I wonder how many folks would miss this reference. If I'm not mistaken, it's only in the original series. On the other hand, I guess Itanium is even more obscure than Star Trek at this point.
I tend to assume that most people know at least as much as I do, so I was taken aback when, after explaining line endings to a co-worker, she asked, "What's DOS?"
The line stands well enough on its own without context, so it can be used even without knowing what its referring to... but it clearly is a reference.
Yeah I’m in this boat. They say this on Reddit all the time so I know it’s a reference to something, but like you said I never bothered to check what it’s actually a reference to.
It suddenly hit me that there are adults alive today who have only ever known PCs without floppy drives.
"Why is it calling you Jim? How are you signed-in to Chrome?"
"I'm not. I don't use that stuff."
"Why is it calling you Jim then?"
"It calls everybody Jim. That's a quote from Star Trek."
He assumed the error message was personalized based on how you were signed-in to Chrome.
Turns out that, though he's a big Star Wars and Dr. Who fan, he managed to completely avoid Star Trek TOS. I found the phrase to be used ubiquitously too but, apparently, not so much that he ever noticed it.
How old was she? I bet there are plenty of people born in the late 80s / early 90s who've never used DOS. Windows 95 changed everything.
But cmd is surely quite compatible with command.com. With more capabilities, but still very compatible. And a deceivingly close user interface.
msdos.sys, io.sys, and command.com
Source is interesting, I took a look: