= Where Is the Future? =
Now that we are 1/52 into the year 2006, it seems like a good time to vent about some things.

== GUI Widgets ==
I am writing this in a <textarea> in Mozilla Firefox.  It is virtually indistinguishable from a multi-line text-editing widget in Windows 3.1.  I do not have any choice in this matter.  The best alternative I can find is [http://mozex.mozdev.org/ mozex], which loads some text into my favorite text editor, lets me edit it, and then dumps it back in Firefox when I am finished.  That is hardly elegant, when I can accomplish the same thing with about as much effort by copying and pasting.

Why can't I embed [http://www.vim.org/ vim] in Firefox?  Why can I not replace every multi-line plain text-editing widget on my system with instances of my favorite text editor?  I know KDE explored this idea, but it's not working for me right now, and I've certainly never seen it done anywhere else.

== GUI Toolkits ==
[http://www.gtk.org/ Why] [http://www.trolltech.com/ must] [http://www.fltk.org/ every] [http://www.wxwindows.org/ GUI] toolkit [http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/vcmfc98/html/mfchm.asp suck]?  Before you argue that your favorite GUI toolkit does not suck, realize that some of the following are true:
 * It can't do something that every other GUI toolkit can do.
 * The rapid development GUI editor sucks.
 * Creating GUIs manually in code is cumbersome.
 * They just released a new version, because the previous version sucks.
 * They are currently working on a new version, because the current version sucks.
 * It is competing with other GUI toolkits that suck.  If it didn't suck, it would clearly be superior.
 * It doesn't work everywhere.

== Computer Mediated Communication ==
I suspect that right now a whole lot of people are chatting with other people using [http://www.aim.com/ AOL's stock chat client].  I suspect they are looking at advertisements that they don't want to see, and on average, their names probably contain almost as many digits as letters, and not by choice.  Meanwhile, I am connected to several IRC servers, IRC being a protocol which is quickly approaching its 20th birthday.  Few will argue that [http://rfc.net/rfc1459.txt IRC] is a good protocol, but it is curiously pervasive.

What is wrong here...
 * I can't send a message, using AIM, to someone is isn't currently online.
 * Staying on AIM all of the time to be able to receive messages like an answering machine is problematic, at best.
 * I can't connect from multiple places, or if I can, I can't reliably get all of my messages.
 * I can't talk to people on some other service.
 * On occasion, service is unavailable with no explanation.

== !WikiWiki ==
It has been great to see [http://en.wikipedia.org/ wikis] gain public attention this year, but why should they stop there?  I want to see data in more structured formats being edited in the style of wikis.  Rather than specifying high-level presentation details as well as content in flat text files, can't we have a better system where data exists in terms of lists, tables, name/value pairs, graphs, or whatever is desired, accompanied by a friendly GUI to edit this new structure of information?  I also want to be able to access a wiki as a local filesystem and make my changes as though I were working on a local text file.  [http://search.cpan.org/~markj/WWW-Mediawiki-Client/bin/mvs MVS] is the idea, but there has to be a better way to do this.

== Another Thing ==
Vendors: fix your crappy web sites!

I should '''not''' be able to go to [http://www.asus.com/ some vendor's web site], navigate a maze of pages to find a product in the ''Products'' section, and then have to start over and find it again in the ''Downloads'' or ''Service'' section to get a file I need.  Welcome to the World Wide Web.  Use those wads of cash I have given you to invest in some [http://www.webcom.com/html/tutor/hotlink.shtml hyperlinks].

== Conclusion ==
Some of these ideas are pretty bad.  I don't care.  Science fiction had us inhabiting other planets by now.  I don't think it's too much to ask to make some better software.

== Also... ==
What's the deal with airplane peanuts?  And where are hovercars?  I want hovercars!