Vaporware - the Tech That Never Was

An anonymous reader writes "CNet has published an incredibly detailed look at the most critical examples of vaporware ever seen in the tech sector. We're familiar with Wired's yearly round-ups, but this decades-long retrospective look at the most promising of all technologies that never saw the light of day, holds some fascinating technology I've never even heard of, including the wonderfully-named three-dimensional atomic holographic optical data storage nanotechnology. 'Continual delays, setbacks and excuses are the calling cards of a product that becomes vapourware. Windows Vista ran the risk of joining the club, and the terrific multiplayer first-person shooter Team Fortress 2 was in production for almost a decade before it was released in 2007. Devoted TF fans feared it would become a distinguished entrant in the who's who of vapourware. You might say Google Mail is in the running, having been in beta since 2004.'"

Comments

Old vaporware

[russotto]

1) Commercial fusion power production
2) Practical flying car
3) Oil from shale and other low grade sources (promised to be viable at $40-$50/bbl)
4) Household robots (or robot overlords, take your pick)
5) Cure for common cold

Re:Old vaporware

[kesuki]

number 3 is being beaten out by 'tar sand' production see, shale oil, isn't oil at all(it's kerogen), while most tar sands ARE oil. Heavy crude oil, still costly to process, so much so that they burn their own tar sand to produce the electricity (and steam) to refine the tar sand into oil, synthetic oil, or petroleum products. but Canada and Venezuela are the two largest tar sand producers (although America, russia, and the middle east also have large tar sand deposits) the only commercial use in the US is for road paving material.

Most of Canada's oil production is from heavy crude, and they are the number one exporter to the united states by volume of oil. so while people debate in the US about if Utah's tar sands are usable to make oil, we buy from Canada who've been doing this for years now, in fact they use a super large dump truck, the largest ever built, so large it needs cameras for the operator to see anything in front, behind or around him! Each tire is thirteen feet tall and weigh four tonnes each. They need to be replaced after approximately 35,000 miles; at a cost of $25,000.00 a piece.

Re:Sim Mars

[Sqweegee]

There was Mars scenario available Sim Earth released for the SNES, PC, Amiga, and a few others. There was also a Venus, Ice planet, and Desert planet... The scenarios involved terraforming the planet to support evolving life.

http://strategywiki.org/wiki/SimEarth:_The_Living_Planet