i suppose you could set up an applescript to run on startup to launch a web browser and go to a site you specify; or anything else you can think of with applescript/automator
Screen savers and browser start up pages were the things we use to do. You can be very creative with the screen savers. Hopefully they will have a disk image for all the machines ( we did). Trying to clean up a machine after people add things can take a long time. Erasing and using the disk images were the quickest way to get things back to normal. Hope you don't get on someones bad side and get lock out of using the lab.
Don't do anything that makes it harder to work on the machine, that's just being an ass. Well designed one-off pranks are much better.
Anyway, try ssh'ing into someone elses machine and using the say command to have the computer read stuff aloud. Try to have follow ups prepared for their different possible reactions so they can't shrug this off as a simple recording set to go off at a specific time.
The say command can take any .aiff sound input so you could use some custom sounds as well.
i like the ssh'ing idea but im not too familiar with it can you explain what it really is and how to do it?
Connecting to another machine and using it like you were sitting on it, but only through the text-based Terminal.
To accomplish this thing you need to have a user account with which you can logon to both computers normally.
You need to find out the target machine's IP address. Since it's a school, the machines might have the address printed and taped to them. If not, find it from System Preferences->Network. If you can't open that, then open Terminal and type "ifconfig". The IP address you're looking for will probably be in the section labeled "en0:", right after "inet" and look like this: "xxx.yyy.zzz.www".
Once you have the address, just go to the machine you'll be using, open Terminal and type "ssh xxx.yyy.zzz.www". The other machine will ask you for your username and password, and then you're in.
You can try the say command beforehand on the computer you're sitting on. Just open Terminal and type "say this is a test".
Comments
You can turn it on and annoy everyone with the chime...
Anyway, try ssh'ing into someone elses machine and using the say command to have the computer read stuff aloud. Try to have follow ups prepared for their different possible reactions so they can't shrug this off as a simple recording set to go off at a specific time.
The say command can take any .aiff sound input so you could use some custom sounds as well.
Still got my wife calling me at work to say she'd broken the iMac.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/31287
i like the ssh'ing idea but im not too familiar with it can you explain what it really is and how to do it?
Connecting to another machine and using it like you were sitting on it, but only through the text-based Terminal.
To accomplish this thing you need to have a user account with which you can logon to both computers normally.
You need to find out the target machine's IP address. Since it's a school, the machines might have the address printed and taped to them. If not, find it from System Preferences->Network. If you can't open that, then open Terminal and type "ifconfig". The IP address you're looking for will probably be in the section labeled "en0:", right after "inet" and look like this: "xxx.yyy.zzz.www".
Once you have the address, just go to the machine you'll be using, open Terminal and type "ssh xxx.yyy.zzz.www". The other machine will ask you for your username and password, and then you're in.
You can try the say command beforehand on the computer you're sitting on. Just open Terminal and type "say this is a test".
"I'm watching you, Clarice. I like your blue sweater. Very trendy."