Posted by
timothy
on from the cd-r-handheld-ogg-player dept.
ThatKidYouDid writes "Wired.com is holding a vote for this years best
vaporware. My vote definitely goes to the oqo, although I'd still snag one if they ever materialized. What do others really wish could have happened by Xmas?"
Re:MS .Net Server
by
TeknoDragon
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
RTFM
"As in previous years, software locked in the pre-release, beta-testing stage is considered vaporware, even if it's widely available. It hasn't shipped until it's shrink-wrapped."
Re:MS .Net Server
by
kraksmoka
·
· Score: 3, Funny
nah, my favorite is Mono by the good folks at Ximian.
better to promote free-vaporware than vaporware you're paying for if it's released or not.
-- "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." - Rahm Emanuel
Re:MS .Net Server
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Funny
Beta software is considered Vaporware? But I have windows installed right now!
While not 2002's.... UO 2...
by
TibbonZero
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I would have really liked to see UO ship, or at least release the source... instead of basically firing everyone and burning most of the work for no good reason..
If there is a piece of vaporware to rule them all it is Team Fortress 2. Check out the website http://tf2.sierra.com. The last time the news on the site was updated was Jan 23, 2001!!! The game has been in the works since 1998!! According to all the official websites TF2 is still in developement/coming soon. Neither Sierra nor Valve has reported that the game is dead. Some version of the game was even demo'd once or twice, which means it was SOMETHING.
TF2, king of vaporware.
-- The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
I actually did some sound effects work for this back when it was originally slated to be a Quake 2 mod by the TF team (before they all joined on with Valve). You can actually still download the MP3 of the sounds all put together, made to sound like one huge battle.
Once they got bought out by Valve, I got paid for the work I did and that was the last I saw/heard about the game really. Looking back at it now though, I hope they really don't use my old sounds, as they're quite dated and admitedly amateur.
At one point, while I was working on the last version of TF released for QuakeWorld (remember that?), Robin of TF had me take a look at a first run of TF2 for Quake2. I actually think I have that still laying around here on an old CD somewhere.
Remember Zeosync made that huge fuss claiming 100:1 compression on random data?
Many news agencies like Reuters ran with it and as usual Shanon proved them wrong (try www.zeosync.com hehe)
If only they had read the newsgroup compression FAQ they would have saved time and all that investor money (they had over $10 million at one point I believe).
Anyhow I thought that was the best vaporware... if only it could have been true;(
Re:100:1 Compression Baby!!!
by
frozenray
·
· Score: 4, Funny
> Remember Zeosync made that huge fuss claiming 100:1 compression on random data?
I bet that they probably achieved an even better compression ratio than 100:1 on their venture capital.
-- "There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
Neverwinter Nights for Linux is technically vaporware, as it has yet to be released, and isn't going to be released before January 10.
QuarkXPress for Mac OS X
by
phillymjs
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I actually submitted this one to Wired last week when they originally posted the request for submissions.
Those fuckwits at Quark have been pissing on their customers for years, and now they're making my life harder because I have to deal with supporting the Classic environment instead of being able to make a clean break to OS X.
I've heard that this way-overdue version of XPress has been the final straw for many of Quark's customers, and they're finally dropping XPress for Adobe InDesign. Quark's customer-hostility has done more to sell copies of InDesign than anything dreamed up by the folks in Marketing at Adobe.
~Philly
Son of Star Wars Missile Program
by
happyhippy
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Itll disappear in a couple of years when the govt cant get any more PR out of it for TWAT
Re:Doom III
by
tbradshaw
·
· Score: 3, Informative
At least we know from the leaked alpha that the game will ROCK:-)
If you've played the alpha and it rocks, and you're sure that it will rock when it comes out... how exactly is it vaporware?
I've had the pleasure of seeing the DOOM 3 theater presentation at QuakeCon 2002, and I can assure you that DOOM 3 is no where near vaporware. It's just so advanced that it's taking a slightly longer development cycle than your typical derived engined game.
I would probably guess that it's more finished than unfinished at this point. (entirely speculation) And Todd Hollenshead did joke with the crowd at QCon that id wasn't in the habit of showing preview versions of the same game year after year at E3.
Re:A working Linux distro
by
manly_15
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
In my mind, Mandrake has come close, but who knows how long they will continue to be around.
I don't think the actual software is the big problem. Most things are not too different from the various Windows OSes. The two main issues for the desktop are:
1. Command line fear. Let's face it. As easy as something like "ifup eth0" is, the idea of typing commands scares users. Sometimes, it can almost be more difficult for newbies to navigate a GUI, especially when you get multiple windows open. It would be really cool if there was a shell that understood straight english and was able to execute commands based on them, ex "connect to the internet", "delete file called xxx", etc.
2. Documentation A lot of the documentation for *nix is very good. However, most newbies wouldn't even think to look on the web, much less in on line help. Sort of like the Mandrake Installer, a desktop OS should have help integrated EVERYWHERE, with the option to turn it off once the user is comfortable with the system.
While vaporware is generally thought of as software, what about hardware? I'd say AMD's Hammer not coming out this year was the biggest vaporware of the year.
-- Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
... a RMS approved completely free operating system with nothing but GNU tools/kernel/etc.
... an actual gaming system based on linux.
... a crash proof secure windows distro.
... peace on earth
so many to choose from... so so many. I know HURD will never reach full developement (no one will dump linux to do something new), 3D in linux sucks hence why there are no games for linux, crash proof windows that is secure (MS always promises and always fails horribly, and well peace on earth and good will towards men (not so long as we got a war mongers running america...)
-- Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Re:Vaporware ...
by
(startx)
·
· Score: 4, Informative
... an actual gaming system based on linux
Did you try the Gentoo 1.4rc1 live cd? It booted, loaded the nvidia driver, and started the ut2003 demo for me with zero trouble.
No contest...
by
gregwbrooks
·
· Score: 3, Redundant
Best vaporware of the past year? Economic recovery.
--
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
I wonder how well the geek-virgin stereotype holds up to the myth, or if it just gets thrown around because we like to poke fun at ourselves. I'd like to see this slashdot poll:
Are you a virgin?
Yes
No
I'm keeping my virginty for Cowboy Neal you insensitve cold!
the matrix reloaded?
by
jefdiesel
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
sure i know the vampire queen's pilot was smoked out after a big week in the sun, but this movie was due out a while ago.. wasn't it?
Silicon Film Technologies should be on there, hands down. They won in 2000 or so. You'd think after two more years they'd find a way to make this work.
It's vapor, but it could be the road to digital for people with high-quality 35mm SLR cameras. Everyone wants to go digital for the convenience, the instant feedback on the shot, the uh, privacy of not going through a photo lab, etc. There must be over a million people with SLR's of higher optical quality than most of today's point-and-shoot digitals.
In fact, I can't imagine why this hasn't flown. I don't think anyone else has beaten them to the punch, and it seems technically feasible. Maybe they can't get the sensor thin enough to close the camera back?
Vaporware since 20 years. Not even "Duke Nukem Forever in Development" can beat GNU/Hurd.
Gotta be Duke Nukem Forever
by
hoser
·
· Score: 5, Funny
Yeah, it's made the list before, but it deserves to be on there again. We've been waiting for this game since:
- Clinton was president.
- The Spice Girls were popular.
- Princess Diana was alive.
- Tony Soprano was a twinkle in David Chase's eye.
- Yahoo was a good search engine.
- The X-Files was on, and it was worth watching.
It's been a long, long time since Duke Nukem Forever was announced. 3DRealms should get an award for most vapourous software ever.
--
hoser: Slashdot reader since 1987.
Re:Might I suggest...?
by
Chazmati
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Ditto here! RH 8.0 is nice, and you hit the nail on the head:
Extras? (slaps forehead) So THAT'S where gftp, abiword, tux racer etc. went. What were they thinking? Half of the menu items removed and duplicated under "Extras"?
And although I can't knock them for the.mp3 support, I thought 'Psyche' was surprisingly weak on video tools. Why not include Kino, dvgrab, gscanbus, avifile, mjpegtools, mplayer, etc?
How about....
by
KAMiKAZOW
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
We keep hearing about technologies for making low-cost, large flat panel displays. But either they don't work, or they don't stay cheap if made large.
There's been talk for years about "printing transistors", "organic light emitting diodes", "E-Ink", and similar concepts. So far, none of these technologies have progressed beyond the prototype or tiny screen level.
Since the market for this technology would be huge (all TV sets, for starters) if it worked and was cheaper than CRTs, it's the premiere vaporware technology. Nothing else actually promoted as Real Soon Now has similar volume potential.
Vaporware-like
by
Devil's+BSD
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
The all-time best vaporware, IMHO, is fusion power. In 1950, the experts were saying that we would have self-sustained, controlled fusion reactions on Earth within 50 years. 50 years later, the new deadline is 2050. Curious, isn't it?
-- I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
ICQ and AIM meld (aka unified messaging format)
by
Gudlyf
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
How long has it been sice AOL bought out ICQ, yet we still have both ICQ #'s and AOL login names, and still a seperate messenger for each? How long will it be before these two finally become one, never mind having a single, unified messaging format that we can all use without having to either install one special client to handle all the different servers (i.e., Everybuddy, Trillian, etc.), or run seperate clients for each? ANd I'm not talking about something like Jabber.
How about the DOJ "punishment" in the MS antitrust case?
Last Year's Vaporware: Materialized
by
fo0bar
·
· Score: 5, Funny
It should be noted that out of the 10 items listed by Wired for the 2001 Vaporware list, the following have materialized:
* 3G wireless networks (Although not what we were promised. I have a 3G phone from sprint, but cannot do things like video on demand) * Photoshop for OS X * Warcraft III * Duke Nukem Forever
I met with the oqo guys at the last Pocket PC Summit (in Hollywood at the end of October). They let me play with their device and it was pretty neat. After some small talk, they let on that the reason we haven't seen these in the consumer market yet is because that isn't their business plan. Their business plan is to get bought up by some large company (Microsoft and Intel were mentioned as potential canditates) and retire. Unfortunately, they forgot to check first on whether or not corresponded with the strategy of any potential buyer. So sadly it appears that while these devices are *real*, we won't be seeing them on store shelves.
The .Net "Revolution"
by
Drakker
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Yes,.Net is coming! Is it a revolution? Not at all, we're going back to the good old mainframes.
Beside, 99% of their architecture isnt even ready.
Re:The .Net "Revolution"
by
Iamthefallen
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Interesting? hardly, it is however getting a wee bit annoying that people are seen as insightful just cause they whine about.Net. If you don't like.Net on techincal merit, fine. If you don't like it cause MS made it, fine. But quit whining about it just because you don't understand it and you're too lazy to pick up some books.
.Net has been compared to most modern languages/runtimes/architectures/strategies in a ".Net is just xxx with yyy!" way, sorry, it is nothing like those. Yes it is similar to J2EE, not Java, J2EE, but not many other things, so please stop the comparisons if you don't know what you're talking about.
99% of their architecture isn't ready, pray tell what that refers to?
-- Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Re:Next TAOCP volume from Knuth?
by
bedessen
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Knuth is a guy who likes to plan ahead. On his web site he states that Volume 4 (of The Art Of Computer Programming) will be ready in 2007, and Vol. 5 will be published in 2009. He then goes on to describe how he plans to rewrite Vols. 1-3 after he finishes 5. Finally after that, "God willing" he says, he plans to write Vol. 6 (context-free languages) and Vol. 7 (Compiler Techniques.) We're talking probably 10-20 years into the future here, certainly what I'd call long-term planning.
Just because Sprint calls it 3G...
by
wilson_c
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
...doesn't mean it is.
The reason your Sprint "3G" phone can't handle 3G features like video is that it isn't 3G. Sprint is using interim technology that the rest of the world refers to a "2.5G" - it offers some of the features of 3G while still building on a second generation base. Since 3G has been hyped so much, Sprint just decided to piggyback their inferior technology by calling it 3G.
Halo on PC is not vaporware in comparisson to Halo on the Mac: Mac users have been hearing "Real soon now" from Bungie since 2000, before the Microsoft buyout.
Linux stampede, MS death
by
NineNine
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I nominate the stampede of users rushing away from Windows to some flavor of Linux. Every other article here is something like, "Company x is installing Linux on xxx,xxx boxes!! Linux is winning! So, how much longer do you think Microsoft will be around?" Yet somehow, this hasn't even begun to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
My vote goes to .net server.
I would have really liked to see UO ship, or at least release the source... instead of basically firing everyone and burning most of the work for no good reason..
Tibbon
tibbon.com
Duke Nukem: Forever. 'nuff said.
You zap the moderators with a wand of humor! The moderators resist!
If there is a piece of vaporware to rule them all it is Team Fortress 2. Check out the website http://tf2.sierra.com. The last time the news on the site was updated was Jan 23, 2001!!! The game has been in the works since 1998!! According to all the official websites TF2 is still in developement/coming soon. Neither Sierra nor Valve has reported that the game is dead. Some version of the game was even demo'd once or twice, which means it was SOMETHING.
TF2, king of vaporware.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Sex - Find It
Auto-Mod-Down 1) In Soviet Russia Vaporware....... 2) Beowulf Cluster of Vaporware 3) Idea, Vaporware, ???, Profit 4) AND THIS POST!
22 years of empty promises... now *that* is a winner!
News just came today of a new Law and Order series - Law and Order: Special Friends Unit.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
Recovery of the American Economy.
employment?
Remember Zeosync made that huge fuss claiming 100:1 compression on random data?
;(
Many news agencies like Reuters ran with it and as usual Shanon proved them wrong (try www.zeosync.com hehe)
If only they had read the newsgroup compression FAQ they would have saved time and all that investor money (they had over $10 million at one point I believe).
Anyhow I thought that was the best vaporware... if only it could have been true
Master of Orion 3, since 2001... no, Nov 2002, December 4th... Maybe January?
Shadowbane, a MMORPG without all that pesky RPG stuff
SimCity 4, delayed 'till January. "It's in 3D, trust us", except you can't swivel the camera
Never came out.. but Soviet Russia was mentioned a few too many times...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
The new feature of slashcode to cut down on duplicate stories...
Post this early, funny. Post this late, redundant... better click submit now...
Neverwinter Nights for Linux is technically vaporware, as it has yet to be released, and isn't going to be released before January 10.
I actually submitted this one to Wired last week when they originally posted the request for submissions.
Those fuckwits at Quark have been pissing on their customers for years, and now they're making my life harder because I have to deal with supporting the Classic environment instead of being able to make a clean break to OS X.
I've heard that this way-overdue version of XPress has been the final straw for many of Quark's customers, and they're finally dropping XPress for Adobe InDesign. Quark's customer-hostility has done more to sell copies of InDesign than anything dreamed up by the folks in Marketing at Adobe.
~Philly
Itll disappear in a couple of years when the govt cant get any more PR out of it for TWAT
If you've played the alpha and it rocks, and you're sure that it will rock when it comes out... how exactly is it vaporware?
I've had the pleasure of seeing the DOOM 3 theater presentation at QuakeCon 2002, and I can assure you that DOOM 3 is no where near vaporware. It's just so advanced that it's taking a slightly longer development cycle than your typical derived engined game.
I would probably guess that it's more finished than unfinished at this point. (entirely speculation) And Todd Hollenshead did joke with the crowd at QCon that id wasn't in the habit of showing preview versions of the same game year after year at E3.
In my mind, Mandrake has come close, but who knows how long they will continue to be around.
I don't think the actual software is the big problem. Most things are not too different from the various Windows OSes. The two main issues for the desktop are:
1. Command line fear.
Let's face it. As easy as something like "ifup eth0" is, the idea of typing commands scares users. Sometimes, it can almost be more difficult for newbies to navigate a GUI, especially when you get multiple windows open. It would be really cool if there was a shell that understood straight english and was able to execute commands based on them, ex "connect to the internet", "delete file called xxx", etc.
2. Documentation
A lot of the documentation for *nix is very good. However, most newbies wouldn't even think to look on the web, much less in on line help. Sort of like the Mandrake Installer, a desktop OS should have help integrated EVERYWHERE, with the option to turn it off once the user is comfortable with the system.
Perhaps #2 is why OSX is so great?
While vaporware is generally thought of as software, what about hardware? I'd say AMD's Hammer not coming out this year was the biggest vaporware of the year.
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
I'm still holding my breath on flying cars...
Tibbon
tibbon.com
so many to choose from ... so so many. I know HURD will never reach full developement (no one will dump linux to do something new), 3D in linux sucks hence why there are no games for linux, crash proof windows that is secure (MS always promises and always fails horribly, and well peace on earth and good will towards men (not so long as we got a war mongers running america ...)
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
What do others really wish could have happened by Xmas?
/. and all, I was thinking sex would be the #1 answer and might say I'm surprised it's not here.
this being
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
sure i know the vampire queen's pilot was smoked out after a big week in the sun, but this movie was due out a while ago..
wasn't it?
I hate spyware and spies
Silicon Film Technologies should be on there, hands down. They won in 2000 or so. You'd think after two more years they'd find a way to make this work.
It's vapor, but it could be the road to digital for people with high-quality 35mm SLR cameras. Everyone wants to go digital for the convenience, the instant feedback on the shot, the uh, privacy of not going through a photo lab, etc. There must be over a million people with SLR's of higher optical quality than most of today's point-and-shoot digitals.
In fact, I can't imagine why this hasn't flown. I don't think anyone else has beaten them to the punch, and it seems technically feasible. Maybe they can't get the sensor thin enough to close the camera back?
Vaporware since 20 years. Not even "Duke Nukem Forever in Development" can beat GNU/Hurd.
Yeah, it's made the list before, but it deserves to be on there again. We've been waiting for this game since:
- Clinton was president.
- The Spice Girls were popular.
- Princess Diana was alive.
- Tony Soprano was a twinkle in David Chase's eye.
- Yahoo was a good search engine.
- The X-Files was on, and it was worth watching.
It's been a long, long time since Duke Nukem Forever was announced. 3DRealms should get an award for most vapourous software ever.
hoser: Slashdot reader since 1987.
Ditto here! RH 8.0 is nice, and you hit the nail on the head:
.mp3 support, I thought 'Psyche' was surprisingly weak on video tools. Why not include Kino, dvgrab, gscanbus, avifile, mjpegtools, mplayer, etc?
Extras? (slaps forehead) So THAT'S where gftp, abiword, tux racer etc. went. What were they thinking? Half of the menu items removed and duplicated under "Extras"?
And although I can't knock them for the
Osama Bin Laden?
Lots of guys are still waiting for this.
Since the market for this technology would be huge (all TV sets, for starters) if it worked and was cheaper than CRTs, it's the premiere vaporware technology. Nothing else actually promoted as Real Soon Now has similar volume potential.
The all-time best vaporware, IMHO, is fusion power. In 1950, the experts were saying that we would have self-sustained, controlled fusion reactions on Earth within 50 years. 50 years later, the new deadline is 2050. Curious, isn't it?
I'm the Devil the Windows users warned you about.
How long has it been sice AOL bought out ICQ, yet we still have both ICQ #'s and AOL login names, and still a seperate messenger for each? How long will it be before these two finally become one, never mind having a single, unified messaging format that we can all use without having to either install one special client to handle all the different servers (i.e., Everybuddy, Trillian, etc.), or run seperate clients for each? ANd I'm not talking about something like Jabber.
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
How about the DOJ "punishment" in the MS antitrust case?
It should be noted that out of the 10 items listed by Wired for the 2001 Vaporware list, the following have materialized:
* 3G wireless networks (Although not what we were promised. I have a 3G phone from sprint, but cannot do things like video on demand)
* Photoshop for OS X
* Warcraft III
* Duke Nukem Forever
Err, wait, never mind on the last one.
I met with the oqo guys at the last Pocket PC Summit (in Hollywood at the end of October). They let me play with their device and it was pretty neat. After some small talk, they let on that the reason we haven't seen these in the consumer market yet is because that isn't their business plan. Their business plan is to get bought up by some large company (Microsoft and Intel were mentioned as potential canditates) and retire. Unfortunately, they forgot to check first on whether or not corresponded with the strategy of any potential buyer. So sadly it appears that while these devices are *real*, we won't be seeing them on store shelves.
Yes, .Net is coming! Is it a revolution? Not at all, we're going back to the good old mainframes.
Beside, 99% of their architecture isnt even ready.
Knuth is a guy who likes to plan ahead. On his web site he states that Volume 4 (of The Art Of Computer Programming) will be ready in 2007, and Vol. 5 will be published in 2009. He then goes on to describe how he plans to rewrite Vols. 1-3 after he finishes 5. Finally after that, "God willing" he says, he plans to write Vol. 6 (context-free languages) and Vol. 7 (Compiler Techniques.) We're talking probably 10-20 years into the future here, certainly what I'd call long-term planning.
...doesn't mean it is.
The reason your Sprint "3G" phone can't handle 3G features like video is that it isn't 3G. Sprint is using interim technology that the rest of the world refers to a "2.5G" - it offers some of the features of 3G while still building on a second generation base. Since 3G has been hyped so much, Sprint just decided to piggyback their inferior technology by calling it 3G.
Halo on PC is not vaporware in comparisson to Halo on the Mac: Mac users have been hearing "Real soon now" from Bungie since 2000, before the Microsoft buyout.
I nominate the stampede of users rushing away from Windows to some flavor of Linux. Every other article here is something like, "Company x is installing Linux on xxx,xxx boxes!! Linux is winning! So, how much longer do you think Microsoft will be around?" Yet somehow, this hasn't even begun to happen.