The Best and Worst Technologies of 2003?

Phoe6 asks: "Last year, at Hexadecimals discussion group we shared a news that Worst Technology of 2002 was TIA (Total Information Awareness by DARPA). What is the Worst Technology of 2003? For the Best, Time Magazine seems to have adjudged Steve Jobs' iTunes as the Invention of 2003. What are your ratings?"

Comments

iTunes for Windows

[deliciousmonster]

let's make it two in a row...

Re:iTunes for Windows

[AKnightCowboy]

Sorry, but iTunes seems to be pretty worthless to me. I can't find anything I like on it. I go to search for "Foo Fighters" and it suggests Too Fighters instead. What kind of online music store doesn't have Foo Fighters!? I open up Poisoned, type in Foo Fighters and voila. Tons of songs available for free. The problem with all these online music stores is selection and overpriced tracks IMHO. It's certainly not the best invention of 2003. Napster on the other hand probably was the best invention of its year.

Re:iTunes for Windows

[terevos]

Umm... are you serious? You ask the question, "What kind of online music store doesn't have Foo Fighters?" - Well I'm willing to bet that NONE of them do. You opened up Poisoned, which is not an online music store. It's a P2P program. If the Foo Fighters do not want to do online music, then no one can make them do that, not even Microsoft.

Re:iTunes for Windows

[DNS-and-BIND]

I beg to differ.

Re:iTunes for Windows

[JudgeFurious]

Microsoft can do anything and the Justice Department seems to agree with that assumption.

What's the point of being Microsoft if you can't do "anything"? ;)

Slashdot Subscriptions

[satanami69]

I'll not saying best or worst though.

Re:Slashdot Subscriptions

[corbettw]

I'll not saying best or worst though.

It's OK, you don't have to.

Re:Slashdot Subscriptions

[ColdScot]

Best/Worst? This is simply black and white thinking, Am I right or wrong? What about all the wonderful shades of gray? There is always a third option, or more tricky bit is finding them; Tools-->Options-->Third Option

Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, the horror...

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Dark Lord Seth]

Shy, pasty, antisocial geek seeks like-minded sentient girlfriend to share parent's basement. Slashdot subscribers need not apply.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[jeffehobbs]

Hey -- don't say anything bad about Slashdot personals! That's where I plan to meet my future ex-wife.

~jeff

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Geek of Tech]

Must enjoy C, D&D, and be able to hold her own at Unreal or Battlefield 1942.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[k4_pacific]

I dated that girl. She knew C, enjoyed D&D, swore by Emacs, and she was one of the most beautiful people I have ever known. I met her at a LUG meeting. After the meeting, I went up and started talking to her. We went out for drinks. A relationship developed. We were a couple in perfect harmony. We finished each other's #defines. But there were irreconcileable differences. She used KDE, I used Gnome. We fought over it. One day, it got so intense that we agreed it would be better if we parted. I haven't seen her in over a year, but I still think about her almost daily. So Crystal, if you are out there and you miss me, send me an email.

Mike

"Software is like sex, its better when its free."
-- Attributed to Linus Torvalds

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[TopShelf]

Hold her own? The whole point is that you don't want to have to hold your own...

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Experiment 626]

I'm still at a loss to figure out what the point of the OSDN personals is... Slashdot has what, like a million readers of which 12 are female? That means they each have thousands of potential geeks to date. The odds are good, but the goods are odd.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Ben Hutchings]

At least a few tens of thousands of those million guys are likely to be gay or bi, so there's still some opportunity for matchmaking.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[magores]

This is funny in a subtle way.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[kachuik]

Balding, middle aged, overweight man seeks woman who is much too good for him.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[dododge]

Must have own SMTP, DNS, and HTTP server. Please send pictures and chipset specifications of server.

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Wolfrider]

--Yah, you need the one-handed controller for that.
:b

Re:Worst invention: OSDN Personals

[Wolfrider]

--Actually it's down to 11... #12 got married to Malda a while back and stopped reading.
:b

Hmm

[nepheles]

There's this thing called "two-point-six" or something that Bill keeps ranting about... I dunno... maybe that's it

Re:Hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd second that. Unlike countless other software, free or not, 2.6 actually made the machines faster. It reminds me of using the Tempus text editor on an Atari ST way back. Atari TOS/GEM was hardly a speed demon. Scrolling windows took forever. With Tempus the power of the ST was very apparent because everything was *FAST*. I feel the same way about the 2.6 kernel. Windows snap open faster, the mouse is less sluggish, it seems to spend less time switching between applications.

Re:Hmm

[Frymaster]

There's this thing called "two-point-six"

i notice that you didn't say "two and three-fifths". interesting. i vote for the best techs of last year (in no order)

1. the decimal system
2. base ten
3. base two
4. the inclined plane

can you imagine how crappy 2003 would have been without those things?

Re:Hmm

[Wolfrider]

--Hey Iraq, all your base are belong to U.S.!

FREECIV 1.14.1, BABY, YEAH, BABY, YEAH!

[James A. C. Joyce]

And the CVS now has AI diplomacy. All, right!

I'de have to say...

[akaina]

... the pissing videogame from those kids at MIT

Re:I'de have to say...

[akaina]

link here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~hayes/mas863/urinecontro l.html

And remember, urine control

My Pick and Pan

[mcwop]

Pick: Apple - for pumping out the goods all year long.

Pan: SCO - do I need to list the reasons.

Re:My Pick and Pan

[Anonymous Coward]

"Pan: SCO - do I need to list the reasons."

No, because that would give them the opportunity to change. Only give the reasons to those who agree to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

PowerMac G5

[oaklybonn]

I'd say the PowerMac G5. For one thing, its a completely new design internally, losing a lot of the legacy of old Mac OS machines. (Which they can do since they don't need to support a 20 year old BIOS or OS.) Another advancement is the attention spent on creating a case that can effectively, efficiently, and quietly cooling the new design.

Re:PowerMac G5

[BWJones]

The G5 is great technology that takes many aspects of architecture design ideas from other systems such as the SGI Octane. For instance, in the G5 (and the Octane) all of the busses are completely independent from one another. So, this means you can completely saturate say, your hard drive bus while keeping your CPU to memory bus completely untouched. This is hugely important to scientific computing (and other areas such as video editing) making the G5 system a much more cost effective solution that the SGI Octane. My Octanes were about $40-50k each while the dual G5s cost me around $5K each with 4GB of RAM and half a terrabyte of storage. Not too shabby eh?

Re:PowerMac G5

[zakezuke]

(Which they can do since they don't need to support a 20 year old BIOS or OS.)

You now, 10 years ago I would be most annoyed with this. I mean, part of the reason I went with the PC was because of the massive amount of legacy ability. I could, for example, run a copy of ms-dos v 1.1 {now with graphics} in the event that I actually needed to. Downward compatability one of the major things that sold me on the PC.

In the year 2003, I could care less about downward compatability. I can get new versions of software online easily.

On the mac front... getting yellow dog installed on a pre g5 powermac is a pain in the tookus, and it's not like there are many things I miss... though that old style monitor connection with a db15 to HD15(vga) with dipswitches that define bootup resolution was kinda spiffy.

Re:PowerMac G5

[heh2k]

For instance, in the G5 (and the Octane) all of the busses are completely independent from one another.

sun, dec (alpha), and amd too.

So, this means you can completely saturate say, your hard drive bus while keeping your CPU to memory bus completely untouched.

i'm nitpicking here, and i know what you meant, but you just described dma, not independent busses. for newbies, it's the same difference as between a ethernet hub and a switch.

Re:PowerMac G5

[Anonymous Coward]

So, this means you can completely saturate say, your hard drive bus while keeping your CPU to memory bus completely untouched.

So if your hard drive is bursting full speed, but your memory bus is untouched, where the hell is the hard drive bursting the data to (or from)? Did they add some sort of quasi peer to peer 3rd party DMA transfers between hard drives? Perhaps the hard drive is just skipping the middle man and directly targeting the frame buffer instead.

No, I'm afraid not. They only proved that idiot fanboys like you will spout of nonsense no matter how dumb it sounds.

Re:PowerMac G5

[Anonymous Coward]

Sheesh. Moderators, your standards are falling. Back in my day, a post had to be correct to be informative.

Bullshit. I've been reading since before they even had accounts and I can tell you that moderators were always easily fooled.

Re:PowerMac G5

[BWJones]

i'm nitpicking here, and i know what you meant, but you just described dma, not independent busses. for newbies, it's the same difference as between a ethernet hub and a switch.

So, I should have used more specific terminology describing point to point architectures that do not share a common bus, which is decidedly not dma.

Re:PowerMac G5

[chipset]

For the uninitiated, can you provide a power point here? So, sorry, that dumbs them down..

Hexadecimal is best new "tech".

[Thinkit3]

So HTML colors and IPv6 are in. Decimal is ugly.

Best technology

[Uma Thurman]

Rutan's rocket ship! Broke the sound barrier in 2003, though it's suborbital spaceflight will be in 2004.

Re:Best technology

[Chris Mattern]

> Rutan's rocket ship!

But the Sontarans will mostly like try to shoot it down...

Chris Mattern

Worst Technology of 2003

[kawabago]

It would have to be Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction! America actually fought a war against vaporware!

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[DFAoBolinho]

I wouldnt say it was the worst tecnology - just one more to the list of non-existing treats the US fought all these past few decades. "He tried to kill my father" he said... I actually think that's a way better excuse than the "mass destruction" one - even though it is still lame... oh well: nothing like a little "first world" politics...

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[BiggyP]

you're forgetting the true technological breakthrough that Iraq's technologists made when they perfected cloaking for said WMDs ;)

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[kawabago]

I hope they don't sell it to the Romulans or we're all fucked!

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[Anonymous Coward]

" They had better have had WMDs, because WE GAVE THEM TO THEM."

I gave my dad an ice cream maker one xmas. It sat in the garage for years. Has the US checked Sadam's garage?

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[cheezedawg]

Actually, Iraq's chemical weapons are NOT from the United States.

http://projects.sipri.se/cbw/research/factsheet-19 84.html

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, they are probably German or Japanese. In fact, they explicitly ruled out the possibility of them coming from the US.

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[cheezedawg]

UN resolution 687 in 1991 required Iraq to produce an accurate declaration of the location, types, and quantities of all of their WMDs. That resolution was passed unanimously under Chapter 7 of the UN resolution that requires member states to enforece it. Iraq never complied with that resolution.

You see, it was never a question of whether or not Iraq actually had the weapons. The world saw him use them, for cryin out loud. The question now is what has happened to the weapons. The UN told Iraq they had to show us their weapons and prove the were destroyed. The fact that the whereabouts of WMDs is still a mystery is proof enough that Iraq was not in complience with the UN, and that alone is enough justification for military action.

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[RedCard]

You see, it was never a question of whether or not Iraq actually had the weapons. The world saw him use them, for cryin out loud. The question now is what has happened to the weapons.

Well, the chain of events is self-evident to pretty much everyone on earth.

1) USA gave weapons to Saddam.
2) Saddam used weapons on - well, on everyone in range.
3) USA stopped giving saddam weapons. He was a good friend to the people of america, but he didn't need any more weapons.
4) Saddam's weapons were gone, because he used them all.

Fast-forward 15-odd years, and here we are.

Any questions?

The UN told Iraq they had to show us their weapons and prove the were destroyed. The fact that the whereabouts of WMDs is still a mystery is proof enough that Iraq was not in complience with the UN, and that alone is enough justification for military action.

...And by the way, am I the only one that remembers that the UN inspectors NEVER FOUND ANYTHING? Even thought they kept inspecting right up until the last minute? And what about the US's inability to produce even a single chem/bio/nuclear weapon, despite scouring the country for months, and despite capturing and questioning hundreds of iraqis?

The whereabouts of the (alleged) iraqi WMDs are not a mystery - there simply aren't any in the country.

PREDICTION: now that saddam is caught, the US will as if by magic produce a large stockpile of weapons that look to be well-hidden and very nefarious.

COROLLARY: in 30 years we'll find out that it was a hoax. If we're still around in 30 years.

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[Theaetetus]

Your points are valid as to why a war should have taken place: yes, removing the old administration, paving the way for democracy, etc.

However - this is not the reason that we, the American people, were told was the reason we were sending our troops to war. We were told it was to find WMDs and stop Al Queda - neither of which has happened.

Whether the war was ultimately good or not is not the point - the point is that our leaders consciously or unconsciously mislead us as to the cause of a war that killed hundreds (heading towards thousands) of our troops. Instead, they should have come to us with the real reasons for a war - securing an oil source separate from Saudi Arabia, removing an unfriendly administration, etc. - and let us make our decision. This is what democracy is supposed to be.

-T

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[cheezedawg]

1) USA gave weapons to Saddam.

Thats interesting, especially considering his tanks, missiles, and aircraft were all soviet made, and his chemical weapons were either German or Japanese. If we did give him weapons, it wasn't very many I guess.

2) Saddam used weapons on - well, on everyone in range.

The US voted for 5 resolutions in the 80's that condemned Iraq for its chemical weapon use.

3) USA stopped giving saddam weapons. He was a good friend to the people of america, but he didn't need any more weapons.
4) Saddam's weapons were gone, because he used them all

Wow! You have solved the mystery! Now we know where the unaccounted weapons went. He used them all! How silly that we didn't think about that before.

And by the way, am I the only one that remembers that the UN inspectors NEVER FOUND ANYTHING?

You remember incorrectly. The inspectors found and destroyed some weapons shortly after going into Iraq in the early 90's. In 1994, after some defections of high level Iraqis, they discovered a secret nuclear weapons program and that Saddam had restarted some research projects on chemical weapons. When confronted with this evidence, Saddam even admitted to this.

But I guess its ok. No need to worry. I mean, he wouldn't lie about it more than once, would he?

And what about the US's inability to produce even a single chem/bio/nuclear weapon, despite scouring the country for months, and despite capturing and questioning hundreds of iraqis?

Iraq is a big place. I mean, it took us 6 months to find is air force buried in the sand- how long will it take us to find a few drums of chemicals? They could be anywhere.

The whereabouts of the (alleged) iraqi WMDs are not a mystery - there simply aren't any in the country.

You are entitled to that opinion.

PREDICTION: now that saddam is caught, the US will as if by magic produce a large stockpile of weapons that look to be well-hidden and very nefarious.

PREDICTION: People like you won't accept anything found in Iraq no matter what.

Has it occurred to you that if the Bush administration was lying about Iraq's WMD's, we probably wouldn't know about it because they would have immediatly "found" them? I mean, why would they lie about the weapons, then proceed to invade the country when an invasion is the only thing that will finally bring out the truth? It doesn't make any sense to only lie halfway like that. I think the fact that we haven't found any weapons yet is proof that the Bush administration wasn't lying about the WMD's.

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[biotic]

Rumsfeld & Saddam

of course they're not american... u.s. had never anything to do with saddam or any other dictatorship for that matter.
promotion of democracy and justice is their only motivation! pfffff

"The american way...": always find someone else to blame!

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[cartman]

"However - this is not the reason that we, the American people, were told was the reason we were sending our troops to war. We were told it was to find WMDs and stop Al Queda - neither of which has happened."

You were told that by whom? When?

You've got to be kidding. George Bush, C Rice, D Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell all repeatedly said that the reason for going to war was to find WMDs and stop Al Queda. Colin Powell even gave a speech to the UN Sec Council (trying to convince them to vote for war) which showed satellite photos of supposed WMD sites in Iraq; after that he listed the Al Queda operatives supposedly in Baghdad. When Bush was asked why the war had to be conducted right then, he responded that if we waited the result could be a mushroom cloud over a major Amercian city.

You were never mislead. You are an idiot, however, which leads you to the conclusion that because you didn't understand, you must have been lied to.

Were you paying attention at all? Are you honestly that obtuse? Or are you just capable of "re-writing" the history in your own mind to fit your political convictions? It's ironic that you accuse someone else of being an idiot.

Re:Worst Technology of 2003

[RedCard]

>>1) USA gave weapons to Saddam.

>Thats interesting, especially considering his tanks, missiles, and aircraft were all soviet made, and his chemical weapons were either German or Japanese. If we did give him weapons, it wasn't very many I guess.

Well, see... your link is dated 1984... Here are three that are more current:

Helping iraq kill with chemical weapons
Chemical weapons - the US and iraq
US-iraq weapons sales: the dossier (Google cache)

Choice quote from the 1st link: "on July 3, 1991, the Financial Times reported that a Florida company run by an Iraqi national had produced cyanide -- some of which went to Iraq for use in chemical weapons -- and had shipped it via a CIA contractor"

And these are just the TIP of the iceberg.

The US voted for 5 resolutions in the 80's that condemned Iraq for its chemical weapon use.

Good for the US! Unfortunately, see the two links above. By the way, as long as we're talking about condemnations, the US has been condemned by the UN in the past.

Iraq is a big place. I mean, it took us 6 months to find is air force buried in the sand- how long will it take us to find a few drums of chemicals? They could be anywhere.

You mean to tell me that you consider a pile of completely unuseable, verging-on-scrap planes buried in SAND to be a viable fighting force? I mean PUH-lease... it would take weeks or months to make any of them even close to workable.

Actually, my mistake... it seems that there actually was a viable fighting force buried in the desert. Oh wait... that was satire.

It doesn't make any sense to only lie halfway like that. I think the fact that we haven't found any weapons yet is proof that the Bush administration wasn't lying about the WMD's.

OK, now that paragraph is an excellent display of gullibility.

I think that you are simply afraid to believe that you have been lied to. I think you're afraid of the implications.

The Slashdot DDos: What about the children?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I agree that the Slashdot DDoS attack caused many people quite a bit of annoyance and frustration, I think leaving the impact at that is very short sighted.

Firstly, I don't think the blame for this DDoS can be centered on just one person or group. Obviously, those who attacked Slashdot are to blame, as are Slashdot's sysadmins, and the people at Arrowpoint. And secondly, the costs of this are much greater than you might think.

I have an eight year old daughter. We had a family pet - a rabbit, black, named Midnight, and my daughter was very fond of it. Midnight, sadly, passed away about two months ago. A week or two after Midnight died, my daughter came to me in tears and asked me, "Daddy, why won't God bring Midnight back? I've been praying like Deacon Simmons told me to."

Naturally, I had to think about how to respond to this. I finally answered, "well, honey, God is a little like Slashdot. He can seem arbitrary, cruel, and unresponsive, but he's really a nice guy who's just a little out of touch and is a little slow at responding to requessts."

This was fine, and I thought that would be the end of it. However, when Slashdot went down last week, my daughter burst into my den, positively sobbing and wailing, and managed to choke out "Daddy! Daddy! I can't get to Slashdot!" "Honey," I said, "it's just a website." But, between sobs, she said, "but you said God is just like Slashdot, remember? Does this mean God is dead?"

I tried to console her as best I could, but nothing seemed to work. When Slashdot came back up, she seemed to return to normal, but she hasn't been quite the same since. She doesn't ask me about God so much any more, and she seems less interested in Church.

As a good Christian, I will turn the other cheek, and not call for the punishment of those responsible. But to the heinous criminals and negligents responsible for this, I must ask, how do you feel about destroying a small girl's sense of innocence and wonder about the world? About crushing her childish dreams and idealism? About shattering her faith in God and his benevolence? About possibly having crushed her soul and emotion forever, leaving her to live the rest of her days in spiritual agony as a broken, scarred husk of a person?

I hope all of you think long and hard about what you've done. What is the soul of a child worth, next to a few double-checks of the router?

Thank you.

Re:The Slashdot DDos: What about the children?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your eight-year-old reads slashdot? don't you think /. is a little too juvenile for her?

Re:The Slashdot DDos: What about the children?

[kfg]

As a good Christian, I will turn the other cheek, and not call for the punishment of those responsible. But to the heinous criminals and negligents responsible for this, I must ask, how do you feel about destroying a small girl's sense of innocence and wonder about the world? About crushing her childish dreams and idealism? About shattering her faith in God and his benevolence? About possibly having crushed her soul and emotion forever, leaving her to live the rest of her days in spiritual agony as a broken, scarred husk of a person?

Yeah. Really. I mean, if God had wanted random strangers on the internet to have this sort of effect on impressionable young girls he wouldn't have invented first boyfriends.

Or priests for the boys.

KFG

Re:The Slashdot DDos: What about the children?

[HiThere]

This is a classic, because I *think* you were being intentionally funny... but I'm not really sure.

Electronic voting machines

[twelveinchbrain]

This has to be the least welcome technology to have come to the public's attention in 2003. Thanks alot, Diebold.

Re:Electronic voting machines

[DFAoBolinho]

Actually - electronic voting in some countries like Brasil work like a charm - I really still don't understand what tha hell went wrong in the US

Re:Electronic voting machines

[luigi22_]

THey're all lazy dumbasses who can't understand the simplest things, and somehow are still considered innovative, like a high school jock that nobody will touch because he takes the school to state. Seriously, moral values need to be rethought.

Re:Electronic voting machines

[lurker412]

Fortune Magazine agrees. It named paperless voting the worst technology of 2003. Runner up was a skin-implantable RFID chip from Applied Digital Solutions.

Re:Electronic voting machines

[DFAoBolinho]

Actually we don't need to be that agressive.

Re:Electronic voting machines

[sharkey]

This has to be the least welcome technology to have come to the public's attention in 2003.

And the best for certain politicians. Who is Ohio voting for in '04?

Re:Electronic voting machines

[DunbarTheInept]

This is a real shame because the *IDEA* of electronic voting is good - but none of the proposed implementations are done right. The electronic voting process *CAN* work with a level of security and verification equal or better than that of paper voting, but none of the companies currently involved have the incentive to bother - because the government isn't making such measures be a requirement of the spec - and THAT oversight (or deliberate omission perhaps?) will lead to our disenfranchisement. When the companies say their voting systems are secure, what they mean is that they tried making them secure from hacking. What they don't understand is that that's not what we're worried about. We, the voters, aren't so much worried about other voters altering the data, as about corruption withing the government itself doing it. (By which I collectively mean the company that wrote the voting software, the people running the polling stations, and the government apparatus that does the tallys.)

Electronic voting has the potential to be MORE corruption-proof than paper voting because you can dupicate the data and have it counted independantly by different parties, but for that to work, that duplication has to occur in a way that the voters themselves can see it happining anf verify it. (For example, print out three receipts, let the voter see all of them, and drop two of them in different 'reader' machines and keep one for taking home.) Then you've got the original databse count in the computer, two more made by another computer reading the paper reciept you scanned, and one you keep for yourself. These different tallys should then be counted by different independant groups entirely. (And the tallys should be not even using the same KIND of machine by the same company - have competiting companies doing the electronic counts of the same ballots, and make sure their counts agree.)

SATA

[Uma Thurman]

How about Serial ATA drives which became popular this year. It was about time that the old fashioned ribbon cables were replace with something more modern.

Re:SATA

[DFAoBolinho]

There are many computer-related technologies that for legacy purposes advance in a turtle-like ritm while others tend to evolve in a maniac-style speed. It's nice to see some efforts to evolve all components of the systems so that we wont see more of the gargals we are used to now. I'm still very interested to see where this PCI Express may lead us too...

Re:SATA

[Dark Lord Seth]

However, isn't SATA150 itself faster then most modern HDs can handle? And for that matter, isn't PATA133/100 still far too fast for most modern HDs? Correct me if I'm wrong, please...

Re:SATA

[poot_rootbeer]

SATA... popular? I dunno about that.

I upgraded my home and work PCs in late 2003, for the first time in 5 years. IDE ribbons still everywhere inside -- though it's nice that they now have handles molded onto the connectors to make them easier to detach.

It generally takes a couple years between when a hardware technology is introduced, and when it truly starts to become popular. My PCs both came with floppy drive controllers and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, even though USB's been mature for years.

Re:SATA

[October_30th]

Too bad it's next to impossible to dual boot a computer with Windows on a SATA drive and Linux on traditional ATA. Grub doesn't understand SATA and Windows XP doesn't play nice with Linux.

Makes an incremental transition to SATA kind of hard...

Re:SATA

[mattdm]

This starts making a difference when you plug in more than one drive.

Re:SATA

[October_30th]

And pretty soon (approximately two RAID0 SATA-drives) you'll have a problem with PCI-bus saturation.

That's why I'm only buying PCI-X mobos from now on.

Re:SATA

[Anonymous Coward]

SATA... popular? I dunno about that.

Standard on every Power Mac G5 and all future Power Macs from Apple, will probably make it to the remainder of the desktop line in 2004. Not sure about the portables.

Expect the x86-based hardware world to be dragged kicking and screaming into the future sometime in the latter part of 2004 or early 2005. Just like with USB a few years ago.

Re:SATA

[DFAoBolinho]

About GRUB not understanding SATA - I have yet to see that, but still I dont think that, if that's really the case, it will be left without support for a long time (if there isnt already a patch for it)

Re:SATA

[Cajal]

Yes, I agree, this could be the worst technology of 2003. Too much hype, and it still doesn't have the reliability of SCSI.

Re:SATA

[AKnightCowboy]

The trouble with SATA seems to be it's even worse than ATA was with drive support. Now I can only have ONE drive per bus? It was bad enough I could only have two per channel when SCSI had at least 7-14 devices per channel, but now I only have one per port. That's just nuts. To top it off the new motherboards only have 2-4 ports for SATA. Why not build them with 12 ports?

Re:SATA

[October_30th]

I've got a SiI3112 PCI controller and haven't been able to figure out how to make GRUB access it.

Re:SATA

[DFAoBolinho]

And have you tried LILO?? Maybe it works!!

Re:SATA

[Uma Thurman]

SATA isn't perfect, but it's a lot better than the ribbon cables. Most people don't need more than 2 ports, and those who do might want to use SCSI instead. Or, they can add a card with more ports on it. The old way of trying to get a single cable onto two drives wasn't working very well. Combine that with the problems of putting a slow or old CD-ROM onto the same cable as a new fast disk, plus the hassles of trying to get a cable all the way from the motherboard to a drive in the top of a large case, and SATA seems like it offers incredible luxury.

Re:SATA

[October_30th]

The trouble is figuring out what device designation the SATA drive has.

But you're right, LILO could be easier to work with. At least it has proper, not readable Texinfo, documentation.

Re:SATA

[asdfghjklqwertyuiop]

what exactly did this thread have to do with scsi again?

oh that's right, nothing. you're just masturbating.

Re:SATA

[ncc74656]

Windows XP doesn't play nice with Linux.

The dual-boot WinXP/Gentoo box I'm using right now disagrees with you. I let LILO write itself to the MBR on /dev/hdb. The first block of /dev/hdb is then copied to a file on a floppy:

mount -t vfat /dev/fd0 /mnt && dd if=/dev/hdb of=/mnt/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1 && umount /mnt

Upon booting into WinXP, the flie is copied to c:\ and boot.ini is modified to add a Linux boot option...something like this is added after (or before) the WinXP boot option:

c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

On booting, the first thing you get is the NT boot loader, which gives you options for Linux or WinXP. If you select Linux, LILO takes over. If you select WinXP, it boots as it normally does.

Re:SATA

[blankmange]

But you really did not say whether this was the best or worst of the year...

Re:SATA

[CustomDesigned]

We install lots of IDE systems with mirroring. This limits you to one drive per port anyway - and with cheap IDE drives, you really ought to be using some sort of RAID.

I agree with you, though, that 4 SATA ports is an absolute bare minimum (2 mirrored disks, CD, tape), and a decent system will have a least 8 ports. Presumably more ports can be added with PCI cards.

Re:SATA

[Uma Thurman]

You're right. I meant it to be the best of the year, because it would have saved me frustration. Not to mention, the skin off my knuckles from pulling ribbon cables off drives in a box with sharp edges all around.

Re:SATA

[Vellmont]

Yah. A new HD tops out at perhaps 45 MB/sec, maybe a bit more. One of the advantages of SATA is command reordering (taking a series of requests for data and re-ordering them to maximize efficiency). The other immediate advantage is the cables are much smaller, so they don't restrict airflow.

Re:SATA

[Yottabyte84]

I just bought a new motherboard 3 weeks ago. Has on-board serial ATA.

Re:SATA

[Ben Hutchings]

Serial ATA isn't the only way to solve the airflow problem. You can get parallel IDE and floppy cables which have the ribbon rolled into a tube in the middle.

Re:SATA

[bersl2]

Whoa! Think about what you're saying: "However, isn't SATA150 itself faster then most modern HDs can handle?"

Don't you want room for improvement? Don't you want to engineer with the future in mind? Granted, you'll always have a bottleneck, but do you really want the next one to be the standard you just now created? Make something to last; don't let the present exclusively occupy your focus.

Re:SATA

[ElliotLee]

Manufacturers, OEMs won't use SATA due to the additional cost, but most geeks and home-built computers now use serial ATA.

Re:SATA

[slittle]

Now I can only have ONE drive per bus?

It's a port, not a bus. I believe it's always been that way, which is why there was the dodgy master/slave thing, to shoehorn two drives into a system designed for one.

Re:SATA

[jo42]

SATA goes in my yet another send data over a couple of wires standard pile:

Ethernet
USB
Firewire
SATA

We need one (1) standard - not 4 bjillion...

Bouncing balls...

[Anonymous Chicken]

...also known as "Beagle 2". I don't have to say which one this belongs to, do I?

ITunes?

[fredopalus]

the iPod is the best invention that last 18 months.

I nominate

[pete-classic]

Yahoo! Groups font choice!

Agh!

-Peter

Re:I nominate

[caveman]

...and the SWF banner ads. I don't even need to install junkbuster ;-)

Segway

[Gudlyf]

Although I think this would belong more under an invention for 2002, it still gets my vote this year.

Re:Segway

[kevcol]

Oh yeah- it sure changed the world, didn't it?

Re:Segway

[Frisky070802]

Hmm, I think you meant to nominate the Segway for best invention, but is that appropriate? Think about it:

• It's hardly sold.
• It was recalled because a low battery could cause riders to fall.
• It's mostly fodder for jokes on TV shows like Frasier.
• Despite all this, I asked Santa for one for Christmas and he let me down.

Linux

[Apreche]

Linux Kernel 2.6

Re:Linux

[sinistral]

Is that your vote the the best invention of 2003, or the worst?

Longhorn

[eyeball]

Ok, technically it's not out this year, but they have started releasing beta copies to people.

Right before windows XP came out, the majority of home/business users were finally 'getting it' -- they were figuring out the filesystem, the menus, etc.

Then XP came out and turned their world upside down. Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that. Not to mention new features integrated into explorer, like CD burning and MP3 playing. Quite a steep learning curve for XP's majority users.

Longhorn is going to come out, and users buying a new Dell or Gateway will get it automatically. Sidebars, and SQL data storage? Their world will be turned upside down once again.

Re:Longhorn

[Afrosheen]

Well luckily for those of you running XP right now, you don't have to worry about Longhorn for another 2 years or so.

Mentioning it this year is just...foolish. Remember, windows 2k came out late and Win98..well just remember it wasn't exactly 1998.

Re:Longhorn

[shaitand]

"Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k."

That's funny, I'd say at least 4/5 of all the XP machines I work with have been reverted to the classic style.

Re:Longhorn

[happyfrogcow]

Is this listed as a "worst" or a "best"? I'll assume "worst" in the context of slashdot, but it is irrelevant, so assume "best" if you want. Either way...

Even though I'll be marked Troll, I have to say this is the dumbest thing I've read in the past week. Longhorn is nonexistant as a operating system. It is a concept in the minds of project managers, designers, and a few MS fanboys/girls. They have some work done, maybe some betas that do fandangly something-somethings, but imagine all the cancelling of features and unintended feature creep that will occur between now and it's released date of 2006(?). Anything that exists as "Longhorn" today, will bare only slight resemblance to the "Longhorn" that will be released "whenever". So if you are calling it a "best" then hold your guns, it could diminish into a pile of steaming poo in 2 years and not ever be released. if you are calling it a "worst", then also hold your guns. It could improve into a top-notch computer operating system by learning from mistakes of the past.

Simply mentioning such a premature thing as the best/worst of 2003 it idiotic. Longhorn has not had any significant impact on anyone at all.

"Then XP came out and turned their world upside down. Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that."

I did exactly that on my parents machine. It wasn't hard. Most people who have used a previous version of windows to a moderate (daily) extent would be able to find information on how to go about doing so.

"Longhorn is going to come out, and users buying a new Dell or Gateway will get it automatically"

Have people you know buy locally. You'll get better support, better hardware and you can probably have them install whatever OS you want or do it yourself. "If it aint broke, don't fix it"

Re:Longhorn

[glwtta]

That's funny, I'd say at least 4/5 of all the XP machines I work with have been reverted to the classic style.

Is it at all possible that's because XP looks like it was designed by a 6 year old left unsupervised with a box of crayons?

Re:Longhorn

[sharkey]

Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that.

That's the first thing I do on a new XP install.

Re:Longhorn

[blankmange]

I believe that is it exactly -- the dumbest interface since MS Bob...

Re:Longhorn

[Valegor]

Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that

That's kind of funny cause I don't know very many people that haven't done that. The XP interface looks like a Fisher Price version of an operating system. Every tech minded individual that I know running XP makes it look like 2000 first thing after installation(well second thing after apply Welshia patches).

Re:Longhorn

[shaitand]

quite possible I'd say.

DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[samdaone]

Just to touch on the other topic posted here about DVD burners the fact that there is multiple formats out has got to be the worst. I don't think the VHS/BETA fight took this long to figure out a winner. One format would help everyone in the long run and its about time we got to it!

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[poot_rootbeer]

I don't think the VHS/BETA fight took this long to figure out a winner.

The VCR format war lasted roughly from 1975 to 1985.

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[samdaone]

Did it?!?! Well then I stand corrected. I could've swore everyone moved to VHS in the early 80's but at that time I was only 7.

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[blair1q]

There is one format that will win.

Blu-wav.

Start planning a wake for your old DVD player, because the lack of a pause at layer change is way more than enough reason to early-adopt a blu-wav player.

The inevitable shrinking of feature-film DVDs to 3-inch discs will attract the proles.

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[samdaone]

Do you have a link to this format? I have not heard of it and a google search for me turned up some wedding sites? Any info you can give would be appreciated.

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[osgeek]

There's this really cool news aggregation web site called Slashdot.

I heard that it even has an article about how there are yet more competing standards for the next generation of DVD.

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[Nazmun]

I only wish that we could get the winner will eventually be the highest capacity dual layer blue laser type drive. I don't want to see a lesser dvd winning because of popularity among major companies.

Re:DVD multiple formats... just have one!

[ElliotLee]

There will never be a 'winner'; both will coexist, especially with DVD+-R/RW drives becoming common.

Worst Technology.

[dnahelix]

Electronic Voting run by Republicans.

The Worst is Yet to Come

[handy_vandal]

It's too soon to judge the "worst technology of 2003". Whatever it is, we'll find out later, when the side-effects have made themselves known.

Probably it's some bio-tech invention we haven't heard about, which is going to render us all sterile and hairless, several years from now.

-kgj

Re:The Worst is Yet to Come

[HumanTorch]

I'll certainly take the hairless part. Damn our simian heritage!

Re:The Worst is Yet to Come

[biendamon]

Sterile? That I can deal with. But hairless.... Ye Gods, people! Think of the children! Bald children!

Oh, wait...

Re:The Worst is Yet to Come

[wobblie]

which is going to render us all sterile and hairless, several years from now

Uh, this is slashdot. Most /. readers won't miss a thing.

Re:The Worst is Yet to Come

[DavidHumus]

> Probably it's some bio-tech invention we haven't heard about, which is going to render us all sterile > and hairless, several years from now.

It's here now - we call it "old age".

Best and Worst of Tech

[strredwolf]

Best: Sharp Zaurus 5x00SL series Linux PDA's.

Worst: Spammer Viruses

Re:Best and Worst of Tech

[Tripster]

I think the spammer viruses depend on the viewpoint, I'm sure spammers see it as the best tech advancement :)

I just wish law enforcement would make some kind of effort to get the gangs using the trojan network for spamming (or anything else!), I setup my own RBL for my server and I add the IPs from all incoming spam I get and it is doing very little to slow down the flow of daily crap.

What really makes me mad is that the stuff that seems to make it through the most is the porn, enlargement and other nonsense. All of it deliberately crafted to fool SpamAssassin and get past any blocks we put up. Can't they take a hint?

If the spammers would just realize that if they only sent to the people who wanted it we'd all leave them alone, but when they are trying to reach kids with porn ads then we have no choice but to fight them.

Windows 2003

[IGnatius T Foobar]

This is not in regard to quality (I think it's shoddy, but that's irrelevant). This is in regard to the amount of damage it will do to the computer industry. The number of competing products which will never see the light of day because of unfair competition. The millions of man-hours which will be spent in 2004 fixing its problems. Windows 2003 is my vote for the worst of 2003.

Re:Windows 2003

[operagost]

So Microsoft should stop developing new products, so that someone else can have a go at the market.

Brilliant. I suppose Linux development should stop at 2.6 until HURD catches up.

Re:Windows 2003

[shaitand]

Linux development is a nonstop ongoing process of evolving and improving technology, expanding capabilities and stability for the benefit of mankind.

Microsoft development is what the reporter says when they announce the latest windows worm that jumps through your software firewall uses your bandwidth to help host ebay or some such. Please note that the only time you EVER got rapid Microsoft response to this development was when the worm in question was using vulnerable windows systems to ATTACK MICROSOFT. They didn't care about you, they were covering their own asses.

Re:Windows 2003

[zbowling]

I would have to say your wrong on this point. Windows Server 2003 is the most complete Windows os to date. I'm not saying this because I'm pro MS in anyway, but the 2003 operating system is 100 times better then Windows 2000 and about 100 times better then XP (giving into the fact that XP is better then 2000 in many ways but opens many new problems that were are almost tottaly fixed in 2003). I enjoy the control and flow of 2003, and I praise them for locking it down in the install. This turned out to be a very valueable feature for our company that does Windows (as well as Linux and BSD) webhosting on both dedicated and shared systems (so we have 100s of machines to setup that we don't have to us an image system for that install right off the cd or over the lan without a hitch. Also as provider of distrubted LAN solutions for small to medium sized companies that can't afford full time IT departmarts, 2003 Server (including Small Biz Server 2003) simplifies setting up the distrubtied network and keeping it secure (all be it, it costs more for the hardware and software aspect to something that Linux could do with 5% of the resources required, but it still averages less then hiring someone full time).

Windows Server 2003 has the ability to do things that previous versions couldn't even fathum from a programming aspect. The networking aspect is about a thousand times better with the ablity to (not super dooper but good anough that anyone with experience with routing couldn't work something to just make it work).

Understand that I'm a born Linux user myself, and I end up installing Cygwin, Mozilla (Firebird mostly), GCC, Apache, PHP, Perl, TLC, and about a hundred other Linux tools on just about every windows machine I come across that I have to use for more then 10 minutes. I know that Windows has querks but I would rate it towards the top in this case.

Re:Windows 2003

[dnahelix]

Maybe Microsoft should finish developing the products they already have on the market.

Re:Windows 2003

[thelexx]

Christ that was painful to read.

then - temporal, "He went to the store and THEN to the movies."
than - comparative, "He spells worse THAN an ape!"
tottaly -> totally
valueable -> valuable
distrubted, distrubtied -> distributed
departmarts -> departments (not sure if that one was on purpose though)
fathum -> fathom
querks -> quirks

Not only is your spelling atrocious, some basic grammar would help as well:

"Windows Server 2003 has the ability to do things that previous versions couldn't even fathum from a programming aspect. The networking aspect is about a thousand times better with the ablity to (not super dooper but good anough that anyone with experience with routing couldn't work something to just make it work)."

Speaking as a developer, you sound like a complete idiot here. Maybe you had a valid point, but your articulation of it was so poor that it is now lost completely.

Also, you seem to have a LOT to say about MS shit for such a 'born Linux user'. Deep down I think you are a troll.

Re:Windows 2003

[Perky_Goth]

then refute him, troll. i was pretty convicenced that MS DID wake up and offered some competition.

Re:Windows 2003

[Dark-Helmet]

> Also, you seem to have a LOT to say about MS shit for such a 'born Linux user'. Deep down I think you are a troll.

Oh the fucking irony... go on and attack his grammar and him personally than try to refute his points. Shove off, troll.

If you trolled on purpose for the irony factor, then I say good show !

Re:Windows 2003

[shaitand]

I don't pay those developing the linux kernel to give a damn if there is an ugly worm terrorizing the nation including myself via a hole in the kernel. If I were to buy a copy of windows however, I AM paying for just that.

TIA is not entirely dead -- it's being outsourced

[GuyMannDude]

I was reading an article in a recent issue of DefenseNews recently where they were reporting that a lot of TIA isn't being scraped, it's being given over to private contractors to perform. The feds still think it's a wonderful idea to track everything we do, they just don't want to so directly involved for political reasons. Private companies are not subject to these sorts of pressures and have considerable leeway on how much tracking of customer information they perform. So DARPA is looking to them to do most of the work and simply provide the government with the processed information.

Remember folks, just because CNN says that TIA is over doesn't make it so, necessarily. The privacy vs. terrorist-defense war isn't over -- it's just beginning. And next time, the government won't be so bloody obvious about what it's trying to do.

GMD

Worst technology: Disposable Digital Camera

[pimpbott]

Lemmie see if I got this straight. Inferior camera, none of the advantages of digital apply here, costs more than a disposable film camera.... what's the advantage again? Okay, I can see saving one use film strips, so it is 100% reusable, but that is the only benifit. OTOH, now that it can be hacked, there may be one benifit. A cheap digital that you can take in poor environemntal conditions and not feel bad about wrecking it. ALso, you can use it in situation where you know you will destroy it, such as taking close up pics of explosions, etc.

Re:Worst technology: Disposable Digital Camera

[3vi1]

>> ALso, you can use it in situation where you know you will destroy it, such as taking close up pics of explosions, etc.

I've tried this several times now, but I'm having a problem: I'm not quite sure how you download pics from a smoking crater. I'm not even sure these are USB 2.0 compliant craters.

Re:Worst technology: Disposable Digital Camera

[pimpbott]

whelp, if the memory part of the camera works, who cares if the impaging portion works. Solid state stuff is pretty dang durable. I'm not suggesting that you blow up the cameras, I'm just saying that for $12, you can put it in harm's way without harming your pocketbook.

Re:Worst technology: Disposable Digital Camera

[3vi1]

In all seriousness, I *can* think of at least one such possible use: Put it in the nose of one of those big-ass amateur rockets and rig it to take a stream of downward looking photos about 10 seconds after the parachute deployment.

MY 2 cents:

[larry bagina]

CmdrTaco's gently-used sex-toy emporium.

Re:MY 2 cents:

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco's gently-used sex-toy emporium.

OSDN personals was already nominated.

But..

[JPelorat]

It's not even gonna be out *next* year.. kinda like tapping Duke Nukem Forever as 2003 Game of the Year, innit?

=)

And as far as the Fischer-Price XP theme goes, every single install of XP I've ever done for myself and others gets instantly reverted to 'Classic' mode. My take is, it's a laptop, not a Speak-n-Spell.

Re:But..

[pfguy]

I always set it back to classic for me, it just plain runs faster (so what if I can't notice the difference?), but I always ask people when I install it for them.

Re:But..

[JPelorat]

I've found that there's no need to put my users through that particular learning curve. They know Win2000 well, no point in frustrating them with something totally different and (IMO) offensively childish.

Besides, they're perfectly free to set it back if they want. So far none have, or have even asked about it.

EFI - worst technological idea

[morelife]

Extensible Firmware Interface EFI

Worst technology introduced. MS/Intel

Replaces traditional PC BIOS and Consumer Rights simultaneously.

It is all about SPAM

[badriram]

Best: All the Spam control software Worst: Spam, just keeps getting worse.

Singing Fishes

[Capt_Troy]

I'm just glad this year passed without further proliferation of those damned singing plastic fishes.

Re:Singing Fishes

[kelzer]

I'm just glad this year passed without further proliferation of those damned singing plastic fishes.

Apparently, you missed this Slashdot article.

Re:Singing Fishes

[Capt_Troy]

Holy shit! This is gonna ruin the whole rest if the year for me!

the *new* TIA gets my vote!

[spacialK]

According to the TIA website, they've renamed the Total Information Awareness project, replacing Total with Terrorist... so I'll skip the political spin and just go along with the idea that this new name indicates a new technology not intended to spy on everyone, just bad people! Man, I'll sure sleep better knowing that.

Agreed - the Worst

[Mr. No Skills]

When I was a child I dreamed of a future with a jet pack on my back. I would fly like Superman as I traveled around.

Now, as an adult I find out they want me to ride a scooter with big ugly wheels. Grrrrrrrr.....

Re:Agreed - the Worst

[Ohreally_factor]

The life of the man with a grappling hook for a hand is the life to lead! There is nothing else that can compare. Nothing!

On the Importance of Grappling Hooks and Jetpacks

Re:The worst ?

[BiggyP]

and MP3 music at that, too bad indeed.

as for iTunes, it's not an invention, it's more an investment, the idea and tech have been around for ages, but no one's actually sunk serious money into it until appple, and luckily for them it paid off.

Re:Segway -- I meant WORST

[Gudlyf]

" Hmm, I think you meant to nominate the Segway for best invention, but is that appropriate?"

NO! I meant to say WORST invention of the year.

Best and Worst

[supun]

Best: Super Model Cloning Kit

Worst: GE Bathtub Toaster ( fresh hot toast while you bathe )

Re:Best and Worst

[skryche]

Best: Super Model Cloning Kit

So: the concept here is... what? You clone a supermodel, raise her from infancy to adulthood, then have sex with her?

That's pretty fucked up. (Not to mention the 18-year wait.)

Re:Best and Worst

[YU Nicks NE Way]

A GE bathtub toaster? I don't know if that's the worst invention of 2003, but it's certainly one of the strangest. Why would I want a toasted bathtub?

Re:Best and Worst

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, the latency is a bit a high but it's easy to increase troughput with very high level parallelism. Plus models need hardly any food.
And you only have to wait 14-16 years(incidentally also the best age for natural self-replication) with models. Unless you prefer women in their prime (30 yrs.)
Nevertheless, the ROI is huge even if only 1 out of 10 model clones make it Super.

Re:Best and Worst

[ch-chuck]

No - check out "Weird Science" sometime - it involves breaking into a defense department mainframe, a soft porn collection and barbie dolls - be sure not to forget the barbie dolls! - but the results are amazing.

Re:Best and Worst

[kelzer]

So: the concept here is... what? You clone a supermodel, raise her from infancy to adulthood, then have sex with her?

Everyone knows these new cloning machines skip the whole maturation process. Duh.

Re:Best and Worst

[Bodrius]

Perhaps, but it still sounds like a genetic improvement over the previous known methods.

Let's call it: Woody Allen 2.0

Or was that beta-testing?

Re:Best and Worst

[Saeger]

Ever see the Futurama episode, I Dated a Robot" ? One of my favorites. They poked fun at Napster by using KidNappster to make fully grown clones of hot celebs.

Mmmm... luscious Lucy Liu...

(In reality, the hard part wouldn't be cloning a body (or rather, molecularly assembling an adult copy), but in getting a good artificial "brain" for it. "I'll take the nag-free/chef/nympho neuralnet. Thanks!" :)

--

true... see: the Segway

[freejamesbrown]

it's flopping and flopping badly. of course, all those pictures of the president falling off of one were worth all the effort.

m.

Worst Technology of 2003

[Fortunato_NC]

I'd like to nominate the Longhorn hype machine for worst technology. All the press garnered by an OS we won't see until 2006 at the earliest is stupifying at best, and patently annoying at the worst.

Plus, with OS X Panther, I have 95%+ of the Longhorn "Innovation" today - tell me why I should wait three years?

The Best, the worst and the ugliest

[MrsPReDiToR]

Hardware central have a great review of the year here: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/edi torials/5139/1/ Personally I cant decide what I would class as the worst. There's plenty to praise and plenty to whine about.

1000 DPI Optical Gaming Mouse!

[molafson]

No, not really.

Probably the completion of the human genome mapping.

Re:1000 DPI Optical Gaming Mouse!

[glwtta]

Probably the completion of the human genome mapping.

A lot is made about this "event," but really it's a little arbitrary. The whole project is over a decade long, build 33 (the "complete" build) was a little like a 1.0 release for a software project - while certainly an improvement, it wasn't drastically different from the build before it, nor the build after it.

The greatest achievements of the project are the technologies developed over the last decade, the run up to the "completion" is just a lot of tedious, repetitive sequencing.

My Picks for Worst

[Gudlyf]

• Segway -- Lots of hype for not a whole heck of a lot.
• Camera-phones -- Some people may love this invention. I think it's just plain silly.
• Smart ID WiFi Detector -- What use is this when it doesn't tell you if the AP is encrypted or not?
• TurboTax 2003 -- When Intuit decided to put key info. in an "unused" portion of the boot block area, causing all sorts of crashes for customers, many who have now sworn off TurboTax for good. Nice one.

Re:My Picks for Worst

[null-sRc]

Camera-phones -- Some people may love this invention. I think it's just plain silly.

i thought this way up until a week ago.

standing on the peak of cypress (BC, canada), with the view of the lion heads, most of the lower mainland, and the sea.. surrounded by snow..

i looked at my cell phone--full reception. *shrugs*

and i thought to myself if only i had a camera fone to rub it in my friends faces who would currently be at work/school :D

Re:My Picks for Worst

[Total_Wimp]

Yeah, I'll call you on the camera phone.

Reason why I think it's one of the best inventions: I never seemed to have a camera around when I wanted one until now. And there are a lot of cool things you can do with a camera when one is around all the time.

Cool things to do with camera phones:

- Shopping in the "real world" and see something cool that you'd like to check out on-line later? No problem. Take a picture of the tag or box and you'll get the exact product number, etc without having to do a bunch of writing. Bonus points of those of you who send it to a friend and have him check on it while you're still in the store.

- Also great for those things you need to show your wife before plunking down cash.

- Screen shots for those error messages on non-networked-and-not-hooked-up-to-a-printer computers. I'm not kidding. It's great.

- Not to mention the "screen shot" of the inside of that computer that's giving your brother-in-law so much trouble. "Yes, Bob, you really do need to hook up that other little wire for that new SATA drive to work".

Camera phones rock. Once we get them to 2 mega pixels and beyond, they'll rock even more. It's amazing how much more useful some technologies can be when you give them just a little boost.

TW

Re:My Picks for Worst

[Gudlyf]

"Take a picture of the tag or box and you'll get the exact product number, etc without having to do a bunch of writing."

A lot of phones now have voicenotes feature. Solves this problem without needing a camera.

Re:My Picks for Worst

[Total_Wimp]

My phone has both and I'll use them both at different times. If I want to get a lot of info and it's displayed, then I'll usually use the camera. If it's just a few numbers, like the section of the garage where I parked my car, then I'll usually use the voice memo feature.

BTW, I have a Nokia 3650 and I sometimes wonder how I ever got around without it. I used to use an iPaq but I kept leaving it at home or at my desk thinking, "I don't need it right now." Naturally, I always ended up needing it when I thought I didn't. My phone is like my wallet; I almost never leave it behind. For me that means that each of the added features has a much greater chance of getting used.

TW

Re:My Picks for Worst

[ediron2]

Um, a minor detail... turbotax 2002. This year's is 2003. Which I'm still not buying. Fsckers.

I'm only correcting you because several of us were talking about this earlier today:

Does anyone else wonder that tax software has somehow dodged the *illogical* urge to upgrade to a newer year-id. I mean, it makes *sense* that we're buying tax software for 2003 (not 2004) now, but doesn't logic fly straight out the window when pointy-hairs and marketing wonks are involved?!

(mutters to self: Yeah, like a reply to a comment's gonna ever get enough attention...on new year's eve, no less...)

Re:Segway -- I meant WORST

[Frisky070802]

Ah. Well, actually, I could go both ways. I would actually love to have one, but it's overpriced, which is why its sales are so poor. I think it is indeed a neat invention despite all the hype preceding its release.

In any case, I think you were right, you got the year wrong, since it was released in 2002.

Hey, I left off a bullet item in my list:

• Cities have banned the Segway from their streets!

Total Information Awareness?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Total LACK of Information Awareness by SCO. Their "technology" is trying to kill open source.

Another awful invention was the Welchia/Nachi "fix" for the MSBlaster worm. I don't know what this person was thinking, but it was annoying as hell. I think it's supposed to die tomorrow, so it sneaks in under the wire.

Two more technologies that suck are spyware (I'm not sure when they were invented -- more like infected -- but they sure became annoying this year) and spam worms that hide their origin, send out adverts for penis enlargers, and oh yes DOS attack anti-spam crusaders. I hope these people die of hyper-penile growth.

Best technology? Well, I'm rather fond of the 2.6 kernel. I like the new KDE too.

Al Gore invented it

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one technology that is the worst of 2003. It has brought us unprecedented spam, loss of privacy, identity theft, pop-ups, a playground for the worst trolls, virus propagation, and some things that are downright ugly (such as www.aintitcoolnews.com). Without it, we would not have ever seen the likes of Goatse.

I'll give you one hint: Al Gore invented it.

Same as last year

[GoofyBoy]

Best: OpenSource. Free-as-in-speech is good. Free-as-in-beer is better. True last year, true this year.

Worst: DRM and anything like it. It threatens to turn me into Gollum.

"ITS MINE, My computer is MINE!!!! Myyy PRECIOUSSS! DRM is trickies. WESSS HATEEEESSSS them."

Re:Same as last year

[CrackHappy]

OH man.... that just conjured up an image of Gollum crouched over a computer on the desk, glaring and spitting on George Bush as he approaches to take the computer away.

"Nasty BUSHESSES! Tricksy and false! "

Apple has only done one thing right

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has only done one thing right: iTunes.

In hardware, however, it is the same old smoke-and-mirrors story. They come up with the best looking boxes to hide "leading edge of last year" slow technology, and cover it up with cooked benchmarks.

The iPod looks good on the front end, but watch hate for the thing rise once you have to replace the $150 batteries. If you can't put the bunny inside, don't buy it.

Re:Apple has only done one thing right

[mcwop]

Disagree. They have cranked out great software and hardware. I use it every day personally, and it works better than any Windows machine and MSFT software I use at work. Leading edge includes productive/useful software. FCP Express is one such example.

Re:100billion and still counting

[shaitand]

Give me a break, we crushed the entire country of Iraq in one night. Granted the people there hate us for stepping and overthrowing their beloved leader, and for invading their formerly sovereign nation and now making it a US subject... err setting up a US controled... err estabilishing democracy, and occasionally chuck bombs at our troops on the street, but that doesn't really count as a continuation of the war.

To make TIA successful

[be-fan]

All they have to do to get TIA implemented throughout the country is:

Rename it TnA and then hold a referrendum.

Simultaneous - RFID tags

[xC0000005]

The radio tags for billing/tracking. There's a technology with a lot of promise for being very, very cool, and at the same time, possessing vast potential for abuse.

I can see the arms race now. RFID tags, RFID countermeasures.

Stores selling things by RFID, and claiming countermeasures are the providence of theives (echos of RIAA, MPAA).

Sigh.

You have obviously never used it.

[Ayanami Rei]

It's about the only Microsoft thing I would ever recommend to anyone who was suggesting something other than Microsoft.

It makes my nipples hard when I use MSC and the revamped policy tools. And XP theme/DirectX9 capabilities lurk underneath for when you need to be distracted.

It's great. It also doesn't look like complete ass with a half-done icon set and primary colors. Grey and blue and antialiased. Works for me.

Worst invention?

[PierceLabs]

The evidence SCO invented to claim ownership of Linux.

Spelling error.

[xC0000005]

Should say province. That's what I get for posting before coffee.

I'm thinking Diebold voting machines

[Kickstart70]

Removing democracy from the voters is about as bad as it gets.

Re:I'm thinking Diebold voting machines

[swordgeek]

I agree that it's bad, but it's nothing new in the US--Bush jr. did that back in 2000/2001.

Re:I'm thinking Diebold voting machines

[The Man]

Democracy is meaningless if the only choices you have are indistinguishable. If a Diebold machine is programmed to throw an election to (for example) Bush, or Gore, what difference would it make? They're identical candidates anyway. It's not like any other party would have the resources to buy an election, so whatever crooked voting machines do will be no worse than what we have right now. The guy who wrote the Diebold memo was right, really: if voting mattered, it would be illegal.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[be-fan]

Yeah, but we won the war.And most everyone is better off for it.
-----
I *hate* that argument. It's so stupid. Of *course* we won the war!!! We're the United States! Were we expecting to *lose*? It's like saying that the war was right because we found Saddam. Of *course* we found Saddam! We're the United States! Were we expecting not to find Saddam? Thinking that maybe one man would somehow elude the grasp of the most powerful nation on earth???

We went to war over WMDs. We went to war because we were lead to believe that there was an immediate threat to the saftey of Americans. If there were no WMDs, than we went to war for the wrong reason, and that makes the war wrong, plain and simple.

As for them being better off, that's an incredibly arrogant and paternalistic thing to say. Its their country. Let them run it. Don't assume that we are blessing them with our precious system of government, because honestly, they don't want it. Why do you think the reaction in Iraq has been: "thanks for getting rid of Saddam, now get the fuck out!" They don't want to become another America, plain and simple.

Gas powered children's toys

[Stalus]

I woke up on Christmas to little kids driving up and down the street on gopeds and mopeds outside my parent's house. At first I thought they were battery powered and didn't go very fast, but I was apparently wrong. They honk at each other and idle them outside, polluting the air in more ways than one. They fly down the road faster than anyone without traffic sense should be allowed. And people wonder why americans are generally overweight and unhealthy.

So in evaluating technologies as best and worst, are there any personal feelings people rate these with? Personally I would say that improvements to communication and travel are good because it brings family and friends closer - 1200 miles doesn't seem as far as it used to, and it's a lot cheaper to get there (It was actually cheaper for me to drive home for Christmas than fly this year). On the other hand, people like my father refuse to use a self-propelled lawn mower because it forces him to get some routine exercise. He wouldn't say it's a bad technology, just not useful to him.

Re:Gas powered children's toys

[random735]

it being cheaper to drive than fly hardly seems like a new thing...nor a trend i'd like to see encouraged. If travel is getting cheaper, then the fastest methods should be getting cheaper, not the slowest...

Re:Gas powered children's toys

[MemRaven]

The only problem with gas powered children's mopeds is that I never had one. Lucky little spoiled rich kids.

And I'm still waiting for my hoverbike.

Network Solutions DNS Search

[Dr. Evil]

Shudder...

haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[mschuyler]

Right. 250 mass grave sites have been reported and only 40 or so have been investigated so far:

+ 1983: 8,000 Kurds rounded up an executed

+ 1988: The "Anfal campaign" 180,000 Iraquis disappeared

+ 1986: Sarin, VX, and Tabun chemical weapons kill between 8,000 and 24,000 Kurds, injure thousands more. There are pictures of the attacks where you can see the gas over the villages and pictures of the victims, not to mention Iraqi documentation.

+ 1991: Tens of thousands of Shites killed

+ Iran-Iraq War: Up to 1 million dead. Numbers likely unknowable. Documented chemical attacks against Iranians. Iran estimates 60,000 affected.

+ 4000 Kurdish villages wiped off the map.

+ Human Rights Watch reports from 50,000 to 100,000 Kurds killed in the various attacks and purges over the years with 500,000 becoming refugees.

+ So far: 300,000 victims in mass graves. Some with hands tied behind their backs apparently buried alive.

And we also have credible reports of medical experimentation, beatings, crucifxion, hammering nails into fingers and hands, amputating penis and breasts with an electric carving knife, spraying victim's eyes with insecticide, branding with a hot iron, raping children and wives in front of parents and spouse, nailing tongues to wooden boards, extracting teeth with pliers, cutting off of tongues, victims shredded in plastic shredding machines.

Victims so far: approaching a million in a country with a population of something like 25 million.

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[Valegor]

Wow, that certainly has nothing to do with the weapons of mass destruction Iraq didn't have.

Um, did you actually read his post? He very clearly mentions two chemical weapon attacks. Iraq clearly at one point had weapons of mass destruction. As far as I'm concerned until they lost the Gulf War that was thier right.

The original poster was not suggesting that Iraq was a happy playground of bliss. He was suggesting that the "weapons of mass destruction" claim was inaccurate or fraudulent. Which is correct.

That is not correct, that is an opinion. To be taken as correct it would have to be proven.

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[Richard_at_work]

You know, im getting sick and tired of this. Yes, all those crimes happened, and I am glad that Hussein has been taken into custody and will face trial for those crimes. But the fact of the matter is that the UK and the US invaded Iraq under the pretense of disarming the Iraqis of Weapons of Mass Descruction. Those weapons have not been found, and the extensive evidence that these programs existed has not yet appeared, and so far is looking very unlikely to appear.

Now, if we held up our arms and said "Yes, ok we were not as right as we would have liked to have been, but we now have him and it would be criminal of us to let him go without punishment for his crimes." that would be ok to the vast majority of people, but we arent, we have jsut changed the pretense to include these new factors.

If Bush and Blair admitted that they were not completely correct, then that would be enough. But they havent, and so we still have legitimate concerns. This could happen again, and again and again. We could use the same pretenses to invade other countries that we have concerns over, and our politicians are NEVER wrong. Because they said so.

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[thelexx]

IT'S NOT OUR RESPONSIBILITY TO POLICE THE PLANET.

I get very pissed when I see self-righteous people like you sugar coating our actions in Iraq with a humanitarian patina. Where were(are) we in Africa? Cambodia (which it sounds like the Iraqis learned a few tortures from)? A thousand other places that have ongoing horrors and NO OIL or other strategic value (and that we could _get away_ with invading - Tibet comes to mind, lots of nuns and monks raped, killed and tortured there too)? Fact is we supported Hussein for much of his rule when we KNEW what kind of ass he was. Our actions in Iraq have thus far only been EXCUSABLE by the stats you list, NOT JUSTIFIED.

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[FatherOfONe]

Actually you are not correct. One of the MANY reasons the U.S. and 60+ other allies declared war on Iraq was because of the weapons of mass distruction. The core reason the war came about was because of Iraq's unwillingness to comply with their U.N. agreement. Now I can't say that I blame them, because they got away without compliance for almost 9 years, and believed that the current administration would behave the same as the last.

Another point for war was that it was shown that there is a connection between O.B.L. and Sadaam.

Another point was that Iraq was training terrorist for use against the U.S. and it's friends.

There were more points, but I think you get where I am going. It was NOT one point.

Of course when they do find WOMD's some people will just say they are planted and choose not to believe ...

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[Richard_at_work]

What the hell are you on? The 1991 cease fire was an agreement between the UN and Iraq, not the US and Iraq. THE US DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUST DO WHAT THE FUCK IT WANTS. It had no right to "take the gloves off" without permission from the UN Security Council, which it blatently did not have and decided to ignore the decisions of the Council anyway. If the US is going to do what it wants without accepting a group decision, then what the hell is the point in it being part of the UN?

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[the gnat]

Actually you are not correct. One of the MANY reasons the U.S. and 60+ other allies declared war on Iraq was because of the weapons of mass distruction. The core reason the war came about was because of Iraq's unwillingness to comply with their U.N. agreement. Now I can't say that I blame them, because they got away without compliance for almost 9 years, and believed that the current administration would behave the same as the last.

This is correct, and some liberal commentators said that the war was justified entirely on these grounds, without the phony "imminent threat" that the Bush administration cooked up.

Perhaps the last administration didn't feel that a full invasion and nation-building was the appropriate way to respond, given that Hussein appeared to have been more or less neutered and Iraq was a far more advanced country than Kosovo or Somalia. (Look up the recent history of Kurdistan for an example of how continued Allied military presence kept Saddam in check.) It would, of course, be interesting to know why Saddam continued rebuffing the UN/US, if he didn't really have weapons.

Another point for war was that it was shown that there is a connection between O.B.L. and Sadaam.

Bullshit. This has still not been proven; the Mohammed Atta connection remains wishful thinking. The terrorists operating up near Kurdistan haven't been shown to be either linked directly with al Qaeda, or (as far as I know) directly supported by Saddam, and they certainly weren't operating outside of Iraq.

Another point was that Iraq was training terrorist for use against the U.S. and it's friends.

He was indeed supporting Palestinian terrorism on the side, but that's no justification for a US invasion. It certainly wasn't at the level of the Taliban hosting bin Laden. Hussein even had Abu Nidal, one of the founders of modern Islamic terrorism, killed because he became an embarassment.

I'm very wishy-washy on this subject, and I certainly don't care for the chorus of leftists that keeps comparing Bush and Saddam and thinks it's all about oil. However, the retroactive justifications from the right sound more absurd each time I hear them. Answer the fucking question, don't make up excuses about how you really had other reasons all along.

There are many places in the world where far worse human rights abuses occur (and where the US doesn't have as long a history of aiding or ignoring these issues, as HW Bush and Reagan did with Iraq); Congo and Sudan come to mind. I'd love to see us clean them up too, but I don't hear the neocons using those crises as a justification for invasion.

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[Richard_at_work]

Another point for war was that it was shown that there is a connection between O.B.L. and Saddam.

A rather low level Iraqi government agent was known to have met a known member of Al Qaieda for 60 minutes in a cafe in Europe in the early 1990s. That is the entire public basis on this link, and if that is the quality of intelligence that the US has and that is the quality of intelligence that the US acts upon, then god help us all. Also to note, members of the US government have met with members of Al Qaieda in the past, for much more indepth talks than these two individuals had.

Another point was that Iraq was training terrorist for use against the U.S. and it's friends.

Where is the proof that these were government funded? During the various stages of the war, the US reported that it attacked and destroyed several "terrorist camps". You know whats interesting about these reports? The majority of them place the camps inside kurdish controlled northern Iraq, protected by the UN no fly zones, and on the border with Turkey, which the kurds also controlled. Hmmmmmmm, but oh well, its within Iraq, so lets blame Hussein, its jsut convinient that he could not take any action against them himself.

The entire premise of this war stinks, and it stinks worse the longer it drags on. which ever way you look at it, the US and the UK attacked a country for reasons that either were not very well defined, or had holes so big you could drive a 747-400 through them. The US/UK wanted to see an end to Husseins rule, and to do so they used a UN situation to do so, which they had no right to do so. They acted like the local vigilante lynch mob, acting on a police arrest warrant. If that is acceptable where you are, then fine, the war is also acceptable, but it isnt around here.

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[FatherOfONe]

We could argue about the points of why we went to war. My main point is still valid, and that is that there was WAY more than one reason the war took place. I also left out one important reason. Sadaam never complied with the U.N. resolution. Heck even France, Germany and Russia agreed that Iraq didn't comply. They just wanted to keep giving Sadaam more time. France even went as far as to say that they would NEVER vote for any military action. I do find it a bit strange that they would agree to the resolution and then not want to back it up in any way except to keep giving more time.... but I digress.... again my main point is that there was more than one reason. We could argue about the reasons, and to be honest I might agree with you on some, but the fact remains that finding WMD's is not the only reason we went to war.

I would imagine we could also argue about if this war caused Libia to change as a country...

Re:haven't found the weapons; did find the victims

[the gnat]

You are repeating the same old lefty lie that Bush claimed Iraq was an "imminent threat". In fact, in his State of the Union address, Bush explicitly said that Iraq was NOT an imminent threat.

Okay, strike the quotes - I know he didn't use those words. However, the record of statements by administration officials indicates that this is exactly the message they wanted to convey; remember Cheney predicting a mushroom cloud over Manhattan? I read mostly conservative news/opinion sites, and all of those guys seemed to be under the impression (or at least working hard to propagate it) that Saddam was going to attack us very soon if we didn't invade.

On the topic of unfair misquotes, by the way, I'm inclined to forgive the use of "imminent threat" given that people are still repeating the tired old "Gore claims to have invented the Internet" bullshit.

It isn't even the best of 2003!

[rtilghman]

I mean come ON, how many free rides does Apple get? I like Apple, they have great designers, but don't you think it's kind of retarded to give best invention/product to a product that is, in essence, just a rip off on numerous products already made? Not only that, but don't you think its a sad statement on Apple AND The industry if we give props to a program that is neither original nor all that great?

I mean let's see here. First you have the annoying fact that iTunes is sooooooo horribly limited from a technology perspective. AIFF is the testicle sweat of codecs, AAC is just Apple's way of invading your womb, mp3 is a blind man's bluff, and (jump back) IT HAS WAV CAPABILITY. Hold the phones, get Sony circa 1982 on the phone, WE CAN RECORD A CD IN A 20 YEAR OLD FORMAT! Point is I don't consider a measly four options for codecs very good, especially when adding in the rest is literally point and click.

But, you say, I have the iTunes store! You sure do partner, but its kind of a one way trip since AAC files are a pain to convert out of AAC (see capturing audio) and you can't shop anywhere else with iTunes. Yeah, nothing like the glorious method of using one product to force use of a second product, eh? Wait a second, that sounds like a similar plot I saw someone in Redmond try! ;)

From just a format perspective, how about the fact that winamp5 has like 10 codecs (haven't looked, but it supports everything I've trried including WAV, MP3, OGG, FLAC, etc.). True, I like the iTunes interface a lot more, but the program itself is more robust in winamp than iTunes.

So basically the grand point here is that unless you use an iPod iTunes isn't required reading, and while the program is snazzy it isn't necessarily the best and is definitely not original.

-rt

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[xenoandroid]

Last time I heard, iTunes supports music players other than the iPod, the iPod is just the only one that supports AAC and that's the fault of the companies that make the other players.

iTunes is definitely the best in terms of overall quality and and ability (note how many other jukeboxes are trying to rip off). I'm sure some people rather not have a meg added to their download just because people like you want 15 options in codecs, most of which are never going to be used. The music jukebox thing may not be original for Apple but there are plenty of other options that didn't invent the music jukebox idea either, including your beloved winamp5.

An invention is nothing more than a solution to a problem, and that is what Apple did, unless you have another definition then you're just another person again whining that Apple gets credit for something just because it's only an improvement on already existing concepts and not some totally new, unheard of, and unbelievable new program that has it's own new format that nobody else uses...oh wait then you'd be whining about it being proprietary.

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[HeghmoH]

iTunes uses QuickTime to play its files, meaning that it supports any file that QT supports, which is a hell of a lot. Not only that, but QT is very extensible, so third parties can add more formats. There's already an ogg plugin out there, and anybody who wanted to could make whatever they wanted. Although as far as I know, it only supports arbitrary QT formats for playback, not for encoding.

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[Eccles]

I mean come ON, how many free rides does Apple get?

Regardless of the technology itself, iTunes and ITMS made online music selling mass-market. I'd be surprised if ITMS hasn't had many times more revenue than all the other online MP3/WMA/etc. sales put together.

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[lotsofno]

"iTunes is definitely the best in terms of overall quality and and ability"

Sometimes, users get so attached to their product of choice, they don't even realize how much they've fallen victim to the company's hype machine. While yes, iTunes is regarded by many as a worthwhile music app, it'd be foolish to assume the rest of the world (especially those who've taken the time to explore other options and features) agrees.

There's more to Winamp/Foobar/QCD/etc than just the number of codecs and a smaller download. The large margin between iTunes and other mp3-players is artificial, meant to downplay the features and hard work put into their competition. Have you really looked at Winamp 5? While it may not have it's own store, the media library is just as powerful if not more, and it's Internet TV implementation runs easier than I've seen with any other program (And of there's free pr0n, too). Throw in all the customization possibilities as opposed to iTunes limiting look, and the strong community support with plug-ins for nearly anything imaginable... It's hard to imagine this program not only uses drastically less resources than iTunes, but even Winamp 2x.

I use iTunes on my Mac, but there are much better alternatives, in terms of "quality and ability," on the PC.

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[JudgeFurious]

Man I agree that Apple shouldn't get a free ride and no, iTunes for Windows should be considered a "Best of 2003" app but it's not like the rest of that made much sense.

Four codec options is fine. Does anything outside of wav, mp3, and AAC matter anyway? Does it matter to 90% of the people who will use this? Converting AAC files out of AAC isn't a pain either. You're burning a CD. Most everyone is burning a CD of what they bought anyway if for no other reason than to throw it in a CD wallet to drag out to their car. Once you burned it you can rip it to whatever floats your boat.

It's not the best, and it's not all that original either so no awards for this one. On the other hand it's not got nearly the downside you make it sound like.

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[magores]

WinAmp 3 was junk.

WinAmp 2 work(s/ed) great.

WinAmp 2 + StreamRipper is a good combination. --Great way to obtain good/obscure/live music that will NEVER be available in a mass-market endeavor such as Walmart/Itunes/etc.

--
For the RIAA people that may be reading this... I prefer recordings of live performances from band that allow that type of thing. So, go away.
--

Re:It isn't even the best of 2003!

[xenoandroid]

Oh yeah, of course this is "flamebait" because I'm stating facts. Now had I been saying, "ooohhh Windows Media Player sucks and iTunes is mediocre" I'd probably have a +5 Insightful moderation.

OnStar for Both

[DynaSoar]

I nominate OnStar vehicle GPS system for both best and worst.

Best because (among other uses) if your car gets ripped off, they can find it fast.

Worst because it can be used as vehicle-embedded spyware.

Re:OnStar for Both

[Roadkills-R-Us]

OnStar's commercials alone garner it my vote for worst tech of 2003!

sorry, but

[mgoodman]

itunes isnt all that innovative. digital music library management apps has been around for a while. and an online music store isn't really a new idea either...just been on hold for a while because of those RIAA bastards.

it should be voted a good technology, but not the best. theres been a lot of cooler stuff being developed, like bulletproof glass car windows you can shoot (it seals back up) but people cant shoot through.

worst: wintel

[ftide]

Anything to do with Microshit or their hard and soft affiliates.

There's positively no need for it, except for migration and translations.

Worse is the people in denial about all the change taking place. A proprietary OS will not be the tablet/notebook/PDA/desktop leader beyond 2005. Even worse still are those who say they're open source but take inveiglers "shortcuts" whenever an opportunity in coding arises to cut corners and sell out the user's privacy and security for a profit.

To all those wintel pundits who say things aren't going to change anytime soon: get a clue and get a life. You had your day and your time is done.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[Haeleth]

We WON the war. And most everyone is better off for it.

In precisely what way are people, other than the Iraqi dissidents whom Saddam was actively torturing, better off for our having won the war?

So far, nobody has shown that Saddam was in any way a threat to me personally, since I don't live in Iraq. It appears that he didn't have any WMDs, so he couldn't have been going to supply those to terrorists. So I'm no safer for his having been deposed.

Meanwhile, my government has spent vast sums of money on a very expensive war. Money which could have gone towards healthcare, education, medical and scientific research. Heck, maybe it would even have gone towards tax breaks.

Well, that sounds rather selfish of me. So why not think of all the people whose suffering could have been alleviated if, for example, those billions that the war has cost us had gone towards making cheap medicines available in Africa? Are you saying that it's better to rescue a few thousand people from an oppressive regime, than to rescue many millions from preventable diseases? Because I have my doubts about that one.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[October_30th]

Actually, he's quite right.

The most dangerous people in the human history have been those who have an unwavering right in their own righteousness. Hitler, Stalin, Jesus, several Popes and so on.

iTunes is not a technology

[Ogerman]

iTunes is a very simple piece of software and a successful marketing campaign. Just because it is (arguably) well done should not classify it as an innovative technology -- especially when it's not even a new idea.

I personally have no interest in using any of these flashy new online music stores. Until they are DRM-free, use an open protocol (ie. cross-platform), and offer lossless formats, just say no. In the meantime, support only independent artists.

Re:THAT'S NOT A LINK, DUMBASS, THAT'S JUST A URL.

[Total_Wimp]

You are so very correct, yet I can't help but wonder if leaving off the "DUMBASS" might have helped.

It is possible that if you had left off the "DUMBASS" the poster whom you corrected might have seen your post and thought, "hark, a link _would_ be more useful than a URL. I shall use that next time." Instead, with your technique, the poster might think, "Oh my, I am truly a DUMBASS. Since I can't do anything right I may as well not post at all... sniff," and we would miss the benefit of his knowledge.

Thank you for your informative viewpoint, but please keep in mind that we all learn faster we use our polite voices. Have a nice day! :-)

TW

Re:Yeah But We WON

[October_30th]

unwavering right in their own righteousness

Unwavering belief, not right, of course.

Re:Linux is *N O T* an invention

[glwtta]

Darl?

Abandonware, maybe

[YrWrstNtmr]

Vaporware is a 'never has been'
Abandonware is a 'had it, but sold/disposed/threw it out'.

We know he had them, the UN knows he had them, *he* knew he had them. His Kurdish and Iranian victims certainly knew he had them.

Go back a few years and ask Al Gore about Saddams WMD's. Ask Hans Blix. Ask Tom Daschle. Jaques Chirac. John Kerry. Madeline Albright. See what they say.
They were all campaigning hard to go to war, because we knew (or they told us) that Saddam had, and was building more, WMD's. Now, because Bush says the same things and actually does something about it, suddenly it's all a falsehood. An 'illegal war'.
Why weren't you yelling "vaporware" when Clinton attacked with those cruise missiles?

The real question is...what happened to all that stuff? Did he, in fact, dispose of it? Well WTF didn't he provide unambiguous proof of that? Or is it merely buried out in the desert, like they did with some frontline aircraft.

"It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
--Sen Hillary Clinton, Oct 10, 2002
"If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
--President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998

Re:Abandonware, maybe

[kelzer]

Nominee for Worst Technology of 2003 - the artificial convervative sense of humor. Doesn't work worth a damn.

It was a joke. Lighten up.

Re:Abandonware, maybe

[fermion]

Go back even further

Given our relationship with Iraq during time that Iraq invaded Iran, I tend to believe we had a pretty good idea of not only what he had, but how far and how much. We probably knew exactly what he got from Russia, and exactly what he got from GE et al.

The first Gulf war established out authority over the region. We set up a survelience system that one of the most advanced in NATO.It allowed to monitor any advances in WMD. And since the probably has the most advanced WMD, at least in terms nuclear and biological power, we certainly new exactly what to look for.

I think if things get declassified in 50 years we migh know what happened with the WMD. What we do know it that the the latest invasion was in the planning stages since the late 90's. And many liberal critized Clinton for his strongarm tactics. However, liberal can never yell as loud as conservatives, so we are seldom hear.

And, let me reiterate. The US supported Iraq when it killed the Iranians. One of the reasons was because the Iranians were opprressing the Kurdish. I guess everyone does. The Iranians were also at the forefront of oppressing women, killing unwelcome people and them proudly publishing thier deaths in the newspapers. The Iranians at that time dismantled a very respectable and open educational system, killing and exiling teachers. As I recall, no one really thought of the Iranians that Iraq had to kill as victims. It was a war to liberate Iran from the muslim fundementalist. Sounds kind of familiar, huh. The only mistake Iraq made was to lose.

Re:Abandonware, maybe

[makisupa]

Excuse me, but what the fuck does Iraq have to do with best/worst tech of 2003?

Seriously.

Politically Correct

[Kenshin]

Now I can only have ONE drive per bus?

Hey, no worries about politically incorrect "master/slave" references anymore...

Re:Politically Correct

[Angus Prune]

Theres nothing politically incorrect about sado-masochism.

Give me a GXX DXXXXX break!

[Lord Kano]

Time Magazine seems to have adjudged Steve Jobs' iTunes as the Invention of 2003.

Steve Jobs is an asshole. His products are constantly being praised by the societal elite, but you know what? No one else cares! Apple has held a consistantly small market share for 15 years. The Apple faithful will continue to be, the rest of the world will continue to not care.

Personally I think that iTMS is pretty cool, but so what? How is it the best technology of 2003?

My vote would be for cheap ($100) dual format +R/RW & -R/RW DVD writers.

LK

Re:Give me a GXX DXXXXX break!

[bnenning]

His products are constantly being praised by the societal elite, but you know what? No one else cares!

The number of Apple stories on Slashdot suggests otherwise. Unless Slashdotters are the "societal elite", which I somehow doubt.

Re:Give me a GXX DXXXXX break!

[Lord Kano]

The number of Apple stories on Slashdot suggests otherwise. Unless Slashdotters are the "societal elite", which I somehow doubt.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but did you notice that the number of Apple stories increased AFTER /. started banner ads?

Maybe, just maybe the two are related.

LK

Re:Yeah But We WON

[bnenning]

Of *course* we won the war!!! We're the United States! Were we expecting to *lose*?

Quite a few pundits were predicting a Vietnam-style quagmire, thousands of Americans killed in street fighting in Baghdad, etc.

We went to war over WMDs. We went to war because we were lead to believe that there was an immediate threat to the saftey of Americans.

No. We went to war because Saddam was a continuing (not "imminent") threat to the region and the world. WMDs were merely one aspect of that threat.

As for them being better off, that's an incredibly arrogant and paternalistic thing to say.

You actually think it's plausible that the Iraqi people were better off with Saddam in power? Not even Dean goes that far.

Why do you think the reaction in Iraq has been: "thanks for getting rid of Saddam, now get the fuck out!"

Yes, that's the general plan, as soon as we can insure that the remaining Baathist thugs won't be able to seize power again.

UN makes resolutions about lots of things

[billstewart]

I already modded myself down for off-topicness.

If you're going to use UN resolutions as a justification for anything, please enforce them in numerical order.... The US's ally, Israel, has never complied with most of the UN resolutions about their denial of civil rights to Palestinian residents. There are probably UN resolutions that the US is in violation of, as well as International Criminal Court actions the US ignored about their mining of Nicaragua's harbors, which is an act of war.

And besides, this isn't a UN war. That resolution was from the *old* UN, that did whatever the US told it to. The *current* UN has France and Germany in it, so this war was run by the Coalition of the Willing, which let the US do whatever they wanted to.

Re:UN makes resolutions about lots of things

[cheezedawg]

If you're going to use UN resolutions as a justification for anything, please enforce them in numerical order....

Its a lot more complicated than that. I assume you are talking about resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions passed regarding Israel and the Palestinians, but you cannot compare them to resolution 687.

Basically, there are 3 types of resolutions that can come out of the United Nations:
- General Assembly resolutions, which carry the same authority as a suggestion and are not enforceable by the UN
- Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 6, which are cease-fire agreements, and again are not enforceable by the UN
- Security Council resolutions passed under Chapter 7, which not only are enforceable, but the UN charter mandates that member states do enforce them

Resolution 242 and the subsequent resolutions against Israel/Palestine were passed under Chapter 6 of the charter. 242 was a cease fire that basically stated that Israel should give up some occupied territory and Palestinians should stop threatening Israel. Now Israel has given up over 90% of the territory that it originally occupied, but they are still very much threatoned by the Palestinians. Either way, the resolution is not enforceable under the UN charter.

On the other hand, all of the resolutions against Iraq, starting with 678 in 1990, were passed under chapter 7, and as such they are enforeable by the member states of the UN. You really cannot compare them.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[Fryth]

No. We went to war because Saddam was a continuing (not "imminent") threat to the region and the world. WMDs were merely one aspect of that threat.

Iraq may be better off without Saddam, but there's no denying that we went to war for the WMD's, only for the WMD's, and solely for the WMD's. There are no WMD's, so the war was wrong.

QuarkXPress 6

[Anonymous Coward]

After buying a legit upgrade, I ended up using a crack to get it to install anyway. Quark will get no more of my money.

Re:Electronic voting machines in Ireland

[billstewart]

Ireland jumped on the Electronic voting machine bandwagon as well, but there are real problems with it.
The catch is that the "If nobody's looking, change the vote to 'Republican'" feature was only tested in the US.......

SCO Doesn't Qualify

[yintercept]

This is about companies that actually create things...not law firms.

Re:SCO Doesn't Qualify

[mcwop]

That is why they get the Pan. They think they created something.

total worst of 2003

[theMerovingian]

Grand Theft Auto. It's worse than molesting children.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[GatorMan]

Let them run it. Don't assume that we are blessing them with our precious system of government, because honestly, they don't want it.

Canada wishes it were that blessed :)

Re:Yeah But We WON

[cheezedawg]

You have been listening to Howard Dean too much. I liked Sen Lieberman's comment on Dean- if Dean can't see why the capture of Saddam makes us safer, then maybe Dean shouldn't be in charge of our national security.

We are better off because a crazed dictator who is sworn enemy of the United States with terrorist connections and an arsenal of weapons is no longer in power. We are better off because a free and democratic Iraq will transform the entire region into a more stable and less hostile place. We are better off because other crazy dictators have seen the results of Saddam's actions, and they are reacting to it (and at the same time they are proving that the Bush Doctrine works).

It appears that he didn't have any WMDs, so he couldn't have been going to supply those to terrorists. So I'm no safer for his having been deposed.

There are lots of weapons that are not accounted for. Are you really ok just waiting for them to be used before we anything about it?

Download limit....

[JackpotMonkey]

The message you requested is temporarily unavailable because this group has exceeded its download limit. Please try again later.

Imagine that, from a linked /. post....

BAD: Govt Surveillance

[rueger]

If there's one technological move that scares the bejeezus out of me it's the US government's rapid deployment of intrusive technology to monitor individuals, or to track their movements and actions.

Whether it's Patriot Two, and the far reaching powers that it gives government agencies to snoop at just about anything you can think of in your life, or the fingerprinting and scanning of people entering or leaving the country, or the increasing use of things like EZ_Pass by law enforcement, it seems that overall this is probably the worst abuse of technology that we can imagine.

Add to these the powers given to corporate interests by things like the DMCA, and it seems that technology is being used to strip away many, many fundamental rights that we should enjoy as citizens.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[Rudisaurus]

Of *course* we found Saddam! We're the United States! Were we expecting not to find Saddam? Thinking that maybe one man would somehow elude the grasp of the most powerful nation on earth???

Uh huh. Where's Osama now?

(Go ahead, mod me down. I AM totally off-topic. It was worth it!)

Re:Yeah But We WON

[Gareman]

WMD's were the excuse and not the primary reason? When Dean is elected, it will be because people are pissed off that WMD's were the excuse and not the primary reason. Every time I hear stuff like this I send him a check.

the best technology is easy..

[kemster]

Easily the best technology of 2003 was the Slashdot Dupe-Post-Checker(c). Using the up-to-now unknown technologies of "regular expressions" and "pattern matching", the wiz-kid staff at Slashdot was finally able to automatically check if a story had already been posted before.

Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.. that isn't due out until 2004, right? Or maybe it's just vaporware..

Re:Yeah But We WON

[IronicCheese]

So they're not better off?

- rape rooms
- 300,000 dead spread over multiple mass graves
- torture chambers

Say what you will about the war and the bad planning of the aftermath, about the needless alienation of the world over the reasons for it and the often cynical rewarding of contracts for Iraq's reconstruction, but to assert that Iraq was better off under Saddam is to show that you're not thinking straight.

Worst tech?

[DroidBiker]

How about the continued poliferation of so-called Digital Rights Management?

Worst Tech

[batquux]

Glowing fish have got to rank up there somewhere...

How?

[ProtonMotiveForce]

You're just spouting nonsense. It doesn't do _anything_ with consumer rights, numbskull. Intel is a supporter of Linux.

Ya paranoid freak.

Re:How?

[morelife]

A PC BIOS redesign which, unlike what we have today, might be able to control what products will operate with it (for example Microsoft or Intel products only), and might control what media and content can be used on the machine in question, would be a giant step toward removing consumer rights in these areas, and maximizing corporate control on the use of hardware, content, possibly stepping on some fair use rights in the process.

It doesn't do _anything_ with consumer rights..

It does, and it will.

Intel is much more a Microsoft supporter than a Linux supporter. That truth explains why they are crafting the EFI spec with MS not RedHat, or openbios.org.

numbskull.
That just makes your incorrect opinion all the more questionable.

Re:How?

[ProtonMotiveForce]

Ohh, I see... "Might be able to control"... "Corporate control". "Fair use rights". You're one of those.

Oh, and Cletus - they _are_ working with RedHat. The itanium build of Linux kind of USES EFI!!!! And openbios.org??! Who the hell cares about them - insignificant. Maybe they should work with every small-time "visionary" on the web, huh?

Paranoid delusions with no basis in fact.

Sorry I mentioned it - carry on with with trying to decipher messages from Aliens in the newspaper or whatever it is paranoids do with their free time.

By the way, why would a large corporation _not_ work with the single largest OS and software vendor in the world?

Re:How?

[morelife]

Sorry, guess I was overly concerned about your well being.

I was worried, that perhaps someday, should you buy a DVD that refuses to play in your computer because of DRM restrictions coming from your BIOS, you might be hurt and upset, and perhaps even feel betrayed by those Mega Corporations you love so much today ... but hell, I won't worry. You and the rest of your white knuckle Microsoft-Loving, Dukes-of-Hazard-Rerun-Watching pedants will be grabbing your ankles so tight that you won't ever feel the impact.

Do remember to come up for air every now and again.

I concur!

[James A. C. Joyce]

Though for me, the ability to hack the game code is probably the next-best thing after its rough-edged cuteness. I'm currently dicking around with the code to add a server option that allows you to choose the radius of a nuclear bomb's fallout and aftereffects. I also made up my own ruleset which has an ICBM, IRBM and Tactical Nuke. Oh, and I threw together a patch which causes dropping a nuke to affect your reputation and to remove infrastructure from around the epicentre of the blast.

(Whew, that's quite a lot to say.)

The Worst Technology is...

[dnahelix]

Electronic Voting run by a company that heavily donates to the Republicans.

The Joy of Segway

[handy_vandal]

all those pictures of the president falling off of one were worth all the effort.

Would be even funnier to see the president run over by a fleet of Segways. But I guess will have to settle for the president's father vomiting on the prime minister of Japan.

-kgj

Bio-Weapon Blues

[handy_vandal]

I'm pretty much hairless already! And since I don't have a girlfriend, I might as well be sterile! So exactly how is this bio-weapon of your going to change my life, again?

Who knows? Maybe the reverse will happen ....

-kgj

Re:Yeah But We WON

[frankmanowar]

We are better off because a crazed dictator who is sworn enemy of the United States

Actually, we helped Saddam out quite a bit during the Iran/Iraq war in the 80's. We became his sworn enemy only when he invaded Kuwait and we realized that oil would be far cheaper in the hands of people we saved from invasion. And please don't give me that crap that we help everyone. Do you think we'd be in the middle east at all if the region's major export was corn?

with terrorist connections

Before or after we invaded Iraq? Nobody had any proof to this speculation before we invaded, but now we have created a self-fufilling prophecy. Of course terrorists are on his side now because they hate us and we invaded Iraq.

and an arsenal of weapons

Where exactly are these again? I'm curious.

a free and democratic Iraq will transform the entire region into a more stable and less hostile place.

A capitalistic Iraq will allow those who participated in the invasion to profit immensely from transforming the middle east into a "western" country. However only "western" in the sense of say, African nations in which we can lord impossible debts over their heads and force them into low wage labor.

We are better off because other crazy dictators have seen the results of Saddam's actions, and they are reacting to it (and at the same time they are proving that the Bush Doctrine works).

True. North Korea did react by announcing their intentions to blow up South Korea and Japan.

There are lots of weapons that are not accounted for. Are you really ok just waiting for them to be used before we anything about it?

If that sort of policy is acceptable, then it surely would be alright to assume you were carrying a gun, shoot you, only to find out later you didn't have one. BUT, you had the possibility of owning one. So, I had to shoot you.

Re:Yeah But We WON (WAY OT)

[Tony]

Iraq may be better off without Saddam, but there's no denying that we went to war for the WMD's, only for the WMD's, and solely for the WMD's. There are no WMD's, so the war was wrong.

We went to war to distract the US population from the fact we haven't solved a damned thing in Afghanistan; we went to war for the oil; we went to war because the current administration has been unable to resolve domestic issues such as increasing poverty, decreasing employment, and corporations that have destroyed the economy to enrich a few people.

We went to war because the American people demanded some sort of retaliation for 9/11/2001. (Side note: after the shuttle blew up on re-entry, it took 3 days to get 2 separate investigations going. Why did it take 18 fucking *months* to begin investigating the 9/11 attacks? And why was the crime scene cleaned up by then?)

No. The war was not over WMDs. Bush may have used the threat of WMDs to whip the citizenship of the US into a war frenzy, and he used falsified documents to do it, but that wasn't what the war was about.

As for the grandparent post: Saddam was not a threat at all to the region. He was a threat to the people of Iraq, but not to anyone else. If you want a continuing threat to the region, take a look at Isreal and Palistine and Saudi Arabia, two of which enjoy American protection and aid.

Re:(rolling eyes)

[mcwop]

You are right, but no need to throw the baby out with the bath water.

The good from Apple: Safari, Panther, Keynote, Final Cut Express, iChat AV, Shake, Soundtrack, G5's, Pixlet...

Fixed, but DNS Still a Problem

[billstewart]

Yes, NS's DNS hijacking was a major turkey, and was possible because the DNS system has centralized technology but no clear definition of who's really in charge. On the other hand, it was easily fixed, because everybody knew who was responsible, and almost everybody in the world yelled at them, including the two organizations whose dubious claims to ownership of namespace policy trump NS's.

NS's DNS hack was a pretty direct application of their Internationalized Domain Name (IDN) design, which brings up the problem that there's a large demand for non-7-bit-ASCII domain names, and the main proposed solution (from NS) has many of the same failures that their missing-DNS-resolver had - it's really only designed for the web, has marginal support at best for email, and fails completely for most other protocols. The alternative is to make the major DNS handlers (client as well as server) 8-bit-clean, do something different to address the uppercase/lowercase relationships, and make sure there aren't any problems with null bytes in Unicode names or other gotchas, and get enough standards committees (plus Microsoft) on board with it to get the thing actually deployed. It's an ugly job and somebody's still got to do it, otherwise somebody will do a much uglier job like NS did.

Worst Tech of 2003?

[gad_zuki!]

Unencrypted wireless keyboards. Oh man, how did that get out of the gate?

ActiveX Spyware. Looks like an official message from the OS, better click on it.

MP3 players under 256 megabytes. Look ma! I have the convience of spending over 200 dollars for something that barely holds more music than carrying around a el-cheapo CD player and two CDs, plus with the added advantage of lossy compression!

The Color T-Mobile sidekick. "Whoops, we screwed the pooch on licensing so we're going to remotely delete your games. Also, there is no software to download from developers. Enjoy your vendor lock-in!"

Anything targeted at "business people." "Oh hi IT department. I saw a cool ad for this treo/PDAphone/speech2text/etc but I'm too stupid to read the instructions so lets setup a time where you can train me on the stupid stuff I can afford to buy every week and then never use again."

Email to phone services. "Now I can get spam read to me by a computer voice on my cell phone!"

"Speed-up" dial-up web proxies that cost almost as much as DSL. Geez people, just get the damn DSL line.

Segway HT Has yet to revolutionize anything but has shown us how the media can be exploited for free advertising.

Red Hat Linux.

RH:Screw you guys, we're going corporate, you know, where the money is.

ME:But, but I'll pay you for updates! In fact I do!

RH:Too bad kid.

Lindows. Worst. Name. Ever. Its like a Sonyo or a Magnetbox.

Windows/Office activation. Pain for when you need to re-install and pushes people back to the 2000 products.

Cellphone earpieces with hanging mics. You look like a crazy person talking to yourself. No really, you do.

AGP 8x Thanks for making my old AGP cards obsolete and bringing back old PCI cards for PCs that don't need kick-ass 3D.

Best tech:

Alltheweb.com Google now has a kick-ass competitor.

The T-mobile sidekick. Once you get over the vendor lock-in its the best mobile browser out there, sans java-script.

The Treo600. Camera and all the palm apps you can handle and it plays MP3s.

Google text-ads. This should be self-explanatory.

Mandrake policy. Nice to see a distro care enough to say how long they're willing to support the product.

Gnomemeeting. Its like a big geek party.

DVD players that can play SVCDs. Finally.

Adapative spam filters. Just golden.

The Firebird/Thunderbird projects. Bye, bye IE/Outlook on windows.

Wifi everywhere. Love it.

Re:Worst Tech of 2003?

[Perky_Goth]

you're a little toooooo cynical, otherwise, spot on.

Re:Worst Tech of 2003?

[Mairsil]

worst:

MP3 players under 256 megabytes.

and best:

The Treo600. Camera and all the palm apps you can handle and it plays MP3s.

Now how can sub-256mb players be useless, and yet be a kick-ass feature in a 24mb Treo?

Re:Worst Tech of 2003?

[jo42]

> DVD players that can play SVCDs. Finally.

Yer behind the times. How about a DVD player for under $150 USD that plays DivX/XivD/MPEG4? LiteOn LVD-2002

Re:Yeah But We WON

[cheezedawg]

We became his sworn enemy only when he invaded Kuwait and we realized that oil would be far cheaper in the hands of people we saved from invasion.

Ok- he tried to illegally expand his borders, and we kicked is ass back out. Even if we did just do it for oil, it was the right thing to do. And do you realize that we only get about 2% of our oil imports from Kuwait, right? If the was was just about oil, we would have probably gone after Canada or Mexico or Saudi Arabia instead.

Before or after we invaded Iraq? Nobody had any proof to this speculation before we invaded

President Clinton knew about Iraq's terrorist links. According to this recently leaked memo, the CIA has been tracking an al qaeda/Iraq link for over 10 years.

Where exactly are these again?

If Saddam had complied with the UN, we would know now, wouldn't we...

A capitalistic Iraq will allow those who participated in the invasion to profit immensely from transforming the middle east into a "western" country.

The Iraqis themselves are very optimistic about their future after Saddam. Why aren't you?

African nations in which we can lord impossible debts over their heads and force them into low wage labor.

Yeah- lets blame the US for everything. Many African nations are struggling with poverty- must be our fault. Theres no other explanation.

North Korea did react by announcing their intentions to blow up South Korea and Japan

North Korea's actions have just confirmed why we have regarded them as a terrorist supporting rouge nation for years now.

BUT, you had the possibility of owning one. So, I had to shoot you.

If you had seen me shoot people in the past with a gun, and you had no evidence that I had got rid of my gun, then yes, you should shoot me if I threaten to kill you. That is the smart thing to do. We are not suicidal, after all.

Segway Bullet Items?

[billstewart]

Segway's aren't very good bullet items - 12mph is too slow for a drive-by shooting... :-)

Actually, I think Segways were mostly banned from sidewalks, not streets, and mainly in cities where Segway was lobbying to get official permission to use them on sidewalks. The right place for them is bike lanes - they're fairly similar in speed.

Re:Segway Bullet Items?

[Frisky070802]

...banned from sidewalks, not streets

Yup, that's what I meant, thanks. And I agree, bike lanes make the most sense, but in their infinite wisdom, or infinite age, the cities that don't want it on their sidewalks don't tend to have bike lanes. I don't recall bike lanes in my last visit to Manhattan...

Skin-implantable RFID chip as RUNNER UP???

[MsGeek]

Shit, I'd say that takes the cake for WORST TECHNOLOGY OF 2003, no questions asked! Chip my dog, my cat, my guinea pigs, that's cool. Call me superstitious, but chipping human beings is too close to the "Mark of the Beast" for my comfort. [shudder]

Re:Skin-implantable RFID chip as RUNNER UP???

[lurker412]

I would agree except that I really doubt that the VeriChip is going to catch on. Outside of prisons anyway. It's just too creepy for people to tolerate. On the other hand, electronic voting seems to have a degree of credibility among the technically unsophisticated. They do not understand the risks, which makes it more likely that the technology will spread.

Worst tech: soundbites

[gad_zuki!]

Parent: ""It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
--Sen Hillary Clinton, Oct 10, 2002"

Heh, funny how the right also routinely attacks her but when you need someone to back-up your war of choice there she is.

Or perhaps we can just make the worst technology ever Television. Its brought down the level of political discourse to the point where people have no problem tossing aside facts and believing what the man in the suit is saying. I mean, he LOOKS presidential, he certainly can't be lying. Right? Right?

Best/Worst YahooPOPs, MSRMS

[k4_pacific]

Worst: Microsoft Rights Management Services (RMS) - Forces everyone who does business with you to use RMS if you use RMS. - Forces you to use RMS to do business with anyone who uses RMS. - Slanders the good name of Richard Stallman. Can he sue them for this? One of the Best: YahooPOPs. (Provides free SMTP/POP3 access to Yahoo Mail by downloading html, parsing out message, converting to SMTP/POP3) I know it is rather trivial in the big scheme of things, but it is a clever program that demonstrates the creativity and originality of the OSS community. http://sourceforge.net/projects/yahoopops/

Database Coordination is Inevitable

[billstewart]

TIA was really two things - letting one US government agency see all the data held by other US government agencies, and forcing the private sector to make more data available to the government with less supervision than ever before.

DARPA's TIA didn't get to be the agency in charge, but the various pretend "anti-terrorist" policy decrees are nonetheless increasing the amount of government data that's accessible by spooky agencies, decreasing the accountability levels (requests vs. formal administrative requests vs. court orders), letting the spooks who were previously only allowed to deal with non-US targets go after US targets as well, and in general there's lots more unprotected data floating around. And the government's been rapidly increasing their demands for private-sector data and data from private individuals - airlines giving the TSA info on who's flying, which they pass on to other spooks who issue no-fly lists, "financial institution" definitions extended to just about everybody including pawn shops, "PATRIOT" and "PATRIOT II" and the like.

Moore's Law means that lots of this is inevitable, in the private sector as well as government. Forty years ago, computers were room-sized and were limited to punch cards for input and magtape for mass storage, and people were worried about privacy then, but actually _doing_ anything with records was a slow process, required long expensive development cycles, and had trouble correlating any data that didn't have simple common keys like Social Security Numbers. These days, wristwatches sometimes have more CPU power and storage than those mainframes, pocket-sized computers have much more, and a spreadsheet and a few Excel macros running on any bureaucrat's desktop can run ad-hoc queries in minutes that would have taken the IRS a year to design and develop back then, and can match up names and addresses with reasonable accuracy.

The real key is minimizing creation of correlatable data, limiting access to data you have, not collecting (or giving out) information that people don't need, using different email addresses for different correspondents, etc. Cryptography gives us a few tools for things like that - hashes, Chaum's blinded signatures. Traditional business practices also have tools, like paying cash instead of credit cards, or Amex's one-use credit card numbers. But it fundamentally requires committment, and there are too many businesses that find it financially useful to collect more data for data mining, and the political climate was going downhill rapidly before the terrorist carte blanche. (Remember Louis Freeh?)

iTunes was a great buisneess feat, not tech.

[bug1]

There is nothing inovative about distributing music online in 2003... ever heard of napster, or kazzaa ?

What is inovate is distributing music online without the RIAA (and their budies) chasing after you and your customers.

Apples music sharing is a great buisness and/or political innovation, its extremely ignorant to consider it a tech innovation.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[ClosedSource]

I agree, we didn't go to war for WMDs. That was just the excuse.

We went to war because Bush realized he could get away with it in a post-9/11 environment. I hope he enjoyed using up his free pass, he isn't going to get another one.

Gentoo and CVS, of course

[axxackall]

Gentoo and it's Portage is the best tech of 2003 of course, as it's first time tech that teaches sysadmin that fine-grained control is possible (even with some historical sense of that control, when it comes to package releases).

As for the worst, I guess everyone here already thought to suggest that it's everything from Microsoft, because it's spreading holes for spam virus/worms. But I would come with old-old name: CVS. It's the worst tech still survived 2003, despite upcoming Subversion with Arch and existing Aegis with Darcs.

The Worst List

[Valen0]

Here is my "worst" list:

1. TIA/MATRIX/etc. - The last thing we need is a "democratic" government starting up 24/7 survelience on everyone. The whole scheme stinks of facist and police state policies.

2. DRM/Palladium/Trusted Computing/etc. - This technology is appearing in more and more retail devices and computer software. When I buy devices or software, I expect them to work... Not lock me out because I might be some pirate.

3. RFID Customer Products - This technology might be good for mass inventory scans, but it starts becoming scary when it starts being implemented in the retail product. I do not like the idea of my good broadcasting what they are to anyone that asks.

Re:The Worst List

[Cprossu]

hmmmmmm The worst tech for 2003...hmmmmmm there are too many canidates lets start off with paladium, and then the P4 Celeron, followed by the geforceFX 5200NonUltra. HOWEVER The 'protection' initiated by the RIAA on cd's to defer owners from ripping their music is definatly the worst technology I can think of also i definatly aggree on the voting machines as for the best, the opteron and the g5 top my list.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[zazas_mmmm]

OK, I'll bite because both you and the grandparent post have made this ridiculous leap in logic. Regardless of the politics involved, this is a faulty syllogism. Karma be damned.

Your logic looks like this:
A) "We went to war...solely for the WMD's"
B) "There are no WMD's"
Therefore
C) "The war was wrong"

In your reasoning, while A may be true, and B may be true, there is no logic that allows you to come to C as your conclusion.

Correct logic would look like this:
A) WMDs are the only justification for a war.
B) There are no WMDs
Therefore
C) The war is not justified.

This logic is clearly ridiculous as there are many reasons beyond WMDs for legitimately going to war--a country attacks us, a ruling power or ethnic group is committing genocide, a ruling party is terrorizing its people and committing horrendous atrocities, or a country's aggressiveness is destabilizing a region--to name a few. I think the problem here is that I've kept your premises but changed your conclusion.

I think I know what argument you were trying to make. Let me see if I can straighten out your syllogism so that the conclusion remains unchanged.

A) Bush took the country to war.
B) Everything Bush does is wrong.
Therefore
C) The war is wrong.

There. Doesn't it feel better to be frank with your agenda?

OT: Re:100billion and still counting

[Vellmont]

Wow, how misinformed are you? Most of the population of Iraq hated Saddam, and are at worst cautious about the US presence. (Who can blame them after 20 years of rule be an evil dictator that the US help set up).

There's currently a small, but (relatively) powerfull segment of the population that were the weasel-boy minions under Saddam that did all the evil shit (you don't murder and brutalize hundreds of thousands of people alone). These are the people carrying out the attacks.

It's a pretty hard sell to say the war is over when there's US soldiers killed every other day in Iraq. Calling it a war is just a matter of semantics, but there's certainly no question there's still active resistance operating in Iraq.

You're right about one thing though, it still remains to be seen exactly what the US is really setting up in Iraq.

Re:OT: Re:100billion and still counting

[shaitand]

"Most of the population of Iraq hated Saddam"

Nonsense, aside from opposing religious factions (an element you'll see opposing the governments of most middle eastern nations) there is as yet any evidence to indicate that the opinion polls which ranked favor of Saddam in the high 90%+ category are anything but perfectly true. Aside from propoganda spouted by the enemy (iraq's enemy the US) there is nothing to indicate the people were oppressed into giving false opinions at all.

I'm not debating on whether or not Saddam was a good guy, only whether or not he was liked by the people of IRAQ. Let's see, he was fighting to reclaim parts of iraq which had been lost, recovering the homeland so to speak. In fact he succeeded. Then the greedy americans concerned about their oil supply came charging in. Saddam spit in their faces by lighting the oil fields the greedy Americans loved so much aflame (after all, that's not why iraq was there, it was there recovering the homeland) showing his disgust at their greed.

Then the greedy americans made false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Blew up one of their own bases in Saudi Arabia so they would have pity casualties, and used all this as an excuse to kill women and children with their bombs for 10yrs.

None of this is neccesarily my opinion, after all Im in the US and our news sources are heavily government monitored and controled, filled with propoganda on the subject. But it is a very feasible view from the shoes of an Iraqie with the information available.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[be-fan]

Correct logic would look like this:
A) WMDs are the only justification for a war.
B) There are no WMDs
Therefore
C) The war is not justified.
--------
Change that slightly and you'll have it right. (A) should read:

A) WMDs were the primary justification for the war.

If there were no WMDs, that means the primary justification for the war did not in fact exist, and therefore, we should not have gone to war.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[be-fan]

It's a simple potential cost vs potential benifet analysis.

The potential benifet of getting rid of Saddam was minimal. Yes, he has done terrible things in the past, but you can't bring those people back. Thus, his past behavior only factors into the analysis as an indicator of his future behavior. Since he was under a great deal of international scrutiny, the chances of him acting similarly in the future, without the international community being able to stop him promptly, were minimal.

You also have to factor in the potential long term benifet of changing the organization of society. Experience has shown that such top-down democratization as we are attempting does not work without an underlying culture ready to support it. There is a reason why there are almost no democratic countries in the Middle East --- culturally, they are not ready for it. So to see a long term benifet from this democratization of Iraq, Iraq would somehow have to be different from most evey other Middle Eastern country.

One potential benefit is reduced state-supported terrorism. If Saddam was funding and arming terrorists, then getting rid of him would be better for our safety. Again, this benifet did not materialize. Even the Bush administration has admitted that Saddam really had no ties to Al Queda.

One last potential benifet is really the turning point. If Saddam had WMD, then there was a huge potential benefit in getting rid of him so he could not use it. WMDs posed a direct danger to the United States, and surrounding areas, because they could be used without giving us time to react. Since there were no WMDs, this benifet did not materialize.

The potential costs are very high. Say what you will about Saddam, you can't deny that Iraq was stable. Instability kills far more innocents than war. About 3000 Iraqi civilians were killed as a result of the Gulf War. 110,000 were killed as a result of all the infrastructure that was destroyed. 70,000 of those were children under the age of 15. After the Gulf War, the government remained in power. Now, in Iraq, he have no strong government, and the potential civilian death toll is even higher.

There is a very high potential that the resulting government in Iraq will be unsuccessful. Our new Afghan government is having serious problems, and internal instability and danger is again a problem in the country. There is a very real possibility that our western-style government in Iraq will fail, and that the country will be thrown into turmoil.

Now, add to these potential costs the actual cost of the military operation, the cost of the lost American and Iraqi lives, the cost of our decreased moral stature around the world, the cost of our breaking international principles of sovreignity, and the cost of increased terrorism as a result of our (effectively unilateral) actions.

To the American people, it was the WMDs, and to a lesser extent, terrorism, that sealed the deal. Without these huge potential benifets, the cost/benifet analysis of this situation works out, by a large margin, in favor of not going to war.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[be-fan]

We are going to let them(NOT the UN!) run their country very shortly.
>>>>>>>>>>
No we're not. We're going to install a US-designed, US-backed government. If we let them have free reign about how to shape their government, they'd most likely choose a conservative theocracy. Why? Because their conservative muslims! Their culture doesn't do the whole democracy thing, not yet anyway.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[be-fan]

There is a difference between what Bin Laden sys and what Al Queda's goals are. Simply, Al Queda has no goals. He uses anti-Western rhetoric, but nobody takes him seriously except the loonies.

Amen, brother!

[phillymjs]

Long live InDesign! Death to Quark and their double-priced, half-assed crapola!

~Philly

Re:Yeah But We WON (WAY OT)

[whatch durrin]

We went to war to distract the US population from the fact we haven't solved a damned thing in Afghanistan

Yeah, the Taliban is still in power, right? Wrong. Osama may not be captured, but for all we know he could already be dead. Either way, we took away from al Qaida a large source of security and funding - the Afghan government.

we went to war for the oil

Really? My gas prices haven't improved. Iraqi oil being sold on the open market isn't going into a US account - it's being used to improve the Iraqi infrastructure. And US taxpayer money is being used to get refineries updated and back online.

we went to war because the current administration has been unable to resolve domestic issues such as increasing poverty, decreasing employment, and corporations that have destroyed the economy to enrich a few people.

Have you even seen the news lately?

Stocks End First Positive Year Since 1999

New Jobless Claims Lowest of Bush Tenure

You might want to find a new source for the conspiracy theories.

Re:Yeah But We WON

[frankmanowar]

I'll be fair. I like most of your answers. And I enjoy sharing like this. we would have probably gone after Canada or Mexico or Saudi Arabia instead

That would be nice wouldn't it? Unfortunately, it would be a little more difficult to make invisible terrorist ties to Canada and Mexico. But I am actually a little surprised we didn't go after Saudi Arabia instead.

President Clinton knew about Iraq's terrorist links. According to this recently leaked memo, the CIA has been tracking an al qaeda/Iraq link for over 10 years.

That is interesting, especially considering the term 'Al Qaeda' is actually a term invented in 1998 after the Oklahoma City bombings to describe very loosely knit extremist organizations around the world. Now that we have given them an umbrella name to operate under, we have not only given their efforts focus, but allow independent groups completely unrelated to bin Laden to claim affiliation with this 'Al Qaeda' thing. It's this exaggeration which has allowed the current administration to link any terrorist group they please in Iraq back to bin Laden.

The Iraqis themselves are very optimistic about their future after Saddam. Why aren't you? If Saddam had complied with the UN, we would know now, wouldn't we...

For some reason, I find it joyless to indirectly participate (via my tax dollars and due to the place of my birth) in the unilateral invasion of a country on anecdotal evidence. If we had given UN inspectors the time they requested instead of bullying the international community it is possible we could have resolved the situation without getting anyone killed. Is that too much to ask?

North Korea's actions have just confirmed why we have regarded them as a terrorist supporting rouge nation for years now.

Do you think it is worth putting that corner of the world in that much danger to prove that point?

Yeah- lets blame the US for everything. Many African nations are struggling with poverty- must be our fault. Theres no other explanation.

Our fault? If by that you mean imperialists then yes. This is an issue with a much longer backstory, but when you invade peoples lands and completely alter their ways of living without their consent and at the behest of the international community it tends to fuck things up. People have struggled to feed themselves in Africa since the beginning of time, perhaps. But now they have guns, tanks, armies, corruption (of course) and international debts. Desperation is the seed of corruption. Since the fall of the Taliban, many kurds have been forced into corruption - dealing opium - to survive because they are out of options. It would be a bald-faced lie to say our specific western cultural influence has not lead Africa to its current state.

If you had seen me shoot people in the past with a gun, and you had no evidence that I had got rid of my gun, then yes, you should shoot me if I threaten to kill you. That is the smart thing to do. We are not suicidal, after all

The smart thing to do would be to not hand out guns in the first place.

Cheers, and Happy New Year

Your data is out of date -- 1984

[wrinkledshirt]

Actually, Iraq's chemical weapons are NOT from the United States.

This is factually incorrect. This list of agents was proven to have come from the United States.

Re: Jesus-caused Deaths

[some guy I know]

How many people did Jesus kill? What's that? Zero?

Actually, if you believe in the Bible, the answer is -1.

the enter key....

[dave1g]

I prefer posts of this size tobe broken down into bulleted like sectionn whe the enter key is used often... Especially when quotes are involved.

Re:the enter key....

[xenoandroid]

Sorry, I used the enter key but I forgot that I had my posting mode set to HTML and not Plain Old Text (and of course I rarely preview before submitting).

Camera phones

[Mal-2]

Camera functions are the worst thing to happen to the mobile phone since neon faceplates. They're being seen now as a privacy and security risk (though they always have been, just with sound instead of images) and banned from various places, such as locker rooms and test facilities. Merely having your phone ring during an insurance licensing test is grounds for an immediate fail. Retake fees being what they are, the state actively pursues all legal (and sometimes not legal, such as outright fraud on the part of the examiners in the Scantron days -- if they didn't like your sandals and t-shirt they'd "correct" your "A" revision test with a "B" revision key) methods at their disposal to see that you take the test as many times as possible.

If using a phone causes undue hardship to others, or allows unfair advantage (cheating on tests, anyone?) then ban its use in that particular environment... okay, that makes sense. You may not LIKE it, but at least there's some reason for it. But now that phones are coming with cameras as a matter of routine, they become LESS useful in some of the very situations where they were previously useful. Are you quietly texting someone to keep the library quiet or reading a message, or are you trying to snap upskirt pics of the girl in the next row? The professional worriers can't tell, so they simply insist you not use (or possibly even possess) the phone at all. Sounds a lot like MS service pack "fixes". By adding one feature, they break others.

Mal-2

How lame.

[jotaeleemeese]

"It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons." --Sen Hillary Clinton, Oct 10, 2002

Which part of "IF left unchecked" you are unable to decode with your obviously damaged reading organ?

And how do you infer from "will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons" that Iraq actually had them?

Now, Clinton spoke about "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction *program*". Notice how he never assumes that Iraq has acquired such weapons. Every single country with a bit of cloud will have a program, some for nastier bits of weapons than others (last time I checked the US has weapons, no programs, based on bioligical, chemical and nuclear technologies).

In other words the Clintons were on top of the money and you are trying to distort the meaning of their words by putting them out of context and actually ignore what they are actually saying.

Lame.

You conveniently omit some bit of information.

[jotaeleemeese]

That Hussein's regime was the darling of the West until he unwisely invaded Iraq in 1991 (after mistakenly believing he have been given green light to do so by the US).

During all those years Human Rights activists were telling goverments in the West, but specially in Washington and London, the nature of this regime, but all fell on deaf ears. Even MPs in the UK raised the issue in the House of Commons (when the gassing of the Kurds in Halabja) but their complaints were swiftly ignored (no suprise there, Margaret Tatcher counts amongst her friends a certain Augusto Pinochet, whom also happened to be helped by the US goverment during his small terror reign).

So the US and UK discovering all this now is aking to a thieve to truns agisnt another and denounces him to the police.

To make it all worse, Human Rights concerns was a complete afterthought and when it becme apparent the big lie the WMDs is, it became the only saving grace of this whole fiasco.

The inavders of Iraq are acting like a thief that brakes into a house just to find a murderer (which happens to be an old buddy) just before executing somebody and saving the victim.

The thief may have stopped the bigger crime, but one still has to question his initial motives for breaking in without permission.

Stop using the UN when is convenient.

[jotaeleemeese]

If the UN passes a resolution is only up to the UN to enforce it.

No member country should prempt the policies of the UN and no country has the moral or politcal authotiry to decide to enforce any resolutions unilaterally.

If you are going to defend the invasion of Iraq at least do it on serious grounds and stop insulting our intelligence.

Re:Stop using the UN when is convenient.

[cheezedawg]

If the UN passes a resolution is only up to the UN to enforce it.

Please take 2 seconds a browse the UN charter. The UN has no executive branch. It has no means of enforcing anything. Thats why they mandate member states to enforce the resolutions. Read Chapter VII Article 45, 48, and 49 for more information. Starting with 687, the 12 resolutions that were passed by the Security Council to disarm Iraq were specifically passed under Chapter VII of the charter, and they therefore specifically authorize the use of military force.

No member country should prempt the policies of the UN and no country has the moral or politcal authotiry to decide to enforce any resolutions unilaterally

What in the hell are you talking about? We didn't preempt any policies of the UN! Did you forget about the 12 resolutions unanimously passed under Chapter VII that specifically authorize the use of military force? We were acting with full legal authority from the UN! Your talk of unilaterally enforceing the resolutions is laughable- these resolutions were passed unanimously under Chapter VII.

ask slashdot

[FLOOBYDUST]

Every ASK Slashdot post that started with " I want to (Build/buy/find) a (house/ network/car/telescope/ girlfriend/ new computer ) but can't find any (info/ plans/ breathing/ price) can the slashdot community help? "