Slashdot Mirror
Wired's 2004 Vaporware Awards
l3pYr writes "Based on user submissions, Wired Magazine has posted its 2004 Vaporware Awards. Duke Nukem Forever has garnered the 'Lifetime Achievement Award,' so it doesn't - officially - make the list. Some of the lucky winners this year are: Alienware, Valve, Microsoft, Apple and TiVo."
10. Alienware's Video Array
9. Intel's Pentium 4 at 4 GHz
8. Apple Computer's G5 Chips at 3 GHz
7. Team Fortress 2: Brotherhood of Arms
6. Gran Turismo 4
5. ATI's Radeon X800 series of video cards
4. TiVoToGo
3. Microsoft's Longhorn
2. CherryOS
1. Phantom Game Console
I have it installed on my system also, although I don't recall booting it anytime recently. It does boot though. It has X, you can compile programs, I think it runs Emacs, it definately runs vi, there might even be a couple games ported to it now. It's a turtle, but definately not vaporware.
Clickety Click
Link to Story
Help fight continental drift.
I was thinking the same thing. We have a system at work that has a X800 installed in it, we got it 6 months ago. Also we just got three X800 XTs in the middle of december. I don't see how these cards can be considered vapourware.
Also, we didn't jump through any special hops to get these cards, we just placed an order with a local computer store, like any Joe Blow is able to do.
[SIG] Far better to be thought a fool then to post on
Yeah, I agree. Maybe they are hurting for things to call vaporware though. I mean they say that TiVoToGo was released on January 3rd, so they called it vaporware for 2004. 3 days late...
I always thought that vaporware implied that the product either didn't exist, or wasn't even close to shipping. So taking a product from non-existent to shipping in 3 days is quite a feat.
Then again (and it surprised me to see a definition for this already) Merriam-Webster defines vaporware as a new computer-related product that has been widely advertised but is not yet available . But even by that definition, TiVoToGo would not be vaporware since it has been shipped before the article was written. Ah well... now I'm just getting to the point of splitting hairs I guess.
-Through the server, over the router, off the firewall... Nothing but 'Net!
Anyone can throw a computer in a pretty case and call it by whatever name they want -- the big deal is the price point they claim to be able to deliver (similar to a console, which MS already did with the XBox), and the concept of a 'subscription' (with a delivery mechanism) for games.
Showing a physical unit off at the CES is like showing a MMORPG without any multi-user support -- it might look pretty, but it's missing the core feature that's supposed to make it special.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
That's exactly what they did. IBM built a brand new fab specifically to build very fast 970s and other 13 nm and smaller chips.
That was the whole point.
Technically as another poster replied, it is out now.
:). Don't let the moniker of "Stable" given to Woody make you think Sarge is inherently "Unstable" in the traditional sense. That's the job of Sid.
I do consider it 'released' as it was released the day it was created. It's been there for download & use for years.
While it's labelled "testing", and woody is the current "stable" in reality I find very little difference between the two. Both have been rock solid for me, although Sarge has had issues of the kind where a config file changes and there's unexpected behaviour, or a package will be updated from version 1.0 to 1.2 and change its behaviour simply by the way it works. That's life on ANY constantly updated operating system.
For most purposes I'd recommend Sarge as the normal, everyday Debian for people to use. It's kept updated, it works, it's solid, and the nice apt tools work fine. Stable is for people who need absolute consistency, those aiming for the five nines.
Debian needs better marketing in release names
Actually using this logic Desktop Linux wins hands down. Every year its arrival is trumpeted yet we still wait.
There's a difference, though. The Year Of Linux On The Desktop(tm) is something that users and pundits keep predicting, not something any one company, or even any group of companies, is promising. In fact, there are a number of distros which meet the requirements for a usable desktop OS, and this has been the case for a couple of years now; if these fail to live up to people's inflated expectations for commercial success, that's the fault of the people with the expectations, not the fault of the people delivering the (very solid) products. This is utterly different from Microsoft's continual promises of secure, stable, feature-rich software that always seems to be Right Around The Corner.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Apparently. Especially since two of the items on their list are on the market right now - GT4 just came out in Japan, and TivoToGo has been out since the beginning of this week.
I've seen it used. Google sysrq and you fill find plenty of things that use it.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
All I can hope is that it's working on the Unreal 3 engine, because by the time it comes out, everyone's computer will handle it at 1000 FPS.
And here's an Engine Demonstration.
For context, click Parent.
While popular religion often presents the idea that early Christians all believed the coming of Christ would be immediate, this is actually explicitly refuted in the Bible in II Thessalonians 2:1-3.
Jesus did state that the kingdom of heaven would come "in this generation" (his generation, not ours) (Mark 9:1, Matthew 24:34), but He also taught that the kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36) and was "within you" (Luke 17:20-21). Since the Bible later identifies the kingdom as the church, refers to Christians already being a part of the kingdom in the past tense rather than future (Colossians 1:13), describes Christ as presently serving as King rather than serving as King in the future (Acts 2:33, Hebrews 12:2), and describes Christ as returning the Kingdom to the Father at His second coming rather than establishing the Kingdom at that time (I Corinthians 15:24), it seems that the prophecy of Christ of the coming of the kingdom referred to the establishment of the church, rather than to His coming at the end of time.
Finally, both Christ (Mark 13:32) and His apostles (I Thessalonians 5:2) stated that noone knew the time of His coming and that it would be without warning, like a thief in the night. Thus, while I and II Thessalonians indicate that many early Christians may have misunderstood, a properly educated 1st century C.E. Christian holding to the doctrine of the second coming as taught by Christ and His apostles would have recognized that the day might or might not come in the immediate future.
That said, you did get a laugh out of me. ;) Hope you found the Bible info informative and that addressing a serious response to a joke doesn't bug you. (That's how I learned everything in high school physics; the teacher addressed serious responses to my jokes.)
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
"fab"
Fabrication plant. where chips are made.
Doh! I'm showing my age. I keep getting my M's and G's mixed up.
But that's exactly the point, a 500 MHz improvement on a 2GHz chip is a 25% increase in speed, and a 500 MHz improvement on a 3GHz chip is only 17% faster.
Think about it. A 100 MHz Pentium to a 200 MHz Pentium is a big deal (100% faster). A 3.2 GHz Xeon to a 3.3 GHz Xeon isn't worth the upgrade (not even 4% faster); you'd only get the faster chip if you were building a new system anyway.
In Microsoft's case, I suspect it was just a bad association with the number 4 from the old DOS days (remember DOS 4? Remember being told to stick with 3.x and wait for 5.x?), but it may also have had something to do with catering for the Japanese market - in Japan the number 4 is associated with death, and is considered unlucky. They seem to take this quite seriously - when I was over there I noticed that chop sticks were on sale in packs of 2 or 5 (when are 5 chop sticks ever useful?) to avoid packaging them in packs of 4.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
That's not as bad as TiVoToGo being #4, despite having already been released only a few days outside the specified window. And the X800 got #5 despite being scheduled to be in transit at press time and having previously available to reviewers.
Virus and Virus 2000 showed a lot of the phenominal mind of David Braben, with impressive graphics and a complex realistic flying system.
In addition to that, he's one of the VERY few coder/designer/CEOs who ALSO are willing to spend the time answering people's questions on USENET. He also ran a survey to see if there was interest in a Linux version of Elite, at the request of fans. That kind of response is rare, but very much appreciated.
Unfortunately, Braben's promises of Elite 4, the debacles over Frontier and FFE, the failure to market Virus 2000 in the US, allegations that he was involved in the killing-off of the clone "Elite: The New Kind", alleged harassment of Ian Bell over his Elite website, etc, suggest that there is a less welcome side to his character.
Most of these are beyond fixing today. Elite 4 is not. But people won't remember the Elite series forever. There's only so big a timeframe to operate in. If he needs help, ideas, support, whatever - that's fine, we can all understand that, but he's not going to get any of those if he doesn't ask, and he might well not get as good as is there, if he's seen as secretive and hostile.
Elite 4 is vaporware, right now, and one of the worst examples of it. If it's done right, though, AND released, it could be a serious killer app in the games market. Even if it's "perfect" and the ultimate product ever written, nobody is going to care if they can't ever see it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Islam says exactly the same thing as Jesus PBUH is quoted as saying in the Gospels, namely that Jesus's return will be a supernatural event and in the Qur'an 6:158 is referred to as certain "of the signs of your Lord after which it will do no good for a soul to believe therein if it profited not from faith before, nor earned good through its faith" as well as in 43:61 "And (Jesus) shall be a Sign (for the coming of) the Hour (of Judgment): therefore have no doubt about the (Hour)". Jesus Christs PBUH return will be momentous in the heavens and earth and will signal the impending Day of Judgment and faith will be useless after since truth will be manifest to all on that mighty day which is the "Day of Allah" (Holy Qur'an). And were anyone to deny one word of the Revelation of the return of Christ, he or she would be violating the teachings of Muhammad.
(Paul btw. didn't even write anything about the earthly Jesus as a person. He was much more a pagan than a jew and for him, christ was some kind of cosmic vehicle for god to get in contact with men.)
Are you kidding me? Paul was a Pharisee named Saul before his conversion on the road to Damascus, and his main priority was stomping out the new cult of Christianity in the name of Judaism. He was about as Jewish as they came during that time period.