Slashdot Mirror
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?"
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.
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.
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)
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?"
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.
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".
Go here and post your eggs. Hopefully others will follow. ~N
in the URL field. It's sorta like funny. I guess.
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....
a il=seti@sun.com&cmd=print_cert&certnum=10000&size= 0 a il=seti@sun.com&cmd=print_cert
:op
example Normal cert: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?em
example easter egg cert: http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/cgi?em
well...i found it funny
Every site, or more specifically interesting component I built was egged.
:) Not backdoors mind you, just "Author Control's" :)
:)
.....how many egged sites are out there ?
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
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
Sig went tro...aahemmm.....fishing........
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.- Return
How did you get there?
Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right-B-A
(Up, Down, Left, Right being the arrow keys... No start key, so we had to go with return).
As computer programmers, me&my friends did quite weird things as easter eggs.
:P
:)
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
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
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).
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!
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 :-(
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.
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.
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/
"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 $you->love(perl)
Go to any "CNET Comparison Chart", click to the "Printer Friendly" version, and look for a clear GIF just below the words "CNET Review" in the left most column...
yomama=fat
reload for a random "Yo Mama" joke everytime
I was working on a web/DB/e-commerce integration project a few years ago and added myself to the Products Database.
:)
I had my specifictions (height, hair color, etc.), system requirement (flex time, 4 wks paid vacation, etc.), and other things like recomended market segment/uses, etc.
Then I put a little work-around in the code so that particular "product" wouldn't show up in any of the list/sort views or with any regular searches, but if you searched for my name, you'd get a lovely page with all my info (including contact info in case someone wanted me for another job).
Not that interesting, but it made me feel good to be able to pull it up 2 years later.
http://www.tk421.net/wizardry/nhoj.shtml
Taco Hell used to be "the" Slashdot Easter Egg. It began stagnating quite a while ago, and I see that it's now even lost its wonderfully hideous purple look. Ah well.
\\'
I almost clicked that.
Append "?=PHPE9568F36-D428-11d2-A769-00AA001ACF42" to the end of any php page running PHP$ 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
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.
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/
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?
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
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.
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.
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.
an easter egg within an easter egg?
http://www.termstua.com/c/Pictures/Porn/
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;