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Silently Corrupting an Eclipse Workspace: The Ultimate Prank

posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 24 2017, @06:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the didn't-need-those-folders-anyway dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

in with a story on Robert Elder Software blog entitled Silently Corrupting an Eclipse Workspace: The Ultimate Prank:

Next time your co-worker asks:

"What's the best way to back up my Eclipse workspace on Windows?"

you can tell them "Just right-click on it and select 'Send to Compressed (zipped) folder' and save the zip file". Unbeknownst to them, you just pulled the ultimate prank by telling them to make a corrupted backup!

          What your friend probably doesn't realize is that the Windows 'Send to Compressed (zipped) folder' utility has a mandatory optional feature to automatically not include certain folders in the archive without telling you. This is a great feature because it demonstrates the excellent sense of humour that the authors of Microsoft Windows have. This feature was no doubt included to allow you to play a variety of hilarious pranks on others by causing them lose data, only to find out about it years later when they want to open the archive and recover it.

The blog post goes on to identify other idiosyncrasies with how Windows mishandles directories whose names start with a period and/or contain Unicode characters.

Reasons you haven't switched to Linux (cont.):

  • 3. Windows has superior development tools.

What other issues have you found with how Windows handles filenames?

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:32PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 24 2017, @09:32PM (#483877)

    On someones Linux PC or someone who hates Win10, load this webpage and fullscreen it then call the owner over. http://fakeupdate.net/win10u/index.html [fakeupdate.net]

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Nuke on Friday March 24 2017, @11:54PM (1 child)

    by Nuke (3162) on Friday March 24 2017, @11:54PM (#483926)

    I saw a more alarming version that said "Upgrading to Windows Vista" . Can't find the link now though. Thing to do is go into an Apple store and set this up, full screen, on one of their demo laptops.

  • (Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:03AM

    by driverless (4770) on Saturday March 25 2017, @01:03AM (#483974)

    That's just pure evil.

    OTOH a more scary one would be 97% complete or something. 0% complete implies you can still quickly pull the plug.