FuelCDP

FuelCDP
James Hiscock
frontline@mindless.com
http://fuelcdp.iwarp.com

Something like this comes along but once in a lifetime. CBS would have enough here for a whole season of 60 Minutes shows. No one single approach to describing the experience is adequate - all ultimately fall short, all are both individually and collectively incomplete.

Both the product FuelCDP and the site representing it are without the bounds of human experience.

Browsing around the FuelCDP website one is immediately startled by a caption text currently on the features page which jumps up in the HTTP browser client:

'Welcome to Adobe GoLive 4'

Strains of 'This Could Be the Start of Something Good' float through one's mind, and one can almost see the wannabe shareware author and HTML guru sitting there, with furrowed brow and mouth hanging open wide, thinking silently to himself:

'How do I get that OUTTA THERE? Oh well...'

One notices as well that the same 'email the author' link keeps popping up again and again:

frontline@mindless.com

This is too much, you say. Kelvin at Fourmilab must be at it again. You start suspecting the whole thing is just a subtle, very elaborate hoax.

You couldn't be more wrong.

Laughter and tears both stop at the same time, in a dead heat. From behind you hear the eerie scream of a childhood nightmare monster approaching.

This is worse than Forrest Gump. But Forrest Gump was Tom Hanks. Forrest Gump was a movie. FuelCDP is REAL.

What is FuelCDP?

FuelCDP is a CD player. FuelCDP does not seem to even want to pretend to offer any features not found elsewhere in almost all other CD players, thus lacking a raison d'etre, but it is here for your edification just the same. Yet FuelCDP has found one way to stand apart from the crowd, even as motley a crowd as the CD player crowd is infamous for being:

FuelCDP is an application that adds and wallows in bloat almost as if it were an art. In fact, FuelCDP is the first application ever that elevates bloatware to an art.

The 'author' of this Wunderwerk has been able to combine dependencies from the seemingly most contradictory environments into a single bursting-at-the-seams 'where's that Steve McQueen I gotta kill him' program.

You see your old friends the VB monsters of course; and the MFC is duly represented - to the point of overload. But you get kilotons of junk from other sources as well - a truly crowning achievement.

FuelCDP combines the worst of Visual Basic, the worst of ISV OCX products, and the worst of the MFC with tons of OCX's - all in one application.

The author complains (see an authentic transcription with a radsoft.net reader by clicking here) that there are so few 'code-only replacements' available, unable ostensibly to write a single line of code himself.

It's astounding - literally astounding. No Seattle Sicko, no Gates Geek, no Microsoft Moron could ever have accomplished so much with so little. Even the authors-in-hiding of RegClean must be relaxing tonight - someone is actually worse than they are.

This is too much fun for words. We have not tried this product, and would be fools if we did, and sincerely warn you from doing so. But after reading the FuelCDP product page you know beyond the shadow of any doubt that you have happened upon something entirely unique in this software industry - an industry already plagued by the idiotic, the ridiculous, and the bizarre.

You have happened upon the ultimate act of blind bloatware idiocy.

The FuelCDP website is a 'must see' - you simply must visit this site before something happens and it gets taken down. And what is amazing about this website - and the product touted there - is that this is NO JOKE. This is all serious.

The 'web designer' and software 'author' of FuelCDP is a true credit to the 'profession.' A big 'thank you' to you from all of us.

We sleep so much better at night knowing people like you exist.