• Laurel Raven@lemmy.zip
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        11 hours ago

        I can’t speak for them if they’re joking or not but it’s something you can absolutely do. *.bat files (short for “batch”, as in a batch of commands to execute in sequence) are the script files for the Windows command line, and can be executed by double clicking on them

        • jmacapp@lemm.ee
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          11 hours ago

          Thanks, I’m familiar with batch files. This just seems like a very bad way to perform a shutdown, especially when running a UI Desktop windowing system. And even if that shutdown command is fully supported from the GUI, I would guess you need to be admin to run it, which means you can run the bat file as admin, so if you can edit the file or modify the env in which it runs (e.g. PATH) it seems like it could be a security problem. And if you don’t need to be root to run the shutdown command, that seems like its own problem. I suppose Windows still has the “run as administrator” from the context menu so maybe that helps.

          • Laurel Raven@lemmy.zip
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            4 hours ago

            You did say “I don’t use Windows” which sounded like you were saying you didn’t know if what they were saying was technically plausible or reasonable, and without knowing what you do or don’t know about Windows or DOS, figured I’d respond with the presumption that it’s possible you’re only really familiar with *NIX systems (which is not a judgement).

            I find it kludgey and unnecessary to shut down that way, but it’s not exactly a bad idea, and it does not require admin rights.

            And there’s no reason it wouldn’t be supported: when you run the file, it opens it in a terminal window, it’s exactly like if you manually opened it and typed it from a technical point of view.

            And if someone malicious has the ability to edit a file on your desktop, they could do a lot more dangerous things, pretty much anything you could put in the batch file, more or less directly.

            Really, the only issue here is that you’d always be force closing your programs when you shut down which increases the odds that eventually they might corrupt one of their files… Not a huge risk, but non-zero.

          • Sonicdemon86@lemmy.world
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            9 hours ago

            As it is a simple command you don’t need to be an admin or run as administrator. Listen kids don’t run batch files if you don’t know where they came from or who made them.