Radiation & Trigger are a pair of fun little hacks that enable you to put up mysterious error dialogs, containing any message you like, on someone else's computer across a network.
Trigger is an error sender, a simple application that lets you type a message in its window, and send it to another Mac on the network. You can actually send error dialogs to yourself, but it's not nearly as fun as sending them to other people. Trigger's main window looks like this:
Radiation is an error receiver, a background-only application that uses 14K of RAM, and steals no clock ticks from foreground processes until it's time to put up a warning. The warnings that Receiver puts up are standard Notification Manager dialogs, which look like this:
They come out of nowhere, and look normal and convincing enough that most users should think the program they're currently using created the error message.
Radiation & Trigger both require System 7, since they use System 7's Program Linking feature (technically, the PPC Toolbox) to work their magic.
These programs were originally named when Radiation was to be a one-trick pony. Originally, I was just going to make Radiation pop up a single warning (the default "Radiation Shield Failure" you still get in Trigger's window) on the victim's screen, and quit. I think you'll agree the ability to send any message you like is much more valuable, and gives the hack more longevity.
Installing Radiation, the message receiver
------------------------------------------
Drag the Radiation extension into the victim's Extensions folder.
In the Sharing Setup control panel, turn on Program Linking. This makes the target Macintosh eligible to receive messages across the network
Then open up the "<Guest>" user in the Users & Groups control panel. Make sure the checkbox that says "Allow guests to link to programs on this Macintosh" is turned on, and save your changes to the Guest user.
Re-start the victim's computer.
Sending messages to Radiation
-----------------------------
Type the message you want to send in Trigger's window
Click the "Send Alert..." button
The Program Linking dialog box opens up. Select the victim's Macintosh from the list on the left side of the dialog. If the user is set up properly, "Alert Receiver" should appear on the right side of the dialog. Select "Alert Receiver" and click the OK button.
Sit back and let the fun begin.
Trigger should never put any ineligible receivers in the right-hand list, so you shouldn't have to worry about sending an error alert to an application that doesn't know what to do with it.
Recommended Use
---------------
This hack was originally designed as a practical joke on in-house software beta testers, who would diligently write down every error that appeared on their screens, until the errors became so frequent and absurd that they'd get that "candid camera" kind of feeling, and the joke would be revealed. The radiation warning has actually frightened some naive users, who have run from their desks in a state of panic. Keep your victim's Mac experience in mind when composing messages, and be merciful.
Start by putting up rather convincing errors (referring to things that blow up a lot--any error relating to a Microsoft product would be a good start). Then create errors that get progressively sillier until you finally arrive at something completely absurd, such as the original radiation warning. Try not to laugh out loud as your victim gets more and more mystified by these errors.
Disclaimer
----------
Every effort has been made to ensure that the Radiation extension is small and harmless (at least from an engineering standpoint--its ability to create psychological damage is entirely up to the user). But with all the different configurations of Mac out there, who knows what might happen? Please treat the current version as beta software. Be careful when putting it on someone's machine. If their computer exhibits quirky behavior (outside of outrageous error dialogs), remove it.
Radiation will generate its own error dialogs if something breaks. So if a very real-looking error dialog appears on your victim's machine, and you didn't send it, try to make a note of what it says and drop me a line so I can fix the problem.
