23rd April 2007, 2:37 PM
Okay so I was basically reading in on some conversation elsewhere on the high interseas (gathering a crew at the pub for a voyage you see) when they are talking about some bizarre arcade custom I never experienced in all the time I've been to arcades.
The idea is simple yet makes no sense. Apparently amongst this tribe, instead of doing something barbaric like "waiting in a line", they would put up a quarter on the machine to indicate they had "next".
How did this work exactly? How COULD it work? Are you telling me they actually would trust that stranger to not just assume it was a gift and TAKE the thing for when they hit a game over? Further, since when are MASS PRODUCED LEGAL TENDER a method of personal identification? Here's how it plays out in my mind.
Someone: I got next, I put that coin up there.
Someone else: No, that's my coin, you are a liar.
First person: No, you are the liar, and I can prove it because.... oh fantastic...
The idea is simple yet makes no sense. Apparently amongst this tribe, instead of doing something barbaric like "waiting in a line", they would put up a quarter on the machine to indicate they had "next".
How did this work exactly? How COULD it work? Are you telling me they actually would trust that stranger to not just assume it was a gift and TAKE the thing for when they hit a game over? Further, since when are MASS PRODUCED LEGAL TENDER a method of personal identification? Here's how it plays out in my mind.
Someone: I got next, I put that coin up there.
Someone else: No, that's my coin, you are a liar.
First person: No, you are the liar, and I can prove it because.... oh fantastic...
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)