The most bizarre thing I've seen in a while

[burythehatchet]

Things You Can't Say in Notepad
If you're a Windows user, open Notepad and type in this phrase, without the quote marks and with no carriage return: "Bush hid the facts". Now save it and open it again.

The subversive text is probably gone, replaced by a line of white boxes, or Chinese characters if you have the font.

Weeeird.
http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog?entry_id=1502576

[Lars39]

1. I got little boxes.

[burythehatchet]

2. Right. How wierd is that?

[Lars39]

3. I typed in "Bush lied about the facts." and that wasn't changed.

Hmm.

[burythehatchet]

4. I'm going to send microsoft a request for possible explanation

I don't think its anything nefarious, just really bizarre.

[Hand]

13. Check the URL in the original post.

For some reason, any text file created in Notepad that consists of a four-letter word followed by two three-letter words and one five-letter word will produce this odd result.

Try typing "Papa ate the apple", for example... :scared:

[Lars39]

14. The second time I typed it in, it worked, but I was using the same

notepad.

[Hugin]

15. Anybody know Chinese?

I get those characters.

畢桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴

:o

[SPKrazy]

5. Didn't Happen For Me

got the same phrase - Bush hid the facts-

[burythehatchet]

7. You'd be the first

no carriage return, no quotes.

[SPKrazy]

12. When I Opened It From My Browser

on IE, it didn't work

when I opened it from start/programs- to notepad, it did happen

strange

[MADem]

30. Me too, no carriage return, no quotes, either. NT

[gristy]

6. wow

A programmer somewhere in MS is committing dastardly deeds.

[burythehatchet]

10. That's hard to believe (though anything's possible)

but I will put the question to MS support

[elehhhhna]

8. All your Bush facts belongs to us.

[Jed Dilligan]

26. That should be

All your bush fact ARE belong to us

shouldn't it?

[elehhhhna]

32. dangit. knew it was screwie. thx!

edit; rats! too late to edit it

[tocqueville]

9. I wrote "Bush is a liar"

and when opening it stood "you are absolutely right"

[burythehatchet]

11. Our computers are starting to think for themselves

and have apparently surpassed the intelligence level of 34% of Americans.

[tocqueville]

21. I'm kidding of course, it's an Easter Egg

I got the white boxes too (on the first one).
I think it's an Easter egg

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_%28virtual%29

Hack In The Box :: View topic - Notepad Easter Egg :) - Post Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 8:14 pm Post subject: Notepad Easter Egg :), Reply with quote. - open up notepad - type. Code:. bush hid the facts ...
https://forum.hackinthebox.org/viewtopic.php?p=84031 - 39k - 15 juin 2006 - En cache - Pages similaires


Notepad Easter Egg? - Invision Power Services - Notepad Easter Egg? Options V ... Type this:. QUOTE. Bush hid the facts. Save the file and close notepad. Open again and the text should have changed (to ...
forums.invisionpower.com/ index.php?showtopic=218438&view=old - 28k - En cache - Pages similaires

Geenstijl.nl - "Bush hid the facts"Leuk.. er zijn nog meer van zulke easter eggs. koekdeeg 15-06-06 @ 13:56 ... Gewoon een bugje in notepad, any other 4-3-3-5 letter word combo will do. ...
www.geenstijl.nl/mt/archieven/013809.html - 74k - En cache - Pages similaires


Funny: How to Break Windows Notepad - A JoeUser Article - Must be another easter egg. But it works. You guys have too much time on your ... Here's a really funny way to break Notepad that a coworker showed me this ...
zoomba.joeuser.com/articleComments.asp?AID=117870 - 61k - En cache - Pages similaires


liked by noname99 (on reddit.com) - New Notepad Easter egg - Bush hid the facts (evilshroud.com). 0 points posted 3 hours ago by noname99 comment · Reddit got owned! (reddit.justgotowned.com) ...
reddit.com/user/noname99/liked - 36k - En cache - Pages similaires

[grytpype]

31. From the hackinthebox.com forum

Okay, played with it a little more. By default on most english systems (and maybe others) Notepad saves things as ANSI. When you re-open the document notepad tries to determine the encoding and in this case guesses wrong and assumes UTF-8. The problem lies in the BOM (byte order mark) not being present in the original document. Notepad calls the system IsTextUnicode function which checks the first couple of bytes and uses some statisical analysis to guess. According to the documentation
"These tests are not foolproof."

[Mnemosyne]

25. .

:rofl:

[HysteryDiagnosis]

16. Wow...... and I should know better..... dayyyyyyyammmmm??? n/t

[Misunderestimator]

17. Happens with any one 4-letter, two 3-letter and one 5-letter word combos.

From your link:

"It's not the massive right-wing conspiracy it might seem, though. The folks at WinCustomize.com discovered an odd bug in Notepad that's triggered by a text file consisting of a four-letter word, two three-letter words, and a five letter word. Some text does it -- "this app can break" is their example -- some doesn't."

Happens with any words with those combinations of letters.

"Gore hid the facts" works the same way... or "Your mom ate trash"... try it.

[Hugin]

20. Thrill killer!

:D

Anyway, according to the Google translator. The chinese
translation of the characters is...

Albert 桳 name Mount 敨 video games were 獴

It's only a Beta mind you.

[Misunderestimator]

24. LOL

The russian translation is "Gore invented the internet"

[Arkansas Granny]

18. If I used a period at the end of the sentence I was able to open

it again. If I omitted the period I got a row of little black boxes when I tried to open it.

[question everything]

19. One more reason for using a Mac ;-) (nt)

[jobycom]

28. Up to three now, eh?

:rofl:

[Mnemosyne]

22. When I hit Save, the file named itself *.txt!

Bush hid the facts.

Tried to save as filename that came up as *.txt (I did not name it that and wouldn't save until I changed it to bush.txt)

Clicked to change where file saved and my 911 assessment file was hightlighted! Huh?

Changed name of file to bush.txt and saved

Closed it and opened it and this was there:
These were boxes in my file! > 畂桳栠摩琠敨映捡獴


Very strange indeed!

[Misunderestimator]

23. You can't say "Gore hid the facts" either. It's a BUG, nothing sinister.

Try it... and then read your own link :) WEIRDLY though... if you do all caps "BUSH HID THE FACTS" it comes back fine.

"Gore was the shits" works as well as "Bush was the first"... Interestingly it doesn't work with ALL 4-3-3-5 combinations... "Fuck the 1st repub" comes back the same after saving, but "hgjh fjg gsa skjhf" turns into boxes. Strange bug.

[corkhead]

27. there's something up involving the number of characters

do the same thing with the following phrase to get the same result

"chmp sht his pants"

or even

"4444 333 333 55555"

and you'll get the same boxes.

sorry to be a wet blanket, but Microsoft's programmers (in India) love chimpy, it's probably just more sloppy programming.

Micro$oft Uber Alles

[TahitiNut]

29. OMG! The word 'gullible' isn't in DU's spelling checker!

:silly: