Back in the early days of CAD (late 70's - early 80's) when we were running DVST (Direct View Storage Tube, i.e. 'Green' screens) terminals hooked to a mainframe, we would play with the minds of new guys by using a tool that allowed you to send text commands to someone else's terminal. We would first send a 'Cntrl-G' which would ring the 'bell' and then we'd send a 'display reset' which would wipe everything off the screen making it look like the system had just crashed and lost all of your work. But nothing had really happened, as all you needed to do to bring everything back was to hit the 'Refresh' button and everything would be back on the display with no loss of data. But it was fun until they figured out what was going on ;-)
Way back... I had a copy of the William Tell Overture and compiled it using QBasic. I loaded it into the IT Managers Autoexec.Bat file, so when he turned on his PC... He was p*ssed.
When I was a user on a VAX/VMS system I had an automatic logout script written in DCL which made the VT terminal look like it was in a logged-out state. When a key was touched it popped to life and flashed a series of brief messages in the style of the damaged Terminator from the first movie - complete with intermittent flicker etc - before adding a bit more text to give the appearance of an ID belonging to the Computer Unit having logged out and then performing a silent logout to mask my own. If you've watched the movie you can guess the final line of the messages.
Received a bit of a telling off from the Computer Unit staff once they tracked down the perpetrator. No sense of humour!
It would screenshot the named remote display and overlay it on that same screen, simulating a lock-up. I think X is more security conscious these days.
I was in a bank standing at an empty tellers station for a long long time while they tried to figure out a how to cash a check.
I wasn't happy. I was bored. I noticed that the terminal beside me had a vertical size control.
Somehow the knob got bumped so that the control buttons disappeared off the bottom of the screen.
We had to finish my transaction at another station. Somehow I didn't mind that extra time quite as much.
I sometimes wonder how long it took for them to figure out the problem.
Bill
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"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter
