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. The earliest known reference
to an Easter Egg[citation needed] as a hidden item in a medium appears to be from 1975's The Rocky Horror Picture Show, in which actual Easter eggs are visible in certain
shots (under Frank N. Furter's throne, for example), from an Easter Egg hunt the crew had while filming.[1] Atari's Adventure,
released in 1979, contained what is thought to be the first video game Easter egg (the programmer, Warren Robinett's name).
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 systems
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 Pitfall II: Lost Caverns, 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;[2][3] the 1997 version of Word, a pinball game.[4] 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. In the 3D Text screen saver, entering the text "volcano" will display the names of all the known volcanoes that exist in
the world. Microsoft removed this Easter Egg in XP but added others. One in XP is to
simultaneously hold the Alt, shift and the number 2 keys in
the Solitaire game to produce a forced win.[5]
Non-software
While computer-related Easter eggs are often found in software, occasionally they
exist in hardware or firmware of certain devices. On some
PCs, the BIOS ROM contains Easter eggs. Notable examples include several early Apple
Macintosh models which had pictures of the development team in the ROM (accessible by pressing the programmer's switch and
jumping to a specific memory address, or other equally obscure means), and some errant 1993 AMI BIOS that on 13 November proceeded to play "Happy Birthday" via the PC speaker
over and over again instead of booting. Similarly, the Radio Shack Color Computer 3's ROM contained code which would display the likenesses of three Microware developers on a <ctrl><alt><reset> keypress sequence - a hard reset which would
discard any information currently in the dynamic memory.[6]
Perhaps the most famous example of a hardware Easter egg is in the HP ScanJet 5P,
where the device will play the Ode to Joy or Für
Elise by varying the stepper motor speed if users power the device up with the
scan button depressed [2].
Another Easter egg is found in the Kurzweil K2x musical keyboard series
(K2500, K2600 and others): if users type "Pong" while in search
mode they can play the game Pong. 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
-
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 streets 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 works, 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
motherboards. 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.[7]
Several models of S3 Trio 64v+ graphics cards have the
Beatles lyrics printed faintly along the edge of the card.
Easter Eggs in Movies and DVDs
Easter Eggs in theatrical movies are often found at the end of the credits, when most of the audience has probably left.
Pirates of the Caribbean did this in all three movies. Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Look Who's Talking
Too, See No Evil, and Thirteen Ghosts also
did this.
The Easter Egg has also found new life in DVD. In some cases, an extra click to the right or left, or going up in the menu
instead of going down to select a choice will bring up a hidden feature, including concept art, humorous outtakes, or deleted
scenes.
Security concerns
Because of the increase in malware, many companies and government offices forbid the use of
software containing Easter eggs for security reasons. With the rise of cybercrime and the
prevalence of the Easter egg's "cousin", the logic bomb, there is now concern that if the
programmer could slip in undocumented code, then the software cannot be trusted. This is of particular concern in offices where
personal or confidential information is stored, making it sensitive to theft and ransom. For this
reason, many developers have stopped the practice of adding Easter eggs to their software. Microsoft, who has in the past created
some of the largest and most elaborate Easter eggs such as the ones in Microsoft
Office, no longer allows Easter eggs in their software as part of their Trustworthy Computing initiative.[8]
See also
Notes
External links
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