I found out today (thanks, Iain) about the fact that in June of this year, an important and hidden chunk of some Windows security internals is going to expire, and if I don't take measures before then, one of my computers is going to be bricked.

I was all prepared to start on my traditional rant about how software always progresses in the wrong direction, how every new version of a program or operating system is worse than the previous one and in some cases this syndrome has gotten so bad that I simply refuse to update.

However, this is not that rant. (And I don't have the energy for it tonight anyway. Some other time.) It occurred to me, on contemplation, that this is not actually a case of Windows making something worse. (For once!) The system they put in over a decade ago, the one that's going to have a fatal expiration in June, was put in for good reason. They could maybe have been a little more transparent about this time limit they baked into it, but, you know, that's a minor quibble, especially since it's been running without needing any care or feeding for over a decade.

I think mostly I'm annoyed because, as ever, I want software to work forever without needing any updates or replacements. This is not some unreasonable, pie-in-the-sky idea! Not with software. Software doesn't wear out. It's not like a car or a pair of shoes. Yes, there are some parts of a computer with a finite lifespan, but the code is not one of them. Code can live forever as long as you can find hardware to run it on.

What we see in the upgrade cycles of most software, apps and OSes alike, is not any kind of need to upgrade (except for the occasional security patch or other vulnerability). What we're seeing is a want to upgrade -- either on your part, because there's shiny new tech and features out there you want to be able to use, or (more often) on the software vendor's part, as they figure out over and over what they can cram into the software to make it seem different enough from the previous versions that they can get you to buy it over again.

I really despise planned obsolescence. Always have, since I first learned it was a thing (which was probably around age eight, from a Mad magazine piece). I like to get decades of use out of my tools -- and I could, for the most part, if it weren't for sheer greed.

And, of course, that effort to constantly cram Something New into the tool, if the tool had already achieved a reasonably good standard of functionality in the first place, means that the tool becomes worse. We don't do this with physical tools. No one adds an extra head to a hammer, making the hammer less useful, because they want to be able to sell you a second hammer.

But now we come dangerously close to the rant I said I didn't have the energy to write, so let's leave it at that.