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Nominations for 2003 Vaporware Awards

spin2cool writes "Wired News is now accepting submissions for its fifth annual Vaporware Awards. These awards "celebrate all those eagerly anticipated gizmos that were put off, put away or quietly put down. And, of course, those that existed merely as a figment of someone's imagination."

9 of 745 comments (clear)

  1. GNU/HURD by iamdrscience · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Biggest piece of vaporware of all time. However, I'll still put some faith in it on the slim chance that it really has needed and benefitted from being in development for ~20 years. Seriously though, can you think of any other piece of software that's been in development that long and is still largely incomplete?

    1. Re:GNU/HURD by purdue_thor · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I second this one! This is a clip from the initial Linux announcement on Usenet by Linus Torvalds back in 1991:

      I can (well, almost) hear you asking yourselves "why?". Hurd will be
      out in a year (or two, or next month, who knows), and I've already got
      minix. This is a program for hackers by a hacker. I've enjouyed doing
      it, and somebody might enjoy looking at it and even modifying it for
      their own needs. It is still small enough to understand, use and
      modify, and I'm looking forward to any comments you might have.


      See what a visionary he was? He knew back in 1991 that GNU/HURD would be the greatest piece of vaporware.

  2. Doom 3? by anethema · · Score: 4, Interesting

    How far back has the release date for doom 3 slipped? "When its done" seems to have become "When you're all too old to care". I really hope this doesnt become another DNF.

    --


    It's easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them.
    1. Re:Doom 3? by *weasel · · Score: 4, Interesting

      one might wonder if id's unspoken business plan is to let Carmack create the greatest engine possible, and then just polish the art until consumers have rigs fast enough to run it.

      I remember quake 3 going through a similar statis period of about a year between playable and release. and quake3 didn't even have a 'single player game experience'.

      but if doom3 had already been released, all you'd hear is moaning about how high the system requirements are. what good would it do them to burn out their product inertia because no-one can play it?

      i'd also guess carmack's time is much more profitably spent adding flexibility to the new engine to increase its appeal to licensees; and supporting the q3 engine licensees, than trying to optimize doom3 until they do release.

      There is simply a wall at which the game won't run well enough on enough machines to warrant a release. And it's right next to the wall at which the time spent optimizing the engine results in less performance gain than the upgrade rate of the gaming market.

      --
      // "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
  3. Re:Windows Longhorn by UnknowingFool · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Doesn't this date push get MS into a lot of legal and PR hotwater? After all, one of the selling points of SA6 was that you could get upgrades every 2 years at a reduced price. If they push it back to 2006, they will dramatically miss their deadline according to the terms of the deal. I'm sure MS wrote enough escape clauses in the agreement to cover their butts so they won't have to fork over any money, but it won't make any of their customers happy. Some of them might start registering complaints to the FTC.

    --
    Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  4. Latex3 by poszi · · Score: 4, Interesting
    IIRC this project started 10 years ago project page> .

    Maybe the reason it has not materialized yet is that Latex2e works just fine.

    --

    Save the bandwidth. Don't use sigs!

  5. Wired list from 2000 by image · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Out of curiosity I reviewed Wired's list from 2000 to see what came of the products that were mere vapor three years ago.
    • Tribes 2 -- released, and rather successful, a good game overall
    • Wireless Web Pads -- tablet PC's are now commerically available
    • Bluetooth -- now shipping in just about everything from cell phones to headsets to laptops
    • Silicon Film's Electronic Film System -- not sure about this particular case, but there are digital film backs available for 35mm cameras, I believe
    • Warcraft III -- released and went on to become a hugely popular game on Blizzards battle.net, has an expansion or two as well
    • Intel's Itanium chips -- shipping and people are deploying them in real-world, large-scale installations
    • A New Linux kernel -- they were talking about 2.4, and 2.6 is now just around the corner
    • Black and White -- shipped. and while a bit overrated, a decent game
    • Duke Nukem Forever -- ha.
    • Mac OS X -- now at version 10.3.1, it is perhaps the best desktop operating system ever built

    So, after three years, only one of the top 10 vaporware products from 2000 failed to materialize. In fact, most of them went on to become successes as well.

  6. Binary drivers, Linux vs. Hurd by dido · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ironically, the GNU/HURD may well be more friendly to proprietary software and drivers than Linux ever will be! Being a microkernel OS, drivers would have a far cleaner separation from the GPLed HURD kernel than the current loadable module system in Linux does. Though I wouldn't bet on it, we may actually get a stable, usable Hurd kernel before Linux fixes the binary modules issue that was the topic of a recent story. At least the Hurd team IS moving towards making a stable release, but it does not seem to be a high priority at the moment in Linux dev to make even something like the Windows DDK for kernel modules.

    --
    Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
  7. Re:(Insert DNF joke here) by artemis67 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's entirely possible that DNF does not even exist as a real project at 3D Realms anymore. Consider that the vaporware state of the game generates a tremendous amount of buzz for the DN brand and for the company. Consider also the grandious vision that is always laid out for the game.

    Now, why would 3D Realms go and kill all of this excitement and attention by trying to release a game that could never live up to the hype? It would be very anti-climactic and could even kill the franchise. They certainly don't want to release the next Daikatana.

    Also, investors generally don't have bottomless pockets filled with cash. How long can they pour money into a game development team before they start demanding results? Two years? Three years? Five years?

    In the meantime, 3D Realms has released a slew of other DN games, when they should have been working on DNF. Though it may have been a priority at one time, DNF is obviously not a priority right now. Or maybe what started out as DNF was cleverly reworked and released under another title, thinking that it wouldn't live up to the hype (DN: Manhattan Project? Max Payne?).

    Here's my prediction: 3D Realms will continue to be evasive on the subject, and will continue to release DN games... and when one comes along that they feel is worthy of the honor, they will rechristen it as Duke Nukem Forever. But only after they've almost completely exhausted the hype surrounding DNF.