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[News] Closed Source Eatser Eggs and Oddities

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Roy Schestowitz

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Jun 14, 2006, 11:42:10 AM6/14/06
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Funny: How to Break Windows Notepad

http://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=117870&c=1

This comes to show that mischievous programmers are given freedom to
vandalise an application. About 10 years ago, Word/Office spellchecker
suggested the words "I'll Drink to that" as correction to "I want to kill
Bill Gates", as far as I can recall.

Jim

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Jun 14, 2006, 12:22:29 PM6/14/06
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Excel family:
http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/eastereg.htm

A few database easter eggs (including Access 97/2000):
http://databases.about.com/od/productinfo/a/eastereggs.htm

--
When all else fails...
Use a hammer.

http://dotware.co.uk

Some people are like Slinkies
They serve no particular purpose
But they bring a smile to your face
When you push them down the stairs.

Roy Culley

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Jun 14, 2006, 7:00:27 PM6/14/06
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begin risky.vbs
<4206505.j...@schestowitz.com>,

At a previous job they used Framemaker. If the spellchecker found
Leafnode in your document it would suggest correcting it to
Framemaker. :-)

Roy Schestowitz

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Jun 14, 2006, 10:34:55 PM6/14/06
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__/ [ Jim ] on Wednesday 14 June 2006 17:22 \__

> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> Funny: How to Break Windows Notepad
>>
>> http://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=117870&c=1
>>
>> This comes to show that mischievous programmers are given freedom to
>> vandalise an application. About 10 years ago, Word/Office spellchecker
>> suggested the words "I'll Drink to that" as correction to "I want to kill
>> Bill Gates", as far as I can recall.
>
> Excel family:
> http://j-walk.com/ss/excel/eastereg.htm
>
> A few database easter eggs (including Access 97/2000):
> http://databases.about.com/od/productinfo/a/eastereggs.htm

I was going to reply and say that resources are wasted against the client's
will. Just before I did, I found the following in the former Web page:

,----[ Quote ]
| The word on the street is that Excel 2002 does not contain an easter
| egg. Apparently, Microsoft has received complaints about the waste
| of resources and file bloat.
`----

So, yes... it's about time they got rid of these idiotic conditional
statements in the code. If it was Open Source, the programmer would get
crucified. It's like leaving your own mark on a project, for vanity to
friends and peers (as in, "look what I planted in Excel back when I worked
in Redmond"). With interpreted languages, people get criticised for
excessive in-line documentation, which contributed to cruft and slows things
down.

Best wishes,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Software patents destroy innovation
http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer Ś PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
Cpu(s): 20.0% user, 3.8% system, 16.3% nice, 60.0% idle
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Tim Smith

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Jun 15, 2006, 2:04:34 AM6/15/06
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In article <4820622.N...@schestowitz.com>, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> I was going to reply and say that resources are wasted against the
> client's will. Just before I did, I found the following in the former Web
> page:
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
>| The word on the street is that Excel 2002 does not contain an easter |
>egg. Apparently, Microsoft has received complaints about the waste | of
>resources and file bloat. `----
>
> So, yes... it's about time they got rid of these idiotic conditional
> statements in the code. If it was Open Source, the programmer would get
> crucified. It's like leaving your own mark on a project, for vanity to
> friends and peers (as in, "look what I planted in Excel back when I worked
> in Redmond"). With interpreted languages, people get criticised for

I don't recall any programmer getting crucified over the Star Wars game in
OpenOffice.

--
--Tim Smith

Roy Schestowitz

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Jun 15, 2006, 2:06:00 AM6/15/06
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__/ [ Tim Smith ] on Thursday 15 June 2006 07:04 \__

*panting* Where??? WHERE, ferchristsake???

I agree that it's out of place and I very much doubt it is/was incorporated
into StarOffice.

Best wishes,

Roy

--
Roy S. Schestowitz | FreeBSD - sidling with a little devil
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE GNU/Linux Ś PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
7:00am up 48 days 12:33, 10 users, load average: 0.47, 0.66, 0.80
http://iuron.com - help build a non-profit search engine

Tim Smith

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Jun 15, 2006, 4:54:08 AM6/15/06
to
In article <15370391....@schestowitz.com>, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>> I don't recall any programmer getting crucified over the Star Wars game in
>> OpenOffice.
>
> *panting* Where??? WHERE, ferchristsake???
>
> I agree that it's out of place and I very much doubt it is/was incorporated
> into StarOffice.

<http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/trench/17293.html>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Trivia_.26_easter_eggs>

--
--Tim Smith

Roy Schestowitz

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Jun 16, 2006, 10:18:50 AM6/16/06
to
__/ [ Tim Smith ] on Thursday 15 June 2006 09:54 \__

Thanks, Tim.

[sarcasm] When Novell/GNOME/Sun does it, it's funny. When MS does it, it's
outrageous.[/sarcasm]

--
Roy S. Schestowitz


http://Schestowitz.com | Free as in Free Beer Ś PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E

Cpu(s): 20.2% user, 3.8% system, 17.0% nice, 59.1% idle

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