Fun with Radio Shack (Winter, 2001-2002) ---------------------------------------- By Cunning Linguist In the tradition of writing articles about wreaking havoc at corporations, I've come up with another corporation upon which to raise hell: Radio Shack. Let me begin by stating that I am writing this article from Canada and most of this article comes from my experience with Radio Shack stores in Toronto (in the Eaton Centre and Fairview Mall) and Montreal (at the Cavendish Mall). There are some parallels to United States Radio Shack stores (I've had experience with them in Beverly Hills and various locations in Los Angeles and New York), and they will be drawn in this article. Canada's Radio Shack Kiosk Canada's Radio Shack stores have a special program running on their Windows 2000 machines that disallows use of the Desktop or Start Menu, and in some cases the rightclick function on the mouse. (We'll cover that soon.) The program, called "Kiosk vX.X," where X is the version number (I've seen from Kiosk v5.0 to Kiosk v6.0, including Kiosk v5.2.2), is Canada's Radio Shack web site: www.radioshack.ca. The Kiosk program doesn't allow a user to surf the Internet freely (even though at all the Radio Shacks I visited in Toronto they were all online via dedicated line and were open for a customer to use). It limits itself to Radio Shack's Canada web site. We can easily bypass this by conducting a little detective work. Surfing Freely On the home page of the Kiosk program on the upper-right corner, there is an icon for a shopping cart program. We've all seen them: they allow you to store items you wish to purchase until the "checkout," where you enter all the credit card information and give away your life to a computer. The icon is titled View Cart Checkout. If you click on it, it will lead you to a "secure" page. You know it's secure because you see the little yellow locked padlock on the bottom right-hand corner of the screen. It's secure. Don't question the security. . Anyway, if right-clicking was disabled before, it should be enabled now (it was for me). If you right-click anywhere on the page and scroll down to Properties, another window will pop up. You can click on Certificates, and then, on the third window that pops up, Certification Path. Here you'll see three things: The issuer of the certificate that says the site is secure (most likely VeriSign), VeriSign's web site, and Radio Shack's web site. What you can do now is double-click on VeriSign's web site, and an Internet Explorer browser should pop up, allowing you to surf the Web freely. (If this doesn't work, because I've encountered places where it hasn't, do the following: right-click on the page, go to Certificates > General > Issuer Statement > More Info. VeriSign's web site should pop up in an IE browser.) United States Kiosks I haven't seen a Kiosk program, per se, in the United States. If they do have a www.radioshack.com kiosk program, you can find ways of spawning IE browsers by playing around on their web site from home. What I have seen at U.S. Radio Shacks are programs that come bundled with the computers on display. In all my experiences (which may be limited in comparison with your experiences, so forgive me) the desktop is accessible, but certain items have been removed (the IE icon, for example). You can use the oldest trick in the book for this one: If they ve got the My Computer icon enabled, simply double-click and use that window to type in your URL. Or you may just want to view the contents of the computer. You can do this with pretty much any icon on the desktop that isn't an executable. Breaking Free from the Kiosk This pertains to the Canadian Radio Shacks. Breaking completely out of the Kiosk is possible with the following easy steps. (As a side note, I just want to say that none of these tricks apply to the Montreal Radio Shack in the Cavendish Mall because the Kiosk is disconnected from the Internet and only accessible if you ask for help, and if you're younger than the person helping you, you're under strict observation.) 1. Go back to the home page of the Kiosk program. (There are nifty little icons that can help you do this on the upper left-hand corner of the screen.) 2. Click on the Computers tab. (There are numerous tabs on the home page that allow you to access different parts of the site. The Computers tab is the second from the left.) 3. Scroll down and watch the left hand side for "Microsoft" in bold type. 4. Click on Microsoft. This is where the inconsistency steps in. On Kiosk v5.0 and Kiosk v6.0 I've seen what I'm about to describe, but not on Kiosk v5.2.2. On the window that pops up when you click the word Microsoft, there will be a File tab on the upper right-hand corner of the pop-up screen. If you click it, there are two choices in the drop-down menu: Exit and Exit All. Exit simply exits the new screen, whereas Exit All exits the entire Kiosk program. Again, this has worked for me inconsistently, so be aware that if you try it might not work. Other Nifty Things Screen saver passwords are big deals at Radio Shack. Usually many or all of the computers on display will be screen saver password protected. I've noticed a couple of things: If you come in and ask for assistance with buying a computer, the screen saver password comes off immediately. Just say you're going to browse around, see how good the system is and all that, and the computer is yours. If you happen to catch a glimpse of what the person was typing, all the better for you, seeing as 99 percent of the time the screen saver passwords are the same. Or you can ask for assistance, have them take the screen saver password off, insert the disk you ve craftily brought from home, and harvest the passwords on the machine. If the computer is on, and there is no screen saver password apparent or if there's no screen saver enabled and the desktop is staring you in the face but you still can't seem to get the mouse or keyboard shortcuts to work, it's because the mouse and keyboard aren't plugged in. So reach around the back and plug them in. Hellos: vel3r, Skrooyoo, Petty Larceny, Spun0ut, and the rest of the LA 2600 crew; Real Vonce, PainFull (Ke2nel), SuNsCrEeN460, YEFROhundo. And a very special thanks to Team Hush who helped fix my email account.