Manager showed off his DOS prowess – with a command that wiped data
REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); This was a time before PCs had become ubiquitous, so Clay was curious about the machines. REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/c'); }); "One lunch break, I asked the junior engineer if I could try his PC," he told us.The junior had little choice but to comply, so Clay sat down at the machine and used the only command he knew. REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/d'); }); Have you let a user wreak havoc on your machine?
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/b'); }); This was a time before PCs had become ubiquitous, so Clay was curious about the machines.
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/c'); }); "One lunch break, I asked the junior engineer if I could try his PC," he told us.The junior had little choice but to comply, so Clay sat down
- ▪REG AD googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.display('labrador/thereg/article/desktop/d'); }); Have you let a user wreak havoc on your machine?
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Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
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Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | www.theregister.com - Articles |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/07/27/manager-showed-off-his-dos-prowess-with-a-command-that-wiped-data/5278057 |
| Publication time | Mon, 27 Jul 2026 08:30:00 +0200 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-27T06:35:58.961Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-27T06:35:58.961Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | W7egkmGmzDxk · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
(function() { let windowUrl = window.location.href; windowUrl = windowUrl.substring(windowUrl.indexOf('?') + 1); let messageElement = document.querySelector('.shareableMessage'); if (windowUrl && windowUrl.includes('code') && windowUrl.includes('expires')) { messageElement.style.display = 'block'; } })(); software Manager showed off his DOS prowess – with a command that wiped data Never believe a suit who says they're handy with tech Simon Sharwood Simon Sharwood APAC Editor APAC Editor Published mon 27 Jul 2026 // 07:30 UTC WHO, ME? Mistakes happen, and when readers of The Register make them, we like to share those tales of woe in a Monday column we call "Who, Me?" It's our guide on how not to get ahead in the modern workplace.This week, meet a reader we'll Regomize as Clay, who in the…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at www.theregister.com - Articles.
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