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1989-07-13
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ANNOY - The irritating DOS Shell, by Mat*Rat
(c) 1989, Ratware Softworks
32 S. Hartnett Ave.
St. Louis, MO 63135
Shareware: $5
How many times have you gotten up from your desk and come back only to
find that someone is been playing games, or has switched to a different
program and messed up your work? Don't you wish you could irritate them
just a bit? Nothing terribly mischevious that could get you in trouble,
of course, but maybe you would like to throw some ANNOYing bells and
prompts at the user when he or she executes a particular program, such as
GOLF!
ANNOY does exactly that. It is a mini DOS shell. It accepts the user's
inputs and executes them verbatim. However, if he enters a command that
you want to annoy him about, the alarm will sound. He is then asked for a
PASSWORD to allow him to use that program, otherwise the computer might
"explode". That should be worth a few giggles. No matter what he enters,
the password is accepted and the program is then executed normally. In
other words, the key program names that ANNOY looks for are not password
protected, and do not prevent the user from running them. (You are
welcome to modify ANNOY.C, and recompile it, to include this feature if
you desire.) We could indeed password protect entry into a particular
program, but what good would it do? The user could easily rename the
file he wishes to execute, or create a batch file to run it for him. The
point of ANNOY is to pester him without making the machine
unusable.
When ANNOY is activated, it requires a password - not to run certain
programs, but to terminate itself. If you enter the PASSWORD, ANNOY
terminates (it is a transient program, NOT terminate and stay resident,
TSR - more on those later), returning control to DOS.
If the user is frustrated by ANNOY (this is the idea), he may begin to
SWEAR at the machine. Should he use the "SHI" or "FUC" nasty 4 letter
words, ANNOY recognizes them and further taunts the user! (These may also
be used as VALID passwords to terminate ANNOY.) In both instances, the
user is informed that the HELP command might be of more use. Entering
HELP elicits the PASSWORD from ANNOY every time. (We don't want to
irritate the user TOO MUCH. He might take a sledge hammer to YOUR
COMPUTER!)
The call format is:
ANNOY [[PASSWORD] [KEYWORD1] [KEYWORD2] ... ]
The PASSWORD may be any string, without spaces, you desire. When entered
at ANNOY's bogus DOS prompt, the password will cause ANNOY to terminate,
returning control to DOS and its normal prompt. This is followed by one
or more keywords. When these keywords are entered by the user, ANNOY
will irritate the user before finally executing the command. On APRIL
fool's day ANNOY should be good for a lot of laughs. Try some commands
like:
ANNOY FIZXQRXVZL*&% DIR PRINT EXIT 123 WP
The password will be very difficult to type. And the most common DOS
command, DIR, will irritate the stuffing out of the user. ANNOY can be
terminated quite easily with a control-C or control-BREAK keypress.
If nothing is on the command line following ANNOY, you are prompted for a
password and a single keyword.
ANNOY also prompts for a log filename. Simply press RETURN if none is
required. Enter a valid filename and ANNOY will log every command the
user enters, along with a "time stamp" to that file. This allows you to
check up on him later. It is wise to use a file on the hard drive. When
first run, the log file is created, initialized with a startup message,
and closed by ANNOY. Subsequent user commands are appended to the file.
The file is only open while being updated, so that if ANNOY were to crash
for some reason, it won't leave opened files lying about. If logging to a
floppy disk, and the user swaps disks between commands, multiple log files
will be created, however. That's why it's best to log to the hard drive.
ANNOY does serve a useful purpose with its logging capability. The log
files could be loaded into a database or spread sheet and used as part of
your accounting time charges on the PC use for your customers, for
example. If you won't want to be bothered with the ANNOY messages then
simply make the password and the annoy keyword the same. Then, ANNOY will
quietly log all your commands, without bothering you about any programs
you might be using.
ANNOY is in NO WAY intended to damage anyone's computer. It is meant in
good clean fun only. Note that if ANNOY's DOS shell is running, and then
the user executes a TSR program, the computer will lock up when the ANNOY
termination password is entered. A TSR loaded on top of a transient
program is always bad news. But you can do this with any program which
supports a DOS shell, such as Procomm Plus, Microsoft Works, and so on.
So, ANNOY is no worse than these - except that it pretends to be DOS.
However, TSRs are generally executed once from an AUTOEXEC.BAT at boot
time. If the lockup does occur, CONTROL-ALT-DEL will bring the machine
back to reality.
It would NOT be wise to make ANNOY part of an AUTOEXEC.BAT file for these
same reasons. Use ANNOY as it was intended, for a cute practical joke on
those who are constantly horning in on your CPU time with their idle games
and other useless trivial programs on company time! If you suspect that
you might be the brunt of an ANNOY joke press control-C before entering
any DOS commands. You DON'T want a taste of your own medicine.
Enjoy your ANNOY! Mat*Rat