Macs at Ease
by Loogie
Most schools use Macintosh computers because they are easy to use and schools can get them at great discounts.
Well, most of the teachers are old farts and the ENIAC wasn't even around when they were young so they have no clue how to use computers. Our generation has grown up in the computer age and many of us know much more about computers than the teachers/faculty.
Some of the teachers don't mind admitting their computer illiteracy and love help with their machines from people like me, but then there are the teachers who think that they know what the hell they are doing and hate it when a kid tells them how to do something when they are in a jam, or how to do something easier, etc. They also just hate it when you hack their crappy little security systems that they thought were so impenetrable. However, I find it rather fun.
The first and most common security system called At Ease. It is a shell program that I really despise. (Not because it is hard to hack, but because it has such a retarded interface.) This is the easiest to overcome. Here are some ways to overcome it.
The first requires a computer with a programmer's switch. This is a switch on the front of the computer used for programmers that loads a debugger built into the ROM. Not all computers have this however. There are two buttons. The left one (with the triangle) restarts the computer. The right one (with the circle) loads the debugger.
When you are in the regular At Ease selection screen, hit the right one and you will see an empty dialogue box with a > at this prompt.
Type:
After you hit Return, the screen will disappear and At Ease will quit and load the regular operating system, the Finder. Then you have full access to everything and can trash or change anything you want!
If the computer you are on does not have a debugger, then try this. Hit Command-Option-Esc. (The Command button is the one with the Apple icon on it and the little close-ended pound sign.) You will then get a dialogue box asking if you want to force quit At Ease. Obviously you do, so click the button Force Quit. Sometimes this will work, quitting At Ease and loading the Finder, sometimes it will quit At Ease and then load it again. (Again, this must be done at the regular At Ease selection screen.)
The third way is as follows. Restart the computer and hold down the Shift, disabling all extensions. When you are about to get to At Ease, it will ask you for a password. Just hit Cancel. Then keep opening up program after program until you run the thing out of memory. Sometimes At Ease will then quit, leaving all the applications open with no operating system open! Then go to all the different programs and quit them. After the last one, the computer will realize that it has no operating system and it will start up the Finder!
However, sometimes this works and sometimes not. It will not work on version 2.0 or higher of At Ease (in my experiments) and it won't work on certain computers, but you may get lucky.
The reason this happens is because At Ease installs a patch in the system itself so that it will latch At Ease at start-up even if the extensions are disabled by hitting Shift at start-up, but there is also an extension. The extension contains a patch for At Ease to make it able to handle running out of memory. This patch is disabled and you can crash At Ease! Nifty, huh?
This last thing is my personal favorite for At Ease. This is not for school but rather office supply stores and department stores like Sears. Most commercially sold Macs (dubbed "Performas") are bundled with lots of software, including At Ease. At Ease is left running on the demo Macs. If they are running a little presentation program, it can easily be quit by using the Command-Option-Esc method mentioned above. Then you will be at At Ease.
The software comes with a default password, familymacintosh (no caps, no spaces) which most places don't bother to change. (Every place I've visited, it worked.) If you use this, then you can even change the password! Hahahaha!
Also, many department stores just let the screensaver run. It is most often AfterDark 3.0. If they are using the password function, then all you have to do is use the same Command-Option-Esc as used above! This is because with AfterDark 3.0, they made the screensaver a separate program that loads itself when it goes on and quits itself when it goes off. You can force quit it like any other program.
There are many other ways to hack At Ease as well as hundreds of other programs.