>> First of all, there *must* be an Emacs mode for this. Because, let's
>> face it, there's an Emacs mode for everything else! :-P
>
> Why would there be Emacs mode for a hacker UI? After all, VI is the
> editor for hackers.

Hehe, depends which university you ask - apparently.

>> Naturally there should be a button to activate that user interface they
>> used in Jurassic Park - because apparently that's what "Unix" looks like.
>
> You.. are aware of SGI Fusion, are you?
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaRHU1XxMJQ

The top-rated comment... is Jurassic Park. ;-)

>> Also we need a button which causes Japanese characters to rain down on
>> the screen, followed by "follow the White Rabbit, Neo", and then zoom
>> through the digits, Matrix style...
>
> When you save and quit, the editor should start dropping the digits to a
> bucket with the correct filename. It could also zoom to the digits and
> follow them to the bucket.

I did a search, there is a surprising amount of prior art. This one is 
particularly pretty:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph2rAZhWuCU

I know Linux used to have a Matrix screensaver, but it was awful. All 
the text was heavily JPEG-compressed so it looked like arse.

It *sounds* trivial to do, but it's actually quite hard to make this 
look really nice...

>> What other features should a *proper* hacker UI have?
>
> Add 256 to one (random) byte of every IPv4 address.

Ooo, that reminds me... My boss found a video clip from some TV drama or 
other. One girl asks why she can't access her email. The other says 
"have you tried using the IP address?", and proceeds to type four 
numbers, none of which is less than 250. (Why the **** have you 
memorised an IP address anyway?!)

This gives me an idea... Such a sequence of numbers is a potentially 
valid DNS name - assuming there's a TLD called 572. If we could set one 
up, that would MESS WITH PEOPLE'S MINDS! (...and probably reveal a bug 
or two in the various software for parsing URLs.)

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