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Wired's 2007 Vaporware Awards
Braedley sends word that Wired's annual vaporware list is up, and a number of products this community has discussed made the cut. The top spot, the position of most dishonor, was almost a foregone conclusion. "Another December, another list, another crowning achievement by the Emperor of the Ethereal, the Head Honcho of Hype, Duke Nukem Forever. We were going to disqualify him out of pity, but Sir Duke is back for 2007 thanks to a few leaked screenshots and an overwhelming number of votes. DNF creators 3D Realms even chose this week to debut a well-publicized video trailer for Duke's long-awaited return. Alas, a trailer is not a game, so — long live the king!"
Maybe they keep releasing Duke Nukem screenshots on occasion as some kind of a running gag? I guess the real joke's on Duke Nukem fans in that case. =)
-Vendal Thornheart
Who the hell still actually reads or cares what Wired has to say about anything?
So, are you saying that by being true vaporware they can live on in glory in a fictional world? Such that, in non-existance we are spared from the crushing mediocrity of "meh"?
Truly philosophical.
More Twoson than Cupertino
How can an unannounced product be vaporware?
It might have been better for Vista if it had remained vaporware.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
When I saw DNF in your post and in a glance-through of the article, I thought you/they were using DNF to denote vaporware status to one of the products until I realized that you (and probably they) were specifically referring to Duke.
This makes me think that they never planned to finish DNF; this is all just a big joke, right from day one.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Be fair. Will Wright has successfully produced plenty of excellent games. That's not to say that Spore will necessarily be the earth shattering game experience that same people are saying it will, but I think someone like Mr. Wright has at least earned the benefit of the doubt that he'll release a game, and that it'll likely be at least halfway decent.
For better or worse, you can't just secretly develop a product in a basement somewhere and then suddenly have them lining store shelves the next day. One company that tries really hard to do that is Apple, and they're constantly getting bashed from many directions due to their obsession with secrecy.
While I'm not making any judgements about you personally, the reality is that consumers as a whole seem to enjoy the hype just as much as the marketing departments do. There are piles of websites dedicated to finding and sharing advanced info, future product hints, and scheming up potential company directions. Any time there's a demand for such information, someone's going to provide it. The fact that that creates an opportunity for cranks and charlatans to scam a few bucks is just a side effect.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
If you want politics
...
/rant
Step 1) www.digg.com
Step 2) vote on Ron Paul
Step 3) Blame everything on Bush/Cheney and scream for impeachment
Step 4)
Step 5) Profit
This is a TECH site. NOT politics. There are plenty of places to bitch about the slime bag snakes that slither their way to the top. After politics, why not introduce a lolcats section, a sports section, etc. There are places elsewhere for that. I for one welcome one of the few communities that has stayed true to its roots and not caved in to crap like politics (Stories about how politics affects tech is a different subject than OMG THEY STOLE THE 2004 ELECTION!!! or Blood for oil bullshit)
Just as a summary: Fuck politics. Keep that shit outta my nerd paradise.
Sure something of more substance could have been #10.
If it had substance, surely it wouldn't be vapour...
Blank until
Absolutely, that was my point! Look at HURD/HIRD. It has a stupid geek-clever name, an ideologically pure license, an academically elegant design and no users. If it ever passed into use by anyone sane, it'd be just some other useless OS.
2)Make big fuss over sequal
3)Don't deliver, but make big deal for next decade
4)Once DNF is a household name, deliver
5)Profit!!
Seriously though, 3D Realms has found a good formula to get its namebrand out. I mean, what gamer hasn't heard of Duke Nukem Forever? It's the most famous non-game in gaming history. Weight for weight, DNF has more name recognition than even probably Halo. It almost behooves them to release it. It will turn every gamer's head 180 with "WTF?! DNF is finally been released!". Even if the game is say 7/10, you can guerentee a lot of copies would be sold just out of name recognition alone.
The project was only announced in 2005! How can they have a "usual fog of hype"? Isn't two years to bring something like that to fruition pretty damn reasonable?
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
why beat up on MS more (oh, yeah, because it's fun!).
Actually, I always thought it was because the pizza delivery boys around here didn't know enough about other tech to have a conversation about anything else.
Just like that jerk off a few weeks back who got modded up (!!) claiming that Windows XP Pro was a server edition product and that XP Home was what everyone used on desktops.
There aren't enough people on Slashdot who have a clue about anything to have a full conversation over so we need to have memes to fill in the silence that would normally be time most people take to think before they open their traps and let some stupid shit fall out. This is the same reason the political section is in such high demand around here.
Maybe they didn't want to piss off Sam and Ivan Raimi since that line was stolen from Army of Darkness.
I would be nice to see some changes to it. I was using it for several months until they changed it to display only 50 messages at once. I couldn't stand pressing the "More" button 10 times per story so I stopped using it.
;-)
I really don't like the old system after using the new one but I can't stand the 50 message limit. They should make the "50" be adjustable to include 50,100,200,300,400,500,unlimited. While there was certainly problems with their Javascript timing out for big threads it wasn't too bad most of the time. They certainly still have work to do to optimize the code but the adjustable number of messages feature would certainly help in the mean time.
Hopefully the Taco will see this message and make the adjustment
We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.