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Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

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Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#41

Post by Someone1234 »

tedunangst wrote: post #38
Someone1234 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 work…

Perhaps it is not microsofts responsibility to ensure kids are always hard at work.

Nobody claimed otherwise.

However it is unfortunate that they decided to conflate a product needed in a classroom (namely the Office suite) and a feature which is not (namely a game).

Microsoft's only responsibility is that their software is fit for purpose, and in this scenario it is not.

edit: 4 people downvoted, not a single reply? This place is turning into Reddit. Pathetic behaviour.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#42

Post by moron4hire »

ayrx wrote: post #2

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.

I've never had a job where we weren't constantly under tight (really, completely unreasonable) deadlines, so to me Easter Eggs always felt like a "fuck you losers" from developers at big, commercial software companies to developers at small, consulting software companies.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#43

Post by walshemj »

ayrx wrote: post #20
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's fun . As the industry matures, people seem to lose the sense of humuor - which is sad, because practical jokes and playfullness is what created said industry.

There is a time and place for humor. Important software is not one of them. When I run something on my machine I want it to do exactly what it is supposed to, nothing more and nothing less. You won't be laughing if $RANDOM_EASTER_EGG has a bug that allows for remote code execution.

You must be a real blast at company party's - lighten up a sense of humour is a requirement in this industry.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#44

Post by walterbell »

pyre wrote: post #29
walterbell wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To the three downvoters: are you saying that easter eggs are approved by the release management process? Wouldn't that make them features?

Easter eggs wouldn't be considered features (even if management-approved) because they are not advertised, and they do not perform a function related to the application. For example, if management approved a flight simulator in Excel '97, would you still consider if a 'feature' of Excel '97?

It was a feature (a property of the artifact) because it provided a signal about management priorities with respect to purchase criteria such as security. Microsoft eventually removed all Easter Eggs as part of their company-wide effort to fix their poor security reputation.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#45

Post by Noelkd »

moron4hire wrote: post #42
ayrx wrote: post #2

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.

I've never had a job where we weren't constantly under tight (really, completely unreasonable) deadlines, so to me Easter Eggs always felt like a "fuck you losers" from developers at big, commercial software companies to developers at small, consulting software companies.

I wouldn't take it personally, it's more likely to be a bit of fun.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#46

Post by binarycrusader »

ayrx wrote: post #20
TeMPOraL wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's fun . As the industry matures, people seem to lose the sense of humuor - which is sad, because practical jokes and playfullness is what created said industry.

There is a time and place for humor. Important software is not one of them. When I run something on my machine I want it to do exactly what it is supposed to, nothing more and nothing less. You won't be laughing if $RANDOM_EASTER_EGG has a bug that allows for remote code execution.

Strongly disagree; appropriate humour in "professional" software is just fine:

  $ man tunefs
  System Administration Commands                         tunefs(1M)

  NAME
       tunefs - tune an existing UFS file system
  ...
  NOTES
       You can tune a file-system, but you can't tune a fish.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#47

Post by scanlime »

kylek wrote: post #31
jadc wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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.

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#48

Post by tracker1 »

ayrx wrote: post #15
onion2k wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You aren't concerned with 'hidden' code - you're concerned about this now because you know it's there. Because it isn't hidden. If you're worried about code doing things you don't know about then there's a heck of a lot more to VMWare that you could be concerned with. It's a huge, complex application. A few KB for a hidden game is irrelevant - you don't know what hundreds of MB of it actually does. If you're worried…

Yes. It's a huge codebase. Why complicate it further by adding something 100% unnecessary? You cannot assume any bit of code no matter how small is irrelevant. If it's there it's potentially exploitable.

I'm pretty sure the bulk of the code is in a disk image, and that binary is embedded instead of loaded from disk... the source for the image likely isn't in the same as an integrated egg generally speaking. They likely added one embed statement and a hotkey listener...

Re: Easter Egg Hidden in VMWare Fusion and Workstation

#49

Post by frostmatthew »

moron4hire wrote: post #42
ayrx wrote: post #2

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.

I've never had a job where we weren't constantly under tight (really, completely unreasonable) deadlines, so to me Easter Eggs always felt like a "fuck you losers" from developers at big, commercial software companies to developers at small, consulting software companies.

> I've never had a job where we weren't constantly under tight (really, completely unreasonable) deadlines

My guess would be the reason small/new shops have deadlines like that is because they're more likely to have less experienced managers. If it bothers you that much perhaps you should work at a larger company where the managers understand nine women can't make a baby in one month.

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