You seem to have ideas (I approve), but it seems to me that the things that you(I?) want are hard to fix as they require controll of the full stack from end to end of the experience you are presented with. So; not gonna happen.

If you want to look at something that could have been I believe OS/400 has a command sensitive shell that knows about help, options etc that can guide you for the specific command you try to use at the moment. IBM could do that because they made all the parts involved.

Norway has switched the main stations (apart from local ones that have 4 years left) and it is the most idiotic bureaucratic move I have ever experienced. So they might have saved a little money operating the FM transmitters, but they just junked millions and millions of perfectly working radios.
Funny thing is, people didn't rush out and buy swathes of new DAB units to replace the old ones - the radio listening has taken a nosedive and the local FM stations are having a right goldage.

How can they make their product worse and worse for each release? There used to be option for inverting/mirroring/flipping your image, but that is long gone. And the linux client implementation must be the worst thing I have seen in yonks - it is impossible to make it grok a camera that cheese is perfectly happy with.

>Microkernels work fine, they just take (up to) a 30% performance hit depending on the workload.
Yes. On your grandmothers cpu. (She has some mighty hefty cpus though.)

Which is why I am keeping an extremely keen eye on the works of Mill Computing - there should be no difference between monoliths and microliths in their architecture.
(And until Intel fixes their ghosts in the system then the performance is real close there too.)

"Back then" I could really feel the need for more processing power and all the things it would enable. Now, I'm not so sure I imagine as much "new" as I do "more" from developments.
But I did have a puzzling experience around 2000 when I was reading a number of CS papers that had roots in the Linux/open movement, and I found it was in large proportions repeating research done in the 60s/70s/80s. Not being aware of what has gone before was not what I expected of the CS community. I'm sure that research was exciting, just as it was the first time around. Are we still doing this?

My internet connection has now crept up into the 250MBit/s range and I'm beginning to wonder if I wouldn't be willing to spend some of it on downloading ads: Mind you, I didn't say watching them.

So is there any way for a web server to know if I'm looking at an ad or if the space it is supposed to occupy is empty?
I'm looking for a variation of an ad blocker that will tell the browser whether it should show a frame/image/whatnot after it has been downloaded or just leave the space for it as empty. Anyone?

1. I'd like to see a well usable SASOS+Micro-kernel combo. Think grand-son of AmigaOS.
2. I want a versioning filesystem. If you are about to press "reply" to say something about something practically-just-about-as-good-as then you are missing the point. Sorry.
3. I want linux distros to actually test the "upgrade" option. Good thing none of those devs have been in arms reach or I'd be behind bars for strangling them so hard my fingers would lock in place.
4. I want old PC standards to go up in flames and die in a horrible fire. Primary and secondary disk partitions - W.T.F.? Bootloaders: Nope, still not making sense and user-unfriendly written all over.
5. Sensible Linux audio.
6. Faster progress from the Mill Computing camp. Would mix well with 1.
7. I'd like to hear some more about the progress on memristors.
8. Why are there no ICs not based on silicon but instead using more exotic materials? Are there really no-one willing to pay the premium for the premium performance?
9. In short: Excitement is missing. Everything is streamlined and uniform and conformant. My local newsagent has a total of 5 different games and computing magazines. I am sure there used to be 20-30 back in the day when computing was exciting and heading in all directions at once.

So I finally went through a major hoopla to upgrade my system so I could run a more recent version of Skype (so mom could keep calling me and get her remote support).
There was absolutely no reason to update (ok, a system update is never wrong) as the old version of Skype worked just _fine_ (well, after a lot of tweaking) and the only reason it stopped working was M$ throwing all the toys out of the pram and refusing to let the old version keep running.

The new Skype wont take my camera (Cheese likes it plenty fine) and the incoming sound is so scratchy and choppy that I have major trouble understanding peoples' speech.
First up against the wall etc...

So long as no-one is in control of the whole desktop stack you can't get a coherent experience and direction. Apple controls the whole stack they use. OSS runs around like headless chickens in all directions - it sorely lacks a Linus who can jump up and shout "eff you" when someone gets too creative.
Take something like the Datatypes from AmigaOS (assuming a more modern and updated take on what they can do): Who would institute this framework and enforce it upon all and sundry desktops around the globe? Where does it enter the software stack - at the X level or further up like KDE/Gnome or even further out (possibly like a server in X style)?

Commodore should really have been "too big to fall/fail". (Seriously, do you know how far up the list of tech companies they were?) Being treated like a private playground probably did not help one iota and aborted any rescue operations.
I hope it was a wake-up call to other big corporations that Moore's Law will bury you if you don't respect it.

I have been waiting for this to happen, but I expected it later and then in some kind of rotational motor (not Wankel) where knock doesn't really exist and you can boost compression until self ignition.

IBM burglar killers? Bah.
Give me the HP PA-RISC Workstation (50/99MHz) keyboard any day. Took a bit of getting used to, but suddenly all others felt wrong. (I've seen similar later, but they had hard plastic keys and not the soft rubber ones of the original.)

(Anyone know some place that sells them?)

I totally agree on proper spelling and sentence construction, but that "Professor" or "Sir" thing wouldn't last for 5 minutes over here in Norway.
Titles and formalism means jack all over here, and we have the flattest organisational structures around. You don't think twice about talking to the boss, and it isn't unheard of by the ground floor do-ers to sabotage decisions in larger organisations if they are considered bad.

Answer: No.

And (IMNSHO) we can blame M$ and the PC for that; where is the diversity in computing today? Back in the day you had all kinds of hw options but now you have x86 and perhaps a bit of ARM (on something you don't put on your desktop).
I rooted for the PS2 with its oddball hw, I rooted for the PS3 with its oddball hw, and then the PS4 ...does nothing for me.
(But hey! I am keenly watching Mill Computing...)

I could see that. Myself, I have a correlation between a few (but not most) sugarfree soft-drinks and getting a headache.
So I simply have stopped drinking those. One does wonder about the others though...