Microsoft.
NET is
Microsoft's stunning new technology. Note the
.NET. That's
Microsoft Innovation at work, it is.
What is it, you ask? Microsoft.NET is, basically, pay-per-view software. You suck whatever it is you want to use (MSN, Visual Studio, or Microsoft Office, for instance) straight off a microsoft server. You can also connect to a local server, if you're into that sort of thing. Bet that costs extra, eh? Neh. (or, as my dad puts it, "Only pennies a day!")
To do all the advanced GUI goodness, it uses proprietary standards, because HTML isn't too great at GUIs. Sure, HTML is ok, but it just can't handle Microsoft GUIs, which are not sparse. Of course, I bet that it just so happens that IE is the only product which will support this.
Even if it doesn't, it doesn't matter, because of what microsoft.NET means for Microsoft.
You see, microsoft.NET frees Microsoft from their Operating System Division. This has tremendous consequences for, say, the DOJ, because it means that the success of the Microsoft Applications Corporation will be independent of the Operating System Division. In other words, the microsoft division is moot, because Microsoft is becoming OS-independent (for the client-side stuff).
This is what the Halloween Documents were referring to. This is a huge step in making protocols proprietary, and preventing just anyone from writing clients. Y'see, with microsoft.NET, they are taking open protocols and wrapping them so that they are part of a closed protocol.