Windows XP Home Edition Easter Egg - Star Wars ASCII Art on Telnet

Brilliant! Star Wars in DOS! I am going to wait for the bianry version to come out

This is extreemly cool, but, It is not a Windows XP item. Telnet opens an outside connection from your computer to another computer and the rest is an internet address. (that's your lesson for today) still extreemly cool.

Telnet is a program to connect other machines in a text only manner to reach data. It was very popular until last two years. It's advanced versions are still being used by most of the Linux/Unix users. The command in the item (I'm going to call that an item because it's not an egg, or anything similar) will connect to the given address, and display what server sends you. In this case, the servers sends you a nicely done text mode demo of the StarWars Movie. So this is neither an egg, nor it's related to Windows. You can find more information and other interesting telnet addresses at: http://www.telnet.org/. Existence of this item actually proves most of the stuff is not properly reviewed.

You can view a JavaScript version at the official site located at http://asciimation.co.nz/. Greatly saves your bandwidth.

This not only works for XP, but will work for older versions of Windows (95, 98, NT, 2000) as well.

The ASCII may not be the easter egg, but there is a quick flashing reference to Douglas Adams' "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy" which is not realted to the movie. On the first frame of the connection a quick "Good-bye and thanks for the fish" appears. This refers to the chapter in the book right before the earth is destroyed to make way for a highway, the dolphins disappear suddenly from the earth and leave notes behind that say "Good-bye and thanks for the fish!" (At least I'm sure that's what it says, it's been a few years since I've read the book.) Anyway, the you just see "thanks for the fish." and I do believe the rest of the quote is there but on my machine, it goes by too fast to read.

I found my copy of Douglas Adams and the quote is "So Long and thanks for the fish." Sorry everyone for the misquote!

Wow. Someone had too much time on their hands. Telnet connects to that website to display that. Anyone got more?

This even works on linux.

This is a pretty cool egg. Imagine how long it would take to do that though and then hide it away.

Yes. The telnet movie is not an Easter Egg at all, as the information about it can be viewed at www.asciimation.co.nz It works on any telnet client, and the Linux terminal mode as well. But in this animation, there is an Easter Egg, as Jen mentioned. A subtle reference to Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy. This egg has also been explained on the FAQs at the asciimation site.

It's not correct to call this a WinXP easter egg. This is an external site someone created, it's simply a telnet operation rather than a web page. Very well done, but not an easter egg.