Aprils Fools Day potential jokes!

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

Hey all,

Seeing as fools day is only a short time away, maybe a good time for backups!

I'm thinking of playing a joke on a buddy..

Print out a C64 screen and stick it on the server text term console!

Although it'd be much more elegant if I could change /etc/issue somehow to come up with it..

On that note, how is it possible to create nice reverse text and underline text in HP emulation. (escape codes?)

I saw a thread on this recently, but lost it.

Out for a pint, points on Monday!

Later,
Bill

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

tput smul (start undeline)
tput rmul (remove underline)
tput rev (reverse text)
tput (rmso) (remove standout - back to normal)

[Robert Gamble]

Ok, here is the kiddie stuff:

1) modify the 'friend's' .profile login script to include 'exit'

2) add an 'at' job to copy the 'funny' .profile back in later in the day

3) make sure you have a good backup copy of your own .profile !!

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Here's a heartstopper borrowed from the old fortune program.

In your victim's .profile,
echo "rm -r *"
sleep 30


You could install the old fortune program and edit the fortunes yourself. Then add fortune to each users .profile; in the original fortune there was an undocumented '-o' option that generated obscene fortunes.

[MANOJ SRIVASTAVA]

Bill

Change the Prompt to

ENTER YOUR PASSWORD ?


and set echo to off.


Manoj

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

If you still can NFS or rcp (be sure you can) give a sysadm a heartache and put "exit" as first statement in /etc/profile. See how soon the phone rings.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Add another shell over the logon prompt that sais "Insert coin to operate" (guess, what: the password to continue is the word "coin")

[Holger Knoppik]

Hi Bill,

seems like the .profile is the favourite file here! OK, how about (again, the victim's profile) while true;do
cat /etc/copyright
sleep 3
done

or, do you know the root password of another server you don't have anything to do with?
Modify root's crontab. Tell the server to reboot every 30 minutes !

Have fun ...
RGDS, Holger

[George_Dodds]

Just tell them there's a full day's scheduled site power down, allways worth a laugh watching them flap about trying to find out who authorised it.

Twisted sense of humour! tee hee ;)

Cheers

George

[Bernie Vande Griend]

The old trojen horse trick is fun too.
Just change their PATH to include a new directory and put some wrapper scripts for 'ls' or other programs to do some interesting things before actually doing the ls.
I like doing a random generator to echo things like: echo "ls? I'm tired right now, I'll get back to you in a minute. Sleep 60; ls;"
or echo "go list them yourself."
or echo "due to cutback's the budget, I can only list items from a-k" ls [a-k]*;

Those were the days when I had time to do this.

[Mark Fenton]

Bill, my friends here in the office are fond of one that is useful for windows users:

If the victim has neglected to lock the screen, minimize everything and snapshot the entire screen. Then hide the task bar and paste the picture on top of the background.

When we did this to the CIO for his birthday, he called up and complained that he needed a new computer. We stopped him before he rebooted.

Too bad the same thing wouldn't work in CDE...

[harry d brown jr]

I like the meltdown program, especially when you are sitting near the person and hear them scream, funnier than Gary Conduit hitting on Hillary Clinton.

live free or die
harry

[Trond Haugen]

I remember a technical bulletin when the M68000 still was rather new. It explained that some lab guy had found several undocumented mnemonics for the processor. They where arranged so the first ones could pass as real. Some of my favorites where:
RST = Read and stretch tape
HCF = Halt and catch Fire
DHD = Drop head on disk
EO = Execute operator
SLC = Subtract and Loose Carry
BPO = Branch on Power Off

Happy Easter,
Trond

[Justo Exposito]

Hi Bill,

This is what you want?

bold=`tput smso` # Bold Letter
normal=`tput sgr0` # Normal Letter
underline=`tput smul` # Underlying
reverse=`tput rev` # reverse video
sound=`tput bel` # sound
blink=`tput blink` # Blinking
ESC=^[ # escape caracter
CSI=${ESC}[
hundred_32="echo ${CSI}?3h" # 132 width
eighty="echo ${CSI}?3l" # 80 width
expand="${ESC}#6" # wide Letter
export bold normal underline inver ESC CSI ochenta expand hundred_32 sound
$ochenta # 80 width mode screen

Regards and good luck,

Justo.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Trond, I think it was also a 1st April set. I remember

FCE - Fill Core with Epoxy
WRC - Wind Realtime Clock
BSO - Branch on Sleepy Operator
PMT - Punch Magnetic Tape

The artice also had some musings about a new dialect of the basic programming language, supporting the new "ComeFrom" operator that would simplify debugging. It should be the opposite of the "goto". Once you /thought/ you understood how this could work, they continued with the extended feature "comefrom on", and my mind got twisted :)

comefrom 10, 40, 834, 1210 on i

or something like this

[Trond Haugen]

Procura, they are good too.
I was also told be a colleague when RISC was quite new that he had hear about a TISC machine. As RISC was Reduced Instruction Set Computer this was Two Instruction Set Computer. He couldn't remember both but one was FB = Fix Bug.
:-)

Regards,
Trond

[Robert Gamble]

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[Bill Hassell]

The tput answers are the way to go but note: these are compatible with all emulators, not just HP. That's the beauty of tput (plus the man page for terminfo).

Here's an old one from many years ago--I think it was an editorial in Datamation (with aologies for faulty recollection):

New computer language discovered! It's called trinary. The basic unit is called a trit and has 3 states: on, off and maybe. The basic numeric element is called a tribble and characters are composed of trites. The main programming language is called Trivial. A unique construct in Trivial is the triple adjuster as in:

A+++

which means: increment A and this time, I really mean it. One of the major differentiators is the ComeFrom instruction.

[Michael Elleby III_1]

my friends... since you are all thinking up thoughts of innocent deviltry... I thought I'd add one..

Nothing works like the old foam mallet in the bag that you pull out in front of your boss real quickly and bang away on the top of the console....

I know, I know... kinda dry, but it works...

[Bill McNAMARA_1]

it's be funnier with a real mallet!

Later,
Bill

[Michael Elleby III_1]

Yes, with a real mallet it'd be loads funnier..

But then, I wouldn't know what to do with the extended vacation I'd be receiving.. I mean, I've already been to Disneyland...

Mike E.

[John Strang]

Hi All,

definitely some interesting ideas there, but I for one won't be at work on 1st April as it's a public holiday :-)

Have a good Easter break everyone,

John

[Mark Greene_1]

For your windows using coworkers' enjoyment, there is the popular "it's not safe to turn off your computer" screensaver:

http://www.gurumeditation.demon.co.uk/freeware/shutdown.htm

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

Much better is the BSOD SS from sysinternals, available on http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/bluesave.shtml

This one adapts to the *real* state of you PC simulating a crash screens change, so it's not static. Real fun for the unexpecting.