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Comment by DominikR

13 years ago

I definitely love those kind of easter eggs.

There are also similar methods in the Android SDK:

UserManager.isUserAGoat() link: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/UserManage...

Log.wtf() link: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/util/Log.html..., java.lang.Throwable)

AdapterViewFlipper.fyiWillBeAdvancedByHostKThx() link: http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/Adapte...

61 comments

DominikR

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danabramov  13 years ago

There is also WTF in WebKit source.

It stands for Web Template Framework, but it's funny it appears all the time in crash reports:

http://google.com/search?q=wtf+webkit+crash

For example:

    Thread 2 name:  WebThread
    Thread 2 Crashed:
    0   JavaScriptCore                  0x32a97d46 WTF::StringImpl::hash() const + 42
    1   JavaScriptCore                  0x32a97c6a WTF::HashTable<WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::IdentityExtractor<WTF::StringImpl*>, WTF::StringHash, WTF::HashTraits<WTF::StringImpl*>, WTF::HashTraits<WTF::StringImpl*> >::lookupForWriting(WTF::StringImpl* const&) + 18
    2   JavaScriptCore                  0x32a9b028 std::pair<WTF::HashTableIterator<WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::IdentityExtractor<WTF::StringImpl*>, WTF::StringHash, WTF::HashTraits<WTF::StringImpl*>, WTF::HashTraits<WTF::StringImpl*> >, bool> WTF::HashTable<WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::IdentityExtractor<WTF::StringImpl*>, WTF::StringHash, WTF::HashTraits<WTF::StringImpl*>, WTF::HashTraits<WTF::StringImpl*> >::add<WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::IdentityHashTranslator<WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::StringImpl*, WTF::StringHash> >(WTF::StringImpl* const&, WTF::StringImpl* const&) + 448
    3   JavaScriptCore                  0x32a9ae30 WTF::AtomicString::addSlowCase(WTF::StringImpl*) + 96
    4   WebCore                         0x31bade0c WebCore::AtomicHTMLToken::initializeAttributes(WTF::Vector<WebCore::HTMLToken::Attribute, 10ul> const&) + 232

nwh  13 years ago

There's been balmy little bits of stuff like this all the way through OSX and iOS for ages, though maybe not quite as flippant.

Every Mac has the kernel extension "Dont Steal Mac OS X.kext" for example, which loads into RAM a short poem.

    There once was was a user that whined 
    his existing OS was so blind, 
    he'd do better to pirate 
    an OS that ran great 
    but found his hardware declined. 
    Please don't steal Mac OS! 
    Really, that's way uncool.

  • 0x0  13 years ago

    That .kext is also responsible for verifying some sort of signature in a hardware chip only present on genuine macs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93Intel_architectur...

  • raverbashing  13 years ago

    I wonder if this has (or had had) some legal significance.

    I remember some issues with the Apple II rom being copied and that they had to add a "Copyright Apple" or something similar to the binary data.

    • pcwalton  13 years ago

      The idea is that this poem is copyrighted as a creative work, and therefore Apple can control its distribution. The actual key contains a copyright message after the poem.

    • gizmo686  13 years ago

      If I recall correctly, they added a watermark to the ROM. The concern was that as adversary could modify the code to make it difficult to prove that it was actually a copy. The watermark was a hidden section of the code which could be executed to demonstrate that the code did in fact originate from Apple.

      If anyone can confirm/deny this, please do.

  • DominikR  13 years ago

    I can definitely understand that, having pulled and Android app from the store because of piracy recently. (in app purchase is really hard to circumvent by pirates, but apps where you pay upfront are pirated like crazy)

  • anonymous  13 years ago

    Didn't Jobs say "Great Artists Steal."?

    Users who are artists must heed these wise words.

    All Hail the Cult Leader.

    As for this "poem", I've seen better from kids in elementary school. This speaks to the creative aptitude of Apple's kernel engineers. Certainly not the strongpoint of their workforce.

    What sort of royalties or up-front payments did CMU get for letting Apple use their kernel?

    • PeterisP  13 years ago

      It's actually very nifty - if you use a "secret"(obscure) key or checksum to check authenticity of hardware, then it still could be legally duplicated as nothing before DMCA was passed would prohibit that. If you use a scrappy poem as that key/token... then it's clearly copyrightable, and its duplication by some other manufacturer can be restricted with ages-old laws.

      1 reply →

  • josteink  13 years ago

    Every Maccard on the planet seems to think pirating OS X is an oh so terrible thing to do (to the point that parent post is bringing up poems about it like its a cute, non-weird thing). At the same time pirating everything else on the planet seemingly is OK.

    I've never understood the rationale behind this.

    Keep in mind I'm a software developer myself and run strictly non-pirated software, and open-source as much as possible. You could never make me replace a Linux desktop with a limited OS X experience, and I see no reason what so ever to put in the effort to pirate it.

    But why is it worse to pirate a OS with bad hardware-support out of the box than pirating... say Microsoft Office? I'm just curious what's up with that.

    • coldtea  13 years ago

      >Every Maccard on the planet seems to think pirating OS X is an oh so terrible thing to do

      First, who are those "Maccards" you are reffering to? Perhaps you meant to say "OS X user" or "persons who likes Apple stuff".

      Second, a lot of us OS X user could not care less if you pirated OS X or not. Matter of fact, I know several people with genuine Macs that also run a Hackintosh (and I experimented with one a while ago).

      >(to the point that parent post is bringing up poems about it like its a cute, non-weird thing).

      The poem is placed by Apple developers, inside the OS X internels. IIRC, it's loaded in a .kext (a kernel extension). That's cute, especially it being a flippant poem and not some 20 page long legal text. In essense, it's a small easter egg.

      It's not like random Apple users write poems about not pirating OS X, which seems to be your impression.

      >At the same time pirating everything else on the planet seemingly is OK.

      "Maccards think pirating OS X is very bad" (wrong) "At the same time pirating everything else on the planet seemingly is OK" (wrong again).

      Even if "Maccards" (sic) thought that pirating OS X is bad, who told you it's the same persons that think pirating everything else is OK?

      >I've never understood the rationale behind this.

      The problem might be that what you believe goes on is not happening in the first place.

    • DominikR  13 years ago

      As an Android developer I had many discussions with Apple users/devs but I never heard anyone say something like that.

    • nicholassmith  13 years ago

      With OS X there's no license key you need to enter, they have a poem instead asking you not to steal it. That's a nice thing, rather than assuming you're going to steal it they have a poem to jokingly ask you otherwise.

      15 replies →

    • tlrobinson  13 years ago

      I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion. From your tone I suspect you're simply biased against Macs.

saurik  13 years ago

These are not the same, as these are left in production. The code names in the iOS binaries were later replaced by their real functionality as it no longer needed to be secret.