Vista got re-released as 7, with a new skin on it and some memory-use optimization, and almost everyone loved it. Most of the heavy engineering was during the Vista cycle.

Without car phones, we wouldn't have handheld cell phones.

The rest of those, good riddance, although I will point out that while they've never lived up to the hype, you can still buy a Segway -- it's more of a weird niche product than an actual bomb.

(For that matter, we seem to be talking about bombs, not "situation normal, all fouled up" -- *lol* the latter seems more like it ought to be the bad stuff that people somehow we deal -- or dealt -- with year after year. By that standard, the 56 years of the horrible NTSC color TV broadcast standard may well take the cake, although stepping farther from electronics, leaded gas or lead paint might beat it. )

Back to the "biggest individual fu...oul ups," one of the biggest that I'm, surprised didn't hurt any of the technologies involved in the long term has been the occasional rash of Lithium-Ion batteries exploding.