playing a prank

[Kwyjibo]

Ok heres the situation, My roomate has a winxp computer with itunes on it and I want to play a little prank on him. We're in a college dorm and he always uses the sharing, I want to block the port on it so it stops working for a day to mess with him. Anyone wanna give me a hand on how to achieve that in XP? I don't have access to the router or directly to the network, just his computer.

 

[johnnyjibbs]

I think if he has Service Pack 2 installed, you just go to the Security Centre in Control Panel and click on Firewall and then on the exceptions tab. iTunes should be listed so if you uncheck the box it should stop internet/network access to iTunes.

 

[Kwyjibo]

i doubt he has SP2 installed ...

 

[cslewis]

Take an hour or two when he's out and install it for him.

 

[Nejja Halcyon]

...But if you do install SP2 for him, have a very good escape route. It'll probably keep a bunch of his apps/games from working.

Nejja Halcyon

 

[Phat_Pat]

or you could install this.

 

[hcuar]

Advise

Ok... I'm going to make a recommendation. I can't believe I'm doing this. I'm going to sound way too old.

I wouldn't recommend messing with your roommates computer as a practical joke. People are very touchy about their computer. You don't want to go there. It will start a practical joke war.

Trust me. Happened to me and everyone on our floor my freshman year. Things got worse and worse until people got hurt.

If you want to play a practical joke, I wouldn't recommend messing with a computer. Your roomate is your only protection against your machine getting messed up.

 

[dotnina]

I agree with hcuar's recommendation. Unless you know your roommate really well, it'll be hard to predict how he'll react to this. He could play a little "joke" on you and your Mac to get back at you ...

 

[JLS]

Its unlikely he would know you did anything (unless you actually told him afterwards), but I agree that its likely to get people angry.

If somebody messed with my machine and as a result I wasted time formatting or something, if I then forund that it was somebody playing a joke, I would be very likely to 'accidently' cause some damage to their machine/files...

"oh damn man, you say the essay you spent 12 hours writing has just vanished?.. That must suck eh."

 

[wowser]

also, the joke doesn't even sound very funny.

 

[Kwyjibo]

ok, well i'm never going to be afraid of retaliation. Its fine if you guys don't want to help, but thats not the kind of advice I was looking for.

As for installing Sp2 thats a little bit far because most of my friends who have tried it said it slowed down their machine considerably. I was thinking more of the network settings or something like that.

 

[MacAztec]

Simple joke, yet fun. Check it out...

Go into your terminal, and if you guys are on the network together.

A nifty trick to make messages pop up on the screens of Windows users on your network. Just type the following into the terminal:
smbclient -M NETBIOSNAME -U FROMNAME
The -U FROMNAME part is optional but it adds a nice touch to the message. The NETBIOSNAME is just that

Type findsmb in the terminal to get other computer’s NETBIOS names. Press return, then command+d when done typing,.

So you type this in Terminal to start: findsmb
It will find the local PCs and give you their NetBios Name. So, once you know his NetBios name, its easy, do this....

In Terminal: -M (his NetbiosName) -U (a name that you want the message from)

Press return. It should say "connected" or something.

Then, type a message, whatever you want to show up on his screen. When you are finished typing the message, hit command+d and then hit return, and it will be sent.

I always do a message from "Microsoft Piracy Team". Then, I talk about how they are in deep crap because the "microsoft piracy team" has found illegally downloaded files, etc. on the machine. Always fun.

 

[wowser]

ha! that would s*** me up.

 

[iLikeMyiMac]

A nifty trick to make messages pop up on the screens of Windows users on your network. Just type the following into the terminal:
smbclient -M NETBIOSNAME -U FROMNAME
The -U FROMNAME part is optional but it adds a nice touch to the message. The NETBIOSNAME is just that.....

Cool. I already tried that out on on windows pc on my network. A message from the "riaa" that adressed him by name really gave him a good scare.

 

[hcuar]

Ok... want a harmless easy prank? Download and burn a linux live cd... Say MandrakeMove from:

ftp://ftp.phys.ttu.edu/pub/mandrakelinux/official/iso/move/9.2/i586/

After you burn the ISO image to a CD, pop it into his CDROM drive, reboot. It'll boot Mandrake Linux without changing his harddisk. If he reboots, it will boot Mandrake Linux again until he removes the CD.

At worst, he'll panick. At best he will see Linux might be a better alternative.

 

[bdomz]

the best windows prank ever is to do a print screen of the desktop then open up microsoft paint, hit paste and then save the file. Now set that file as the backround picture for the desktop and turn off the option to Show Desktop Icons (right click anywhere on the desktop to do this). Your roomate will think hes clicking on icons when hes really just clicking on the backround picture. He'll probably figure it out pretty quickly but your average computer user would have no clue.

 

[hcuar]

the best windows prank ever is to do a print screen of the desktop then open up microsoft paint, hit paste and then save the file. Now set that file as the backround picture for the desktop and turn off the option to Show Desktop Icons (right click anywhere on the desktop to do this). Your roomate will think hes clicking on icons when hes really just clicking on the backround picture. He'll probably figure it out pretty quickly but your average computer user would have no clue.

Nice... pretty funny. No damage done.

 

[dontmatter]

Ok heres the situation, My roomate has a winxp computer with itunes on it and I want to play a little prank on him. We're in a college dorm and he always uses the sharing, I want to block the port on it so it stops working for a day to mess with him. Anyone wanna give me a hand on how to achieve that in XP? I don't have access to the router or directly to the network, just his computer.

I don't think that's the funniest prank ever, more just annoying and frustrating.

The better one that happened at my college dorm was a really drama queen, falsley "innocent", and computer illiterate girl left her laptop for an hour, and for a few days after, it played sex noises (QUITE explicit) at full volume, even if the computer was on mute. That was funny.

 

[whocares]

the best windows prank ever is to do a print screen of the desktop then open up microsoft paint, hit paste and then save the file. Now set that file as the backround picture for the desktop and turn off the option to Show Desktop Icons (right click anywhere on the desktop to do this). Your roomate will think hes clicking on icons when hes really just clicking on the backround picture. He'll probably figure it out pretty quickly but your average computer user would have no clue.

Alternative: use a print screen from your Mac

 

[Kwyjibo]

Ok... want a harmless easy prank? Download and burn a linux live cd... Say MandrakeMove from:

ftp://ftp.phys.ttu.edu/pub/mandrakelinux/official/iso/move/9.2/i586/

After you burn the ISO image to a CD, pop it into his CDROM drive, reboot. It'll boot Mandrake Linux without changing his harddisk. If he reboots, it will boot Mandrake Linux again until he removes the CD.

At worst, he'll panick. At best he will see Linux might be a better alternative.

-Doesn't that require changing his bios settings? Yeah thats much less invasive than what I have planned.

-Adding sex noises would be funy but i'm the top suspect there.

- The screenshot thing takes too much effort if done right, last year on techtv they featured it.

-I never said this would be the funniest prank ever .... or that I wanted it to be. I wanted it to be clever and frustrating.

 

[hcuar]

-Doesn't that require changing his bios settings? Yeah thats much less invasive than what I have planned.

Usually systems are configured to boot from the CD first. So... no. If not... it's a quick change for the boot order. No harm done.

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

Simple joke, yet fun. Check it out...

Go into your terminal, and if you guys are on the network together.

A nifty trick to make messages pop up on the screens of Windows users on your network. Just type the following into the terminal:
smbclient -M NETBIOSNAME -U FROMNAME
The -U FROMNAME part is optional but it adds a nice touch to the message. The NETBIOSNAME is just that

Type findsmb in the terminal to get other computer’s NETBIOS names. Press return, then command+d when done typing,.

So you type this in Terminal to start: findsmb
It will find the local PCs and give you their NetBios Name. So, once you know his NetBios name, its easy, do this....

In Terminal: -M (his NetbiosName) -U (a name that you want the message from)

Press return. It should say "connected" or something.

Then, type a message, whatever you want to show up on his screen. When you are finished typing the message, hit command+d and then hit return, and it will be sent.

I always do a message from "Microsoft Piracy Team". Then, I talk about how they are in deep crap because the "microsoft piracy team" has found illegally downloaded files, etc. on the machine. Always fun.

For some reason that didn't work for me

 

[7on]

For some reason that didn't work for me

Has to be sent to an unpatched, unfirewalled XP machine.

 

[AoWolf]

Simple joke, yet fun. Check it out...

Go into your terminal, and if you guys are on the network together.

A nifty trick to make messages pop up on the screens of Windows users on your network. Just type the following into the terminal:
smbclient -M NETBIOSNAME -U FROMNAME
The -U FROMNAME part is optional but it adds a nice touch to the message. The NETBIOSNAME is just that

Type findsmb in the terminal to get other computer’s NETBIOS names. Press return, then command+d when done typing,.

So you type this in Terminal to start: findsmb
It will find the local PCs and give you their NetBios Name. So, once you know his NetBios name, its easy, do this....

In Terminal: -M (his NetbiosName) -U (a name that you want the message from)

Press return. It should say "connected" or something.

Then, type a message, whatever you want to show up on his screen. When you are finished typing the message, hit command+d and then hit return, and it will be sent.

I always do a message from "Microsoft Piracy Team". Then, I talk about how they are in deep crap because the "microsoft piracy team" has found illegally downloaded files, etc. on the machine. Always fun.

Any way to do that to some one on a Mac?

 

[Timelessblur]

I will warn you now you room mate better be able to talk it as a joke and not get very touchy about you messing with his computer.

you are playing with fire. It really pisses me off when people mess with my computer with out my permision. There are a select few I dont mind using it with out my permision but they not not mess with any thing and follow that rule.

I had some mess with my computer 1 to many times and I finally blew up at them kick them out of my room and then I lock my computer when I leave. Since I blew up people have not messed with my computer.


Think about it this way how would you like if some got on your computer and started messing with it. no perment damage and noughting that can not be undone in a few mins if you know what was done. How do you like people messing with a lot of bigger settings (like you network settings) I could take any computer and pretty much kill there abitly to use the network in under a min and but it noughting that I could not undo in 3 sec. Mainly because I know my way around messing with firewall and routers