Google Analytics

Monday, August 18, 2008

Linux featured in DOA: Dead or Alive movie

Because it's such a classic, I like to re-watch DOA: Dead or Alive every now and again. Based on the video game DOA 3 on Xbox, it vaguely follows the story line of the game. With a rich universe, impassioned drama and superb acting I have no idea why it only got 4.9/10 on IMDB ;)

On the weekend I was enjoying my third or fourth viewing of this theatrical masterpiece when I decided to pause during one of those 'computer code flows down the screen' scenes. To my surprise, this is what I found:

Alpha source code from the Linux kernel scrolling down the screen


For those playing at home, you can find this code in arch/alpha/kernel/err_impl.h from a 2.6 series Linux kernel.

There are some slight differences with the original code though. Random words and tokens are missing. For example, the copyright message has been mostly stripped, random words are missing from the description comment and tabs are displaying as boxes.

Having Alpha source scrolling down the screen didn't really make sense in the context of the scene, but I guess if they're going to just put 'whatever' up there, it's a nice Easter Egg for the nerds to unearth.

No comments: