Thanks to good old alacarte I became the owner of a brand new USB Panic Button! Now this thing doesn't really do much, as all it does is sit on my table next to my monitor serving absolutely no purpose. Well... that is until the Russians attack.
It's a great novelty item and it looks pretty damn cool. An emergency button encased in a flip-openable glass-like shielding and a black and yellow stripped overcoat of stickers connected to your computer. O the possibilities!
One press and you can begin the missile campaign, or send orders to troops stationed in the eastern theatre, or (insert 24 reference of choice
Well being who I am and unhappy with what ever state my computer is in, I decided it was time to hack this thing. I consulted alacarte who came over to my place and we started sniffing USB ports, so to speak. Which left us with a little bit more understanding on how the button worked but no idea how to access the events.
Having been deprived of Visual Basic, the language I was literally born into and raised by, I had no way of easily hacking this. Luckily I found the installer yesterday and cut half an hour of driving lessons just to install the old development environment. I did a bit of research on how to steal windows handles. And finally hacked it by 5pm last night.Now... when I press the Panic Button my computer invokes Task Manager. I mean think about it. Pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del in fury isn't as fun as flipping open a cover to punch an large red emergency button.
Other stuff I have made it do is: hibernate the computer, force a shutdown, time a shutdown, play a sound. But obviously you can have full control over it and make it do whatever.
Note: in trying to create a distributable product, I ran into a few too many setbacks and never had the time. Fortunately, a couple readers are sharing theirs. Thanks Jesse and John.
If you have a solution you want to advertise here, just link it in the comments.
