| Easter Egg (virtual) |
Article Index for Easter Egg |
Website Links For Easter |
Information AboutEaster Egg (virtual) |
|
A virtual Easter egg is a hidden message or feature in an object such as a Movie , Book , CD , DVD , Computer Program , or Video Game . The term draws a parallel with the custom of the Easter Egg Hunt observed in many western nations. In computer programming, the underlying motivation is often to put an individual, almost artistic touch on an intellectual product which is by its nature standardised and functional. It is analogous to signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals or Alfred Hitchcock 's legendary Cameos . COMPUTER-RELATED EASTER EGGS Software-based Easter eggs are messages, graphics, sound effects, or an unusual change in program behavior that mainly occur in a software program in response to some undocumented set of commands, mouse clicks, keystrokes or other stimuli intended as a joke or to display program credits. They are often located in the "About" box of a software. An early use of the term ''Easter egg'' was to describe a message hidden in the Object Code of a program as a joke, intended to be found by persons disassembling or browsing the code. Easter eggs found in some Unix Operating System s caused them to respond to the command " Make love" with "not war?" and "why" with "why not" (a reference to " The Prisoner " in Berkeley Unix 1977). The TOPS-10 operating system (for the DEC PDP-10 computer) had the "make love" hack before 1971; it included a short, thoughtful pause before the response. This same behavior occurred on the RSTS/E operating system where the command "make" was used to invoke the TECO editor, and TECO would also provide this response. The largest Easter egg is purported to be in the Atari 400/800 version of ', which contains an entire game that was more complex and challenging than the original Pitfall II. Many Personal Computers have much more elaborate eggs hidden in ROM , including lists of the developers' names, political exhortations, snatches of music, and (in one case) images of the entire development team. The 1997 version of Microsoft Excel contained a hidden Flight Simulator 1 2 ; the 1997 version of Word , a Pinball game3 . The Palm operating system has elaborately hidden animations and other surprises. The Debian GNU/Linux package tool Apt-get has an Easter egg involving an ASCII cow when variants on "apt-get moo" are typed into the shell. Another notable Easter egg is from '' The MathWorks MATLAB : the why command provides succinct random answers to almost any question. % why % because the not very smart system engineer insisted on it In Mac OS X operating systems, a recording of the Liberty Bell march, famous for being the opening theme of the British comedy sketch series Monty Python's Flying Circus can be found under /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/test/. In Mac OS X Version 10.4 , the recording (audiotest.au) plays "Nobody expects The Spanish Inquisition !" Another Easter Egg is found on all Microsoft Windows Operating Systems prior to XP. Go to Control Panel, Display settings, then choose the screen saver heading. Then select the 3D Text Screen Saver and click on Settings. Enter the custom text of "volcano" and click on OK. Then when you preview/use the screen saver it will display the names of all the known volcanoes that exist in the world. Microsoft removed this Easter Egg in XP and Vista . Non-software While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in ''. The EEPROM of Nagra smart cards for the Dish Network Satellite Television system contain the phrase "NipPEr Is a buTt liCkeR". Nipper was a hacker who broke old security routines on the cards, and this text is included as a fallback to old security routines, where the phrase was hashed against an input text to verify the card. Several '' Oscilloscopes '' have been known to contain Easter eggs. One example includes the HP 54622D known to play Asteroids. CHIP AND PCB-BASED EASTER EGGS See Also: Chip art Many Integrated Circuit (chip) designers have included '' Hidden Artwork '', including assorted images, phrases, developer initials, logos, and so on. This artwork, like the rest of the chip, is reproduced in each copy by Lithography and Etching . These are visible only when the chip package is opened and examined under magnification, so they are, in a sense, more of an " Inside Joke " than most of the Easter eggs included in software. Originally, the Easter eggs served a useful purpose as well. Not unlike Cartographers who may insert Trap Street s or nonexistent Landscape features as a Copyright Infringement detection aid, IC designers may also build non-functional circuits on their chips to help them catch infringers. Easter eggs, however benign, if directly copied by the Defendant , could be used in Mask Work infringement litigation. Changes to the copyright laws (in the USA, the Semiconductor Chip Protection Act of 1984, and similar laws in other countries) now grant automatic exclusive rights to Mask Work s, and the Easter egg no longer serves any practical use. Western Digital 's MyBook Pro has several words on the metal band that wraps around 3 sides in Morse Code . The code reads: PERSONALRELIABLEINNOVATIVESIMPLE INNOVATIVEPERSONALDESIGNRELIABLE INNOVATIVEDESIGNPERSONALDESIGN SIMPLEINNOVATIVE The Commodore Amiga models 500, 600 and 1200 each featured Easter eggs, in the form of titles of songs by The B-52's etched on the Motherboard s. The 500 says " Rock Lobster ", the 600 says " June Bug ", and the 1200 says " Channel Z ". The Amiga OS software includes a variety of hidden messages as well. AmigaOS Easter Eggs from the Amiga History Guide Several models of S3 Trio 64v+ graphics cards have The Beatles lyrics printed faintly along the edge of the card. SECURITY CONCERNS NOTES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
|
|
|