I have seen on some IRCs people writing 'sudo rm -rf /*" etc. (not as advice, but as a joke,) but that person is always promptly kicked out and everyone in the channel tries to warn others.
The author's view is definitely too pessimistic. Most people on IRCs like Freenode aren't evil 'hackers' out to 'hack' you (this reminds me of an episode of Numb3rs.) Other smaller IRC servers can get rowdy, but I've yet to see that on Freenode et al.
I think much better advice would be to not randomly execute crap you see online without knowing what the program is and does, especially in root.
A few days ago I decided to pick up a bash book from O'reilly and, truth be told, the guys in a room in Freenode knew how to help me in any question I made, no matter how silly I might felt for even asking (specifically I remember asking them about case insensitive shell expanding of wildcards which ended up being a locale issue in my installation).
That doesn't mean that they're all saints, I just find it comforting that there are people out there who will gladly assist a complete stranger (in my case, me).
The author's view is definitely too pessimistic. Most people on IRCs like Freenode aren't evil 'hackers' out to 'hack' you (this reminds me of an episode of Numb3rs.) Other smaller IRC servers can get rowdy, but I've yet to see that on Freenode et al.
I think much better advice would be to not randomly execute crap you see online without knowing what the program is and does, especially in root.