Re: you want userspace or ring 1+ safety
" you want userspace or ring 1+ safety, you'll give up a bit of performance"
OK, I'll happily accept that as a starting point.
"it is the users who aren't willing to settle for that."
Really? Got any evidence for that?
I'm fully aware of the difference between performance as measured by some gamestyle benchmark, and productivity. They're not the same.
Productivity's kinda hard to measure directly, but a bluescreen has a negative impact, as does an unwanted information disclosure. A bluescreen on a shared server (rather than a client setup) has a negative impact proportional to the number of punters connected to the server.
The IT department's end users are NOT made more productive by putting stuff in the kernel that don't belong in the kernel. Put it back where it belongs.
L33t gamerz should have been allowed (nay, forced) to stick with the real-mode-oriented world of Windows 98, IF they truly wanted ultimate gaming speed. Or they could move their games to a proper games machine.