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Linux 2.4 Wins 4th Place ... in Vaporware
An anonymous reader says: "Linux kernel 2.4 got itself at the 4th position in
Wired Vaporware 2000 contest!
The top prize goes to ... (check the link out for yrself ;)"
I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days uptime, but what do I know? I guess a "product" without a release date just isn't something comprehensible.
Perhaps the software industry could learn something from Hollywood... and maybe that's one of the good things that will come out of media mergers.
I've been amazed at the accuracy of release dates for movies, usually accompanied by accurate releases of a slew of other products, web sites, games, etc.
And yes, we know about Episode II many years in advance. It's a complex product using the latest technologies and likely a very unusual distribution system. However, we all also know the exact release date, and I'll bet it will be out that same day.
I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days uptime, but what do I know?
Case and point.
I've had a MacOS X devel. preview up for longer than 30 days, but that doesn't mean OS X is out and about. Why don't you take your mad linux bigotry to somewhere it belongs, like slashd- oh, nevermind.
I guess the next time Taco bashes MS for delaying a product launch, we should just point him to the beta versions then..
All those corporations are already supported by their existing product lines and have money to burn on experimenting. There are no viable companies whose business relies solely on open source software.
Existing ext2 users, i.e., The Ignorant Masses Who Use 2.2 Kernels And Would Like To Get A Smooth Upgrade? =)
I had some ext2 corruption things (recoverable, fortunately), but they said test12 would fix 'em. I think I'll just get 2.2 and wait until they ship "stable" 2.4 - apart of the slight ext2 problems, it seemed to work more or less fine...
I have nothing to prove to you. And I trust that it makes no difference even if I tell you that I am in fact not lying. Do you know why ? Because I don't need to. But who am I telling, right ;)
:)
I have one proof for you, that absolutely guarantees that the uptime posted previously is authentic: What kind of friggin' idiot would be running -test4, on december 28th, if it wasn't for keeping an uptime to brag about ??
See ?
I'm sure that when you check when -test4 was released, you will see that it is not too far from being 127 days away.
Don't get me started on Daikatana.
:p )
Hey, I wish it had been delayed even _longer_.. (actually, I only borrowed it to see how awful it was..
Your Working Boy,
I am glad that I am running junkbuster... there were a crapload (80% of page real estate) of adds on those pages.
donfede
To address the Linux kernel specifically, it was said to be released in December....
Oh my god! It's still December!
--- http://foo.ca
Vaporware is (or at least, was) something that has been promised, but for which absolutely *no* evidence of its existence has surfaced. For example, when a company says "we're developing the WhizBang 2000!" but there are no beta releases or even screenshots. Both MOSX and Linux 2.4 have prerelease versions out. And Windows 2000 had beta releases last year, so it couldn't be called vaporware either. I guess Wired has a different definition of vaporware than everyone else.
Yes. Of course, the media in general likes to redefine words to their own liking. Yet another reason they can't be trusted--you never know what they're really saying!
Definitely. Slightly off topic, I feel the same way about politicians making campaign promises. How can you promise to do something when 1) You don't know what will happen 5 seconds from now, much less 2 years from now; 2) You have to have consensus from other politicians to make decisions?
It is. Vaporware is when there is absolutely *nothing* available: no betas, no screenshots, nothing. Only promises. There is plenty of evidence for the existence of 2.4, MOSX, PS2, .NET, etc. Wired just doesn't know what "vaporware" means.
.NET is already out there.
Just out of curiosity, do you plan to sing the same tune when Perl 6 comes out? Quite possibly breaking a lot more than 10% of the existing apps? And if you think it won't, well, Larry Wall "... promises that Perl 6 will be "better, stronger, faster" and that there will be a clear, clean migration path from Perl 5 to Perl 6." Hmmm, migration path ... that means that some changes will be involved, yes?
...
Just wondering
My
Sigh. I was replying to EnderWiggnz's comment that began "there is something definitely WRONG with a company that, when they make a new compiler, they break 10% of their existing apps.".
Sorry.
My
I agree, I'd just assume wait for my copy of Tribes 2 to be fairly bug free before I get it. My mother in law pre-paid for it, so all I have to do is sit back and play Tribes 1 until 2 arrives.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
Don't tell my new one that is has been recalled. It's perking along just fine and hasn't been rebooted since I got it (except for OS updates).
Jason
"FORMAT C:" - Kills bugs dead!
Wired already put forth the rules they used. Someone else's definition of the term vaporware is irrelevant. BTW, BY December indicates before the outset of as far as Wired is concerned. The fact that the strict definition of "by" indicates "before the end of", was never the percieved/expected meaning. If 2.4 was supposed to be ready before the end of December, the words "by New Year's" would have been said.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
People who don't know how to spell or use their/there/the're or too/to in a sentence.
All that is required here is for them to pretend they don't know what vaporware means.
YOU know wired is just using the word 'Linux' because they know it get plenty of links-to and clicks. Goddamn promotioinal stunt.
signal, noise, to me it's all the same.
Exactly. It's not like what is up and running is the official, stable 2.4. It's something else that's prerelease. We might as well say Mac OS X is here because betas are available.
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
man, do I enjoy having the ease of MacOS and a shell in the same OS. It's gotten to the point that Linux is someting I run on my handmedown frankenputers for packet filtering and File serving, and MacOS X is the workstation OS that fits within that landsacape like chocolate and peanut butter.
I guess this is what this is all about. GPL'd OS for the mission critical stuff, and OS X built on unix for the users. I've been living like this for a few months, and man is it ever so sweet. I really dig the ability to use MacOS for most tasks....it's FUN...In my 20+ Years of using computers..this is the first time I've "whistled while I work" while at the same time being able to co-opt the OS with the shell when I've had to get something done NOW despite what the GUI offers me.
I've been using linux for years, but for day to day getting things done with a unix....it's slim pickins on the "average joe getting things done" compared to OS X.
In any case...the proportion of informed people who choose a unix instead of windows is directly proportional to the national security of the nation where it occurs.
MOOF!!!!!
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Yeah, the article is completely off base. What they fail to take into account when they decide what's vaporware and what's not is that project managers are not dionne warwicks psychic friends, and they can't possibly foresee every pitfall a project will encounter when they make their shipping estimates. Just because a project slips doesn't mean it's vapor. In my opinion, a thrashing project becomes vapor when the developers give up on it.
I use OS X PB at work for my primary operating system. The only glaring problem I see is that appleshare has some serious issues, but since scp is available from the shell, it's not that big of a deal....actually, it forces me to operate more securely. The OS is a far cry from vapor.
If you want vapor, try a new shipping core from intel that doesn't suck entirely. C'mon...their workhorse PC core is still the P6, released in '94 I believe. They've been promising a nifty replacement since then, and have failed to do anything that impresses users. In fact, it has let AMD whoop some serious ass. OS X was started in '97 as rhapsody/openstep. For an OS project that has changed direction, kernels and goals many times in ~4 years and achieved this much progress, I would have to say it's the furthest thing save a shipping product from vapor.
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
I think the best illustration of this thread shows that a lot of people can just be plain stupid regardless of what operating system they use.
Dacels Jewelers can't be trusted.
Microsoft's Chicago, Novell's Wolf Mountain (or whatever it was called), etc.
These were announced as "products", but were actually "projects" that spawned other products from the technology created. Some other notorious vaporware never actually produced any product(s).
I agree with others that view available pre-release versions of the announced products kinda disqualifies them as Vaporware - there IS something tangible in existence (not just vapor - hence the term).
I AM, therefore I THINK!
Not being totally up on what's available regarding .NET, I'd put it in the same vaporous category as Copland -- it's out there, but the simple fact is that not enough people have it. If Apple (or Linus, for that matter) died tomorrow, we'd have MacOS X and Linux 2.4. If Microsoft went, would we have a functioning .NET in the public's hands?
.NET "privileged betware" in that MS hasn't released any betas of their .NET stuff beyond a close group of privileged beta testers.
I'd consider
However, if Apple went down the toilet without releasing OS X we wouldn't have OS X -- at best you'd have the preview release with a zillion and one bolt-ons for Darwin, as OS X isn't an open source project that someone else could take up. But then again you'd have a dead platform, so whether or not OS X's source became available for further development is kind of a moot point.
Since you aptly describe the true nature of vaporware (ie, doesn't exist anywhere outside of press releases and potentially faked screen shots), why not put OS X, .NET, Linux 2.4 in a new category?
I'd call it Betware and define it as one step up from vaporware; products that are released in a beta or otherwise mid-development state whose final release is long-promised but not (yet) delivered and whose functionality, stability or features will not be finalized until the "release" version.
Don't you mean MPAA approved? And I'm not sure where it is either.....
Greetings,
Pioneered at Oracle?!? Bleh. Forever ago, back when the technical magazine was 'Popular Electronics', a company mocked up a box with blinky lights, called it a computer, and got the cover. They then built the computer inside it. (I don't recall that computer's name, it was one of the early 'also rans' in the Altair era.)
Speaking of Altair, how about that boy Bill Gates? Bill Gates evidently called up the Altair company (MITS), told them he had a Basic for their system, offered to sell it to them, and when they accepted (or asked for him to show them, I don't recall which), he (and Paul Allen, I believe) PROCEEDED TO WRITE IT ON THE TRIP OUT THERE!
Oracle invented Vaporware? Not hardly.
Cyberfox!
it's not a rumor. Linus said December.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
Products need release dates. It really doesn't matter (from a production point of view) if you hit them or not, but you MUST have a target. I am a software developer at a software company. We set release dates internally, and sometimes we let our customers know what they are going to be. It is good for us to have a date that all development is forced to stop and serious shakedown testing can start. If we didn't have release dates we might never release any software, or worse, we might just give our customers access to the "nightly build" the equiv of free software projects asking end users to use the cvs snapshot.
A given release might not be that interesting, or have a lot of features, but at least it shipped.
You think articles like these are the _only_ pressure companies have to release unfinished software? Ha!
If you read Blizzard's web page, Warcraft 3 isn't supposed to be released until mid 2001. Wired needs to do a little more research and stop pulling things out of their ass. Not that it matters, I gave up reading them months ago.
blizzard has always said Q4 2001, which (i think) has not occured yet. what's up with that list entry?
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--Henry David Thoreau
2.4 is vaporware.
There are no 2.5 unstable kernals yet.
Different kind of vaporware.
Actually the anecdotal accounts of long up-times do help put things in a bit of perspective. (Idle boxes or lightly-loaded single-purpose boxes don't count. Even NT manages to stay up if you don't stress it.)
No. He's right. Last Novenber, or so, Linus said
he was hoping it would be out some time in December (1999). Do a little research before slinging insults.
IHMO, thos article is a kind of joke/Xmas fun. Not of these products are vaporware.
Good products may take a very long time to develop. I still prefer having to wait a long time for a good product than getting a buggy product.
This article title should have been "The thing your are wainting for and you want the most".
Anyway, I would have put duke nukem as number one. By coincidence I was checking the page today.
it's posts like this that are in extremely poor taste. As the quality of posts--and lately it seems users--decline on Slashdot, I'm beginning to give up hope on this site. It was a good idea, but I think it's size has outgrown it's usefulness. Maybe I'll see you over at kuro5hin. Then again, I hope I don't.
-brain
I hate wired magazine. always have.
-brain
i prefer sleezeball for the same reason.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
if the kernel was released in the next few days :). it's gotta be really close. another thing i found humorous. they were bitching about netscape 6 for being "a piece of shit", but if netscape 6 had taken longer to be released they would have bitched about it being vapor ware. so they have nothing good to say?
if their not happy with the state of the kernel the source is there, as is the status of the bugs. they could spend the time and energy fixing the bugs insead of complaining... but thats not fun. it's much more fun to complain about something than to spend the time and effort to fix it.
use LaTeX? want an online reference manager that
-- john
what, the "marshalling" bits?
the programming bits that are supposed to make coordinating objects and programming completely drag and drop?
you know, the thing that automagically generates some special XML so that you can use "SOAP on a ROPE"?
As another developer said at the devcon i was at, i'll trust MS to auto-generate code for me when they can make VizStudio not crash when i move the mouse.
so, tell me, what parts of .NET do you say you have installed? and what the hell is it good for?
tagline
... hi bingo
and it happens all the time with MS...
a new version of gcc, or pgi's or whomever's compiler comes out, and you expect that your existing code should compile, and run, exactly as it did before they change the version # on the compiler.
can we say "forced upgrades" and "planned obsolecence"? i knew we could.... MS makes a slight, but fundamental change in their compilers, and forces everyone to use these new features or things dont work quite correctly, and of course, you need the latest greated OS from them too, because the previous version just doesnt have those "features" that this one does. Yeh yeh, so what if they do the same thing, these are BETTER ... want proof look at the OLE process...
10% of old stuff not compiling is bad... a 10,000 line program, and 1000 lines may need to be looked at...
bad stuff...
tagline
... hi bingo
That they can't get a version of software by the release date. La de Freaking da. The digital film I can see as vaporware, as they don't seem to have even shown the product to anyone. Xtrem should be up there, since they haven't shown anyone their supposed "1200 mhz g4" that they are bragging about.
;)
I am not suprised Bungie isn't up there, but thats because they never release dates, ever (well, since marathon 2).
OS X would be considered vaporware in the same sense of win2k, since there was a public beta out this time last year, but that doesn't really count either, since both of them actually show progress and growth, that people outside of the company can attest too.
Wired is trolling slashdot for hits. Too bad my proxy doesnt load their banners
From my perspective, Bluetooth is right on schedual. In fact after today it will be a little tiny bit ahead of schedule. I am at work today because I needed a break from the holidays. The project I am currently on will be a major piece in the manufacturing infrustructure of Bluetooth. The whiners at wired have no undestanding of the development cycle of a technology like Blutooth, that requires the coordination of many players including govermental agencies. Their opinion is of no value. In fact, if they do not understand new technologies, what do they understand? Probably nothing. I'll bet the average 15 year old /. reader/poster could do a better job of writing a techy mag!
How exactly do you check uptime on Mac OSX?
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
So its not out, but lets not whine. All I've seen from Blizzard is great games. Warcraft 1 and 2 rocked. People are still playing starcraft. Just because its not out yet doesn't mean it won't rock so much when its out.
And I know it will >:)
"Torvalds says he is trying to roll out the next major Linux release, version 2.4, by this fall."
Methinks that is not a release date.
I just wonder when it was that people began to care about what Wired has to say about /anything/
I think they've got it fixed now, but last time I checked out a 2.4.0-test10 (I think) kernel, it was having EXT2 filesystem corruption problems. Thats what I call not exactly ready for prime time...
Linux 2.4.0 is *publically* available. There is a difference.
Wired is just trolling. They s/could have awarded ``most overrun schedule'' awards.
Sure, Windows is a fine OS if you are using MS' definition. Bush won the elections, if you don't count the votes. Oh, wait...
Thanks!
I can't understand that trouble, I'm just happy with the 2.2.x series, if you use it as server OS, and it is IMHO one, altough you can and I do use it as my only OS...:-).
You don't need USB, nifty 3D-acceleration, or even X, you can just sit there and watch it running and let the uptime grow...:-)
Sure, I will be happy when 2.4.0 is out for production use, maybe I wait until 2.4.2 is on the road, before switching any mission critical machines. I have no doubt, when Linus said it would be a pain for him do work with a 2.2.x kernel, that it will rock.
2.2.x definitly does, the only problems I had so far, where all related to this crap cheap PC-Hardware someone mounts in a 19" rack and sells it to you as server. If it's possible I will try VA Linux next time...I don't think any OS delivered from Redmond has ever reached the stability that a Linux test/beta versions have.
At least I have no problems waiting until Linus sais it's ready for primetime...:-)
Michael
How does one bet an Anonymous Coward?
Were you able to get it to play without playing the scenes in multiple languages twice? I tried watching enemey of the state, but everytime the credits ran or the producers added text to the scene it ran for each language on the disc. Other than that it works great. My DVD collection is once again useful.
treke
Actually, OS X for the consumer isn't out yet. OS X Server has already seen a year go by...
-k
I have a bluetooth adapter for my ThinkPad.
Rod Taylor
Even a dipshit like me can see that you are making distinctions which are irrelevant to the point.
Pot, "Contact", it's funny (to me anyway.)
Anyway, it is just a sig. It's not a big deal.
-Peter
Okay, so I should have told that guy that asked to fuck off, just so I wouldn't upset you?
How about if you fuck off instead?
-Peter
What's your sig mean?
If you are asking me, see my user page.
-Daniel
I don't speak or read Japanese, but their web interface was a nice touch...even if a little silly.
---- Sigs are bad for your health ----
Give a hand, not a hand-out.
.NET is about software running on top of another OS. A runtime. It is not a kernel nor does it have kernel level modules. why would it cause a BSOD?
It all depends on how you define vaporware. The Jargon File 4.2.3 defines it as " Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place)." I would take that to mean announcing a product but without any type of release. A beta version is still a release in my book, albiet still a work in progress--but clearly it exists and it's being worked on so it's not vapor. Mac OSX would also not be vapor in my definition, since it also clearly exists.
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
Linus says everytime someone asks when 2.4 will be out he delays the release by another 24 hours.
Yes, the above is true. I also agree with your other points regarding software engineering practices. But, there is one overriding difference for most open source: The people working on it are often not getting paid.
So, unless critics of Linux or other open-source projects are willing to contribute time or money, they have no right to tell the developers how to work.
Hell, you can buy MacOS X now, so that shouldn't be called vaporware either.
--
Free Mac Mini
This is true, but you have to remember three thing: 1) it's still beta. 2) this is only one data point. 3) 90% of his APPLICATIONS ran without a hitch, not 90% of his code or 90% of his features. For the 1 out of 10 programs, maybe it showed up with the wrong color fonts, maybe it crashed his machine -- we don't know.
Setting expectations is half of business. If you can't make accurate judgements about when you think something is going to be completed, you've pretty much failed at business -- and lots of other things. Shipping when something is complete might make for a better product, but it makes for a poor business.
When a project is going to be late, the company needs to make a judgement call on what blend of timeliness and feature completion they will go with. It differs in every situation. Since Linux isn't a company-funded project, it tends to go with feature complete. Most businesses lean toward timeliness while letting the shipping date slip a bit, especially when there are competitors and customers to worry about.
I've been in situations where a software vendor promises to have a certain version in production by a given date. Being an important customer, we had access to internal development versions so that we could do our own development using their APIs. Unfortunately, they let their ship date slip and their product came in several months late, meaning that our project was late, too. If we had known that they were going to be so late, we would have probably gone with another vendor. It would not have had as many features and it would have required more work, but it would have been delivered on time.
All I want for Christmas is Kernel 2.4... For crying out loud! Mabe next year...
--------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------
Perversely greped and groped by PowerPenguin
Oh look, another chance for me to plug AtheOS;)
;)
Come on, more kernel/device driver coders needed. IDE, ISO9660 & PPP support would be nice if anyone who has the knowledge & time would be willing
Syllable : It's an Operating System
A linux dvd player was supposed to be released by Intervideo in the second quarter of 2000. We are obviously far past the second quarter of 2000 and they have still not released the DVD player. According to the message on their website, LinDVD still has an unannounced price, and has been released, but only to manufacturers. I'm guessing it won't be, oh.. another couple years until it comes out. I can't stand this shit. Here is the link.
Case in point on Wired's 1999 list: Diablo II. It had been delayed forEVER, and the fanbase was borderline homicidal. When Blizzard finally released, the engine was unforgivably slow, Battle.Net and LAN play were painfully lagged, singleplayer play was buggy. Fun, sure, but it didn't have the tight, cohesive feel that Diablo I did. The game simply felt rushed. IMHO as always.
J
Yeah, but the Playstation 2 really should have gotten 1st place. Sony has been running very aggresive marketing campaigns, but nobody can buy one. Maybe we could nominate the PS9 from their "PS9" commercials. :P
Warcraft III? Huh? Blizzard's been working on it nonstop since it was announced, which was not all that long ago (just before Diablo II, I think).
I just think Wired is completely trash, spreading rumors as fact. Might as well change their name to "Weekly World Wired". Anyway, below is the mail I just wrote them after seeing some of the crap in that article.
Don't take my word for it, get a book, check it out.
Moderating to further my personal world domination agenda... and to get chicks.
Why not just say "It'll be done when it's done" and leave it at that rather than pulling dates out of thin air that obviously mean nothing?
Because of a little thing called Mindshare. The whole purpose of the marketroid is to keep us thinking about ProductX so we don't turn our attention to CompetitorY. Even Linus dangles a little carrot in front of us in the hopes we don't all get bored and install some flavor of BSD.
SUBLIMINAL (insightful) MESSAGES (insightful) SUCK!
Ok my karma is maxed out. When do I become Enlightened?
Well, when was the last time Linus, Blizzard, etc. tried publishing a magazine? :) Like all 'software engineers', they're good at wasting money and time on vaporous products.
I know not many people have heard of it, but Sirtech has been writing it for at least more than 3 years, but probably more than that, I just can't remember.
How can "they" (paranoia mode on ;) call something vaporware since a beta has been released ? Or maybe the "first stable release" of all the Windows OS versions (NT and W2K without a service pack, or Win'95) pleased them more since they claimed them usable...
I don't usually post this kind of crap, but this has taken me out of my very Zen nerves. Rank this as (-2, Linux Zealot) if you wish.
Karma cannot be described by words alone.
This is not funny at all. I'm giving up my moderator points to post this.
I just found out that my MIS director's wife works for Edgewater Technology. She's OK, but quite shaken. She hid under a desk and the gunman walked past her twice. The people shot were within 20 feet of her.
One of the people shot had just returned from maternity leave. It was her first day back. Her husband arrived in the neighboring church with the baby in his arms only to be told his wife didn't make it.
It is never funny when people die like this.
"I'm The Bounty Bear. I will find him anywhere. I'm searching."
Companies, for the most part, will take these comments two ways:
1) Ha ha. We know it's late, but we're glad it is a highly anticipated product. Thanks for the exposure.
2) Ouch. Yes, we need to get our act together, something is wrong. In future products we'll try our best to avoid problems that cause delays, so we can ship a working product on time.
Ok. I can understand that Linux 2.4 and OS X are not released in commercial form, but where the hell did someone figure that these products are Vaporware??? At least my understanding of Vaporware is something that is promised and something you can't get your hands on. However, I'm running Linux 2.4-pre test blah blah whatever on my box, which makes me believe that it IS on its way. Mac OS X public beta is on my buddy's box, runs great, but of course, it's freakin' vaporware. Who the fuck comes up with these things, and from which hole did they crawl from???
Is '6a' considered odd or even? =)
--
NT 5 was Cairo, actually. Or supposed to be -- it was Microsoft's big object-based symphony. Of course it vanished rather quietly to be replaced by yet another release of good old NT.
And you're correct in saying parts of copland have continued to improve more recent releases -- I think it would be more accurate, though, to simply call it stripping the carcass for parts. However, calling MacOS 8.x (i.e. Tempo) almost-Copland is way off the mark -- 8 in particular was not much more than 7 with a new coat of paint. The real architectural changes only started with 8.1 and HFS+.
/Brian
You can use 2.4.0-testX's now, and they're as stable as any 2.2.X I've ever used.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Wired: Will Troll For Hits
Yup, but they've got a long way to go before they reach the kings of all hit-trolling, ZDNet. Through the magic of Headlin-o-Vision, let's take a look at what that aritcle would have been like over at PCWeek...
LINUX IS OUT OF DATE! EVERONE WHO MATTERS TO HATE IT BY Q4 2001!
Whoa. On second thought, let's not.
I think referring to 2.4 as vaporware, while not technically accurate, has some merit. OpenSource is different from software held behind a companies castle walls: it's always out in the open (ideally). So yes, we know it exists in some form: but the fact is, we've been hearing how 2.4 would be out Real-Soon-Now for quite some time, and still waiting.
Not that I think this is a bad thing; on the contrary, having publically availably betas and waiting until the code is golden is a strength.
what? -- are you a journalism major who wandered onto this site to do some 'research'?
;-) )
your point about italians, women, blacks, et aliis is a perfect example of the ridiculousness of _most_ journalists, which is why i think you must be one.
journalists _chose_ to be journalists, to go in for cheap & easy pseudo-intellectualism, rumor-mongering, etc. moreover, as there are so many of you clamoring for the limelight you crave, you must often stoop to nonsense to attract some attention (as wired have done, and do). the sad thing is that you take yourselves seriously. (unlike software engineers -- we _never_ take ourselves seriously
my point was this: when did wired do something really, really hard, like ship a big piece of software? for this 'article', all they need do is send out emails seeking 'nominations', come up with something clever to tack onto the front of it, and 'at the stroke of a pen' castigate and belittle the hurculean and extended efforts of dozens or hundreds of intelligent, hard-working people all for the sake of some lame letterman-like publicity stunt.
none of those wankers would understand five lines of the linux or osx codebases. what gives them the right? the same reasoning, i suppose, that entitles you to make the trite (and entirely irrelevant) inference about my previous post.
so scamper back to reading time magazine or whatever it is you people do when you are not being holier-than-thou, or the trolls may get you..
when was the last time wired shipped any software? like all 'journalists' they are very good at shipping lame-brained assemblages of meaningless words that have no connection to anything.. blurpy software engineer (been running 2.4.0-testxx for months now)
The difference with movies and other theatrical productions is that it's much easier to estimate and keep track of the time it will take to produce. Movie production doesn't have to deal with bugs, or abstract constructs like code which are difficult to quantify.
:-P
If a particular actor doesn't have enough time to practice or do enough takes, that actor's performance will just seem a little lackluster in the finished product. If one piece of code in a program isn't absolutely perfect the entire program is likely to go to hell in a handbasket the second that code is called. It's a similar situation with say, construction. One flawed support will ruin your entire skyscraper. Even worse if there are people in it when it collapses.
"Where shall the word be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence." -T.S. Eliot
I'm sorry man, but this isn't funny at all© I have friends that work at there© Seven people died!
Besides, if you think its so damn funny why post anonymously?
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
Sorry. I've been watching my new DVD's of The Prisoner every day after work. :)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Avoid odd-numbered Star Trek movies
Avoid even-numbered Microsoft Service Packs.
Most Trekkies and NT Admins will agree that following these rules is a good idea.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
You said the 2.4 kernel can't be vapor since you've been running on it for thirty days. Well, the same could be said for almost any product on that list: OSX, Itanium, etc. (and I'm sure the games on the list have been played internally for months). If you're going to nod your head when others shout "Vaporware!" then you should be prepared to accept criticism when the products near to your heart slip as well i.e. those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
None of the mentioned products are vapourware, Wired should just rename the article to "late products that people are looking forward too" but alas that doesn't sound half as interesting so fact goes out of the window in favour of a better headline.
A journey of a thousand miles starts with a brutal anal raping at airport security
Well, what else can we expect from a country that's made up of the scum and refuse ejected from all of the other countries of the world?
The American population is made up of the rejects and the unwanted so is it really surprising that you are happiest while murdering someone. It's the only way you can really relate.
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
It's easy. Just go download one of the 2.3.* kernels and edit a couple of files and BAM! 2.4
Gimme Gimme Gimme - Karma!
While i cant speak for the Linux community, I was glad they delayed it and took it as a sign that they were finally getting the right idea. So for me anyway its not just a matter of if Linux does its good. I belive this should be the attitude of any software company. I am willing to wait for the latest features if it means that they will work.
2.4 isnt out because it's not working.I would rather it be vapor until it works. One of the main reasons I perfer Linux to M$ is that with Linux the time and care is taken to make sure that the features work before it's shipped rather than shipping a buggy product just to make some randomly chosen date.
Heh... I was about to flame you until I realized you have posted a carefully constructed satire.
For anyone who doesn't get it, I'll go paragraph by paragraph starting with 'if we can simply':
0. The UK, Australia, and Canada have shown that baning all firearms does not reduce firearm-related crime. In fact, it increases it.
1. Criminals already make firearms and buy them through black markets.
2.a. Areas within the US that have higher percentages of legal gun owners and Carry Consealed Weapon permits have lower crime and murder rates.
2.b. It is imposible to reason with an attacker/home invader. Scaring them off with deadly force is the most effective way.
2.c. The police are not required to respond to any 911 call. You can not force the police to show up, nor sue them for failing to show up.
3. this madness would not of occured if guns were illegal. I have to laugh at this one. If you read the story and know anything about firearm laws, you already know that AK-47s are illegal in the United States. The attacker also did not legally aquire the weapons used in his attack. Simply, the weapons he used were already illegal.
(I want to expand on #3. If you search the firearm attacks from 1999, you will find that only one attack (from GA) used a legal firearm. Coincidentally, there were no fatalities.)
As far as the rest of the thread, can any one define Vaporware?
--Demonspawn
Not quite. I went to E3 in 1997. The programmer/techie guy there frequently referred to Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans as "Warcraft III". The official E3 press releases didn't use the triple-I designation, but the Blizzard frontline people definitely were (and none too happy about the change in direction away from RTS).
hymie
Yeah, that page's been in place, announcement and all, for little over a year now. That's vaporware by my book.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
This comment sums it up:
"OMG, I nominated this one last year," wrote John Lusby.
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
--
Garett
I admit that I am a Blizzard fan so this will be slanted ;)
The first version of War3 was called Warcraft Adventures which was scrapped because the project wasn't viewed in good light late in it's programming. I think the release date was only months away when the project was scrapped to the dimay of both us Blizzard fans and War3 team.
Resources were then temporarily redirected to Diablo 2, the previous years vaporware #4 item, to finish the product. Nearing the end resources were again reallocated to start a new project called WarCraft III.
Now that War3 had been announced not even a year has passed before this is declared vaporware. Am I the only one that can find humor in this?
Hmm... haven't tried that. I was just glad to see synchronized DVD video and audio on my screen. ;-) I watched both Pulp Fiction and Apocalypse Now without problems.
tstdvd /dev/hdc
tstdvd /dev/hdc /dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB
and then pipe the movie to Xine:
css_cat -v1P /dvd/VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB | xine stdin://mpeg2
Oh, and before you ask: yes it's all GPLd, non RIAA-approved code. I don't understand why this fantastic project has not been discussed more here.
Do you understand that VS is not just a C++ compiler, it has a lot of libraries (STL, ATL, MFC) that are updated, that may not be fully compatible [and should not in some cases - for example STL went long way from ARM to current standard].
So 90% ratio for beta is more than good.
MSDOS: 20+ years without remote hole in the default install
Dont mind me I am complete imbecile. I shall now do the world a favor and start replacing a section of my brain with a goldfish. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
I may be mistaken but I thought OS X was out already.
Where am I going and why am I in this handbasket?
--
--
You are a fucking moron.
Actually, it's kind of interesting if you look at vaporware for 1999, by year end of 2K most of these things had come true: broadband, SDMI (coming and going), Diablo II, and Netscape 6.0 (as bad as it may be). I guess better late than never (read: Dikatana).- -------------------------
-------------------------------------
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"And may your days be long upon the earth."
this is *REALLY* a horrible article
basicaly they appare to have simply tallied the votes of people who have no idea what "vaporware" is
it's something that DOES NOT EXIST or you can reasonably assume will *NEVER* be released
I've used 2.3 and 2.4 unstable kernels
I've seen previews from people from various gaming websites whos staff has actually sat down and PLAYED warcraft3
Black And White is a MASSIVE project and you can't POSSIBLY expect them to meat their estimated release dates
Duke Nukem Forever? well, it would appear that it's one of those projects that probably got some beurocratic shuffle done to it and delayed it
Mac OS X? people are using and have been using the OPEN SOURCE darwin core for a while now...
Tribes 2? combination of a large project with overly optimistic release dates
Wireless web pads? I've SEEN them avalible for sale with my OWN EYES for christs sake
bluetooth will come, it's coming, quit bitching
as for "silicon films electronic film system" I've never even HEARD of it before so it obviously didn't get that much hype
Yeah, but we'd still be waiting for SP6 ...
Actually, they wrote it (along with Monte Davidoff) over a few weeks on the Harvard mainframe using an emulator they also wrote. What was written on the trip down there was the bootstrap loader since Paul Allen forgot to pack the listing. (You had to toggle it in to be able to load a paper tape)
Actually, MITS did have a working Altair running at the time of the article. It was lost on the flight out to Popular Electronics when they were shooting the cover photo so the cover just has a dummy box. People were getting Altair kits within weeks of the article. There was a backlog on assembled versions and later kits because MITS never anticipated that level of demand and ran out of parts and people to solder them together.
VisiOn was shown first of the four and finally shipped last - well after Windows, TopView and GEM. VisiCorp bundled it with their own apps so nobody wanted to develop for it and the development tools were next to impossible to get. Not only that but it would only work if you used their VisiMouse with it. In fact, it was the classic industry example of bad preannouncement for years.
As for people signing their lives over to MS, the only commercial apps for Windows 1.0 were a graphics app from MicroGrafx and the game Balance of Power, both of which came with the run-time version of Windows bundled with them since neither of them were willing to bet their sales on the pitifully small Windows installed base. Remember that Windows had almost no users until Windows 3.0 which was five years later.
Everybody else either didn't bother or wrote for TopView which with IBM's name was expected to be the winner and didn't require much change to existing apps. There were also a few people writing for GEM.
In the end, TopView flopped because their only real feature was multitasking and QuarterDeck's DesqView did it better, GEM was destroyed by the Apple look and feel lawsuit and VisiOn finally shipped at a ridiculous price years late. Oh, and Microsoft lost money on Windows for five years in a row after it released but kept working on it thus proving that persistance sometimes pays off over good business sense.
Actually, this isn't news. Project Managers have repeatedly argued for the PERT method rather than the CPM method, which would allow people to place a range of completion dates rather than a single deadline date.
Should any company actually keep actual delivery dates against projected (original) dates, I'm fairly certain that the distribution curve would non-normal and biased. (Actually, any project dealing with the unknown should have a non-normal & biased distribution curve.)
I'm willing to listen to anyone who's collected a database of met/unmet (from original) projection dates to see how close they've gotten...but I'm willing to lay money that they're no where near the 3% of construction projects.
BTW: Project Management is totally seperate from Quality Management - ie: CMM, bug-tracking systems, testing processes, etc. Quality Management uses the number of bugs as a indication of how far toward completing the project you are which, for a varity of reasons, is a poor choice of a metric.
Actually, I have the beta version of Windows.NET and VisualStudio.NET, as well as the .NET SDK v2 in my hands right now, so what were you saying...?
-
The IHA Forums
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
so u think it's funny to swear? moron
xcyber """"""Complexity for the sake of complexity is not a solution, neither is simplicity for the sake of simplicity
The general rule is not to use any Microsoft product until SP3 is released :)
I had a relevant link, but I lost it
Living better through chemicals
What a F'in tease to start any article on December 27th with Linux 2.4! How many people are counting on slashdot to be the site that breaks the news to them about Linux 2.4 And you just go putting headlines like that up. Ah well got my heart pumping for a minute which is more than I can say for my job.
And, last I checked, .NET was never projected to be available in 2000.
They haven't recalled the P4, yet.... They did recall the P3 1.13 Ghz though, and HP recalled a few of their PCs with P4s in them, due to a corrupted bios....
Shit adds up at the bottom...
Curious how vaporware the 2.4 kernel is, there actually is a product out and you can get it, also curious how vapowarish MacOS X is, you can order the public beta from Apple's website, at least you can actually see and use the product...hmmm zdnet appears to have some new employees this year
/* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */
It's good to have a "goal" in the form of a date of expected release as with Linux theres no one breathing down your neck everyday making sure you stick to the task at hand or release in a forced manor. Of course we as the community take it for granted when things dont show up for the projected "goal" we've got a 2.2 kernel and it works quite well. Lets not trivialize the work being done because it misses a date or two because when it comes out you can be confident in it's quality.
Do you prefer getting 2.4 in time, but having tons of bugs ? The kernel guys are working very hard, they add tons of features and remove very bugs each pre release. It's very good that it takes time, We're going to have a great kernel that way.
And if one can't wait, he can always take the 2.4.0-testXX version, which are very stable already.
or is this whole article done by someone in solitarry confinement that hasn't been receiving any outside news for a while?
/. but it was knocked back.
I'm too lazy to shred the article piece by piece, but I do know that there is a linux-based PDA out there [contra to their claim of no Linux organizer]. I had suggested it to be a post in
And, while the Itanium might not be readily available, it is quite likely that this is mainly because hardware manufacturers don't feel like offering the more expensive chipsets and new motherboards during the main shopping season if they have warehouses full of 'dead-cows-can-still-be-flogged' boxes.
The same thing seems to be the case for Intel itself. They just came out with P4. It would not make business sense to release the Itanium at the same time.
After all, the general masses [ie. the market] wouldn't really distinguish between usability and necessity, but would simply buy whatever is 'the latest'. On top of that, many widely used software packages don't run on machines that use Itanium chipsets [you guessed it, we got one...].
So, overall, WIRED really screwed up with this article.Badly researched, opinionated against just about everything and everyone. Let's make a collection and send the author a do-it-yourself kit to help him put himself out of his misery and make the world a cleaner place.
"Everyone is talking about polution - do you know how much oxygen 6 billion people use everyday?"
there's a reason its called "Public Beta"
I haven't seen Carnivore in Best Buy yet! I really want one.
I heard that Linus said that for each time he is asked when kernel 2.4 was coming out, he would delay the release by 24 hours ...
Oh wait, that was someone else.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
Remedy, developers of Max Payne, a game that's been in developement for years, has taken the right path of setting no release that, and saying it'll be done when it's done.
I've been using Windows 2000 on one of my machines since the market release. I'm glad I didn't wait for some luddite to tell me when it was 'safe' to use it, because I've gotten a lot of good use out of it. It's not crashed a single time in the months I've been using it.
It's right up there with the BSD Unices in terms of reliability for a desktop system.
Hay thar.
Yes. Vapourware is a product release/marketing method pioneered at Oracle, back when Larry Ellison was a hungry businessman, not the smug guy he is today.
The Oracle salespeople would sell a new feature for their database project, then stop by the developer's shop after the sale to tell them what they had to cobble together. Oracle was built on that kind of business practice, they won out against other (more ethical) vendors in that fashion.
It's well-documented in the book The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison (God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison). If you haven't read it, you need to. Puts Larry Ellision, the king of hate-Microsoft, into proper perspective.
Hay thar.
Why should anybody take up a dare here on Slashdot from an Anonymous Coward?
Hay thar.
The Linux Kernel v2.4 should be now known as Vapourware. Hrm, I wonder what Vapourware is called once it's actually released? Solidware? :)
I run Vapourware 2.4 on all my boxen, with over 20 days of uptime on each one of them. Damn, I wonder what Vapourware 2.5 holds in store for us?
I agree, but it would be nice if, even after delaying the release forever and a day, that the finished still isn't riddled with bugs (ahem, M$). Than again, there always is the great OSS expression 'Release early, release often', course that doesn't really apply to companies as much.
I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days uptime, but what do I know? I guess a "product" without a release date just isn't something comprehensible.
Welcome to Darwin!
Taco, I hope your not implying that 2.4 is not vapour, and MacOS X is....[localhost:~] vidboi% uptime 12:09PM up 23 days 23:10, 9 users, load averages: 1.03, 1.07, 1.08
What about financially viable open source? We have heard it for quite a while but there are still no corporations who can live on developing open source.
Of cause, some corporations make open source software but they certainly can't make a living out of it.
Darn trade organizations...
Well, this is mostly correct, but the originally-hyped next-generation OS effort by Apple (right around the time of the PPC conversion) was code-named Copland. About the same time, Microsoft announced its biggest piece of vaporware - it was either Chicago or Cairo... at any event, this was around 1995, after Win95 came out, and was supposedly their next-gen OS (read: Windows_2000_). I don't remember all the features it was supposed to have, but needless to say most of them never materialized in any of MS's OSes.
Anyway, for reasons known and unknown, Copland eventually got scrapped. The research done as part of Copland did not, and a significant portion of that work found its way into 8, 8.1 and 8.5. Pretty much as you stated, OS 8+ is "almost-Copland." The current OSes have a revamped memory system, a new kernel and a lot of the improvements that were to come with Copland.
After the failure of Copland, however, Apple realized it needed proven technology to form the core of its system. Where better to look than the brainchildren of two former Apple employees?
In the end, Steve Jobs sold his technology more effectively than Jean Louis Gassee, and Apple snapped up NeXT. They announced Rhapsody, and even began showing and previewing it. As early as 1997, Apple had Rhapsody demos at MacWorld. In early 1998(if I have my dates correct) Apple released Mac OS X Server, a direct descendant of NeXTSTEP with some Macintosh beautification. (Note, I may be a year off in my estimates, can't remember now) They started to talk about Mac OS X Client, and it was supposed to come out in mid-2000 and be preinstalled on systems in Jan 2001. Well, it sorta did. We got the beta. And for a beta it's a fine system. If there were more driver support and I could get Classic to work correctly, I'd be using it all the time.
This January? I don't think we'll see preinstalls just yet. So they're late. But judging from the quality of the beta, I think Apple is within months of releasing the system - at the very very latest, at MWNY. (don't quote me on that, just my feeling).
Are they late? Yes. But given that they've consistently improved the classic Mac OS through this whole time (I crash rarely, and then usually because of IE5's crappy popup window handling), I can't be too angry at them.
At the same time, I am acutely aware of how many people need that reliable stability and how many need the underpinnings of OS X. I know that it is imperative for Apple toi release OS X soon. I hope they do.
There's just something wonderful about having a command line and a Mac all rolled up in one!
Thanks for correcting me on this. I couldn't remember the exact dates, and thought I might be a year off.
Ah yes! NT5 == Windows2000 (don't just believe me, look at what srvrmgr on NT4 reports 2000 as!)
Yeah, you are correct, 8 itself isn't all that hot. But 8.1 and above have really been good for the Mac OS, even if they haven't been the next-gen OS we've all been waiting for. It's like Apple is saying "We've got something great coming up, but we're going to keep making what we've got today better until it's done."
~> uname -a
;)
Linux xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 2.4.0-test4 #1 SMP Fri Jul 14 01:56:30 CEST 2000 i686 unknown
~> uptime
7:08pm up 127 days, 4:49, 5 users, load average: 2.08, 2.02, 1.95
And the 2.08 is not even stuck kernel threads, it's seti@home and mutt
And marketing and engineering not working from the same dates doesn't qualify as a problem?
Maybe it's just me, but I don't like the idea of deceiving people with release dates. Yeah, people who base their lives around marketing release dates deserve what they get - but why does this happen? Why are there two dates in the first place, a true one (which we're not told but are expected to divine) and a false one (which we're told)? There's an industry-wide lie, a naked emperor, where everyone "knows" you never trust release dates - so why make them? The answer is, admittedly exaggerated release dates are made to lie to people, either to placate stockholders or to build advance excitement or in extreme cases, to sucker in potential customers to lure them away from competing products that may be ready a year or two sooner ("Real Soon Now" for years on end). If you have to lie to people to make money off them, isn't something wrong?
OK, so why not use the engineering dates instead of marketing dates in the first place? Marketing won't stand for it - that's not what they're about, at least not in today's industry where marketing and engineering are two opposing armies. Not like engineers never lie, but engineers have a better idea of what's possible (build a new OS in six minutes? sure!) than marketers.
You can use the discrepancy between dates to determine how much of a shooting war there is between a company's engineering and marketing wings. Look at Microsoft - they miss deadlines by YEARS and usually lose half the announced feature set (and gain thousands of bugs) along the way - why? It's not like they WANT to make shit products - rather it's that marketing designs their products without asking the engineers what it'll take to incorporate into a codebase that is already bloated and grub-infested from two decades of this.
I'm not saying that marketing should NEVER influence the design of a product, but that marketing should at least attempt to work with engineering on such matters, determine how feasible things are, refine the feature lists, and perhaps even start building for a few months before deciding on a feasible release date.
As for Linus wearing both hats - he's fallen into the same industry trap, where it's expected that the first date out of your mouth is pulled out of your ass. Maybe that's thinking we should try to get out of.
Granted maybe I'm not the one to talk, I've got programs that've been in a state of beta for two years. But maybe it's better to simply never HAVE a release date, than to make one up that's gonna be wrong - especially if you know you're a) depending on other people that have pulled their release dates out of their asses, or b) charting unexplored territory where you really don't know HOW long it'll take to do the impossible. Of course that won't fly in the mainstream software industry, but that's because the people who control the money live in what amounts to another world.
~ radiographite: art by john shepard
I mean, things like the bluetooth comment (there is bluetooth stuff; I saw a telephone headset and something else....I forget... at a store) are innaccurate. And, frankly, it's wired. Who cares?
The Doctor What (KF6VNC)
While this is true, I have yet to see any project in any area (art/cs/marketting/whatever) where something didn't go wrong somewhere. THINGS ALWAYS GO WRONG. There's nothing wrong with blowing dates. Especially when doing development. Implementation is a little different. For example, it should take a known quantity of time to install Linux on a computer. It takes an unkown quantity of time to create Linux. The reason - one is development, the other is implementation. Implementation deals with many more known quantities than development, and is thus subject to delays. This is why MS was so late at delivering NT5. In development, you don't know what the obstacles are. In implementation, you know a lot more of them. Therefore, developers should never be criticized solely for not achieving time frames.
Engineering and the Ultimate
InterVideo has had a Linux DVD player in the works for a little while now (LinDVD, to complement their main product, WinDVD) and is in beta testing at oem's right now. Check out www.intervideo.com for more info.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
I have VisStudio.NET installed on my machine and have been testing it pretty vigorously since I received it. It certainly has things left to complete, but it is much farther along in beta than I think you realize. At only Beta 1, roughly 90% of the applications I've tested under it run without a problem (VC++ -- VB apps are a little more problematic). I won't even get into "what the hell is it good for" because if you cant read for yourself the thousands of docs out there about the new functionality in VS.NET, then you wont be able to read my summary either. How about next time, before you spout off at the mouth, you read up a little and do a little of your own evaluation before jumping in and looking like an ass.
Perl - $Just @when->$you ${thought} s/yn/tax/ &couldn\'t %get $worse;
Well, did you try looking here?
Sheesh.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
Then what the FSCK am I running on my iMac at the moment? NeXTSTEP? Rhapsody? WHAT!??!?
:)
As for linux, hey my departemental samba file server runs fine on vapour. It is currently running in circles around our win2k server, and it's not even breaking a sweat (no, the digital equivalent op poking its nose). Yes, they are both running on the same type of hardware
(yes this is meant in jest, and yes I do run Mac OS X PB on my G3 mac, and no, I don't like microsoft)
--
Slashdot didn't accept your submission? hackerheaven.org will!
Is there a patch to make it play discs crippled by CSS? I've been using Oms from the LiVid people so far. I get reasonable results (PIII-600, TNT2). I would like to compare it to Xine, but the only things I seem to be able to play with Xine out of the box are VideoCDs.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
True. Don't forget to add Diablo 2 to the list of games that didn't quite live up to their hype (although it was worth a play through, replay value went out the window).
:)
The only game I've played recently that I thought lived up to its hype was Baldur's Gate 2. Now of course I'm playing that while waiting for Masters of Orion 3 to come out which seems like its going to be great
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
As long as 2.4 is not released, it is an achknowledgement from Linus that it isn't quite ready for prime time.
Although it is available, it is quite like a beta test for users.
When 2.4 is released this will change, but we will have to put up with someone calling it vapourware.
Duh. It's vaporware because it's not released yet. If you want 2.4.0-test13-pre3, or even 2.4.0-test13-pre3ac2, you can get it, but you can't get 2.4.0. It does not exist.
What matters (to Wired) is not that the new kernel has no release date, it's that it was "promised" (originally) for December 1999, then for December 2000, and it's still not here.
Yep, that was in response to VisiOn. A Mac-like on the PC... Everyone slobbered all over it. It was running, but still under heavy development. Nobody was at the MS booth, where everything was text mode.
Bill had some programmers mock something up very quickly for display. "Look at us, we have it, too. We're a bigger company. You'd do well to bet on us... Sign here..."
When VisiOn was released, it was a complete flop, because everyone had signed their lived over to MS, and it was due "real soon now." It's worth it to wait, right?
Windows 1.0 was released 2 years later, and VisiOn was dead. The whole story disgusted me. (PC Computing, BTW, I don't remember the date)
Unfortunately, this is one story ignored by all the A&E type documentaries out there. Note that it was completely left out of "Pirates of Silicon Valley."
I'd like to remind all of you who are running various beta releases of 2.4 that it is HIGHLY UNWISE to rely on software which DOESN'T EXIST. I strongly urge you to downgrade to a 2.2.x series kernel. You only believe you're booting successfully. You're only imagining that you see DRI, USB and similar on your desktop. YOU ARE FOOLING YOURSELVES.
I repeat: 2.2.4 is currently for unicorns, fae and hobgoblins only! Do NOT run mythical software!!!
Apple has consistently said that they would release OS X client in January of 2001! Since when did they ever promise earlier?
It was promised earlier, actually -- take a look at the press release archives. However, it's not nearly as late as some would have you believe. Some people say it's taken them four years (time since the NeXT acquisition), which just isn't true, since Apple shipped most everything that was promised for Rhapsody in the form of Mac OS X Server nearly two years ago. Darwin was unveiled at the same time.
However, I agree that Mac OS X is not vaporware, as I am typing this from OSX public beta. Vaporware typically means something that doesn't exist, or something that the general public does not have access to.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
In early 1998(if I have my dates correct) Apple released Mac OS X Server, a direct descendant of NeXTSTEP with some Macintosh beautification.
Mac OS X Server shipped on March 16, 1999, same day Darwin was announced.
- Scott
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Scott Stevenson
Scott Stevenson
Tree House Ideas
Score:4 Insightfull? My ass. This kid knows nothing about software development. Managment techniques and development tools needed for predictablity are just now coming on line. Ergonomic, enviromental, and cultureal conditions that impact software development are not well understood. Despite what hidebound upper managment thinks, software is way different then any other thing that mankind has ever done. I have a new manager. He has never managed software. How do I explain to him that a phone call at the wrong time can set me back half a day. My previous manager, also a non-programer understood the levels of consitration that progmers sometimes need. This is a rare thing. He once waited in my cube for 30 min for me to come up for air. I was so zoned on my work, that I did not notice him, and he just sat, not wanting to break my consentration.
UML and CRC cards are fairly new and most programers are not yet familure with their use, let alone the managers. Without tools like these, the design phase of a software project is impossible, and with them, just improbable ( we have a long way to go). After 20 years, I have gotten pretty good at predicting my time requirements. Stated_Estiment = My_Estiment * 4.
I think the reigning king of vaporware is still Atari. I remember Battlesphere being talked about, but never released for YEARS.
Looking at atarihq.com, they seem to have more stuff that never made it out of their building than what was sold on shelves.
Transmeta
Key point in the article: Linus "says he is trying to roll out the next major Linux release, version 2.4, by this fall." That was written in June of 1999.
Of course there's no definite promises, but we're definetly over a year past the first timeframe he mentioned..
-bugg
Heh... Every time I hear Windows 2000 I have this little mental voice whispering 'Remember Linux 2.3.48?? For the love of gawd, wait a few months for another patchlevel!'
.sig: Now legally binding!
So people sort of waited. A year on or so, people really wanted these new wonder macs with the RISC processors, so apple went ahead and made them. All marveled as they ran the same old operating system, just a bit slower than a real 68040. Those in the know said that it's to apple's credit that they wrote such an effective emulator that the enitre operating system could run on it, but they were dismayed at the lack of the good stuff a decent risc processor could have offered, like better memory management and such.
Funny enough, later (1995?) apple released 604 based machines, about the same time Be released its dual 603e machine (BeBox) running a wonderfully capable OS with wonderful hardware features, and no applications. With this new release, apple said in a year, we'll have this new and better OS out... lets call it rapsody. Great!, many people bought 604 machines thinking that soon, they could run rapsody on them.
But that was delayed. Then scraped as OS 8 came out. mind you, os 8 has more native PPC code in it than ever before, such that 8.1 was all PPC and 8.6 was only for PPCs (they dropped the 68040). But still there was no grand OS.
Be OS was rumoured to become part of apple such that it could be used as the foundation for they're next operating system. But then it came to pass that next would actually provide thier next operating system. In a promissed period of 6 months no less.
Okay, there were some developer releases in 6 months of openStep on both intel and PPC, but... that didn't really help any mac users. Then there came os 9, sans pre-emptive multi-tasking. And then eventually the beta for OS X.
In the mean time the PPC machines are selling better than ever, and the old system no longer seems so crippling, mainly cause its not really all that old anymore, just crufty.
-Daniel
What wierd people
Yes I agree. I would also add that, in my opinion, these sort of articles calculate a product's "vaporwareness" as a function of how late they are AND how much they are expected. So even when you can say that OSX or kernel 2.4 are not THAT late, they are hugely expected by a lot of people. That's why, aside from the usual delays in its development, games always appear on these sort of lists, because thousands of fans ara anxiously waiting for Black&White and Warcraft III. That's why OSX entry on Wired's list is accompanied by comments from several people stating hoy badly they need the software.
"All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams". Elias Canetti
Articles lie this can be good if companies realize that they are blowing important dates and that there is something nternally wrong. A reference was made to the turnover of developers on Duke Nukem. Hopefully, Epic will try to resolve this.
The fact ofthe matter is that if you blow a date, then something went wrong somewhere. It may have even been with the estimation process. Companies must learn that blown dates and vapourware are indicitive of internal problems that must be resolved.
-no broken link
I don't know about Linux but wireless webpads did come out at least in Japan
Here's Sony's Airboard. Walk anywhere in the house, no keyboard, no wires, browse the web, watch TV, watch a video. Prop it up in the kitchen to view a recipe. Read slashdot on the toilet. It's out!
Need to type? I touch screen keyboard appears. -g
Granted, it is kind of difficult to know if the tag line, "...hard time calling something Vapor..." is one of distain or a plaintive statement of fact. However, the observation has to be made: so bloody what if Wired calls it vaporware. It's not even relevant to real life. Nor does it affect anyone on the planet if it's published as such. So why get into a snit?
That is why you can download the betas?
No more vapourous than a dev kernel, thanks.
Jeremy
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Linus's "predictions" are not announcements or press releases or marketing messages. They are his personal opinions, usually expressed on the development mailing list to other programmers (and occasionally in interviews to reporters). It's your fault if you take them for anything else (just like it's your fault if you expect him to make coding decisions based on anything other than what he finds pleasing).
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
If there's ANYTHING that should be called vaporware, my vote is BitBoyz. Do they even have pictures of engineering samples yet?
If we can simply pass enough laws to make guns illegal, and also sue the gun manufacturers out of business, we can solve all of this insane gun-related violence.
Because, as we all know, we will be much safer if we all are unarmed. Criminals are too stupid to make their own weapons or find black markets to buy them.
You simply can't make society safer by allowing law abiding citizens to be vigilantes. Our police force is amply able to handle the few gun related crimes that might occur once all guns become illegal. If your house is being robbed or otherwise under attack, calling 911 and reasoning with your attacker is always better than defending yourself with a gun. The police will respond immediately and save you.
Once again, this madness would have not occured if guns were illegal. The Slashdot population should be smart enough to recognize that you solve problems by concentrating on the specific technology, not the human nature, behind the problem. We should teach this fact to the rest of the world.
I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Let's hear it for slow releases. I'd be very happy if KDE was as paranoid as Linus about issuing a "stable" release, and as willing to ignore the cries and complaints of them as do not help with the coding.
This is ridiculous! Apple has consistently said that they would release OS X client in January of 2001! Since when did they ever promise earlier?
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Hey, Daikatana isn't vaporware.
We just wish it was
Except that it was not a working demo. It was a cleverly written presentation consisting mostly of animated graphics, etc. so that it looked exactly like a real PC OS running. But it wasn't. It was an animation. And BG played the part completely, making believe he was actually running a program, etc. all according to his script.
This froze the market of course, because every one was waiting for the stuff that was going to come out "Real Soon Now"(tm).
Of course, this may be one of those Urban Legends that go around the net every so often. But I wonder about it sometimes.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
In this regard, these make interesting reads:
- Calderas' legal brief against MS PreAnnouncement claims
- The early history of vaporware, as discussed in a computer history mailing list archive from 1996
Someone ought to do a full list of all of the dirty deeds of Bill G, just so that it doesn't get forgotten. y'know, things like IE3.O for Unix."It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What about Halo? I've been waiting for Halo since I saw it 2 years ago (that seems so long ago!) at MacWorld Expo. Even their website (halo.bungie.com) hasn't had any new screenshots added in months (years it seems). There's been the purchase by Microsoft, and I can accept that as a delay in site updates. But they didn't update it for months before their acquisition by Microsoft.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Halo is one of the most anticipated games of all time... and here it is 2 years later and nothing!
Evan here has a good point, If consumers demanded stable finished products, not buggy code that would later require fast internet connections for 40 meg patch downloads (or pay money for a CD with the patches on it), A lot more programs would be delayed months if not years. This seems to be a classic case of market demand pushing an inferior product. Personally I'm still waiting for SP3 for Win2k to be released, lord knows there have been enough security fixes, and critical updates to warrant it.
"...your future, make it a reality, all you have to do is fight for me"
How about the Intel P4, does marketing an item then having to recall all of them because they dont work, count as vaporware? For months after release I couldnt buy one....so I got an Athlon and computed happily ever after
"...your future, make it a reality, all you have to do is fight for me"
"One list of 2.4 issues is available here, for the curious."
;-)
Please note, that list was: "Last modified: [tytso:20001112.1433EST]" (test11pre3) which is out of date, big time.
For a list of changes since then, check the Changelog-test11 for test11, Changelog-test12 for test12 and Changelog-test13 for test13
Linux - Vaporware as it's finest
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
2. You can BUY MacOS X Public Beta from Apple. It is well known that Apple is going to announce in just 2 weeks a final ship date for OS X. Futhermore, it is very widely beleived that it will ship in Feb.
3. They quote The Register. I like the Register, I think they are a good source of humor, but for crying out loud, it like quoting The Onion. No credibility.
Burn Hollywood Burn
puns of wired "checking their sources" aside, this story must have been submitted a month ago and is only seeing press now. I'm sure if this story gets printed (on paper) we'll see a Whited-Out Section where Daikatana was.
"Me Ted"
BOSTON SUCKS!
What happened to the RIAA-approved DVD player that was supposed to be shipping?
> Can we solve this problem?
Yes. Lend your support for a different opensource OS, such as Fluke or EROS. Get it running under VMWare and the rest of the hardware support picture can be done at a more leisurely pace. Linux isn't the only game in town.
--
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
They may have a point here. But not enough to consider the 4th place.
;) . The problem here is that we are starting to have a community segment that is not capable to achieve this, by their own means...
Yes, Linus stated a lot of "soon, soon, soon..." and that's bad. I think that timelines should be more strictly stated and the process of kernel delivery made more simple and strightforward. Because many people are already working with 2.4 since the first "test" releases. Here 2.4 is widely used since test6 and that is a few monthes ago. A lot of people on the community are already using "test" tarballs for quite long.
Yes, many users don't feel the "benefits" of 2.4. But sorry people that's what Linux is all about - construction sets. I perfectly understand that some may not have the preparation to make a kernel upgrade or play with it. Unfortunately the difference between Windows and Linux is exactly on this. You build the system according to your needs and don't wait for the train to arrive to your station. You build the train and get off the station
Anyway, Linus is wrong by saying a lot of "soons". But even if he shot 2.4 in December, it would take 3-4 monthes to see it on the distros. And nearly half year to see it widespreading. So I would still put 2.4 in this vapourware list. Just to blame the way this kernel is being promised. But surely not in 4th place. Somewhere between 8th or 9th, maybe.
They shouldn't be mentioning release dates when they really have no idea what the hell they're talking about. When was 2.4 originally supposed to come out? Like a year ago? What happened to that date? And now there's something from Linus saying early December, hopefully. Hell, it's almost early January. Since they obviously have no clue what they're talking about why even mention a release date in the first place?
Why not just say "It'll be done when it's done" and leave it at that rather than pulling dates out of thin air that obviously mean nothing?
Yeah, I guess if you count prerelease test kernels.
infinitely more vaporous than most of the top 10, including OSX, which has been in beta for a while...
of course, .NET will be out there, RSN
tagline
... hi bingo
Please. TF2 is the biggest piece of vapourware to be .. erm, conceived? They've been working on this game for YEARS!
Don't get me started on Daikatana.
------------
CitizenC
Linus said 2.4 would be out in December. But December isn't over yet...
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
god and Santa Claus. I have been praying for peace on earth and putting it at the top of christmas list for about 37 years, and once again, I look under the tree, up in the heavens, and on the nightly news, and I see no sign of it. *sigh*
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
One list of 2.4 issues is available here, for the curious.
dtach - A tiny program that emulates the detach feat
The architecture of the current Linux kernel served it well over the first few years of its existence: it allowed a lot of features and reasonable performance to be implemented quickly. But it may not serve as well in the current environment.
Can we solve this problem? Maybe one of the open source microkernels, or maybe the use of some other programming language for the kernel that couples different parts of the kernel less tightly and isolates the kernel from problems in individual modules would help. Or maybe it will be possible to move there incrementally, without starting from scratch.
Actually, when Mark Ursino coined the phrase it meant products that existed only in their press releases. At the time a lot of companies would do the press release and possibly a mock up and show that to the press and at trade shows to get orders. They'd then take the money from those orders to pay for tha actual development while putting out announcements about the final version being delayed. So any product that is even in development isn't truly vaporware.
1) Vaporware USED to mean that it does not exist except as a pipe dream and Linux 2.4 is WAY beyond just a pipe dream... it really _will_ come out soon (and how many times has that been said!).
:)...
... January... spring... summer... fall... december", then people would not be so hyped/disappointed.
2) But if you are using their definition of vaporware as just software that was expected out by now, then the 2.4 kernel does earn a spot.
It is easy to second guess the actions of great men (Linus Torvalds and company) but far harder to be worthy of their respect. And yet I critisize anyway
When Linus Torvalds blessed the beginning of the 2.3 developement cycle, he said he wanted MUCH SHORTER developement cycles with "9 months being about right". Nine months came and went and he started saying he expected to see it done by xx/xx/xxxx date while in the mean time, he kept accepting neat new features/rewrites to the kernel causing more delays.
Now if Linus had not talked publicly about "shorter developement cycles" and "hope to get it out before
If Linus had just said something to the press like this:
"I really don't know when to expect the next kernel out. We are perfectionist and when a new kernel is released, we want to be proud to have our names attached to it... We think that the 2.2 kernel is a very good kernel and we hope that for those few who could really use the new features in 2.3, that we can provide them as soon as we know how."
With variations of a response like that, people would never be able to claim 2.4 is late. Now on the mailing list, Linus's speaches about getting 2.3 ready ASAP, was/is resonable and any reporter who writes about stuff from the kernel mailing list should be lynched.
BTW: From reading LKML, I think the kernel developers have done an exceptional job with the 2.4 kernel and it is really something to look forward to.
I miss the Karma Whores.
And Apple's OSX - they aren't done either. Tribes 2 is full of bugs, and it isn't done. I hope companies don't listen/read these. I'm happy to wait for a finished product. Release it when it's done, not when it's due.
Do the obvious to e-mail me.
Duane
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Vaporware used to imply software that only existed in press releases and screenshots. No one outside of the company had seen actual running copies of the software in question.
.NET could be considered non-vapor, if you consider Visual Studio.NET and the Whistler betas to be released products.
By that standard, Linux 2.4.x and Mac OS X are certainly not vaporware. Even
I mean, it's not like the 2.4 test kernels are hidden from the world, only mentioned in glowy press releases and described as the Second Coming of MS.
Wired: Will Troll For Hits
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
I heard that Linus said he is going to give a 5% discount for each day that 2.4 misses the December release date by.
.
Oh, wait . .