What's most epic about this is it's in the UNIX Hater's Handbook. One of its rants was how better-designed systems would warn you if you were going to nuke your whole system. The reason is that a command to wipe the whole system was more likely a mistake than developer or admin's intent. UNIX would do it without blinking. Inherently unsafe programming and scripting combined with tools like that meant lots of UNIX boxes went kaput.
And today, over two decades later, a person just accidentally destroyed his entire company with one line without warnings on a UNIX. History repeats when its lessons aren't learned. This problem, like setuid, should've been eliminated by design fairly quickly after it was discovered.
EDIT: Added link to ESR's review of UNIX Hater's Handbook which links to UHH itself. Nicely covers what was rant, what was fixed, and what remains true. Linking in case people want to work on the latter plus my sour relationship with UNIX. :)
And today, over two decades later, a person just accidentally destroyed his entire company with one line without warnings on a UNIX. History repeats when its lessons aren't learned. This problem, like setuid, should've been eliminated by design fairly quickly after it was discovered.
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=538
EDIT: Added link to ESR's review of UNIX Hater's Handbook which links to UHH itself. Nicely covers what was rant, what was fixed, and what remains true. Linking in case people want to work on the latter plus my sour relationship with UNIX. :)