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by derrida 5526 days ago
Wow. I thought Microsoft were too uncool to include stuff like this in their code.
2 comments
dazzawazza 5526 days ago
It's in the bios so it would happen if you were running any OS. Evidence of MS coolness still eludes us.
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nikcub 5526 days ago
how about the flight simulator easter egg in Excel? that was cool

microsoft always included cool easter eggs in their products

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_eggs_in_Microsoft_produc...

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ajarmoniuk 5525 days ago
Not anymore. After the lawsuit about including the web browser with the system they are no longer allowed to include undocumented features in their software. (citation needed)
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rubyrescue 5525 days ago
no it wasn't then. It was around 2000 or so and more related to (as i remember) two things - securing government and enterprise contracts and public perception related to viruses and security. I was there as an employee in Visual Studio and distinctly remember the admonition from Brian Valentine that there were to be NO easter eggs in Win2K and on. They couldn't credibly say that they were in control of the security of the platform with people hiding doom levels in Excel and (in the case of Visual Studio) working slot machines...
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ajarmoniuk 5525 days ago
Working slot machines? Please tell me more...
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rubyrescue 5525 days ago
visual studio 6.0 - help | about, then ctrl-shift while double clicking the visual studio logo. the code name for the project was... vegas

EDIT: wow this isn't even on wikipedia. i feel like i'm revealing a MS secret. :)

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nikcub 5525 days ago
ye hence my past tense because I couldn't recall one from more recent products. that sounds like a reasonable reason why they don't do it anymore
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thepumpkin1979 5525 days ago
Excel takes 154MB in disk... that's why!
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canop 5526 days ago
You were right : "This is a design feature of a detection circuit and system BIOSes developed by Award/Unicore from 1997 on."
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savramescu 5526 days ago
So Microsoft actually suppressed this on Normal Mode, but not in Safe Mode. At least there's information about it somewhere, because I wouldn't expect it if I encountered it.
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_ea1k 5525 days ago
"During normal operation or in Safe mode, your computer may play "Fur Elise" or "It's a Small, Small World" seemingly at random. "
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