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."

Comments

WMD detector

[corebreech]

nt

Re:WMD detector

[Anonymous Coward]

And they say security through obscurity just doesn't work.

Re:WMD detector

[edalytical]

WMD definitely fall into the category of things "that existed merely as a figment of someone's imagination."

Re:WMD detector

[i_m_sane]

Wait this is America...

25% is considered passing!

Re:WMD detector

[nomadic]

Oh come on...it's easy to hide a few vials of anthrax or nerve gas, but it's not easy to store all the equipment needed to make it.

The administration said there were WMDs. They said they knew where they were. They lied.

Re:WMD detector

[Frymaster]

it's easy to hide a few vials of anthrax

a "few vials" wouldn't really count as "mass" destruction though, would it? take a look at the amount of chemical weapons the united states stores. there's a nice map available here:

http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/cbw/cw.htm

these repositories range from 2,000 to 13,000 tonnes each. and there are nine of them.

that's a lot more than just a "few vials"

(nb: i am not sure how old this map is, but the us is not committed to destroying chem weapons until 2007... the purpose is to demonstrate that wmds are have "mass")

Re:WMD detector

[jkabbe]

Wait this is America...

25% is considered passing!

It can certainly get you elected President :)

Re:WMD detector

[rifter]

It was also widely reported that this report was bullshit and that is why Tony Blair is in trouble. British Intelligence and those who had reason to actually know what was going on were thinking it would take Saddam months to get things together for a WMD attack. He was being seriously hampered by the no-fly zone, sanctions and inspectors. The gas atack on the Kurds occurred back in the 80's when we liked Saddam and were selling him WMD. After the first Gulf War no incidents of usage of WMD nor evidence of continuing WMD programs were ever found.

Re:WMD detector

[VivianC]

I dropped this little eyeglass screw in a plush carpet. Took me forever to find it, I actually gave up for a day then the cat was playing around with something and I saw it was the screw, it found it in the carpet.

Great idea! We'll send a bunch of cats to Iraq!

Re:WMD detector

[GSloop]

Set this in context of what was accused... ...by the president in his State of the Union message. Anyone who listened to that speech would now reasonably expect our forces to be finding "25,000 liters" of anthrax, "38,000 liters" of botulinum toxin, "500 tons" of sarin,
mustard and VX nerve agent, and "29,984" munitions capable of delivering chemical agents -- along with a hidden nuclear weapons industry.

If these were "realistic" estimates of what Saddam had, and they were being honest about it, it's certainly not the kind of thing one smuggles out of the country under your shirt or hidden in your trousers. It's not the quantity that can be easily and quickly destroyed, especially without
notice.

So, was the imagery intentially deceptive? Was it intended to simply have shock value?

If these weapons DID exist, which, given the other statements and the credibility of the administrations, I don't believe they did - again, if they did, where are they now?

We'd better hope either that there were NONE, of that if there were, that we find them. Because if there were and we don't, then the only answer is "we don't know who has them."

Since the war was basically conducted to prevent the transfer of WMD to "bad-guys" or terrorists, then the very objective we used to promote the war was the outcome of it.

Frankly, IMHO, the President gave the whole world a bill of goods that was a total crock. The was was not justifiable on the WMD grounds. What might be a reasonable justification was the brutal dictator himself.

Yet to play that card, one would have to account for the US's part in arming and looking the other way when he did the dirty work for us. (Like attacking Iran and using WMD, which we provided intelligence data to make it more effective.) We forget how the US encouraged the Shia and Kurds to rise up against Saddam and then let them get cut down like wheat.

No, going to war against Iraq on humanitarian grounds wouldn't sell, certainly not for the hawks in this administration. And if we go to war on humanitarian grounds, then why was Bush so opposed to our involvement in Bosnia and the other conflicts around Serbia?

Oh, BTW, the assertion that the WMD could be in Syria doesn't fly. If the sat intelligence as Powell showed it, could supposedly pinpoint the presence of WMD so cleanly and clearly, then sending it to Syria wouldn't work either.

Cheers,
Greg

Re:WMD detector

[pyros]

And I can also search for "liberal satan ass cream" and I get results too, over 2000 in fact.

Without commenting on the validity any opnions regarding the justification of the war, that is the best rebuttal of google evidence I've ever seen.

Re:WMD detector

[dnoyeb]

Dude please. We've all heard it before. We KNOW he HAD them because we gave them to him. The issue was not HAD but HAVE. So what he has the ability to house, use, distribute WMD, we all know that. But does he have any NOW. Appearantly that answer was no, and still is no.

War could have and should have been justified for legitimate and available reasons. Manufacturing a reason just removes credibility.

(Insert DNF joke here)

[Hentai]

Or does anyone even still remember?

Re:(Insert DNF joke here)

[pheared]

They do, it's just not funny anymore. :-)

Re:(Insert DNF joke here)

[Hentai]

Not even in Spanish?

(Mulching is a process of inbred fertilization which employs certain decomposed organic materials--including, but not limited to animal sediment to blanket an area in which vegetation is desired. The procedure enriches the soil for stimulated plant development while, at the same time, preventing erosion and decreasing the evaporation of moisture from the ground.)

Re:(Insert DNF joke here)

[Keith Russell]

After this long, they should just give 3D Realms the Vladimir And Estragon Lifetime Achievement Award, and drop DNF from the ballot.

Re:(Insert DNF joke here)

[frenetic3]

(Insert DNF joke here)

Did Not Finish

*sigh* and i've reached a new low...

-fren

Re:(Insert DNF joke here)

[artemis67]

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.

Windows 95

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still waiting for that bug-free OS we were promised years ago. Should be the vaporware king for years to come.

Well, being that it's 2003

[Raul654]

Hal 9000 is already 2 years late. Damn Illinois people ;)

Re:Well, being that it's 2003

[NickFitz]

Reply to the spam and you could have several inches of "self augmentation" right now!

Is that a joke?

[eurleif]

"And, of course, those that existed merely as a figment of someone's imagination."

Is that a joke, or can they read minds now? I could come up 1000 things that I planned to create but didn't tell a soul about, could one of them win?

Obviously!

[djkitsch]

This is obviously a clear winner...

Vaporware winners from years past...

[tcopeland]

...are listed here. Indrema, nice.

Re:Vaporware winners from years past...

[AKAImBatman]

10. Indrema: This company cast itself as a slayer of corporate behemoths -- Indrema said it would produce an open-source game console that could beat those from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. But the available evidence suggests that, in the company's short life, all it managed to get out the door were a few sorry press releases.

"If only they would have gotten off their sorry butts and built the stupid device instead of modeling 3-D mockups and obsessing over the developer's kit," said reader Tim Toner, who had great expectations for the system, "there would already be a fanatical grassroots developer network in place big enough to scare the big guys." Those big guys did well last year in the world of games, but Indrema died a quiet death last spring.

Doesn't that sound a lot like the "Phantom Gaming Console"? Hmm...

Atari 1450 XLD

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm STILL waiting for one of these wonder computers Alan Alda told me about!

Windows Longhorn

[Zog The Undeniable]

It couldn't be anything else really. Despite a demo by billg, the release date has slipped from 2004 to 2009!.

Re:Windows Longhorn

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Windows Longhorn

[mcSey921]

2009 is listed as "an outside chance" from some Gartner analyst. 50% 2006, 40% 2007 and an outside chance of 08-09. Not to defend M$, but Gartner Group doesn't make their release schedule.

Re:Windows Longhorn

[stubear]

The Reg, well Gartner really, is full of crap. Nowhere in the article or the Gartner report does it state which version of Longhorn they are referring to and it is highly unlikely that the desktop version of Longhorn will slip that far behind. I'm guessing they are referring to the Server version of Longhorn which is more likely because the Server versions have been slowly slipping behind the desktop releases. 2000 and 2003 Servers were all released after their desktop counterparts (2000 Professional and XP Professional respectively).

Not only that but these dates keep creeping every time the story is retold. Gartner puts the release of Longhorn (likely the Server version) at mid-2008 at the latest and 2006 at the earliest however The Register states Gartner puts the date as late as 2009 but doesn't mention whether it's early or late 2009. I'd call that highly suspect. The 2009 date The Reg is reporting comes from the end of the article where Gartner suspects that if Longhorn ships in 2007 the EOL for 2000 will get bumped a year but in the event that Longhorn is released in 2008/9 they believe MS will force customers to upgrade to Windows 2003 Server first. Earlier reports about the shipping date of Longhorn had it slipping from late 2005 to early- to mid-2006 then suddenly to no earlier than 2007.

In the meantime this fails to take into account a number of issues, not least of which is where is the desktop version in all of this? There are far too many if's and way too much on the line for MS to let Longhorn slip beyond 2007 at the latest and with the shape the OS was in during the PDC is it quite likely we will see Longhorn hit the shelves in 2006.

Re:Windows Longhorn

[leifm]

There is no guarentee in there, you pay for SA, if an upgrade comes out during the term you get it, if not that's life. Sure people will get pissed off, but that would be their fault, for getting sucked into SA, not MS's.

Re:And the winner is ...

[frankthechicken]

and spell checker on Slashdot

The granddaddy of them all

[Ralph Wiggam]

Until Duke Nukem Forever is released or officially canceled, they shouldn't waste their time with Vaporware awards. We know what's going to win.

-B

GNU/HURD

[iamdrscience]

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?

Re:GNU/HURD

[purdue_thor]

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.

Re:GNU/HURD

[starseeker]

"Seriously though, can you think of any other piece of software that's been in development that long and is still largely incomplete?"

I don't think that's really a fair statement. If you are speaking of ACTIVE development, there has been very little for a long time. The pulse is there - some activity does exist - but not enough to tackle in any kind of reasonable time the production of something like Hurd. And Hurd does actually exist, by the way. You can run it. If you mean a stable, "world conqueroring" Hurd is vaporware, I'll agree with that.

Gnu/HURD is not likely to ever be a major player for the simple reason it does not have critical mass. BSD and Linux have critical mass, and they are currently the only open source kernels that do. Many more exist, and of those the Hurd is perhaps the most prominent, but it simply doesn't have the mindshare.

I'll tell you why Hurd is still a good thing though. Imagine this - the foobared US legal system makes free Linux impossible in the US. What then? Contribute to BSD, where SCO can grab all our hard work and turn it against us? Nope. GNU Hurd will rise in such a case. It is fundamentally a conceptual jump beyond Unix, and SCO cannot possibly establish any claim. If they monkey with it they will tangle directly with the FSF, and frankly that might be worth it just for the entertainment of seeing the FSF fully roused.

If SCO wins, GNU Hurd will become the new center of GPL kernel development. The direction to head is quite clear - complete the port to L4, flesh it out, clean it up, and introduce the world to a real world OS that is a generation beyond Unix or Windows. The potential has always been there, but the difficulty of implimenting something fundamentally new was what allowed Linux into first place. With the proper incentive, like smacking SCO across the face, GNU Hurd development could take a quantum leap. That is why it is good to have around, even if it isn't doing anything important right now. It is a second string to our bow, and greased up and pulled taught it could shoot a mean arrow.

a secure Microsoft product?

[Numeric]

Didnt Gates or Ballmer promise that?

Clue Ware

[phrostie]

i vote for infringing code by SCOG

The Phantom

[wobedraggled]

Nuff said...

Doom 3?

[anethema]

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.

Re:Doom 3?

[sheetsda]

The rumor (well, I don't know if its rumor, I fairly sure John Carmack himself said it) is that Microsoft offered id a truckload of money to sit on Doom3 until an XBox port was done.

Re:Doom 3?

[*weasel]

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.

404 Code not found

[Anonymous Coward]

The SCO infringing code!

Windows Security

[smartin]

Nuff said.

Nanotechnology

[kautilya]

Refer to a random nanotechnology source. Pick a random word with nano (as in nanobot, nanomotor, nanogear etc) as its prefix. It will certainly qualify.

Windows NT the winner in 1991?

[chrysrobyn]

Does anybody else remember the day when NT stood for "Not There" instead of "New Technology?

Re:Windows NT the winner in 1991?

[enkafan]

Actually:
Finally, it was time to start writing some code. "We checked the first code pieces in around mid-December 1988," Lucovsky said, "and had a very basic system kind of booting on a simulator of the Intel i860 (which was codenamed "N-Ten") by January." In fact, this is where NT actually got its name, Lucovsky revealed, adding that the "new technology" moniker was added after the fact in a rare spurt of product marketing by the original NT team members. "Originally, we were targeting NT to the Intel i860, a RISC processor that was horribly behind schedule. Because we didn't have any i860 machines in-house to test on, we used an i860 simulator. That's why we called it NT, because it worked on the 'N-Ten.'"
From http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winserver2k3_g old1.asp

6 years late - almost 7

[dpille]

HAL became operational in 1997:

I became operational at the HAL plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1997

Duke Nukem Forever Development

[HaloZero]

You guys just wait. You rag on DNF for five years straight, while 3D Realms is probably kicking asses left and right in the dev for it. They'll bust out in 2008 with a game that brings the house down, and all of you will be just blown away.

Of course, then we have to live through the ...fallout... of 'After vaporware, Duke Nukems you!'

Re:Duke Nukem Forever Development

[WebMasterJoe]

I'm sorry, by 2008, we'll be too busy with our flying cars to pay any attention to DNF!

Latex3

[poszi]

IIRC this project started 10 years ago project page> .

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

Stars! Supernova Genesis.

[Anonymous Coward]

At this point it's less vaporware and more religion, since it is largely sustained by faith.

Re:Easy

[bugbread]

DoomIII is working on it. Somehow, though, I just can't shake the feeling that DoomIII is trying to fill DNF's shoes. It's like a kid who wants to be like his big brother. But one day, one day...BOOM!! Puberty hits, and DoomIII is the new king of vaporware!

Or not. I couldn't really venture to guess. I'd put good money on DNF never coming out, though.

Wired list from 2000

[image]

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.

Binary drivers, Linux vs. Hurd

[dido]

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.

Re:Binary drivers, Linux vs. Hurd

[DrXym]

If all things were equal then perhaps. But Hurd has been bogged down in politics, lack of direction, lack of support, lack of volunteers, instability intransigence, purity over pragmatism etc. for the last decade.

Hence the reason that it is all but forgotten while Linux is busy taking over the world. Considering that Hurd was started before Linux, this is a pretty sad indictment.

Half Life 2

[Manic Miner]

Half Life 2 is the new DNF..

Lots of demos's but no shipped product, and a ship date that keeps getting pushed back.. sure everyone loves valve so this will be an un-popular point, but it's begining to look like vaporware...

SCO Linux

[Treacle Treatment]

I nominate SCO Linux binary-only lisenced code. The only product supposedly on the market that no one has bought, no one knows what's in it, or why they should even purchase it.

Did Not Finish?

[Czernobog]

Or. Dude. Nearly Finished.

Most likely Dude. Never. Forget it....

The high-tech industry economic recovery ...

[Pathetic Coward]

that has been "six months away" for the last three years.

Re:Iraqi WMDs!

[mcc]

Man, it is going to be SOOOO much fun watching you guys when we begin to uncover cache after cache after cache.

The "there are no WMDs" line is not the message.

The message is, secondarily, "Saddam was not a real or credible threat to the U.S. or its interests". Primarily, the message is this: "Regardless of the 'just'ness of this war, George Bush acted wrongly in initiating it. He acted wrongly in rejecting the real, basic, and relatively quick diplomatic solutions to the problem he claimed to be going to war to solve. He acted wrongly in not only going against the will of, but actively flipping off the United Nations, finally and unquestionably destroying the convention that we have tried to hold since the end of WW2 that countries don't just go invading other countries just because they feel like it, even if those other countries are "bad". And he acted wrongly in brazenly, openly lying to the people of the United States and the entire world about his reasons for going to war."

The "there are no WMDs" line is just icing. It's a "isn't this pathetic, not ONLY was Saddam not a real or credible threat to the U.S. back before the war when we THOUGHT he had WMDs, he didn't even HAVE WMDs". If you want to claim Saddam having WMDs would be automatic proof he was a threat, let me put it to you this way: I know where to find the WMDs. No, really, I do. I know where they are. I'll tell you: They're in North Korea.

I wonder how many ways you'll be able to say: Yeah, but America still sucks and I hate George Bush.

Probably the same way that Bush supporters manage to find so many ways (when it's the better part of a year now and there's still no credible reason why the U.S. went to Iraq except to be the world's unilateral playground monitor) to say: Bush didn't lie to us.

Besides, there are so many excellent reasons to hate George Bush, and only a portion of them have anything to do with Iraq.

My movie

[WebMasterJoe]

I'm still waiting for History of the World: Part II. See! Hitler on Ice! Jews in Space!

Now I'm just beginning to think they're never going to release that one. Stupid media censorship.

Re:My movie

[WebMasterJoe]

Thanks! I was just going to not care that some idiot mod thought this was a troll, but it's nice to see some support, albeit anonymous.

Mods, the post was a reference to History of the World, Part I, where the end of the movie is a promo for the sequel, which never came out. Hence, it's vaporware.

Consumer electronics

[swb]

I don't know if anyone actually promised these but:

OLED TVs
HD Tivo
Widespread HD adoption

The latter is *almost* here, in that I can get Discovery, a couple of the locals, HBO and Showtime in HD on my local cable system, but I wouldn't call a whopping 6-7 channels and a manditory paid installation a symptom of "widespread adoption".

Microsoft Innovation

[AlienRelics]

Said to be coming for decades, haven't seen it yet.

I was going to say the OQO

[howlatthemoon]

But the last change I can find on their web site http://www.oqo.com was a link to the 2002 vaporware awards. You know it's bad when a company cites a vaporware articles about their product as product press. Maybe it is time to shut the web site down, huh?

Barbie Linux, Fact or Fiction?

[mykepredko]

You Decide:

The original article: http://qrxx.4t.com/barbieOS.htm along with http://g0re.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=6586, http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id =7885 and http://linux.omnipotent.net/article.php?article_id =7885.

Be nice if my daughter was on the same OS as her old man.

myke

Let the record speak for itself...

[precogpunk]

We know where they are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad.
- Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.
- Dick Cheney August 26, 2002

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.
- George W. Bush September 12, 2002

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.
- Ari Fleischer December 2, 2002

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.
- Ari Fleischer January 9, 2003

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.
- George W. Bush January 28, 2003

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.
- Colin Powell February 5, 2003

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.
- George Bush February 8, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.
- George Bush March 18, 2003

We are asked to accept Saddam decided to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.
- Tony Blair, Prime Minister 18 March, 2003

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.
- Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark March 22, 2003

Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction, I suggest they wait a bit.
- Tony Blair 28 April, 2003

We'll find them. It'll be a matter of time to do so.
- George Bush May 3, 2003

I am confident that we will find evidence that makes it clear he had weapons of mass destruction.
- Colin Powell May 4, 2003

I never believed that we'd just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.
- Donald Rumsfeld May 4, 2003

I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.
- George W. Bush May 6, 2003

U.S. officials never expected that "we were going to open garages and find" weapons of mass destruction.
- Condoleeza Rice May 12, 2003

They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.
- Donald Rumsfeld May 27, 2003

Link to source

No list would be complete without ...

[argStyopa]

Teamfortress 2

First hint was as an expansion for HL.
Then as a standalone.
Then an expansion for HL/CS
Then a standalone.
I believe the latest incarnation is as a standalone, running the HL2 engine.

It's been so long, I don't even REMEMBER if I pre-ordered it via Amazon.com - but that was when it was a $30 expansion. Do they still have my ticket? Did I pay? I truly don't remember.

The US gave them the WMD

[Offwhite98]

The US gave them the technology for missiles and the germ and gas WMD decades ago. The proof as I have heard some joke, the US simply kept the reciepts. The US has benefitted from providing weapons for wars in Iraq and Afganistan. The US provided weapons to Afganistan to fight the Soviets and to Iraq to fight Iran. That is a lot of blood on our hands as Americans and I wish people were not so shortsighted about it. I hear my friends say these terrorists simply hate us because the US is a successful world power, but they miss the point that these people have suffered greatly because of US policy to do whatever necessary to protect our monetary interests. The US will have to learn the peace should be the top US interest.

It's called a "bluff"...

[anactofgod]

There is a very simple explanation of why Saddam Hussein would have played the games he did with the UN weapon's inspectors and allowed the world to continue to think that he had developed WMD, when in fact he may have had none in any militarily significant quantities.

Any poker player could recognize the situation he was in. Saddam played what he thought was a very strong hand 12 years previously, anted up in a big way, and was called by US-led coalition forces. Now, he's stuck in the same game, with a much weaker hand, facing a very strong one, and he can't just fold. What would a poker player do? Bluff, of course!

The most reasonable explanation I have been able to develop was that Saddam was trying to bluff his way out of a untenable situation. He cared not one whit about "bloodying America's nose", or being "seen as a martyr". He only cared about surviving an invasion by the US and maintaining his hold on power, in that order. The best way to survive an invasion is to prevent it from occurring in the first place.

If I were Saddam in 2001, I too would have postured that I had WMD, and the wherewithal to use them (established many years previously when he gassed his own population and the Iranians), in the hopes that that would change the equation for the US strategic planners. (For recent evidence of the effectiveness of this strategy, I give you North Korea.)

The facts that
(1) the Bush administration put our troops on the ground and went ahead with it's plans for invasion and
(2) Saddam did *not* use WMD in a last ditch defense even when he showed no restraint in the past

indicates to me that the simplest and most likely explanation is that not only did Iraq NOT have WMD in any militarily significant quantities, but our government knew that to be true, even when they were positing the opposite.

I have heard every whacked out theory on Saddam and the WMD, and some well thought out, but very convoluted ones, but surprisingly, never ONCE have I heard this very simple bluffing explanation put forth in the media. How can it be that no official "analyst" has thought of it?

---anactofgod---

SCO License for IP in Linux

[MuParadigm]

While I agree with many that Duke Nuke'em Forever, and Doom III, must be on the list of this year's Best Vaporware, and disagree the Longhorn should be on it since Longhorn wasn't promised for this year, the absolute number 1 piece of vaporware for the must be:

SCO License for IP in Linux

I mean, come on. SCO hasn't only promised repeatedly that it would be *required* for businesses running Linux, but they've threatened to *sue* any Linux using business that didn't buy one.

Not only has the license not materialized, they're *still* threatening to sue someone who doesn't buy it within 90 days. Yep, you read that right, they're threatening to sue someone who hasn't bought a license that they don't sell. Oh, they won't say who it will be yet either. Vaporsuit, vaporinfringement, vaporinfringer, vaporlicense: VAPORWARE!

The absolute King of Vapor for the year 2003. No contest.