Watching Vista and .NET 3.0 from Afar

Microsoft appears to be very proud of "glass", the ability to create transparent and translucent forms. A preview is already available in current Windows for the developer who can create forms with Opacity (translucency) from 0 to unity (100%) but Opacity applied to the entire form, meaning you could not get a transparent form with opaque lettering, which seems to be promised by Vista "glass".

However, Glass seems to me to be very Web 1.0 in the sense that high-quality modern blogsites have a simplified, two-dimensional, pastel look which doesn't pretend, as do older Web pages, that a three-dimensional look is more "real".

The fact is one is looking at a painting of reality, and in the same way the Impressionists foregrounded the assertion, "this is a painting, dumb head, of reality" as opposed to maintaining the "realistic" myth that one is looking through "glass" to see a Bouguereau nude freezing her ass on the French coast, Web 2.0 designers focus our attention on content and not "cool" form.

Would that Microsoft understand that Windows is now mature technology and that now is the time to stabilize it, not add "cool" new features.

Alternatively, make a form on the screen Inherit a far more general paradigm: why does a Form have to be a rectangle? Could it not be a circle, or given the power of today's processors, an amoebic shape described by its inflection points or a fully general set of points?

And why does a Form have to be a two-dimensional Object? Could it not be a point of zero dimensions, a line of one, a plane as it is today, a three dimensional virtual object (such as a circuit or virtual building explorable from all angles yet untethered to the plane) or in general a hyperthing?

It may seem I am suggesting something "too" complex, but the real complexity lies in tethering new software objects to outdated paradigms.

The most general question is, what is it we do on a computer screen. The answer is we visualize possible and impossible worlds, and perhaps the Window paradigm limits our imagination. Perhaps there should only be one Window, not many, and perhaps in this Window objects, of n dimensions, could disport themselves.

Or perhaps I've just invented Microsoft "Bob", a miserable "intelligent assistant" of the 1990s. Oops.

We can only, with commonly available technology, point, and its hard to point in depth.

But I do think that circa 1985, some Subgenius at Microsoft settled on the very idea of floating rectangles in phony space as The Paradigm and that this has locked our thinking ever since.

"Thinking outside the box" isn't the answer if we get Microsoft Bob. Whereas a deliberate simplification, such as the deliberate restriction of contemporary blogs to a two dimensional look, or the "three primary colors and right angles" of the 20th century Dutch artist Piet Mondrian can, like structured programming, give us surprising power by way of humility.

Reverend Nilges said:

Would that Microsoft understand that Windows is now mature technology and that now is the time to stabilize it, not add "cool" new features.

Personally I think Microsoft came to this realization a long time ago which lead to Windows 2000 and more recently Windows XP SP2. Quite frankly, I have never had an XP box of any variety blue-screen on me for an unknown reason. The one time it DID happen was when I was trying to install a souped-up video card that came with bad drivers on the CD.

The question for me right now is, "Why do I want to upgrade to a new O/S that is clearly a new foray into the bells and whistles arena when I, as a power user, value stability more than sizzle?" Honestly, Windows XP does everything I need it to do right now and nothing that I've seen from Vista grabs me. It's all just...pretty.

As for .NET 3.0, I haven't really looked at it yet. I'm up to my eyeballs in .NET 2.0 stuff right now and probably will be until well after Vista has shipped. I've never been one to ride the bleeding edge unless there was a clear, definite reason to do so. Some might argue that the new WinFX suite is a clear, definite reason but I think all of that functionality is Microsoft championing architecture that's still a couple years away from being widely adopted. It'll be fun to read the posts from those folks who are early adopters and see how all this shakes out.

...year after year, it acquires more and more of a hairball of features which load the Registry and file space with useless information, and because within software development it is an adage, that great programmers can't design GUIs (which true gods can), startup and shutdown both cause me to tear my hair, for there is no indication what the hell is going on, and no indication when startup is done.

Microsoft may have mastered multiprogramming, but owing to the fact that it appears to assign inferior coders to GUIs, no awareness is evident that the power user is ALSO multitasking, and needs to know why she can't switch into an application.

And if I see one more progress report that displays zero progress for minutes and hours I am going to have a conniption fit.

No responsibility is taken at edges and interfaces for the same socioeconomic reason that the rubber tyre industry was never integrated with the auto industry (with the result of the Ford Explorer crashes of the 1990s, and the lack, until recent high end models, of dashboard indications of tyre pressure, balance, and quality).

OK, I know that the hard disk has to be connected to the mother board. But "operating system not found" doesn't mean this.

My understanding of blue screen of death is that it can result from a low level breakage in the interface between HD and MB, wherein low level chains and links are simply not there. It still happens in the experience of ordinary users, who then have to drag ass to East Hell Mall to get the "extended warranty" they paid big bucks for under pressure at the store in West Yup.

Wherein lawyers, doctors, college professors and compiler developers are lectured by pimply community college dropouts on why the problem is their fault...when the latter cannot, in my experience, properly remove the lid from a desktop, having not been trained in such lowly tasks at East Jesus Tech, expecting instead to enter the middle class.

In other words, the computer industry has become the auto industry, dominated by a false, macho expertise and poor workmanship.

I mean...give me a break. We learned from Steve Jobs in 2004 that we cannot find stuff on our hard disk, because we have Google, written by honest men and women for the Internet, whereas on XP we have that stupid little animated dog WHICH DOESN'T FIND ANYTHING IN REASONABLE TIME.

Google has solved a problem that should have been solved in 1988, by Microsoft!

The XP user is infantilzed by media: she's not supposed to learn that her file space is a tree, which could be searched by a tool, with integrated GUI, that clarified the fact that you're recursing a tree.

One of the best-selling computer books' title is "Don't Make Me Think!". Where is my father's idea that you treat devices with respect, and invest some time in learning how to keep them in top shape?

Trivial things, like folding a map in the car properly!

My father was too respectful of things, and I am not respectful enough.