I hear ya, that's about the time I was coming up too. While your colorful vernacular isn't exactly how I might have put it, I think that it illustrates the frus

I hear ya, that's about the time I was coming up too. While your colorful vernacular isn't exactly how I might have put it, I think that it illustrates the frustration felt by many, ever since the beginning of personal computing. I also wish that HyperCard had been a bigger influence on the early web. It was written in human terms for techno-novices trying to get real work done. As HyperTalk evolved into AppleScript, it lost its original elegance and is now just another cryptic toy language that is difficult or impossible to write without a manual. IMHO to fix all of this, we need to bring back ideas like research budgets of perhaps 5-25% and every company over say 50 employees or $5 million/yr gross having some form of 20% time for in-house projects. That can't happen as long as everyone is competing with each other just to survive though. And not when the leading internet companies plow most profits into share price and dividends instead of free and open source community tools. I wish we had more stories of individuals and groups that made enough money to retire, but instead of just reinvesting into the status quo, went on to fund real innovation through philanthropy or alternative business structures like co ops.