I fell for a similar (but less) obvious joke on my first Linux installation back in 1995. That one used dd instead of rm. I lost a lot of code that I had written. After that, I’ve failed to see the humor in this kind of joke. There’s always the risk that someone new doesn’t understand it’s a joke, and tries it out.
I remember on a browser-based multiplayer game in the early 2000s, the vets would tell annoying or cheating newbies that they were using the “CTRL+WIN” to see their moves. Of course, as soon as they hit CTRL+W…
I agree. The / directory may receive special considerations, and it may be extra protected, but once I was doing something with rm -r and …/* in some folder inside my home directory… it wasn’t fun.
No, I did not have to learn that the hard way. I could have learned it another way. You’re objectively wrong. And you don’t always have a backup. Especially not back in 1995, when this happened. Back then, backups typically happened nightly. So even with a backup, I would still have lost a day’s worth of work.
I fell for a similar (but less) obvious joke on my first Linux installation back in 1995. That one used dd instead of rm. I lost a lot of code that I had written. After that, I’ve failed to see the humor in this kind of joke. There’s always the risk that someone new doesn’t understand it’s a joke, and tries it out.
It happened in this very post, actually. Serves them right for French bashing.
The rest of the time, I’d agree with you, I’ve never done this joke nor condone it.
I prefer the less harmful “alt+F4” joke, though most people know what that one does by now.
Yeah, it helps freeing RAM and making your pc go faster
I remember on a browser-based multiplayer game in the early 2000s, the vets would tell annoying or cheating newbies that they were using the “CTRL+WIN” to see their moves. Of course, as soon as they hit CTRL+W…
I agree. The / directory may receive special considerations, and it may be extra protected, but once I was doing something with rm -r and …/* in some folder inside my home directory… it wasn’t fun.
Some folks have to learn the hard way.
No, I did not have to learn that the hard way. I could have learned it another way. You’re objectively wrong. And you don’t always have a backup. Especially not back in 1995, when this happened. Back then, backups typically happened nightly. So even with a backup, I would still have lost a day’s worth of work.