Fantastic story. I joined Microsoft in 1997 but unfortunately I cannot confirm the story, I never heard this story before, but it doesn't surprise me, we had a lot of fun back then with all kinds of pranks, and Easter eggs, until one day it was all suddenly stopped, ship an Easter egg and get fired was what they told us. That was a very sad day. I can confirm that Microsoft was doing things with Java back then, I worked in an XML parser written in Java when I first joined Microsoft.
All of those quirks and inside jokes were forcibly removed to assure customers and government agencies there were no 'hidden' code or features in a product - just the released, documented, and tested pieces of the product.
