why bother?

[tedmich]

A surprising trend in the semiconductor industry is that none of the engineers coming out of school these days has a clue how to make the old parts. If a company needs to keep the old parts in production, they have to find retired engineers willing to go back to work. Most of the old parts are made on old equipment in facilities that aren't clean enough for the new MOS processes. As these engineers die off, old parts will go out of production. The old Plessey analog parts were a cash cow because of replacements needed for the Military. Production had to be shut down because they couldn't find the people that knew how to make them.

I was (also) disappointed while watching the Matrix movies that their silly EMP weapon didn't just drive the evolution of all tube Sentinels...