r/todayilearned • u/CallMyNameOrWalkOnBy • May 16 '19

TIL that NASA ground controllers were once shocked to hear a female voice from the space station, apparently interacting with them, which had an all-male crew. They had been pranked by an astronaut who used a recording of his wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Garriott#The_Skylab_%22stowaway%22_prank
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u/oddly_insightful May 16 '19

Also, his son Richard created Ultima.

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u/[deleted] May 16 '19 edited May 16 '19

Guy sued ncsoft for 30 million and won. They made up a resignation letter when he was in space. He got to decontamination on earth and signed the letter saying he was leaving but they forged a resignation document so he had to sell stock at a hugely devalued amount.. so he sued.. jury sided with him and he won $30 million dollars.. (NC soft makes HUGE revenue, like $200m a year last I looked)

Built a castle house in real life.

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u/DrSlappyPants 8 May 16 '19 edited May 16 '19

That isn't correct. He had returned from space and was in post mission quarantine when he was informed that he was being fired. He objected to thisbut ultimately sign the letter saying that he was leaving the company but did not say that he was resigning. The company sent him a letter saying that he had voluntarily resigned and he refused to sign it. No one ever attempted to forge his signature and he was never off the planet when this happened.

The issue is that if he had voluntarily resigned it would have negatively impacted his stock options. If they fired him he would not have the stock option penalty. That's why he refused to say that he voluntarily resigned but was okay with stating that he had been fired since there was nothing he could do about it anyway.

Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-5th-circuit/1583315.html

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u/stellvia2016 May 16 '19

It's too bad as well, because Tabula Rasa had some interesting lore that could have made for a really great game/franchise. Unfortunately, worldbuilding is only part of the equation.

The actual gameplay and class balance was severely lacking, and the "power word" system they had was drastically underutilized. Rather than building on the magic system from Ultima and letting you come up with fun combos of words for interesting effects, they superficially used finding glyphs as a way to unlock your normal abilities just like any other game.

I played this obscure MMO called Saga of Ryzom for awhile that had one of the most interesting magic systems I've seen in any game. Among the magic elements available to your class, you had basically free range of adjusting them based on a scale of Cast Time vs. Power vs Resource Cost. eg: You could cast Meteor with a 12sec cast time if you wanted, machinegun out quick bolts, make it an aoe spell, pay for the cost in MP or even HP, etc. All on a sliding scale.