This is not a true Perl story, but I do remember learning how IBM's many service-tapes were best used as scratch tapes. They called us up in a panic, having just delivered a service tape (apparently, to all their customers) that would render a mainframe un-bootable.
Fortunately, I had not installed it, and never planned to. “Computer software like fine wine ... let it age.” Knowing that their service-tapes were cumulative, I actually applied them about once a quarter, and used tapes that were at least a month old (after reviewing all of the issues-lists for the tapes that had arrived subsequently). The rest went into a (big...) box.
