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Slashdot Asks: What's Your Favorite Easter Egg? (slashdot.org)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the hopping-down-the-funny-trail dept.

One year ago, Easter Sunday was greeted with the news that many companies were increasingly cracking down on "Easter Eggs," like the harmless snippets of vanity code playfully hidden by developers. "As programming becomes more corporate, more official, one cannot appear to have code that is not officially sanctioned," the author of The Elements of Computing Style told the BBC, though other programmers they spoke to disagreed.

The Easter Egg is a tradition which dates back at least to a hidden room in a 1979 Atari game, and I still have fond memories of the Batmobile Easter Egg (video) in King's Quest II (1985) and tales of that weird musical Easter Egg in Windows 95 which scrolled the names of their entire development team.

So share your favorites in the comments. What's your favorite Easter Egg?

106 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. My favorite by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    My favorite Easter egg is the Hershey's chocolate eggs with the blue foil wrapper.

    1. Re:My favorite by davester666 · · Score: 2

      Really? I hate chewing that foil wrapper.

      I very much prefer the bulk bin of chocolate.

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  2. Chocolate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Dark. What? I like dark chocolate.

    1. Re:Chocolate by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Bloody oath.

      Just because it's shaped like a Sherrin doesn't make it good chocolate.

    2. Re:Chocolate by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 1

      Victoria, thanks for asking.

  3. DEC easter eggs by VAXcat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Back in the day, when we slew the dinosaurs with our slide rules, DEC had a product that ran on PDP11s and VAXes called Datatrieve. It was a query and reporting language, with extensive help. If you typed "Help me", it would reply that "Datatrieve is not in the counseling business - you should see a therapist, Priest, or Rabbi". Datatrieve help also had the feature that if you wanted more detailed help on a subject, you could type HELP ADVANCED subject, and it would give more detail on the subject. If you typed "Help advanced me", it would rely that "you are not advanced". A DEC executive got wind of this, and demanded that it be removed. It was removed in the next release - at which point DEC was deluged with problem reports from customers, complaining that it had been removed.... Datatrieve help would also reply to request for the subject of Wombats...

    --
    There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
    1. Re:DEC easter eggs by KGIII · · Score: 5, Funny

      Seeing as this is Slashdot and there's no Cowboy Easter Egg... I'll have to go with:

      sudo apt-get moo

      And, because Slashdot eats the text formatting, here's a picture:
      http://i.imgur.com/BGXbVxZ.png

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    2. Re:DEC easter eggs by kimhanse · · Score: 1

      And:

      root@splint:~# aptitude moo
      There are no Easter Eggs in this program.
      root@splint:~#

    3. Re:DEC easter eggs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Seeing as this is Slashdot and there's no Cowboy Easter Egg... I'll have to go with:

      sudo apt-get moo

      ...

      Uhh... no sudo required, folks.

    4. Re:DEC easter eggs by KGIII · · Score: 1

      I sudo *everything*! (Not really, I'm just used to typing it with apt. Fortunately, it is harmless.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    5. Re:DEC easter eggs by KGIII · · Score: 3, Funny

      Which is probably a rip off of something else, somewhere down the line - until you find that we're still cracking the same jokes as Plato and our graffiti has been the same thing for thousands of years.

      Remember, you're unique - just like everybody else.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    6. Re:DEC easter eggs by tinkerton · · Score: 1

      Which is a very common observation on /.. Whenever someone claims some new idea, others pounce on it saying it's old.
      Well, it's not completely wrong. Nothing we make up is ever completely new, but it's sloppy to jump from there to claiming there is nothing new.

  4. The original by denis.goddard · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Created by ... Warren Robineet" Forever burned into my brain.

    1. Re:The original by golgotha007 · · Score: 1

      This was my first easter egg experience, when Adventure was a hot, new game on the Atari 2600; truly fascinating.

    2. Re: The original by whopis · · Score: 2

      If it was burned into your brain I am surprise you didn't realize it was "Warren Robinett"

    3. Re: The original by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In the jakks pacific remake i think it was "text goes here" or some such!

    4. Re:The original by aslagle · · Score: 1

      With a 7-digit slashdot id? Yeah.

    5. Re:The original by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

      It was anti-climactic for me to learn what those words were. The television of my youth was not the best and the combination of the pulsing colors and the blocky font made them completely unrecognizable as English text. I thought them to be some sort of clue to another puzzle, the beginning of another Adventure (forgive the pun!), that my young brain was unable to fathom at that age.

      To learn they were merely a writer's mark, rather than an access to further fun, was pretty sad. Maybe this is why the book Ready Player One was so fulfilling. It recaptured some of the mystery and magic I felt not knowing fully what the little dot had given me access to.

      --
      When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
  5. SimCity Easter Egg by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    I happened to love the porntipsguzzardo Easter Egg in SimCity!

  6. flight simulator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    The flight simulator in MS Excel 97 (I think)...

    1. Re:flight simulator by MS · · Score: 1

      Mine favorite too.

    2. Re:flight simulator by rwa2 · · Score: 1

      And then in the real MSFS, you could fly your airplane into a certain building in Redmond (with noclip), and see a photo of the development team on an inside wall.

      Back when flying airplanes into buildings was an appropriate thing to do in MSFS.

    3. Re:Flight simulator by Hymer · · Score: 1

      Yes it is, has played it on my PentiumPro in 1999 or 2000.

    4. Re:flight simulator by allo · · Score: 1

      And flipper in word97

  7. Karateka by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At least on the Apple II version, if you inserted the game disk upside down, the game booted and played upside down.

  8. Doom in Excel 95 by PhineusJWhoopee · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As seen in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... ed

    1. Re:Doom in Excel 95 by Superdarion · · Score: 1

      The first time I heard of it and saw it, we thought the list of names at the end room was a list of souls that Bill Gates had consumed to prolong his life.

      The truth was more heinous than we had imagined: it was a list of people involved in creating Office...

  9. Can't pick a favorite. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I liked the .fortune egg in the original Halo: Combat Evolved.

    I discovered it by accident and was floored by the Unix reference on a Microsoft Console by a Microsoft owned Studio. Bungie previously made the Marathon FPS for the Mac, and Halo is a spiritual successor to Marathon (even includes Marathon Terminals in Halo3, and Guilty Spark 343 has the Marathon Logo in his eye [more easter eggs]).

    Perhaps not the best eggs, but the ones you hear about first and thus expect don't seem to make as big of an impression as the ones you find yourself.

    I would say some good things about Nethack, but that seems to be a game that is built out of easter eggs.

    1. Re:Can't pick a favorite. by squiggleslash · · Score: 1

      Bungie previously made the Marathon FPS for the Mac, and Halo is a spiritual successor to Marathon

      While the first version of Halo was released after the Microsoft acquisition, it was already in development when Microsoft bought Bungie and actually came out for Mac OS X. I used to play it on my TiBook.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    2. Re:Can't pick a favorite. by Darron_Wyke · · Score: 1

      On Halo, there was also the Siege of Madrigal egg. On level 5 (I believe), you'd steal a Banshee and fly up to a remote ledge...to hear that music playing.

  10. Adventure by mbadolato · · Score: 1

    The first one I ever encountered was the one hidden in the Atari 2600 Adventure game

  11. Pig mode by Ixtl · · Score: 1

    ResEdit back in the System 7 days had a special "Pig Mode" dialog box that would pop up if you used the right key combo. I mean, I was like 9 or something, so I was easily amused; but I thought it was great.

    1. Re:Pig mode by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Wasn't this a mode where it used a lot more memory/processor time or something? Essentially, it went from multitasking nicely to almost taking over the whole machine.

  12. DOS MZ header by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    The first two bytes of every MS-DOS .EXE was the signature "MZ", which happened to be the initials of a Microsoft developer.

    Kinda like how technical book authors like to slip in their own names in script code examples... only MZ got his wired permanently into *every single* DOS app.

    1. Re:DOS MZ header by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

      Windows EXEs and DLLs have the MS-DOS EXE header so if you try to run them in MS-DOS, MS-DOS can try to run them. Typically this stub just prints out "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." and exits. Some apps could even run in both Windows and DOS (though this was back during the 3.1 days when both were in common use)... both versions were crammed into the same EXE. You could probably still do it today.

      You can try it out today by trying to run Windows apps in DOSBox. The message it prints out is generated by the application you run.

    2. Re:DOS MZ header by HideyoshiJP · · Score: 1

      On a similar subject, I always really thought it was cool that Intel's hardware devices use the PCI vendor string VEN_8086.

    3. Re:DOS MZ header by tlhIngan · · Score: 1

      Windows EXEs and DLLs have the MS-DOS EXE header so if you try to run them in MS-DOS, MS-DOS can try to run them. Typically this stub just prints out "This program cannot be run in DOS mode." and exits. Some apps could even run in both Windows and DOS (though this was back during the 3.1 days when both were in common use)... both versions were crammed into the same EXE. You could probably still do it today.

      Yes, you can. The PE header (which is a lot like the MZ header) has a spot for the DOS stub executable - this is the executable that runs if you're not' in Windows, and the PE header looks enough like the regular MZ EXE header that DOS will run the stub (since DOS doesn't know about PE executables).

      So a Windows program consists of two executables - a regular DOS mode 16-bit executable and a Windows executable. Both of which are completely independent binaries. Granted, the default Windows compilers give you a DOS stub that says "This program requires Windows" but that's not a given - you can certainly put two separate binaries in it. One application would be self-extracting archives - it would have a DOS mode SFX and a Windows mode SFX.

  13. Flight simulator by aglider · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Within excel

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
  14. DEC Ultrix by aglider · · Score: 1

    make love: I don't know how to male love
    rm God: God non existent
    I al noto dure they weren't easter eggs.

    --
    Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
    1. Re:DEC Ultrix by Hognoxious · · Score: 2, Funny

      make love: I don't know how to male love

      Try it on a Mac.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  15. Re:Ubuntu Easter Eggs by rasmusbr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Aw, looks like part of our shared cultural heritage has been lost.

  16. Hidden SIDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I remember when Slashdot had hidden SIDs (story IDs), which were IDs that could be entered in the URL and would take you to a discussion that wasn't actually part of a story and wasn't shown on the front page or any section page. One of those was trolltalk, which was a hidden SID dedicated to discussion about trolling Slashdot. I'm not aware of this being documented on Slashdot, but trolls (and others, no doubt) were aware of it and used it. I'd say it qualifies as an Easter Egg.

    1. Re:Hidden SIDs by The+MAZZTer · · Score: 1

      As a coder I would classify that as a bug or glitch, as it was most surely unintentional, whereas easter eggs are. It sounds like the website was allowing users to view and comment on stories that did not actually exist.

    2. Re:Hidden SIDs by Drishmung · · Score: 2

      Also, at one time, slashdot used to embed Futurama quotes in the http headers. curl -sI https://slashdot.org/ would print them. Alas, no more.

      --
      Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
  17. Ericsson internal program by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    On the about page there was a picture of the little mouse logo. If you clicked it, it would look startled raise its arms above its head and squeak. Was quite cute. Not sure if it is still there.

  18. Tetris on HP 56400 scope by rfengr · · Score: 1

    Tetris on HP 54600 scope

    1. Re:Tetris on HP 56400 scope by Circlotron · · Score: 1

      Yeah, we had a bunch of them at a place where I worked some years ago. I had the Test Engineering dept believing I had done something naughty to my scope :-P https://youtu.be/Rd1fUHTtII8?t...

  19. A)bort, R)etry, F)ail by Blaskowicz · · Score: 5, Funny

    It was a stupid mind game that DOS let you play when you were stuck because of bad sectors on a floppy. In retrospect, that was a rather bad and unfunny Easter egg!

    1. Re:A)bort, R)etry, F)ail by narcc · · Score: 1

      Only this and nothing more: Abort, Retry, Ignore...

      --
      Required reading for internet skeptics
  20. Dartmouth Timesharing by murdocj · · Score: 1

    Dartmouth Timesharing had the "what" command that gave info about the system. Don't recall the legitimate uses, but as a special case if you entered "what 2+2" it output "4". Comment in the code was "joke".

    1. Re:Dartmouth Timesharing by istartedi · · Score: 1

      Did it sniff for a numerical argument and invoke a calculator, or did it just look for those arguments? What happened if you did "what 2+3"?

      --
      For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
    2. Re:Dartmouth Timesharing by murdocj · · Score: 1

      Yeah it just looked for "2+2". Anything else I think I just gave a brief error message. That was the joke... people (including me before I knew better) thought it might have a calculator in it, so you would try "2+2" and get an answer.

    3. Re:Dartmouth Timesharing by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      If I remember correctly, I believe they also had a "What is life?"

      Wow...that was a long time ago.

    4. Re:Dartmouth Timesharing by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      Actually, I just wracked my brain on this. I may not be remembering correctly--it may have responded that "Life is an unknown option," which was also somewhat profound.

  21. Red Ryder by mveloso · · Score: 1

    "Don't click on my head"

  22. Microsoft Excel by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Excel 2000

    Excel 97

  23. Up up by somenickname · · Score: 1

    Up up down down left right a b select start.

    1. Re:Up up by Coren22 · · Score: 1

      Select Start?

      --
      APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  24. Something Old, Something New... by Grady+Martin · · Score: 1

    My most recent discovery is :smile. My most memorable is probably the legendary secret page of The Mushroom Kingdom... That was a long time ago, and in hindsight, the staff did a great job ensuring users who knew the secret did not spoil it for others. I still check on the secret page from time to time, just to make sure it is alive and well.

  25. ROM Picture by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    http://www.eeggs.com/items/545...

  26. From the original Amiga... by drfreak · · Score: 1

    It was in my "Rock Lobster" revision of the A500. I'm not sure how early the Easter Egg started in the AmigaOS or how long it was allowed to continue in future revs. If you hit a certain key combination, you would get a message: "Amiga: Born a Champion." If you could manage to keep four fingers on the keyboard while pushing a floppy disk in with your big toe, the message would change to: "Amiga: We made it, they fucked it up." Obviously, a rebellion against Commodore taking over the brand.

    1. Re:From the original Amiga... by Layzej · · Score: 1

      If I recall you had to pop the disk out as part of the sequence to trigger the message :)

    2. Re:From the original Amiga... by RJFerret · · Score: 1

      Yes, first disk change (in or out) provided "We made the Amiga." Second disk change swapped the text with, "They fucked it up."

      It was that way in 1.2 and 1.3, removed in 2.0, changed to something like "always a champion" or something lame like that IIRC.

  27. python2.7 by rekoil · · Score: 4, Funny

    In python2.7 interactive mode:
    >>> from __future__ import braces
        File "", line 1
    SyntaxError: not a chance

    1. Re:python2.7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      What about import antigravity?

  28. Robot in Quark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    In versions of Quark xPress in the late 1990s, there was a series of keystrokes that when performed while a text box was selected, would cause a small robot to appear from one side of the screen, walk across the screen, raise his arm to point at the box, and then fire a ray gun that would make the box disappear. I discovered it one day when a guy in the office who could barely breathe and see at the same time started yelling something about a robot with a ray gun had just destroyed the page he'd been working on.

  29. YouTube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Type webdriver torso into the search bar on YouTube. Creepy! Doesn't work on mobile.

    1. Re:YouTube by chronoglass · · Score: 1

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

  30. The 3d Text screensaver egg. by Grog6 · · Score: 1

    In win95 and 98, using the 3d text screensaver and typing "volcano" in the text field would bring up a rotating list of volcanoes.

    Similarly, "beer" would bring up beers.

    You could make a text file called "secrets.txt", with a certain format, and it would play your lists. :)

    It was changed for win2k and later.

    --
    Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
    1. Re:The 3d Text screensaver egg. by GTRacer · · Score: 1

      Don't forget the teapots in the Pipes screensaver!

      --
      Defending IP by destroying access to it? That makes sense, RIAA/MPAA. Go to the corner until you can play nice!
  31. Re:Ubuntu Easter Eggs by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 3, Funny

    It has been a long time since I have fallen for a Goatse Troll, congrats! Sadly it looks like the site has been taken down. I wonder how many hits that page got, that's a very large opening to fill!

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  32. Aptitude by DrYak · · Score: 5, Funny

    # aptitude moo
    There are no Easter Eggs in this program.
    # aptitude -v moo
    There really are no Easter Eggs in this program.
    # aptitude -vv moo
    Didn't I already tell you that there are no Easter Eggs in this program?
    # aptitude -vvv moo
    Stop it!
    # aptitude -vvvv moo
    Okay, okay, if I give you an Easter Egg, will you go away?
    # aptitude -vvvvv moo
    All right, you win.

                                   /----\
                           -------/      \
                          /               \
                         /                |
       -----------------/                  --------\

    # aptitude -vvvvvv moo
    What is it?  It's an elephant being eaten by a snake, of course.

    --
    "Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
    1. Re:Aptitude by bidule · · Score: 1

      What is it? It's an elephant being eaten by a snake, of course.

      Sorry, I thought it was a hat.

      --
      ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
  33. Every one of them that existed by Artem+S.+Tashkinov · · Score: 1

    Nowadays they are vanishly rare.

  34. Silent Night on ATM by Flu · · Score: 2

    An ATM-type machine developed by an ex-employer used to play Silent Night on Christmas Eve by spinning its motors. Unfortunately, that model is no longer in use. :-(

    1. Re:Silent Night on ATM by RLaager · · Score: 2

      Here's "Eye of the Tiger" on a printer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    2. Re:Silent Night on ATM by Xyrus · · Score: 1

      There was an ATM at my old college campus whose motors would play "da-dadadada-daaaa!" (think superman) before it dispensed money.

      --
      ~X~
  35. Palm taxi by Eric+Wayte · · Score: 1

    The taxi that used to appear at random on the Palm Pilot.

  36. Re:Haman's Ears by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

    My understanding is that it refers to the three cornered hat that Haman wore, although some people think it's a reference to his pockets. I've never heard of it having anything to do with his ears before; where did you find that meaning?

    --
    Good, inexpensive web hosting
  37. Palm Pilot by MrLogic17 · · Score: 1

    There were a few easter eggs on the original Palm Pilot. One showed the Development Team Credits with a photo, another was dancing palm trees in the Giraffe app.

    I used to have a web site listing a lot more, but it's been lost many ISP's ago...

    edit: Found it!
    https://web.archive.org/web/19...

  38. Mac Plus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not a software Easter egg, but a hardware one.

    On the inside of the back plastic cover of the Mac Plus was the signature of everyone who had worked on it. Probably no more than fifty people if I remember right.

    1. Re:Mac Plus by QQBoss · · Score: 1

      The Amiga 1000 also had signatures on the inside of the case, along with a paw print for Mitchy.

      Does the Guru Meditation Error count as an Easter Egg, though?

  39. Re:Haman's Ears by mi · · Score: 1

    I've never heard of it having anything to do with his ears before; where did you find that meaning?

    Funny, I've never heard about any other interpretations, than "ears" — that's what my dad told me about them many years ago.

    According to Wikipedia, they are called that in Israel...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  40. secret about box by manu0601 · · Score: 2

    In MacOS 7.5, drag and drop the "secret about box" text snippet to the trash, and get a waving MacOS flag. Wind direction and force is controlled by mouse position.

  41. Classic Mac applications and ResEdit by Scoth · · Score: 1

    I'm having trouble remembering a specific one, but a lot of games and apps for classic Mac OS (7-9 mostly) included Easter Egg pictures, sounds, and text if you opened them in ResEdit. Usually they'd be something along the lines of "What are you looking in here for?", "Stop trying to bypass the registration!", etc kind of things. There was a little shareware app that tweaked menus that had the author singing Daisy, Daisy I'd love to find again, but I can't remember the name of it.

  42. Free The Fish by salvorHardin · · Score: 1

    I think it was in Gnome (maybe still is), where you could use the ALT+F2 keyboard shortcut to bring up the run dialog, and type in "free the fish". And a swimming fish would appear across your screen. You could click on it and it would swim away, but would return a few moments later (unless you killed gnome-panel). We used to do it to each other if we left our machines unlocked.

  43. Commodore 64 EasyScript word processor by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 1

    If you hit F1, then Ctrl-3, the C64 would start belting out "Pomp and Circumstance" in all its SID (Sound Interface Device) glory!

  44. From Pro Audio Land ... Begbroke on an SSL console by PeeAitchPee · · Score: 1

    Every 777th snapshot (or so the rumor says), Solid State Logic's G series audio consoles would put up the coveted "Begbroke" Easter Egg. The legend said that if that happened when you were mixing, you'd come up with a gold record . . . I can personally attest that that was NOT the case. ;-) https://www.reddit.com/r/audio...

  45. Data General and Apple MPW by Drishmung · · Score: 1
    Data General's AOS/VS operating system had an undocumented command named "XYZZY." In the original 16-bit version, the response was: "Nothing happens." In a later 32-bit version, this was amended to: "Twice as much happens."

    http://rickadams.org/adventure...

    The Apple MPW C compiler had a notorious set of error messages (does this count as an Easter egg?). http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jo...

    --
    Protoplasm. Quiet Protoplasm. I like quiet protoplasm.
  46. Tetris in HP Oscilloscope by troylanes · · Score: 2

    I recently picked up a used HP 54600B oscilloscope and whilst searching for the manual came across a "three finger salute" that launches a fully playable version of tetris [ http://www.eeggs.com/items/392... ]. I wonder how many hardware engineering hours were spent "debugging" hardware during the 90's with one of these. I also wonder how this slipped through code reviews.

  47. TECO by zaft · · Score: 1

    The text editor TECO that ran on... TOPS-10, I think, before most of you were born had a fun Easter egg. To create a file once you started TECO, you'd type "make ". If you typed: >make love TECO responded: ?not war?

  48. Book of Mozilla by PPH · · Score: 1

    Enter about:mozilla in a Firefox location bar.

    --
    Have gnu, will travel.
    1. Re:Book of Mozilla by hackertourist · · Score: 1

      I just did that in Pale Moon and got this:

      Mozilla: In Memoriam

      Dedicated to the tireless developers who have come and gone.
      To those who have put their heart and soul into Mozilla products.
      To those who have seen their good intentions and hard work squandered.
      To those who really cared about the user, and cared about usability.
      To those who truly understood us and desired freedom, but were unheard.
      To those who knew that change is inevitable, but loss of vision is not.
      To those who were forced to give up the good fight.

      Thank you. Pale Moon would not have been possible without you.

  49. Three Ancient Eggs by larryv · · Score: 2

    Around 30 years ago, I was one of the lead developers for the first query server for Unisys V-Series/Medium Systems. The product (named Exxtract(tm) ) would display a little "text picture", on the system console (ODT) at midnight Christmas Day of a small Christmas Tree, with presents around it, and at midnight new Years Eve/New Year's Day would display a little text picture of a couple glasses of Champagne, along with the words to "Auld Lang Syne", and best wishes from M. V. and Associates. No harm done, and we usually got some sort of pleasant comment from the customers after their first time seeing the messages. Also, if the server ever detected a fatal/impossible/irrecoverable error, it would memory dump, and display the message "And Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash - Where *EVER* you are!" We got more squawks when people saw that one, though it was probably more related to the crash than the message, per se.

  50. Word 97 by Alien+among+you · · Score: 1

    If you type zzzz and right-click, the suggestion is 'sex'.

  51. Easter eggs by sgunhouse · · Score: 1

    The two that come to mind for me ... Opera 7-12 and now Vivaldi will come here if you type /. in the address bar ... and some old programing language - I forget which one now, it was ages ago - that if you typed "What is the meaning of life?" would respond with 42.

  52. SimCity by sabbede · · Score: 1

    Or maybe it was SImCity 2000. Anyhow, you could get a window where one of the dev's favorite jokes (also one of mine) would scroll past. A punny joke about bits of string trying to get served in a bar.

  53. ack by ausekilis · · Score: 1

    I guess they're not really Easter eggs if they're in the documentation... still amusing:
    ack --thpppt
    _ /|
    \'o.O'
    =(___)=
    U ack --thpppt!

    ack --bar is a bit better (but slashdot won't allow "junk" characters)

  54. vi by peektwice · · Score: 1

    I seem to recall the vi man page having a pronunciation guide in HP-UX 10.10 or 10.20. I might be wrong on the particular operating system, but it was funny nonetheless.

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    Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
  55. Re:Gordon Freeman by Darron_Wyke · · Score: 1

    The funny thing about that is that City 17 is not that far from Chernobyl. So that explains how he ended up there after the G-Man dropped him off.

  56. Congratulations. You aren't running Eunice. by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

    SSIA

  57. ROCKS! by zeekan · · Score: 1

    The "Rocks" game in the Agilent Oscilloscopes. Pretty good Asteroids clone.

  58. Re:Gordon Freeman by Coren22 · · Score: 1

    http://half-life.wikia.com/wik...

    It is in Ukraine, also, remember there are references in the game to New Little Odessa, which appears to be named after Odessa, which is a Ukrainian city.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    Wikipedia also says it is Eastern Europe. Do you have any references for it not being in Eastern Europe?

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    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
  59. Commodore 128 Easter Egg by yofanator · · Score: 1

    How it was hidden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO_aBoCQQkU

  60. Easter Egg that Bill Gates wrote (Commodore PET) by yofanator · · Score: 1

    A detailed explanation here

  61. Simcity 2000 Easter Egg by allo · · Score: 1

    You know the cross hair to center the map? Try clicking on the helicopter flying over crossings. If you have catastrophes enabled, it will even start a fire, else it just will crash into the ground and a new one will appear later