Slashdot Mirror
Wired Releases Annual Vaporware List
alacqua writes: "Wired
has an article titled
Vaporware 2001: Empty Promises
which is a top-ten list of last year's vaporware.
'You've Got Smell!'
made it, but the Justice Department did not. Says Wired, 'Speaking of Microsoft, some smart-aleck readers opined that the most vaporous thing in tech last year was the Justice Department's failure to deliver on its promise to punish Bill Gates for his company's monopolistic misdeeds -- but we thought that a bit of a stretch.'"
Wasn't last year's Vaporware's list OS X? I think we will always have vaporware esp. since it only costs a few bucks to get an AP Wire sent out! Oh well. My 2k2 Vaporware prediction is that we will still not see DNF -- but I wouldn't mind being wrong on that!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Anyone remember that one?
This would be the biggest 'vaporware' of all.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
who wants to bet Lindows tops that list?
Cheers,
RLJ
From the article:
But 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller wasn't very upset to hear about his product getting the Vaporware top spot. "It's a very ambitious game," he said. "It's not cookie-cutter shooter like most are nowadays
If it's another FPS, how can it NOT be cookie-cutter ?
Absolute statements are never true
#4 Team Fortress 2.
That is a great question!! What the hell happened to that? TF is a great game, and the thought of adding real voice to the game seemed like a sure-thing. Now, years later, I haven't heard squat.
Reading the TF2 site, I noticed that it was given a "Game of the Year" award...in 1998!
Vapor award for vaporware!
Go figure!
I for one am glad that the Government, for whatever reason, was denied the opportunity to meddle in the affairs of business! The whole Microsoft lawsuit was nothing more than a ham-handed attempt by various Democrat cronies at making a name for themselves (as seen by Jackson's shameless publicity maneuvers) by attacking one of America's great success stories in the commercial world.
Government has no business interfering with the market! As any Economics 101 student, a free market is the most efficient way of allocating limited resources known to man, and every time the Government gets involved we end up with corruption and red tape which serve only to line the pockets of the beurocrats at the expense of honest taxpayers - that's you and me folks! Whether you like Microsoft's software or not, they are an important part of our economy responsible for the continued employment of thousands and an important driving force in the computer industry.
No, I'm glad that since George has come to power this ridiculous socialist attack on our economy has been derailed and things have gotten back to how they should be - a free market, not one in which the Government meddles in order to score points. Recognising the power of the free market is what has made America the economic powerhouse of the world, and those that choose to ignore this are little better than the liberals that decry our actions in Afghanistan.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
announce a bunch of new hardware before they went ka-blooey?
How did warcraft 3 make the list of vaporware? It's coming out soon, the beta is tonight... Just because something is delayed doesn't make it vaporware.
"8. Artificial intelligence: Weren't we supposed to have talking, thinking, "living" computers by 2001?"
What? Dick Clarke isn't enough for you? Ok, maybe he's missing the "living" part, but two out of three ain't bad.
Wired is spot-on in a couple of areas, but I'm afraid they missed the biggest "Vaporware" of the entire year: The antitrust "breakup" of Microsoft.
I don't know about anyone else, but that's been the most frustrating waiting game in the Industry for a long time now, IMHO.
Come on. Blizzard is one of a select few game development companies who care to take the time to do the game right. Unlike Ion Storm, Blizzard isn't going through personnel changes and company infighting. Unlike Ion Storm, Blizzard has a pretty strong track record for delivering very high quality games (Warcraft, WarcraftII, Starcraft, Diablo, Diablo II). They have always been a "we release it when it's done, now go away" type company. Frankly, that's a good thing.
Also, some of the dev efforts have been diverted to a Warcraft MMPORG.
There is a lot of vaporware in the games industry, but when you pin a top company with a near flawless track record going back a decade working on their next-big-thing as vaporware, you will be proven wrong.
I always laugh when I see that name.
I keep thinking of a jingle a colleague
of mine proposed "Pull my finger for iSmell".
Gotta luv it!
So I guess the next version of Duke Nukem won't be out until next year? ;)
I for one am glad that the software developers (3D Realms for Duke Nukem Forever in particular) are taking their time creating this game. I am sick and tired of games being released these days that need patch after patch, often times just to make the game PLAYABLE, let alone enjoyable.
Where and when should developers draw the line? Shouldn't that be for them to decide?
-- Dan
Many thought Diablo 2 was really Starcraft 2 but it turned out not to be true. Now it looks like Warcraft Battle.net addition and Warcraft III are going to come out next leaving Starcraft 2 out in the cold. But I think this is fine. Starcraft 1 still has some left in it even thought it is over 4 years old.
aren't exactly vaporware, unlesss you consider vaporware to be something that is already designed, built and in operation.
OK so there was a lot of fuss made over them and unless your in Japan you're probably not going to get your hands on one. But realize that the phone companies buying 3G bandwidth was not a guarentee you were going to get the phones straight away, more like an insurance policy that the telco's would still be alive in a few years when they are providing it.
Also why does warIII make this list? It's just going into public beta, they could have at least selected 'World of Warcraft' instead.
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
How about a linux distribution that actually works, yet is easy to set up (ie: no kernel recompile, no scrambling for more libs). Maybe even decent laptop support, and OpenGL support out of the box.
Something like Redhat (though better) with more of a Slackware approach to how it works.
I've been hearing about this one for years. If it would some day arrive, it'd be very nice. Until then, Windows XP it is. I don't have the time to fuck with linux for hours.
Dragging people kicking and screaming into reality since 1996.
Funny, I remember calls for beta testers from both Diablo 2 and Diablo 2:LOD. Here in the Western US, they ship betas.
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
Yep. I dream of the day when food products no longer need to have those annoyingly informative nutritional labels upon them.
The fact is that in a free market such labels would already exist, because consumers would demand them! Instead we have the situation where consumers are lulled into a false sense of security by Big Brother socialism, and sheeplike, accept any and all measures designed to protect them from themselves, even when such measures are clearly less efficient than their free market alternatives!
Jon Erikson, IT guru
It's in the /. MacWorld coverage.
But still, they're right. I think I can be correct (mostly) in saying that Apple wouldn't exist today if it weren't for Adobe, and without X-native Adobe apps, X will flounder. It's a *wonderful* OS, but Adobe has long been providing Apple with the killer apps it needs to stay alive, and OS X is no exception.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
10. Indrema: This company cast itself as a slayer of corporate behemoths -- Indrema said it would produce an open-source game console that could beat those from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. But the available evidence suggests that, in the company's short life, all it managed to get out the door were a few sorry press releases.
"If only they would have gotten off their sorry butts and built the stupid device instead of modeling 3-D mockups and obsessing over the developer's kit," said reader Tim Toner, who had great expectations for the system, "there would already be a fanatical grassroots developer network in place big enough to scare the big guys." Those big guys did well last year in the world of games, but Indrema died a quiet death last spring.
9. Peekabooty: With governments tightening their controls on cyberspace -- purportedly to fight terrorism -- it's time we had a thing called Peekabooty, the advocates screamed. Peekabooty was to be an "anti-censorship" Web surfing tool promised early last year -- but never delivered -- by the Cult of the Dead Cow (CoDC), a group of privacy-minded hackers.
One reader said: "Everybody was freaking out because it was supposed to be released in the first days of July, but then it was delayed of a few weeks, and months later, if you go back to the CoDC website, there is still nothing about it, not even a general idea of when to expect it."
8. Artificial intelligence: Weren't we supposed to have talking, thinking, "living" computers by 2001?
There was that Spielberg movie -- but even if it was robotic, it didn't count. Jimmy St. Germain commented on the lack of "actual work" produced by Cyc, the ages-old A.I. project headed by Douglas Lenat. To be fair, Cyc is not really vapor -- some of its intelligence is in use in some network tools, for example. "But I am not a systems administrator," St. Germain said. "I just wanted to be blown away."
He raises a good point. Where are our robots?
7. Digiscents iSmell: The digital-age version of Smell-O-Vision got its media start with a cover story in Wired magazine -- "You've Got Smell!" the headline proclaimed -- but even that wasn't enough to make this quirky idea a reality.
The company's main undelivered product was called, cutely, the iSmell, which Digiscents said would have been the world's first consumer "personal scent synthesizer." You would hook up the iSmell to your computer "just like speakers," a company spokesman said last year, but instead of synthesizing the sound of an onscreen explosion, the iSmell would blow out a whiff of smoke-scented air.
There were actual working prototypes of this device, which traveled to trade shows and newsrooms to prove that, yes, smell technology did exist. But finding itself short on cash, Digiscents shut its doors last April. "I know the damn thing worked -- I had a working one on my desk," said John Hayes, one of the readers who suggested that iSmell should make the vapor list. "That's why it was so frustrating to me. In some ways the Digiscents experience will push back (the release of smell synthesizers) by a few years."
6. Silicon Film's electronic film system: Last year, Silicon Film Technologies made our list for failing to deliver its intriguing "digital film" system, which purported to turn an ordinary camera into a digital one. The digital film, one year later, is still not available, to the chagrin of many readers.
The company's website is still up and it still promises to ship its digital film when "required certifications are obtained." But the phone number doesn't seem to work any more, which led Tom Hammer, a Wired News reader, to wonder if "this was one of the great Internet hoaxes of all time."
5. 3G wireless networks: Unless you're a wealthy Tokyo businessman, you've probably heard a lot about next-generation wireless services but have never had the chance to try it. For many years, telecom companies have been saying that high-speed wireless services -- including video and audio on your cell phone -- were just around the regulatory and technical corner.
But Carlos Salvestrini wrote: "I still can't quite get a hold of a device that supports 3G mobile service, let alone a company that provides it. It appears as if there's this whole big 'mobile revolution,' but if I don't have a device to test it in, or someone who offers me the service, how can the revolution be happening?"
4. Team Fortress 2: Valve Software has been promising to release this purportedly groundbreaking multi-player game for a few years now. The company's website says that Team Fortress 2 "blends role-based action with the social camaraderie found in classic war movies," but many readers wondered whether Valve was even working on the title.
"This was one (first-person shooter) that would wander off the beaten path," Mike Parker wrote. "And it did more than that, it wandered off into the bushes, never to be found again."
3. Photoshop for OS X: Apple's new operating system for the Macintosh, Mac OS X, is a fine OS, but the company would likely be getting more plaudits for the system if Mac heads could purchase Adobe Photoshop for it.
Rumor has it that Adobe will release at least a beta version of Photoshop OS X during the next few months, but that apparently hasn't satisfied many who want to use their pretty new Macs when they play Photoshop tennis.
"Where's the beef?" Juli Maclean asked. "My suggestion: The accounting folks in Cupertino (Apple's California headquarters) should walk a mob down to San Jose and hold their pitchforks and torches at Adobe's front door, demanding that they ship a Carbonized Photoshop now so that their OS X sales will kick in from people like us -- their bread and butter."
2. Warcraft III: Nobody was more eloquent about the tardiness of Blizzard software's next offering in its popular Warcraft series than Tadhg Kelly, who seemed to take the company's actions as a personal affront.
"Never have the continuing expectations of so many been dashed by the tardiness of so few," he said.
If you check back in the Wired News archives, you'll find Kelly saying the exact same thing in last year's Vaporware piece. That's because Warcraft III was vapor, then, too. Called for comment, a Blizzard spokeswoman said the lateness was "in typical Blizzard fashion," because the company wants to make sure the software reaches the standards it is happy with.
And the winner is
The company's website says: "There is no date. We don't know any date. If you have a friend who claims they have 'inside info,' or there's some game news site, or some computer store at the mall who claims they know -- they do not. They are making it up. There is no date. Period."
That kind of talk led Holger Kleinsorgen to write, "Future generations will say 'when Duke Nukem Forever is released' when they mean 'when hell freezes over.'" And Dennis Murphy said, "This is the game I'm going to be telling my grandkids about waiting for -- and then they're going to tell me, 'Yeah, we know. So are we!'"
But 3D Realms CEO Scott Miller wasn't very upset to hear about his product getting the Vaporware top spot. "It's a very ambitious game," he said. "It's not cookie-cutter shooter like most are nowadays, and we're pushing a lot of standards. The proof will be in the pudding."
But will the pudding be here in time to avoid inclusion on next year's Vaporware list? Miller said he'd rather not answer that.
Aside from promises made aproximately 40 years ago (and every decade since then), I don't know of anyone who honestly expected AI to arrive in 2001, especially no one who knew anything about it in 2001, or in 2000, or 1999, etc. Claiming its vaporware was a bit off. No one is marketing HAL to the masses everyday, like the other things on the list.
Secondly, Blizzard has always been late with their games. Usually several years late. In fact, I submitted a story (that actually got accepted) to Slashdot a few months ago saying that Warcraft3 wouldn't be out until 2002. Blizzard is almost always the first to say "Calm down, its not ready yet" as opposed to other items on the list that we were always being told "Expect to get this real soon!"
I always felt Vapor involved products that we were falsely told to expect soon. Both AI and Warcraft3 were things that we should have known weren't coming anytime soon. Thinking otherwise is a result of being ill informed.
I know it's not Duke Nukem Forever, but what is Duke Nukem Endangered Species?
Hogsback
The above copy does not include links in the document.
For a better "Rundown minus advertising" that includes the links use this please.
I remember reading somewhere about devices that squirted miniscule amounts of flavoring upon a tastless wafer. Are these around? Or should they be added to the list of vaporware?
Everything is mainstream now.
That "digital film" idea is a pretty damn good idea. If it had a good enough sensor, it would rock to be able to use a real camera with real lenses. It makes me wonder if they could make the sensor part thin enough to fit in the average camera.
Other problems are battery life (not a lot of room for batteries), and where can you put a flash card (don't think it would fit in that format).
Still, if someone could pull that off, it might rock hard. Imagine being able to use either film or digital depending on what you're doing.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
When games are in development over a year, they start looking dated, compared to the hottest new hardware, and the screenshots for next year's vaporware.
Over two years, and publishers start insisting on rewrites to use the latest and greatest XXXEngine, because the XXEngine is no longer a hot marketing buzzword to use in advertisments.
Past that, and the code base has been rewritten a dozen times, all of the original people on the team have left (what's 3DO up to, 3 layoffs now?), and it's just a deathmarch.
I swear I will do my damndest to incoporate this line into everyday conversation tomorrow. I just want to see the jaws drop.
Thanks for the laugh, troll,
-- RLJ
It's probably a good thing that the iSmell didn't make it last year. I can see a whole new world of disasterous hacking in the works. The ability to make somebody's iSmell give off an iFart whenever you felt like it would probably cost companies billions as all their employees begin bickering and taking constant fresh-air breaks.
Wired doesn't get it: software development is HARD. I can't really blame them, though, when so-called software developers don't get it. How hard can it be, I say, when I myself have developed several Visual Basic applications? Naturally this doesn't distinguish between doing it and doing it RIGHT. There is the problem of defining requirements; they generally turn out to conflict; then they change every other week. I'll say it again: developing commercial software for general release is HARD. And for the terminally inattentive, I'll spell out the rule of software release:
It is released when it is released. Don't expect it any sooner.
Anyway, here's Wired's (software) Vaporware for the last three years. Consider this year's in light of it...
Vaporware 1998: Windows 2000
It's here now.
Vaporware 1999
9. Ideaworks3d's Vecta3D
It's here now.
7. Games for the Mac
Not a Mac afficionado; all I know is that there are Mac games, but not many. I'll give them this one.
6. SDMI
It's here now, though flawed in both concept and execution...
5. Daikatana
It's here now.
4. Diablo II
It's here now.
3. Netscape's Communicator 5.0
It's here now (though they secretly incremented the version number while no one was looking).
1. Windows 2000
See 1998's list, above
Vaporware 2000
10: Tribes 2
It's here now.
6: Warcraft III
Hey, they finally nailed one!
4: A New Linux kernel (2.4, specifically)
It's here now.
3: Black and White
It's here now.
2: Duke Nukem Forever
This one's not here, but the article itself states there's no scheduled release date! How is this vaporware?
1: Mac OS X
It's here now.
So, Wired, in the software category, you called 2 out of 14 (both of which are still under active development). The rest weren't vapor. How, then, should we view this year's software entries?
They gave up quake 2 long ago. Now it will look like Unreal Tournament.
Xanadu has definitely got to be the king of vapourware! Four decades in the making, and still not ready :)
I guess it will never be, really. The original concept was way too wacky, even for modern times. But three cheers to Ted Nelson for his advances in Hypertext systems! Many of his concepts are used on the internet nowadays. Modern version-control systems remind me of his "time-scrolling" idea, and although we dont need "visible" links we certainly would be better off having zero broken links. He even foresaw copyright problems in the digital age!
I believe they meant that they don't ship 1.0 version releases that should have been beta tests.
In other words, they wait until the product is ready before they officially release it.
That Amiga's internet application development is done by a company called VaporWare
...people who give a shit about Wired anymore!
AI always makes a safe bet for vapourware each year. I've never been ever to figure out how the human species can possibly build an intelligent machine when man himself does not possess intelligence itself.
As the old Trek joke goes, "Bean me up Scotty, no intelligent life here!"
And it may be in others also.
I think that late releases by blizzard are intentional.
IIRC:
Warcraft II was the most anticipated game of the year.
Starcraft was the most anticipated game of year
Diablo was the most anticipated game of year
Diablo II was the most anticipated game of the year
Warcraft III is probably going to be the most anticipated game of two years if ths trend continues.
badness 10000
...goes to GNOME's lack of anti-aliased fonts.
AA fonts may not have been promised by any developers but how can we live in the year 2002 without anti-aliased fonts on our desktop? Sometimes I find a quiet, isolated spot and just sob quietly thinking about it.
I know there's the gdkxft project, but let's get it into standard distributions soon.
It is on the alltime greatest vaporware games. Its worth a read.
Then there was also <insert Microsoft slam here>. And don't forget <insert Sun's latest Java-enabled pipe dream> - I mean, who couldn't see that coming!
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
Wired should take a look at Brooks work ( http://www.ai.mit.edu/ ), they are getting there, pritty darn quickly too...g roup/cog ) is flipping cool, as is many other projects at the AI lab at MIT.
Cog ( http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-
mlk
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
I hereby coin the term "Crumble Ware" to apply to things like Anarchy Online, that maybe should have been left as Vapor for a little longer. They were sent out into the hands of eager consumers before they were done, and were shoddy and incomplete.
/. here )
So I'm now nominating the following products into the Crumble Ware top 10:
Mac OS X v 10.0 (10.1.2 is actually quite good)
Xbox (see
Halo (only on xbox)
AO
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
I find it funny that Warcraft 3 made the list on the same day that beta test signups for WC3 are being accepted. Mind you, the site seems to be completely down at the moment.
---
I didn't want to leave this space blank.
Turn into "Time Magazine?"
> To be fair, Cyc is not
> really vapor -- some of its intelligence is in
> use in some network tools, for example.
So...why is it in the list of top vapor stuff?
> "But I am not a systems administrator," St.
> Germain said. "I just wanted to be blown away."
Ahh. You're bored by practical applications of AI to solve existing problems. Maybe, once the important problems get solved, we'll give you some automated pr0n.
> He raises a good point. Where are our robots?
Geeez...you'd think that "Wired" would have realized that:
1. AI is hard.
2. The last time we thought all the hard AI problems would be solved RSN was in the early eighties.
3. Aibo and other consumer products have color and motion tracking built in without requiring a BS in Geek.
unplug it. Smashing it with a 20-lb sledge would work too, and be more stress relieving. :)
Indeed no profits.
Wait until next year,
Then about at this time we will
see on wired:
Greatest Tech. Failures of 2002:
.
.
.
3) VAsoftware
2) transmeta
1) linux as a business plan
then give me a Linux that has a wizard based autodetecting (i aint got the patience to write down irq's or scrabble about looking for card names with a screwdriver under my desk) install that will run on ntfs or fat/32 ,will seamlessly boot alongside 2 other win os's by using the NT loader without screwing up my drives, does not require multiple partitions and 3gb to install, has built in full networking support for m$ networks so i can integrate it into our lan without spending hours setting shit up, comes complete with a fully functional mouse based gui drag n drop by default ,no compiling command line shite ,comes on 1 bootable cd rom (no floppy crap), oh and before i forget i want it for free, any ideas ?
Redmond Linux looks pretty nice too; dunno how it is to install, but they've made it look like windows and apparently added stuff to make it network easily into a windows environment.
Links not provided.. use google..!
455fe10422ca29c4933f95052b792ab2
Should whatever IT was make the list? I'm still waiting for the most revolutionary product ever created to hit. All I see is some over priced scooter you can't buy for another several years.
;)
The only thing that could be more vaporus than Duke Nukem Forever would be the OS X version of Duke Nukem Forever.
WikiAfterDark.com It's a sex wiki, go now!
http://www.RunABot.com/ - has over 8,000 online chat bots. Create your own.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
PNG sucks, I have to load a plugin to use it. Not using PNG is GOOD from my point of view. Now go ask Apple to convert to Ogg or something.
The LZW algorithm, which is used to encode GIF images, is patented, and the patent owner (Unisys) tries to get people to pay if they sell software with a GIF encoder in it.
IIRC, LZW is only used for the compression of GIF images, not the actual encoding. There has been a GIF library alternative, libungif, available for some time now. It lets you programatically work with GIF images sans LZW. If you have to work with GIFs, check it out. Otherwise, like you said, PNGs are much better.
It's a very dark ride.
> Speaking of Microsoft, some smart-aleck readers
> opined that the most vaporous thing in tech
> last year was the Justice Department's failure
> to deliver on its promise to punish Bill Gates
> for his company's monopolistic misdeeds -- but
> we thought that a bit of a stretch.
Please. Want to reenact Bill Gates vs. the DoJ?
Here's how.
Take your hand (Right or left, it doesn't matter) and look at it, so that your knuckles are facing you.
Next, fold your pinky and thumb so that they're connected behind your palm.
Then, fold your index and ring fingers down.
Congratulations - you're the DoJ, and Bill Gates' hand is your own!
you are hi-larious.
This'll blow my karma to hell, but, hey, you only live once. :P
Granted IPv6 isn't technically vaporware since it DOES exist and *BSD and Linux support it. But, really, outside your own private network, who's using it? Any of the major ISPs? Don't think so.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not knocking it. It just that if it's so much better than the IPv4 we've all been using, why isn't it being widely used? And don't tell me that new technologies take time to be implemented widely. Hell, P2P/Napster took off like teenage girls to an N'Sync concert, and IPv6 was around before then.
Oh, fuck it! Who wants pie?!
It's a very dark ride.
Let's see...suppose they could make it work and be the same size as 35mm. Then you have a system that:
1) gives you no preview so you don't know if the colour balance is right, focus was okay, or if someone blinked. This is one of the main advantages of digital.
2) would have horribly limited storage capacity and battery capacity. Just think, all the electronics, the battery pack, and the flash memory all have to fit in a space the size of a 35mm roll of film
3) would have to be made specifically for individual camera models due to the fact that the size and positioning of the light sensor has to exactly match the interior of the camera. This means that either there would only be a few compatible cameras, or the "digital film" canister would have to be made in dozens of different models, at much increased expense.
4) would be very unwieldy to change rolls. Either you buy two of them at double the cost, or you wait while it downloads to a laptop or other more permanent storage. Either you pay twice as much, or you chance missing that perfect shot.
The digital film idea has been hashed out multiple times on rec.photo.digital, and unless you're dealing with medium format digital backs ($20K and up), it just doesn't make sense.
Mozilla, Konqueror, Opera, Netscape 4.0+, and IE 5.0+ fully support PNG.
OmniWeb seems to as well - that's what I'm using to post this on my Mac OS X box.
And, just to keep this on topic, my vapor vote goes to IPv6. I hear deployment is still just around the corner. In the mean time, I still can't get a guaranteed static IP at any price from a cable or DSL provider here in Buffalo.
Supposedly IPv6 will have enough addresses to give one to each of the angels dancing on the head of the proverbial pin. Can't wait.
--saint
This is just more proof that when a person (OJ Simpson) or corporation(m$) has the financial resources and the power that comes with it to go one on one with the gov in a court room they always win and we (the taxpayers) lose?
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
Registration for beta starts in about three hours (PST). Dang it (for ActiveX part)!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
I have given up on Duke Nukem 3D Forever.
If they bost to have to best 3D engine when released, then they have to rewrite the engine to keep up with current tech..
And by the time that engine is ready it will be out of date, then they will never get to the point they feel it is ready.....
Wise men speak because they have something to say, Fools because they have to say something!!!!
I thought Top Ten Lists were OUT in the wake of Sept. 11. No wait, that was In or Out lists. That were out. My bad. I'm outta here.
Edith Keeler Must Die
Does anyone know the current status of TF2? I remember back in 1998 TF2 was scheduled to be released as an add-on pack for Half Life in late November. I even pre-ordered it from EB that summer. I ended up getting an e-mail from EB in early 99 stating that my pre-order was canceled due to release changes.
Number 1: Major Code Rewrite
Duke has never been about the engine its always been about Duke and the wacky adventures he gets into. "Come Get Some" comes to mind. 3DRealms went back and totally rewrote the game for the Unreal engine. Never ever ever ever go back and totally rewrite something unless your working in parallel. It just isn't worth it.
Number 2: This has been hyped for a LONG TIME
I was still living in the DORMS playing Quake 2 when they said this thing would be out soon. I distinctly remember chatting with people on the second map on the original CTF rotation about it. Don't give me the crap about "Its done when its done".
Number 3: Give leeway to those companies that deserve
At Microsoft anytime you are on a team that ships a product you get an award. id Software and John Caramack will have shipped Doom 3 before this thing gets out the door. Blizzard gets leeway because they generally take longer but STUFF SHIPS! This must make 3DRealms investors bonkers. Do you pull the plug on the funding or do you get out a product.
I predict DNF will be exactly like Romero's piece of trash. It will smack of dating, be full of holes, and everyone will laugh. Show of hands of people who thing they could have studied C++ and game programming for two years then went pack to an ALREADY built engine and wrote this thing? Not sure if I could but I bet a big hunk of individuals here could.
HT
You truly are retarded, because you believe that big business is the only way to achieve anything worthwhile.
Jobs, money, stuff--knock yourself out--there's more to life than ANY of that crap.
Actually, you're not a retard, you're a fucktard.
I think they did start shipping at a point this year actually, but after a month they suspended operations:
link.
He's also an atheist. Atheists are cool.
Those of us waiting for live!ware 3.0 to extend the use of live!drives have been waiting for the release e-mail for months, and their web site hasn't changed. Yes the CD is for windows, and Yes i have to use it for work/games, so get over it. If you have a live!drive you know how badly the release is needed.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
Or alternatively: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NCE Z/o/qid%3D1010095826/sr%3D8-1/ref%3Dsr%5Faps%5Fvg% 5F1%5F1/026-6218755-4392446
two words, HOLY SHIT!
Our Price: £27.99
Platform: Windows 95, Windows 98
Release Date: 8 March, 2002. Not Yet
Available: You may still order this product.
We will ship it to you when it is released by the manufacturer
-- Dan
1. Oh! I didn't know that my SLR 35's didn't have a preview. Not everybody uses digital for the LCD screen, I'd almost pay extra for one without that power-sucking feature. I like a viewfinder and use digital mainly for the ease in processing and the capacity of the CF cards.
2. Am I the only one in the world who wouldn't mind carring a belt pack with extra battery power to have decent life and a reasonably powerful flash? I remember carring a 510 volt battery on my hip for a long time because it gave me a strobe with a 40' range and 2 second recycle times. Talk about being able to get those otherwise missed shots.
3. This would not be a toy for the masses but for serious amatures and pros who already have a serious investment in a quality system and accessories. Custom backs for a few Nikons and Canons would cover most of the market.
4. Removable storage? A simple CF slot on those few custom backs we already decided on. How many gigs do you need?
Maybe RECREATION.photo.digital isn't the place for such discussions.
Profanity - The sign of a small mind trying to express itself.
I want to know what ever happened to Neverwinter Nights, I even went back to school so I'd have time to play it when it came out... maybe I'll get a degree instead.
Amazingly, looking at their news page, they're still going!
Come on, where is the damn card guys? ;)
Sounds like you've already bought the M$ crap hook, line and sinker! M$ networki. Please. You should really try a TCP/IP network.
Try SuSE 7.3. You can download it.
What about the Tux2 file system that was announced on Slashdot last year? The SourceForge site is dead and Google only turns up the original announcement and links to dead pages.
It would have gone to BidforPower.
as soon as you give me a windows NT that runs on a HPFS or ext2fs.
Asking for bullshit are we?
They've been promising that one for a long time. Judging from the continuing news of security holes and virii, I'd sure put it on the vapor list.
No sig? Sigh...
and was watching TV within minutes of the Linux install, on the tuner in my Linux box. Blew me away. Can't do that with windows.
By the way, is working at MS fun?
What about that all hyped video card from Bit Boys. Now THAT was vaporware and hype... I remember endless articles on how it was the next best thing to sliced bread...
.NET is the biggest piece of vaporware ever. MSFT should call it .NOT
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
Actually, Doug Lenat and Cycorp , who were mentioned in the article, seemed to be expecting just that - if you think Mr. Lenat beleives the claims that he has made. And whether or not he turns out to be correct, he seems to be a very smart man.
My take (and I am certainly no expert) is that Mr. Lenat is a theorist and he sees no theoretical problem to acheiving his goals. This leaves him with an engineering problem which he consistently underestimates. I know I have essentially that problem often, although on a much smaller scale.
Back to AI, you can add the fact that AI seems to be defined differenly by every person you speak to. This is another factor which can cause estimates on when the vapor will materialize to vary greatly. Some would even say AI had already arrived in 2001.
Move on. There's nothing to see here.
If Duke Nukem Forever has no release date, why does Amazon list it as being released on 8 March, 2002?? It has it on it's pre-order list....maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel.........
https://comerford.net
Amazon are renowned for selling items when they don't have an actual release date. If it's not announced at 3Drealms, then nobody knows the ship date.
My Journal
It is missing the most important vaporware of all: KERBANGO!!! To this date, I haven't seen any comparable piece of hardware
Duke Nukem Forever should really be renamed Dikatana2.
I have heard it said that the title isn't Duke Nuken Forever, that's just how long it will take to get to market...
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
Surely this should be in the top ten vapourware list.
For over six years who ever has owned the dead parrot that call itself Amiga has been telling us that "the Amiga revival is going to happen real soon." and that new Amigas are going to built.
Lately the Amiga One is supposed to be on sale real soon...
How I wish it was true, but in reality it should be the vapourware list....
Or if you want to be obtuse and tell me Microsoft is promising another MSX revival (oops showing my age there) i'll take that as vapourware instead
in case you're wondering, there is already a free standard for animated images that support lossy (jpg) and lossless (png) component images. =)
png info is at: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/
mng info is at: http://www.libpng.org/pub/mng/
I'd have thought the new Amiga would have made :-)
it into 2001's list again? Oh well, perhaps
'return of the Amiga' can make 2002's honours list?
Since when was D2 a solid, well polished game? No matter what you're smoking, I want some of that weed! Without the hype and the great D1, D2 would have failed sure as hell. It was technically backwards at release date (BTW, there was a patch 2 days before release...) and the 8 or 9 patches that followed only caused a shift to different problems. The most recent versions tend to be fairly stable but game balance in singleplayer has gone to hell.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
"The Reality Master is dedicated to viewing the world objectively; without emotionalism, wishful thinking, cynicism or silly prejudices"
Dude, you are so full of yourself, it's not even funny. *Everyone*, and that includes you, has a bias. That fact that you can't see that makes you one of the biggest hypocrites on Slashdot. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with having a bias, but at least have the wisdom and maturity to *admit* that you have one.
hint: if you are stuggling with finding your bias, I suggest reviewing your previous pro-miliary, pro-violence posts written sometime around Sept-Oct of last year.