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The Best and Worst Technologies of 2003? 451

Posted by Cliff from the rate-your-own dept.
Phoe6 asks: "Last year, at Hexadecimals discussion group we shared a news that Worst Technology of 2002 was TIA (Total Information Awareness by DARPA). What is the Worst Technology of 2003? For the Best, Time Magazine seems to have adjudged Steve Jobs' iTunes as the Invention of 2003. What are your ratings?"
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The Best and Worst Technologies of 2003? More

The Best and Worst Technologies of 2003?

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  • let's make it two in a row...
    • Sorry, but iTunes seems to be pretty worthless to me. I can't find anything I like on it. I go to search for "Foo Fighters" and it suggests Too Fighters instead. What kind of online music store doesn't have Foo Fighters!? I open up Poisoned, type in Foo Fighters and voila. Tons of songs available for free. The problem with all these online music stores is selection and overpriced tracks IMHO. It's certainly not the best invention of 2003. Napster on the other hand probably was the best invention of

    • I mean come ON, how many free rides does Apple get? I like Apple, they have great designers, but don't you think it's kind of retarded to give best invention/product to a product that is, in essence, just a rip off on numerous products already made? Not only that, but don't you think its a sad statement on Apple AND The industry if we give props to a program that is neither original nor all that great?

      I mean let's see here. First you have the annoying fact that iTunes is sooooooo horribly limited from a

      • Re:It isn't even the best of 2003! (Score:4, Informative)

        by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @04:29PM (#7848030) Homepage Journal
        iTunes uses QuickTime to play its files, meaning that it supports any file that QT supports, which is a hell of a lot. Not only that, but QT is very extensible, so third parties can add more formats. There's already an ogg plugin out there, and anybody who wanted to could make whatever they wanted. Although as far as I know, it only supports arbitrary QT formats for playback, not for encoding.

  • Slashdot Subscriptions (Score:5, Funny)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:39PM (#7846980) Homepage
    I'll not saying best or worst though.

  • Worst invention: OSDN Personals (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:40PM (#7846987)
    Oh, the horror...

  • Hmm (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nepheles ( 642829 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:40PM (#7846993) Homepage
    There's this thing called "two-point-six" or something that Bill keeps ranting about... I dunno... maybe that's it
    • There's this thing called "two-point-six"

      i notice that you didn't say "two and three-fifths". interesting. i vote for the best techs of last year (in no order)

      1. the decimal system
      2. base ten
      3. base two
      4. the inclined plane

      can you imagine how crappy 2003 would have been without those things?

  • FREECIV 1.14.1, BABY, YEAH, BABY, YEAH! (Score:3, Informative)

    by James A. C. Joyce ( 733782 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:40PM (#7846995) Homepage Journal
    And the CVS now [freeciv.org] has AI diplomacy. All, right!

  • I'de have to say... (Score:3, Informative)

    by akaina ( 472254 ) * on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:41PM (#7846999) Journal
    ... the pissing videogame from those kids at MIT

    • Re:I'de have to say... (Score:5, Funny)

      by akaina ( 472254 ) * on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:44PM (#7847039) Journal
      link here: http://web.media.mit.edu/~hayes/mas863/urinecontro l.html

      And remember, urine control

  • My Pick and Pan (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mcwop ( 31034 )
    Pick: Apple - for pumping out the goods all year long.

    Pan: SCO - do I need to list the reasons.

  • PowerMac G5 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by oaklybonn ( 600250 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:42PM (#7847007)
    I'd say the PowerMac G5. For one thing, its a completely new design internally, losing a lot of the legacy of old Mac OS machines. (Which they can do since they don't need to support a 20 year old BIOS or OS.) Another advancement is the attention spent on creating a case that can effectively, efficiently, and quietly cooling the new design.

    • Re:PowerMac G5 (Score:5, Informative)

      by BWJones ( 18351 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:52PM (#7847135) Homepage Journal
      The G5 is great technology that takes many aspects of architecture design ideas from other systems such as the SGI Octane. For instance, in the G5 (and the Octane) all of the busses are completely independent from one another. So, this means you can completely saturate say, your hard drive bus while keeping your CPU to memory bus completely untouched. This is hugely important to scientific computing (and other areas such as video editing) making the G5 system a much more cost effective solution that the SGI Octane. My Octanes were about $40-50k each while the dual G5s cost me around $5K each with 4GB of RAM and half a terrabyte of storage. Not too shabby eh?

      • For instance, in the G5 (and the Octane) all of the busses are completely independent from one another.

        sun, dec (alpha), and amd too.

        So, this means you can completely saturate say, your hard drive bus while keeping your CPU to memory bus completely untouched.

        i'm nitpicking here, and i know what you meant, but you just described dma, not independent busses. for newbies, it's the same difference as between a ethernet hub and a switch.

        • Re:PowerMac G5 (Score:3, Insightful)

          by BWJones ( 18351 )
          i'm nitpicking here, and i know what you meant, but you just described dma, not independent busses. for newbies, it's the same difference as between a ethernet hub and a switch.

          So, I should have used more specific terminology describing point to point architectures that do not share a common bus, which is decidedly not dma.

    • Re:PowerMac G5 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by zakezuke ( 229119 )
      (Which they can do since they don't need to support a 20 year old BIOS or OS.)

      You now, 10 years ago I would be most annoyed with this. I mean, part of the reason I went with the PC was because of the massive amount of legacy ability. I could, for example, run a copy of ms-dos v 1.1 {now with graphics} in the event that I actually needed to. Downward compatability one of the major things that sold me on the PC.

      In the year 2003, I could care less about downward compatability. I can get new versions o

  • Best technology (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Uma Thurman ( 623807 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:42PM (#7847011) Homepage Journal
    Rutan's rocket ship! Broke the sound barrier in 2003, though it's suborbital spaceflight will be in 2004.
  • It would have to be Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction! America actually fought a war against vaporware!

    • Re:Worst Technology of 2003 (Score:5, Funny)

      by BiggyP ( 466507 ) <philh@@@theopencd...org> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:56PM (#7847167) Homepage Journal
      you're forgetting the true technological breakthrough that Iraq's technologists made when they perfected cloaking for said WMDs ;)
    • Right. 250 mass grave sites have been reported and only 40 or so have been investigated so far:

      + 1983: 8,000 Kurds rounded up an executed

      + 1988: The "Anfal campaign" 180,000 Iraquis disappeared

      + 1986: Sarin, VX, and Tabun chemical weapons kill between 8,000 and 24,000 Kurds, injure thousands more. There are pictures of the attacks where you can see the gas over the villages and pictures of the victims, not to mention Iraqi documentation.

      + 1991: Tens of thousands of Shites killed

      + Iran-Iraq War: Up to 1

    • Abandonware, maybe (Score:4, Insightful)

      by YrWrstNtmr ( 564987 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:59PM (#7847783)
      Vaporware is a 'never has been'
      Abandonware is a 'had it, but sold/disposed/threw it out'.

      We know he had them, the UN knows he had them, *he* knew he had them. His Kurdish and Iranian victims certainly knew he had them.

      Go back a few years and ask Al Gore about Saddams WMD's. Ask Hans Blix. Ask Tom Daschle. Jaques Chirac. John Kerry. Madeline Albright. See what they say. [davidstuff.com]
      They were all campaigning hard to go to war, because we knew (or they told us) that Saddam had, and was building more, WMD's. Now, because Bush says the same things and actually does something about it, suddenly it's all a falsehood. An 'illegal war'.
      Why weren't you yelling "vaporware" when Clinton attacked with those cruise missiles?

      The real question is...what happened to all that stuff? Did he, in fact, dispose of it? Well WTF didn't he provide unambiguous proof of that? Or is it merely buried out in the desert, like they did with some frontline aircraft.

      "It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons."
      --Sen Hillary Clinton, Oct 10, 2002
      "If Saddam rejects peace and we have to use force, our purpose is clear. We want to seriously diminish the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program."
      --President Bill Clinton, Feb. 17, 1998
    • UN resolution 687 in 1991 required Iraq to produce an accurate declaration of the location, types, and quantities of all of their WMDs. That resolution was passed unanimously under Chapter 7 of the UN resolution that requires member states to enforece it. Iraq never complied with that resolution.

      You see, it was never a question of whether or not Iraq actually had the weapons. The world saw him use them, for cryin out loud. The question now is what has happened to the weapons. The UN told Iraq they had

  • The Slashdot DDos: What about the children? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:43PM (#7847027)
    While I agree that the Slashdot DDoS attack caused many people quite a bit of annoyance and frustration, I think leaving the impact at that is very short sighted.

    Firstly, I don't think the blame for this DDoS can be centered on just one person or group. Obviously, those who attacked Slashdot are to blame, as are Slashdot's sysadmins, and the people at Arrowpoint. And secondly, the costs of this are much greater than you might think.

    I have an eight year old daughter. We had a family pet - a rabbit, black, named Midnight, and my daughter was very fond of it. Midnight, sadly, passed away about two months ago. A week or two after Midnight died, my daughter came to me in tears and asked me, "Daddy, why won't God bring Midnight back? I've been praying like Deacon Simmons told me to."

    Naturally, I had to think about how to respond to this. I finally answered, "well, honey, God is a little like Slashdot. He can seem arbitrary, cruel, and unresponsive, but he's really a nice guy who's just a little out of touch and is a little slow at responding to requessts."

    This was fine, and I thought that would be the end of it. However, when Slashdot went down last week, my daughter burst into my den, positively sobbing and wailing, and managed to choke out "Daddy! Daddy! I can't get to Slashdot!" "Honey," I said, "it's just a website." But, between sobs, she said, "but you said God is just like Slashdot, remember? Does this mean God is dead?"

    I tried to console her as best I could, but nothing seemed to work. When Slashdot came back up, she seemed to return to normal, but she hasn't been quite the same since. She doesn't ask me about God so much any more, and she seems less interested in Church.

    As a good Christian, I will turn the other cheek, and not call for the punishment of those responsible. But to the heinous criminals and negligents responsible for this, I must ask, how do you feel about destroying a small girl's sense of innocence and wonder about the world? About crushing her childish dreams and idealism? About shattering her faith in God and his benevolence? About possibly having crushed her soul and emotion forever, leaving her to live the rest of her days in spiritual agony as a broken, scarred husk of a person?

    I hope all of you think long and hard about what you've done. What is the soul of a child worth, next to a few double-checks of the router?

    Thank you.

  • Electronic voting machines (Score:5, Insightful)

    by twelveinchbrain ( 312326 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:43PM (#7847033)
    This has to be the least welcome technology to have come to the public's attention in 2003. Thanks alot, Diebold.

  • SATA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Uma Thurman ( 623807 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:44PM (#7847044) Homepage Journal
    How about Serial ATA drives which became popular this year. It was about time that the old fashioned ribbon cables were replace with something more modern.

    • Re:SATA (Score:2, Interesting)

      by DFAoBolinho ( 736714 )
      There are many computer-related technologies that for legacy purposes advance in a turtle-like ritm while others tend to evolve in a maniac-style speed. It's nice to see some efforts to evolve all components of the systems so that we wont see more of the gargals we are used to now. I'm still very interested to see where this PCI Express may lead us too...

    • Re:SATA (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 )

      However, isn't SATA150 itself faster then most modern HDs can handle? And for that matter, isn't PATA133/100 still far too fast for most modern HDs? Correct me if I'm wrong, please...


    • SATA... popular? I dunno about that.

      I upgraded my home and work PCs in late 2003, for the first time in 5 years. IDE ribbons still everywhere inside -- though it's nice that they now have handles molded onto the connectors to make them easier to detach.

      It generally takes a couple years between when a hardware technology is introduced, and when it truly starts to become popular. My PCs both came with floppy drive controllers and PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, even though USB's been mature for years

    • Re:SATA (Score:2, Interesting)

      by AKnightCowboy ( 608632 )
      The trouble with SATA seems to be it's even worse than ATA was with drive support. Now I can only have ONE drive per bus? It was bad enough I could only have two per channel when SCSI had at least 7-14 devices per channel, but now I only have one per port. That's just nuts. To top it off the new motherboards only have 2-4 ports for SATA. Why not build them with 12 ports?

  • Bouncing balls... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Chicken ( 700655 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:45PM (#7847054)
    ...also known as "Beagle 2". I don't have to say which one this belongs to, do I?
  • Although I think this would belong more under an invention for 2002, it still gets my vote this year.
    • Oh yeah- it sure changed the world, didn't it?
    • Hmm, I think you meant to nominate the Segway for best invention, but is that appropriate? Think about it:
      • It's hardly sold [zdnet.co.uk].
      • It was recalled [segway.com] because a low battery could cause riders to fall.
      • It's mostly fodder for jokes on TV shows like Frasier.
      • Despite all this, I asked Santa for one for Christmas and he let me down.
      • " Hmm, I think you meant to nominate the Segway for best invention, but is that appropriate?"

        NO! I meant to say WORST invention of the year.

        • Ah. Well, actually, I could go both ways. I would actually love to have one, but it's overpriced, which is why its sales are so poor. I think it is indeed a neat invention despite all the hype preceding its release.

          In any case, I think you were right, you got the year wrong, since it was released in 2002.

          Hey, I left off a bullet item in my list:

          • Cities have banned the Segway from their streets!
    • When I was a child I dreamed of a future with a jet pack on my back. I would fly like Superman as I traveled around.

      Now, as an adult I find out they want me to ride a scooter with big ugly wheels. Grrrrrrrr.....

  • Linux (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:47PM (#7847075) Homepage Journal
    Linux Kernel 2.6

  • Longhorn (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eyeball ( 17206 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:48PM (#7847089) Journal
    Ok, technically it's not out this year, but they have started releasing beta copies to people.

    Right before windows XP came out, the majority of home/business users were finally 'getting it' -- they were figuring out the filesystem, the menus, etc.

    Then XP came out and turned their world upside down. Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that. Not to mention new features integrated into explorer, like CD burning and MP3 playing. Quite a steep learning curve for XP's majority users.

    Longhorn is going to come out, and users buying a new Dell or Gateway will get it automatically. Sidebars, and SQL data storage? Their world will be turned upside down once again.

    • Well luckily for those of you running XP right now, you don't have to worry about Longhorn for another 2 years or so.

      Mentioning it this year is just...foolish. Remember, windows 2k came out late and Win98..well just remember it wasn't exactly 1998.
    • "Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k."

      That's funny, I'd say at least 4/5 of all the XP machines I work with have been reverted to the classic style.

    • Re:Longhorn (Score:5, Insightful)

      by happyfrogcow ( 708359 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:10PM (#7847330)
      Is this listed as a "worst" or a "best"? I'll assume "worst" in the context of slashdot, but it is irrelevant, so assume "best" if you want. Either way...

      Even though I'll be marked Troll, I have to say this is the dumbest thing I've read in the past week. Longhorn is nonexistant as a operating system. It is a concept in the minds of project managers, designers, and a few MS fanboys/girls. They have some work done, maybe some betas that do fandangly something-somethings, but imagine all the cancelling of features and unintended feature creep that will occur between now and it's released date of 2006(?). Anything that exists as "Longhorn" today, will bare only slight resemblance to the "Longhorn" that will be released "whenever". So if you are calling it a "best" then hold your guns, it could diminish into a pile of steaming poo in 2 years and not ever be released. if you are calling it a "worst", then also hold your guns. It could improve into a top-notch computer operating system by learning from mistakes of the past.

      Simply mentioning such a premature thing as the best/worst of 2003 it idiotic. Longhorn has not had any significant impact on anyone at all.

      "Then XP came out and turned their world upside down. Sure you can revert the theme and menus back to win2k, but I don't know anyone that has done that."

      I did exactly that on my parents machine. It wasn't hard. Most people who have used a previous version of windows to a moderate (daily) extent would be able to find information on how to go about doing so.

      "Longhorn is going to come out, and users buying a new Dell or Gateway will get it automatically"

      Have people you know buy locally. You'll get better support, better hardware and you can probably have them install whatever OS you want or do it yourself. "If it aint broke, don't fix it"

  • DVD multiple formats... just have one! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by samdaone ( 736750 ) <samdaone@hotmail.com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:50PM (#7847102) Journal
    Just to touch on the other topic posted here about DVD burners the fact that there is multiple formats out has got to be the worst. I don't think the VHS/BETA fight took this long to figure out a winner. One format would help everyone in the long run and its about time we got to it!
  • Electronic Voting run by Republicans.

  • The Worst is Yet to Come (Score:4, Funny)

    by handy_vandal ( 606174 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:51PM (#7847116) Homepage Journal
    It's too soon to judge the "worst technology of 2003". Whatever it is, we'll find out later, when the side-effects have made themselves known.

    Probably it's some bio-tech invention we haven't heard about, which is going to render us all sterile and hairless, several years from now.

    -kgj

  • Best and Worst of Tech (Score:3, Interesting)

    by strredwolf ( 532 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:51PM (#7847121) Homepage Journal
    Best: Sharp Zaurus 5x00SL series Linux PDA's.

    Worst: Spammer Viruses
    • I think the spammer viruses depend on the viewpoint, I'm sure spammers see it as the best tech advancement :)

      I just wish law enforcement would make some kind of effort to get the gangs using the trojan network for spamming (or anything else!), I setup my own RBL for my server and I add the IPs from all incoming spam I get and it is doing very little to slow down the flow of daily crap.

      What really makes me mad is that the stuff that seems to make it through the most is the porn, enlargement and other nonse
  • This is not in regard to quality (I think it's shoddy, but that's irrelevant). This is in regard to the amount of damage it will do to the computer industry. The number of competing products which will never see the light of day because of unfair competition. The millions of man-hours which will be spent in 2004 fixing its problems. Windows 2003 is my vote for the worst of 2003.
    • It's about the only Microsoft thing I would ever recommend to anyone who was suggesting something other than Microsoft.

      It makes my nipples hard when I use MSC and the revamped policy tools. And XP theme/DirectX9 capabilities lurk underneath for when you need to be distracted.

      It's great. It also doesn't look like complete ass with a half-done icon set and primary colors. Grey and blue and antialiased. Works for me.

    • Re:Windows 2003 (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zbowling ( 597617 ) * <zac@zacb o w ling.com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @04:18PM (#7847932) Homepage Journal
      I would have to say your wrong on this point. Windows Server 2003 is the most complete Windows os to date. I'm not saying this because I'm pro MS in anyway, but the 2003 operating system is 100 times better then Windows 2000 and about 100 times better then XP (giving into the fact that XP is better then 2000 in many ways but opens many new problems that were are almost tottaly fixed in 2003). I enjoy the control and flow of 2003, and I praise them for locking it down in the install. This turned out to be a very valueable feature for our company that does Windows (as well as Linux and BSD) webhosting on both dedicated and shared systems (so we have 100s of machines to setup that we don't have to us an image system for that install right off the cd or over the lan without a hitch. Also as provider of distrubted LAN solutions for small to medium sized companies that can't afford full time IT departmarts, 2003 Server (including Small Biz Server 2003) simplifies setting up the distrubtied network and keeping it secure (all be it, it costs more for the hardware and software aspect to something that Linux could do with 5% of the resources required, but it still averages less then hiring someone full time).

      Windows Server 2003 has the ability to do things that previous versions couldn't even fathum from a programming aspect. The networking aspect is about a thousand times better with the ablity to (not super dooper but good anough that anyone with experience with routing couldn't work something to just make it work).

      Understand that I'm a born Linux user myself, and I end up installing Cygwin, Mozilla (Firebird mostly), GCC, Apache, PHP, Perl, TLC, and about a hundred other Linux tools on just about every windows machine I come across that I have to use for more then 10 minutes. I know that Windows has querks but I would rate it towards the top in this case.

  • TIA is not entirely dead -- it's being outsourced (Score:5, Informative)

    by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:53PM (#7847142) Journal

    I was reading an article in a recent issue of DefenseNews recently where they were reporting that a lot of TIA isn't being scraped, it's being given over to private contractors to perform. The feds still think it's a wonderful idea to track everything we do, they just don't want to so directly involved for political reasons. Private companies are not subject to these sorts of pressures and have considerable leeway on how much tracking of customer information they perform. So DARPA is looking to them to do most of the work and simply provide the government with the processed information.

    Remember folks, just because CNN says that TIA is over doesn't make it so, necessarily. The privacy vs. terrorist-defense war isn't over -- it's just beginning. And next time, the government won't be so bloody obvious about what it's trying to do.

    GMD

  • Worst technology: Disposable Digital Camera (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pimpbott ( 642033 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:54PM (#7847147)
    Lemmie see if I got this straight. Inferior camera, none of the advantages of digital apply here, costs more than a disposable film camera.... what's the advantage again? Okay, I can see saving one use film strips, so it is 100% reusable, but that is the only benifit. OTOH, now that it can be hacked, there may be one benifit. A cheap digital that you can take in poor environemntal conditions and not feel bad about wrecking it. ALso, you can use it in situation where you know you will destroy it, such as taking close up pics of explosions, etc.
  • CmdrTaco's gently-used sex-toy emporium.

  • EFI - worst technological idea (Score:4, Interesting)

    by morelife ( 213920 ) <f00fbug@@@postREMOVETHISman...at> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:57PM (#7847192)
    Extensible Firmware Interface EFI

    Worst technology introduced. MS/Intel

    Replaces traditional PC BIOS and Consumer Rights simultaneously.

  • Singing Fishes (Score:5, Funny)

    by Capt_Troy ( 60831 ) <tfandango@@@yahoo...com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @02:58PM (#7847203) Homepage Journal
    I'm just glad this year passed without further proliferation of those damned singing plastic fishes.

  • Best and Worst (Score:5, Funny)

    by supun ( 613105 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:00PM (#7847222)
    Best: Super Model Cloning Kit

    Worst: GE Bathtub Toaster ( fresh hot toast while you bathe )

    • Re:Best and Worst (Score:5, Funny)

      by skryche ( 26871 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:24PM (#7847474) Homepage
      Best: Super Model Cloning Kit

      So: the concept here is... what? You clone a supermodel, raise her from infancy to adulthood, then have sex with her?

      That's pretty fucked up. (Not to mention the 18-year wait.)

      • Re:Best and Worst (Score:5, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:54PM (#7847738)
        Agreed, the latency is a bit a high but it's easy to increase troughput with very high level parallelism. Plus models need hardly any food.
        And you only have to wait 14-16 years(incidentally also the best age for natural self-replication) with models. Unless you prefer women in their prime (30 yrs.)
        Nevertheless, the ROI is huge even if only 1 out of 10 model clones make it Super.
    • A GE bathtub toaster? I don't know if that's the worst invention of 2003, but it's certainly one of the strangest. Why would I want a toasted bathtub?
  • I'd like to nominate the Longhorn hype machine for worst technology. All the press garnered by an OS we won't see until 2006 at the earliest is stupifying at best, and patently annoying at the worst.

    Plus, with OS X Panther, I have 95%+ of the Longhorn "Innovation" today - tell me why I should wait three years?

  • The Best, the worst and the ugliest (Score:4, Informative)

    by MrsPReDiToR ( 736605 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:02PM (#7847244)
    Hardware central have a great review of the year here: http://www.hardwarecentral.com/hardwarecentral/edi torials/5139/1/ Personally I cant decide what I would class as the worst. There's plenty to praise and plenty to whine about.
  • No, not really. [slashdot.org]

    Probably the completion of the human genome mapping. [ornl.gov]
    • Probably the completion of the human genome mapping.

      A lot is made about this "event," but really it's a little arbitrary. The whole project is over a decade long, build 33 (the "complete" build) was a little like a 1.0 release for a software project - while certainly an improvement, it wasn't drastically different from the build before it, nor the build after it.

      The greatest achievements of the project are the technologies developed over the last decade, the run up to the "completion" is just a lot of ted

  • My Picks for Worst (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gudlyf ( 544445 ) <gudlyf@@@realistek...com> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:04PM (#7847258) Homepage Journal
    • Segway -- Lots of hype for not a whole heck of a lot.
    • Camera-phones -- Some people may love this invention. I think it's just plain silly.
    • Smart ID WiFi Detector [thinkgeek.com] -- What use is this when it doesn't tell you if the AP is encrypted or not?
    • TurboTax 2003 -- When Intuit [intuit.com] decided to put key info. in an "unused" portion of the boot block area, causing all sorts of crashes for customers, many who have now sworn off TurboTax for good. Nice one.
    • Yeah, I'll call you on the camera phone.

      Reason why I think it's one of the best inventions: I never seemed to have a camera around when I wanted one until now. And there are a lot of cool things you can do with a camera when one is around all the time.

      Cool things to do with camera phones:

      - Shopping in the "real world" and see something cool that you'd like to check out on-line later? No problem. Take a picture of the tag or box and you'll get the exact product number, etc without having to do a bunch
  • Best: OpenSource. Free-as-in-speech is good. Free-as-in-beer is better. True last year, true this year.

    Worst: DRM and anything like it. It threatens to turn me into Gollum.

    "ITS MINE, My computer is MINE!!!! Myyy PRECIOUSSS! DRM is trickies. WESSS HATEEEESSSS them."
  • All they have to do to get TIA implemented throughout the country is:

    Rename it TnA and then hold a referrendum.

  • Simultaneous - RFID tags (Score:4, Insightful)

    by xC0000005 ( 715810 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:15PM (#7847392) Homepage
    The radio tags for billing/tracking. There's a technology with a lot of promise for being very, very cool, and at the same time, possessing vast potential for abuse.

    I can see the arms race now. RFID tags, RFID countermeasures.

    Stores selling things by RFID, and claiming countermeasures are the providence of theives (echos of RIAA, MPAA).

    Sigh.

  • Worst invention? (Score:5, Funny)

    by PierceLabs ( 549351 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:17PM (#7847411)
    The evidence SCO invented to claim ownership of Linux.

  • I'm thinking Diebold voting machines (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kickstart70 ( 531316 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:19PM (#7847434) Homepage
    Removing democracy from the voters is about as bad as it gets.

  • Gas powered children's toys (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stalus ( 646102 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:22PM (#7847460)

    I woke up on Christmas to little kids driving up and down the street on gopeds and mopeds outside my parent's house. At first I thought they were battery powered and didn't go very fast, but I was apparently wrong. They honk at each other and idle them outside, polluting the air in more ways than one. They fly down the road faster than anyone without traffic sense should be allowed. And people wonder why americans are generally overweight and unhealthy.

    So in evaluating technologies as best and worst, are there any personal feelings people rate these with? Personally I would say that improvements to communication and travel are good because it brings family and friends closer - 1200 miles doesn't seem as far as it used to, and it's a lot cheaper to get there (It was actually cheaper for me to drive home for Christmas than fly this year). On the other hand, people like my father refuse to use a self-propelled lawn mower because it forces him to get some routine exercise. He wouldn't say it's a bad technology, just not useful to him.

  • Network Solutions DNS Search (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dr. Evil ( 3501 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:25PM (#7847476)

    Shudder...

  • OnStar for Both (Score:3, Interesting)

    by DynaSoar ( 714234 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @03:40PM (#7847617) Journal
    I nominate OnStar vehicle GPS system for both best and worst.

    Best because (among other uses) if your car gets ripped off, they can find it fast.

    Worst because it can be used as vehicle-embedded spyware.

  • iTunes is a very simple piece of software and a successful marketing campaign. Just because it is (arguably) well done should not classify it as an innovative technology -- especially when it's not even a new idea.

    I personally have no interest in using any of these flashy new online music stores. Until they are DRM-free, use an open protocol (ie. cross-platform), and offer lossless formats, just say no. In the meantime, support only independent artists.

  • Give me a GXX DXXXXX break! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lord Kano ( 13027 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @04:11PM (#7847878) Homepage Journal
    Time Magazine seems to have adjudged Steve Jobs' iTunes as the Invention of 2003.

    Steve Jobs is an asshole. His products are constantly being praised by the societal elite, but you know what? No one else cares! Apple has held a consistantly small market share for 15 years. The Apple faithful will continue to be, the rest of the world will continue to not care.

    Personally I think that iTMS is pretty cool, but so what? How is it the best technology of 2003?

    My vote would be for cheap ($100) dual format +R/RW & -R/RW DVD writers.

    LK

  • the best technology is easy.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by kemster ( 532022 ) <.moc.nsm. .ta. .723mek.> on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @04:31PM (#7848059) Homepage

    Easily the best technology of 2003 was the Slashdot Dupe-Post-Checker(c). Using the up-to-now unknown technologies of "regular expressions" and "pattern matching", the wiz-kid staff at Slashdot was finally able to automatically check if a story had already been posted before.

    Oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.. that isn't due out until 2004, right? Or maybe it's just vaporware..

  • Worst Tech of 2003? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @05:32PM (#7848608)
    Unencrypted wireless keyboards. Oh man, how did that get out of the gate?

    ActiveX Spyware. Looks like an official message from the OS, better click on it.

    MP3 players under 256 megabytes. Look ma! I have the convience of spending over 200 dollars for something that barely holds more music than carrying around a el-cheapo CD player and two CDs, plus with the added advantage of lossy compression!

    The Color T-Mobile sidekick. "Whoops, we screwed the pooch on licensing so we're going to remotely delete your games. Also, there is no software to download from developers. Enjoy your vendor lock-in!"

    Anything targeted at "business people." "Oh hi IT department. I saw a cool ad for this treo/PDAphone/speech2text/etc but I'm too stupid to read the instructions so lets setup a time where you can train me on the stupid stuff I can afford to buy every week and then never use again."

    Email to phone services. "Now I can get spam read to me by a computer voice on my cell phone!"

    "Speed-up" dial-up web proxies that cost almost as much as DSL. Geez people, just get the damn DSL line.

    Segway HT Has yet to revolutionize anything but has shown us how the media can be exploited for free advertising.

    Red Hat Linux.

    RH:Screw you guys, we're going corporate, you know, where the money is.

    ME:But, but I'll pay you for updates! In fact I do!

    RH:Too bad kid.

    Lindows. Worst. Name. Ever. Its like a Sonyo or a Magnetbox.

    Windows/Office activation. Pain for when you need to re-install and pushes people back to the 2000 products.

    Cellphone earpieces with hanging mics. You look like a crazy person talking to yourself. No really, you do.

    AGP 8x Thanks for making my old AGP cards obsolete and bringing back old PCI cards for PCs that don't need kick-ass 3D.

    Best tech:

    Alltheweb.com Google now has a kick-ass competitor.

    The T-mobile sidekick. Once you get over the vendor lock-in its the best mobile browser out there, sans java-script.

    The Treo600. Camera and all the palm apps you can handle and it plays MP3s.

    Google text-ads. This should be self-explanatory.

    Mandrake policy. Nice to see a distro care enough to say how long they're willing to support the product.

    Gnomemeeting. Its like a big geek party.

    DVD players that can play SVCDs. Finally.

    Adapative spam filters. Just golden.

    The Firebird/Thunderbird projects. Bye, bye IE/Outlook on windows.

    Wifi everywhere. Love it.

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