Not using vendor prefixes isn't a better idea. The reason for vendor prefixes is to allow developers to experiment with these features and feedback bugs, issues, improvements and future feature suggestions. It's a testing ground, and the web is a great environment to collect information about that testing. So not supporting vendors efforts doesn't encourage them to innovate. Perhaps these vendor prefixes should be limited to alpha/beta versions of browsers instead?

A better idea is for developers not to rely solely on vendor prefixes. Use them, but don't rely on them.

One of the use-cases that led Opera to support webkit prefixes were sites that styled a button using a webkit gradient. Without the webkit gradient, the user received white text on a white background. So in this case, only webkit browser users saw a button, other browsers saw nothing.

Opera, Firefox, and Microsoft were all receiving bug reports of this nature, in quantity. So it's not really practical to reply to users with a "site developer's fault" - it's a losing proposition, because - much like tomjen3's attitude in this thread - the site developer doesn't care. It's a brick wall in terms of evangelism.

Opera have taken 13 webkit prefixes and aliased them as opera prefixed - when the corresponding opera prefix isn't present. That is a practical user-centric solution that works until vendor-prefixes are crushed under the weight of technical debt.

(London Web Standards hosted State of the Browser today - http://browser.londonwebstandards.org/ , including a panel session with representatives from Opera, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Chrome panelists - no Safari representative, Apple declined the invitation. Hope they upload the video, it's worth watching, particularly for Opera's Bruce Lawson's comments about webkit aliasing)