I agree with most of the sentiments, except for one key statement: > "Just about any computer you can buy today is going to have some kind of non-trivial boot

I agree with most of the sentiments, except for one key statement: > "Just about any computer you can buy today is going to have some kind of non-trivial boot time. It probably will require a whole ecosystem of crazy things to make it work. It will be fragile. You can break it easily." I vehemently disagree with the italicized portion, at least in the way it's presented. Those on here probably aren't affected, but many of the non-technical users I know are afraid of learning how to go beyond simple tasks on their computer (word processing, internet browsing, etc.) because they're afraid they'll break their expensive box and have to pay someone to fix it. Most UIs today seem to help users avoid breaking things and typically have some sort of notification if they'll change something that would break their machine (e.g. UAC in Windows, padlock in OS X). Even beyond this, general application development wouldn't pose these risks. Hardware hacking certainly could, but any time you're dealing with the physical workings of something that's an assumed risk.