Pranksters on a bunch of internet forums will tell uninformed computer users to type this into the Terminal to fix their computer problems. Once these poor bastards hit the return key and type in their password the system starts erasing everything on the hard drive. This command is only for use with Un*x-like operating systems (Mac, Linux, and BSD but not Windows.) The Windows version of this command is ‘format c:’

==

sudo = do the following command as the Super User (aka root (the system administrator account))

rm = remove (aka delete) the following files

-rf = flags for the ‘rm’ command, which mean ‘recursive’ (aka go into each subdirectory, and their sub-sub-directories, etc, forever) and force (aka don’t prompt, “Are you sure?” nor “Cannot remove a non-empty directory”)

/ = root directory, base of your drive, from where all other folders on your directory tree stem off of. /home is a part of /, /etc is a part of /, even /mount/WindowsXP is a part of /

So you’re telling the system to remove itself. When the command is run, it gets loaded into RAM and when it finishes, it finds itself without anything on the drive (in theory, apparently).