Posted: 12/3/2007 6:45:34 PM EDT
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[rant] I just had a bunch of philosophers tell me the Run command line IS MS-DOS I contradicted them and told them what you see is a shell or GUI or [/rant] |
You can run DOSbox if you really want to play 
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I hate shit like that too. It's one thing to be a computer user and use the wrong terms for stuff because you don't know any better. It's another to inflict your ignorance on others with an air of authority about you. The Run dialog that comes up when you invoke the Run command from the Start menu or press WindowsKey + R is just a dialog box in the explorer.exe process. Whatever you type there gets passed to the ShellExecute API. That's why you can 'run' a folder and have it come up in an Explorer window, or 'run' a Word document and have it come up in Word. When you go to a Command Prompt by clicking the shortcut of that name or typing 'cmd' in the Run dialog, you're in the Command Interpreter. There was a command interpreter called cmd.com in the DOS days, which may be the source of the confusion, but the command interpreter in NT-based OSes is like DOS only inasmuch as commands like 'copy' and 'dir' are the same in both. cmd.exe is just a console executable that understands some built-in commands like 'dir' and whatnot, and passes the rest on to ShellExecute. That said, I know many Windows programmers who are very much aware of the difference between Windows and DOS who call the command prompt a 'DOS box', as in "Bring up a DOS box and type 'xcopy foo bar'". That's just a short hand that's easier to say than 'command interpreter' or 'command prompt'. I can see how a user who doesn't know any better could overhear that and conclude that a command prompt is DOS, which is an understandable mistake; preaching that in formation to others is not an understandable mistake, it's being a fuckwit. |
I am presuming that the above reference is not directed/intended towards me. I can appreciate an individual who is more knowledgeable than I, but in essence, if there is knowledge lacking, I sure hope 1) someone points out my fallacies, so that 2) when I speak in to my peer groups, I have at least corrected information. Thank you for your insight. |
I'm sorry if that came off a little harsh. I'm prone to rants myself. You are correct; that wasn't directed to you. It was directed to the 'philosophers' as you call them, who perpetuate misinformation. Not unlike the mall ninjas who know a guy who heard a friend of a Marine sniper complain about a busted AimPoint, ergo Marine snipers hate AimPoints (as but one hypothetical example). |