I'm not really sold on the idea of a bullpup rifle in the first place, so I agree with you that they could have done much better. It's surprising however that they managed to so thoroughly mess up an AR18 based weapon, given that it is generally an extremely reliable design.
Exactly - when the H&K G36 is also based on the AR-18 and is considered a superb weapon. They had to *work* at it to screw it up.
I do like bullpups, but I think that FN finally got the idea right with the FN2000 and its soft-eject system. Most other bullpups have one or another glaring flaw, though some are more usable than others.