Volume 3: My days in a college fraternity Chapter 89 Don't rush to consider social responsibility
"Hey, Tommy, there are four important features you marked that cannot be implemented on SSD-2 for the time being. Everyone needs to finish their own homework. It will probably take two or three weeks before they can spare time to help you. But this software has already received unanimous praise from the idiots in the club. Automatic segmentation, text search, footer annotation and other minor innovations have made the originally indispensable WordStar become shit in their mouths. And congratulations..." Eric walked into Tommy and Jason's dormitory while talking loudly, and then saw Jason sitting in front of the computer busy dealing with two girls:
"No one told me that you two are now living in a co-ed dormitory."
"Ladies, I promise to solve all the troubles you encounter tonight, even if I don't sleep. Come one by one, I can handle it. First lady, what is your problem?" Jason asked the first girl without bothering to greet Eric.
The girl pushed her glasses and said, "For the cursor control keys, I hope it can be a combination of letter keys and the Ctrl key. This software uses the 8, 2, 4, 6 four-key diamond combination to control the cursor up, down, left, and right. It makes users who have become dependent on WordStar and have formed muscle memory very uncomfortable. I always subconsciously follow the key positions I memorized before, so I hope it can be changed to the same shortcut keys as WordStar."
"The purpose of developing this software is to make cursor control no longer as complicated as WordStar, where you need to remember sixteen key combinations to move the cursor. To move the cursor using WordStar, you need to first press Ctrl+Q to enter the cursor movement state, and then press Ctrl+other messy keys to complete it, right? Now it's very simple. You only need to remember these four numbers, plus Ctrl. No pre-commands are required, and the operation is instant." Jason exhaled, flipped through the notebook left by Tommy, and introduced to the girl:
"We are pushing technology forward, but you, ma'am, are suggesting we go backwards, so I'm sorry, but we won't listen to your valuable advice. Ma'am, what's your question?"
The second girl gave another feedback. She found the document function of SSD-2 very convenient when writing. The only drawback was that she needed to re-record some operation methods. So she suggested adding a call command to directly display a few simple format codes and key combinations that are different from WordStar on the screen. This would make it convenient to write without having to read the operation guide distributed by Tommy. She could just call up the command, take a look at it, and continue working. At the same time, it would not increase the size of the software.
"OK, thank you for your valuable suggestions. May I ask your name? Once we have completed the update, we will send you the latest beta version as soon as possible." Jason carefully wrote down the other party's opinions, and then imitated Tommy's previous scumbag look and said to the girl.
"Jessica Pearce, social science major," the girl said, and she and her companions left the E-66 dormitory together.
After Jason recorded the other person's name, he turned on the computer and operated it according to the girl's instructions. Then he looked at Eric and said, "Boss, do you want to visit me?"
After the girls left, Eric closed the door, took out a cigarette, lit it, and asked Jason, "Where's that Tommy guy? I thought this thing was only doing small tests inside the SSD."
"I don't know. Maybe he went to some other dormitory to help people install software. Apart from classes, part-time jobs, and homework, he spent the rest of his time trying to get his classmates to try out the SSD-2 and give him feedback. What do you want to congratulate him for? He is finally going to design the party this week. I suggest not to do that because he will definitely be perfunctory." Jason stood up and took out two bottles of Coke from the refrigerator and handed one to Eric. He chattered on as if he had met someone he could complain to:
"Ever since that guy was busy with software, there haven't been any alcoholic beverages in the refrigerator for a long time. If anyone in this Stanford freshman class can get the 3S title when he graduates, it must be Tommy, the idiot. It's too stressful to be roommates with such a person. It's easy to feel guilty about wasting time when you see him working hard while you're lazy. Let's put it this way, self-studying computer-related courses has left me with no time to read magazines for two weeks. If I hadn't been able to go back to SSD every weekend to attend parties and chat with girls, I would have jumped off the roof long ago."
Eric took the Coke and said, "No, I want to congratulate him. The night before last, Charles and I went out for a drink with a few SSD graduates who started working in Silicon Valley software companies. We talked about Tommy and you rookies. I heard that the software Tommy made is very practical. An alumnus wanted to meet Tommy to see if it is possible to trick his boss into buying it so that Tommy can make a fortune. Charles and I are very happy. This means that Tommy can make at least hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then we will make him bleed a lot to celebrate. However, this matter is ultimately up to Tommy to make his own decision, so I came to meet him."
"What did I just say?" After hearing Eric's purpose, Jason was stunned for a moment, then asked Eric.
Eric shook his head slightly. "You said being roommates with Tommy was too stressful and you were ready to jump off the rooftop."
"That guy will soon have hundreds of thousands of dollars. As his roommate, my biggest pressure now is how to spend that money for him!" Jason stared at Eric and asked loudly, "But are you sure that there are idiots willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a plagiarized software? Hundreds of thousands of dollars?"
"This kind of thing is very common. Last month, there was an idiot next door at DTS who developed a small software that can add text to pictures and sold it for 200,000. It took less than two weeks from development to sale. The original intention of that guy to develop that software was just to write "You are a bitch" on the photo of his cheating girlfriend and then post it all over the school. If he wrote it by hand, he was worried that the police would find him through handwriting comparison, so he chose to print it with computer fonts so that the police would have no trace." Eric said to the excited Jason:
"Every time we met him at the bar, we could hear him congratulating himself on the fact that his ex-girlfriend was a slut who made him $200,000 and helped him find a prettier girlfriend."
After listening to this, Jason said enviously: "I'm happy for him."
…
"Tommy!" Eric stared at Tommy Hawke, who was sitting in front of the computer looking through various feedback information, and said angrily:
"You can fucking ask the other party if they want to invest instead of buying the copyright, but you can't... you can't tell him that your next idea is to put the advertisement on the back cover of "The Joy Seeker", "Children and Parents", and "Metropolitan"! Who uses a computer will buy this kind of garbage magazine! I won't be angry if you put it in the fucking "Playboy". At least its interview is very in-depth, "The Joy Seeker"! Fuck! You treat the SSD-2 you made as a whore! This is made by everyone working hard for you, and you don't respect it! You don't respect everyone, and you don't respect the brothers who helped us after graduation! You can refuse and say that you don't plan to sell it now. I will understand and support you, but you can't treat me like an idiot!"
Jason carefully observed the situation, and considerately piled baseball bats, boxing gloves and other things near the two men for their convenience. After he finished all this, he sat back on his bed with a bag of potato chips, waiting for the two sides to officially start fighting.
Eric is recognized as a good guy by the rookies and rarely loses his temper. The reason for his anger is that when he happily introduced to Tommy an SSD graduate who wanted to learn about Tommy's software and tried to trick the boss into buying it so that Tommy could make a fortune, Tommy hoped that the other party could trick the boss into investing. Eric asked Tommy about his ideas, and Tommy actually told him to put the ads in those useless magazines. This was the reason for Eric's anger. He felt that Tommy had been joking around and didn't respect him at all and didn't believe what he said.
"The Pleasure Seekers" is the most popular sex trade magazine in California. Its largest customer groups are prostitutes and call girls. Prostitutes buy the magazine to learn about the market and make comparisons. Call girls who are preparing to enter the sex industry look for recruitment information from entertainment companies in the magazine, or simply buy advertising space themselves to post recruitment ads.
The last two are old-fashioned cheap family women's magazines in the United States. Since the Great Depression, they have been the main source of news and life skills for middle and lower class women. They tell women what foods are cheap but filling so that their children will not go hungry, what part-time jobs are suitable for them to earn some pocket money, how to take care of multiple children, how to buy cheap clothes, how housewives can save money, etc. As for the advertisements, they are all kinds of discounted cheap goods.
But now, Tommy Hawke told him that he was going to put software advertisements in these magazines. Wasn't this a joke?
Tommy stood up, took out a cigarette and handed it to Eric, and said in a soft voice: "Just listen to me, Eric? I can give you a reasonable explanation."
"That's better ." After Eric finished cursing, he took the cigarette handed to him by Tommy, lit it, sat in Tommy's chair, and prepared to listen to Tommy's explanation.
Tommy leaned against the end of the bed and looked at Eric. "First of all, I don't want to sell the copyright just to make a quick buck. In other words, even if I want to sell it, I have to go through some trouble first. I can't just sell it for a few hundred thousand and then multiply it several or dozens of times. Maybe I will consider it. If we want to sell it at a high price, we need data. When those people want to buy it, they will ask you about the sales volume and revenue of the software. According to the market situation in Silicon Valley this year, as long as 10,000 copies of this software are sold, we can get a purchase price of at least 3.5 million. How to choose between a few hundred thousand and 1.5 million? Of course, the latter."
"Unless you drop out of school to start a company now, you won't have time to sell it." Eric exhaled a puff of smoke and said to Tommy, "So, you're going to drop out of school?"
Tommy lit a cigarette in his mouth, took a deep puff, and then said to Eric:
"No, the current plan is to ask classmates to test it and reduce the difficulty of operation to the lowest level. At the same time, I asked Holly Keener from the Golden Hair Society, the blonde girl from the Freshman Night. She is studying social engineering and works part-time at the Entrepreneurship Education and Research Center in the School of Engineering. She is helping me take the software there so that the teachers and guest lecturers there can help try it out. If the feedback is good and they are interested in supporting this project, I can probably get 50,000 yuan in entrepreneurial support. Then I can find active feminist charitable organizations in Stanford University. The Golden Hair Society is very familiar with those organizations. I have asked Renee to help me understand the situation. If possible, we can cooperate with them to open a charitable training company. I will use the entrepreneurial fund to purchase a batch of the cheapest computers as shares, and they will invest in management. In this way, the daily management of the company will be in charge of the students of the charitable organizations in turn. As a co-founder, I don't need to waste too much time on it. Anyway, there is nothing to manage, so I can continue to study normally."
"The training company's ostensible purpose is to encourage women to leave their homes and seek equal job opportunities, but the deeper purpose is to pay less tax. There is no charge for the training, but the ladies need to buy the software, which is cheap, 49.99, almost one-tenth of WordStar. The money earned by the lowest-level call girls from taking one customer is enough to afford it. And I plan to purchase 50 of the cheapest compatible computers, selling them for 600 yuan, which means 30,000 yuan of capital to support the training program. This means that we can make a profit if we sell 1,000 copies. After the training, the charity can also recommend jobs to those women. Everyone benefits. I get some money, the charity gets reputation, the women get jobs, and the software gets sales."
"You use a group of low-level women to attack today's white-collar clerks? Make those clerical jobs as cheap as fast food restaurant waiters? When the capitalists see that even prostitutes know how to operate computers, those white-collar clerks' weekly salary of nearly three hundred dollars will quickly become less than two hundred dollars." Eric said.
"It's hard to get investment from smart people, Eric, but it's easy to make money from the poor. The poorer they are, the more eager they are to find opportunities to change their fate. If they want to make money, they need to steal the jobs of white-collar workers. I'm just helping the proletarian ladies by providing them with weapons so that they have the confidence to steal the money of the bourgeoisie and lower the price by the way." Tommy nodded and did not deny this:
"Those clerks who want to maintain their elite status had better learn some new skills. California may not have 50,000 billionaires, but there are definitely several times more housewives or call girls. With 50 bucks, they can have a chance to find a decent job, not be scolded by their husbands as trash, and not have to rely on selling their bodies. Some people are willing to do that. Not all poor people are willing to sink forever."
Eric thought for a moment, and suddenly a question occurred to him: "What if those women can't find a job? I mean, although it sounds like white-collar jobs will quickly become worthless, what if they can't find a job?"
Tommy said as a matter of course: "Of course I will go back to being a housewife or a call girl. Before becoming a capitalist or a politician, don't rush to consider social responsibility, Eric. What we want is sales figures that will allow us to sell this thing at a high price or attract large investments, not really helping California women solve employment problems."
