Сейчас уже почти все пользуются графическим интерфейсом. Да...

Now almost everyone uses the graphical interface. Yes, it’s not so, now the vast majority of people began acquaintance with a computer from a graphical interface. Already few people remember such a wonderful DOS operating system, which allowed to give rise to one legend that populated the Internet.

On Windows, you cannot create a file or folder called "con", because Bill Gates in his childhood had the nickname "con" - a nerd. And he tried to prevent such files and folders from appearing in his system.

(The author is not known to me)


Everyone who is "in the tank", trying to create a file or folder "con" (without quotes), instantly makes sure that this can not be done and ... immediately not only believes the explanation given, but also transfers this myth to friends.

In fact, everything is much more prosaic. "CON" is the reserved name for the standard input / output device, short for "console". By default, the input operation from CON is keyboard input, the output is printing to a monitor. For example, if on the command line (for example, in cmd or in Far, you just don’t need to say “I don’t know, I don’t know how”, you won’t study, you’ll remain in the tank)

copy specify-name of existing-file-file; the contents of the file are displayed. And if, on the contrary, dial

copy con specify-name-nonexistent- (new) -file
then the system will wait until you type something from the keyboard, press F6 (end of file character) and Enter. After that, everything that was entered will be written to the specified new file. The fact is that the copy command is used to copy files, for example, a call

copy specify-name-of-existing-file-specify-name-of nonexistent- (new) -file will cause the contents of the file specified by the first argument to be copied to the file under the name of the second argument. Those. the CON file cannot really exist in the system, but operations with it as a file are possible, but they are redirected not to disk, but directly to input / output devices!

The name CON is not the only one reserved in the system. For example, you cannot create a PRN file yet. This is an alias for the printer command

copy specify-name of existing prn-file led to printing the specified file. Only for a long time there are no printers working through the LPT port, no computers with the LPT port and the command will not work, and the PRN file - as well as LPT1 - cannot be created anyway.

This is how legends are born. A certain mysterious, inexplicable and incomprehensible fact is shown to a person (a natural phenomenon), and then an “explanation” is given that operates on terms familiar to him (as a typical representative of his time) (“nerd”, “he took care”). A real explanation would require an excursion into history, acquaintance with new terms and facts ("I / O device", "command line"), and we have before us a typical example of how you can understand everything without explaining anything - ready ground for creating legends, pseudoscientific theories, mystical movements ...

Often, the scientific explanation of the phenomenon simply cannot be presented at a level that is accessible to understanding by the masses, but it may not yet be created at all and is incomprehensible to anyone. At the same time, if inexplicability exists, there will always be craftsmen to create the illusion of understanding and warm their hands on it.

This is because the ideas of Oira-Oira are capable of being received by only two hundred and three hundred people all over the globe, and among these two or three hundred there are quite a few corresponding members and - alas! - there is not a single correspondent. And the classical work of Vybegalla, “Fundamentals of the technology for the production of self-slipping shoes”, stuffed with demagogic chatter, made at one time the care of B. Nursery (correspondent - N. L.) a fair amount of noise. (Later it turned out that self-donning boots cost more than a motorcycle and are afraid of dust and dampness.)

(A. and B. Strugatsky, "Monday ...")

There is one more thought about this, not quite mine. Why is mysticism so popular? Why are the humanities developing, and the natural ones found themselves in the pen? Why do people believe that there is nothing accidental? Why is the idea that the whole world is developing towards a specific goal gaining momentum?

The fact is that over the centuries, science has carried out one deanthropocentric revolution after another. The Earth was not the center of the world, the Sun was not the center of the Galaxy, there were many galaxies, the Universe did not have a center. People did not arise ready, and descended from monkeys. And all living things arose from the substance developed in the bowels of the stars. The mass of people is less than the mass of mosquitoes, and the mass of the Earth is much less than the mass of the Sun. The Sun itself is a very small star, a dwarf. The mass of gas is many times greater than the mass of stars, and all the stars are drowning in hidden mass, dark matter, dark energy, making up less than one percent of the mass of the Universe. Man from the king of nature turned into a grain of sand, insignificant for her.

And humans could not bear it. Their instinct for self-preservation of greatness proper worked for them. Humans clung to the idea that nature exists for them. That the planets revolve in order to influence their fate. That they have something else (“intangible”) that can affect the universe. What the universe is filled bar