h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Great article,I have just one point to make.

Isn't this article effectivley advertising one company's product?

Hi LooseCannon,

We've got quite a few entries that are, in effect, product reviews. Check out http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A481024 for easyEverything on Tottenham Court Road; http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A533404 for our entry on Starbucks (coming up next week). As well as these we've got loads of entries on computer games, books and videos...

It's hard to call it advertising where there's no reason (or easy method) of buying the product. You can buy a drive to read the disks, but not one to write to them. And since nobody can buy drives to write to the disks, there are presumably no disks to read, and therefore no reason to buy a reader.

Really, we're talking about a possible future technology. For it to catch on, it will have to become affordable, an industry standard, easy to install and use, and so on. A product in development tends not to have these qualities.

Unfortuanately, since most things on earth are commercially available in one form or another, and the Guide is about earth, the entire guide could be interpreted as advertizing in one way or another.

Yeah, sure! This technology does sound nice, though! I would like it if it became quite widely available! But I still have to figure out DVD - I have one in my computer but I never ever use it!

Another reason this isn't advertising is that when you advertise something you usually brag about all of the technical aspects of it. Had they been advertising, for instance, it would probably have said 1024 instead of "just over a thousand." (1024 is 2^10, you know how computers love the number 2.) >:^B (horizontal key shift 1 to the right)