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[Fenrir]

(my friend had linux on his laptop and we found it hilariously easy to turn it off when he wasn't looking, thanks to lack of 'are you sure you want to quit?' dialog box XD)

A dialog box would have foiled your little prank? One more click?

[GlyphGryph]

I'm not even sure what he's talking about. Did he shut off the computer? Like, pressing the button? Is that the prank?

I'm really, honestly, very confused. Because I can do that with windows machines too. :/

[ChairmanPoo]

I'm not even sure what he's talking about. Did he shut off the computer? Like, pressing the button? Is that the prank?

I'm really, honestly, very confused. Because I can do that with windows machines too. :/

I can do that with a toaster.

[kaenneth]

Best Windows prank is:

1) Hit printscreen key
2) open MS Paint
3) paste the screenshot
4) save it
5) set it as desktop background
6) hide icons
7) hide taskbar
minimize all apps

I once did all that while a co-working was sitting in front of his PC, with his head turned away talking to someone. (He started it, the boss ended when it started impacting productivity)

[Doomshifter]

(my friend had linux on his laptop and we found it hilariously easy to turn it off when he wasn't looking, thanks to lack of 'are you sure you want to quit?' dialog box XD)

A dialog box would have foiled your little prank? One more click?

I'm not even sure what he's talking about. Did he shut off the computer? Like, pressing the button? Is that the prank?

I'm really, honestly, very confused. Because I can do that with windows machines too. :/

As opposed to our laptops, where the dialog box would pop up, or you'd have to hold the button it, we could simply tap it quickly to shut it off, making him lose any unsaved work (he had a bad habit of not saving things either). He didn't look away for long, time was of the essence!

Eh, never mind. It was a stupid thing that we did that we found mildly entertaining compared to class.

[Roboboy33]

6) hide icons
7) hide taskbar

How do these?

[GlyphGryph]

Oddly enough, my copy of linux does pop up an options box when you press the button - it shuts off itself if 60 seconds pass by with no further input, but... eh. That honestly sounds more like a hardware thing.

[Fenrir]

Which distribution do you run, GlyphGryph?

[Starver]

6) hide icons
7) hide taskbar

How do these?

There's a number of ways.  For the taskbar, one way is to set to auto-hide (although the real one will pop up when you get the mouse down there, if the victim is still trying to click on the background-image version of the Start Button/whatever he may not activate it).  Another is to make sure the taskbar is not locked, then just drag it down to zero-height.  (For bonus points, move it to another edge of the screen, first, then drag it to zero height/width.)

To easily undo (if your prank isn't intended to be so troublesome, or at worst reversible by you in a "What was your problem again?" slight-of-hand way), I'd take the genuine shortcut icons into a handy spare folder somewhere, and under the Desktop advanced settings untick the My Computer/Documents icons (or equivalent).  There's often some 'special' icons for Internet Explorer or somesuch which might (depending on Windows version) need dealing with otherwise.  You could, of course, just move them (and everything else) so that they're just off the edge of the desktop (somewhere where they'd not be easily noticed, against the background), as you could, in the first place, with every other icon.  (You may need to unset any Align To Grid and/or Auto-Arrange settings.)

If I had time, I'd consider setting up a clickable mapping on a .htm containing just the false-screen image, set it as a Web Page/Active Desktop desktop.  Having made the clicks on the various bits of the image that should be clickable link to something other than what should have happened (or to open a "hahaha.txt" document, or something), it wouldn't merely be unresponsive, but be responsive in unexpected ways.  There's other tricks I could incorporate into that, but it's been a while since I've even considered such tomfoolery.

(And I've deliberately not mentioned a couple of other methods that are a bit more destructive.  A prank should be reversible.  You can probably do some .reg manipulation to automate some of the above actions, but I'd make sure you have exported the original settings so you can reinstate them.  I won't, but I reckon I could get a batch file together to do most of the work, save for getting the original screenshot.  And I think that, on top of everything else, could be done with whatever generation of more advanced windows scripting tools you might have at your disposal on the platform concerned.)

[kaenneth]

For hiding desktop icons, if may vary with windows version, but on 7, you right-click the desktop, select 'View' and uncheck 'Show desktop icons'

[Starver]

Yep, also Vista (just checked the machine a few desks over to the right), but not XP (the two machines directly in front of me).

(I won't bother checking 2K (a machine I've got at home recording radio), ME (my Dad's old machine, in my loft, needs plugging in), 98 (another machine at home) or 95 (a machine at home that needs the RAM replacing).  I think XP's probably the bottom limit and all these others will lack the option anyway. And anything Win3.x/DOS6.22 or prior has a different set of pranks that applies to it, but that's even more retro!)

However, it seems I can't get the Vista taskbar to zero-height (at least with the mouse, even after unlocking it so that I can vary its size), so I'd probably just move it to another edge and auto-hide it.  Probably remove the "keep on top of" tick as well.

[Pokon]

Well, somewhat related to the OP...

Do you go on TVtropes often? Because I can relate a similer, if stranger, problem.

I feel stupid. Yeah, having the same problems with the site, too, seems that the entirty of Firefly is infested, too.

[Stargrasper]

Okay, I don't exactly want to start some sort of OS fanboy war, but assuming that you won't get viruses or you'll be nigh-immune to them simply because you don't have Windows is pretty silly.

Wow, a page ago, you guys spent around two pages on a one-off comment I made.  I feel a need to defend myself.

I never said Linux would make it so you wouldn't get viruses.  I said that most viruses explicitly target vulnerabilities within subsystems of Windows and cannot affect Mac or Linux because neither has those specific vulnerabilities that such viruses depend on.  Also, as I said, you still have to think about security.  There's stuff out there, but there's not nearly as much of it and if you're using Linux, you're probably smart enough to handle it.  It's the same reason that biological viruses and other disease causing things typically have a hard time affecting more than one species; it's built for that one species.  Not that there aren't things that affect all species, but it's unusual for there to be disease that effects more than one species.

Okay, I feel slightly better.  You can go back to your derail of a derail of a derail.

Also, Happy Not-Quite-Yet-New Year.

[DrPoo]

Its like with my dad, as soon as the internet goes slow im the scapegoat. If i play a multiplayer games "son if you dont close that server i will trash your computer and fuck up the internet for good"

He dosent even care about my little sister constantly watching youtube all the time.

I dont understand that, he is a qualified hipath guy (phone centrals and shit) that works with networks all day and sometimes hints about phreaking, even.

Did i mention he blindly supports SOPA?

Old people, no matter how much they sit all day on their terminals making shit work they just cant grasp that im not hacking, nor running servers.

Its even worser than at school, as soon as they see a text input field that isnt Word im accused of hacking. I once got put in restraint by a teacher because he saw me inputting javascript into the url field of the browser. They spent more days with meetings about me "hacking their firewall core executeable linux gui interface to cause a systemwide lockdown prank site" and blackmailing me to sign a paper saying the teacher never put me under restraint and never acted violently, at the time i still had blue marks. I remember one particular day where a teacher saw me with notepad open, making ascii art "i think your doing something illegal now, get off before i call the police" then i went "Do you know what i am doing, does it look illegal? Tell mrs, does arramging symbols in a creative way to create images look illegal? If you dont know what i am doing, ask before acting. Im tired with this shit. " she went *pokerface*

[klingon13524]

Its like with my dad, as soon as the internet goes slow im the scapegoat. If i play a multiplayer games "son if you dont close that server i will trash your computer and fuck up the internet for good"

He dosent even care about my little sister constantly watching youtube all the time.

I dont understand that, he is a qualified hipath guy (phone centrals and shit) that works with networks all day and sometimes hints about phreaking, even.

Did i mention he blindly supports SOPA?

Old people, no matter how much they sit all day on their terminals making shit work they just cant grasp that im not hacking, nor running servers.

Its even worser than at school, as soon as they see a text input field that isnt Word im accused of hacking. I once got put in restraint by a teacher because he saw me inputting javascript into the url field of the browser. They spent more days with meetings about me "hacking their firewall core executeable linux gui interface to cause a systemwide lockdown prank site" and blackmailing me to sign a paper saying the teacher never put me under restraint and never acted violently, at the time i still had blue marks. I remember one particular day where a teacher saw me with notepad open, making ascii art "i think your doing something illegal now, get off before i call the police" then i went "Do you know what i am doing, does it look illegal? Tell mrs, does arramging symbols in a creative way to create images look illegal? If you dont know what i am doing, ask before acting. Im tired with this shit. " she went *pokerface*

F11 in any browser with http://hackertyper.net/ on the school computer. Or if you can't go there because of a proxy, Windows command prompt. Post the result please.