The Worst Tech of Q2 2006 106
ClickOnThis writes "CNET has an article on the Worst tech of Q2 2006. Their rogue's gallery includes: Segway Polo, the 'Nyko Intelligent Remote 360', and a dishonorable mention for the HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray format war. My personal (un)favorite is the appropriately-named Pantech 300 mobile phone, which is so small you could almost swallow it. From the article: 'When it's in your hand, you will feel like Gigantor. But it's a trick. You are not Gigantor. And if you're at a monster truck rally, bully convention, or Hell's Angels hangout while you're using it, you'll catch some hell for being Mr. Fancy Li'l Mini Phone. A wedgie, Kick Me sign, or stop-hitting-yourself situation might ensue.'"
Vista (Score:5, Funny)
But now it looks like we will have to wait until 2007.
Yeah, yeah mod me Troll, I don't care this time!
Re:Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Vista (Score:1)
Yeah, yeah mod me Troll, I don't care this time! :)
Congratulations, you have discovered the magic phrase to automatic +5 Funny!
I've said it before... (Score:5, Insightful)
I get the feeling that in the upcoming console war this name change is going to be proof of the old adage "There's no such thing as bad publicity".
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:3, Insightful)
The list should be renamed: Things this editor stumbled into 1Q 2006 that he doesn't like, all of which employ technology in some vague way.
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2)
It's a brilliant name.
Cnet's article is rather flippant, and is certainly light-hearted. For these reasons alone, I would not put any stock
Re:I've said it before... (Score:1)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:1)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wii do you say that?
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2)
I haven't said it before, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2)
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2)
Oh, I dunno. Sony's rushed controller addition plus their price tag has got a lot of people waiting and seeing.
Re:I've said it before... (Score:1, Funny)
That might explain Microsoft's success.
Re:I've said it before... (Score:2)
Gadgets Suck (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gadgets Suck (Score:2)
Small is bad now? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Cnet used to be decent a few years ago; now it's frankly best ignored.
Oh, and I'd say the Nintendo name change is probably one of the better PR coups this year. Perhaps the reviewers didn't get a free DS Lite either.
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
The Polo thing.. maybe a bad idea, but hardly a technology.
And to top it off, it's years old instead of "Q2 2006". The first hit on 'segway polo' on Google goes to www.bayareaseg.com/Polo.htm [bayareaseg.com], which explains in its History section that they weren't the first to do polo, but their own first match was in July 2004.
(saturday night and making this point on Slashdot - check, still in the target audience...)
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
Actually, I would argue it does. 8 seconds is about 7.5 seconds too long. My two year old Minolta 4MP camera boots in well under 2 and it's hardly state of the art today. (Slide the shield open and by the time I can get the camera lined up it will shoot.)
I have two young kids- getting a decent photo really is a matter of seconds. An absurdly long bootup time indicates the people who designed the camera r
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.vkmobile.com/uk/product/gsm_spec.jsp?p
I bought mine a month ago and love it. Only 48g, very thin. Easily fits comfortably in shirt pocket or suit pants. And rather cheap also!
Only con - shorter than average battery capacity.
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1)
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, I'm totally perplexed by this. I looked at their "review" of the phone, which is really just a couple of sentences inexplicably listing its smallness as "con". Did they forget about the ability to duct tape bricks to the phone if they have some bizarre desire for it be larger?
And yes. The phone--not that small. Not nearly small enough.
The US cellphone market seems to be plagued by two awful things:
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Assuming you have a GSM carrier (Cingular or T-Mob), you *can* move the SIM card to another phone. And there's a glut of "unlocked"[*] phones available on EBay and from online retailers, which will accept any SIM card. With CDMA that Verizon uses, of course, you actually have to *tell* the carrier that you're changing phones, since there aren't swapp
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
Motorolas in particular are good for this, you can often find "SEEM" edits that re-enable disabled features.
Or you can sometimes find (and load on) a "generic" firmware image that will remove all the carrier specific stuff.
Even for CDMA phones you can often find such modifications.
Bear in mind that making such changes to the phone will probobly void the warranty and may violate aggreements with carriers.
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1)
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
The margins are better and the sales are better on the multi-function phones.
Even a prepaid phone may have SMS, music, games, a camera, a color screen. You have a closed market, a very profitable market, in after-market sales of ringtones, etc.
This isn't unique to cellular:
When was the last time you saw an add for a single-function scanner for home use?
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
I'm not sure that either of those needs to be true. I and a substantial portion of my geek friends would pay more money for a version of one of the current bloatware phones that just had all the crap ripped out and was thus smaller and lighter. (Are you listening, Nokia/Motorola/Sanyo/Samsung/Sprint/Cingular/Veriz on? Yank out all that shit, cut the size of the phone in half, double the price, and I am there.)
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1)
Yeah, I don't know of any positive reason for a phone to necessarily be big. Screen size might become a factor if it got ridiculously small, but some of us don't need fancy screens with Nvidia graphics and the latest games - we want a telephone that is easy to carry around. However, if the mentioned phone's battery life is in fact below averag
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:3, Funny)
You're American. Get used to it. It's part of your culture.
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1, Interesting)
It's an American thing... (Score:2)
I think it has to do with finger fatness among certain American reviewers, reminds me of that Simpsons episode...
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1)
On the one hand I want to have a small phone since I do want to keep it with me easily on those days I want to be contacted.
On the other hand phones can be so small they are painful to use for some things. For example my previous phone had a keypad which was so small it was physically hard to press the buttons with my big thumb! Not a big deal for dialling simple numbers, but a real pain when it came to sending text/sms messages.
So yes, I can see that a phone being too small could be a con, but I guess
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1)
Maybe you should ease up on the steroids a little?
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
* Screens are too small and unreadable
* Battery life is reduced
* Antenna size reduced
* Cost more
* Usually don't have bluetooth
Actually, I'm one of those people that actually e-mails people on my phone and likes features.
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
Fortunately, there isn't just ONE phone design, so we can all be happy.
Except me for a little while. When is my voice-controlled over-the-ear phone going to come out?
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:1)
I was shopping for a new phone a couple days ago and almost bought the Pantech 300. Thank God I saw the Samsung D807 and the drool factor kicked in before it was too later.
Re:Small is bad now? (Score:2)
http://europe.samsungmobile.com/eng/mobile_phone/s gh-p300/specification.jsp [samsungmobile.com]
maybe a bit wider than other models, but most probably the slimmest one around.
steves and segway polo (Score:2, Funny)
can I vote for CNET? (Score:2, Insightful)
Xbox 360 - Hands Down 'Winner' (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the record is up to someone who is on their SEVENTH!!! 360 replacement unit.
It is bizarre to see 360 owners talk about how lucky they are with only have to have gone through one or two replacement 360s. Or how 'impressed' they were with how quickly Microsoft sent the delivery truck to pickup their dead 360. Boggle. It's like airline passengers bragging about how a certain airline has the best bodybags when confronted with the abysmal safety record of the airline they are flying on.
The failure rate of the Xbox 360 hardware is so beyond any other piece of electronic hardware it has to be costing Microsoft insane amounts of money to keep the 2 million or so poor sods with 360s from storming the Redmond headquarters. Free games, waving fees for out of warranty failures, insane amount of money on shipping units to and from Microsoft for replacement.
What is funny about the whole Xbox 360 hardware failure fiasco is after the first Xbox marketplace failure this was the one where Microsoft was supposed to get things right and take over the console world.
Heh, so much for that plan...
Re:Xbox 360 - Hands Down 'Winner' (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the worst tech of 2006 because it is a massively overpriced 480p gaming machine that Microsoft is trying to use for 720p. The fucked up 360 graphics system has only 10megs of EDRAM - which is exactly how much you need for 4xAA 480p screen - meaning that developers are forced to either go with almost no AA and have jaggies everywhere(like most 360 games) or implement a tedious to write custom tile renderer just for the 360 version of their game that drags down rendering performance due to all the redundant rendering from overlapping geometry on tile boundaries.
The 360 is a nightmare for developers.
It's like Microsoft told ATI, take one of your stock pc graphics cards and fuck it up and make it as difficult as possible for developers to work with.
* Lack of decent AA - jaggies everywhere
* Miserable framerates - due to the system trying to render at 720p when it really is only powerful enough to handle 480p
* Screen tearing - due to developers not being able to maintain a decent framerate at 720p
* Texture filtering problems - there is an almost complete lack of AF in 360 games - something even old lowend pc graphics cards can handle without a sweat
You just want to smack your head and roll your eyes and have pity for the poor sods that have to do 360 development.
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Xbox 360 - Hands Down 'Winner' (Score:2, Informative)
What a load of shit. (Score:3, Informative)
Predicated Tiling [google.ca]
Re:What a load of shit. (Score:2)
Re:Xbox 360 - Hands Down 'Winner' (Score:2)
You won't know the meaning of the word 'nightmare' until you start facing down a PS3.
Schwab
Re:Xbox 360 - Hands Down 'Winner' (Score:3, Insightful)
Lack of programming? (Score:2)
640k ought to be enough in that time; when floppy's where 5/14" 360k and 3.5" 720k; harddrives where a luxe and the code
Re:Xbox 360 - Hands Down 'Winner' (Score:2)
The weekend is good again (Score:2, Interesting)
Futurama did it! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Get some sleep already man (Score:2)
Tubenet (Ted Stevens' version of the Internet) (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Tubenet (Ted Stevens' version of the Internet) (Score:2)
Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS... (Score:5, Interesting)
I think, the Segway will be my relief when I get old and can't walk as good as now. It should be a nice replacement for those grandma walking aids that must be used these days.
So, I don't think the segway is a bad thing at all. looks stupid, but hey... %)
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:5, Funny)
Now it makes sense. The Segway's market is that large group of elderly people who can't walk long distances but are able to stand for long periods of time.
"Somewhere between mobility and the Rascal Scooter [rascalscooters.com]? Consider Segway!"
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:1, Offtopic)
Hey, I still do, because it's so easy! They're riding those bikes while rubbing their genitals against the saddle, wearing those ghey tight shorts (or moronic baggy ones) and stupid fugly helmets, taking up space on the roads for no reason at all.
I hope by "bikers" you meant the people riding bicycles, not motorbikes. Those guys would kick my ass.
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:2)
I commute around NYC by bike, so "no reason at all" isn't always true. It's faster than walking, driving, or taking the subway; better exercise; and doesn't get you any parking tickets ever.
I hope by "bikers" you meant the people riding bicycles, not motorbike
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:2)
Also, side car bikes rule.
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:2)
Just be careful whilst going around turns. You tend to look really silly weaving around a turn with sidecar imitating a pogo stick :)
-b.
Re:Segway... hey, they laughed at bikers for YEARS (Score:2)
A prime example of why I don't read CNET... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A prime example of why I don't read CNET... (Score:2)
Re:A prime example of why I don't read CNET... (Score:1)
Ultra Mobile PC (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, a name change is not "worst tech".
Re:Ultra Mobile PC (Score:2)
Peter swallows phone (Score:2, Funny)
Or Futurama (Score:2)
What's up Amy? Have you swallowed your cellphone again?
Segway.. (Score:1)
Re:Segway.. (Score:2)
Rich folks and their toys/games (Score:2, Interesting)
Killer App (Score:3, Insightful)
"Worst name change: Nintendo Wii" ? (Score:2)
CNET Self Promoting ? (Score:1)
HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, not enough (Score:2)
Re:Tagging WTF (Score:2)
Re:Tagging WTF (Score:5, Funny)
If only there were some kind of list of messages containing the opinions of users of slashdot... messages that would be listed like a line, no.. a... a thread. Yes.
If only you could read the fucking thread. If only.
Excellent Karma? (Score:2)
by Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward has excellent karma? He must have hacked the system.