IIRC, it was in the original Hitchhiker's radio play, about a third of which became half of Restaurant.
However, you are correct that it was the computer, not Arthur Dent, which grabbed all the ship's computer resourced to figure out how to make tea to Arthur's satisfaction. He had no idea the dispenser would tie up the ship's entire system. He just wanted some tea.
Spending money on promotion is a wager. You are betting that the game will be accepted well enough to justify the money spent on advertising. Since most executives have no advanced sense of what consumers like (a perception often referred to as "taste"), they go for what they see as the safe bet, which is what consumers have bought before. This is why movies have sequels, TV shows have spin-offs, and game companies keep cranking out generic shooters with graphics and characters based on recent action blockbusters.
Spending money on advertising an original game is a gamble, unless you know for a fact that it's a really good game... but since game execs have no idea what a good game is, that's not really an option for them.
P.S. I also have no idea what Rez is. The game I played most on the Dreamcast was Soul Calibur (yet another sequel game).
The space race was originally between USSR and USA, do other countries feel they need to spend so much money in order to feel on par with the USA ? I think they could spend the money elsewhere improving the living conditions for their nationals.
It's noteworthy that nations which are along the equator are much better locations to launch satellites from than Florida. Putting shit into orbit for profit has become a pretty good way to make money over the last 20 years or so.
In other words, a Brazilian space agency could easily show a net profit (if it doesn't already).
Add manned flights, and you could be talking huge numbers. Look at how much money various rich dickheads have been willing to pay the Russians for passenger seats on rocket launches in recent years. Sending boy-band stars and Microsoft executives into space could be a very plump tomato... especially if you let the rest of us pay you to not bring them back.
Kind of makes me want to get a hold of the "Yes, Minister" DVD's, and watch Sir Humphrey Appleby go to work. He could deadpan lines like that like nobody else.
But if I reply to your reply to the comment on the story of the article which comments on comments on the content of the industry, then you might choose to respond to my reply to your reply to the comment on the story of the article which comments on comments on the content of the industry, and the whole affair starts to sound like a really shitty folk song.
He's clearly obsessing over something without any real rational reason. It's sort of like people who complain about the Internet becoming "too corporate." All the academic resources of the Web that were there back in the NCSA days are still out there. All the geek counter-culture is still around, ready to be found. If anything, such things are far more abundant. The fact that Toyota Motors and CNN have web pages doesn't change anything, unless you let it.
Likewise, the fact that there are craploads of licensed games in the console market doesn't take away from the joys of Halo, GTA, DOAX, NBA Street v2, or any of a wide array of other fun and creative games. This guy needs to lighten up. If you don't like the idea of a game based on The Hulk, do what the rest of us do: don't buy it. If the simple fact that it even exists upsets you whether you personally buy it or not, then you need a life... or maybe anti-depressants. Talk to your therapist.
If the power goes out in Minnesota, it doesn't take me 30 seconds to find out where everybody is and what's going on. I already know.
Where everybody is: At home or on their way there. What's going on: Everybody is eating all the ice cream and steak in their freezers by candle-light. We midwesterners do so hate to let food go to waste.
Come on, for any given block in the Twin Cities, power has gone out at least twice in the last five years, due to trees hitting power lines, weather-related incidents, etc.
One time, when I was working at the PJ Tower (a few years ago when Tad Piper actually owned the brokerage, rather than an out-of-state bank), some idiot took down half of down-town by cutting a main with a front-loader. Was there panic in the skyways? People scrambling for HAM radios? No, of course not. We just took a slightly longer lunch. It kind of sucked walking down stairs from the 11th floor, but at least we weren't on the 40th. Power fails, life goes on. No need to have generators or elaborate contingency plans unless you are running a hospital or something.
If I cared that much about internal network speeds, I would be using the Gig Ethernet, or at least a 100 bit Ethernet card, instead of the wireless hub.
Since I don't run a video processing lab, I don't often need to exchange large files between the systems in my house. If you do, I recommend putting up with the minor inconvenience of a wire. It's a much cheaper way to realize high-speed transfers on a LAN.
The most famous Wheaties box covers are usually Olympic stars. For them, getting on the Wheaties box usually caps the end of their Olympic careers, because their event won't be played again at the Olympics until four years later, by which time they probably will no longer be at the peak of performance which allowed them to get the gold.
All "cover curses" come down to this: Players tend to get attention when they play beyond expectations. That means that "Joe Pointguard" is going to get on the cover of "Fantasy Basketball Player Annual" right after playing the season of a lifetime.
So, the players that get on covers are players that just had great performances. Those performances will be tough to match by the same player, especially now that all the players who compete against them will no longer be taken by surprise by what they can accomplish.
For every Michael Jordan, who plays at an incredible level for year after year, there are a dozen Penny Hardaways and Vince Carters, who dazzle fans for a while and then reveal themselves to be merely good starting players in a league that's packed with other superstars.
Actually, sometimes professional electricians create real messes too. I recently wired a new room in my house, and discovered that the electrician who wired it cut all kinds of corners: sharing ground wires for separate circuits, and stuff like that. We ended up having to re-do most of the house just to safely put in the two new circuits and additional wiring we wanted.
When I wire something for myself, it might not be perfect, but with the help of an experienced electrician, it will be good enough to be safe, legal, reliable, and simple to expand from. When an unscrupulous professional wires something, it will be done just well enough to fool the inspectors.
What!? A new wireless technology is in the concept phase and seeking investors, meaning we might see a better wireless product on the market in five years or so!?!?
What a fool I was to frivolously piss away that $200 on an Airport 802.11b hub, which runs at almost 10 times by DSL connection speed, a mere year ago! If only I had waited! Sure, it would mean I have had nothing for all of last year, and nothing for all of this year, and nothing for quite some time to come, but at least I would have had the promise of a much broader pipe to connect to the tiny trickle of data coming through my broadband connection... if and when it arrives, without having frittered away all that money on an industry-standard wireless network that will only be useful for another 10 years or so.
It's amazing how quickly the discussion of PC vs. Console degenerates into personal attacks.
Actually, it's astonishing how quickly it happens. I just re-read the thread, and it turns out the very first thing you did in this "discussion" was call me a "sucker" for buying an X-Box.
So pardon me while I once again stoop to your level and tell you to go fuck yourself.
For somebody who abhors personal attacks (especially without knowing another person well enough) so much, you are very quick to accuse me of being an alcoholic. Please take a look in the mirror before you start pointing fingers. Also, lighten up. Re-read my post and realize that the general tone of my remarks were intended to be light-hearted.
If you like to sit in front of a game PC monitor for 40 hours a week (in addition to whatever time you spend staring at a screen for your job), and I would prefer to socialize over a beer with friends, why can't you accept that some people would rather spend their time differently that you do?
For me, the X-Box is a tremendously good value for the money. $300 (which, for the record, I didn't spend myself... several of my friends pitched in and bought me one for my birthday) buys me a game console which provides all the electronic gaming entertainment I really need at the moment. Spending $1000 on a game PC, plus the frequent upgrades needed to keep up with the latest game requirements, just doesn't make sense for some of us. The post I originally replied to was claiming that PC's are the more economical route to take, and I was simply pointing out that this is nonsense: it costs more. A lot more. Sure, you have many more options for ways to fill your time as a PC gamer, but you pay a lot for that privilege.
Most of us have better things to do with our lives that play video games for 40+ hours a week.
Those of us who do not completely neglect our jobs, families, and personal hygiene will probably not play 40 hours in a month, let a lone in a week. For us, having the X-Box is nice for when you have company over. DOA3 or Madden Football is a pleasant alternative to darts or poker for me and my drinking buddies.
If you would rather fire up the PC and spend hours and hours playing EQ (or "DivorceQuest" as it is known among our circle of friends), you just go right ahead.
I had a game PC up until recently... It was getting used for NWN about once every two months. I've wiped the drive and turned it into a Linux server, and have no intention of replacing it anytime soon.
When I upgrade the rest of my computer, it will have been ~3 years since I got it, and will amount to about $200 a year spent upgrading it.
$200 a year? My X-Box was $300 to buy over a year ago, and I plan on keeping it, as it is, for at least another year, if not longer, before turning it onto a spare Linux server. That's 3 years of game use with $0 per year spent on hardware upgrades, for a game system that cost far less than your PC.
As for the people saying "what if you want to play a PS2 game or a Nintendo game? You gotta buy more consoles"... That's utter nonsense. Sure, I can't play GTA3 on my X-Box, but you can't play DOA3 on your PC either. PC, PS2, X-Box, GC... no matter which way you go, there's going to be some games you can't play. Of all the current game consoles, the X-Box probably has the smallest selection of games, but it's still far more games than I'm ever actually going to own. I've got 9 games at the moment, with 3 more I'll be buying in the next few months (Knights of the Old Republic, Soul Calibur 2, and one of the many football sims). Those will occupy my free time plenty enough that I have no need to play the whateverthehell the latest Mario game for GC or GTA spin-off that's coming out on other platforms.
Still MMORPG's are not likely to ever catch on for the X-Box, not just because of the lack of keyboard, but for this simple reason: $$ per month for broadband + $$ per month for "X-Box Live" (currently $50 for a year, but who knows what the monthly fee will end up being?) + $$ per month for Varient or whoever is putting the game out... Who the hell is going to pay all that?
Warthog Jump and Warthog Jump Revisited are the "Birth of a Nation" of Halo movies
My thoughts exactly. They were technically groundbreaking, but the triumph of their importance is somewhat tainted by the fact that they are so fucking racist...
Oh wait. Not so much.
Maybe you should have said they were the "Battleship Potempkin" of Halo movies. You know, because they helped invent the visual language of the genre, but ultimately were communist propaganda...
Dammit! Are there ANY seminal movies of scholastic importance that weren't completely fucked up in some way!?
Oh wait, I got it... The Warthog Jump movies are the "Nosferatu" of Halo movies. There, I knew I could do it.
Back on topic: I was very late jumping on the RvB bandwagon, but I totally worship those guys now... Hilarious stuff.
Jeremiah Johnson: Y'ever get lonesome? Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Fer what? Jeremiah: Woman? Bear Claw: Full time night woman!? Bear Claw: I never could find no tracks on a woman's heart. I packed me a squaw for ten year, Pilgrim. Cheyenne, she were, and the meanest bitch that ever balled for beads. I lodge-poled her at Deadwood Creek, and traded her for a Hawken gun. But don't get me wrong; I loves the womens, I surely do. But I swear, a woman's breast is the hardest rock that the Almighty ever made on this earth, and I can find no sign on it.
Perhaps I should amend my previous post to speculate that I might someday use my X-Box as a redundant web-server, or perhaps, with a little tweaking, a digital video media server.
Anyway, my point was, modding it is not terribly important to me right now, when I'm just playing DOA3 and HALO on it. (Okay, and DOAX too... I confess.) The only reason I would mod it is if I wanted to use it as a $200 Linux box.
Are there really any people out there left with an unmodded X-box ?
Unless your X-Box is modded with one of those "switchable" chips, modding your X-Box excluded you from X-Box Live, so yea, there are a lot of X-Box users out there with no mod chip.
As somebody who doesn't give a crap about X-Box Live, I simply have not gotten around to modding mine. I might do so eventually, if I tire of the games and want to use it as a Linux firewall box or something, but otherwise I have no real need to go through the hassle of modding mine at the moment.
That is correct. He says they won't until the prequel trilogy DVD's are done, because they intend to take the time to make a premier package, full of bells and whistles.
Still, when it finally does arrive, if it does not have the original theatrical release version, framed in the right aspect ratio, with proper matting and the original non-CGI effects, I won't bother with it.
I won't mind buying some kind of crazy 4-disk set which has both versions or something, but I ain't paying a penny if it lacks the original. Lucas may insist that the Special Edition is "the real Star Wars," and as the creator, nobody is in a better position for such a declaration than he is, but the film he gave to the world in 1977 is the Star Wars I want in my DVD library.
Slashdot Mirror
However, you are correct that it was the computer, not Arthur Dent, which grabbed all the ship's computer resourced to figure out how to make tea to Arthur's satisfaction. He had no idea the dispenser would tie up the ship's entire system. He just wanted some tea.
Spending money on advertising an original game is a gamble, unless you know for a fact that it's a really good game... but since game execs have no idea what a good game is, that's not really an option for them.
P.S. I also have no idea what Rez is. The game I played most on the Dreamcast was Soul Calibur (yet another sequel game).
Chinese complains
Koreans ignore him
It's just a game
That's not a haiku.
Proper syllable pattern:
five, seven, and five.
None of these conform
To haiku definition
No seasonal verse
Now the truth comes out
Enjoyment's not the goal, just
Conditioned response
I think they could spend the money elsewhere improving the living conditions for their nationals.
It's noteworthy that nations which are along the equator are much better locations to launch satellites from than Florida. Putting shit into orbit for profit has become a pretty good way to make money over the last 20 years or so.
In other words, a Brazilian space agency could easily show a net profit (if it doesn't already).
Add manned flights, and you could be talking huge numbers. Look at how much money various rich dickheads have been willing to pay the Russians for passenger seats on rocket launches in recent years. Sending boy-band stars and Microsoft executives into space could be a very plump tomato... especially if you let the rest of us pay you to not bring them back.
Kind of makes me want to get a hold of the "Yes, Minister" DVD's, and watch Sir Humphrey Appleby go to work. He could deadpan lines like that like nobody else.
But if I reply to your reply to the comment on the story of the article which comments on comments on the content of the industry, then you might choose to respond to my reply to your reply to the comment on the story of the article which comments on comments on the content of the industry, and the whole affair starts to sound like a really shitty folk song.
He's clearly obsessing over something without any real rational reason. It's sort of like people who complain about the Internet becoming "too corporate." All the academic resources of the Web that were there back in the NCSA days are still out there. All the geek counter-culture is still around, ready to be found. If anything, such things are far more abundant. The fact that Toyota Motors and CNN have web pages doesn't change anything, unless you let it.
Likewise, the fact that there are craploads of licensed games in the console market doesn't take away from the joys of Halo, GTA, DOAX, NBA Street v2, or any of a wide array of other fun and creative games. This guy needs to lighten up. If you don't like the idea of a game based on The Hulk, do what the rest of us do: don't buy it. If the simple fact that it even exists upsets you whether you personally buy it or not, then you need a life... or maybe anti-depressants. Talk to your therapist.
Where everybody is: At home or on their way there.
What's going on: Everybody is eating all the ice cream and steak in their freezers by candle-light. We midwesterners do so hate to let food go to waste.
Come on, for any given block in the Twin Cities, power has gone out at least twice in the last five years, due to trees hitting power lines, weather-related incidents, etc.
One time, when I was working at the PJ Tower (a few years ago when Tad Piper actually owned the brokerage, rather than an out-of-state bank), some idiot took down half of down-town by cutting a main with a front-loader. Was there panic in the skyways? People scrambling for HAM radios? No, of course not. We just took a slightly longer lunch. It kind of sucked walking down stairs from the 11th floor, but at least we weren't on the 40th. Power fails, life goes on. No need to have generators or elaborate contingency plans unless you are running a hospital or something.
Since I don't run a video processing lab, I don't often need to exchange large files between the systems in my house. If you do, I recommend putting up with the minor inconvenience of a wire. It's a much cheaper way to realize high-speed transfers on a LAN.
The most famous Wheaties box covers are usually Olympic stars. For them, getting on the Wheaties box usually caps the end of their Olympic careers, because their event won't be played again at the Olympics until four years later, by which time they probably will no longer be at the peak of performance which allowed them to get the gold.
So, the players that get on covers are players that just had great performances. Those performances will be tough to match by the same player, especially now that all the players who compete against them will no longer be taken by surprise by what they can accomplish.
For every Michael Jordan, who plays at an incredible level for year after year, there are a dozen Penny Hardaways and Vince Carters, who dazzle fans for a while and then reveal themselves to be merely good starting players in a league that's packed with other superstars.
When I wire something for myself, it might not be perfect, but with the help of an experienced electrician, it will be good enough to be safe, legal, reliable, and simple to expand from. When an unscrupulous professional wires something, it will be done just well enough to fool the inspectors.
What a fool I was to frivolously piss away that $200 on an Airport 802.11b hub, which runs at almost 10 times by DSL connection speed, a mere year ago! If only I had waited! Sure, it would mean I have had nothing for all of last year, and nothing for all of this year, and nothing for quite some time to come, but at least I would have had the promise of a much broader pipe to connect to the tiny trickle of data coming through my broadband connection... if and when it arrives, without having frittered away all that money on an industry-standard wireless network that will only be useful for another 10 years or so.
Oh, woe! The crying shame of it all!!!
Actually, it's astonishing how quickly it happens. I just re-read the thread, and it turns out the very first thing you did in this "discussion" was call me a "sucker" for buying an X-Box.
So pardon me while I once again stoop to your level and tell you to go fuck yourself.
If you like to sit in front of a game PC monitor for 40 hours a week (in addition to whatever time you spend staring at a screen for your job), and I would prefer to socialize over a beer with friends, why can't you accept that some people would rather spend their time differently that you do?
For me, the X-Box is a tremendously good value for the money. $300 (which, for the record, I didn't spend myself... several of my friends pitched in and bought me one for my birthday) buys me a game console which provides all the electronic gaming entertainment I really need at the moment. Spending $1000 on a game PC, plus the frequent upgrades needed to keep up with the latest game requirements, just doesn't make sense for some of us. The post I originally replied to was claiming that PC's are the more economical route to take, and I was simply pointing out that this is nonsense: it costs more. A lot more. Sure, you have many more options for ways to fill your time as a PC gamer, but you pay a lot for that privilege.
Those of us who do not completely neglect our jobs, families, and personal hygiene will probably not play 40 hours in a month, let a lone in a week. For us, having the X-Box is nice for when you have company over. DOA3 or Madden Football is a pleasant alternative to darts or poker for me and my drinking buddies.
If you would rather fire up the PC and spend hours and hours playing EQ (or "DivorceQuest" as it is known among our circle of friends), you just go right ahead.
I had a game PC up until recently... It was getting used for NWN about once every two months. I've wiped the drive and turned it into a Linux server, and have no intention of replacing it anytime soon.
$200 a year? My X-Box was $300 to buy over a year ago, and I plan on keeping it, as it is, for at least another year, if not longer, before turning it onto a spare Linux server. That's 3 years of game use with $0 per year spent on hardware upgrades, for a game system that cost far less than your PC.
As for the people saying "what if you want to play a PS2 game or a Nintendo game? You gotta buy more consoles"... That's utter nonsense. Sure, I can't play GTA3 on my X-Box, but you can't play DOA3 on your PC either. PC, PS2, X-Box, GC... no matter which way you go, there's going to be some games you can't play. Of all the current game consoles, the X-Box probably has the smallest selection of games, but it's still far more games than I'm ever actually going to own. I've got 9 games at the moment, with 3 more I'll be buying in the next few months (Knights of the Old Republic, Soul Calibur 2, and one of the many football sims). Those will occupy my free time plenty enough that I have no need to play the whateverthehell the latest Mario game for GC or GTA spin-off that's coming out on other platforms.
Still MMORPG's are not likely to ever catch on for the X-Box, not just because of the lack of keyboard, but for this simple reason: $$ per month for broadband + $$ per month for "X-Box Live" (currently $50 for a year, but who knows what the monthly fee will end up being?) + $$ per month for Varient or whoever is putting the game out... Who the hell is going to pay all that?
My thoughts exactly. They were technically groundbreaking, but the triumph of their importance is somewhat tainted by the fact that they are so fucking racist...
Oh wait. Not so much.
Maybe you should have said they were the "Battleship Potempkin" of Halo movies. You know, because they helped invent the visual language of the genre, but ultimately were communist propaganda...
Dammit! Are there ANY seminal movies of scholastic importance that weren't completely fucked up in some way!?
Oh wait, I got it... The Warthog Jump movies are the "Nosferatu" of Halo movies. There, I knew I could do it.
Back on topic: I was very late jumping on the RvB bandwagon, but I totally worship those guys now... Hilarious stuff.
Jeremiah Johnson: Y'ever get lonesome?
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Fer what?
Jeremiah: Woman?
Bear Claw: Full time night woman!?
Bear Claw: I never could find no tracks on a woman's heart. I packed me a squaw for ten year, Pilgrim. Cheyenne, she were, and the meanest bitch that ever balled for beads. I lodge-poled her at Deadwood Creek, and traded her for a Hawken gun. But don't get me wrong; I loves the womens, I surely do. But I swear, a woman's breast is the hardest rock that the Almighty ever made on this earth, and I can find no sign on it.
Perhaps I should amend my previous post to speculate that I might someday use my X-Box as a redundant web-server, or perhaps, with a little tweaking, a digital video media server.
Anyway, my point was, modding it is not terribly important to me right now, when I'm just playing DOA3 and HALO on it. (Okay, and DOAX too... I confess.) The only reason I would mod it is if I wanted to use it as a $200 Linux box.
Unless your X-Box is modded with one of those "switchable" chips, modding your X-Box excluded you from X-Box Live, so yea, there are a lot of X-Box users out there with no mod chip.
As somebody who doesn't give a crap about X-Box Live, I simply have not gotten around to modding mine. I might do so eventually, if I tire of the games and want to use it as a Linux firewall box or something, but otherwise I have no real need to go through the hassle of modding mine at the moment.
A cross-licensed Gilmore Girls product with no coffee? Don't be absurd. That would be as stupid as a Star Wars game with no space ships.
Still, when it finally does arrive, if it does not have the original theatrical release version, framed in the right aspect ratio, with proper matting and the original non-CGI effects, I won't bother with it.
I won't mind buying some kind of crazy 4-disk set which has both versions or something, but I ain't paying a penny if it lacks the original. Lucas may insist that the Special Edition is "the real Star Wars," and as the creator, nobody is in a better position for such a declaration than he is, but the film he gave to the world in 1977 is the Star Wars I want in my DVD library.
I currently own zero, a state in which I shall remain until Lucas puts out the original theatrical versions on DVD.
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in my "Han shot first" zealotry.