tourist information

from Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003)

tourist information
 n.

   Information in an on-line display that is not immediately useful, but
   contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going on with the software
   or hardware behind it. Whether a given piece of info falls in this
   category depends partly on what the user is looking for at any given
   time. The `bytes free' information at the bottom of an MS-DOS or
   Windows dir display is tourist information; so (most of the time) is
   the TIME information in a Unix ps(1) display.

from The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)

tourist information

   Information in an on-line display that is not immediately
   useful, but contributes to a viewer's gestalt of what's going
   on with the software or hardware behind it.  Whether a given
   piece of info falls in this category depends partly on what
   the user is looking for at any given time.  The "bytes free"
   information at the bottom of an {MS-DOS} "dir" display is
   tourist information; so (most of the time) is the TIME
   information in a {Unix} "ps(1)" display.

   [{Jargon File}]