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Nominations for 2003 Vaporware Awards

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the amusing-traditions dept.

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."

5 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. 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.

  3. 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.
  4. 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.