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.'"

Comments

Vapourware? Thank God!

[Jon Erikson]

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.

Re:Vapourware? Thank God!

[Jon Erikson]

Ask any Economics 101 student and he will tell you that a free, open service market will eventually become closed, and the barriers to entry then raised insurmountably high. At this point, you need the government to step in and free up the market.

Only if their department has been corrupted by the Chomskyist rantings of certain anticapitalist agitators. Time and time again it has been shown that a free market leads to the maximinally efficient allocation of resources in a free market. And America is perhaps the only place in the world that has had the sense to reject the yoke of socialism and implement such a system.

In case you weren't aware of it, in a free market there is this little thing called competition which ensures that different companies are able to compete on their merits and ensures that a closed market never forms. Only when socialism interferes do such monopoly situations arise; hence the rise of the monopoly in America since the great socialist takeover of the last 70 years.

Labelling

[Jon Erikson]

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!

Re:Yo Motherfucker

[Sloppy]

Some day you'll upgrade your 386sx to something faster. When that day comes, you'll have enough memory to run a web browser that was written in 1995 (when most browsers started to support PNG) or later.