Press Any Key To Delete, Any Other Key To Abort.

Suppose you are unfortunate enough to have ran a not so nice and somewhat ambiguous program.

The command line output is the below:

Warning, you are about to overwrite all data on device [some device] including partition tables and boot sector.
ALL DATA WILL BE DESTROYED BEYOND RECOVERY.

Enter any key to continue, any other key to abort: █

Which key would you press ?

 

The off button...

 

whatever "key" sends the SIGINT signal

of course it might have a signal handler to catch that and still do it ... might want to send SIGKILL ... or what Tyronsonwood said

 

Is there not a key that says
"YOU CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT!"
!

 

http://youtu.be/nw8OvX9etYE

 

before apple started the mac series, the reset key was next to the enter key. dragon made an apple compatable that put it someplace safer and more sensible. apple sued dragon out of business.

 

Your bootsector has been patched, press any key to undo, and any other key to continue:

Now what would you do?

 

i would seriously not trust the undo. my current os and settings asks before it makes root changes for adminstrator level approval. as far as i know, a cancel or abort, generally prevents them from being made.
unclear and ambiguous messages are certainly scarry. they're what i'd expect from an o.s that pretends to be simple by hiding everything.

 

Shoot the hostage in the knee...

 

you'd better find a way to safely terminate that program and fix the bootsector before rebooting, "patched" most likely means that it's not gonna boot into your OS next time but instead run some code bootstrapping code that corrupts your data, bricks your machine by corrupting the firmware etc. lol

 

that's assuming there actually is one running that is actually doing those things, and not just emitting deceivingly ambiguous warning messages. shutting down for a minimum of a minuet before rebooting. which will come up in safe mode, which doesn't load the interface level of the os, if anything actually did happen. roms won't brick even if eeproms will. saved ap data generally remains untouched anyway. you just don't try to run anything until full restore, again only if boot really has been scrambled or overwritten. yah i know not messing with low level stuff means they'll be crap robing cycles and slowing things down, but it also means very seldom having to be smart enough to mess with things like that in the furst place.

 

Yeah, there's pretty much no way to corrupt a mask rom (most is flash or eeprom these days tho) ... but I do imagine there are some pretty evil things that could be done with boot code. ID BE FUCKING PISSED lol

You can even build "usb flash drives" that when plugged in brick the motherboard (has power switcher circuitry in it that takes that 5v and emits a high voltage pulse onto the logic signals and ur board is fried) .. just leave it some place labeled "confidential corporate finance" or something similar, and curiousity kills the cat