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The 87 Lamest Moments In Tech, 2000-2009

Posted by kdawson on from the where-to-begin dept.

harrymcc writes "The last ten years have been an amazing era for tech — and full of amazingly dumb moments. I rounded up scads of them. I suspect you'll be able to figure out which company is most frequently represented, but Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Sony, and many others are all present and accounted for, too."

12 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. The XBox's need more coverage. by pecosdave · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The 360 for its inexcusable failure rate, then in the wake of Microsofts competitors constantly revising their models and offering updates Microsoft declares they will not create a version two or revise their hardware.

    Then - while XBox 360's were new and failing in droves, Microsoft not only decides the old model will no longer be supported with new products they recall as much existing stock of the old model as they can and do their best to make it got away. Sort of like they wanted to do with XP when Vista came out.

    Something all the game consoles need:
    Older laptop style optical drives that can be changed by release a lever. Can anyone say failure rate?

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    1. Re:The XBox's need more coverage. by RogueyWon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Video gaming in general could have used more prominence in TFA. After all, it's undoubtedly a part of the tech sector. Thinking of 10 examples off the top of my head, in no particular order...

      - The Red Ring of Death: as you say, should absolutely have been in there. Cost-cutting decisions lead to major customer frustrations. The issue is then compounded by lies, obfuscation and, once the problem is acknowledged, a massively slow response.

      - The Gamecube: everything about it. A nasty, tacky piece of junk with no games worth looking at that was put out with the intention of being a serious contender and rightly consigned to third place.

      - Hot Coffee: the video game industry unintentionally playing right into the hands of the "think of the children" brigade. While there's an absolutely legitimate battle to be fought against censorship of video-games, this was a huge tactical mis-step.

      - The Sixaxis controller: rather than going for the obvious solution of competing with the Wii by having more and better games (which would hardly be difficult), Sony decided to rush some desperately inadequate motion sensing tech into the PS3's controller. When it was announced, everybody assumed it would be a nasty hack. When the PS3 was launched, everybody could see it really was a nasty hack. Fortunately, most PS3 developers now ignore it.

      - The original Xbox360 controller: just... what? I'd love to know who decided this was a good idea. Microsoft actually issued a better, second-generation controller pretty quickly. But not before they'd become a laughing stock.

      - Spore: the hype, the underwhelming game, the hideously broken DRM, the Amazon review campaign. Never has a game promised so much and delivered so little.

      - Nintendo's online strategy: yeah, still waiting on this one... maybe they have one... somewhere...

      - The PSP Go: Sony put out a revision of their middlingly-successful handheld whose only claim to fame is that it has less functionality than the original version. And then they wonder why it doesn't take off...

      - The DSi: Nintendo demonstrate that they have the ethics of a rabid pitbull by putting out the first handheld for many years to incorporate region locking.

      - The Phantom: ok, I know that some of the events surrounding Infinium Labs are touched upon briefly in TFA, but I think the Phantom should have taken pride of place in the line-up of tech-fiascos over the last decade.

  2. Nice find. by upuv · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Ah that was good for a Laugh.

    Steve Ballmer on stage at any time is always funny. :) Developers Developers Developers..... bahahahahahahaha

    Sony root kit. I'm still finding PC's infected with this beast.

    Zune. Do they still make this thing. I actually saw one in the wild once. Man that thing is UGLY.

    The Kindle the most pointless electronic gizmo ever. It's not a laptop, phone, or book. You don't own the content. and it's UGLY. You want how much??????

    All in all a good read. Thanks.

  3. Re:First Paragraph by silentcoder · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Mod parent up, I was just on my way to come post the same thing.

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  4. Re:First Paragraph by iamapizza · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mod parent up to 6.
    #88: Also note that Google's multiple outages this year (and last?) don't get a mention.
    #89: No mention of Windows Mobile 6.5 and how MS threw away its last chance of ever competing with the droid/iphone.
    #90: TFA

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  5. Re:obligatory by Saint+Stephen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The lack of a trite name for this decade has been the coolest, because people haven't been able to call something the "blank of the blank", mimndlessly.

    The next decade is even better!

  6. AOL Search Logs? by a0schweitzer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No mention of the publicly available AOL search logs? I thought that was fantasticly funny. Stupid, but funny.

  7. Re:Y2K by EvilTwinSkippy · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Heck, I worked at a museum that ended up spending 6 figures to wholesale replace their IBM System 36 accounting system with an AS/400. (Including having developers completely rewrite the RPG code...)

    In 2001 we had several companies that wanted to donate System 36's to be museum displays. We ended up telling them that we already had 2 of our own!

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  8. Re:sony rootkit by El+Lobo · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Hmm... what planet are you living on? Shining planet Abble?

    http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139250/Snow_Leopard_bug_deletes_all_user_data

    http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=031001SMSU6O

    http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/27/apples-snow-leopard-may-stop-you-from-doing-your-job/

    I can go on forever....

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  9. Re:sony rootkit by Swift2001 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In the very first edition, if you had a guest user, and you used it, you would return to the administrator account and find all the data gone. Bad. Fixed in 10.6.1. We're now in 10.6.2. But some people just can't move on.

  10. Re:Playstation 3 backwards compatibility and price by Geoff-with-a-G · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'm a little surprised that didn't make the list. It still irritates me, every time I look down at the PS2 I still have hooked up next to my PS3. Looking at the eBay listings for a $400 used 60 Gig console next to a $300 shiny new 80 Gig console just reinforces it.

  11. Re:First Paragraph by Guy+Harris · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I think I heard of one embedded system that broke due to Y2K, but I've seen many more over the years that got confused over leap years. The year 2000 was especially good for that because that wasn't a leap year even though the common, oversimplified, every-4-year rule says it should have been.

    Actually, it was a leap year, even though the common, not-quite-as-oversimplified-but-still-too-simple every-4-year-except-for-every-100-year rule says it shouldn't have been. The really dumb systems with the every-4-year rule lucked out.

    Now we can all wait for the end of civilization in February 2100 as every single embedded system crashes....