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Duke Nukem Forever Tops Vaporware List
Wired has an annual list of high-profile vaporware projects and the number of games on there is just depressing. Numbers 7, 6, 5, 2, and 1 are all videogame projects. When the Phantom is only #2, you know what has to be number 1. From the article: "Announced in 1997 and promised every year since, this game takes vaporware to new heights. Think about it, in just 13 months this game will have been in one form of development or another for a decade. This project started with a game based on the Quake 2 engine, then in 1999 it moved to the Unreal engine and has been stalled ever since."
Water is wet!
Although I think calling the new Legend of Zelda "vaporware" is off as its only late by... ooh...3 months.
DNF is only a long standing joke because its of interest to us.
I'm sure our anticipation of that will be similar to how movie buffs react to news.
Its taken 18 years to a get a sequel for Indiana Jones.
DNF has loads of time yet.
liqbase
> Think about it, in just 13 months this game will have been in one form of
> development or another for a decade.
I can't believe there are still people who seriously think this is what's happened. Obviously they've not been working on it for 10 years. They must have decided at some point to work on other things and simply give the impression they were working on it, and have finally (perhaps) decided to release something. Not many companies get to pay nothing to have one of their major project ranges mentioned on a regular basis - good luck to 'em. I've bought several of their games on PSX and PC but I'm hardly hanging on for new games from them (or any other company for that matter). I'm happy to wait for reviews and screenshots of the finished product.
DNF vaporware of the year?
I thought they would stop nominating it after a life time award... I mean, dead horse and all that
Speaking of TiVo, I'm thinking about buying one but I don't know what to get. Some of my buddies were able to do some neat things hacking into their TiVos, and I'd like the ability to save off selected shows or movies without building a MythTV box (too much effort). Which TiVo should I buy, and what Windows/Linux/FreeBSD apps should I grab? Are there non-TiVo firmware images I should download and install on my TiVo? Can I just go out and buy a TiVo brand new and use it without having to mod it? Or, even better, is there a web site out there that explains everything? I googled for "tivo recommendations" and "which tivo to buy", but they didn't turn up anything interesting. It looks like the Series 2 DVR does everything I want except for burning stuff to DVD, but if I can just FTP the files off or something that'd be good enough for me.
I'm proud of my Northern Tibetian Heritage
Personally, I don't consider something vapourware that's delayed from the end of the year in question to first quarter of the following. Maybe I'm picky, but I prefer my vapourware to be talking in years, not months. But every year, they pick at least one or two. Zelda being delayed 3 months does not, I think, get it the 'vapourware' sticker.
And c'mon, Google? That's a real strech. All the things they mention you can use just fine. By other people's definition, they're finished, but Google's fussy. That's not 'vapourware'. Geez, they must have been seriously hard up for ideas or something.
Starcraft: Ghost is more on the nose, though not in Duke Nuke Em's league. The Phantom is aptly named. Complaining about Blu-Ray or HD-DVD seems a touch premature I think, given how long it takes hardware standards to formalize, but at least there's a little substance there. TF2 has been in the works forever.
Vista, well, it's been delayed a couple of years so I guess it qualifies, even if it's one of those things that's guranteed to come out, in a way like nothing else on that list, even if does take another three years.
Wood Shavings!
- Godai
No, you don't get it, it works NOW. My friend, in a management position at Intel corp., recently called me to bitch about Windows. I overnighted him a Fedora Core 4 DVD.
He called me the next day, ready to try it out, apprehensive as hell. I told him not to sweat it, that he didn't even need me on the line.
He booted from DVD, "Next-buttoned" everything from then on. It detected his 3D accelerator, his flatscreen monitor, his wireless network, and all of his hardware and dropped him in a nice desktop.
He plugged in his late-model Brother laser printer. Autodetected upon plugin and away he went, printing.
He plugged in his USB flash drive to test out access to office files. BOOM, icon appears on desktop. He double-clicks and up pops a file manager window showing his files.
He double clicks on an MS Word file and it opens in OpenOffice, no problem.
He plugs in his scanner and asks what program he needs to use to scan. I tell him to start GIMP and use the acquire tool, just like he would in Photoshop. The nice, user-friendly scanner dialog was just like he was used to in windows, and he scans three or four test scans and says "all good!"
He wants to use his Olympus digital camera. I tell him to go for it, so he plugs it into USB and BOOM, an icon appears on his desktop. He starts copying images off of it.
He normally copies his images to DVD-RAM, and he's got an external DVD-RAM drive that he made by installing a Panasonic LFD-211 in a USB case. I get a little nervous about this one, but he plugs it in to his USB hub, inserts a 4.7GB disk, and BOOM, there it is on his desktop.
He drags-drops the files from his digital camera to the DVD-RAM drive, prints out the photo he'd scanned with gimp, and tells me that he has one last need: he's got to install MS Office, Photoshop CS, and FrameMaker.
FrameMaker and Office, I tell him, are a go. Photoshop CS, not so fast. Does he need the whole suite? No? Then does he have Photoshop 7 onsite? Can he use that? Yes? Then we have a go. I point him to the Codeweavers website and he buys Crossover Office for the price of pizza and soda delivery, well under the cost of similar software for Mac OS.
After downloading it, he double-clicks on the Crossover Office icon on his desktop. Up pops a window asking for his password, and a moment later, it's installed itself.
I tell him to insert the Office XP CD and double-click on the "Setup" icon, just like he would in Windows. He does, and a few minutes later, he's got Office XP installed, including completed activation. He quickly does the same for FrameMaker 7 and Photoshop 7.
He begins to ask "how do I start these," and a moment later cuts himself off with, "oh never mind, they've gone into the start menu in a group called 'Windows Applications'."
He launches each one to test that it opens, saves, and prints files.
An hour and forty five minutes after he originally called, we've gone from nothing to a full Fedora desktop, complete with printer, scanner, digital camera, flash drive, DVD-RAM drive, and major Windows applications, and I haven't had to answer a SINGLE QUESTION and have instead been listening to him talk mostly about his family.
It's two weeks later, and I haven't had a SINGLE CALL from him asking for tech support help. His one comment, sent via e-mail:
"Man, I can't believe how fast Linux is. Starting about last year I was thinkin' this PC was due for a replacement request, but I guess it was just XP."
--
Linux is ready NOW. Five years ago, there were a few unmitigated optimists that refused to admit that Linux wasn't ready yet. Today, there are a few unmitigated cynics that refuse to admit that it became ready sometime in the last 24 months.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW