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?"

Comments

Yoda

[Gabey]

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

Intranet apps

[tshak]

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.

Re:Intranet apps

[pete-classic]

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

Slashdot Egg

[aardwolf64]

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

Re:Slashdot Egg

[TheKubrix]

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

Re:Slashdot Egg

[kliklik]

How about http://warez.slashdot.org/?

Re:Slashdot Egg

[Loligo]

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

Pretty lame, I already had all that stuff.

-l

Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg

[cswiii]

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

Slashdot Easter Egg

[big.ears]

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

Re:Slashdot Easter Egg

[fobbman]

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

.

Is Jeeves Gay?

[PunchMonkey]

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".

GoatSe.CX

[clinko]

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.

Re:GoatSe.CX

[Fesh]

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

"Augh! My eyes! Backbackbackback!"

easter egg clients

[brer_rabbit]

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"

Re:easter egg clients

[Quai]

Like this one?

Resume` in Code

[RembrandtX]

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.

Re:Resume` in Code

[plumby]

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.

Slashdot Easter Egg!

[indole]

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).

Re:Why, yes I did . . . and it's still there

[rayray14]

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

My high school's web page had a dead clown page

[PastaQueen]

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.

My favorite easter egg..

[_mythdraug_]

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

Mississippi

[KILNA]

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... :)

Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg

[frovingslosh]

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

Eudora had my resume in it

[Wee]

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

HTTP header

[lampwick]

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.

Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff

[tevita]

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

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

Re:Marvin the Paranoid Android 404 takeoff

[Scooby Snacks]

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

Re:Slashdot.org easter-egg

[neuroticia]

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

-Sara

Another Slashdot Easter Egg!

[SteelX]

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

Re:seti@home easter egg

[totallygeek]

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.

Re:DNS txt record easter eggs

[josh crawley]

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

Al Gore's campaign web site

[mikosullivan]

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

Re:my favorite easter egg

[pipla]

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"

Govt Surplus Ark

[mgarraha]

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.

Re:seti@home easter egg

[Anonvmous Coward]

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. :)

PayPal

[usr122122121]

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.

DANGER GIRL MODEL

[caferace]

Only cute chicks need apply

For a company on its way out, this is still amusing....

Re:Jeeves + monty python

[ivan_13013]

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.

It's password protected ...

[AftanGustur]

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 /.

Re:seti@home easter egg

[Washizu]

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.