there is always a way :P
seems to me that a little program that runs at boot could disable the "feature"
as for using in/out in user-mode programs, i am not sure i agree
back in the days of DOS, i used to write programs that used in/out and set interrupt vectors all the time
i can understand the need for chaining vectors, of course
the question here is security, i suppose
but, i don't see a lot of attacks coming from the serial or parallel ports - lol
as a hardware engineer, i would often like access to these ports
so - i guess i have a "non-standard" view of the issue
