R
Roger Stone
Dear Mr Gates,
Microsoft is losing its way and becoming even more of a bloated
mega-corporation whose main aim is self-preservation. In consequence
progress is slowing, and like a whale moving ever more slowly through the
water it gradually becomes vulnerable to internal and external parasites
which will devour it.
Please use your money and your experience to save the world from domination
by the dead hand of the decaying monster you have created. What we need is a
new computing structure which:
• is not Office, but is the settings and user files of the User. Thus, when
I log on to a computer, anywhere, my identity, settings and preferences are
picked up, with a library of my files. Using the Microsoft software resident
on the workstation, it behaves the way I am used to working, it has access to
my Outlook personal file, and it can find the other files I need when I need
them. Perhaps it remotes into my virtual computer?
• does not, as it ages, take longer and longer to boot up and to run. I
realise this may well be a consequence of the need for hardware sales and
software updating to feed off each other; but it’s a pain in the arse. The
redundant bloatware which clogs the e-arteries needs to be rigorously cleaned
away. A modern computer goes from youthful vigour to hardened-artery
constipated senility in only three to five years; this is absurd. The
personal computer should be as long-lived as the User. It is a bundle of
settings and preferences, not hardware or programs.
• can draw on the resources of the workstation, and if these are limited –
like if the User is operating from an i-phone or some ancient machine with
slow dial-up connection – will adjust what it can do and EXPLAIN this to the
user. “Sorry, boss, I can’t download that over this connection. I could
call up the text only, if you like.†It will do this immediately, not after
a thirty-second wait whilst something times-out.
• is going to be able to adapt to new user interfaces. Soon, we shall be
using subtitles on spectacles or contact lenses, an ear-stud to receive
sound, an eyebrow-mounted camera to enhance vision, and implanted cellphone
and memory running off the body’s own electricity; we shall talk to the
inboard computer by making shapes with our mouth, throat and tongue muscles
which will be picked up by implanted sensors. Or something like that. The
“operating system†which can best ride with the change to that bio-technology
will be the one that survives.
• The key point is that it’s a LEAN operating interface, cut-down and clean
and efficient, that’s needed; NOT some increasingly beautiful slick graphical
interface which takes ten minutes to load. Simpler, quicker, more stable. A
thin front-end which can open up the more complex files, processes and such
like on demand. And it will have to be very robust: if the stuff works,
people are going to depend upon it in their day-to-day lives even more, and
it will generate great insecurity and frustration if it goes down at all
often. It’s one thing to have temporarily lost access to some crucial data
because the network’s gone down; it’s quite another to find that you are lost
in a strange city because Google Earth has disappeared from your vision, you
don’t know who you’re talking to because the subtitles have disappeared, and
you have the nagging feeling that if you mouthed “One-one-two, personal
assault,†that no-one would respond, or even record what you are seeing as
evidence.
I suggest that this is done by launching a new software house, drawing on
the existing Microsoft as infrastructure to piggyback, but equally ready to
work with any other programs that come along.
Devise a program that, by a macro, sets up whatever software you open, to
use your own preferences, with its own secure access to your files. It acts
as an intermediary between you and the software; a butler who will open the
door and who has already ensured everything inside is in order, laid out the
way you like it. It knows when you need full explanations, but when you are
in a hurry it is ready, and does not indulge in chatter. It is probably
called George. (It will eventually grow into a symbiotic computer half of
our brain that will be part of all our thinking and remembering, and the User
will be hardly aware of what is coming from his own memory, and what from the
machine; neo-hippies will grumble that mankind is being taken over by
computers, and conspiracy theorists will suggest that the early designers
(principally you) have implanted buried commands which will one day overthrow
civilisation, or cause us to vote communist.)
Only you can do this. If anyone else attempts it, Microsoft or Google will
either out-manoeuvre them, or buy them and incorporate them. If YOU do it,
as a new software initiative prepared to work hand in hand with Microsoft,
they will float, smiling, and nod and agree. (What choice do they have?)
In the unlikely event that this proposal is given any serious consideration,
or even less likely that you are interested in any further elaboration of the
ideas, please feel free to get in touch; I should be delighted to do whatever
I can.
Roger Stone
----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...2e71e174f5fa&dg=microsoft.public.office.setup
Microsoft is losing its way and becoming even more of a bloated
mega-corporation whose main aim is self-preservation. In consequence
progress is slowing, and like a whale moving ever more slowly through the
water it gradually becomes vulnerable to internal and external parasites
which will devour it.
Please use your money and your experience to save the world from domination
by the dead hand of the decaying monster you have created. What we need is a
new computing structure which:
• is not Office, but is the settings and user files of the User. Thus, when
I log on to a computer, anywhere, my identity, settings and preferences are
picked up, with a library of my files. Using the Microsoft software resident
on the workstation, it behaves the way I am used to working, it has access to
my Outlook personal file, and it can find the other files I need when I need
them. Perhaps it remotes into my virtual computer?
• does not, as it ages, take longer and longer to boot up and to run. I
realise this may well be a consequence of the need for hardware sales and
software updating to feed off each other; but it’s a pain in the arse. The
redundant bloatware which clogs the e-arteries needs to be rigorously cleaned
away. A modern computer goes from youthful vigour to hardened-artery
constipated senility in only three to five years; this is absurd. The
personal computer should be as long-lived as the User. It is a bundle of
settings and preferences, not hardware or programs.
• can draw on the resources of the workstation, and if these are limited –
like if the User is operating from an i-phone or some ancient machine with
slow dial-up connection – will adjust what it can do and EXPLAIN this to the
user. “Sorry, boss, I can’t download that over this connection. I could
call up the text only, if you like.†It will do this immediately, not after
a thirty-second wait whilst something times-out.
• is going to be able to adapt to new user interfaces. Soon, we shall be
using subtitles on spectacles or contact lenses, an ear-stud to receive
sound, an eyebrow-mounted camera to enhance vision, and implanted cellphone
and memory running off the body’s own electricity; we shall talk to the
inboard computer by making shapes with our mouth, throat and tongue muscles
which will be picked up by implanted sensors. Or something like that. The
“operating system†which can best ride with the change to that bio-technology
will be the one that survives.
• The key point is that it’s a LEAN operating interface, cut-down and clean
and efficient, that’s needed; NOT some increasingly beautiful slick graphical
interface which takes ten minutes to load. Simpler, quicker, more stable. A
thin front-end which can open up the more complex files, processes and such
like on demand. And it will have to be very robust: if the stuff works,
people are going to depend upon it in their day-to-day lives even more, and
it will generate great insecurity and frustration if it goes down at all
often. It’s one thing to have temporarily lost access to some crucial data
because the network’s gone down; it’s quite another to find that you are lost
in a strange city because Google Earth has disappeared from your vision, you
don’t know who you’re talking to because the subtitles have disappeared, and
you have the nagging feeling that if you mouthed “One-one-two, personal
assault,†that no-one would respond, or even record what you are seeing as
evidence.
I suggest that this is done by launching a new software house, drawing on
the existing Microsoft as infrastructure to piggyback, but equally ready to
work with any other programs that come along.
Devise a program that, by a macro, sets up whatever software you open, to
use your own preferences, with its own secure access to your files. It acts
as an intermediary between you and the software; a butler who will open the
door and who has already ensured everything inside is in order, laid out the
way you like it. It knows when you need full explanations, but when you are
in a hurry it is ready, and does not indulge in chatter. It is probably
called George. (It will eventually grow into a symbiotic computer half of
our brain that will be part of all our thinking and remembering, and the User
will be hardly aware of what is coming from his own memory, and what from the
machine; neo-hippies will grumble that mankind is being taken over by
computers, and conspiracy theorists will suggest that the early designers
(principally you) have implanted buried commands which will one day overthrow
civilisation, or cause us to vote communist.)
Only you can do this. If anyone else attempts it, Microsoft or Google will
either out-manoeuvre them, or buy them and incorporate them. If YOU do it,
as a new software initiative prepared to work hand in hand with Microsoft,
they will float, smiling, and nod and agree. (What choice do they have?)
In the unlikely event that this proposal is given any serious consideration,
or even less likely that you are interested in any further elaboration of the
ideas, please feel free to get in touch; I should be delighted to do whatever
I can.
Roger Stone
----------------
This post is a suggestion for Microsoft, and Microsoft responds to the
suggestions with the most votes. To vote for this suggestion, click the "I
Agree" button in the message pane. If you do not see the button, follow this
link to open the suggestion in the Microsoft Web-based Newsreader and then
click "I Agree" in the message pane.
http://www.microsoft.com/office/com...2e71e174f5fa&dg=microsoft.public.office.setup