Wired News 2006 Vaporware Awards 215
silentounce writes "Wired News has released the winners of its 9th annual Wired News Vaporware Awards. I won't list any of them in the summary because I don't want to spoil anyone's surprise. They have some interesting entries, one that is more a concept of a product than an actual product. I'm not sure how you can claim something is vaporware if it hasn't even been given a specific name or a developer yet, but apparently they think they can. "
Nothing for you to see here. Please move along (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Nothing for you to see here. Please move along (Score:4, Funny)
As always, you-know-who is #1 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:As always, you-know-who is #1 (Score:3, Informative)
that is an awsome list.
Those are just fun statistics
Re:As always, you-know-who is #1 (Score:2, Insightful)
Vaporware (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
Old jokes never tire on Slashdot, you insensitive clod!
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
Old jokes never tire on Slashdot, you insensitive clod!
Re:Vaporware (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Vaporware (Score:3, Insightful)
That's pretty much a capsule definition of the internet!
Re:Vaporware (Score:2)
2. Reply with older joke
3. ???
4. Profit!
Re:Vaporware (Score:2)
By the way I still want to play Team Fortress II.
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Informative)
The original TF2 was scrapped around the same time as HL2 started dev, but that was because they just compleatly restarted the project based on Source.
Re:Vaporware (Score:5, Funny)
They really are still working on it. Sometime in the near future they're going to release a demo and set a firm shipping date. We'll all play the demo and it'll so rad everyone will have a video game induced orgasm and toss out all their copies of the now obsolete Halo. The day before the actual release Jesus will return and send everyone off to their just reward, meaning no one will ever actually get to play the damn thing since video games are way to evil to be allowed in Heaven and way to fun to be allowed in Hell.
Re:Vaporware (Score:2)
Re:Vaporware (Score:2)
Re:Vaporware (Score:2)
Re:Vaporware (Score:2)
A380 is not vaporware... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:4, Interesting)
The X-33 flew as well, but that was total vaporware. Until someone accepts delivery of an A380, it will remain as vaporware as Airbus continues to delay shipments in order to "work out the bugs".
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:4, Informative)
The A380 is not vapourware - its in production, the delays are due to production problems and not technical issues with the concept itself. Infact, the A380 delays are the perfect example of incompatabilities in IT based projects - different parts were designed with different versions of the CATIA system, leading to problems with the wiring bundles that Airbus are sorting out now.
Airlines also disagree with you - two airlines (Singapore and Qantas) placed followon orders to their originals this year, even before they had the first one delivered, so that says something about confidence in the aircraft.
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are going to classify the A380 as vapourware, then you automatically need to classify every single aircraft project announced as vapourware as well, because they all fit the wikipedia definition in one form or another. And this includes Boeings 787 and 747-8 series, Bombardiers Cseries stretches, and numerous others.
Vapourware is another term that has lost its meaning on Slashdot.
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:2)
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:2)
Production of huge jetliner bogged down with delays and national rivalries
By David Greising
Chicago Tribune
HAMBURG, Germany - In Airbus' sprawling Hamburg plant, one of modern industry's biggest meltdowns, lies a tale of two airplane-production hangars and two countries, Germany and France.
Nearly 600 people should be hard at work in the key production hangar here, where Airbus planned to assemble the giant sections of the world's largest passenger airplane, the A380. Instead, the quiet is broken only by music playing softly on stereo speakers that an employee sneaked in. Only a few dozen employees tinker on eight airplane carcasses clogging a production line that cost some $15 billion to develop.
The workers essentially are hand-building some of the company's first two dozen A380s.
Airbus' super-jumbo jet program was launched before Chicago-based Boeing's big hit, the 787 Dreamliner. But the A380 now is two years behind schedule -- and the production delay will cost Airbus' parent company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co., $6.1 billion in operating profit over the next four years.
In Hangar 42 nearby, it is a different scene. Dozens of aerospace engineers are in a mad dash to untangle the A380's myriad problems. They huddle in front of computer terminals set up on 15-foot-long folding tables so they can be in constant contact with workers in blue jumpsuits who are investigating a hobbled A380. The workers, confronted with bundles of wire that won't bend in the right places and cables that come up short, explain the problems to the engineers and urge them to design new ones. And quickly.
The design engineers are bogged down by computers that can't talk to one another. One displays their work in three-dimensional images, the other is strictly 2-D. The breakdown fouls the effort to design and build parts and get the A380 back into full production.
The A380 line won't run full speed until 2010, if all goes well. Biding their time until then, thousands of workers are idle or on part-time shifts. Yet others labor furiously, redesigning parts and installing them as they arrive, all in the rush to get the A380 on track.
The production problems are especially tough to manage because the rest of Airbus' system is running full steam. The company will deliver a record number of smaller aircraft this year, 430, outdistancing archrival Boeing and topping 400 for the first time. In addition, the company last month announced it will launch a midsize aircraft, the A350, designed to compete with Boeing's hot-selling new 787.
But no matter how well the rest of the business might run, though, Airbus can't declare success as long as the A380's problems remain unsolved.
What's gone wrong
An examination of what has gone wrong with the A380 is a much broader issue than parts that don't fit and computer systems that can't communicate with one another. Indeed, corporate and European politics are as much to blame for Airbus problems as the breakdown between computer-design systems in France and Germany.
A bitter battle for control of European Aeronautic Defense and Space Co. last summer came to a head when the A380's emerging crisis should have demanded top management's attention.
Cultural issues also are at play. Workers in France and Germany don't necessarily trust each other. French workers suspect the Germans covered up problems or ignored them in an effort to keep work for themselves.
To move forward, the company has had to work out labor agreements in both countries, and a massive reshuffling at the top of Airbus also has occurred.
At full production, Airbus hopes by 2010 to produce four of the massive A380s per month. But it will deliver only one next year and 13 in 2008. The reason: It will take years to redesign significant parts on the production process and move those planes clogging the line.
Tom Williams, head of production at Airbus, ticks off the immensity of the prob
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:2)
By that definition (Score:2)
Likewise I'm sure that DNF exists in some form, I'm sure that they haven't just been doing nothing all this time. However it's not out, and thus is vapour.
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:2)
And the saga has been going on long enough to be compare with Duke Nukem, especially since no one seriously expected the next version. The A380 should have been delivered mid 2005. Now 8 months later they have apparently have a delivery of date of late 2007, with full production apparently delayed until 2009. This is not a production schedule that builds confidence, and certainly not a delivery schedule for a plane that already exists.
Of course, as has been widely reported, the wiring problems were that they wires were simply cut too short, and not one wanted to fix it.
The A380, even if they get a few dozen planes out, if going to be the vapor ware project that defined the first decade of this century. OTOH, when the 15th A380 is delivered, perhpas by the end of 2008, they will have shipped more A380s than Concordes.
Re:A380 is not vaporware... (Score:2)
Duke (Score:4, Funny)
Move along. Next article.
Re:Duke (Score:2, Informative)
It already has ONE a lifetime achievement award!
Re:Duke (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Duke (Score:2)
Re:Duke (Score:2)
Re:Duke (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Duke (Score:2)
Re:Duke (Score:2)
Re:Duke (Score:2)
Re:Duke (Score:3, Funny)
Airbus A380 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Airbus A380 (Score:2)
Re:Airbus A380 (Score:2)
Vapored (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes there's a prototype for the A380. There's also a demo for Spore. But until Airbus figures out how to insert those 300 miles of wiring, the prototype is meaningless. Without any wiring, a jetliner is just a ... I want to say "big doorstop" but somehow that's not right.
You do sort of have a point. "Vaporware" originally described products that never got beyond the Breathless Announcement, and were usually created solely to stifle interest in competing products. Only one or two products on the Wired list fit that description. We really need a separate term for products that are really, honestly under development, but are way behind schedule. Deathmarchware?
I'm profoundly unsurprised that Spore is in trouble. IMHO, Will Wright is grossly overrated as a game designer. All his games pretend to be simulations, but the "realities" they pretend to implement are absurdly simplistic. (Why is every Sim a bisexual OJ?) People do enjoy playing them, but only because they enjoy fantasizing about their imaginary worlds. The game pretends to bring simulation to the fantasy, but really just provide fancy graphics. Judging from the videos I've seen, Spore isn't any different. And for a game that pretends to model the evolution of wholes species, that just isn't enough.
Re:Vapored (Score:2)
Yes there's a prototype for the A380.
It may be a screwed up project, but its far from vapourware.
Re:Vapored (Score:2)
Re:Vapored (Score:2)
Yes there's a prototype for the A380. There's also a demo for Spore. But until Airbus figures out how to insert those 300 miles of wiring, the prototype is meaningless. Without any wiring, a jetliner is just a ... I want to say "big doorstop" but somehow that's not right.
Re:Vapored (Score:2)
Prototypes can do without on-board entertainment systems while production machines cannot. Imagine flying to Singapore without Julia Roberts! The horrors!!
A380 (Score:2)
Re:A380 (Score:2)
The A380 is just on perpetual back order.
Re:A380 (Score:3, Insightful)
Vaporware? (Score:2, Insightful)
So many of those products may be "lateware" but not vaporware. Hell, even Duke Nukem may be out some day AFAIK.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:4, Funny)
Aww come on, now you're pushing it, man!
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2)
Re:Vaporware? (Score:3, Insightful)
Due to the lack of clairvoyance in the media industry, it's hard to tell beforehand which products will never be released. So the working definition of vaporware is a product that was promised a certain time, but wasn't release. Many delayed products get canned, some get the name transferred to a new product, and some actually come out, delayed. Which one it will be, we won't know until it happens. In the mean time, we call the products "vaporware", because they failed to materialise as promised.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2)
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2)
Thus in modern terms, it is considered "correct" to use vapourware for a product that has not been delivered according to promises. Especially if new promises are continually made and broken. i.e. "Battlecruiser 3000AD was vapourware for seven years!"
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2)
I think the motivation for this "modern" view is partially political. It has allowed Vista to be labled as vaporware even though there was really no doubt that MS was going to release it eventually.
Re:Vaporware? (Score:2)
Seriously, products that are announced for years without any measurable progress to show that there is actually something being done to get them to gold status deserve the award. I'm not so sure about the A380, and maybe Vista didn't really qualify either. But there are hands-down examples that deserve that award, like DNF. It might ship, finally, one day, after the apocalypse or whenever, it's not ruled out that it just might show up one day. But so far I can't see any measurable progress, no information that there is actual development, not even new screenshots, so it does fit the definition of Vaporware pretty well.
True Vaporware (Score:2)
TLF
I like ruining surprises (Score:5, Informative)
Runner up.. (Score:2)
Re:Runner up.. (Score:2)
They slipped a little on the technical preview, but work is progressing. There's a lot on the plate to get to KDE4--mainly under the hood to port everything over to QT4. However, I understand this will open the door for more cross-platform KDE apps (KOffice, Konqueror, etc. running natively in Windows & OSX). They're aiming for a mid-2007 release, but there's still a ways to go and I wouldn't be surprised if it slipped to late '07/early '08. It's a bit trickier to pin an open source project as vaporware--the code's available and either it's being worked on or it isn't. KDE most certainly is.
Re:Runner up.. (Score:2)
Re:I like ruining surprises (Score:2)
Duke Nukem vs. Windows Vista for MIA Award... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Duke Nukem vs. Windows Vista for MIA Award... (Score:2)
Re:Duke Nukem vs. Windows Vista for MIA Award... (Score:2)
Misread (Score:3, Funny)
I bet it would sell....
Re:Misread (Score:2)
Re:Misread (Score:2)
A Sybian controlled like Alek's Christmas lights [komar.org]. That would rule, until it gets Slashdotted and the porn stars start dying.
Probably best for this one to be a hoax...
Windows Media Player for Linux? (Score:3, Insightful)
As I wrote before here, WMP for Linux was meant as a strategic move to scare content owners away from the open-sourcing of Real Networks' player and codecs, by promising WMP-based DRM for the Linux market. It seemed to work, but rather than go to WMP (which had technical issues as shown by early BootlegTV downloads from the DGM record label (King Crimson)), they held off until iTunes set the new DRM standard. M$'s been behind ever since.
Re:Windows Media Player for Linux? (Score:2)
Re:Windows Media Player for Linux? (Score:2)
Re:Windows Media Player for Linux? (Score:2)
DNF (Score:2)
I can see the meme already: "This is what DNF should have been" for new game demos....
Evolution - NOT (Score:2, Interesting)
Evolution is defined as unguided. The above is a description of Intelligent Design, not evolution. The player is essentially the god of a universe built via Theistic Evolution, and every game play decision is a miracle. In a game based on true Evolution, you would just watch everything unfold randomly according to the game rules after perhaps tweaking some initial conditions (you are allowed some Initial Design of the rules / state at the Big Bang, since that doesn't involve any god/world interaction).
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
And that is a game how? And it is "loosely" based on evolution, things you eat and how you behave determine some of the outcomes. Obviously it's more complex than that, but it is not just entirely designing. With your logic you could argue that Civilization [slashdot.org] isn't really a simulation of human history because it doesn't involve actual beings making decisions that result in a society unfolding.
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
just have some way for the creatures to develope based on what problems they encountered. No it would not be "real" evoloution, but it would be awsome to watch.
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
I'd feel like playing WoW again...
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
There are Gods of War, Gods of Harvest, Thunder Gods, why not a God of Evolution? Try tossing that into an Intelligent Design argument. That oughta stir that argument up.
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
Re:Evolution - NOT (Score:2)
Evolution is defined as unguided. The above is a description of Intelligent Design, not evolution.
Geez. Don't be so dogmatic. ;-)
Silly argument (Score:2)
Why are you using the term "theistic evolution" after having redefined evolution to be exclusive of theistic influence? Your argument has just been made to fall flat on its face by your own use of the adjective "theistic" to describe a form of "evolution" in what would be an oxymoron under your terms.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with describing Spore as a game about evolution once you accept that evolution guided by an intelligent force is still a form of evolution, as you just have by the use of that term.
(Also, most supporters of the theory called "Intelligent Design" and packaged to schools as an alternative to the teaching of evolution reject the possibility of theistic evolution as well as that of nontheistic evolution, even though theistic evolution would be a perfectly valid form of intelligent design as the term would seem to be defined at face value.)
Qualified Terms (Score:2)
Because terms are qualified to create new terms - often opposed in meaning to the original word. The unqualified word "evolution" usually refers to a mix of natural selection and macro evolution - with perhaps some origin of life thrown in. But throughout secular textbooks, the unqualified term is carefully explained to mean "without design or guidance".
There are at least three qualified variations on "evolution":
- micro evolution - Natural Selection, which selects or mixes optimal traits from preexisting genetic material.
- macro evolution - creation of new genetic material by an unguided process of random mutations and Natural Selection.
- theistic or guided evolution - creation of new genetic material by a carefully designed process of random mutations and Natural Selection. This is what is used in "genetic algorithms" or "evolutionary algorithms", for instance. Some genetic algorithms are pure Natural Selection (all traits are designed beforehand).
"Macro evolution" is the only kind subject to any controversy, since it has not been directly observed.(Also, most supporters of the theory called "Intelligent Design" and packaged to schools as an alternative to the teaching of evolution reject the possibility of theistic evolution as well as that of nontheistic evolution, even though theistic evolution would be a perfectly valid form of intelligent design as the term would seem to be defined at face value.)
You are absolutely correct. Guided evolution is perfectly compatible with Intelligent Design theory. Theists object to theistic evolution on (somewhat shaky) moral grounds - a god that creates via a process as apparently harsh and cruel as evolution seems somehow abhorrent (although you could say it is "worth it all in the end"). Also, secularist object to theistic evolution on "materialist" grounds - "The Universe is All There Is". But, again, I agree, it is a Really Bad Move for Intelligent Design supporters to reject the possibility of guided evolution. Note that this is not across the board. Michael Behe, for instance, in "Darwin's Black Box" suggests a "big bang of life" (all genetic material designed and put mostly dormant in a single super cell) followed by Natural Selection (species evolve by activating, deactivating, and discarding material).
Note that the Catholic / Protestant split essentially began over the unqualified use of the word "faith". Did "Sola Fide" mean "Sola Fide Informis" (as the Catholic Hierachy thought), or "Sola Fide Formata" (as Luther apparently intended). There are way too many conflicts rooted in ambiguities of language combined with a lack of charity.
Palm OS? (Score:2)
Please stop... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please stop... (Score:2)
Re:Please stop... (Score:2)
Skype on Symbian (Score:2)
Skype + Sybian = Teledildonics?
Cartman found it... (Score:2)
C'monnnn, C'monnnnn...
It's a cointoss (Score:2)
SED made it, but not OLED (Score:2)
Wrong Aircraft (Score:5, Insightful)
Tivo Should Earn Special Award... (Score:2)
Worse, those new HiDef Tivos don't even support TivoToGo for Windows - so they've actually managed to go backwards in the past year.
Me, bitter? Nah...
DNF should not be on the list (Score:2, Funny)
How about the final spec for 802.11n, the blazing-fast new Wi-Fi? While many hoped to see it finalized this year, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers has been saying not to expect anything until January 2007. No false promises, no Vaporware Award.
Then about Duke: The company still has a message on its website saying that the game will be released "when it's done."
It doesn't sound like they're promising anything to me, so it shouldn't be on the list.
Re:DNF should not be on the list (Score:2)
2) The Duke Nukem page didn't ALWAYS say "when it's done." They switched it to that after pushing back the release date about 4 times. It still counts.
Meanwhile in Barcelona (Score:2)
Wired FUD against SED (Score:2)
But that doesn't make as interesting a story, I guess. You'd think this was a simple mistake except it's so easy to fact-check.
What's happening in July 2007 is they're supposed to start mass production of the tubes. But you won't be able to buy one until next Christmas. You can probably see some on display at the Peking Olympics. That is unless a lawsuit against Canon stops the production lines.
Anyway, for those new to SED, it's an array of pixels, each with its own "CRT" in it - an inkjet-printed emitter striking a phosphor. Contrast ratios are expected to start at 5X the best LCD sets and go up from there.
Re:iPhone (Score:2)