Advent speakers were built in an era when society valued well-built products that lasted a long time. Then Moore's law made it cheap to add software to every pr

Advent speakers were built in an era when society valued well-built products that lasted a long time. Then Moore's law made it cheap to add software to every product. This was seen as good because it meant you could customize, upgrade, and differentiate products simply by changing software. Where things went off the rails was when MBA types realized that software (together with the Internet) could also be used to force the customer to accept a rental model rather than a purchase model for hardware, thus extracting a recurring revenue stream from him/her. The solution is of course for customers to fight back against this bullshit. But that requires competitors who don't play this game, and that requires VCs who will tolerate a healthy, slowly-growing business rather than one that grows exponentially and flames out. I hope we can return to that world someday.