How to annoy a Windows user in less than 20 seconds

But it will take some practice.

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That's an old one. We used to do this on our public machines. It drove people crazy.

That said, here is how to elicit screams of anguish from an OS-X or Linux user:

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Used to do exactly this at the lab all the time. The best is if you have the time to make a smiley face with all the icons before you do the print screen.

um duhgh.....

try making a shortcut to

C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 60 -"you just got pwned"

By david zhivkovich (not verified) on 06 Oct 2008 #permalink

um duhgh.....

try making a shortcut to

C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe -s -t 60 -"you just got pwned"

change name and icon to firefox, and replace this shortcut w/ the real one.

if they never end up just resorting to IE.... give 'em a big pat on the back!!!

(ps. the ONLY way to stop the shutdown timer is going to run and typing "shutdown -a" without the quotes)

By david zhivkovich (not verified) on 06 Oct 2008 #permalink

Yup, that's an old one.

If you have more time you can hide the picture in an overlay.
That stumps most people on how to restore the background.
And if you have a lot of time you can even stick some form of script in the webpage you are using as overlay to prevent right click use.

(The things we did while studying :)

By Who Cares (not verified) on 06 Oct 2008 #permalink

What about the overlay with the icons as flash object that won't let the mouse cursor near them???? (Like that old "how to keep an idiot busy" trick)

Well, if somebody set my desktop to that stupid TellyTubbies theme, that would certainly annoy me in less than 20 seconds.

This is about 40 steps easier on a mac. There, got it in the correct thread on the second try.

Why would you want to do this? If you did it to me, I'd just think you're a dick.

Well the flash would have been fun too :D
That other trick was easier on 3.11 since it was a no-brainer to catch any form of escape. I had to actually work to do that on 95/XP

By Who Cares (not verified) on 07 Oct 2008 #permalink

Well, juvenile pranks do have their time and place - I thought it was kinda funny and clever when my pre-teen kids did something similar to me, a number of years ago.

The same juvenile stuff works in linux. Try changing the default in inittab to runlevel 6 or 0.

On the IBM 1401 we used to mess with the bootstrap deck to make it read all the cards and do nothing. It wasn't very funny then.