Software for people you hate

  • Thread starter Thread starter Richard Steinfeld
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Richard Steinfeld

What software would you give to your worst enemy and why?

It should be on-topic, in other words, freeware. Of course, you are free
to interpret this as you wish. For example, it is OK with me for you to
give your hate-ee commercial software, since, after all, you're giving
it to them: to them, it is "freeware," right?

Discuss among yourselves. But don't forget to list your favorite code
weapon here.

Richard
 
Richard said:
What software would you give to your worst enemy and why?
Click to expand...

Although I've never tried any of them, apparently a guy called AA Fussy
does "quite a line" of applications. Think of him as a kind of Ed Wood
of software. He releases stuff under Babya Software Group.

There's some stuff at the following website:
http://www.geocities.com/babyap2002/

He does things like issue "press releases" and announces "acquisitions".
There was also some mention about him trying to put together an
Operating System using Visual Basic, and other flawed ideas.
 
Although I've never tried any of them, apparently a guy called AA Fussy
does "quite a line" of applications. Think of him as a kind of Ed Wood
of software. He releases stuff under Babya Software Group.
Click to expand...

Excellent analogy!! The Ed Wood of software!

As regards freeware weapons...I can't recall the exact name of the
app, but it was one of those 'keyboard bangers' for toddlers....you
know, it loads up full screen and every time the child hits a key the
compy makes a farty noise and a little image pops up.
I downloaded one particular example, ran it - and could I get out of
it??
Nothing worked....not alt+tab, not ctrl+xyz...etc - even ctrl+alt+del
did sod all. Only way to get out of it was to press reset.

Now that, plus a self-installing link in the startup folder would be
very nasty indeed.

If I had access to their computer, I'd load it with Black.exe ( see
pricelessware pages ), using a bitmap of their desktop.

Regards,
 
I once worked for sales department that had the nick-name of
"Meat-Grinder." In those days, we were using computers with Windows NT
4 on them, and the IT department had setup the machines so that all of
our programs were in the Start Menu and there were no icons on the
desktop at all.

We had a saleswoman who made life even more difficult for everyone.
This woman was working on a very profitable and important sales quote
for her most lucrative client and an Excel spreadsheet was opened on
her computer screen. For some unknown reason, she left her desk.

I dashed over to her cubical, print-screened her monitor image, saved
it to her hard drive as a graphic and set it as her wallpaper. Then I
minimized her Excel app window and returned to my desk.

The fireworks flew as she tried in utter desperation to edit and alter
that spreadsheet but it refused to cooperate. She started slapping the
monitor and punching the computer case and her supervisor came over to
chatise her for her childish behavior in front of everyone else.

The supervisor figured out the deception in a very short time.

Nearly everyone had seen me do it, but this woman had no friends and so
no one ever revealed that it was me who had done it. The woman was so
angry and embarrassed that she left the building in tears and did not
return for two hours.
 
Richard Steinfeld formulated on Saturday :
What software would you give to your worst enemy and why?
Click to expand...



This program is from the early days of computing, but I recall a
"trick" version of DOS. Sorry, but I don't recall the name of the app.

You copied it into the computer's root directory and typed its name in
the DOS prompt and the new "prompt" would appear.

Everything appeared to be just fine, until you typed a DOS command and
pressed the ENTER key. (Remember that GUI's did not exist at that
time.)

You'd type in a command and the prompt would return "Leave me alone,
I'm busy."

Then you'd type some other command and the screen would tell you to go
to hell...the responses would get progressively more obscenely
sarcastic after that.

This trickster's version of DOS made life unbearable for the IT
students who worked in the college computer lab!
 
Richard Steinfeld formulated on Saturday :

This program is from the early days of computing, but I recall a
"trick" version of DOS. Sorry, but I don't recall the name of the app.

You copied it into the computer's root directory and typed its name in
the DOS prompt and the new "prompt" would appear.

Everything appeared to be just fine, until you typed a DOS command and
pressed the ENTER key. (Remember that GUI's did not exist at that
time.)

You'd type in a command and the prompt would return "Leave me alone,
I'm busy."

Then you'd type some other command and the screen would tell you to go
to hell...the responses would get progressively more obscenely
sarcastic after that.

This trickster's version of DOS made life unbearable for the IT
students who worked in the college computer lab!
Click to expand...

What about the old -.COM that you left ready on the command line to be
invoked by the unsuspecting user hitting Enter. It informed you that
water had been detected in your HDD and helpfully commenced a cleaning
cycle with great sound effects.

Cheers, Phred.
 
What about the old -.COM that you left ready on the command line to be
invoked by the unsuspecting user hitting Enter. It informed you that
water had been detected in your HDD and helpfully commenced a cleaning
cycle with great sound effects.

Cheers, Phred.
Click to expand...

I knew a teacher in a public school who was using his Macintosh Color
Classic to show slides to his class. He didn't know that one of the
students had changed a .snd file in the System Folder for an event.
When he clicked on the "wrong" portion of the screen, the computer did
not say the familiar monkey chirp---it screamed **** YOU three times as
loud as the little speaker could yell it.

The classroom roared with laughter and my friend nearly tackled that
little Mac to shut it up.
 
Richard Steinfeld formulated on Saturday :



This program is from the early days of computing, but I recall a
"trick" version of DOS. Sorry, but I don't recall the name of the app.

You copied it into the computer's root directory and typed its name in
the DOS prompt and the new "prompt" would appear.

Everything appeared to be just fine, until you typed a DOS command and
pressed the ENTER key. (Remember that GUI's did not exist at that
time.)

You'd type in a command and the prompt would return "Leave me alone,
I'm busy."

Then you'd type some other command and the screen would tell you to go
to hell...the responses would get progressively more obscenely
sarcastic after that.

This trickster's version of DOS made life unbearable for the IT
students who worked in the college computer lab!
Click to expand...
I liked the one that turned the screen upside down.
--
David
Remove "farook" to reply
At the bottom of the application where it says
"sign here". I put "Sagittarius"
E-mail: justdas at iinet dot net dot au
 
Anonymous said:
I once worked for sales department that had the nick-name of
Click to expand...
I dashed over to her cubical, print-screened her monitor image, saved it
to her hard drive as a graphic and set it as her wallpaper. Then I
minimized her Excel app window and returned to my desk.
Click to expand...

LOL. I used to pull this trick on my workmates back in the days of Win3.1. I
would print screen their desktop, replace it with the graphic and watch them
go nutz, clicking on icons that suddenly stopped working.

There was also a way -- I forget how now -- to run the screensavers and lock
users out. (NOT the password -- it was some other trick). I would set it up
to autostart so that they couldn't even escape by re-starting. I would use
the Marquee saver with a suitably phrase insulting the size of their manhood
and other otherwise juvenile stuff.

M
 
Gotta say, this thread has been very entertaining. Pity that the mere
mention of the dread name A. A. Fussy in the early stages has brought that
individual back from his (welcome) slumbers. I wondered if it would. Too
much of a co-incidence?
It would be nice to have some of these old cherries if anyone knows where
they can be obtained...
 
Richard Steinfeld brought next idea :
What software would you give to your worst enemy and why?

It should be on-topic, in other words, freeware. Of course, you are free to
interpret this as you wish. For example, it is OK with me for you to give
your hate-ee commercial software, since, after all, you're giving it to them:
to them, it is "freeware," right?

Discuss among yourselves. But don't forget to list your favorite code weapon
here.

Richard
Click to expand...

There was the Windows one which appeared to format your entire HDD,
whether you clicked OK or CANCEL.
 
: Richard Steinfeld brought next idea :
: > What software would you give to your worst enemy and why?
: >
: > It should be on-topic, in other words, freeware. Of course, you are
free to
: > interpret this as you wish. For example, it is OK with me for you to
give
: > your hate-ee commercial software, since, after all, you're giving it
to them:
: > to them, it is "freeware," right?
: >
: > Discuss among yourselves. But don't forget to list your favorite
code weapon
: > here.
: >
: > Richard
:
: There was the Windows one which appeared to format your entire HDD,
: whether you clicked OK or CANCEL.

That's the one I was going to mention. I think the upside down screen
was
fun but the washing-drying one was a favorite. The sound effects
sounded
just like water running before the drying spin cycle began. Formatting
the
HD message got immediate attention and caused much anxiety. "Freeware"
on floppy discs...sold at flea markets, on the sidewalk by the
bookstore,
and various other places. They were cheap and some had useful little
programs.
I still have a floppy or two with some of those "DOS tricks" programs on
them.




: --
:
: Regards,
: Harry (M1BYT) (L)
: http://www.ukradioamateur.co.uk
:
:
 
I still have a floppy or two with some of those "DOS tricks" programs on
them.
Click to expand...

Does anyone still remember that old Macintosh trick that got rewritten
for the PC? The one that put a critical stop dialog box on your screen
and then moved the entire box each time the mouse-cursor got close to
the button that would "fix" the problem? It looked like the dialog box
was running away from the mouse.

I've never actually SEEN this one, but I'm sure that it could be done:
A quick and very small EXE that would change the settings of the
computer's screen saver or the theme of the computer. It would be nice
to sit in a conference room with the CEO and the Chief Purchasing Agent
of the client's company and watch a rival salesman give a
presentation---only to have his computer switch to an X-rated screen
saver or a screen saver sporting the logo of the client's main
competitor during the slide show while everyone is watching.

Off-topic PS: On a similar note---but certainly off topic: Back in the
days of VCR tapes, I had a friend who was asked to record a movie for
his buddy. His buddy was married with kids and asked for the movie by
name. His buddy made the mistake of NOT telling my friend WHEN and
WHERE this tape would be played. My friend recorded the show, but
halfway through he stopped the movie, inserted a few seconds of a scene
from an X-Rated movie, and then resumed the requested film. About a
week later, his buddy shows up at his doorstep with news that the tape
played at the family reunion and his wife, all the children and the
grandparents were watching when the horrible scene appeared...

Okay, I'll try to stay on topic next time...
 
Nunya said:
Gotta say, this thread has been very entertaining. Pity that the mere
mention of the dread name A. A. Fussy in the early stages has brought that
individual back from his (welcome) slumbers.
Click to expand...

Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.


Whosoever speaketh of Cthulhu shall remember that he but seemeth dead;
he sleeps, and yet he does not sleep; he has died, and yet he is not
dead; asleep and dead though he is, he shall rise again. Again, it
should be shown that:

That is not dead which can eternal lie,
And with strange eons even death may die.

Great Cthulhu shall rise from R'lyeh, Hastur the Unspeakable shall
return from the dark star which is in the Hyades near Aldebaran, the red
eye of the bull, Nyarlathotep shall howl forever in the darkness where
he abideth, Shub-Niggurath shall spawn its thousand young, and they
shall spawn in turn and take dominion over all wood nymphs, satyrs,
leprechauns, and the Little People, Lloigor, Zhar, and Ithaqua shall
ride the spaces among the stars....

http://www.cthulhu.org/

Well, that's about as funny as I could get at such short notice.
 
You know, it almost makes me want to create a webpage in homage to AA
Fussy.

Now that the genie is out of the bottle, and the butter cannot be
unspread, I'd like to reproduce a post I once made on comp.lang.lisp:

If you like this, then you should probably check out:

Timecube:
http://www.timecube.com/
"To ignore Time Cube is evil". My all-time favourite.

Virtual Interaction Configuration
http://www.mindspring.com/~timrue/vic-contents.html
An Integrated Development Environment. V.I.C. takes IDEs beyond even
what emacs/lisp can accomplish, by leveraging the power of crop circles.
Or something.

For a more extensive listing, visit
http://www.crank.net/contents.html
It categorises kooks alphabetically and hierarchically.


For those who don't want to actually install software, but want to see
it working over the web, there's always the AI Mind in JavaScript:
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/jsaimind.html
Susan might, or might not ;) want to incorporate it into her links of
webware.

Alternatively, you can see the whole sorry thread at:
http://tinyurl.com/7bhyn
Enjoy.
 
Steve said:
Excellent analogy!! The Ed Wood of software!

As regards freeware weapons...I can't recall the exact name of the
app, but it was one of those 'keyboard bangers' for toddlers....you
know, it loads up full screen and every time the child hits a key the
compy makes a farty noise and a little image pops up.
Click to expand...

Steve,

Is this the one?

Toddler Keys version .97
(http://tk.ms11.net/)

I couldn't get it to work on my WinXP HE box, either. My grandkids
might have liked it, but I really wanted it so that I could easily
lock the keyboard ... wife's got a cat. <g>

BTW, Mark, Ed Wood. LOL. Did you see the recommendation in this NG for
free ringtone software from Babya?

Ron :)
 
Ron said:
Did you see the recommendation in this NG for
free ringtone software from Babya?
Click to expand...

I'm afraid I missed that particular offering from his /oeuvre/.

I still can't make up my mind about AA Fussy. I had suspected that it
was mostly some kind of malware, but the concensus of opinion seems to
be that his stuff is actually supposed to work (in theory). Youth,
insanity, or troll - it's difficult to decide which is applicable.
 
Mark said:
I'm afraid I missed that particular offering from his /oeuvre/.

I still can't make up my mind about AA Fussy. I had suspected that it
was mostly some kind of malware, but the concensus of opinion seems to
be that his stuff is actually supposed to work (in theory). Youth,
insanity, or troll - it's difficult to decide which is applicable.
Click to expand...

BTW, I may have to rethink Toddler Keys:

(http://tk.ms11.net/)

At least some of its features seems to be working now. I installed it
early on with my WinXP box, and I have since done a lot of tweaking.
If my comments were hasty, I apologize.

Ron :)
 
At least some of its features seems to be working now. I installed it
early on with my WinXP box, and I have since done a lot of tweaking. If
my comments were hasty, I apologize.
Click to expand...

I was referring to AA Fussy - in case you think I was bad-mouthing you.
 
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