I understand and agree with the driver signing requirement.  Currently, you can boot with it disabled from the F8 menu, should you have reason to do so.  What is so frustrating is that you can't enable that option permanently.  I don't need to be lectured on the evils of poor, unsigned drivers, but if I want to load them anyway, I should have the ability to do that without having to F8 my system every time it boots.

The number of people who even understand the issue is small, and the number of people who would forcefully disable the driver signing is even smaller, but it SHOULD be an option for people who want to do it.  It's extremely frustrating for those of us who, knowing the risks -- for whatever reason -- want to load an unsigned driver.

This is also not an oversight.  At some point in the betas, you could use bcdedit and disable the checking.  This is reasonable, and makes sense.  You should be able to do that from a technical standpoint.  However sometime before RTM, they specifically disabled the ability to disable driver signing permanently with bcdedit.

The real question is, why?  I think it was either a money-grab for the cert authorities, or a way to force more control over the environment, to the end of trying to impede the efforts of homebrew drivers and hackers -- groups of people that historically don't pour a lot of money into Microsoft's pockets.