Yes, but [ % ] is not implmented, therefore you always "live".

He's talking about the 4th post from this thread

Obvious..maybe, if we were all coders..i am not, as many other members..unbelievable...it should be explicit that was dangerous
I am not so pissed off just because:
1.backupmenu rocks
2.what you made me do to my phone yesterday i did the same to your mom and your sis the day before!

Pasting or typing this code (singular), or any code for that matter, in your n900 terminal, without checking first what it actually does... And next blaming others for that omission... Priceless...

The only virus that will harm the N900 (afaik) is the manual virus: Delete all your files. Then convince all your friends to do the same.

dude, you are being a prick. there were warnings all over the place not to do what you said you did. also the code was flawed and could not work in your case because it was for bash, not ash, so stop whining.

i understand i you tried to make your point pretending you bricked your device, but when you start talking about family members i might get offended.

dont know anything about these warnings but i appologise, i was pissed off and rude.

It is very unlikely that N900 can be infected with viruses. Remember that N900 runs on an ARM architecture which is not the same as x86 that you have on desktops. It also comes with linux kernel (when using the default OS known as maemo) which is really unlikely to be targeted.

There are however worms, trojans and maybe even viruses written for other OS such as android for instance but it is unlikely those entities are able to target maemo due to the way maemo is not designed in the same way. In saying so it does not mean that running nitdroid (android for N900) means that you won't be infected either, well you can be if you happen to stumble upon such entities.

To put it frankly, people who develop such malicious programs would not be willing to target niche platforms like N900 or maemo itself. They would be targeting major platforms like iOS (on Apple iPod/iPhone), android (many manufacturers rely on android), symbian (quite rare considering that symbian has tightened itself up upon first instance ages ago).

Viruses, trojans, worms, etc are almost non-existent on maemo platform. The probable most fearsome attack would be user executed commands. maemo does not come with `self-protection' mechanisms. When I meant `self-protection' mechanism is such commands or programs that the user is unsure of what it could do to the system could actually have a detrimental impact. Other platforms would generally have such protection in place so should you unwisely tried to destroy your critical files whilst the operating system is running, it will most likely prevent you from doing so. Remember, maemo is more or less a proper linux being shoehorned into a handheld device, There's not many linux distributions out there that would by default come with an adequate enough protection to counteract let alone be configured properly by the end user.

Thus this is also more or less the same reasons as using developmental programs such as from extras-{testing,devel}. When you were warned that it may cause instability or otherwise undesired operations on your device it does not mean anything else but just that.

in short, only microsoft platform get viruses due the fact they focus on features and colorful interfaces rather than security.

Viruses can be done in Python, no? Wouldn't such viruses ( or is it "virii"? I never remember) essentially be crossplatform even across different processor architectures?