After every "update", Windows 10 bricks another piece of my existing machine. After the last update, I had to find a wifi antenna. Scarce item these days in local stores. The old one had worked flawlessly for over a year. The "update" says it is incompatible. To date, I have spent over $600 replacing components that work until some genius at MS decides they don't like that brand anymore.

Try a resume going back to 1971. I get interviews, which go well. I use *most* of the new tech (code is code is code) so have the skills they want. Then nothing. Well, not always. Sometimes I get a call back about 6 months later about the 20-something that "didn't work out" and a bit about "would you be interested in a trial period?" Basically, no. I am not interested in filling time for an organization that discarded my offer without *any* contact, after face-to-face revealed my grey hair. They have told me everything I need to know about their corporate culture.

Another problem was found years ago. The ink used on the label side actively ate away at the disk. I believe there was a lawsuit in England to do away with it there, as they saw it as intentional obsolescent technology, designed to gouge the consumer. It was designed to destroy the disk after 10 - 20 years.

As well as filling in the sheets, if you were lucky you could punch the cards, too. Before even writing code, though, you would do your program flowchart to make sure you knew where you were going. From your previous stash of cards, you would pull the appropriate JCL headers instead of having to go through that particular piece of hell. Want a printout with that? I worked for a college doing this stuff. One day, I was told to mount a new disk for a project. Going down the lines of drives, I finally found a bay that was not marked. I stopped the drive, pulled the 25 pound disk out and put the new one in. Then the system crashed. The only "free" unmarked pack was the OS. Students came by for weeks looking for their lost work. Must have been the gremlins, you know? ;-)

We called the POM the IBM Bible. And I learned to pause at ALL commas, or I might not read it correctly. An Excellent manual. And I agree, after working through the mainframes, I am often appalled at the "quality" of work I see in Windows programs.

I started on an IBM 360, doing assembler coding. Still have the IBM books I bought at the college bookstore. I was always amazed how much it felt like coming up from deep sea diving after a day of coding registers, doing multiplication via shift commands and all the other great little tricks that now seem ancient history. I still find myself comparing manuals based on how well they follow basic IBM rules: you can not self-reference a term in explaining the term, the explanation must not reference other terms that are not explained or that can not be identified as precursors to the term. It was a great machine to learn on.

Instead of just playing the numbers, why don't governments stop the manipulation entirely? You buy a stock, you hold it for 3 DAYS. The market adjusts for the sales and purchases instead of being artificially stimulated. The microsecond barons have to do some REAL work instead.

Looking forward, from the past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gattaca

Exactly right. And if you had the misfortune of being competent when your co-workers preferred to go golfing, able to be found when needed, you pretty much sealed your fate. The dependable worker bee.

For many diabetics, bread is poison.