Most overhyped thing (that fell flat) in the last 10 years?

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Aquila76

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
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Originally posted by: Kaervak
Originally posted by: BionicSniper
Originally posted by: brxndxn
Divx.. or was that more than 10 years ago?

divx is huge....

windows me & windows 98
Not that Divx. The Divx DVD players where you had to pay to watch a DVD each time.

LOL, yeah Divx (not DivX) was a good one. Something like $10 for the Divx DVD, but $2 each time you watched it. Didn't Circuit City (the only poor bastards that sold Divx) have to pay out a near full refund to anyone that bought the Divx systems as a result of a class action lawsuit? I wonder how deep in that idea the MPAA was!

I'm still wary on Y2K. I was a Y2K Solutions Specialist (or some other BS title my company gave me) and 99% of the systems we had worked OK (mostly UNIX). I remember showing my boss that the systems kept the time and date fine in the OS, although they were wrong in the BIOS (rolled over from 99 to 87, IIRC). We spent tons on these 'Y2K Compliant' BIOS clock add-on chips (Mr. BIOS was the name, LOL) although everythong went fine.
 

The Linuxator

Banned
Jun 13, 2005
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Originally posted by: Budmantom
Minidisc


I disapprove that, its the same technology that is used to creat PSP UMD plus 1 GB Mini-Discs that can fit over a 45hours of non-stop attrac3 plus format I dont think this is a hype it's a fact.
Edit : and that 1 GB minidisc which you can write to edit modify conetnt on at 64X speeds (in Hi-MD players) costs only $ 7 , ok I have around 450 songs in my music collections (between CD's and Music I bought online)
I can fit all of my library in 1 / $ 7 disc I am up for it , not only that but I can use the 1 Gb Minidisc to store data oh ya thats what I am talking about an alternative to CD-R.
The world needs to learn a thing or two from Sony cds should have an enclosure like MD do you will never scratch your CD again period.
 

bhanson

Golden Member
Jan 16, 2004
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Microsoft Windows XP.

"It won't crash, you won't have to reboot to update!"

diaf
 

AstroCreep

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Jan 13, 2004
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Too late to chime in? ;)

-Blair Witch (that piece o' crap received waaaaay too much press)
-Any Mike Tyson fight since he was released from prison

If I can think of any others I'll add them later. ;)
 

Aquila76

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
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Great poll, and I voted Atkins. Only 3 years ago everybody (on a diet, anyway) was buying Atkins anything faster than stores could stock it while screaming for the FDA to rethink the food pyramid. Then Atkins himself DIED, and now Atkins' Co. has filed Chapter 11.
Talk about falling flat!
 

VIAN

Diamond Member
Aug 22, 2003
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The most overhyped probably Y2K.

But I voted WMDs because it had the most impact on us.
 

Kaspian

Golden Member
Aug 30, 2004
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Originally posted by: anxi80
some good suggestions. ill throw windows me out there.


thats a good one,,,,,:thumbsup: what a pice of junk for an os. When it came out I stayed with win98se. But there were alot of ppl that didnt........and they paid the price.
 

Czar

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
28,510
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segway
wmds
rdram


the y2k bug was very real, just for the most part it was solved so people didnt see what could have happened
 

Acanthus

Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
19,915
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ostif.org
Originally posted by: Czar
segway
wmds
rdram


the y2k bug was very real, just for the most part it was solved so people didnt see what could have happened

At least RDRAM had a performance advantage for quite a while. It wasnt officially dethroned until Intel I865/I875, and that was beacuse chipset development had completely halted at I850, had it continued, RDRAM would still be the leading performance memory today.

Edit: spelling
 

Robor

Elite Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Originally posted by: Yossarian
Segway easily. "It will change the way cities are designed" hahaha yeah right. Now they're used by rich idiots to play polo.

I saw some old rich dork riding one in a snooty mall over in Tampa last weekend. What a joke!
 

sparkyclarky

Platinum Member
May 3, 2002
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Y2K bug - nope, not overhyped/didn't fall flat - they spent billions fixing the thing and the lack of problems was most assuredly a result of that work

Segway - yep, claims of revolutionizing travel/redoing cities are a joke when the thing is simply an improved scooter

WMDs - not overhyped, as they are out their in many countries, overstated/misinformed in Iraq's case certainly (perhaps fell flat here)

Rambus - not overhyped/didn't fall flat - in use on numerous game consoles/other markets than the PC, was actually a good memory type for the P4 before dual channel DDR took over

Minidiscs - still sold, quite popular in other countries, was a decent cassette replacement until MP3 players took over

Daikatana - both overhyped and fell flat - poor sales/crappy game/Romero's baby dies

Dot Coms - e-commerce is still going strong, there was a bit of a bubble, but once that was checked progress continued as normal

SARS - never was a ton of hype, and still is a bit dangerous

Atkins - it works, it's just hard to stay on it (my pa did for 6 months and lost 20 pounds or so), may not be great for your heart, but never really fell flat



My vote goes for the Segway (visions of South Park's parody)