Missing Feature: Alpha Blending

I remember sometime in the late 1990s being introduced to a feature of winamp I had never seen before: alpha blending in the visualizer. Those low-res psychedelic visuals could be stretched over all my other windows, without interrupting their use. Since then I've only seen the effect used one other time (in an IRC client).
Computers and graphics cards are much more powerful now, why aren't all programs making use of alpha blending? Sure you may notice that your drop down menus are semi-transparent.... but that's hardly useful. I pulled up a youtube video today on my laptop, and wished I could watch it while using another program full-screen. The perfect answer would be to view the video over my other applications, but have the focus stay on my other app. How sweet could it be to have full screen video over your text editor?
Verdict: 100% possible today. Why don't we have this?

Where are the flying cars?

When is the future going to get here? We're so tired of waiting, we had to start a blog. This blog is for future technologies not yet realized, features still missing from the machines around us, and the attempts being made to bring the future now. We hope you enjoy, and we hope you'll participate with your comments, post ideas, and hours spent staring at these pages. To the future!