Comments on: Secret Windows XP Easter Egg – ASCII Star Wars

By: Scatman Dan

Scatman Dan — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:07:40 +0000

In response to just about everybody:

Not an Easter Egg: try doing it without Internet access and you’ll see that it doesn’t work, because what’s actually happening is you’re connecting to a server which gives you the ASCII art.

Doesn’t require Windows XP. This will also work in Linux, MacOS, Windows 2000, Windows Vista, Windows 7 if you install “telnet” (it isn’t by default). Hell, I can get it to work on my phone.

Not “aalib” or any other quick fix: this is all hand-drawn ASCII-art, as is obvious if you look at it for a few seconds.

By: Reee

Reee — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 09:48:18 +0000

Well we could all agree that it perhaps took someone a “x” amount of time to wright the ascii render bit, but im afraid this isn’t an easter egg, if it is then surely typing “http://www.gaj-it.com/401/secret-windows-xp-easter-egg-ascii-star-wars/” into your browser is and easter egg, or typing dir/w in the cmd prompt is too. Im sure you could telnet into a load of servers and find “easter eggs”. Rendering clips from 3D studio max is a bit different to replacing a pixel with a char, also if you think about it to render the movie into ASCII on the fly sounds fast but the movie is say an hour or so long so thats how long it takes to render!

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:01:00 +0000

The video-to-ascii libraries out wouldn’t produce something like this. These illustrations are very simplified in a way the libraries wouldn’t be able to do automatically.

By: Stephen

Stephen — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 01:27:58 +0000

Video can be output to ASCII on the fly, so this could *potentially* be done very quickly

Not an easter egg, all that is happening is you are connected to a remote service. This is not XP specific.

By: Arutha

Arutha — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 10:22:27 +0000

Whoa someone needs to cut down on the ProPlus me thinks.

Your telling me that it took two seconds to render a full movie into ascii format?

Can I ask what computer your using as it takes me hours to render my clips from 3D Studio Max into anything even if that is ascii format which I have not tried yet.

Hope you feel a little less crankey in the morning, or afternoon or whatever time you wake up.

By: Shizawana

Shizawana — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:11:53 +0000

So far I we can conclude that you all (excluding Worby and John) are plain stupid idiots.
1. It’s not an easter egg (sorry Simon)
2. It’s not “genious” and it didn’t take “ages”. There is in fact a lib (aalib) that outputs video as ascii. Ergo; it took two seconds.

By: Worby

Worby — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:16:14 +0000

Hay guyz i just found an easter egg on my computer it’s caled notepad.exe don’t tell anybudy gusy!!!111

By: Simon M.Pettit

Simon M.Pettit — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:28:03 +0000

Hey John,

It is labeled an Easter Egg as it is a hidden extra but while not embedded in the OS software still needs the right combination to be entered, in this case the command in the run box.

If you want to know more about how an Easter Egg in computer terms is defined feel free to follow this link

http://www.compukiss.com/tech-talk/easter-eggs-high-tech-style-2.html

By: John

John — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 07:48:49 +0000

I agree it’s cool, but how can that be labeled an Easter egg? Telnet simply connects to a remote server called towel.blinkenlights.nl and displays whatever the server wants to be displayed. It will work on many systems besides XP, as long as there is ANSI terminal support in the Telnet app.

By: Simon M.Pettit

Simon M.Pettit — Thu, 29 May 2008 09:49:41 +0000

Indeed, I am not an expert in the ASCII field, but even I known the simplest thing can take hours