Re: Netscape "random" number seed generator code available

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In article <199509251159.EAA08528@mycroft.rand.org>, jim@acm.org (Jim
Gillogly) wrote:


>I'm nervous enough about all the Easter Eggs that have been reported in
>Netscape, like the secret keystroke shortcut to get to Fishcam, or the
>different behavior it exhibits when it finds a certain obscurely-named
>directory at the top level. 

Would you please elaborate?

TIA,

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- -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.
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    Date: Mon, 25 Sep 1995 22:59:11 -0400
    From: Lucky Green <shamrock@netcom.com>
    Subject: Re: Netscape "random" number seed generator code available

    In article <199509251159.EAA08528@mycroft.rand.org>, jim@acm.org (Jim
    Gillogly) wrote:

    >I'm nervous enough about all the Easter Eggs that have been reported in
    >Netscape, like the secret keystroke shortcut to get to Fishcam, or the
    >different behavior it exhibits when it finds a certain obscurely-named
    >directory at the top level. 
    
    Would you please elaborate?

Personally, I like the Easter Eggs in Netscape and other software
products.  I don't know if there's an consensus definition of `Easter
Egg', but my working definition is something like ``An unpublicized,
unharmful, preferably amusing, feature for which interested users may
hunt.''  I think that such things add some fun for curious users and
indicate a bit of `hacker spirit' in the development team -- meaning
`hacker' in the classic sense, not the media-bastardize synonym of
`cracker'.  I also think that in Netscape their existance is an
indication that the managment at Netscape is a bit less uptight than
management at some other places.

I didn't know about the FishCam Easter Egg, but I know that Netscape
has a couple of Easter Eggs related to the activity indicator in the
top right of the display.  Typically this is the Big N logo with
animated meteors, etc. flying by when the window is active.  One
Easter Egg temporarily turns this into a compass which spins to
indicate activity.  Another causes the animation to show a dragon
(Mozilla) breathing fire for the remainder of the session.  I won't
spoil your fun by telling how to find them.

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--
Rick Busdiecker                        Please do not send electronic junk mail!
 net: rfb@lehman.com or rfb@cmu.edu    PGP Public Key: 0xDBD9994D
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> In article <199509251159.EAA08528@mycroft.rand.org>, jim@acm.org (Jim
> Gillogly) wrote:

> >I'm nervous enough about all the Easter Eggs that have been reported in
> >Netscape, like the secret keystroke shortcut to get to Fishcam, or the
> >different behavior it exhibits when it finds a certain obscurely-named
> >directory at the top level. 

> Rick Busdiecker <rfb@lehman.com> writes:
> Personally, I like the Easter Eggs in Netscape and other software
> products.  I don't know if there's an consensus definition of `Easter
> Egg', but my working definition is something like ``An unpublicized,
> unharmful, preferably amusing, feature for which interested users may
> hunt.''  I think that such things add some fun for curious users and

I enjoy Easter Eggs in general, and I agree that a program with fun stuff
like this in it gives one a warm fuzzy feeling about the relaxed management
style at the company that produces it.  On the other hand, of all kinds of
mass market software, network-aware software needs to have the most trust
from the users, because it alone has the capability of passing information
out of your machine.  My preference is always to have source code
available for security-critical functions so that I can verify that it's
not only doing what I want, but also doing nothing that I don't want.

For a program like Netscape it doesn't make sense to supply source code,
of course, and the Easter Eggs already provide some evidence that it's
doing something that I didn't "buy" (assuming I've bought it, of course).
From there it's a short step to the questions "What else is it doing that
I didn't pay for?  Reading my PGP key generation environment?
Interesting.  What else?"

> I didn't know about the FishCam Easter Egg, but I know that Netscape

Ctrl-alt-f if you're a PC type, or Ctrl-meta-f if you're on a Sun; I'm
calling the diamond to the left of the space bar a "meta".

	Jim Gillogly
	Hevensday, 5 Winterfilth S.R. 1995, 16:14