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I've started to go through and retag questions using and look at the question, and if it's genuinely about DOS, leave it.

If it's a denial of service, I've been retagging it as because it's silly to have tags that are ambiguous for questions.

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  • In a slightly unrelated note, we should work to get this to be the canonical answer for such things, so we can mark and close dupes serverfault.com/questions/99890/…
    – Tom O'Connor
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 11:39
  • 3
    Why, oh, why would anyone be asking about DOS (the OS) here?!
    – gWaldo
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 16:07
  • Is it safe to assume they mean MS-DOS? That way there can be no confusion...
    – Mark Henderson Mod
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 20:42
  • I'm pretty sure they do. I've been through every question tagged [dos], they're all either mistagged as denial of service, or relating to cmd on windoze.
    – Tom O'Connor
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 22:38
  • 1
    @MarkHenderson For our purposes we can probably get away with saying "DOS is DOS", but they could easily be referring to FreeDOS (which is what I see popping up more and more in places where DOS is still a thing), or emulation (DOSBox, DOSEMU -- though those are probably worthy of their own tags)
    – voretaq7
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 22:53
  • Is there that much variance between freedos and msdos?
    – Tom O'Connor
    Commented Dec 29, 2011 at 22:56
  • @TomO'Connor - I agree with your general sentiment but not quite so sure about that particular question, as the asker wishes to exclude third party s/w and/or tools from the Denial-of-service discussion. Not saying there's anything wrong with the question they're asking in itself, but I think a canonical question/answer has to include those alternatives.
    – Rob Moir
    Commented Dec 30, 2011 at 14:29
  • @gWaldo: Legacy Applications... For example there are lots of ancient SCADA-like systems that only run on DOS. You'd be surprised to learn how many of these lurk in buildings doing things like controlling vents, lights, etc.
    – user62491
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 6:36
  • @kce Turbines, motors in nuclear fuel reprocessing plants. cf, stuxnet.
    – Tom O'Connor
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 9:25
  • @TomO'Connor - the stuff of nightmares.
    – user62491
    Commented Jan 4, 2012 at 17:57

1 Answer 1

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This makes sense to me.

To answer @gWaldo's comment, DOS is still very much alive and kicking (and screaming, and doing all sorts of other horrible things).
I will admit to having software at $job running in a DOS emulator (until we can eliminate the last bits of our systems relying on it and make it go away), and it's also in some SCADA systems (which we as system administrators are sometimes tasked with interfacing with and monitoring. I've had that pleasure...)

6
  • Insert sympathies here -->
    – gWaldo
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 16:10
  • In lieu of sympathy please send scotch.
    – voretaq7
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 17:08
  • NICE. Shipping is expensive. Tell you what: I'll keep a bottle here, and you can swing by for doses when needed...
    – gWaldo
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 18:10
  • Crap. You're in NY; you might actually take me up on that...
    – gWaldo
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 18:16
  • Only if it's good scotch.
    – voretaq7
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 18:17
  • Well, I just got laid off a couple weeks ago, so no liquor for me in the meantime. I'll probably celebrate with some Macallan when a new one is secured.
    – gWaldo
    Commented Jan 3, 2012 at 18:39

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