Ariel Millennium Thornton @arielmt@computerfairi.es

The worst computer mistake I ever made was on my C64, way back when I had only one floppy drive. I wanted to make a backup copy of a disk, & the disk copying program I was using had to format the backup first. It was halfway done with the format phase when I realized I was holding the blank floppy in my hand and that the disk I wanted to copy was being formatted.

This is in my ~/.shrc on BSD to keep me from accidentally nuking or clobbering files I forget are there:

alias cp='cp -ip'
alias mv='mv -i'
alias rm='rm -i'

This also works in ~/.bashrc for bash, & with GNU versions of cp (except `cp -p` preserves different file attributes), mv, & rm.

"Interact with this post if you remember _______"

Thanks to the magic of the Internet, your kid might have to explain why they got 8-tracks, disco albums on any medium, and/or pet rocks.

@Saxxon Screen suddenly got filthy. Need to shut down to clean the screen without catastrophe. Can't shut down because can't see the shutdown option well enough to tell it apart from sleep & restart. Can't see it because screen filthy.

@maple Coffee made me alert.

ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION
ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION
ATTENTION ALL PLANETS OF THE SOLAR FEDERATION
WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL
WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL
WE HAVE ASSUMED CONTROL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUzAWw4qsmA

This #DarkPattern showed up after I emptied my shopping cart. Sneaky, Amazon...

Ah, it *was* Dubya, but much later than I remembered. The FCC mandated it in order to comply with the WARN Act back in 2007: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts

@maple The FCC mandated emergency alert capabilities in all our cell phones back in '07, broken down into four categories: Amber Alert, Severe Alert, Extreme Alert, and Presidential Alert. The first three can be disabled in individual phones, but the fourth can't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Emergency_Alerts

@troubleMoney I'm pretty sure it was Bush. A lot of the War on Terror paranoia felt just like Cold War/Second Red Scare paranoia.

I'm pretty sure we can thank, not Trump (hard as that may be to accept), but Dubya Bush for the unblockable Presidential Alert part of the Emergency Alerts feature.

It's been in cell phones for many, many years, and I'm certain it was part of the aftermath of That Day.

What I'm most impressed about, positively or negatively, is that the presidential alert test actually worked even half as well as it did. Last time they tried a national test that involved actually notifying the the public, it failed miserably.

Trump's taking the blame/credit, but he did nothing.