418
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](http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2324) by those madcaps at the Internet Engineering Task Force, the people who define the internet's underlying protocols.
More Geek Plates[](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/the-geekiest-license-plates-of-all-time/)[Live Free or Die: The Origins of the Geek License Plate](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/origins-of-geek-plates/)[](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/geeky-license-plates-2/)[Greatest Geek Plates: Readers' Picks](http://stag-komodo.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/geeky-license-plates-2/)HTTP 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](http://www.flickr.com/photos/dokas/4278247694/)*
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