Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Polette,
Speaker 1: and I am the tech editor here at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as he always does,
Speaker 1: is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there, So today we're
Speaker 1: not tackling anything particularly no delicate in terms of technology,
Speaker 1: nothing that we needed to do a lot of research on. Instead,
Speaker 1: we decided to do something a little bit more fun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this comes to us courtesy of Rich in a
Speaker 1: little listener mail. Rich says, Hi, guys, I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you had done a podcast covering hidden Easter eggs
Speaker 1: and software, video games, et cetera. Couldn't find it if
Speaker 1: you have. The first one I can remember coming into
Speaker 1: personally was in the Atari game Yards Revenge. I also
Speaker 1: remember Microsoft Excel having a hidden game when you went
Speaker 1: to a certain cell and type something. Anyway, I thought
Speaker 1: it would be cool if you guys could cover some
Speaker 1: of some with their origins. Thanks Rich, Well, Rich, We're
Speaker 1: gonna cover a few of our favorites. We each picked
Speaker 1: uhh five, I think and um, because there are hundreds
Speaker 1: and hundreds of Easter eggs out there. Yes, and we
Speaker 1: should probably start by explaining what an Easter egg is. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a good idea. So Easter eggs are these hidden
Speaker 1: little features within something it doesn't It can be software,
Speaker 1: it could be hardware, it can be pretty much anything
Speaker 1: you can imagine. There are a lot of DVDs of
Speaker 1: Easter eggs. In fact, we may do an episode just
Speaker 1: about DVD ster eggs in the future. We specifically avoided
Speaker 1: them for this episode because they're just they're hundreds of
Speaker 1: those as well. But in general, and easter egg is
Speaker 1: something that someone connected to a particular project slips in
Speaker 1: as a joke, usually an inside joke, some sort of reference, um,
Speaker 1: or sometimes just a treat for people who like to
Speaker 1: poke around and explore uh in hardware and software. M Yeah.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're actually condoned by the publisher. The publishing company
Speaker 1: knows about it and they say, oh, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: as long as it doesn't interfere with anything, you know,
Speaker 1: go ahead and throw that in there. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: some of the very uh, my very favorite ones, my
Speaker 1: very very favorite one especially is one that was done
Speaker 1: without the knowledge of the publisher, and um it was actually, uh,
Speaker 1: sort of a punishment to the publisher for not being
Speaker 1: more accepting of including credits. Interesting. So, yeah, this can
Speaker 1: be a way for a programmer to either let off
Speaker 1: a little steam or just be silly. I mean when
Speaker 1: you're saying they're designing hardware or software. When you're spending
Speaker 1: hour after hour in the design process the testing process,
Speaker 1: it can really become a grind. And these little things
Speaker 1: are kind of ways of expressing your own little personality
Speaker 1: quirk or whatever, and away that's kind of fun and
Speaker 1: and other people can enjoy. And if no one ever
Speaker 1: finds it, well it's still a joke that you can enjoy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And uh, the reason that they're called easter eggs, well
Speaker 1: it may or may not be obvious to you, but
Speaker 1: it's sort of like going on a hunt. The idea
Speaker 1: is that you will hunt them down and find the
Speaker 1: little a little bit of secret joy I guess hidden
Speaker 1: away in the recesses of the program or the the
Speaker 1: disk somewhere, and they're not supposed to be impossible to find.
Speaker 1: If you're possible to find, then they're not really Easter eggs,
Speaker 1: and some of them are really challenging, and some of
Speaker 1: them aren't quite so difficult. Like on DVDs, for example,
Speaker 1: you may have noticed, while you know, trying to navigate
Speaker 1: from one option to another, that you highlighted something that
Speaker 1: you didn't think was a choice, and then it turns
Speaker 1: out that there's some weird little feature behind it. That's
Speaker 1: a very common easter egg and it's it's not that
Speaker 1: difficult to find on most DVDs, assuming that you have
Speaker 1: a you know, normal DVD remote control. Yeah, and even
Speaker 1: and computer computers, excuse me. In a computer, you can
Speaker 1: often move the mouse around and find little spots that
Speaker 1: you and click on that will activate hidden features. And
Speaker 1: my in my experience, has been a little easier to
Speaker 1: find in a on a computer than it has been
Speaker 1: actually using the remote. Yeah. Yeah, some remotes just aren't
Speaker 1: as responsive, it seems to that kind of thing. I've
Speaker 1: noticed the same sort of issues. So let's go ahead
Speaker 1: and get started, Chris, watch you start us off. Well,
Speaker 1: I was gonna I was gonna go ahead and start
Speaker 1: with my favorite UM. This was an Atari game. UM
Speaker 1: from Back in the Dark Age is actually somewhat literally
Speaker 1: game called adventure um, in which you play Okay, you
Speaker 1: play a square right. No, literally you're not you know
Speaker 1: someone who's uncool. You are a square but but no,
Speaker 1: you are an adventurer and you are trying to uh
Speaker 1: get the chalice and bring it back. Um. The thing
Speaker 1: is there are three dragons that are out to get you. Um,
Speaker 1: and you are supposed to go through the labyrinth and
Speaker 1: get through the castle and defeat the dragons and and win.
Speaker 1: It's a pretty simple game. Um. But apparently, from what
Speaker 1: I have read, UH, programmer Warren Robinette was not allowed
Speaker 1: to put his name on the final product. Apparently it
Speaker 1: was Atari's game as far as Atari was concerned. Um.
Speaker 1: So what he did, uh he embedded a micro dot
Speaker 1: uh inside the wall of of one of the dungeons.
Speaker 1: And UM, I won't get into the details. It's it's
Speaker 1: kind of complicated how you have to do this. But
Speaker 1: there's a bridge that you can pick up and carry.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to carry one item with you. How do
Speaker 1: you pick it up by running into it? So you yes, well,
Speaker 1: I mean this is back in the day where you
Speaker 1: had a joystick with one button, um, which you know.
Speaker 1: Many of the younger listeners are probably going what really
Speaker 1: just one button? Oh, I mean no, most the other
Speaker 1: you know, most of them have some kind of joystick,
Speaker 1: except it's the current generation doesn't have, you know. Yeah, anyway, anyway, anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: you you had to pick up the bridge and ram
Speaker 1: it a against this wall and it would allow you
Speaker 1: to cross over far enough you're actually move past the
Speaker 1: normal line to get into the wall and pick up
Speaker 1: this micro dot, which was essentially one pixel. And when
Speaker 1: you had this dot, you could cross over this other
Speaker 1: wall and see Warren Robinett's name and said created by
Speaker 1: Warren Robinett. So he does he got his name in there.
Speaker 1: But you had to know, I hadn't know exactly how
Speaker 1: to get through there. Yeah, you had to pick up
Speaker 1: the bridge and take it with a certain spot and
Speaker 1: carry it back. And um, it was a little complicated,
Speaker 1: but not complicated enough to stop lots and lots of
Speaker 1: people from seeing it. And I think you know, this
Speaker 1: is one of the most well chronicled Easter eggs out there,
Speaker 1: although their websites devoted to this, and yeah, they're a
Speaker 1: lot of these will spread viral e once someone disavers them,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll tell a couple of people and then it
Speaker 1: before you know it. It seems like it's common knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's kind of funny how fast they can pass through
Speaker 1: the entire uh network of folks. Well yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: this was before the Internet and lots and lots of
Speaker 1: people knew about you know, this game that came out
Speaker 1: in the late nineties seventies, so you know, so my
Speaker 1: first one is similar in that it refers to a
Speaker 1: the classic era of home video gaming. It's the Konami code,
Speaker 1: which was first used in a game called Gradius on
Speaker 1: then to Know Entertainment System. It was more famously used
Speaker 1: in Contra and the code itself you would use your
Speaker 1: Nintendo controller and you would put in the sequence using
Speaker 1: the controller and go up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right,
Speaker 1: b A. I guarantee you that some of our listeners
Speaker 1: said that with me I started, they probably said it
Speaker 1: faster because they just you know, it gets stuck in
Speaker 1: your memory. So back in the day, this was a
Speaker 1: cheat code that would allow you to get usually like
Speaker 1: for most games thirty Extra Lives, a lot of different
Speaker 1: games use this this code, uh yeah, and a lot
Speaker 1: of these games, these early in games, because remember this
Speaker 1: is back before you could do things like save your
Speaker 1: progress in a game. If you turn the game system off,
Speaker 1: you you ended your game. You would have to start
Speaker 1: a new one, so you lost all the progress you
Speaker 1: had made. So things like generating extra lives was a
Speaker 1: big deal because you know you wanted to try and
Speaker 1: see the end of the game if possible. Um, well,
Speaker 1: you know I wouldn't normally call that an easter egg, right,
Speaker 1: that's a cheat code. So cheat codes and easter eggs,
Speaker 1: I'd say, were two different things. However, the people who
Speaker 1: are building the software we're using today are the same
Speaker 1: people who as kids were playing games like Contra and Gradius,
Speaker 1: and they were people who knew the up, up, down, down, left, right,
Speaker 1: left right be a code, so they started to build
Speaker 1: it into software. Specifically, you find it and a lot
Speaker 1: of web pages. There's one web page in particular called
Speaker 1: Konami Code Sites dot com. If you go there, you
Speaker 1: can actually see a list of all the different sites
Speaker 1: that have this as an easter egg in it. In
Speaker 1: order to access Konami Code Sites dot Com, you have
Speaker 1: to know the Konami code to do up, up, down, down, left, right,
Speaker 1: left right b A and then it'll let you in. Uh.
Speaker 1: And among them are sites like Facebook and dig although
Speaker 1: I should say that I tried using it on both
Speaker 1: of those recently and I couldn't get them to work.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was because I was using Chrome,
Speaker 1: so it may just be that's not supported in that browser.
Speaker 1: I haven't tried all the different browsers yet. But in Facebook,
Speaker 1: what it used to do at any rate was create
Speaker 1: kind of a lens flare effect and it would go away.
Speaker 1: If you quit out and came back into Facebook, you'd
Speaker 1: be fine, But I had this kind of weird fantasy
Speaker 1: lens flare effect. Um also Google Reader, which it still
Speaker 1: works in Google Reader. If you do it in Google Reader,
Speaker 1: the background turns into Ninja's and uh. There are lots
Speaker 1: of other websites that use it too, and it just
Speaker 1: shows in this way. It shows that a lot of
Speaker 1: the people who programmed these websites were big Nintendo Entertainment
Speaker 1: System fans back in the day. And I think it's
Speaker 1: a cool little code to keep going. And you never know,
Speaker 1: you know, it may be that the website you're on
Speaker 1: at any particular time has that code and just by
Speaker 1: typing it in some of them, you have to hit
Speaker 1: another key after the sequence, like ter or you may
Speaker 1: have to click the mouse button. But yeah, there are
Speaker 1: there are several that that use it as a as
Speaker 1: a key to get into the Easter Egg. Okay, your turn. UM.
Speaker 1: I actually have a couple from my uh days as
Speaker 1: a pseudo graphic designer. Um, those that we're talking about
Speaker 1: the early two thousand's late nineties when Photoshop three and
Speaker 1: four were out, and um, actually there's been a series
Speaker 1: of Photoshop releases that have an Easter Egg. UM, but uh,
Speaker 1: this is a really simple one actually, UM. And in
Speaker 1: Photoshop four, which is actually the first one I found
Speaker 1: out about it. UM, if you hold down alt when
Speaker 1: you do about Photoshop, I think it's alt, Um, it
Speaker 1: will bring up a splash screen very much like the
Speaker 1: one that that you see when the program actually starts. UM,
Speaker 1: but um instead actually shows you a picture of a
Speaker 1: cat and it says big electric cat, which is the
Speaker 1: which was the development name for the product. And uh,
Speaker 1: you can actually and scroll through the credits and just
Speaker 1: just like you would see the credits you know on
Speaker 1: on other versions of the flash screen, but you can
Speaker 1: actually make the cat me out using another key combination
Speaker 1: or or burp actually and then uh in later versions
Speaker 1: Photoshop five. Strange cargo shows a box and you can
Speaker 1: actually open the box to see the cat um. But
Speaker 1: it's just one of those cool little things that they
Speaker 1: throw in there and obviously supported. You know, Adobe knows
Speaker 1: about this, and you know it's not harmful, it's not offensive,
Speaker 1: you know, why not? You know, yeah, it's just kind
Speaker 1: of fun, the level of sophisticated humor that your average
Speaker 1: software developer has. Moving on. So this one, this one
Speaker 1: is the one that I included mainly because of my
Speaker 1: own personal connection to this Easter egg. Okay, uh So,
Speaker 1: there's a series of of computer games that came out
Speaker 1: in the eighties and nineties called Ultima. All right, I
Speaker 1: think you've heard of it. Yeah, uh so Ultimate five
Speaker 1: was a game in which you were playing UM, a
Speaker 1: hero who returns to a world after many years of
Speaker 1: being away from this world to discover that things are
Speaker 1: not going so well and it's your job to try
Speaker 1: and make things right and you learn lessons along the way.
Speaker 1: And uh I got to play this game back when
Speaker 1: it was an alpha build, so uh most of the
Speaker 1: stuff was complete for the game, like the basic mechanics
Speaker 1: UM attacking, defending, you know, your health, that kind of
Speaker 1: stuff magic things, but a lot of the other stuff,
Speaker 1: like conversations with other characters, hadn't been built out yet,
Speaker 1: so you would come up and try and talk to
Speaker 1: people and they had nothing to say. One of them
Speaker 1: actually specifically would tell you he had nothing to say.
Speaker 1: Most of them just didn't respond at all. Um But
Speaker 1: the one who would respond with nothing to say was
Speaker 1: obviously a joke written by one of the developers. But
Speaker 1: one thing that was in there was a weird little
Speaker 1: easter egg that one of the developers told me about
Speaker 1: while I was there. He just thought it would be
Speaker 1: funny to tell me, and it was that within certain
Speaker 1: towns they have wishing wells, and if you tried to
Speaker 1: use the wishing well, you would lose one gold coin.
Speaker 1: And you could make a wish, and you could wish
Speaker 1: for different things, and in some towns something would happen.
Speaker 1: In some towns it wouldn't. Most towns, one wish always worked,
Speaker 1: which was corvette. If you wish for a corvette, a
Speaker 1: horse would appear next to you and you could get
Speaker 1: on the horse, and the horse would increase your movement rate,
Speaker 1: so you could get in between towns much more quickly
Speaker 1: than you would otherwise. Um, so, just using a gold
Speaker 1: coin and a wishing well typing them the word corvette
Speaker 1: and boom horse would appear right next to you. So
Speaker 1: I was curious if they would keep this in and uh.
Speaker 1: Richard Garriott, a k Lord British, was very kind enough
Speaker 1: to send me a be about to my five. Um. Uh.
Speaker 1: He had befriended my dad and he was all around
Speaker 1: great guy. Sent me a copy. And the first thing
Speaker 1: I did was, as soon as I was able to
Speaker 1: get to a town the head of wishing well, I
Speaker 1: used it wish for a corvette and a horse appeared
Speaker 1: and I thought that is awesome. I was in on
Speaker 1: an easter egg before it even went gold awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, next, that's very cool. Um. Actually, uh, in
Speaker 1: my notes, id you, we were talking about sophistication of
Speaker 1: the humor um the if just sorry I should have
Speaker 1: mentioned this before, but if you. Apparently I found this
Speaker 1: out as I was doing some research. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to make sure that I had a lite name straight
Speaker 1: and things. Apparently, though, if you if you take a
Speaker 1: screenshot of the splash screen for a special cargo, which
Speaker 1: is photoshop five, uh and open it and photoshop and
Speaker 1: hide all the channels, but the blue channel you actually
Speaker 1: get to see one of the senior science a picture
Speaker 1: of the senior scientist on the engineering team. That's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: That's yes. But the other one. I was going to
Speaker 1: mention that a graphic design program is UH Quirk express. Well,
Speaker 1: I guess it's actually a page layout program UM. But
Speaker 1: this was one of the ones I found by accident.
Speaker 1: UM because if you had UH and and one of
Speaker 1: the earlier versions of cork I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: still there, but in Quirk three, if you had a
Speaker 1: box basically an image box or a text box UM,
Speaker 1: and you held down shift option command K, which was
Speaker 1: a variation. I actually did this by accident and said
Speaker 1: as a fat fingered key mistake. Normally that would kill
Speaker 1: the box. We did uh. I think option command K,
Speaker 1: but if you add a shift instead, somebody's gonna run
Speaker 1: in and tell me I'm wrong. Anyway, it's got an
Speaker 1: extra key in it. There was a little alien that
Speaker 1: walks out from the side very slowly, just a little make,
Speaker 1: makes a little clumpy noises, you know, and then comes
Speaker 1: out and zaps the box for you. So instead of
Speaker 1: it just disappearing, there's this whole you know, sound effect
Speaker 1: gets rid of the box. I found out again in
Speaker 1: my research and later ver since a cork if you
Speaker 1: if you hit that key combination, the alien comes out.
Speaker 1: But if you keep hitting it rapidly, another alien comes out,
Speaker 1: and apparently they have a fight. Nice. That's a great
Speaker 1: Easter egg. Yeah, and it's one of those things where
Speaker 1: I've always pictured Cork is a very serious company, but
Speaker 1: apparently they had a sense of humor enough to include
Speaker 1: that in several releases of the program. Well here's one
Speaker 1: that also shows, uh, kind of a snarky sense of
Speaker 1: humor by a company. That company being Mozilla or actually
Speaker 1: that nonprofit group Mozilla, which responsible for the Firefox browser.
Speaker 1: If you go to Firefox and type in in the
Speaker 1: address bar about colon Mozilla, Uh, this is what you get.
Speaker 1: And it kind of is a little dig at a
Speaker 1: certain mega corporation that may or may not have the
Speaker 1: world's most popular internet browser. Um Mammon slept, and the
Speaker 1: beast reborn spread over the earth, and its numbers grew legion,
Speaker 1: and they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops into the
Speaker 1: fire with the cunning of foxes, and they built a
Speaker 1: new world. In their own image as promised by the
Speaker 1: sacred words, and spoke of the beast with their children.
Speaker 1: Mamon awoke and lo it was not but a follower.
Speaker 1: From the Book of Mozilla, chapter eleven, verse nine, tenth edition. So, um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some biblical references in there, Mammon being the personification
Speaker 1: actually the godlike personification of greed, and specifically greed for money,
Speaker 1: which may be a reference to a certain Microsoft UM
Speaker 1: and how Microsoft at the time had been suggesting that
Speaker 1: Firefox was kind of a flash in the pan and
Speaker 1: totally unstable and you shouldn't use it, And then they
Speaker 1: essentially are saying there that um, eventually they're gonna take
Speaker 1: over the world and when Microsoft wakes up, it's going
Speaker 1: to be too late. Uh. Kind of interesting. I was
Speaker 1: very I actually tried this out in Firefight. It wor Yes,
Speaker 1: it does work, and it works. So about colon Mozilla
Speaker 1: in the Firefox address bar if you want to check
Speaker 1: it out. Okay, from my uh, for my last two
Speaker 1: I deviated from the UM software model somewhat. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I actually own the first one. UM My my very
Speaker 1: first computer, as many of you know, was an Amigo
Speaker 1: one thousand and UM and Commodore was far from the
Speaker 1: only computer company to have done this. But if you
Speaker 1: open up and I haven't actually done this with mine,
Speaker 1: I think I was afraid that I mess something up
Speaker 1: this in the days before I was familiar with the
Speaker 1: guts of a computer. But if you open up and
Speaker 1: I still have it, it's just somewhere else. Um. But
Speaker 1: if you open up the case and flip over the lid,
Speaker 1: you will see, um, the all the signatures of the
Speaker 1: people who worked on the Emigo one thousand. Um. It's
Speaker 1: a really part of the plastic in the case. So
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty cool. Yeah, that's not unusual either. It's
Speaker 1: another one of those easter eggs that has appeared in
Speaker 1: other products as well. If you were brave enough to
Speaker 1: open it up, you would be able to see it. Now,
Speaker 1: in some cases the items that you'd open up were
Speaker 1: not easily closable. Again, so it wasn't necessarily something you'd
Speaker 1: want to attempt. A lot of tech stuff is like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't want to hear I got it opens popped out.
Speaker 1: This one has to do with a programming language. So
Speaker 1: if you have the Python Interactive Interpreter, so we're talking
Speaker 1: about the Python programming language. Open up Python Interactive Interpreter
Speaker 1: and you type in import anti gravity. It brings you
Speaker 1: to an x k c D comic about how simple
Speaker 1: the Python programming language is to learn. Yeah, so Python
Speaker 1: developers in turn fans of x k c D and
Speaker 1: and there's like this uh mutual adoration society going on there.
Speaker 1: But that's kind of interesting. Also very odd that you
Speaker 1: would type in import anti gravity and that would send
Speaker 1: you there. I mean, how how often does one type
Speaker 1: that in Python Interactive Interpreter. I can tell you how
Speaker 1: often I've done it. Yeah, zero times. Alright, your turn. Um,
Speaker 1: the next one. I guess this is my last one,
Speaker 1: isn't it? Um? The would involve one of our favorite bands.
Speaker 1: They might be Giants, Um, Who's Factory Showroom CD. This
Speaker 1: is a little challenging because a lot of bands on
Speaker 1: the last track of the CD, they'll just leave some
Speaker 1: you know, silence for I don't know some of them
Speaker 1: ten fifteen minutes and where No Yankovic did that once
Speaker 1: to me and scared the living hell atom. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: there was ten or twelve minutes of silence and then
Speaker 1: just thirty seconds of him screaming and banging stuff as
Speaker 1: loudly as he possibly could. That'll that'll teach you to
Speaker 1: leave the CD player running, especially if you're like, oh boy,
Speaker 1: I think I lost at least three years of my
Speaker 1: life off of that. Anyway, you were saying, well, this
Speaker 1: one actually requires you to back up while you're listening
Speaker 1: to the first track to get to the to the
Speaker 1: get to the hidden tracks. It's a little bit more challenging.
Speaker 1: I've you know, frankly, I know it exists because I've
Speaker 1: seen it replicated. I've never been able to get it
Speaker 1: to work. I guess I just the CD players I
Speaker 1: own or are just in it. Yeah, but um no,
Speaker 1: it's it's documented. It's well documented as a matter of fact.
Speaker 1: But it's it's pretty cool because you can you actually
Speaker 1: play track one and then if you just rewind, theoretically
Speaker 1: is supposed to work. Yep, but I think that's very clever.
Speaker 1: I don't know how. I don't know how you do that,
Speaker 1: how you encode. I mean, I know how to encode
Speaker 1: a CD and audio CD, but over the first couple
Speaker 1: of tracks as if they didn't exist, and then you
Speaker 1: only can get to them by backing out. That's interesting. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a mystery. Well, my last one is about how
Speaker 1: Mac window boxes suck. I'm sorry, but I'm sorry. Uh So,
Speaker 1: when OS ten, you can choose two different ways to
Speaker 1: minimize a an open box on her on your OS. Okay,
Speaker 1: there's Genie and their scale. Those are the two different
Speaker 1: methods you can use to minimize the boxes. There's actually
Speaker 1: a third one, but it's not a choice you can
Speaker 1: see right there. You actually have to do a little
Speaker 1: work to choose it. It's called suck okay, so it's
Speaker 1: not in system preferences. What you have to do is
Speaker 1: you have to open up a terminal window and you
Speaker 1: have to type the following defaults right calm dot Apple
Speaker 1: dot doc my men effect M I N E F
Speaker 1: F E C T dash string suck. If you type
Speaker 1: that in and then you restart the dock and you
Speaker 1: try to minimize something, you will see that the window
Speaker 1: gets sucked down into the dock like it it shrinks
Speaker 1: on one side and then just zips on down into
Speaker 1: the dock as if it's being sucked down by some
Speaker 1: sort of acute force. And it's actually pretty cool to
Speaker 1: look at um. And you can also switch it back
Speaker 1: to you know, going into your system preferences and change
Speaker 1: it back if you if you don't want to see
Speaker 1: your windows minimized that way. But I thought that was
Speaker 1: a clever one. Interesting that it was included as an
Speaker 1: option even though it's not visible within the actual system preferences.
Speaker 1: Wonder if that one was supposed to have been included.
Speaker 1: Might have It might have been when some things that
Speaker 1: are counted as Easter eggs originally were supposed to be
Speaker 1: part of the the feature project project. Yeah, but either
Speaker 1: something didn't get done in time, or it was kind
Speaker 1: of a it was a you know, it was deemed
Speaker 1: as not as important as the rest of the project
Speaker 1: and kind of abandoned. Uh. Sometimes that code just stays
Speaker 1: in there and you might be able to access it
Speaker 1: a certain way. Um. And the in those cases, it
Speaker 1: might not technically be an Easter egg because it was
Speaker 1: something that was supposed to be a feature. It was
Speaker 1: just left in. Um. I can think of one. And
Speaker 1: there's there's kind of on a flip side of Easter
Speaker 1: eggs too. Yeah, there's stuff that should have been in
Speaker 1: a product but was left out, and unfortunately evidence of
Speaker 1: that feature remains in the product. And then you get
Speaker 1: people who are ticked off I can think of Knights
Speaker 1: of the Old Republic the video game, there was an
Speaker 1: entire section uh, I can't remember it was in the
Speaker 1: first one, of the second one. I want to say
Speaker 1: it's the first one, but there was an entire section
Speaker 1: of that game that's referred to in a couple of
Speaker 1: different places, and you know that you're supposed to go there,
Speaker 1: but there is no way to go there because they
Speaker 1: never built out that section of the game and they
Speaker 1: didn't go back and remove the other references. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of instances of of video games where
Speaker 1: something was alluded to but never actually was created. So uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a dark side as well, appropriate for Star Wars.
Speaker 1: Um Yeah, just talking about that reminded me of an
Speaker 1: Easter egg that I did that I do think it's cool.
Speaker 1: Um ti vo is known as a a device that well,
Speaker 1: when on its release, a lot of a lot of
Speaker 1: the content providers, the TV content providers, were really upset
Speaker 1: about it because they didn't want people Now you could
Speaker 1: record and playback shows any time and skip commercials, which
Speaker 1: was what replay TV advertised. You could just skip ahead
Speaker 1: thirty seconds. Well, that actually earned replay TV quite a
Speaker 1: few lawsuits um. But TiVo said, well, you know you
Speaker 1: can fast forward, but you can't actually skip ahead, which
Speaker 1: are in them a break from the lawsuits at least
Speaker 1: for those UM. But there is a way to do it,
Speaker 1: and I think it's probably one of those things that
Speaker 1: they had in the code. UM, but they probably had
Speaker 1: turned off for a reason. I'm guessing that's the reason.
Speaker 1: I've never heard anybody say that that's the reason. But
Speaker 1: if you play, if you if you have a first
Speaker 1: generation or I don't know if it still works on
Speaker 1: the newer generations, but I know it worked on on
Speaker 1: my first generation. So elect play select three zero select
Speaker 1: on the remote. Suddenly when you press forward, it goes.
Speaker 1: It skips ahead thirty seconds. You don't have to fast
Speaker 1: forward through commercials anymore. So send your complaints content providers
Speaker 1: to over the inst at how stuff works dot com. UM. Well,
Speaker 1: that that wraps up our our quick discussion about our
Speaker 1: favorite Easter eggs. Now. Granted, like we said, there are
Speaker 1: thousands of these, their websites devoted to Easter eggs, and
Speaker 1: all kinds of DVN, hundreds of undiscovered Easter eggs out there.
Speaker 1: In some cases, all it takes is for someone who
Speaker 1: worked on the project to mention it to someone else
Speaker 1: and eventually it will disseminate to everybody else. In other cases,
Speaker 1: everyone just keeps mom about it and it really does
Speaker 1: take some creative um snooping to figure out if something
Speaker 1: has an Easter egg or not. Uh so, uh, I
Speaker 1: remember that one point I had a DVD and I
Speaker 1: can't remember what it was now where the Easter egg
Speaker 1: was actually a picture of an Easter egg. Really yeah,
Speaker 1: if you found like the little Easter egg and you
Speaker 1: pushed the button, it would just gave you a picture
Speaker 1: of an Easter egg and that was the Easter egg.
Speaker 1: It was a joke played on you for messing around
Speaker 1: trying to find the Easter egg. Um anyway, but that
Speaker 1: wraps up this discussion and it leads us now to
Speaker 1: our second bout of listener mail. This listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Ben in New York and he says, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I am officially obsessed. I listened to you guys for
Speaker 1: four hours today. While listening, I thought of some new
Speaker 1: ideas for the podcast Annoyances and Technology and Science and
Speaker 1: Medical Technology, your seventh grade fan, Ben, then seek out help.
Speaker 1: Listening to us for four hours is a sure sign
Speaker 1: of a problem. I'm glad that you were able to
Speaker 1: admit this to us. Now it's time to take the
Speaker 1: next step. Ben, Really, we really appreciate it. That's great.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you enjoy the show, and those are
Speaker 1: great suggestions. We've added them to the list. If we
Speaker 1: were to do an episode on annoyances and technology, I'm
Speaker 1: going to probably need some valume because as it goes on,
Speaker 1: I will get more and more irritated, and Chris can
Speaker 1: only put up with so much of that. I'll have
Speaker 1: to uh have to bring my poncho in from when
Speaker 1: that vein on your forehead, decide to exclude when I
Speaker 1: finally have an aneurysm right there in the middle of
Speaker 1: the podcast. We know what's going to happen. People, It's okay,
Speaker 1: I'm all right with that. Well, Ben, thanks a lot
Speaker 1: for writing in. If any of you want to write
Speaker 1: in with questions or comments and anything like that, our
Speaker 1: email address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: and Chris and I will talk to you again really
Speaker 1: soon for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com and be sure
Speaker 1: to check out the new tech Stuff blog now on
Speaker 1: the House Stuff Works homepage, brought to you by the
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