For those of you unfortunate enough to have had to struggle with Windows Vista, you may appreciate this more than the rest. I recently came to the epiphany that the security system in Windows Vista is much like Gun Control. Both take a certain amount of control out of the hands of law abiding citizens. Gun control mean that they can't carry guns; Vista doesn't allow them certain administrative access and control. Both provide this same control to people willing to subvert the government or the Operating System (Vista). It strikes me that in both situations, we create an environment where those in power are the ones we are trying to keep from holding power.
A proper operating system provides the owner with the tools and sane defaults to lock the machine down without removing access to the system. Further, it encourages greater understanding of the system which leads to a greater understanding for potential abuse of it. That's one of the many reasons I like running Ubuntu Linux with additional interest in Mac OS X and have no plans to run Windows Vista on my own computers.
This has caused unlimited heartache for my mother on her Gateway laptop, which runs Vista Home Edition. It's already tough, as she's nearly clueless on computer use to begin with, but this extra silliness makes it really hard on her. I note many attempts at security are very ill-conceived, poorly implemented, seemingly designed as a convenience for MS and their coders. It's like a sop designed to shut up folks complaining of security vulnerabilities. Instead of actually fixing the problems, they simply make it harder to use.