OK- That scared me enough. I spit the red pill out and swallowed the blue pill. Ignorance in this case is truly bliss (Matrix movie line).

Since my blog post was the trigger for this discussion, I feel compelled to respond.

The post, I feel has been misunderstood by many who have judged it as 'misguided' and 'stupid' and those who claim I don't understand the ramifications of the Red-Pill mode.

If the post is read carefully (www.themaemo.com), you will find that there is a clear warning against the potential of harm that may be caused misusing the Red-Pill.

The post was meant to demonstrate to new users the easter-egg/coolness that has been a tradition of the tablets. Its a pity that many feel so paternalistic about the device that they would go to great lengths to stop people from even talking about it.

Warnings are common place - heck, there's one everytime an app from Extras is installed. Why should the Red-Pill be any different? Requests for take-downs is not the answer and the community would do good by not promoting what I consider to be akin to censorship.

Its great that the community is so passionate about the user experience but what is Nokia saying about this? If this is such a big concern Nokia should put out out an immediate patch and seal this one and for all. The fact is that this isn't a big issue as it is made out to be. Most will not do too much after taking the red-pill, and those who do are willing to take the risk, are probably savvy enough to seek help after they brick the device. I bricked my tablet several times, I learned, and it was fun.

In the end, its just a gadget.

I think Quim answered this already:

Thanks. well, it was fun having the Red-Pill around

Is it possible to revert back the settings once you have taken the red pill?

Yes. Follow the same process, but choose the blue pill.

The Red-Pill in Maemo5, unlike previous Maemo platforms, is not persistent. Closing the Application-Manager reverts it to the default Blue-Pill mode.

After reading this thread and many others, I have to ask the following.

Given that:
1) Extras will be enabled by default in the first firmware update,
2) Warning everyone away from extras-testing and extras-devel,
3) The amount of effort the community is putting into protecting end users from potentially harming their device,

Should rootsh be removed from extras and pushed back to testing or devel?

Gaining root certainly has plenty of potential to brick or cripple a device easily, particularly in the hands of an end-user, and as many people have mentioned here, end-users shouldn't need root access anyway.

If it is located in Extras, and Extras is heavily promoted as the "safe" programs an end-user may mistake it a being a safe program to install. At least if it is located in testing or devel, the user should have a good idea that it is a potentially harmful program to install.

*EDIT* If a moderator feels this should be a separate thread, please move it.

What!? I hope you are just being over-dramatic there.
Please tell me the n900 has some sort of protected BIOS-type firmware so you can always re-install Linux with the flasher utility!?

"bricking" implies that specialised hardware is needed for recovery.

Thanks, myk. You're right; CrashandDie is being over-dramatic.

(So cool! Someone who is actually from Fremantle!)