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Ten Technology Disasters

Posted by michael on from the things-that-go-crunch dept.

Ant writes "What do a 17th-century Swedish warship, an opulent Chicago theater and a Kansas City hotel "skyway" have in common? All met catastrophic ends and they have important lessons to teach today's innovators."

11 of 327 comments (clear)

  1. They forgot about number 11 by SaxMaster · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... Submitting your page to Slashdot, technology disaster number 11 :)

    --
    "Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal desire" --Robert Frost
  2. 11th Technology Disaster by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    the mess of spaghetti code running slashdot...see today's downtime as exhibit z.

  3. Re:The real list--real world version by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    You forgot to squeeze this one into the list somewhere:

    Linux programmers trying to build a usable operating system.

  4. Re:From a luddite point of view: by Graspee_Leemoor · · Score: 3, Funny

    Someone's been reading the Age of Empires technology progression chart again...

    graspee

  5. Lets see ... by smartin · · Score: 1, Funny

    Dos
    Windows 1.x
    Windows 2.x
    Windows 3.x
    Windows 9.x
    Windows Me
    Windows nt
    Windows 2000
    Windows XP

    And the worst technology desaster...

    Microsoft Bob

    --
    The difference between Canada and the USA is that in Canada healthcare is a right and gun ownership is a privilege.
  6. Re:disasters course by Tumbleweed · · Score: 4, Funny

    > The engineering undergraduate program at Queens University actually
    > has a disasters course as one of the non-technical electives.
    ...
    > Supposedly this engenders a greater sense of responsibility into the
    > engineers to be.

    Perhaps, then, this should be a required class instead of an elective one. *shrug*

  7. Re:Breaking a few eggs and all that... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Maybe there should be an minimum level of intelligence required before having kids. And a minimum level of attractiveness too. We could breed out ugly, stupid people. Wahoo! In 2 generations the world would be full of hotties!

  8. Re:Breaking a few eggs and all that... by Matthaeus · · Score: 2, Funny

    You can't breed out stupidity

    No, but I'm sure we could find a way to make reproduction much less intuitive. If we had the source code, that is.

  9. Well mod me down and call me karmawhore by wheany · · Score: 3, Funny

    From the article:The result was the most lavishly appointed and heavily armed warship of its day, but one too long and too tall for its beam and ballast--a matchless array of features on an unstable platform.

    That's like Windows, right?

    1. Re:Well mod me down and call me karmawhore by t_allardyce · · Score: 3, Funny

      No, windows would be a ship of the same size with _one_ cannon that fired non-standard sized balls, sometimes fast enough to do damage, but more often than not, so slow that they would just plop out. It would still be unstable, but they wouldn't even be able to get 3 sailors on board before it started rocking. It would be launched anyway and even though it would sink after 5 minutes, 500 more ships of the same specs. would be built

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  10. What About /. by Lethyos · · Score: 3, Funny

    Does Slashdot fall into this so-called "technology failures/disasters" category?

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    Why bother.