
Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation - officialjunk
http://www.misc.name/#/pride-easter-egg/
======
ayrx
Am I the only one not amused by easter eggs in software? It's code that I
don't know about doing stuff that I don't know about. More code means more
chances for bugs, maybe even bugs that results in security vulnerabilities. If
the programmer snuck it in without management approval, it may mean code that
isn't as thoroughly tested as the rest of the program.

~~~
aaron695
A programmer who bothers to put in an Easter egg to me has pride in what they
are creating and also gives them more ownership.

So I see it as both an indicator of good work and a positive thing.

Yes, other's believe that Easter eggs are bad I assume you're referring to the
famous
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/larryosterman/archive/2005/10/21/483608.aspx)

It has good points but I believe it to be wrong in conclusion, there's lots of
real issues to care about before this one.

~~~
Someone1234
I agree with Easter Eggs in products. That being said another good example of
an "Easter Egg gone wrong" was the games in Excel 95 and 97.

Excel 95 had a "Doom"-like 3D game. Excel 97 had a basic flight simulator.
These were fun and weren't buggy, but here's the problem:

How much time do you think was lost in classrooms in particular after all the
kids discovered there were games they could be playing instead of working? All
of the built in Windows games were removed, and Flash/Java weren't installed.
But you cannot remove these if you need Excel.

This was a legitimate issue in the 1990s. So much so that the school I
attended gave anyone detention caught playing these games during class
time(!). Yet every class there would be someone sitting in the corner playing
away.

~~~
cujo
I find it hilarious that you're upset with easter eggs in principle because
kids were distracted during class. I'm sure all those kids couldn't hack it in
the real world because of these awful distractions.

~~~
Someone1234
> I find it hilarious that you're upset with easter eggs in principle because
> kids were distracted during class.

That's exactly the opposite of what I said, I said I liked Easter Eggs in
principle but then gave an example of when they went wrong. The first line of
my comment was: "I agree with Easter Eggs in products."

Easter Eggs are good, you just really have to consider the impact they're
going to have (in terms of perception, usages, and bugs).

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psk
Is easter eggs in VM a good idea?

Couldn't malware attempt to locate potential easter eggs in order to determine
if they are in a honeypot?

~~~
mlvljr
VMalWare! Yikes!

~~~
KhalilK
I laughed harder than I should have.

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officialjunk
"If you'd like to reverse engineer @scanlime's VMWare easter egg, attach a
0-length floppy image after booting and dump /dev/fd0 with dd."

[https://twitter.com/travisgoodspeed/status/50224961576974745...](https://twitter.com/travisgoodspeed/status/502249615769747457)

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blowski
This is just an article linking to an article[1], which itself links to a
Google translation of an article written in French[2].

[1][http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/vmware-nested-
easter-...](http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/2013/09/vmware-nested-easter-
egg.html)

[2][http://www.hypervisor.fr/?p=4063](http://www.hypervisor.fr/?p=4063)

~~~
jadc
The French article has a comment by Regis Duschene one of the VMware Fusion
developers stating that there is an Easter Egg in the Easter Egg.

The virtualghetto.com article is referring to that second easter egg (i.e. the
Pride mode) and telling you how to "unlock" it.

The post linked to here on HN is by M. Elizabeth Scott who created the Pong OS
easter egg while at VMware.

A version of the code of the Pong OS can be found here:
[http://sourceforge.net/p/vmware-
svga/git/ci/master/tree/exam...](http://sourceforge.net/p/vmware-
svga/git/ci/master/tree/examples/pong/main.c)

From a cursory look, I don't think it has the Pride mode.

~~~
kylek
There isn't really an explanation anywhere, but the colors that the game
changes to in pride-mode look like original Apple logo colors - is that a hat
tip?

~~~
scanlime
Yes. Multiple meanings.. gay pride, but also pride in our work, and in
producing the first product of its kind for Apple machines, and pride in the
small team of us that made it happen within VMware.

