Sooner quit IT than run a closed platform...
It seems to be a sad trend everywhere you look. People always seem to want to sacrifice freedom for security. If Windows wouldn't have been so flagrantly insecure in the first place (ActiveX? what the hell is that? "Lets make a tech that allows people to run executable code straight from a web page!"), then users wouldn't have been so inundated.
Rather than fix the security problems (pull the browser from the OS, remove Active X, no svchost.exe, etc), "security" has become a term meaning "protect users from themselves". It is agravatingly evident with Vista UAC.
Part of the problem is that closed systems are inevitably the way of big business. To be honest the PC and the Internet have been freaking out corps since their inception. They look enviously towards the cell phone companies, who can control nearly every aspect of their closed systems.
But everyone seems to forget that the free wheeling nature of the Internet is exactly what made it win out over closed systems like AOL and Compuserve. It is just another case of ignoring a long term buck for a short term penny.
Windows Vista 64 is the start with its "secure content path" for HD-DVD. The fact that is is so easily cracked anyway will prompt the MPAA to loby congress to force MS to fully embrace Palladium in their next OS. No one will be able to red the contents of memory or crack the Super-HD-DVD (or whatever comes next).
At that point inovation will truely be dead, and no one will be able to publish software without a billion dollars in start up and licensing cost. I fear at that point Linux will be the only choice for independant developers. But at that point the market will probably be so locked down that only hobyists will be bothered to run it.
Sad days ahead :-(