The Next Five-Year Plan

It is the early hours of November 1st and the latest WU has disabled the USB 3.0 ports on the back of my computer, but the slower Front USB ports will still work. Oh brave new world, and so I have removed the Win7 machines from the Internet and ordered a copy of Win7Pro 32/64 OEM. I have plenty of disks, and Acronis 12. I will allow this old Dell Optiplex 755 to be my presence to the mother software vendor. Win 10 Insider was free when I started in the program, and perhaps I will get to keep it. Once off the network, Win 7 OEM can be installed on all of the machines while they are set up for dual-boot with Debian Linux as the new OS for future use. There is trouble in Linux World, and a new version, "Buster", was released 6 weeks ago. You feel the cool confidence of the designers as they tangle with their unwelcome presence.
I am reminded of my divorce 27 years ago. It was painful, expensive and very ugly. Money meant nothing and the one child meant everything. There is a price for a human life in law. But Linux has no price. It is free.
OK, well then, let's dance!

FWIW, Dell has rolled over as well. My particular box is the stunning OptiPlex 755. It was loaded for gaming before gaming became so popular by a rich uncle of a teenage boy. It was also the 'minimally configured' Windows 10 platform I have since learned. Dell is supporting the OptiPlex line, but not this model (mysteriously absent from the 'select list'). Further, Windows 10 is configured to provide all of the -- now very limited list -- of drivers that will install. Notably missing is the Ethernet Controller driver for my secondary network plans.
Clearly, the muscle is being applied from above, or below, and MS Control Central, and with new zeal and enthusiasm. It seems to be a kind of 'cyber cleansing' of the older machines. Fortunately, Linux is booming in response. You can get the complete Debian 10 ("Stretch") build along with 53,000 programs for just the cost of the DVD's alone from Debian. I think it clocks in at around 30 or more DVD's, but you get the entire library of user-written, and free, applications. It has been my experience since NT was introduced that I could not give more than a 'B' to an MS-programmer. They refuse to use C++!! They have their own flavor of an object-oriented compilier, as I recall, something like C#.
From #-minds come inconvenient and annoying very tiny paper cuts.

"Caving in" seems to be the new world order, and it is to be expected. I am surprised it took this long, given the fact that a global 89% market share monopoly can do as it stockholders damn well please. Many will give in, and some will move on. Apple's success is do in large measure to its use of (real) UNIX as the MacOS.

TRUE FAX:
"This download, Intel® USB 3.0 Device Driver for Windows 7* for NUC6i7KYK 5.0.0.32,
will no longer be available after October, 31, 2019 and will not be supported
with any additional functional, security, or other updates."

How sweet -- planned obsolescence... at least it isn't all in my head.

The name of the game is not 'bury Win7'. Rather it is to foist panic onto the stalwart users of Win7 and FORCE THEM to shell-out the cost of buying Win10 and thus set record-breaking sales numbers in the 3rd Quarter of 2019. It is money that matters, and principles are irrelevant.
I have removed my 'best boxes' (I use desktops) from the Internet so licensing in no issue when I re-install Win7 from the OEM-DVD's they came with, and at least get fresh and full Win7 SP1 to use to transfer the data to a 'book' (3TB). Then it's LINUX for all. Now that I understand the LINUX mindset I look forward to it. Linus Thorvalds actually likes INTERRUPTS and so do I. I wrote a sweet little 4,000 line assembly language program for a biomedical monitor 20 years ago and all I/O and real-time scheduling done was using Interrupts (or, Do It Now!). I like Linus -- G.M.T.A.

In the end, and as I learned 40 years ago as a newbie to microprocessors in the 8080 days, there are "Main Programs" (that loop infinitely) and then there are "Interrupt Service Routines" (ISR's). To the user, the Main program needs to appear to be in control to keep them happy, but in fact the hardware responds to hardware-event interrupts whenever its chain is pulled externally. And so the ISR's have the truly higher authority as the MP gets clocked into a coma when something evokes an interrupt in the hardware. That puts the system programmer in charge as it should be. For insecure and narcissistic control freaks this notion is terrifying. To soothe their psyches we can "turn the interrupts off" but only after a 'hard reset' that includes enabling interrupts at boot time (Execute the instruction at hardware location 000, aka, 'the Origin'). When writing machine code, the panicky software engineer will make "Disable Interrupts" their first instruction!
No guts, no glory -- "I happen to LIKE interrupts!" (It looks like voodoo magic to the Software Manager, but so what? )