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CES 2008 Hall of Shame

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Mon Jan 14, 2008 04:01 PM
from the natural-financial-selection dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Hardware
Romana Reynolds writes "The CES 2008 Innovations Design and Engineering Awards Showcase honored the Atom Chip Corporation, which was exhibiting the same 100GB, 500GB, and 1TB 'quantum optical' memory chips back in 2006. We actually wandered by, but long gone are the 'SolarMemory' chips, and he didn't know anything about Duke Nuk'em Forever. A little easy digging shows that they'd been making the same extraordinary claims and exhibiting prototypes at CES during the past three years, long enough to make 'atom chip hoax' the fourth suggestion on typing 'atom chip' into Google. I'm amused that the 'preeminent' panel of judges failed their vetting and gatekeeping functions. But I fear that Atom Chip will gather investors based on their recognition at CES, and continue in the game for many years to come, while honors at CES become a Hall of Shame."
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Stuk writes "Research & development company AtomChip have announced a new 6.8GHz 1TB RAM and 2TB HDD laptop, which is "coming soon". Apparently it does not use a hard disc, instead it is based on "solid state AtomChip® optoelectronics". A new "non-volatile Quantum-Optical" type of RAM is used. Other features include voice commands, "Num Lock mode, Caps Lock mode, Scroll Lock mode". They're spoiling us." If Nintendogs has taught me anything, it's that voice recognition is awesome and should be used for everything. *cough*. And also to be skeptical of this many buzzwords.
Submission: CES 2008 Hall of Shame by kurthr (30155)
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CES 2008 Hall of Shame 50 Comments More /

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  • Aren't they going to use that in the Phantom console [wikipedia.org]?
  • Quantum optical? C'mon, is it just me or doesn't that just sound like they made that up after watching a Star Trek: The Next Generation marathon on Spike?

  • No! I won't belive it! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I well expect to get that $10k I invested into atom chip back, with excellent interest.

    Yes, I know that my $10k investment is only worth $5 now, but that's just the cost of R&D, it'll come back! ...
    It's not coming back, is it?

  • Corporate Image (Score:5, Informative)

    by FalconZero (607567) * <[moc.liamG] [ta] [oreZnoclaF]> on Monday January 14 2008, @04:12PM (#22040670)
    Wow, with a website as slick as theirs [atomchip.com], I wonder if they made their show posters with crayons?

    Seriously though, if their intention is to promote snake oil in the hopes of attracting investors then the least they could do is put more than an hour of effort into what is pretty much (at least in this industry) the primary corporate representation.

    At least they didn't create it in Word. Now that would have really irked me....

    Incidentally, I did a little digging on this, and it seems its owned by a Russin Scientist called Shimon Gendlin (based out of Long Island), who as per information here [findarticles.com] in 1997 owned two companies both pitching along a simmilar theme :
    • SVG Israel New Technology, Ltd. (President)
    • Compu-Technics (Chairman of the board)
  • Unfortunately, the rate at which fools part their money to other fools is astonishing.
  • Ya think there are enough links in that story? I could be convinced that this technology isn't going anywhere without separate links to "Hall" and "Shame"!

    Anyway, as long as we're heaping ridicule on gullible technoidiots who keep falling for the same hype year after year, how did 2007's "Possible Cure For Cancer!" stories here ultimately pan out? Can I take up smoking yet?

  • Panel of Judges (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WyrdOne (96731) on Monday January 14 2008, @04:39PM (#22041226)
    Hmm lets see, about 1/2 the Panel is made up of CEO's and Prisident/Founders of various businesses. People so far removed from the technology they work in they probably couldn't tell you how their own products actually work.

    Most of the other half are made up of Salesmen, Journalists, Evangelists and Marketing agents. People who don't know the right end of a lightbulb usually.

    I saw maybe 2-3 people in that whole list that *might* have a clue about how technology works.

    CES needs to get a new panel of judges who know their stuff. Maybe get some leading professors in the field to come judge? How about senior product "Engineers", you know the people actually making the stuff that ends up in CES?
  • Why else would they have monetized (read:fake search page) their previous company web site [compu-technics.com]? No content, just a nice money grubbing content free website.

    Maybe because with that site being linked from all over the web, they're going to rake in a carload of money?

  • Mmm... Atom Chips... (Score:5, Funny)

    by FlyingSquidStudios (1031284) on Monday January 14 2008, @04:42PM (#22041290) Homepage
    Atom chips go great with quarkamole.



    Thank you, I'll be here all week! Support your bartender!

  • A display on a memory chip? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fuocoZERO (1008261) on Monday January 14 2008, @04:54PM (#22041516) Journal
    This page [atomchip.com] suggests that the memory devices they are creating have a small display to show the free space on the chip. Wouldn't this suggest that they are making these chips filesystem aware and able to read free space? Adds to the bogus factor... not to mention the 3rd grade quality of their site...
    • It's not file system aware.

      When you run the file system on your pc computer, it opens the quantum disk and reads to the LCD on the side for automatic update! Thank you. [Buy Now]

    • Re:A display on a memory chip? (Score:4, Funny)

      by poot_rootbeer (188613) on Monday January 14 2008, @06:14PM (#22042992)
      This page suggests that the memory devices they are creating have a small display to show the free space on the chip. Wouldn't this suggest that they are making these chips filesystem aware and able to read free space?

      Nah, they just treat every memory cell storing a 1 as "used", and every cell storing a 0 as "free".

      That calculation's much easier to do with the modest computing power of a USB stick than actual filesystem awareness would be.

  • WHOIS Record (Score:5, Informative)

    by computer_guy57 (998179) on Monday January 14 2008, @05:28PM (#22042038)
    Their WHOIS record shows the registrant as "Domain Discreet," and their contact email as random-jumble-of-letters@domaindiscreet.com. If that doesn't scream "hoax" (kinda like everything else about them), then I don't know what does.

  • No real surprise here. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Telecommando (513768) on Monday January 14 2008, @05:32PM (#22042148)
    CES is and always has been more about marketing and hype than any actual innovation.

  • Blocked AtomChip.com (Score:4, Interesting)

    by StickyWidget (741415) on Monday January 14 2008, @06:03PM (#22042768)
    It's gotta be a hoax, Websense is blocking it.

    Or porn. Or Liberal Propaganda. I'm just not sure these days.

    ~Sticky

  • What a bunch of idiots (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blind biker (1066130) on Monday January 14 2008, @08:22PM (#22044546) Journal
    Check this out on their website:
    http://atomchip.com/_wsn/page4.html [atomchip.com]
    Welcome to the World of Nanomicrons and Beyond!

    wtf is a nanomicron?
    • You talk as if you think there is some sort of vetting process involved. Other than asking "Do you have enough money to rent space?" I doubt convention organizers care one way or the other what people are trying to show.

    • Re:Wow... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by LynnwoodRooster (966895) on Monday January 14 2008, @11:32PM (#22046294) Journal
      For around $25K, you too can have your own CES Innovations award! Having exhibited my own products at CES for many years, I can tell you that you:

      1. Pony up around $2,500 to "submit" your product for evaluation
      2. Pony up another $5,000 when your product is chosen to be a "semi-finalist"
      3. Pony up another $7,500 when your product is chosen to be a "finalist"
      4. Pony up another $10,000 when you are chosen a winner, to cover "marketing expenses"
      5. Profit (for CES and, presumably, you via marketing)

      Inside most of the CE industries, CES Innovations awards are ignored - they mean nothing because everyone knows you can buy one. Just if you want the press or marketing exposure (so the BB/CC sales drone can move your product - it's an Award Winner!) it's worth the $$$. If you don't need it, don't pay.

      That said, traffic at CES was noticeably down this year. LV wasn't as crowded, the floors were more open, and many areas - like the Venetian and Hilton - had a LOT of empty space. Lots of companies are dropping out of attending CES simply because it's gotten way too expensive to show at, and it simply has lost focus on what made it big back in the day - entertainment CE products.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by JMLang (833136)
      Well, the patent grab claim is unlikely. All but one of the US patents listed in the photographed flyer have been abandoned according to the US Patent office (failure to pay maintenance fees). Looks like they don't have much in the way of patent rights now, and they probably won't have much more in ten years time if they can't come up with the cash to pay maintenance fees now. Caveat Investor...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by shawnce (146129)
      Not that I believe any of their website ... but some vendors (Apple comes to mind) provide TOSLINK optical connections using a 1/8" combo audio jack [apple.com].

    • Not just Panding! Grantid, too. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by zippthorne (748122) on Monday January 14 2008, @06:12PM (#22042948) Journal
      They appear to have actually achieved at least one patent. Their news page [atomchip.com] contains a link to a description of "quantum technology" [delphion.com] Which appears to be an abstract consisting of a jumble of barely related words, a reference to an otherwise unknown "Gendlin effect." [google.com] and a child's sketch of a design for magnetic core memory.

      However a google patents search uncovers an actual patent! [google.com] Which is basically the same, but with more child's sketches, such as one of a transistor, and a page that appears to be practice isometric drawings, and several pages of black & white photoshop cloud noise renderings.

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