HTTP 418. To most highway drivers, it looks like a random collection of characters -- the kind of mud-spattered jumble you'd see on any car. But to Phil Dokas, it's a really good joke. And he's right. His "HTTP 418" vanity license plate is one of geekiest license plates ever attached to the back of a car -- and that's one of the highest compliments Wired could ever give. A couple of years ago, Dokas chose "HTTP 418" as the vanity plate for his Volkswagen Jetta. An HTTP 418 is an kind of internet status error, but it's not likely to turn up on your web browser. It was created as part of a 1998 April Fool's joke by those madcaps at the Internet Engineering Task Force, the people who define the internet's underlying protocols. More Geek Plates Live Free or Die: The Origins of the Geek License Plate Greatest Geek Plates: Readers' PicksHTTP 418 is part of the "Hyper Text Coffee Pot Control Protocol standard." It's the error you get when you try to make coffee in a teapot over the internet. According to a draft of the standard: "Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code '418 I'm a teapot.' The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout." When the vanity plate arrived at his home, Dokas pulled out his camera. "I took a photo of it and put it online knowing full well that someone was going to eventually say: 'Hey, I get this. I think it's amazing." It took six months, Dokas says, but someone finally got the joke. Dokas eventually hung up the license plate when he sold his car and moved from Michigan to the Bay Area to take a job as a developer at Flickr. But if you pass by his cube, you can still see it on the wall. No license plate could ever match the genius of the HTTP 418. But many come close. Click through the images above to see them in all their splendor.... Photo: Phil Dokas/Flickr

This is the license plate that inspired Phil Dokas to get his "418" vanity plate. To most drivers, "CTHLHU" looks like some weird consonant-starved name, but to H.P. Lovecraft fans, this is a fiendishly funny plate. Lovecraft's Cthlhu is a scaly winged, tentacle-faced demon. In short, a completely evil creature with a whole different idea about "kids first." Photo: Pete Tosacano/Flickr

A great user error message, popular in tech support shops: "Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair." Photo: Jessamyn West/Flickr

You know you're a badass when you drive a Porsche with a Linux license plate command that could completely wipe all the files off that jerk who's tailgating you. Photo: Michael Ford/Flickr

Last spotted in May 2005. We think it is some sort of Google social network beloved by people in Brazil. Photo: Peter Kaminski/Flickr

A subtle hat-tip to trolling. In Windows, Alt-F4 closes the window you're typing in and is a favorite troll tech tip to knock newbies out of online games and chat rooms (i.e., having trouble with your computer? Try hitting Alt-F4). Photo: Brandon Debes/Flickr

If you think trigonometry on a license plate isn't cool, you are sadly mistaken. Photo: Mary MacTavish/Flickr

A beloved Unix command that somehow works perfectly on the back of a car. It means "file system check." Photo: Nathanael Burton/Flickr

A tip of the hat to the old syn-syn-ack three-way handshake that's used to set up a TCP/IP connection. Photo: Tim Vandegrift

Everyone will be wanting one of these babies ... someday. Photo: Phil Hollenback/Flickr

Technically, it's an all-white license plate. This geek-joke license plate is the hexadecimal HTML color code for white. Photo: Jon Canady/Flickr

We spotted this Legomobile parked in Oracle's parking lot a few months back. Photo: Wired/Robert McMillan

There is a metaphor here. We're just not 100 percent sure we know what it is. Photo: J. Chris Vaughan/Flickr

No matter how hip Microsoft tells us that Windows 8 is going to be, a Microsoft license plate will always be geeky. Photo: Christina Dulude/Flickr

OK, "Dad of 3" is not a geeky license plate. But this license plate really does belong to Mr. Linux, the King of Geeks: Linus Torvalds Photo: Wired/Jon Snyder