i think that's the problem: it singlehandedly helped spread lots of viruses and was horribly unsecure for a long time

and here's what the article had to say:

Quote :

"8. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 (2001) Full of features, easy to use, and a virtual engraved invitation to hackers and other digital delinquents, Internet Explorer 6.x might be the least secure software on the planet. How insecure? In June 2004, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (CERT) took the unusual step of urging PC users to use a browser--any browser--other than IE. Their reason: IE users who visited the wrong Web site could end up infected with the Scob or Download.Ject keylogger, which could be used to steal their passwords and other personal information. Microsoft patched that hole, and the next one, and the one after that, and so on, ad infinitum. To be fair, its ubiquity paints a big red target on it--less popular apps don't draw nearly as much fire from hackers and the like. But here's hoping that Internet Explorer 7 springs fewer leaks than its predecessor."

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 11:36 AM. Reason : p2]

7/19/2006 11:35:12 AM

superdisk/zip was the shit back in the day. in high school I used to use the school's t1 to download games and movies in a lab and then put the games on my superdisk. then I'd take them home, reassemble the rars and burn there. I lived in an area that got broadband extremely late

[Edited on July 19, 2006 at 11:53 AM. Reason : d]

7/19/2006 11:52:55 AM

Quote :

"It is about technical products that were sold to the public and failed miserably."

In that case, AOL definately doesn't belong on the list, nor does the Zip drive. Then again, the list is rather crapy to begin with, there have been worse technical products than these.

7/19/2006 2:36:07 PM

7/19/2006 3:53:39 PM

^ hehe i remember that

7/19/2006 5:07:22 PM

^^ better without the "owned" gayness

7/19/2006 6:24:54 PM

quicktime for windows

7/19/2006 9:51:48 PM

again, I like the quicktime format...vivid colors and great sound.

7/19/2006 9:59:19 PM

Yeah, love quicktime format, hate the player, but it's still less intrusive than real player and more stremlined than mediaplayer 9->10

7/20/2006 1:20:49 AM

Has quicktime come out with an installer that doesn't force you into installing a couple of other iTunes programs that you didn't intend to install? Do you still have to edit the registry to get it to stop preloading?

Side note: Maybe I kept grabbing the wrong installer and maybe I could never find the "do not automatically start" in the preferences

7/20/2006 7:19:52 AM

Quote :

"again, I like the quicktime format...vivid colors and great sound."

What the fuck are you talking about? Quicktime (.mov) is a container format just like AVI/WMV/ASF. The quality is completely dependent on the video codec used.

HAhahahAHah, got called out

7/20/2006 9:25:26 AM

Quote :

"Then I started the AOL Trial-then-Cancel method, which worked for a while, until we got billed pretty badly for using a "local" access number that was actually long-distance. From that point on, we got RR. I'll never forget the day I cancelled AOL after we had gotten RR. I sat there arguing with the guy, until I finally told him "why the fuck should you care if I stay with AOL, i'm a time warner customer now and you guys are the same company, so you profit either way". That shut the guy up."

Interesting article on AOL retention practices:

http://consumerist.com/consumer/exclusive/aol-retention-manual-revealed-188005.php


Also, you can view the entire AOL "Retention Manual".... it is a great example of how to violate the settlements that you had in place with various State Attorney Generals, and a sure sign that you will have many states demanding huge civil penalties for violating the agreements.

http://consumerist.com/consumer/exclusive/aol-retention-manual-uploaded-in-full-188310.php

7/20/2006 9:36:59 AM

I mean since they're listing software, they completely own themselves by not having E.T on there.

I think a game responsible for the collapse of the american video game industry in the early 80's qualifies as 'worst tech product of all time.'

7/20/2006 9:50:39 AM

E.T. was a terrible game... I must have missed "the collapse of the american video game industry"

7/20/2006 9:54:13 AM

wikipedia it.

7/20/2006 10:55:56 AM

I already read a bit about it. Maybe it sucked for the people making games, but as far as I was concerned (from the POV of a gamer) gaming boomed in the 80s with the NES and the competition between the NES and the SMS. Certainly wasn't the nail in the coffin I was expecting to read about.

7/20/2006 11:01:32 AM

Uhm

Thats because the NES marked an end to that era.

Quote :

" The video game crash of 1983 was the sudden crash of the video game business and the bankruptcy of a number of companies producing home computers and video game consoles in North America in late 1983 and early 1984. It brought an end to what is considered the second generation of console video gaming. This phenomenon unfolded primarily in the United States and Canada, since the contemporary global market for video game consoles had not yet evolved[citation needed]. The crash was followed by a gap of three years, during which there was a much smaller market in games for home computers in North America, and no significant development for video game consoles. That gap ended with the success of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) that was first introduced in Japan in 1983 (as Famicom) and then in the United states in 1985 and would break out in popularity in 1987. This period is sometimes referred to as the "video game crash of 1984," because that was the year the full effects of the crash became obvious to consumers. Hundreds of games were in development for 1983 release, most of which ended up in bargain bins. But few games were developed in 1983 for release the following year, resulting in a drought of new video games in 1984. "

You really shouldn't say you've read stuff if you haven't.

7/20/2006 1:32:34 PM

I read it and I wasn't impressed. I was alive then dude, and I don't remember this being as big of a deal as they are making it out to be.

The three year crash of video games that started in '83, but the NES was released during the crash. Big deal. Maybe there wasn't as much money as people were hoping to make during those years but I didn't suffer from lack of games back then.

7/20/2006 1:38:18 PM

Two years of no new consolde development dude.

Can you imagine if for the next two years nothing new came out on any console system now?

I'd say that was a pretty big deal.

7/20/2006 1:49:29 PM

How did that experience leave you, the gamer, as a 1 - 4 year old ?

7/20/2006 1:51:51 PM

Gaming didn't start until 1987 when I got my NES with the cool ass robot.

7/20/2006 2:06:32 PM

I guess playing and replaying chopper command got me through the lull years. I was too busy with that one and all my Intellivision games to even notice

[Edited on July 20, 2006 at 2:11 PM. Reason : -]

7/20/2006 2:09:42 PM

Quote :

"Has quicktime come out with an installer that doesn't force you into installing a couple of other iTunes programs that you didn't intend to install? Do you still have to edit the registry to get it to stop preloading?"

We wanted quicktime but not iTunes on our work computers. There's an installer somewhere on the website for just quicktime. I had to dig like hell to find it.

I think the list is seriously flawed for a number of reasons, and I'll leave it at that.

7/20/2006 5:54:28 PM

Quote :

"Has quicktime come out with an installer that doesn't force you into installing a couple of other iTunes programs that you didn't intend to install? Do you still have to edit the registry to get it to stop preloading?"

We wanted quicktime but not iTunes on our work computers. There's an installer somewhere on the website for just quicktime. I had to dig like hell to find it.

I think the list is seriously flawed for a number of reasons, and I'll leave it at that.

7/20/2006 5:56:06 PM

I know a few folks that still use AOL with RoadRunner. I keep telling them that they don't need it for anything, but then they say "we want to keep our AOL email address." OK, keep throwing your money away then.

7/20/2006 8:41:38 PM

Quote :

"What the fuck are you talking about? Quicktime (.mov) is a container format just like AVI/WMV/ASF. The quality is completely dependent on the video codec used. HAhahahAHah, got called out"

yeah, and I am sure all those codecs aren't just for quicktime or anything as far as authoring tools go.

7/20/2006 10:35:36 PM

Quote :

"I had to dig like hell to find it."

Actually, first search result on yahoo for quicktime leads to

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/download/standalone.html

[Edited on July 20, 2006 at 10:38 PM. Reason : .]

7/20/2006 10:37:58 PM

Quote :

" What the fuck are you talking about? Quicktime (.mov) is a container format just like AVI/WMV/ASF. The quality is completely dependent on the video codec used. HAhahahAHah, got called out "

Sorenson Video 3 is the codec I think of when I think of quicktime. It's the most commonly used quicktime codec and it's exclusive to quicktime. For all intents and purposes, it is "the quicktime codec" since it represents almost any non-hd quicktime movie you've ever seen. When gargs praised the quicktime format, he was most likely thinking of the advantages of this fairly well rounded codec.

[Edited on July 21, 2006 at 7:34 AM. Reason : ]

7/21/2006 7:32:52 AM

Quote :

"I already read a bit about it. Maybe it sucked for the people making games, but as far as I was concerned (from the POV of a gamer) gaming boomed in the 80s with the NES and the competition between the NES and the SMS. Certainly wasn't the nail in the coffin I was expecting to read about."

The thing is a lot of people considered video games to be a passing fad. So many companies tanked. If the NES didn't save everyone's shit, gaming probably wouldn't be what it is today. Also, for an industry that had only been around for a little over a decade, a two year depression seems pretty bad.

7/21/2006 9:26:58 AM

Quote :

"yeah, and I am sure all those codecs aren't just for quicktime or anything as far as authoring tools go."

Except for Sorenson as ^^ mentioned, nearly every Quicktime codec used has a PC/AVI equivalent.

And Apple has abandoned Sorenson in favor of standard MPEG4. Sorenson is just a tweaked H.264, and hasn't ever really been a good streaming codec. It is used in Macromedia Flash's video playback though.

7/21/2006 11:44:19 AM

As most people have said, Zip disks were great during their days. And to boot, they are still used in places all over the world.

However, what really sucked and is angering for me was the 120 MB SuperDisk. It was the same size as a floppy/zip, but also the same thickness as a floppy. I got suckered into buying them because the university I was attending got some machines with them in 1999, and they offered more storage in a sleeker package than Zip disks. I backed up my files from my 4 years there in 4 of those disks, and since then, haven't been able to access them because the stupid disks and their drives can't be found anywhere else, and as far as I know, died out/never caught on, unlike the Zip disks/drives.

Anybody know those? BTW, I got imation branded ones.

[Edited on July 21, 2006 at 8:49 PM. Reason : I would still love to get into those disks... but I don't think that is possible.]

7/21/2006 8:23:21 PM

yeah i know the disks youre talking about.

and I think i only ever saw one of those drives.

check ebay or craigslist or something like that. maybe you will get lucky.

7/21/2006 10:40:32 PM

Najeeb:

there are data recovery specialists that can help you.

but they are $texas.

7/21/2006 11:12:27 PM

i swear ncsu used to have some of those

7/21/2006 11:18:47 PM

They were pretty ubiquitous on Macs for a year or two.

7/21/2006 11:20:46 PM

You can still get superdisk drives on ebay for less than 25 bucks.

Just checked and there are 70+ listings just for the drives. Pick one up and get yo data.

7/22/2006 7:57:58 AM

I hated the whole "Gain/Gator" corporation spyware bullshit. They should have put that up there in place of some other spyware.

7/22/2006 1:34:04 PM

I think I still have my Superdrive sitting around somewhere because my iMac DVSE didn't have a floppy drive and the Superdrive wasn't much more than an external floppy drive.

I've also got a portable digital recording console that's ZiP-based.

7/22/2006 5:16:07 PM

I had AOL in 1993, had it for a few yrs, loved and hated it. Was the only kid on the block with the net. Hated the aol starting up Dial-up screens. Then it took forever to load your main screens, specially at 14k or 28k.

Once HL game out and CS beta started to become a bit popular, I started to play those online. When I used AOL, my ping was always above 300, most of the time, I was lucky to get 350. Then I found out about the free service netzero and juno services. Tried those and always had a ping between 200-300. Used those for like 6 months. But after that, too many ppl started to use their service and pings went to crap.

Then a little bit later, finally got RR cable to the house. Again, 1st person on the street. Love the LPB days when majority of the ppl still used dialup.

And for the record, I think Zip disks shouldn't be up there. They were hugely popular for their time. I have 5 zip drives (100 and 250's) with about 100 disks. My dad used them to back up shit for work and I used to transfer files between computers before we ever got a home network. I even used it kind of like a removable hard drive back then. Slow, yes. But helped out a lot when your old computer only had a 1GB hard drive or less. I mean, back then, to imagine you could back up your entire hard drive on a few zip disks was nice, instead of dealing with dozens of floppies.

What about that Clik! product from Iomega that came a while ago? It was a nice idea, but I don't think that every took off.

7/22/2006 7:09:54 PM

Aol sucks and deserves to be #1 on the list. The old AOL was a scam and was nothing more than a sandbox on a beach.

7/23/2006 4:58:35 PM

Well, to be fair, at the time, the beach wasn't much of a beach. AOL was it's own little island for a while and in some ways was better than the plain old beach. It was only after the world wide web seriously took off that AOL wasn't worth it, and even then it got to the point where AOL realized it needed to open it's doors to the rest of the beach. AOL however, was the easiest way to get started way back when.

7/23/2006 5:06:51 PM

Quote :

"ZiP-based"

Haha

7/24/2006 11:10:27 AM