Someone opined that, "I dont have to worry about my furniture bypassing Windows Firewalls and disabling my antivirus software, now do I?"

Actually that may not turn out to be true. At some point you will probably have a RFID reader in your house. If 1) they embed a RFID tag in their manufactured goods (very likely), and 2) that tag contains even subcomponent of a robust security threat (again, very likely considering that the frame virus was clearly the work of a group, not some hacker at the frame factory), then it may well be a sofa, books, clock or toaster oven that supplies the final code which "hacks" your homes information infrastructure!

Just how awesome is this threat? They can embed lots of it right on your motherboards and microcontrollers--sleeping like a dormant viral gene--ready to be activated when the conditions are right!

For the past 20 (yes TWENTY) years I've been advocating moving substantial OS components to ROM (and later various types of PROM).

No one listens to EE engineers. MS and Apple both employ more artists and computer scientists. They've been lied to concerning the things that software (rather than hardware) can best accomplish.

The truth is that anything which needs to be dome quickly should be done with a hardware-based solution. My friend needed to find and factor prime numbers. He showed me his software, we analyzed it, rewrote it in a nice low-level language (this probably took us 30 hours), and then I was able to build the entire thing as chip. The final result, search times were improved by a factor of 10,000 (yes, that's ten-thousand times faster) than his original system. Admittedly, using the assembly language routine gave a 40-fold speed increase, so we should factor that out and call it a software improvement. Still, a dedicated hardware solution represented a 250-fold speed increase.

OSs typically spend a huge amount of time (and thus resources) doing repetitive tasks. This calls for OSs being largely built as hardware. I believe that with some moterhboard innovation, a 1GB bank of EEPROM could hold the OS which would only be updated rarely, that users would never have to "wait" to load, and which would be much more stable (less subject to viruses or various other troubles) than the current paradigm. In fact, they could even use ROMs and sell OSs much like processors or memory are now sold. Multi-boot systems would be so easy--you just need a motherboard that supports additional banks of ROMs.

Imgaine a car that wouldn't drive for 2 minutes each time you wanted to use it. Now imagine that every time you upgrade the car that delay increases. No one would buy it. How about an aircraft or a space shuttle. Why does everyone let countless hours of productivity slip away while Windows starts up (or reboots after a crash) the MS way? Folks, you must demand better! We embed higher-level software all the time. Windows XP (or Vista if you're a sucker), and Mac OS X (leopard, right?) could be modified for this purpose far more easily than creating a new OS--but they might need to send their Java/C++ hacks back to school for classes in microprocessors.

The last, and most damning analysis is an environmental one. How much energy is wasted worldwide while Windows (re)boots? It's certainly enough to run a small country. It's interesting to lay a part of the world's energy crises at Apple and Microsfots door.