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by salawat 2220 days ago
Don't know why you're getting downvoted. I've been trying to keep an old Vaio Z series ticking along with Windows 7 using a community hybrid graphics driver. Lo and behold, you can't even do that anymore without basically hacking the windows kernel from the bootloader because Micro$oft is too busy sucking up to the movie/streaming industry to allow regular users to keep their things running. The kernel will not let you load an unsigned driver and give you the option to overrule their BS setup, even if you have looked at what the driver to determine what it is doing is correct, and are willing to use it.

B2B is the new policy setter. Businesses are the new first class User, and everyone else is just a Luser. To hell with em' all I say. If I could I'd find a way to crack their DRM anti-end-user circuitry and share it with the world out of spite. I liked that damn laptop. I still like it. I'm going to figure out how to pull off that bootloader thing, and I'm putting it out there for other Z series owners. You shouldn't have to fight a computer damnit!

And yes, I could swap to Linux, but that isn't really the point. The DRM crap moving to hardware means everyone has to deal with it. Furthermore, everything else I run is already Linux, and that laptop is my token Windows machine, which has quite a bit of sentimental value, as it was one of the machines that got me through college.

Anyway. Consider my hat firmly in the outraged bucket. This is ridiculous. Worthy of ridicule in every sense of the word. The entire software/hardware industry should look at the industries or actors asking for it, and tell them to work on getting on better terms with their users. The majority won't misbehave if you just provide a reasonable experience.

About the only two industries that have a reasonable claim to needing these types of features are National Security, medical devices, and grudgingly finance. That's it. Even then, I have difficulty swallowing the application, because it just leads to people trying to pry the lid open ever more. If they aren't going to give people the capability to opt out of this draconian nightmare, I want nothing to do with them.