The Atomic Ass
Redefining Sound
Starting a web browser via a root shell would fall under my definition of user intervention, and the only purpose I can conceive of needing to do so would be software testing, which should be done on machines with no critical information.I'm going to call bullshit right there. All software has bugs and if those bugs lead to memory such as buffer overflows or they are in services directly tied to a shell with escalated privileges you can do whatever the hell you want. I realize that you meant to say that Microsoft Windows includes these things by default but all of the common OS's are useful when approached with pragmatism as opposed to fanboyism. In reality all you have to do is become a desirable enough target to become truly vulnerable.
I understand that bugs exist, but a distributed community tends to jump on these things acceptably quickly for my experience and level of comfort. Microsoft places themselves at a distinct disadvantage (and their users, as well), by having so many of their bugs inherent to the design of the underlying system.