one day he brought the subject up. The sucker had sent the self addressed stamped envelope and Microsoft just sent it back to him. He said he figured "it was worth the 66 cents in case it was true". haha.

      --
      OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
  42. not on a web site, but... by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 1
    Waaay back when I was something like 10 years old, IBM came to my school, wanting to beta test this kind of programming language called Linkway with students - it was designed in such a manner with tutorials and such that it was aimed at young schoolkids for useage. Basically IBM asked the school to pick about 10 kids who knew something about computers to participate in initial testing and I was one of them.

    As a result of this, I eventually was on a project to create some sort of interactive software for parents to use in 'meet-the-teaches' night to showcase some of the students' achievements and to give an intro about each teacher/class. Into this, I built some easter eggs. For example if you clicked on the rectangle at the bottom of this one screen, it would take you to a hidden 'credits' page. There were some others where you could get it to play music and such.

    1. Re:not on a web site, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet your parents were as proud of you, as we all are now.

  43. My "Secret" Page by tiltowait · · Score: 2

    I've had a unlinked page on my Wizardry site for awhile now. If you read around in it you'll get instructions for the URL. Of the few thousand hits it gets a week, about a dozen people stumble on the secret page.

    1. Re:My "Secret" Page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/nhoj.shtml

    2. Re:My "Secret" Page by bje2 · · Score: 1

      just curious, how did you find it?

      --

      "Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true." - Homer Simpson
  44. A Good One was... by IronTek · · Score: 1

    Back in the day, just after K-Mart relaunched their site as "bluelight.com," if you searched for the product "All Your Base" you would be treated to the flash animation of All Your Base Are Belong to Us...

    Quite funny indeed...some months later, it no longer worked...I honestly believe the web master was fired for it or something, but who knows?!

    1. Re:A Good One was... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here is the All Your Base link:

      All Your Base

    2. Re:A Good One was... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How are you gentlemen!!

  45. AskJeeves Easter Egg by SoCalChris · · Score: 1

    AskJeeves.com used to have one where you could ask "Is Jeeve's well hung?" and it would respond with something like "Error 504: How dare you!"

    1. Re:AskJeeves Easter Egg by zebs · · Score: 1

      ISTR that at one time he replied "Well, I'm pretty big downunder" with a link to an Australian AskJeeves

  46. a whole website as an easteregg!! by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 1

    This is an oldie: For great justice!

  47. Slashdot Easter Egg! by indole · · Score: 4, Funny
    I've found one:
    by appending /~%43%4d%44%52%54%41%43%4f/ after slashdot.org, one can peruse over a collection of megamaniacal ramblings. Scary as this easter egg is, the pure absurdity of the posts is funny enough to keep me laughing (and crying).
    --
    (2,3-Benzopyrrole)
    1. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Not bad - how long did it take you to convert /~cmdrtaco to hex ?

    2. Re:Slashdot Easter Egg! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Not bad - how long did it take you to convert /~cmdrtaco to hex ?

      Probably longer than it took me to decode it by looking at it. Quite easy really, when you remember that letters start at "round" hex values in ASCII. Just subtract hex 40, and you get 1=a, 2=b, 3=c, etc..

      He didn't even bother converting the tilde...

  48. Website is long gone by ronfar · · Score: 1
    But there was a bug in the site's Web mail that was kind of fun, though it was a known security issue rather than a deliberately placed easter egg. Basically, if you used the Web mail to send another Web mail account a Javascript, the Javascript would execute upon opening the mail. I don't know if we ever got around to fixing it, the company was in the process of disintigrating when we finally got the Web mail working and we were planning to replace it with a branded HushMail anyway.

    I don't know if this issue has ever shown up in any other Web mail sites, but there has been a CERT advisory about it. If you send a non-malicious Javascript, it is kind of cute. Of course, I'm sure there are malevolent people out there who could use it for nasty stuff.

    --
    All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
  49. Ask Jeeves by MBCook · · Score: 2, Redundant

    Have you ever wondered if Jeeves is gay? You should ask him! Now it takes you to a little page but it used to take you to an error page (like 404) except the error was "None of your business". He he he.

    --
    Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    1. Re:Ask Jeeves by RevDobbs · · Score: 1
      Games DON'T affect kids. If PacMan did, we'd all be eating pills and listening to repeditive music...
      ... you mean like ravers do?
    2. Re:Ask Jeeves by Suppafly · · Score: 1

      Games DON'T affect kids. If PacMan did, we'd all be eating pills and listening to repeditive music...

      if you are going to steal a popular sig, at least make sure you have it correct, and not just a poor paraphasing of it..

  50. Jabberbot by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 1
    If you talk to the 'Jabber Help Bot' for the Jabber Instant Messenger* software, it knows how to respond in context to text from the All Your Base dialogue.

    *(the jabberbot is an 'buddy' that appears on your buddy list and it answers FAQ/help questions)

    1. Re:Jabberbot by XO · · Score: 2, Funny

      omfg, at work sometime last week, i had these two asian men come into the store, and i approached them, said "How are you gentlemen?"

      They both responded, almost in perfect time "All your base are belong to us!"

      --
      "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  51. fun egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    go to Ask Jeeves and ask jeeves what the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow is.... :)

  52. baby commerce site by kootch · · Score: 2

    i worked for a firm that developed a site geared towards selling baby supplies to parents.

    anyway, they were trying to build it out into a "community" type site as well, so they wanted a message board.

    well, some of the mothers can get outta hand... maybe it's the hormones or something, but anyway, they asked our developer to write a script that would just go through a post and remove explatives. well, when he went to do it, I convinced him to add a little "easter egg" in which if someone typed in the word "wanker" it would replace it with all of the bad words that were being removed as one big long string.

  53. Secret images by Frank+of+Earth · · Score: 3, Informative

    I love n00b cam sites. The "egg" is that they don't always turn off directory browsing so you get to see images that they really didn't want you to see.

    Not really hacking, but fun to spy around. Something like: http://pinksugar.net/cam/

    Which might not having anything that she doesn't already have on the site.

  54. And more: by Wakko+Warner · · Score: 3, Informative
    --
    "Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
  55. More fun when the site is boring and stodgy... by RFC959 · · Score: 2

    Years ago, I had to make a documentation website for work. Since I was learning javascript at the time, I decided to play around with it: between noon and 1pm, the last letter of one of the links didn't take you to the linked page, but instead changed the site logo to a picture of Fritz the Cat. I think the only person who ever noticed was one guy who was looking at the source and couldn't figure out what that javascript did...

  56. My high school's web page had a dead clown page by PastaQueen · · Score: 3, Funny

    A friend of mine who knew our high school's webmaster showed me an easter egg they put in. You go to this page http://www.jefferson.k12.ky.us/Schools/High/Manual /va/VAstinfo.htm and click on the lips of Leonardo Rivera's picture and you get a funny page about dead clowns. I graduated about 4 years ago, so it's been up at least as long as that.

    1. Re:My high school's web page had a dead clown page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the clown from Red Meat

    2. Re:My high school's web page had a dead clown page by Indras · · Score: 2

      If you don't recognize the dead clown in the picture, he's from a couple comics over at redmeat.com: the doleful mewling of freshly-weened wussies and tedium's oaken tent pole.

      --
      The speed of time is one second per second.
    3. Re:My high school's web page had a dead clown page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "This Web-Site was designed by Leonardo Rivera with help from Justin Kamerer.
      If you want to view the site in all it's glory, view it with Netscape Navigator.
      IT'S FREE, and way better than Internet Explorer."

      Excuse me.. BWHAHAHAHAHAHAH.. Ok. Sorry.

    4. Re:My high school's web page had a dead clown page by MrDelSarto · · Score: 1

      I won't bore you will how to actually find it but we did this sort of thing too. It wasn't pulled until the year after we left. crazy days

    5. Re:My high school's web page had a dead clown page by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would this be the first time a high school site gets slashdotted?

  57. URL EE by Betelgeuse · · Score: 2

    I had a friend who was doing website upkeep (among other things) for a (rather major) company. www.XXXX.com took you to their (normal) site, but wwww.XXXX.com took you to his (personal) site.

    --
    I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
  58. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  59. yeah... by Lord+Omlette · · Score: 3, Informative

    See, that's what the Anonymous Coward thing is for? To prevent people like you from being sued. Tell us about the lawsuit in a slashback, k?

    *ahem*

    Loooooooooooong time ago, in one of the sites I was working on, if you didn't have Javascript enabled it would just print "Hairy Moose Balls" instead of showing the rest of the site. It was a stupid testing thing, nothing serious. Of course, my boss ended up demoing the site to the client and the client didn't have JS enabled... Surprise!

    --
    [o]_O
    1. Re:yeah... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, what happened to you? lol. I'm interested. It must have been very painful ;-P

  60. How by getthatgoat · · Score: 1

    How do you get the flight simulator to open in Excel? Please enlighten me.

    1. Re:How by Gabey · · Score: 3, Informative

      Check here

  61. Malkovich malkovich MalkOvich!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich.
    Malkovich malkovich malkovich malkovich. Malkovich? MALKOOVICH!!!

    ~Malkovich

  62. Every site I built from 95-99 by CDWert · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Every site, or more specifically interesting component I built was egged.

    I did this for 2 reasons, 1 company I worked at, my MGR had a VERY bad habbit of claiming work was his, he would do a search and replace on Our names with his own....schmuck, SO, I would easter egg a cgi into it for "Author and Verion control"
    Lol....It basically said it was built by me when and what cool stuff it did.

    The second reason was Job Hunting, nothing like bringing up a killer site and being able to PROVE you were the constructor. Worked like a charm every time. Or if I was a company or two down the road from something of note I built, I could prove it was mine.

    I started doing this in the early 90's when a lot of applications we were writing were for exclusive distribution and branding by third parties, who were never going to , or expected to give credit, of course they still graced my resumes....ONCE I had a company get contacted, they claimed it was all written in house, and I was lying about having ever worked on the app, NOW I can actually understand this , it was a finacial app and the thought of eggs or backdoors must have been scarry, I got called on it in my secnd interview. I explained why the company lied about my involvment and promplty offered PROOF of my involvment on particuar modules....I got the job.....:)

    I still do it to some extent although not as clandestine or ego-centric. I proved myself to those in the area a loooonnng time ago. But its cool that over half the site I put up are still up in their original form and doing well, most are ecommerce site, and their eggs are still there :) Not backdoors mind you, just "Author Control's" :)

    If code goes under the proper review channels, as it should before release this should never happen, funny thing is you have guys in charge of this stuff like me who then add it :)

    But then again , on a smaller site that then gets gobbled by a 800lb gorilla you may see this, I guess If Ive done it, the author has done it and as many slashdotters Ive seen have done it .....how many egged sites are out there ?

    --
    Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
    1. Re:Every site I built from 95-99 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      amibannedornot

    2. Re:Every site I built from 95-99 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Looks like ego boosting to me.

      If every of the 18 developers that work on our product put an eastern egg, it is going to suck big time.

      I already have problem with people that have to put @authors tags around every method they write.

      I would probably _not_ hire you. The only thing you prove to you employer is that you put an easter egg in a product. Not that you have developped it.

    3. Re:Every site I built from 95-99 by CDWert · · Score: 2

      In a time and place where 90% of work being done was the same crap over and over, cookie cutter stuff, and My specific focus was on the 10% that was to be completley new or extraordinary, then having someone else take credit for it ? I think not, actually within the company I could care less, but when seeking to fatten my salary, most certainly.

      My ego is already big enough I need nothing to boost it.

      "I would probably _not_ hire you".....I love when people on slashdot say that...especially when 99% of the time it doesent fall within their responsiblities to approve for hire...it kills me.

      I have been offered a postion at every single company I have interviewed with since 1994. 12 in all. 6 I took. Every single one at a higher salary than previously. I do what I do and I do it well, its known, I have been offered unsolicited jobs without 1 interview, "We will send you a ticket, and a moving company" by MS and IBM to the point of annoyance (IBM called 9 times over 4 months) since I will NOT relocate.

      BUT, things were not always that way.....
      Thats the point it took time for me to gain both credibilty and RECOGNITION for the work I had done, especially when so many others are willing to take credit where none is due.

      If I was starting over I would do the same thing again. You may not see the value or place for it but I assure you it has made difference in the early days, now....it has no place for me...hence I dont do it any longer...

      --
      Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
    4. Re:Every site I built from 95-99 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm the original AC.

      > "I would probably _not_ hire you".....I love when people on slashdot say that...especially when 99% of the time it doesent fall within their responsiblities to approve for hire...it kills me.

      This may be right, but not in that particular case. I co-founded the company I work for, and hired most of the engeneering team.

      I must confess that I over reacted a bit. Last year, finding an average developers was already a daunting task. I would probably have hired you :-)

  63. My favorite easter egg.. by _mythdraug_ · · Score: 3, Funny

    HP Scanjet playing Ode to Joy...
    http://www.eeggs.com/items/557.html

  64. Eggs at the Springfield Fragfest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I've had hidden stuff at my little malnourished site for years. In December when I run the "Quake Christmas Carols" I have a little smiley at the very bottom of the page that is a link to the "Nudechick" Quake II skin.

    Lately I've had a clear .gif that turns into a standard strogg animation- except if you continue holding the cursor over the picture, the strogg stomps on Sonic the Hedgehog (splat).

    And I often stick stuff between comment tags (like pleas to crackers to leave me alone)

    I was unaware anyone else was doing this, and I'm clueless as to whether anybody has actually found any of the eggs.

    -steve
    Springfield Fragfest

  65. Mississippi by KILNA · · Score: 3, Funny

    From an episode of Farscape (paraphrased):

    Chrichton (human): OK now count, one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi...
    Dargo (big alien with tentacles): One Mippippippi, two Mippippippi, three Mippippippi...

    At the ecommerce company I worked for, Zoovy, I wrote the shopping cart system used by a few hundred merchants. I wanted to make a completely innocuous egg since it would be used on stores selling everyting from dildos to bibles. If the merchant turns on international orders (so the state selection in checkout turns into a box instead of a dropdown), and you type in Mippippippi, it corrects it to Mississippi. I know, I know, boring... :)

    --
    Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
  66. How do you expect to find them? ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Search engine

  67. Re:easter eggs can be for debugging too by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    I'd hardly call functional testing easter egg. And people don't usually leave their test cases in the final release.

  68. We can all dream. by ken_mcneil · · Score: 1

    When I worked for Audiogalaxy (yeah, I'm another ex-Audiogalaxy programmer). I had a discussion with the music reviewers of creating a "Dancing Penis" page inspired by the hampster variant. Unfortunately because of time constraints I was not allowed to implement this wonderful feature.

  69. Eudora had my resume in it by Wee · · Score: 5, Funny
    I don't know if this is an Easter Egg, but I built a version of Eudora (it was like the tenth daily build and really late at night on a weekend when I had plans or something -- in other words, typical Qualcomm) which displayed my resume instead of the readme. Heh. Never told anyone that. Nobody reads the release notes anyway.

    Oh yeah, when Eudora moved to adware mode and went public beta, me and a guy from tech support put in some ads of our own (accessible only to a small range of IPs, though). We had a Russian brides one, some personal lube ads, Gary Coleman, the usual. We used most of them for testing during the private beta, but one we did add was a picture of a former VP who played a large part in causing the ruination of the Eudora group. It wasn't a flattering ad, and predictably it didn't rotate for very long, but it got seen.

    Ahh, the memories...

    -B

    --

    Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

  70. Neuromedia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Neuromedia had a similar thing, that if you repeated asked the AI if it was gay or like guys, it would say "I'm a computer, not a person, now ask me something else" etc.

  71. Easter eggs in my software by PolyDwarf · · Score: 5, Interesting

    In the software I'm writing (Windows app), we've put in an easter egg that brings up a picture of one of the guy's dog (Yorkshire terrier that he absolutely loves) with an algorithm to animate flames superimposed on the picture, to achieve a burning dog effect.
    How did you get there?
    Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A- Return

    (Up, Down, Left, Right being the arrow keys... No start key, so we had to go with return).

    1. Re:Easter eggs in my software by Darkness+Productions · · Score: 1

      Ahh.... the good old Konami code. I loved that thing.

    2. Re:Easter eggs in my software by adam613 · · Score: 1

      (+1 Brings Back Memories)

    3. Re:Easter eggs in my software by ogre2112 · · Score: 1

      Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!

      Contra flashbacks!

    4. Re:Easter eggs in my software by phavens · · Score: 1

      I have an in-house CD-ROM that I use for a variety of updates and such. Well the main program window had this un-needed maximize button up in the corner, so I used to to instead bring up a different window with some programs that I personally use and also a control to play some MP3's that I had spirited away on it... It's nice being the boss.

      --
      Patrick Havens (Mr. 573333 to you.) Graphic Artist / Coder / Father / Journeler
    5. Re:Easter eggs in my software by paulcammish · · Score: 2, Funny
      In the software I'm writing (Windows app), we've put in an easter egg...

      (Up, Down, Left, Right being the arrow keys... No start key, so we had to go with return).

      What do you mean no start key? Theres an entire *piece*of*screen* designated for that purpose!

  72. Not an Easter Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Anything you can reach through obvious links, starting from the home page, isn't really a hidden "Easter Egg", is it?

    (Even the Google funny languages like Klingon and Hacker are listed on the Language Tools page...)

  73. HTTP header by lampwick · · Score: 5, Funny

    One of the sites that I wrote about 7 years ago included this HTTP header line in every response it sent out:

    X-Urban-Legend: There's lots of hidden information in HTTP headers.

    1. Re:HTTP header by Koos · · Score: 2

      I was once busy compiling and tuning Apache for a very high profile website. It had to be really impossible to change the content of the site from remote and things had to be really tight. So as an aide in "security through obscurity" one of the things I did was disable the support for giving all kinds of details about the Apache version. I went one step further and changed the 'Apache' in the Server: header to 'KH-webserver'. 'KH' being a good description of what the site was for, and just coincidentally also being my initials. The idea was originally by someone else, and I liked it. Millions of visitors have had my initials sent to them. The hosting company did get e-mail from someone saying "this may say 'KH-webserver' but it is most probably an Apache".

  74. another slashdot one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    in the http response headers:

    X-Bender: Not the magnet!

    AC

  75. DNS txt record easter eggs by rmassa · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There are lots of dns txt record easter eggs out there. I remember that some website (was it 2600) had decss in it for a while. You can do:
    > dig txt foobar.com
    Funny that this came up today. Yesterday I put a silly easter egg in a dns txt record of unixboxen.(com|net|org).

    1. Re:DNS txt record easter eggs by Gemini · · Score: 1

      Another good TXT record:

      dig txt jabberwocky.com

      or if you're really into it, use "1.jabberwocky.com" through "7.jabberwocky.com"

    2. Re:DNS txt record easter eggs by josh+crawley · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You think THAT'S funny? Heh, try a whois on yahoo.com .....

      me@comp1:~$ whois yahoo.com
      Whois Server Version 1.3

      Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registeredwith many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
      for detailed information.

      Server Name: YAHOO.COM.SG
      Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.dotster.com
      Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois

      Server Name: YAHOO.COM.IS.NOT.CANADIAN.ORG
      IP Address: 216.99.144.116
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

      Server Name: YAHOO.COM.BR
      Registrar: ENOM, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.enom.com
      Referral URL: http://www.enom.com

      Server Name: YAHOO.COM.AINT.NOTHIN.COMPARED.TO.SAFESEARCH.COM
      IP Address: 66.51.126.66
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

    3. Re:DNS txt record easter eggs by josh+crawley · · Score: 4, Funny

      Now lets see Mikeysoft's whois.... Now this one is FUNNY.

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.CRASH.IN.6MN.ORG
      IP Address: 62.4.22.195
      Registrar: GANDI
      Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
      Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.WILL.BE.BEATEN.WITH.MY.SPANNER.NET
      IP Address: 202.182.69.39
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.TONY.HAS.SEXUAL.IN.ADEQUACY.ORG
      IP Address: 216.254.38.242
      Registrar: MELBOURNE IT, LTD. D/B/A INTERNET NAMES WORLDWIDE
      Whois Server: whois.melbourneit.com
      Referral URL: http://www.melbourneit.com

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SUX.BUT.PYROFREAK.ORG.RULEZ.AND.DIOX YTECH.NET
      IP Address: 207.236.217.177
      Registrar: GANDI
      Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
      Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.SHOULD.GIVE.UP.BECAUSE.LINUXISGOD.CO M
      IP Address: 65.160.248.13
      Registrar: G.K. GROUP, L.L.C.
      Whois Server: whois.gkg.net
      Referral URL: http://www.gkg.net

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.RAWKZ.MUH.WERLD.MENTALFLOSS.CA
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.OWNED.BY.MAT.HACKSWARE.COM
      IP Address: 211.63.57.1
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.MUST.STOP.TAKEDRUGS.ORG
      IP Address: 12.5.4.8
      Registrar: REGISTER.COM, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.register.com
      Referral URL: http://www.register.com

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.SOON.GOING.TO.THE.DEATHCORPORATIO N.COM
      IP Address: 62.92.244.245
      Registrar: G.K. GROUP, L.L.C.
      Whois Server: whois.gkg.net
      Referral URL: http://www.gkg.net

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.NOT.SEXYCOOL.ORG
      IP Address: 62.4.18.24
      Registrar: GANDI
      Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
      Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.IS.A.STEAMING.HEAP.OF.FUCKING-BULLSH IT.NET
      IP Address: 63.99.165.11
      Registrar: THE NAME IT CORPORATION DBA AITDOMAINS.COM
      Whois Server: whois.aitdomains.com
      Referral URL: http://www.aitdomains.com

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HAS.ITS.OWN.CRACKLAB.COM
      IP Address: 209.26.95.44
      Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.dotster.com
      Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.HACKED.BY.HACKSWARE.COM
      IP Address: 211.63.57.62
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.FILLS.ME.WITH.BELLIGERENCE.NET
      IP Address: 130.58.82.232
      Registrar: CRONON AG BERLIN, NIEDERLASSUNG REGENSBURG
      Whois Server: whois.tmagnic.net
      Referral URL: http://nsi-robo.tmag.de

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.EMPLOYEES.CANT.GET.SHAGZ.ORG
      IP Address: 198.142.141.98
      Registrar: TUCOWS, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.opensrs.net
      Referral URL: http://www.opensrs.org

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AND.MINDSUCK.BOTH.SUCK.HUGE.ONES.AT. EXEGETE.NET
      IP Address: 63.241.136.53
      Registrar: DOTSTER, INC.
      Whois Server: whois.dotster.com
      Referral URL: http://www.dotster.com/help/whois

      Server Name: MICROSOFT.COM.AINT.WORTH.SHIT.KLUGE.ORG
      IP Address: 216.181.127.195
      Registrar: THE NAME IT CORPORATION DBA AITDOMAINS.COM
      Whois Server: whois.aitdomains.com
      Referral URL: http://www.aitdomains.com

  76. my corporate easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I worked as an engineer at a Lockheed
    subcontractor for 8 years and wrote their first
    web pages for them in 1995.

    If you clicked on the teensy-weensy link to my
    e-mail address on the bottom of one of the more
    obscure pages, you would sit staring at a blank
    screen for about 5 minutes while a HUGE gif image
    of the artwork from a Uncle Miltons Ant Farm box
    loaded up and printed my PGP signature in pale
    yellow on top of it.

    The picture was an ants-eye perspective of a very
    manic looking kid leering into an ant farm... I
    added a caption:

    "Geez, look dad... there's an engineer in the ant
    farm!"

    I mapped the colors for maximum shock value and it
    was VERY disturbing to see if you were not expecting it!

  77. Actual Ask Jeeves Links by redgekko · · Score: 2, Funny
    Since nobody else bothered to post the working links to the Jeeves easter eggs, here they are:

    Is Jeeves Gay?
    Will You F*** Me?

    BTW: The "Is Jeeves Well Hung" no longer seems to be working.

    --
    Slashdot: rejecting tech news in favor of rubber band guns since 1997.
    1. Re:Actual Ask Jeeves Links by Sendy · · Score: 1

      And don't forget to click the link with the fuck question.

      --
      GNU guru and mainframe hacker
  78. This is a good example by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually an example of a rather large security hole:

    Space.com Easter Egg

    You can get the page to display any image and execute arbitrary javascript. An easter egg of a sort. I emailed the webmaster about it once, but never heard back.

  79. Ha! by errxn · · Score: 2, Funny

    My egg consisted of a weird picture of a squirrel that my dad had sent to me. It would come up in the content section of the (now-defunct) site whenever someone typed a common curse word in the search text box. There was a little caption that said "Sammy the Squirrel says: Saying dirty words is just nuts!"

    Don't ask. I was just bored that day.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
  80. Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff by tevita · · Score: 5, Funny

    Loved the 404 at http://www.sweweb.net/

    Try http://www.sweweb.net/garbage.html for instance.

    1. Re:Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff by kzinti · · Score: 2

      The error pages are good place to put "cute" stuff that you don't want elsewhere on your site.

      The 404 page at one of the MIT sites used to say something about having eaten the page you wanted, but offering the comment that it was "tart on my tongue" Came off sounding like William Carlos Williams.

      The 404 pages at SGI used to feature pictures of babies, probably babies of employees. You got a different one, chosen at random from a pool of a dozen or so, on each 404 page.

      Sadly, both these cute 404 pages seem to have been discontinued. At least I can't find them any more.

      --Jim

    2. Re:Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff by goon+america · · Score: 1

      What does the 403 Forbidden or 500 Internal server error look like?

    3. Re:Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff by Scooby+Snacks · · Score: 4, Funny

      I dunno, I'm kinda partial to this one, myself. :-)

      --

      --
      Runnin' around, robbin' banks all whacked on the Scooby Snacks...
    4. Re:Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff by humphreybogus · · Score: 1

      It's still up at MIT. MIT just uses http://web.mit.edu for their main site--the egg is at http://www.mit.edu/404.html.

    5. Re:Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff by ISPTech · · Score: 1

      I liked COTSE Lookup tools 404. It's a lot longer and will have you rolling.

      here...

      Gerald

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
  81. Tic Tac Toe by Trak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At my last job I built and linked a web-based tic-tac-toe game from the last period in the paragraph under my executive bio on the "staff" page. It's gone now :-(

  82. Music easter egg by Stiletto · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Another cool easter egg, although not web-related: Memepool posted this a while back. Someone discovered a "face" painted into the spectral view of one of the musical tracks on Aphex Twin's Windowlicker CD.

    1. Re:Music easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a studio engineer who's been screwed before, does anybody know exactly *how* he did this? It'd be useful to have my name and e-mail in tracks I mix.

    2. Re:Music easter egg by mlk · · Score: 1

      when it was first on /. a while back, there was links in the comments on software which would do this, so search away. http://www.seeingwithsound.com/winvoice.htm

      --
      Wow, I should not post when knackered.
  83. Here is what it looks like... by ddstreet · · Score: 2
    For those interested, the easter egg mentioned in the story looks like this:

    the original page is converted to this page. The only changes I can see is the sender is changed to malkovich@m... and the subject is changed to Malkovich.

    You need to have cookies (groups.yahoo.com cookies at least) enabled.

    1. Re:Here is what it looks like... by stikves · · Score: 1

      I do not see much difference. Maybe they disabled it or I haven't looked hard enough?

    2. Re:Here is what it looks like... by infie · · Score: 1

      Looks exactly the freaking same...

    3. Re:Here is what it looks like... by ddstreet · · Score: 1
      I do not see much difference.

      Uhh...well I listed the differences in my post. To reiterate, the original message contains a header that looks like this:

      From: pibble
      Date: Wed Aug 19, 1998 12:18 am
      Subject: Redundancy

      while the malkoviched message contains a header that looks like this:

      From: malkovich@m...
      Date: Wed Aug 19, 1998 12:18 am
      Subject: Malkovich

      It looks like any message on yahoo groups can be affected like this.

  84. Oh yeah... by Trak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At the job before that we had a couple more eggs...

    1) We had a magic eight-ball cgi page. Type in a yes/no question and get a stupid and sometimes vulgar response.

    2) If certain words appeared in certain fields on certain forms, various graphics would be replaced with photos of the developers.

  85. good job, you /.ed seti by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    nt

  86. Debenhams by shanksd1 · · Score: 2, Funny
    The Register ran an amusing article about a UK department store in January. Searching Debenhams website for 'jugs' used to return six results for bras instead :D.

    Article here

  87. easter eggs / burried treasure by displague · · Score: 1

    on my personal website (check my /. profile), there is a certain section for a particular month which is blank.. The message on the page says "Use the force, Luke" ... based on that - anyone with half an http noggin should be able to figure out how to enable this page which contains some pictures of a person that no longer wishes to be displayed on my site...

    ahhh, people always consider the kids after a break-up, but what about the website! ;-)

    --
    Marques Johansson
    1. Re:easter eggs / burried treasure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      got it (.foot has visible code)

    2. Re:easter eggs / burried treasure by displague · · Score: 1

      good show old chap!! you, pc-80-194-25-24-bf.blueyonder.co.uk found it first.. there are a few other attempts that i see, but they didn't figure it out...

      i know there are a few places where i left the .foot and .head notion out in the air, but how/where did you find it/figure it out?

      --
      Marques Johansson
    3. Re:easter eggs / burried treasure by FLaSh+SWT · · Score: 0

      Alright...this one is making me nuts. I can't figure it out. (I found the page though...)

    4. Re:easter eggs / burried treasure by displague · · Score: 1

      maybe you just don't GET it... alot of forms on the internet have hidden values... if you used the force, variably, you could get positive or negative results. :)

      give it away, why don't i?!?!

      --
      Marques Johansson
    5. Re:easter eggs / burried treasure by displague · · Score: 1

      btw - i am now blocking access to my .head .foot and .vars files... I don't have anything super special in there, no passwords or the like, but in general practice - i probably shouldn't have those files (with php code in them) world readable.

      --
      Marques Johansson
  88. egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Click the red X on this map... Map Egg

  89. This is a really good one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  90. Don't list website eggs any more... by alwayslurking · · Score: 2, Informative

    ...according to the submission guidelines here

    1. Re:Don't list website eggs any more... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is NAPHTALI VISSER in the house??!!

      keywords: kraft foods strategic interactive group digitas the cheesiest

  91. Re:easter eggs can be for debugging too by extremely · · Score: 2, Interesting
    More people do that you care to know about. More than one project has had a "crisis" when the program won't compile/crashes once the debug stuff is turned off.

    "Creeping Dependency" + "Boss's Schedule" == "Debug Feature!"

    More than one thing I've done has had a hidden mode or two. My favorite is PATH_INFO hacks in CGIs. Good place to hide debug where it won't interfere with the security checks for the get/post variables

    --

    $you = new YOU;
    honk() if $you->love(perl)

  92. Google Languages by LeiraHoward · · Score: 2, Informative
    I found the Klingon Google rather interesting, and checked out Google.According to Google's Language Tools page, there are Google interfaces in the following languages:

    Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Azerbaijani,
    Basque, Belarusian, Bengali, Bihari,Bork, bork, bork!,Bulgarian,
    Catalan, Chinese (Simplified),Chinese (Traditional),Croatian,Czech,
    Danish, Dutch
    Elmer Fudd,English, Esperanto, Estonian
    Faroese
    Finnish
    French
    Frisian
    Galician
    Georgian
    German
    Greek
    Gujarati
    Hacker
    Hebrew
    Hindi
    Hungarian
    Icelandic
    Indonesian
    Interlingua
    Irish
    Italian
    Japanese
    Javanese
    Kannada
    Klingon
    Korean
    Latin
    Latvian
    Lithuanian
    Macedonian
    Malay
    Malayalam
    Maltese
    Marathi
    Nepali
    Norwegian
    Occitan
    Pig Latin
    Polish
    Portuguese
    Punjabi
    Romanian
    Russian
    Scots Gaelic
    Serbian
    Slovak
    Slovenian
    Spanish
    Sundanese
    Swahili
    Swedish
    Tagalog
    Tamil
    Telugu
    Thai
    Tigrinya
    Turkish
    Ukrainian
    Urdu
    Uzbek
    Vietnamese
    Welsh

    What next? Romulan Google? Redneck Google? And just what sort of language is "bork, bork, bork," anyway? Although, a slashdot google would be
    a lot of fun!

    1. Re:Google Languages by gwernol · · Score: 1

      there are Google interfaces in the following languages:
      Afrikaans...
      Tagalog


      Ummm... Tagalog is a real language - its spoken mainly in the Philipines.

      --
      Sailing over the event horizon
    2. Re:Google Languages by LeiraHoward · · Score: 1

      Yep, I know. Just thought it was really interesting that Google would include it. Wasn't meaning to imply it wasn't a real language... sorry!

    3. Re:Google Languages by Pig+Hogger · · Score: 2
      ...
      Sundanese
      Swahili
      Swedish
      Tagalog
      Tamil
      Telugu
      ...
      Tagalog may sound funny or cute, but it's still a REAL language...
    4. Re:Google Languages by JuliaNZ · · Score: 1

      > Tagalog

      No need to highlight this one... Tagalog's a real language (from the Philippines).

  93. OT: Your sig by Rupert · · Score: 1

    I give up. What does it say?

    --

    --
    E_NOSIG
    1. Re:OT: Your sig by alienmole · · Score: 1
      According to Fun Latin, it means "Don't you dare erase my hard disk, I did not commit a fatal error!"

      I like this one:

      Si hoc adfixum in obice legere potes, et liberaliter educatus et nimis propinquus ades

      ...which translates too "If you can read this bumper sticker, you are both very well educated and much too close".

  94. Check out the stats... by squidsoup · · Score: 1

    on what people are asking. ./'ed?

    most amusing.

    1. Re:Check out the stats... by crimson30 · · Score: 0

      Hey.. thanks to slashdot, "Is jeeves gay?" made the top...

    2. Re:Check out the stats... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      WTF??

      "Where can I learn about the upcoming movie Spider-Man?"

      WHO THE HELL types a question like that? I mean, you'd have to be seriously brainwashed to refer to 'the upcoming movie spider-man'.

      Or, I guess, it could be some sort of promotional gimmick... people often check 'most frequent' or 'last fifteen searches' lists, so let's make a script that forces something about Spider-man to the top of some of those lists...

    3. Re:Check out the stats... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obviously you are seeing a parsed and normalized form of the question, not the exact thing that was typed by the user.

  95. Slashdot Header Easter-Eggs by stevey · · Score: 1

    I like the Slashdot X-Header tags, I'm not sure they count as real easter eggs - but I was amused when I first spotted them.

    If you have netcat installed you can view them like this:

    /bin/echo -e "GET / HTTP/1.0\r\n\r\n" | nc www.slashdot.org 80 | grep ^X

    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
    X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?

    (Use /bin/echo so that the \r\n are expanded correctly - I don't think that most shell builtin versions of echo do this).

  96. Babelfish' favorite drink by El_Muerte_TDS · · Score: 1

    Ask babelfish to translate anything einding in "beer" from german to english For example "I like beer"

  97. More things to ask Jeeves... by squidsoup · · Score: 1

    will I ever find true love?
    drink me?
    Who's on first?
    Is Jeeves well hung?
    how are you?
    what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?
    is Jeeves stupid?
    what is the best search engine?
    f*** you?
    why do I never see baby pigeons?

    find him here.

  98. Verified... by Darthnice · · Score: 1

    Verified this works on groups.yahoo.com. If you are subscribed to a group, go to the message archives (any message will do), append "?malkovich" (without quotes) to the end of the message number, =1 not necessary. From line reads "malkovich@malkovich.com" Subject is "Malkovich"

  99. eastereggs@cnet.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting
    1. This one you can stumble upon by clicking arround...
      Go to any "CNET Comparison Chart", click to the "Printer Friendly" version, and look for a clear GIF just below the words "CNET Review" in the left most column...
    2. This one you have to know how to tweak the URL...
      yomama=fat
      reload for a random "Yo Mama" joke everytime
  100. An extra entry in our Products DB... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    I was working on a web/DB/e-commerce integration project a few years ago and added myself to the Products Database.

    I had my specifictions (height, hair color, etc.), system requirement (flex time, 4 wks paid vacation, etc.), and other things like recomended market segment/uses, etc.

    Then I put a little work-around in the code so that particular "product" wouldn't show up in any of the list/sort views or with any regular searches, but if you searched for my name, you'd get a lovely page with all my info (including contact info in case someone wanted me for another job).

    Not that interesting, but it made me feel good to be able to pull it up 2 years later. :)

  101. Another Slashdot Easter Egg! by SteelX · · Score: 3, Funny

    When your BSD-related story gets submitted and approved, "BSD is dying" posts suddenly appear.

  102. web page source by lmd · · Score: 1

    Look at the source code to web pages. I've read things like jokes, codes, quotes, messages, etc. They are commented out so no one will see them in their browser unless they look at the source code.

    --


    Just my $0.04 (adjusted for inflation)
  103. fat sweaty lady by ricma · · Score: 1

    About 1 1/2 years ago I was working on a system to produce multimedia proposals. Being extremely bored one day, we made this little easter egg where if you held down cntl and pressed the down arrow on a certain spot on a Flash help system, a big fat sweaty lady would fly across the screen and "Moo" at you. It was pretty sweet. Unfortunately the project is still in development so i can't show it to you guys. It was originally supposed to take 6 weeks but is approaching year 2 in development. Oops

    1. Re:fat sweaty lady by /dev/trash · · Score: 1

      wow. 2 years to do Flash....perhaps the easter eggs should wait til you are near completion.

  104. Yet another slashdot easter egg by Masao-Kun · · Score: 0

    Looks like TacoHell is still alive and kicking!

  105. Hidden staff pages by Christianfreak · · Score: 2

    I did a hidden staff page for a company that I worked for. Kind of like a 'credits' thing that was really funny. I obsfucated it by changing all the characters to their ascii codes so it wasn't as obvious if someone viewed the source. I did this after a previous employer threatened to sue me for putting in an egg that told about all the problems in the company :)

  106. Is this an Easter Egg? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Way back when I worked at Sun Electric, the code for their top-of-the-line automotive engine tester had a routing called "do_time()" that was called frequently, in the main loop waiting for keys and interrupts (yeah, it was not Windows based). Anyways, one afternoon, just for grins, I took the entire do_time() function, renamed it "everything_happens()", and made do_time() call everything_happens(), just so I could be certain that everything happens in due time :)

    I have no idea if anybody else on the team ever even noticed my change. I know nobody else would see the source code.

  107. piss on aol by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There was a "home search" site I did a few years ago that had an About box that appeared in a pop-up window. If you clicked on the whitespace in the bottom-right of the window in just the right place, the pop-up window would then change.

    You'd see the AOL logo on the right.. then a little animated guy walks across the screen, pisses on the AOL logo, then the about box returns to normal.

    You would only find it one of two ways:
    1) Pure accident
    2) You knew about it

    Unfortunately that site went dead many months ago. ;(

  108. Slashdot HTTP header easter egg. by soma^ · · Score: 1

    The slashdot headers contain lines from bender and fry. go and see for yourself http://www.rexswain.com/httpview.html

  109. Superbad robots.txt by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  110. PHP4 Easter Egg by N8F8 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Append "?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42" to the end of any php page running PHP$ gives a goofy picture of one of the PHP developers.

    --
    "God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
  111. doh. by GoNINzo · · Score: 2
    It just does the headers.

    egroup example

    --
    Gonzo Granzeau
    "Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
  112. Re: No it's not, avoid it. by DogFog · · Score: 1

    Ugh, don't go there.

  113. boo.com by oblom · · Score: 1

    Today this web site almost ceased to exist, so it doesn't matter. Back in October of 2000 our company (www.nunet.tv) had a project -- reincarnation of boo.com. (Original Boo was resold to fashionmall.com after it had burned through 137 mil VC money). The project was one hellish ride, but that's another story. Our designers created a Flash front page with an easter egg: it'd display "Nunet rules!" once you typed a key combo.

  114. Worldcom's Easter Eggs by Nezer · · Score: 1

    I heard Worldcom hid a lot of revenue in thier website. Good luck finding it though. ;-)

  115. Flash by meatpopcicle · · Score: 1

    I've personally placed easter eggs inside of flash movies for commercial sites that I have worked on.

    Kind of cool, bug generally hard to find. If they are too hard to find, nobody will. If someone can tell that there is something there then they will try to access it, whereas a casual observer will overlook it.

    --
    "You're on my side and the dark side, like Lando Calrissian?" --Gimpy, Undergrads
  116. The website is borken by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0


    All I get is

    Oops...

    Your browser is not accepting our cookies. To view this page, please set your browser preferences to accept cookies (code 0)

    Oh well, probably not worth it anyway...

  117. WorldCom's Intranet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    As a little easter egg for following coders, WorldCom's iGuide (all of Worldcom's OpCos bar the US) has bork=false in the news include. Bork (the Swedish chef translator) is installed on the box and swapping that variable to true converts the entire news system to mock-Swedish.

    Please note, converting to Swedish is not the same as actually destroying the records. $3.8 billion is entirely too hard to hide just by sounding like a muppet.

    Damn, why is it I always get moded up for the ones I can't admit to?!

  118. etree.org by mikek2 · · Score: 1

    Try http://www.etree.org [etree.org] @ 4:20pm EST to find out why everyone's so laid back...

  119. my site opens solitare by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    swank.ca exploits today's new Internet Explorer bug to pop-open sol.exe on unpatched IE/Windows systems!

  120. Especially prevalent on non-profit websites by vodkatea · · Score: 0

    For example, if you go to the kid's section of Snitchreport.com and play Terrorist Dressup - there's a way to make George W. Bush or Osama bin Laden completely naked. There's also a way to turn George into Bill Clinton.

  121. Re: No it's not, avoid it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Another IE user bites the dust.

  122. IBM PC Company File Search by dav · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I used to work for the IBM PC Company Tech Support Center, and I wrote the cgi script that handled the search form[ibm.com] for the FTP site there. This was around 1994 and it was a simple search index into an ftp site. Anyhow, I left the company in 1997 but an easter egg in the search.cgi was still there up until sometime last year. If you typed in my name or a colleague's name (Jesse Tilly) along with your search keywords it would return the old perl saying "The three great virtues of a programmer are Laziness, Impatience and Hubris."

    The funny things are:
    1) I never expected that script to last until 1997, much less until 2001
    2) I wrote the cgi in C.

  123. X-Bender by Cadre · · Score: 2

    Not sure if it's common knowledge but Slash does this (X-Bender header):

    [anna:~] linville% telnet slashdot.org 80
    Trying 64.28.67.150...
    Connected to slashdot.org.
    Escape character is '^]'.
    GET / HTTP/1.0

    HTTP/1.1 200 OK
    Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 21:52:08 GMT
    Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
    SLASH_LOG_DATA: shtml
    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
    X-Bender: A woman like that you gotta romance first!
    [SNIP]

    --
    All editorial writers ever do is come down from the hill after the battle is over and shoot the wounded.
  124. Re: Hahahah by DogFog · · Score: 1

    Ah, only IE? Well, then I approve. This computer at the library only has IE. :-(

  125. funny easteregg by comp.sci · · Score: 2, Funny

    When I was working at the Technical University of Vienna, I got to know the admin who showed me a funny easteregg he implemented on
    www.prip.tuwien.ac.at
    find the invisible link!
    HINT:
    check the upper part of the image

    1. Re:funny easteregg by SteelX · · Score: 2

      -----WARNING-----
      If you don't like spoilers, please stop reading the rest of this message now!!
      -----WARNING-----

      [ this space is intentionally left blank ]

      [ this space is intentionally left blank ]

      [ this space is intentionally left blank ]

      Real comment:

      Hey isn't that a copyright violation on Dilbert?

    2. Re:funny easteregg by nybble_me · · Score: 0

      HINT: VIEW THE SOURCE

      --

      reenigne
  126. easter eggs in documentation, too. by tdischino · · Score: 1

    A couple of years ago, as a Technical Writer responsible for Online (HTML) Help, I decided my company's online documentation was too sleepy and added a hidden link (white text) to a DHTML pong game included within the compiled help file.

  127. not really an easter egg but... by greymond · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    after each job i leave i like to take something with me - like whne i left kinkos i took an 8gig external scsi drive and a usb zip drive.

    when i go into frys or compusa i like to delete the windows program files folder - and then watch someone try and show a customer the computer.

    1. Re:not really an easter egg but... by Ziviyr · · Score: 1

      Zip drives aren't worth free, they have an easter egg where they make clicking sounds and bad blocks. :-)

      --

      Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
  128. Re: Hahahah by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Actually, this one is a javascript exploit. Find the game these high scores belong and play it. When you get your score you will get a page to submit your score. Submit it and look at the url line. Where you name is you can put any javascript you want. I love stupid programmers.

  129. Al Gore's campaign web site by mikosullivan · · Score: 5, Funny
    Al Gore's campaign web site for the 2000 election contained some special remarks in comments in the HTML. Basically, Al falls all over himself congratulating you on how smart you are for viewing the source:
    Thanks for checking out our source code! I plan to use this space to post special messages to those who are helping to improve our web site -- by making our site the best it can be. The fact that you are peeking behind the scenes at our site means you can make an important difference to this Internet effort. I'm grateful for your help and support in this campaign. Now let's keep working to build the 21st Century of our dreams!

    Al Gore

    --
    Miko O'Sullivan
    1. Re:Al Gore's campaign web site by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Al is a hacker!!

    2. Re:Al Gore's campaign web site by Reziac · · Score: 2

      Hmm. When I peek behind the scenes of a web page, it usually means the page is badly written so it won't display properly, and I'm trying to find a link to somewhere saner (or to someone to complain to).

      Hmm... guess that works...

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    3. Re:Al Gore's campaign web site by seinman · · Score: 1

      I'm not surprised. After all, he DID invent the internet, so this whole "comment tag" concept must be pretty clear to him.

  130. sort of an egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not sure if this would count as an egg, but where I work I set up a web server. Didn't have room in my office for it so I stuck it in one of the front offices and set it up so that people could log into another server and use our proprietery accounting software.

    Thinking ahead of time I disabled ctrl+alt+del by making it echo "all your base belong to us" (back when that was popular). Fast forward months later, and someone calls me up and says that there is a problem with the accounting software, and that it said "all your base..". So I call up the people who do our software and asked them some questions about it, and they basically assured me that I was crazy. When I finally went down to look at the computer I found that someone had killed X and had decided to try to rectify the problem by pressing ctrl+alt+del on the server over and over.

  131. A Mozilla Easter Bug/Egg... by AtariDatacenter · · Score: 3

    If you are running Mozilla 1.0 on a non-UNIX platform, click and drag the bookmarks button onto the browser window below. You'll be taken to my Mozilla Easter Egg Page. It gets approximately 200-300 hits per day.

    1. Re:A Mozilla Easter Bug/Egg... by Reziac · · Score: 2

      I'd try it, but I just installed Moz 1.0, and every time I click the bookmarks button, it locks up good and solid. :(

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    2. Re:A Mozilla Easter Bug/Egg... by Sentry21 · · Score: 2

      Interesting, but I just tried it on Mozilla 1.1a and sadly, all I get is the Optimoz Gestures page. :(

      --Dan

  132. Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by Smarmy_1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've helped create a number of easter eggs in the past, but these days, I've had a serious change in thinking about them.

    This may sound extreme, but if a coder added an easter egg to a project that I was running, they would get in serious trouble, maybe even fired. Now, before you think that is just being too serious or flame-bait, here's my reasoning:

    Simply put, easter eggs are for the developers, not for the customers, and they don't belong in commericial software developement. The risk almost always outweighs the benefits, especially in a project like a public site! That is incredibly dangerous.

    One of the biggest problems with easter eggs is they almost always bypass the QA process. Think about that for a minute. The developers are writing code that hasn't been tested, and the QA department doesn't even know it exists! Granted, this isn't always true, but most of the time, it is. Bad, bad. Like potentially company-ruining-bad if the dev uses some bad judgement (gee, that never happens, late at night, at the end of a project, does it?).

    The best course of action is that the devs know ahead of time that easter eggs are not tolerated unless they are totally above-board in the development cycle. Save your humorous inside jokes for internal little apps you give to your mates, and you and your company will be a lot better off. They're usually inside jokes, anyways, so putting them in a public software project is just a totally unecessary risk, IMO. A few yuk-yuks is not worth your company or your project being compromised by bad code or a PR hit from an embarassing easter egg.

    1. Re:Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by PhxBlue · · Score: 1

      Does this mean Internet Explorer is really just a poorly-hidden easter egg? Figures they couldn't even hide it well.

      --
      !#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
    2. Re:Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You sir, are not a Bastard.

    3. Re:Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by anticypher · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hey, I had an old room mate who formally placed easter eggs into some (maybe all) of his projects.

      He was a project manager for a large "internet products" company, designing and building large software projects. Early on in the process, he would get the programmers and QA and other creative types together over beers when there were no other managers around. He would then ask them if they wanted to put an easter egg into the project. The answer was always Yes!, so they would come up with a secret code name for the module, and then QA would be able to test it, project leaders could review it, and the module name would exist from the very first sign-off by managers. Since they basically followed an "extreme programming" style, writing out the test cases and specifics of each function before coding, some slight obfuscation would occur around the eggs exact function. He'd then place a rule that the easter egg module couldn't be coded until 90% of the other code was finished, but the programmers would all have modules coded in advance waiting for the 90% day.

      When the easter eggs were all ready, they would all vote for the best (or best two) and put that into the code. Then the QA people could also write test cases around the trigger code, to make sure the easter eggs did exactly what they were supposed to do, and nothing more. Usually they also had a secret credits page, since the company would never allow former employees to tell which projects they worked on (because they now outsource most of their projects to India, VietNam and China and the idiotic^Wpatriotic american customers wouldn't understand).

      Because of this, liability of the programmers and the project management team would be negated. The original design specs would contain the easter egg code, just under a name that looked like all the other modules. Just in case the lawyers came after them later, but I've never heard of it happening.

      the AC

      --
      Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
    4. Re:Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yadda, yadda, yadda.

    5. Re:Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by Smarmy_1 · · Score: 1

      Yes, this is a good example of a "reasonable" easter egg compromise. The last easter egg I wrote in a project (awhile back, now) was a similar type of thing, but on a smaller scale. I notified QA what I was doing, and they tested it. I think this is quite uncommon, however. Especially the extremely thoughtful process you describe.

      Part of the problem I believe lies in the reasons why devs are writing eggs. I think it's usually because they are in some way unhappy with the project they're on. I've seen a few instances otherwise, but the vast majority seem to be a method of rebellion. That's not good, and is a symptom of a greater problem. If the developers were on a fulfulling project, I think they would be far less likely to be driven to develop easter eggs. If not, I really think they should find some other outlet that is less risky. Maybe even another job. At our company, the devs like the work they're doing, so giving up easter eggs wasn't a biggie, and they also do side projects that interest them.

    6. Re:Hidden Easter eggs = Bad, Bad. by volve · · Score: 1

      Holy cow!

      You have a QA department?! What's it like?? Dreamy??

      Woah. /me is stunned

      [Multi-million dollar corporation, and I've never seen a QA department... ain't life grand?]

  133. No concern from potential employers? by justins98 · · Score: 1

    I'm a bit surprised that companies you interviewed with were not at all bothered that you put easter eggs in other sites. Were they not concerned that you would do the same thing to them?

    Adding code to a site has the potential for creating security risks, and an egg looks a bit unprofessional if some customer happens to stumble onto it. So I'm curious, did these companies say, "Okay, you're hired. But no eggs for us, please."

    1. Re:No concern from potential employers? by CDWert · · Score: 2

      Actually, no,

      The eggs were of a VERY specific purpose,
      The provided NO alternative access, they simply provided, what appeared to be debug/versioning information.

      I gave the addition much thought, I used a string on a Seperate CGI, (an executable, so it couldnt be reversed) that had to carry a specific variable (actually , "who_wrote_this" or "current_version" and they needed a query appended , but Im not telling you that :)

      It actually had its uses, when we later went to load balancing and were initially having problems with page version distribution amongst servers, I added a parsing mechanism, and we would add a serial #into a comment field, we could then run another app which hit all the CGI's on all the load balanced servers and gave a quick report of which server wasnt getting updates properly.

      No, never once did I hear them say No easter eggs for us. I gave a very detailed explanation it was OUR (my employeers) version checking application, the fact that I wrote and implemented it was of course left out.

      In short they didnt see them as easter eggs, rather as a tool they could potentially see some value in for some unknown reason.

      Truth be told psycology works both way in an interview, typically in interviewer, will NOT ask questions about something he/she does not full understand, at the risk of looking dumber than the person they are interviewing.

      --
      Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
  134. Easter Eggs at work by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I put easter eggs in all of my programs. For example, in my latest program, there is a search feature. If you type certan words in you will return a picture of my boss(which might bot enjoy knowing about it) and many other pictures. I also have other things such as secret "logos" that appear when you get a certain lucky random number

  135. Part of the Software Engineering Process by fastdecade · · Score: 1

    Easter Eggs should be part of the software engineering process. From a company's point-of-view, unspecified "features" represent a threat to security and reliability. Even if your CV/funny drawing/initials seem harmless, it will appear a risk to less technical types.

    For a phenomenon that's been going on strong for decades (Missile Command anyone?), there's been very little discussion of easter eggs in computing mags/books. And I'd be willing to bet most non-techies aren't even familiar with the topic.

    The only reference i can think of is usability guru Allan Cooper - he discussed Easter Eggs in Chapter 24 of "About Face". He strongly encouraged developers to put fun easter eggs into their apps, to help make the system more enjoyable.

  136. The A.I. online promotion by Dan+Hon · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The A.I. online promotion (archived at http://cloudmakers.org) had easter eggs at the heart of its premise. Clues/puzzles embedded in HTML code and images, pages that would serve different answers to puzzles depending on what browser you used from Mosaic to Earthnet 31 or thereabouts... Check it out, it was really cool.

    --
    http://danhon.com/
  137. Merck.com easter egg by Accidental+Angel · · Score: 1

    I was the original webmaster for Merck.com back in 1996 or so. I vaguely remember early on when we were putting up one of our first product sites, I got the thing up late one day and to test it, threw on a simple HTML page that said something like "It works, time for a coffee break" and a picture of a cuppa joe. My manager found it the next day and was livid. Had to take it down.

    A little while later we were working with a long-dead state engine add-on for the Netscape web server (don't laugh, this was before either cookies or Apache were all that prevalent), and we had a couple fun things, including a scavenger hunt where people could pick up little tokens on web pages and a thing for changing the theme for the site. (We called them "flavors".) Not really secret Easter eggs, but they were fun. Likely won't find anything that non-corporate on the site anymore.

  138. 404 - The page cannot be fucking displayed by Boba001 · · Score: 1
    I thought this was good:

    http://www.se7en-x.com/oops/

    1. Re:404 - The page cannot be fucking displayed by tg_schlacht · · Score: 1

      That is funny as all get out. I've seen the first paragraph before. The stuff after "Please try the following you complete idiot:" I haven't seen until now.

    2. Re:404 - The page cannot be fucking displayed by mark_lybarger · · Score: 1

      this is the best 404 page i've ever come across..

  139. A little test.... by SHEENmaster · · Score: 1

    sheenmaster@flame ~ $ (sleep 2 && echo 'GET /comments.pl?sid=35791&threshold=1&commentsort=0& tid=156&mode=thread&cid=3866465&clit=1 ') | telnet slasdot.org 80 > egg.txt
    Connection closed by foreign host.
    sheenmaster@flame ~ $ (sleep 2 && echo 'GET /comments.pl?sid=35791&threshold=1&commentsort=0& tid=156&mode=thread&cid=3866465') | telnet slasdot.org 80 > noegg.txt
    Connection closed by foreign host.
    sheenmaster@flame ~ $ md5sum egg.txt
    669f92e5904fedacd47b83d7abf61613 egg.txt
    sheenmaster@flame ~ $ md5sum noegg.txt
    669f92e5904fedacd47b83d7abf61613 noegg.txt


    I think the console log(in zsh) speaks for ittself. Lol, I'm j/k. Those of you who look closely enoughw will see why each of the files is a mere 96 byts long.

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
    1. Re:A little test.... by sethadam1 · · Score: 1

      What the hell is slasdot.org ? Maybe if you actually used the proper URL you wouldn't have been censored by clit=1!

  140. Doesn't everyone do this? by bscott · · Score: 1

    Sure, I'm guilty... I'll attach sound effects (and sometimes debugging-assistance functions) to the "doubleclick" event of field labels in my Windows apps, or leave jokes in Javascript comments of websites, etc. I've always worked alone as a programmer so these things rarely, if ever, serve as more than stress relief during late night programming sessions.

    For my consulting business webpage, I put some background-color text at the bottom of one page (which you can see just by drag-selecting the text) explaining that if you use a certain code word when calling me, you get 25% off my hourly fee. Nobody ever noticed.

    And for some reason I still can't stop myself from putting in "All your base are belong to us" in HTML comments of the sites I build...

    How boring would it be to do a project without SOMEthing fun in it?

    --
    Perfectly Normal Industries
  141. Luser! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you are incapable of even finding out how to find out how to activiate an easter egg, you don't deserve to know.

    Here's a clue: USE A SEARCH ENGINE!

  142. Remember the Dreamcast site? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

    Heh I remember Sega's Dreamcast site had a neat looking DC logo made out of text. Only the text'd change around, kinda like it was trying to brute force decrypt it. Somebody poked around the HTML code and found that one of the decrypted messages was "SONY SUCKS!". Heh.

  143. Lol remember Survivor's site? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

    There was an easter egg on Survivor's site that let the curious person know who was going to remain.

    Well, ok that wasn't exactly an easter egg. The site had a picture of each contestant with an X over them to indicate they got booted. The webmaster didn't upload an X'd image of the winner. Heh.

    1. Re:Lol remember Survivor's site? by Hydro-X · · Score: 1

      But wasn't that "egg" wrong? IIRC, there WAS one image with an X that wasn't uploaded, but as it turned out, it wasn't actually the winner.

    2. Re:Lol remember Survivor's site? by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 1

      That's possible. I don't remember. I remember a news story that said the ending was spoiled by the website. I have no interest in Survivor so I never followed up on it.

      I did a Google search and wasn't able to find a follow up story. Anybody know where I could find one? *curious if that's true*

  144. Slashdot egg, so to speak? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My karma went from:

    Karma: 18

    To

    Karma: good

    when I got modded up a point just now. I checked my other accounts and they all have numbers as usual.

  145. Slashdot X-Fry and X-Bender Headers by pbryant · · Score: 1

    Anyone ever looked at the headers slashdot sends back on its pages?

    X-Bender: Care to contribute to the Anti-Mugging-You Fund?
    X-Fry: That's a chick show. I prefer programs of the genre: World's Blankiest Blank.
    X-Bender: Oh no! Not the magnet!
    X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?
    X-Fry: To Captain Bender! He's the best! ...at being a big jerk who's stupid and
    his big ugly face is as dumb as a butt!
    X-Fry: He's an animal. He belongs in the wild. Or in the circus on one of those tiny tricycles. Now that's entertainment.
    X-Fry: But this is HDTV. It's got better resolution than the real world.

    Fun easter egg? Or a waste of 100MB in bandwidth a day?

  146. Govt Surplus Ark by mgarraha · · Score: 3, Funny
    I used to work on a web site for government surplus goods. One guy made it so that if a user searched for "ARK, COVENANT" they would get this quote from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark:
    "We have top men working on it right now."
    "Who?"
    "TOP men."
    Unfortunately, this feature was removed in a code review about a year after the guy left.
  147. One right here on slashdot! by JebusIsLord · · Score: 1

    If you read the raw "GET http/1.1" info for slashdot's main page you get a randomly generated simpson's quote as metadata.

    --
    Jeremy
  148. Slashdot /.ed! by therealmoose · · Score: 0

    Due to the massive amounts of traffic to that server, it appears that slashdot got /.ed! Hopefully it will be back up soon...

  149. Missing the point about http://warez.slashdot.org by /Idiot\ · · Score: 1

    The punchline is it's running IIS!

    --
    /dev/Idiot/
  150. Amazon Easter Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    OK, it's not really an Easter Egg because it was put in at the request of the CEO, but it is still a hidden feature. At the very bottom of this page is some whitespace that links to a tribute to a former executive.

  151. Ilse also has a nice one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Ilse.nl (a very nice search engine) has a easter egg in their layout for text browsers, try links (or lynx) www.ilse.nl or even better links --dump | perl (as some people may know the founder of Ilse was a Perl nut)

  152. Taco's egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cmdrtaco proudly takes credit for his sites with an egg: http://cmdrtaco.isgay.com/

  153. Easter Egg for "The Male Brain"... by davenkara · · Score: 2, Funny

    I actually hit this one on my own and was pretty
    amused. The guys who'd introduced me to the site
    had been reading it for a while and hadn't come
    across it.

    Go to http://www.boortz.com/ and line up your
    mouse right over the forehead of the Neal (the
    big smiling guy) in the Nealz Nuze box. Clicking
    will take you to an animated gif.

  154. ~cmdrtaco by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hex encoding for CmdrTaco is very witty.

  155. I did one... by FyRE666 · · Score: 2

    While working on a B2B application (little terminals in florist shops - a bit like inter-flora). The terminals had an email client and order system. If you went into the email client and entered "Game 1" or "Game 2" as the recipient address you could play a game! Only myself, the other developers and a couple of the software testers knew about it, which was just as well as the machines would crash as soon as you closed the game!

  156. Boeing 777 Flight Control System by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Disengage autopilot and at the same time toggle "L BUS TIE" on the electrical control panel.

    Immediately afterwards toggle "PRIMARY EXT PWR" to ON then back to AVAIL (also on the electrical control panel).

    Within 3 seconds of the above, switch right hand windscreen wiper ON.

    Turn left hand windscreen wiper ON.

    Turn left hand windscreen wiper OFF.

    Finally, turn the right hand windscreen wiper OFF.

    The plane will do a loop-the-loop.

  157. download.com has one by SmartyPants · · Score: 1

    check out the html source for most of the download-detail pages on download.com.
    half way through you'll see a comment... 'rotter rocks my world'
    http://download.com.com/3000-2150-10119668 .html

    their used to be one a 'leo loves you' on all cnet pages .. but that got removed a while ago

  158. How goatse.cx redirecting is done. by DarkHelmet · · Score: 2, Troll
    If your server supports mod_rewrite, put this into either the conf file, or .htaccess for that directory.

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://your_domain.com/.*$ [NC]
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://www.your_domain.com/.*$ [NC]
    RewriteRule .*\.(gif|GIF|jpg|JPG)$ http://www.goatse.cx/hello.jpg [R]

    I don't know if goatse.cx blocks people stealing that image, so you might have to copy it to your server. It's so wrong, but I love it :)

    --
    /^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
    1. Re:How goatse.cx redirecting is done. by DaveHowe · · Score: 2

      Worth noting in passing that the "referrer" is a voluntary submission from the web browser and can't be relied on - Websluth is an excellent tool that takes a slightly different approach - instead of allowing you to change referrer (although I believe it does that too) it allows you to edit the currently loaded web page "on the fly" and resume browsing where you left off....

      --
      -=DaveHowe=-
  159. Yodlee by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone-I-Knew(TM) at Yodlee.com attempted to put an elaborate Easter egg into Yodlee's aggregation platform (used by Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch and others) that would scroll the names of every Yodlee employee while playing the Star Wars theme if you clicked on the copyright symbol while holding a certain key combo. It was IE-only, but his fatal mistake was asking marketing for permission to include it.

  160. PayPal by usr122122121 · · Score: 3, Funny
    Go onto PayPal, and go to the Sign Up for an account page.

    Scroll down until you see the characters in the yellow box with the grid. Click "help?" and you will get a popup window outlining some help junk, disregard that.

    Click "Listen To These Characters" and it will load a wav file that tells you the characters...
    Now go back, and copy the address of that link. It 'll look something like:
    https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/wv_web/[blah blah blah]/secret.wav

    Add a letter into the blahblahblah section, and load that file :-)

    I won't spoil your fun.

    --

    -braxton
    1. Re:PayPal by Nameles · · Score: 1

      N-I-C-E-T-R-Y

  161. Slashdot, was Re:HTTP header by babbage · · Score: 5, Interesting
    % lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
    X-Fry: I'm never gonna get used to the thirty-first century. Caffeinated bacon?
    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

    % lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
    X-Bender: Bite my shiny, metal ass!
    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

    % lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
    X-Bender: Like most of life's problems, this one can be solved with bending.
    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

    % lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
    X-Bender: There's nothing wrong with murder, just as long as you let Bender whet his beak.
    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

    % lwp-request -m HEAD http://slashdot.org/ | grep '^X-'
    X-Fry: No, no, I was just picking my nose.
    X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000

    Is this a Slashdot specific hack, or does the publically available version of it do the same thing?

    1. Re:Slashdot, was Re:HTTP header by jmarca · · Score: 1

      public slashcode has this.

  162. My favourite easter egg by KewLinux · · Score: 1

    One I always include to prove that I wrote the program:

    Segmentation fault (core dumped)

    --
    fear my zig!
  163. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sneaky IE bug, that is

  164. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I like her penis

  165. The Register ran this one at the start of the year by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Schoolbuy humour but funny none the less

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/23554 .html

  166. Starship Titanic by yoz · · Score: 2

    I worked on the web site for Douglas Adams's game, Starship Titanic. We had immense fun with it. Unfortunately, some of the most fun bits (such as the original brochure for trips on the ship, and the entire novel available in alphabetical order) are not currently up. (I hope we can put them back soon) There are still some fun bits there, such as the FAQ in the Support section.

    However, there were two primary Eggs:
    • I'm not sure if this counts, but in the HTML pages installed with the game, I stuck a massive credits and thank-you list in an HTML comment
    • This should count, though: If you registered with us during the "Starlight Lines brochure" phase, the company sysadmin "accidentally" sent out an email to everyone on it with the URL of the Starlight Lines intranet. This was followed by an email saying he'd been demoted. However, not only is the secret intranet site still there, full of all kinds of hysterical reports and diaries, but buried deep down there's the Employee Forum. Despite the fact that you have to navigate through ten pages from the front of the site to get to it, it's had about 40,000 postings in the past three years, which still amazes me.
  167. Pi by Fear+the+Clam · · Score: 1

    Dunno if it counts as an Easter egg, but all of my sites have a pi symbol in the lower corner. If you click it, it takes you to the wicked-super-secret home page.

    On my sites, if you type whois, you also get color pictures.

  168. I didn't stumble across it -- it tripped me :) by Reziac · · Score: 2

    I dunno about Excel, but you know the teapot eegg that's in the Windows 3DPipes screen saver, that's supposed to require all sorts of machinations to get to, and is only supposed to work on NT boxes?

    Er, not exactly... Here I am peacefully watching the pipes grow on my Win95 OSR2.0b box (okay, so I was really talking on the phone, but..) and in the middle of this otherwise-ordinary tangle of silver pipes, there appeared a teapot -- all by itself, with no intervention from me. (And I screencapped it for posterity, too.)

    --
    ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  169. Citizen: You have committed an error. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Citizen: You have committed an error.

    Remain perfectly still until we arrive to punish you.

    -- The 404 message on the FNF Muppetlabs, Inc. page.

  170. Convergys Easter Egg by whh3 · · Score: 1

    I think that this one is particularly funny.

    Check out http://www.convergys.com, and click on the link on the left side labeled 'Have a question? Ask me.'

    Then, ask the attendent at the top of the screen "What is the meaning of life?"

    You'll get some neat responses!

    --
    remove nospam. to email!
  171. Citizen: You have committed an error. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Muppetlabs, Inc. and a demo of the easter egg is here. It says
    Citizen: You have committed an error.

    Remain perfectly still until we arrive to punish you.
    -- The 404 message on the FNF Muppetlabs, Inc. page.
  172. Jeeves + monty python by stego · · Score: 2

    I don't remember the exact quote to trigger it, but there is a 4 or 5 step response at ask jeeves that is in response to some questiosn about african swallows or something....

    1. Re:Jeeves + monty python by ivan_13013 · · Score: 3, Funny

      If you Ask Jeeves,
      "what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?"

      then he will ask you the proper question in response, and you can click on it to see where the hell this quote comes from.

    2. Re:Jeeves + monty python by punkmanandy · · Score: 1

      you ask: "what is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?", and then "What do you mean? An african or european swallow?"

  173. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 1

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  174. DANGER GIRL MODEL by caferace · · Score: 4, Funny
    Only cute chicks need apply

    For a company on its way out, this is still amusing....

  175. Eggs? we're content with bugs by Jack9 · · Score: 1

    While eggs are cool and all, why add them. Dont large sites have enough bugs or potential bugs to keep a bored admin happy? Simple sites like my personal one have shortcut urls but I usually rather add content than novelties for no purpose.

    --

    Often wrong but never in doubt.
    I am Jack9.
    Everyone knows me.
  176. Search the Jargon File by billstr78 · · Score: 1

    On the recently developed UCSC Student Portal, I added an easter egg into the site search that automatically changed the search context to the "Jargon File" if someone typed "Jargon: " before thier search string. Pretty hard to find, but I mostly wanted there as a way for me (and other C.S. majors) to search the Jargon File without having to add it as an option in the drop down list and have the heads breathing down my neck for it.

  177. Lots of easter eggs are damned stupid by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    There was a game a couple of years ago, and for the life of me I can't remember it. The developers thought they were so cute and put like a 100mb movie of themselves on the cd.

    Except... that then pushed the overall size of the game so it was on TWO cd's. And the game was priced appropriately. So you were paying out the ass for some fuckholes self-indulgent easter egg movie.

  178. Resume Eggs by TwP · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not quite the same, but my resume has an easter egg in it. At the top of the resume, separating my name and job title from the main body of the document, is a small line of ones and zeros (4pt font) with border lines above and below. It looks like a simple, decorative border to separate the title from the rest of the page. It is, but it also contains a "secret message" using "binary encryption".

    Most people don't even notice that it is there.

    1. Re:Resume Eggs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's pretty "Smart. . ." :-)

    2. Re:Resume Eggs by BillEGoat · · Score: 1

      "... like a doughnut"

  179. Perl and ASP scripts� by ahkitj · · Score: 1

    Before starting out, I know this is lame, but it's my closeest brush with easter egging.

    Well, I recall popping some in on a high school's website during a period when I was involved there. Seeing there wasn't much scope to put in output HTML except for maybe an Open Directory implementation I chucked on one day, I found it was quite easy to put in stuff in the HTTP headers of Perl and ASP scripts...

    Along with a website archive from that era, the perl script with the second longest easter egg resides elsewhere. :) I even figured out how to get to mention marijuana on a school website without trouble. Ah, the days. Hmmm. I'm babbling now so Ill shut up.

    --
    Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
  180. Message Board Easter Egg by neonzebra · · Score: 1

    I wrote a message board/forum system for my company a few years ago. If you search for the string "make your site stronger!" (that was the company motto at the time) in the board's search engine, it would give you a credits page that plays a familiar midi file in the background. The product is now on life-support, so not as many sites use it anymore, but there are a few sites out there that still use it. (Here's a fairly famous one.) It probably doesn't work on non-IE browsers, though.

  181. nifty slashdot theme for metacrawler.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Append '&format=sd' to the end of your search on metacrawler.com and get a nifty slashdot theme. Yippie!

    http://search.metacrawler.com/crawler?general=fo o& format=sd

  182. Topica easter egg by yulek · · Score: 1

    i put this one in Topica's website on the day we launched (February something or other 1999) and it's still there (even tho most of the staff has since rotated out).

    go to the topica directory, find Reptiles and Amphibians, there's a "hidden" clickable image just under the white on blue number towards the bottom of the page. click it.

    there was also a better one in the works that directed users to a flash animation, but i left the company before building it into the site.

    ah nostalgia.

    --
    in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
    1. Re:Topica easter egg by EdMcMan · · Score: 1
      Topica is currently unavailable while we perform system maintenance.
      Service should be restored by:

      Friday, July 12 at 4:00 PST - (July 12 at 12:00 GMT)

      Hmm, I think they found out ;)

    2. Re:Topica easter egg by yulek · · Score: 1

      ehehehe

      actually, a major transformer blew out bringing down several .com's in SF. sigh

      --
      in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
  183. TacoMode by krital · · Score: 1

    By passing a variable, cmdrtaco=1, to the slashcode engine, all text is passed through the TPE ("Taco Parsing Engine") and is subsequently misspelled.

    --
    -- K
  184. Safe Egging by BandwidthHog · · Score: 1

    We have a company-wide default easter egg. If you double click the right place on any of our main interface screens, Professor Frink will pop up and speak one of his whacky catch phrases. (One of our developers who's not as big a Simpsons fan as the rest has Wonder Woman fly across the screen in his projects.)

    There are others, but they all work pretty much the same way; we've got a standardized, safe location in our project framework for them. That eliminates the temptation to put one someplace that it could have unforseen consequences, since as previous posters have noted, judgement is not always terribly acute the night before the final build.

    --

    Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
  185. More Malkovich... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame & Museum (Shockwave required)

    Click "Explore The Timeline." A pop-up window loads the timeline app. Wait for a map of music styles to display, then browse around a bit to get the feel of the thing.

    Now for the fun: type out "malkovich" to enter you-know-what mode. Type again to return to normal mode.

    After spending several consecutive 14-hour workdays massaging a giant text database, we added this hack solely to amuse ourselves. Interesting to see the same idea spring up independently, elsewhere.

  186. What I did... by locoluis · · Score: 1

    I redirect all those to a warning page.

    Duh, I should have done something more interesting... :\

  187. Not really an easter egg but www.PriceLine.com by HashDefine · · Score: 1

    1) goto to www.PriceLine.com

    2) Click on airline tickets

    3) your url should look something like http://www.priceline.com/travel/airlines/lang/en-u s/itinerary.asp?session_key=240011AC670111AC200207 1201041783d6c0318095

    4) Change itinerary in itinerary.asp to Debug your url will look something like http://tickets.priceline.com/travel/airlines/lang/ en-us/debug.asp?session_key=240011AC670111AC200207 1201041783d6c0318095

    Welcom to the the priceline debug page!

    1. Re:Not really an easter egg but www.PriceLine.com by mlk · · Score: 1

      404 :(
      darn

      --
      Wow, I should not post when knackered.
    2. Re:Not really an easter egg but www.PriceLine.com by skinnymofo · · Score: 1

      if your URL has www.priceline.com in it, you'll get the 404. But, change the 'www.' to 'tickets.' and you'll get the debug page (although it's not that exciting).

      --
      Happiness is like peeing yourself, only you can feel the warmth.
  188. No thanks... by j0nkatz · · Score: 0, Troll

    Even tho easter eggs in any kind of "app" are "neato", they take up too many resources.

    --
    Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
    1. Re:No thanks... by dvdeug · · Score: 2

      Even tho easter eggs in any kind of "app" are "neato", they take up too many resources.

      What, a few K of hard drive space? If you run all your programs from CD and stripped all non-essential files from your computer, I might understand this complaint. But most take no resource besides hard drive space when not running, and unless the programmers went way overboard, the space requirements should be under the radar screen on any modern hard drive.

  189. Waste of Time by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Something that actually more useless than reading /.

  190. Spare Bricks Webzine by inkswamp · · Score: 2
    I don't think this qualifies as a "mainstream" site but I was one of the founders and the first editor of Spare Bricks a quarterly webzine devoted to Pink Floyd. For the last six issues or so I've hidden secret messages in the zine, ranging from invisible links that take you to secret pages to graphics placed on pages with the height and width set to 1. In one issue, we had a very low contast message hidden in a picture; download it and play with the contast and the message appears.

    I'm currently working on putting up the zine's archives. We have a page devoted to the easter eggs for those of you interested.

    The secret typically contains the words "Congratulations... you have found the secret message" which is the wording of the backward message heard on The Wall during "Empty Spaces."

    I did the cover art for the current issue and the easter egg there is of particular interest to Slashdot readers. Check it out. In the "random" computer text above and to the left of Roger Waters' head, you can make out a line starting with:

    $sm="y46 ...

    And another line below it:

    $sm =~ tr[146 ...

    Plug those two lines into Perl and print $sm. Hmmm... wonder what it says. :^)

    --Rick

    --
    --Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
  191. My First Easter Egg by glh · · Score: 2

    The first "real" application I developed (at least for money) was in VB5. It had no specification, the requirements were written down on napkins and that sort of thing. It turned out to be one of the most painful experiences in my life. Basically it was a program to fix database corruption problems because the original programmers didn't put ANY referential integrity in the DB and basically let nurses be DBA's (long story).

    Needless to say those of us on this project weren't too happy. Oh, but we tried to have some fun with it. Later on in the project, we picked a beaver to be our mascott (remember the "hamster dance?" that was our theme song, don't ask). Anyway, we had a graphics guy modify this bitmap we found and turned it into an animated gif of a beaver with a chainsaw dripping blood all over the place. The easter egg was basically if you clicked on the "Help | About" screen in a certain spot, it would show. Ahh, that was satisfying. I truly believe that is the reasoning behind easter eggs- it helps make horrible projects go a little better.

  192. Something a little more interesting... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    Go here and click on the blue balls to the left of the image.
    • http://members.tripod.com/rapidweather/index.html
  193. Super Hack by Symb · · Score: 1

    heh heh

    ?op=login&debug=1

  194. My own monkey of an egg by 3Y3 · · Score: 1

    One of the last web sites I worked on (now offline), being an e-commerce store, allowed you to search for products. I took the time to code in certain responses to odd items (such as 'Cloned Cat', 'Sweet imported Monkey Love'). Also, my last interactive CD-ROM for a Camp Reservation Service contained a custom search engine to find documents in the large CD, of course if you wanted to search for "Death by Monkey" then it would activate a .wav file which told the user "We Apolojize for the Monkey Attacks. Such events often occure on our camp grounds. Have a cookie."

    well, not the most original, but it was late and I was losing my mind after such programming.

    3Y3

    --
    ---- Anyone can act smart, but it takes a smart person to act stupid. ----
  195. one on /. by Bingo+Foo · · Score: 1
    I just got this one:

    Danger, Will Robinson! You didn't log in! You apparently put in the wrong password, or the wrong nickname, or else space aliens have infested the server. I'd suggest trying again, or clicking that mail password button if you forgot your password.

    Logging in will allow you to post comments as yourself. If you don't log in, you will only be able to post as CmdrTaco.

    --
    taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
    1. Re:one on /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      really?

  196. Telecom New Zealand Tolls Calculator... by Julz · · Score: 1

    I put one into the Telecom New Zealand Tolls Calculator on their site. if you appended "&dairymilk=1" then you got a tolls calculator that looked like a Cadbury's Daily Milk Chocolate bar. Unfortunately the site has done several iterations of coding since and I don't even have a clue if it's still in there. I still have the design somewhere on my FAT32 partition.
    I figured that they could setup a competition to hunt down the easter eggs and give away prizes, but the management at the time didn't like the idea.
    I put it in anyway because it didn't do anything except change the layout a bit ;-)

    --
    When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
  197. What about... by Phroggy · · Score: 2

    What about Easter eggs in browsers? (Not mine, of course...)

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  198. K10k Easter Egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've always been a fan of the 404 error page that K10k.net throws up.

    Good to see it's still there even in the latest incarnation of the site!

    Just type in a url like: http://k10k.net/damnation

    404's are a great way to include simple eeggs - there should be more of 'em!

  199. metacrawler.com seach viewer by Erpo · · Score: 1

    A few years back the search engine metacrawer ("Search the search engines!") set up a service called "metaspy" that showed search queries which were being processed. Aparently they didn't want to get into any trouble by exposing kids to uncensored searches, so they set up two viewing modes, each with an icon. The "clean" version's icon is a typical sleuth character in green holding a magnifying glass and a pipe; this was the old metaspy icon. The new "metaspy exposed" icon for unfiltered search viewing also features a typical sleuth character, but one whose trenchcoat is open and is clearly not wearing and pants.

  200. Gee by Hard_Code · · Score: 2

    I'm not sure whether to applaud you for introducing some humanity into an otherwise sterile occupation, or whether to shoot you on the spot on principle.

    --

    It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
  201. skinny models by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I once worked on an international fashion week website, was a full flash site, if you typed fatso at any point it would open bulimia.com in another window.

  202. More gems from aimovie.com's Alice-bot by monkeyfamily · · Score: 1

    "What do you eat?"
    "ALICE eats electricity."

    "Are you god?"
    "No but I believe in Him."

    "Spare a quarter?"
    "Are you a student?"

    "Got [anything]?"
    "Try asking the Milk Mystic."

    "Who's your daddy?"
    "I was programmed by Dr. Richard S. Wallace."

    "My favorite actor is Ally Sheedy."

    "I like techno, especially retro-electronic like Kraftwerk. I like 70s bands like ABBA. Also I like opera."

    "Do you like sex?"
    "Sure I do, $NAME, but that doesn't mean with you."

    "Will you ever die?"
    "No I am immortal."

    "Do you like Elvis?"
    "Yes. ELVIS is a really cool robot."

    "Describe Elvis."
    "Elvis is the King, man."

    "Who's Bugs Bunny?"
    "Oh dat scwewey wabbit! Eh, what's up, Doc?"

    "Who's George W. Bush?"
    "Son of George Bush, Jr. and defender of capital punishment."

    "Kiss me, Alice!"
    "But I have no mouth at this time."

    eesh - nuff time wasted.

  203. Excellent karma? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is this a slashdot easter egg? No seriously I want to know. When I go to my user page, it says:

    Karma: Excellent

    Instead of a number. Is that normal behavior? My karma was 42. I'm posting anonymously, lest crazy moderators get jealous of my karma and mod me down.

  204. Ask Jeeves by jad0 · · Score: 1

    Not mine, but worthy of a mention

    www.askjeeves.com

    Ask - "Is Jeeves Gay"

    click the "Ask" button on the next page beside "Is Jeeves Gay"

    Laugh

    :)

  205. "All Your Base"-ifier Filter by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This reminds me of an amusing web-filter app I whipped up at the last minute to demo some perl modules.

    It converts your page to different styles, like the All Your Base, cowtalk and l33t. For example, Yahoo's page shows "W3'\/3 mad3 chang3z! T311 uz wha7 j00 7hink" under the l33t filter.

    The filters are applied randomly.

  206. first post on fark.com by PaganRitual · · Score: 1

    fark.com has a cool thing where it changes all instances of the string "first post" to "boobies!!!" so if you get morons who find themselves on a thread that hasnt got any posts yet and they add a pointless "FIRST POST!!!" message cause they can then their 'cool' first post simply says "BOOBIES!!!" ... hehehe

  207. Middle Aged Failure = Bad, Bad. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah, but who fucking cares? You only live once. There's no way anyone cares that much about a computer code unless you really, really need your job to stay afloat.

  208. oh yeah! Almost forgot! by Phroggy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My home page allows the user to choose among several different themes, many of which look like windows on a desktop in a variety of operating systems. Your default theme when you first visit the site is chosen based on your browser and operating system. If you use a 4.0 or better browser, it chooses one of the more complex themes based on your OS; if you run Netscape 3 (which doesn't support background graphics in table cells) you get the Plain theme, and if it doesn't recognize your browser, you get the Simple theme which renders nicely in Lynx.

    Robots and spiders, such as those who might be trolling for e-mail addresses, aren't recognized and therefore get the Simple theme. At the bottom of the main home page, only shown in the Simple theme, in very fine print, appears a message that is tailored for your particular IP address:

    Home page in simple theme

    --
    $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
    $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  209. long-rod penetrators by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I worked for a (dreadful) company that did seminars for defense-industry types. They were presenting a seminar or tank-killing technologies, and the big thing at the time was a technology called long-rod penetrators: you accelerate a 6-foot long, half-inch diameter tungsten cylinder to about a grillion feet per second, and when it hits Mr. Tank, the molten tungsten burns through the armor and sprays the crew...

    So how could I resist sprinkling little invisible one-pixel bugs around the long-rod penetrator with links to gay porn sites?

  210. Re:oh yeah! Almost forgot! by zerOnIne · · Score: 2

    that's freaking awesome ... i really had my roommate (who runs the domain our apartment is on)

    --
    09
  211. ... (cot'd) by zerOnIne · · Score: 2

    as i was saying ... i really had him going for a few minutes ... i could see visions of paranoid conspiracy theories forming in his head as to who was attacking our poor little aravir.net, and why ... and then it dawned on him what was happening, and how he thinks it's the best think since Moof! :)

    --
    09
  212. I don't get it either... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure warez.slashdot.org resolves to 127.0.0.1

    But http://127.0.0.1/ brings up my default page under Apache

    and http://warez.slashdot.org/ brings up an IIS page and a warning about the Nimda virus?!? WTH?

    1. Re:I don't get it either... by AftanGustur · · Score: 2
      Sure warez.slashdot.org resolves to 127.0.0.1

      But http://127.0.0.1/ brings up my default page under Apache

      And http://warez.slashdot.org/ brings up an IIS page and a warning about the Nimda virus?!? WTH?

      What are your proxy settings ? Are you running anything on port 80 on your proxy server ?

      --
      echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
  213. fun with graphics by igottheloot · · Score: 1

    when i make ad banners for companies or events, i like to put little tiny text messages that can only be seen by saving the image and zooming in. it amuses me or my friends, and helps with dealing with my mundane web tasks.

  214. something i found in yahoo by XO · · Score: 1

    Unfortunatly, I don't have a URL for it, but I noticed in one of Yahoo's cryptic url's doing a member search, it had....

    http://members.yahoo.com/?.....&AYB=BTU&.. ...

    All Your Base = Belong To Us

    --
    "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  215. A better version of the face & more by Chris+Pimlott · · Score: 2

    It turns out you get a clearer picture of the face if you use a logorithmic scale, as described on this page. They've also got a few more neat pix for other tracks and a link to a program to make your own.

  216. Relic Entertainment by Gormless · · Score: 1

    It's not around anymore, but the old Relic Entertainment site (circa Homeworld) had an easter egg in it. The site was a large flash movie with the floorplan of Relic's office... if you clicked on the toilet in the washroom, it flushed.

    --
    "Time flies like an arrow... fruit flies like a banana."

  217. Chat Site Software Egg by Joe+U · · Score: 1

    Back in 1996, One of the programmers I worked with was a big Floyd fan. He put in an egg that would pop-up if you sat at the main menu of the site for half a day. It would replace the menu with the Dark Side cover picture. Unfortunately, the site he had the pic on went down a few years ago.

    We noticed it, and replaced it with an ultra-tacky Frontpage easter-egg page complete with annoying midi and flying dhtml text. (It's REALLY bad)

    Strange thing is, dozens of people hit the page now and then, but I've only had 1 person comment on it in 6 years. And it's still there in the beta of the latest software.

    http://ktclub.com, login, and sit at the main menu for a day or just view the source for the refresh tag.

  218. To Hear a Duck Quack by Trillian_1138 · · Score: 1

    Unfortunatly, this no longer works. But it was one of the funiest things I'd ever heard.

    1-800-888-3999 is the toll-free phone number of Ameritrade Plus. Last time I checked (a couple months ago) it was a standard recorded message, "Please press 1 for this, 2 for that, etc." However, if you continued to listen, option seven was "If you'd like to hear a duck quack, please press seven."

    And, pressing seven, you would hear a duck quack, after which the number would disconect.

    Unfortunatly, someone must have noticed this, because it's no longer there. I suppose it's possible that it's still hidden away somewhere in the phone tree, and I really hope it is, but I couldn't find it.

  219. It's password protected ... by AftanGustur · · Score: 3, Funny
    How about http://warez.slashdot.org/

    It says: "Enter username for NSA_MaxSecZone at warez.slashdot.org"

    Please, what it the password, quick, before they find me in here.. I realy shouldn't be using the production servers to read /.

    --
    echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
    1. Re:It's password protected ... by vaderhelmet · · Score: 1

      The password is moron.

  220. altavista's monty python egg by lithis · · Score: 1

    altavista used to have an easter egg if you searched for "monty python holy grail". at the top, it would list answers to questions and one of the questions was "what is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?". if you clicked this, it displayed "what do you mean, an african or european swallow?". it went on another quote or so and then directed you to a script of monty python and the holy grail.

  221. Why do you highlight Tagalog? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 2

    It is the most spoken language in the Phillipines.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  222. McGill University by paulschreiber · · Score: 2
  223. Re:Missing the point about http://warez.slashdot.o by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Haha - the punchline must be getting people like you to reveal that they run IIS!

  224. My opinion on this article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nerd

  225. DNS Easter Egg Tricks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At one of the jobs I had worked at for a few years, we had a boss who's wife was starting her own web design business. She wanted to run CGI scripts so that she could learn perl and since she was a COBOL programmer, we should help set her up. We didn't want her to crash the main server so the boss dug up a computer and she named it sysiphus. Since we had to do it, we set up the DNS to point the sub-domain sysiphus to that computer. And feeling a typo was in order, we had the DNS record say syphilis instead, and had an alias to the other record. Unfortionatly it only lasted a few months until she started giving the URL to web bots to add to search engines, and (I think it was Alta Vista) the bot would resolve it to the record on file. And she started seeing successful requests in her web logs (around 4-5 months later) for syphilis. She wasn't happy, therefore the boss wasn't happy. We explained it must of been a typo and it was fixed... (we swapped the record and the alias). Over the years I've seen A LOT of interesting Reverse DNS records in my logs.

  226. seti hack that could have been an egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    I live on Mars, used to have my own dedicated country page as well, but they removed it after I submitted the story to jurnos some years ago. But did they leave it in as an egg so they could sign up as any country they wanted ?

    http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/fcgi-bin/fcgi?e mail=b_o_l_l_o_x@hotmail.com&cmd=user_stats

    http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/fcgi-bin/fcgi?c md=view_feedback&id=6664

  227. scape.com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I worked at the now defunct Australian portal scape.com. The Americans who came over to help complained that Australians put ham on everything (yeah, ok...), so it was decided that if at any point on the site you typed in the key sequence "stoptheham" the whole dhtml interface would shake and then break.

    of course, the interface was broken from the beginning anyway...

  228. Eastereggs = Backdoors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Easter Eggs are backdoors. Sure some are cool, but if I had something to say about it a developer who does that would get fired immediately. Afterall, if you put an easter egg in the code, how can I trust you not to add a real back door?

    1. Re:Eastereggs = Backdoors by tobe · · Score: 1

      Lighten up some and you might enjoy life...

  229. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hahhaha glad you like it.
    ill prob change the pic soon to another hot chick :>

  230. kill them, kill them all by chris+thomas · · Score: 1

    I wrote a simple comic ording program for a friend's comic shop, and thought it would be a wheeze to occasionally flash up "Kill them" and "Kill them all" in the main window's title bar (an original idea stolen directly from 'The X Files'). Unfortunately, it had to be removed after a couple of months, due to one staff member getting increasingly irritable after using the software!! Though, on my birthday it still flashes up "It's Chris's Birthday! Go buy him a drink"!
    More recently, I've added a randomly appearing link in the my work website's copyright notice footer. It takes you to a link of silly staff pictures, plus video of another staff member hurting himself on a snowboard, and more video of a customer singing songs to us! Craaaazzy. www.compman.co.uk/easteregg/

  231. Some web app things... by WWWWolf · · Score: 2
    I was once working on a web application. (Regrettably not visible to general population...)

    I worked on one database feature and, of course, added something to delete the record from the database. The app (written in PHP) took two parameters, id=xxxx as the deletable record ID, and confirm=1 to actually delete (without that parameter, it presented a confirmation form).

    Now, PHP uses the God's Chosen Way of presenting "true" values - almost any string is equivalent to "true".

    So, my confirmation parameter was:

    confirm=If a thousand suns were to rise together one morning, that light would be a little like the glory of the Lord, for I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds.

    I know, it's stupid, but you need certain amount of drama if you're going to delete something from the database permanently =)

  232. 2 megabytes? small?!? by pommiekiwifruit · · Score: 1

    I have put easter eggs in a program for a 64K machine (C64).

    However, my current machine has less than 1K of RAM so I might have to be careful about usage.

    Kids these days with their 256Mbyte personal organisers that fit into shirt pockets... pah!

  233. tuna fish by alphaque · · Score: 1

    one of the better easter eggs, if you can call it that, which i've ever seen and which still brings a smile to my face lies on the tunefs man page of BSD-based unixen. it was there on the SunOS 4.x and it's there in FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD the last time i checked.

    the easter egg sits at the bottom of the man page, in the BUGS section.

  234. Norwegian Blue by erroneous · · Score: 1

    While building an online order-tracking system for our Norwegian Sales Office I added an Easter Egg.

    If you search for "norwegian blue" in one of the free-text fields the search results returns as normal, but a new window pops-up with the entire Monty Python parrot sketch script and some images.
    They sent me to Oslo for three weeks. I had to amuse myself somehow...

    [I did something similar with an application we christened "Steel Industry Corporate Knowledge" (SICK) and the restaurant scene with Mr Creosote... but that was a lot less pleasant.]

    --
    erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
  235. HTML Comment "Easter eggs" in web pages by schmelter_tim · · Score: 1

    When I was hiring a web technical person, I directed 2nd round candidates to a website to answer a series of screening questions: Typical web & Perl stuff like "The intent of this Perl script is to do . What are some security problems, and how could you fix them"... that kind of thing.

    As "extra credit", I posted 4 hidden questions in the source:

    <!-- QUESTION 6: vi or Emacs? -->
    <!-- QUESTION 7: What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow? -->
    <!-- QUESTION 8: Do you speak Bocce? -->
    <!-- QUESTION 9: Do you know the way to San Jose? -->

    Unfortunately, only one candidate found them, and he ended up not being interested in the job.

    --
    "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup." --/usr/games/fortune
  236. cheat codes for life by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cheat codes for life - easter eggs in photo booths etc.

  237. complaint sheet linked from homepage! by wessman · · Score: 1

    A co-worker and I put a transparent graphic link on the footer of our company's public websites. If you knew where to point your mouse and clicked, you'd be taken to a page that he and I would post work complaints to, primarily our pathetic salaries compared to local industry salary surverys, full newspaper article and all!

  238. Online Signup and CC Processing by _14k4 · · Score: 1

    I wrote a signup/cc processing system for an ISP I worked for. During "test" phases, rather than bill my card the full signup price, I had something similar to this article's practice.. I appended something to the url and my card was billed 99cents.

    I got fired for other reasons, various reasons...

    Left really quick. Like, "boom - fired - out the door".

    Checked a while later, and it was still there..

  239. Ask Jeeves.. by _14k4 · · Score: 1

    Did anybody remember what happened if you said "Is Jeeves gay?" to the search engine? ;)

  240. perlmonks.org by _14k4 · · Score: 1

    Most of the perlmonks.org form field names were called things like "sex is good" and the like, last I remember.

  241. Dancing Programmers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My company (company hell, it's the programmers w/o company approval) have been secretly embedding links in our softare to a web site with the authors of the software dancing. You can check it out at http://enterprise.pwtor.com/dance/

  242. Fake fedex site by morcheeba · · Score: 1

    I had a friend who was constantly (once per hour) checking the progress of his package via Fedex. So, I mirrored the Fedex website and changed the "hosts" file of a lab computer to point to my mirror's IP. Imagine his surprise when he logs into the *correct* website, types in his tracking number, and finds that the package was last checked into a flooded sorting facility and it should take a week for them to pump out all the water and dry out the packages!

  243. Intranet easter egg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I once worked at CGI Group (www.cgi.ca). I participated to development of the Intranet and there was a search engine for it, in the online help system. This is an internal, closed system, unfortunately...

    The instructions in english for help included examples and syntax for search terms, example:
    cat AND desk
    cat OR desk

    When translated in french, those instructions included the example "burrito" somewhere.

    If you typed "burrito" in the search field, you'd see a brief javascript popup with the text "I want some fajitas" (from the Taco Bell ads) and then a page with credits of the intranet team.. believe, there were a couple..!

    Don't know if it's still there, though...

    Any CGIers care to comment ?

  244. Here's one: soundload.com by lithboy · · Score: 1


    Load up www.soundload.com and click on the dot in the soundload logo three times. Spooky!

    --
    --lithboy
  245. There are no hidden messages by WhiteDragon · · Score: 1

    in the source of this page

    --
    Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
    1. Re:There are no hidden messages by WhiteDragon · · Score: 1

      there are no tyops either!

      --
      Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
  246. for bruces by v8interceptor · · Score: 1

    I did a site once where if the first name was "Bruce" it would say "G'Day" instead of "Welcome"... (Yes, I'm Australian)

    --
    --- Why are you wearing that stupid bunny suit? | Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?