#failed tech

[gaykarstaagforever]

This product apparently never made it to market, because they spent a whole lot of money prototyping a weird thing that was going to be too expensive and too weird for anyone but a very specific type of nerd.

So I can't fairly judge it. But it still sounds like a very smart person's very stupid idea for something that is absolutely not going to do what they want it to.

You can't math-formula your way to flavor, guys. I know you think that should work. But as processed food containing 140% of a safe level of salt proves, making tasty food is as much art as it is science.

Forget Paper Bottles: The Best Way to Clean Up Plastic Waste Is No Bottle at All

A startup called Cana leapfrogs coffee and sparkling water machines to make almost any drink at home.

(Also I feel like focusing on the supposed positive environmental impact of this "make goofy cocktails" machine is very much a sign that they knew the basic concept was pretty weak.)

[weirdtech]

The Eyetop Wearable DVD Player is a device used to watch DVD media on-the-go. Unlike the conventional portable DVD player which has a built in screen akin to a laptop, this device displays content through a small screen in the eye of the included sunglasses. As one would probably guess this device was considered a failure as not many people could find a practical use for watching a film through a pair of glasses that they couldn’t by using a standard portable DVD player. While the advertised use of these glasses was the ability to move around while watching a DVD this action is inherently dangerous and should be discouraged. The device also comes with a carrying bag as it is much too large to be simply carried around or placed in a pocket (unlike the Discman, which many have compared it to upon first glance). The battery life is, while not abysmal, rather lacking as the Eyetop only holds a maximum of 4 hours. The greatest feature, as many people have discovered, is the ability to plug the video sunglasses into any device with a composite or A/V output. The device has become popular with RC enthusiasts as a way to see the video output on an RC device’s camera without requiring the attention on a separate screen.

[weirdtech]

The Iomega Zip Disk was stated to be the next evolution in floppy disk technology and touted as a “superfloppy.” Indeed, it was the most popular of the floppy disk successors being cheaper than a standard hard drive while offering greater data storage for the price (hard drives typically cost around $200 for 500mb while a Zip Drive was $200 itself but $20 for each 100mb cartridge and a cartridge was also included with the drive). These drives were also believed to be more stable than hard drives at the time, which were known to have issues with the writing heads becoming misaligned or damaged with slight amounts of movement. 

However, due to Iomega’s attempt at saving production costs, models produced during a period of several months had a foam washer removed from the actuator head area that was used to prevent misalignment due to a jarring stop in the case of sudden power failure. This caused “the click of death” in many drives where the actuator would become misaligned and repeatedly click back into it’s starting position. This misalignment could also be caused by things such as dust, contaminants or even rogue magnetic fields. The misalignment could also cause damage to the zip disks themselves, specifically the edges of the disk, and cause irreparable damage to any drive the disks were inserted in.

Iomega received a class-action lawsuit regarding this “click of death” due to the immense loss of consumer data and violation of the Delaware Consumer Fraud Act. Iomega lost the case and offered effected customers vouchers for other Iomega products. This issue, combined with the growing cost of the Zip Disk and the low cost and high capacity of their main competition caused the Zip Disk to fall out of favour with consumers and eventually cease production altogether.

[weirdtech]

The Bandai Pippin was Apple’s failed attempt to enter the video game market in 1996. The system was released in Japan first, marketed the Pippin Atmark, and came in the off-while color typical of Apple computers at the time. Approximately 7 months later it was released in North America as the Bandai Pippin @World and came in matte black. The system was Apple’s attempt at creating an all-in-one console that not only played video games but could perform some of the basic tasks of a standard Macintosh computer (even running a stripped down version of Mac OS 7). Due to lack of marketing on Apple’s part, the underwhelming power of the console compared to its other 5th generation contemporaries and the general public’s disinterest in media boxes at the time the Pippin was a massive failure; reportedly selling only 42,000 systems out of 100,000 manufactured. The console was officially discontinued by Steven Jobs upon return to the company in 1997 and ordering the shut down of all “Macintosh Clones.”

[mspi]

Cute. Someone thought that my phone that recognized my face was magical. BTW, that was a few + years ago. BTW, it was flawed--it stopped recognizing me each time my weight changed.

dnagirl

[unclewalter23]

Burn Notice - Season 5 Episode 4 - No Good Deed ~ Failed Tech

Burn Notice has been one of my Netflix binge watching pleasures. Michael Westen doing his spy stuff, helping people, blowing stuff up.  All in all a very enjoyable show. Sometimes it pushes the limits of logic and physics, but hey it's all in good fun right?

This episode had one particularly bad technology fail that I just cannot let pass.  You see, in this one there is a hacker lady who is trying to crack highly encrypted bank files using a cluster of computers which she had some thug steal from a warehouse. Westen and crew thwart her of course but before they do we get to see the high tech cluster this uber-hacker lady had created.

Behold the high tech goodness of... three late '90s - early 00's Dell Dimension XPS towers. Also note that only one has a connected network cable. 

Shall I point out that this episode came out in 2011 and these computers came with Windows 98?

Then I saw this:

A homebrew PC and a vintage pre-Jobs Mac Power PC 8100.  You know the one Apple made when everyone thought they were doomed? The one discontinued back in 1995 when AOL was going to rule the world?

Thankfully they blew up the antiques, but not until they had to throw in one more technological sin.

There is the bomb, taped to the back of the antique Dell... a Dell without a power supply.  They aren't even trying now, are they?

So to recap, a super good hacker lady has a hired thug steal computers, I can only assume from a Salvation Army, to build a "computer" cluster to crack secure files.

She used computers with a combined processing power that is less than my Samsung Galaxy III to break a modern encrypted file.

My inner Tech died a little watching this episode.

-Uncle Walter