I'm pretty sure this one was actually the motherboard manufacturer's idea, but Microsoft did something far stupider.
In Windows XP, if you open Windows Explorer and have the search sidebar active, there's a little animated yellow dog sitting there below the search form. He's originally from Microsoft Bob, and he's there as your 'agent' to search your filesystem. The animation goes through a full cycle about every 90 seconds, and in part of it the dog pants twice. A sound is played through your speakers.
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I'm pretty sure this one was actually the motherboard manufacturer's idea, but Microsoft did something far stupider.
In Windows XP, if you open Windows Explorer and have the search sidebar active, there's a little animated yellow dog sitting there below the search form. He's originally from Microsoft Bob, and he's there as your 'agent' to search your filesystem. The animation goes through a full cycle about every 90 seconds, and in part of it the dog pants twice. A sound is played through your speakers.
This confuses and infuriates people: http://ask.metafilter.com/38461/ http://ask.metafilter.com/51844/ http://ask.metafilter.com/52427/ http://ask.metafilter.com/65029/ http://ask.metafilter.com/70851/
That's amazing, I'm going to leave the search window open now, A badly designed Windows feature is the best virtual pet I can think of.