Easter Eggs
April 10th, 2007 by JeffEaster has just passed us by again this year, and makes its mark in this week’s Jeff’s Tech Tip. 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 probably to put an individual, almost artistic touch on an intellectual product which is by its nature standardized and functional. It is analogous to signature motifs such as Diego Rivera including himself in his murals or Alfred Hitchcock’s legendary cameos.
Today we will look at one that you can find in Windows XP and another with Google Search. Let’s look at one Easter Egg in Windows XP first:
- Open Notepad
- Type in the phrase “Bush hid the facts”
- Save the file to your Desktop and close notepad
- Open the file in notepad.
When you opened the file in notepad, what did it contain? It has been reported that this is not actually an Virtual Easter Egg, but a bug in the way Windows XP handles certain types of files. You can find more information about this particular Easter Egg at http://www.eeggs.com/items/48383.html.
Google is the leading search engine on the internet. Their Page Rank algorithm powers their search rankings and helps to ensure that you get relevant results when you use their search engine. There is one unintended consequence of this, and that is that webmasters can force certain websites to appear when a completely unrelated search term is entered. One such example of this has to do with the search term “failure”. When you visit Google and search for “failure”, what is the top result? If you got a link to the White House website for George W. Bush, you have seen this phenomenon first hand. You can find more on this tactic at the BBC Website.