So basically what you're saying is that we should just give up and go
home. Right? Do we seriously just want to give everybody full root
access and let whatever happens happens, never asking them to think a
second about what they're clicking or doing? Basically windows95/98
mentality?

Right now you can install new software on Fedora 7 out of the box - without entering a password - by browsing to: http://addons.mozilla.org

So, you do not need root access to screw yourself over. Really, everything not under /home (i.e. under "root" control) is basically unimportant infrastructure goo. How do I know this? Because almost every time I've tried to upgrade Fedora something has gone wrong, so I've just preserved my /home, blown away my disk, reinstalled, and reinstated /home and been at basically the same point I was before. Just have to enable passwordless sudo.

No one has really solved the problem of trojan software. Dialogs are definitely not a solution. Now, we can have a dialog for it and I wouldn't argue against it - but we shouldn't delude ourselves into thinking that having people enter a password is going to stop them from getting their MP3s to play.