Slashdot Mirror
The Twelve Most Tarnished Brands In Tech
harrymcc writes "Polaroid, Netscape, CompuServe, Westinghouse, Heathkit — these were once among the most respected names in the technology business. They're still around, but what's happened to them is just plain sad. I took a look at the tragic fates of a dozen mighty brands that have, in one way or another, fallen on hard times."
3Com/USRobotics should be on this list.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
But coasters! We got lots of coasters (or aerodynamically challenged frisbees) out of the deal. Worth something.
I think they may have sent out floppies first, so at least you got a free floppy before.
SSC
Like any young kid, you are confusing DIVX (Digital Video Express self-destructing video discs) from Circuit City with "DivX :-)" the codec and codec company. They are completely unrelated. In fact, the "DivX ;-)" name has a winky emoticon to signify that it's mocking the DIVX name.
I see a lot of you twenty-somethings online these days. Whenever an old-timer like me (and I'm in my 30s) says that DIVX sucked, you folks immediately spout "but but but DivX plays fine on my computer." Impressive.
Uh, Read RFC 1.
December 1969.
I'll agree that Napster immensely popularized the use of P2P tech... but it wasn't the first, not by a long shot.
Compaq never had a good brand reputation to lose. They've made junk computers since day one.
Spoken like someone who doesn't know anything about Compaq besides what they see in department stores.
Compaq's business products (Deskpro line) were top-of-the-line. They were elegantly-engineered tanks that ran pretty much forever. Opening one up revealed a thing of beauty - being able to swap out expansion cards and hard drives without need of a screwdriver even to open the case, without being flimsy.
The Presario was junk, but do you judge all Fords based solely on the Pinto, all Chevys based solely on the Vega? Compaq made rock-solid business desktops and servers.
My memory of Deskpros is that they drew blood every time I opened one up. Sure, you could open the case "without need of a screwdriver" but it meant turning metal thumbscrews that were shaped suspiciously like, and were as sharp as, bits for a wood router. The insides were all razor-sharp, stamped metal patiently waiting to get near your wrist or a finger.
The overall impression was that Compaq hated their customers and wanted them to suffer.
remember DEC had some x86 systems that were similar. Great quality, but proprietary as hell and tough to work on the hardware. Faster than other desktops of the same category.
You are welcome on my lawn.
My thoughts exactly. I remember opening Compaqs to explore what was inside, and getting really bad cuts from the sharp things everywhere.
On another note, what about Hughes?
Under Howard Hughes, the company was doing fantastic. They did some great stuff, and came up with some pretty awesome inventions.
And then, Howard went batshit crazy, and the company went downhill. Hughes still does some pretty cool stuff, but it's nothing like that it used to be.
Another company, of course, is Bell Labs.
Through nothing short of government greed and interference, the fantastic company that gave us transistors, lasers, information theory, radio astronomy, Unix and C was broken up, and eventually destroyed everything that they stood for.
Today, AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent, and baby-Bells are nothing short of a joke.
There is no innovation to speak of, nothing approaching the scale of Bell Labs in any case. It was a sad, sad day.
Personally, I feel that had Hughes and Bell Labs survived today, we may have had more technological advances than we do today.
In Europe they went crazy for the Amiga. Most Amiga users are upset at Microsoft and Apple for screwing them in the past and some dual-boot AmigaOS and Yellow Dog Linux or some other PowerPC version of Linux.
If Slashdot had bothered to cover the Amiga we'd know what went wrong and what they are currently doing.
AmigaOS 4.0 was written by Hyperion or some other company and there was licensing deals. AmigaOS 5.0 was supposed to outclass and outperform Windows Vista and Mac OSX. But due to lawsuits it never got released.
The best open source project to come out of the Amiga technology is Amiga Research OS which will work on Intel X86 systems and virtual machines and has a version that runs native inside of Linux. But it lacks proper third party hardware drivers for modern systems so I'd run it in VirtualBox or some other virtual machine like HaikuOS does. AROS is AmigaOS 3.1 based on the APIs and started out as a WINE product and became a full OS.
Amiga, Inc. sells some of the classic Amiga games for Windows and mobile devices under the Amiga Anywhere titles. Some day like the C64 they will port them to the WII, PS3, and XBox 360, etc.
In an attempt to open source and modernize the Amiga and AmigaOS technology they are taking a page from Apple and making an AmigaOS merge with Linux to create Anubis OS but it is not Amiga, Inc that is doing it but another group. While Mac OS X was based on NextStep (A MACH kernel *BSD Unix based OS) and the Classic MacOS series the Anubis OS claims to be Linux based with the Amiga GUI and ability to run Amiga software.
I hereby challenge Slashdot editors and readers to report on the Amiga projects as they mature and make progress. See if 2010 can be the year of the Amiga coverage at Slashdot and create an Amiga category if one doesn't already exist.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.