Volume 4: White Devil Chapter 296: A Small Favor
After Tommy contacted Susan and asked her to make an appointment with her mentor Rice, he finished his morning run, washed up, and went to WinStar in Silicon Valley with Jason to experience the latest AmigaOS on the computer in the conference room. Jason, Susie, and the founder of AmigaOS, Jay Minor, who was as big as a brown bear, sat opposite Tommy, each with a Compaq laptop open in front of them.
This thing is equipped with an Intel 386 chip, a display resolution of up to 640×480, 4MB of memory, a 60M hard drive, and a 2.5-inch floppy disk drive. If the floppy drive is removed, the hard drive can be upgraded to 120MB. It supports battery power. After closing the screen, its thickness is comparable to a briefcase filled with documents.
This is Compaq's flagship laptop that was launched last year. The lowest configuration is priced at US$5,399. If it is upgraded to the top configuration and equipped with accessories such as a docking station and a backup battery, the price will quickly soar to US$11,999.
Only real business people who need to travel frequently and handle work on the plane are willing to buy this kind of thing. When ordinary people hear that a docking station costs as much as US$999, they think that this thing is just like those luxury yachts and private jets, and there is no chance that they will have close contact with it.
"The operation can be even simpler." Tommy turned his eyes away from the screen and looked at the three people: "What is the selling point of AmigaOS? It's its name, which is as considerate as the user's girlfriend. The main selling point of Microsoft Windows 2.0 now is that it is fully functional, and tries to fill their systems with as many software as possible that users had to pay for before, such as drawing software, document software, and even programming software. A white-collar worker who works on a computer only needs to buy a set of Windows and install it on his computer, and then he doesn't need to pay for other software. He can complete a lot of work completely with the existing software in the computer. What distinguishes us from Windows is that we give users considerate idiot-level operation. Microsoft's user group is those who know how to operate a computer, and our user positioning is very simple, that is, the real idiot group in the world, who knows nothing about computer systems, just like those idiots who bought a TV and needed the salesperson to help them search for TV station signals. Facts have proved that once these groups develop a habit of using it, unless the brand owner kills himself, they will basically not change their habits and accept new things."
Listening to Tommy talking about the features of Windows and AmigaOS, several people kept nodding their heads. As for Apple's operating system System 6, it was completely ignored by those present and was not even mentioned.
The main reason for such a low presence is that after Jobs left, various problems arose in Apple's business strategy layout. The System 6 operating system is as bad as shit. It claims to have the world's best sense of art and color. In fact, it is indeed colorful, but there is nothing else to show for it except the color. It wants everything, but sets restrictions on everything, and there are also many idiotic designs that can be called anti-human.
For example, in Windows, AmigaOS or other niche operating systems, there is a Recycle Bin or Trash Can function. The names are slightly different, but the working principle is the same, which is to throw useless files into it, and a restore function is added thoughtfully. If users delete some files to the trash can but soon regret it, they can use the restore function to pick the files back from it, just like treating garbage in the trash can in real life.
However, the operation of Apple's System 6 system is that after the user deletes the file and throws it into the trash can, as long as the user closes the folder where the deleted file was originally located and returns to the desktop, the trash can will be automatically emptied. Without professional personnel to recover the data, it is completely impossible to recover it. The data restoration service charges at Apple computer sales stores are extremely expensive and are charged according to the size of the file.
With this stupid design alone, Apple directly increased Microsoft's market share by eight percentage points.
Bill Gates always smiles from ear to ear when talking about market share in public, and he also does not forget to praise the Apple system as being excellent.
In an interview, Jobs said he had never considered returning to Apple, and the development of System 6 had nothing to do with him. He had always been focused on launching his new company's NEXT computer and operating system.
Only those with obsessive-compulsive disorder who love colors would pay for it, because it allows users to assign colors to each icon, which is the prototype of a customized desktop. Apart from that, it has no highlights. It was precisely because of the two consecutive design failures on the operating system that allowed Windows to cannibalize Apple's computer market in the years since Jobs left. Although it still maintains a certain market share due to the reputation and user habits established when Jobs was in office, it has already opened up a considerable gap with Windows.
"Tommy, I have a question. Jason and I have also discussed this question. Suppose I am an ordinary person with no computer knowledge at all. I bought a computer with the AmigaOS system. It does look simpler and easier to use than other systems, but there are no exciting games in it. You have always refused us to add more fun built-in games on the grounds of bloating. So, why should I choose to turn it on when I get home from get off work instead of sitting in front of the TV in the living room with a bottle of beer and watching a movie? What can this computer bring me?" Jay Miner looked at Tommy and asked seriously.
In fact, this issue has been discussed many times internally. As the developer of AmigaOS, Jay Minor has always insisted on his own opinion, that is, if you want to make AmigaOS enter ordinary families, you must consider adding sufficiently attractive playability.
But Tommy always refused to let them build in more fun mini-games.
Tommy looked at Jay and said with certainty, "Give him the world."
Seeing Jay didn't react, Tommy pointed at the computer screen:
"The Amiga in front of you has a browser application developed by the World Wide Web Information Resource Retrieval Office of the Stanford University Linear Accelerator Center installed on it. It's codenamed Midas, which means Monopoly. It doesn't mean you'll become a millionaire in the real world by opening this application. Instead, opening this application means you'll become a millionaire in the spiritual world. Now, you can try to open it."
"I've used this thing before, and its hypertext link search and lookup function is pretty good, but I don't think ordinary people would be interested in these academic..." Although Jason took a leave of absence, he was still a student at Stanford University. He was the first to try out the new achievements made by several institutions under Stanford University involving computer software and hardware and the Internet.
At this time, he opened the web browser icon with familiarity, and said with certainty that ordinary people would not use this thing to read various university information and documents.
He was not unfamiliar with this application. This software was produced by Stanford University. When it was opened, the window page would list the link addresses of various universities connected to the Stanford University network, allowing people to easily click to reach the relevant pages of the university network they wanted to visit. They no longer needed to deliberately remember the IP addresses or network domain names of those universities as before.
But the window page that popped up now was completely different from the interface he had used to search for information when he was developing it. This browser was set up with a new loading page. There were no links to various universities, but instead various classified network addresses, like a text version of a tourist map, telling users where to go if you like reading novels, watching the news, discussing games, discussing sports, celebrity gossip, wanting to know the TV program schedule, or if you like to donate money. Jason even saw a category in the corner called Opposite Sex | Dating, and the first website was called Pimp... Can you make friends of the opposite sex on Pimp?
Jason casually clicked on the address of a game category, and the page jumped to a simple message discussion board, which looked like a page program used by some universities to discuss a certain issue. There were already many discussions about well-known games in it.
"That's what I mean. See the world. I asked Susie to help me do a survey on her telephone BBSs, and then sorted out 24 classified sites of public interest. The browser application belongs to Stanford, but the 24 websites do not belong to Stanford. They are also the world's first batch of public websites on the commercial Internet. According to statistics from the Internet Association for Assigned Numbers, including Europe, there are only more than 50 websites on the entire earth. Except for our 24, the rest are all scientific research institutions or academic organizations. These websites are not those telephone BBSs that are very regional and require you to remember various numbers and queue up every time to log in. As long as your country has an Internet node connected to the network, as long as you open this browser, you can enter these website forums and leave messages and chat with people around the world who have the same interests as you."
Jason looked carefully at the links to the twenty-four websites. At this moment, in his eyes, these hypertext links were twenty-four future well-known Internet brands. As long as good user habits were cultivated, just like people were always used to shopping at Walmart, they would also be used to only going to the websites they provided to obtain the information they wanted on the Internet.
"You're not the only one who owns these websites, right?" Jason looked at Tommy with some concern.
Although Tommy has amended the supplementary clauses of the Communications Act, if his behavior is too ugly, antitrust authorities will come knocking on his door sooner or later.
"I myself don't know who these websites belong to. Maybe they belong to the Indian chief, some ONE or SDD alumni, or even my maid. In short, I am sure they don't belong to me. I just have the right to decide what image they should appear in front of everyone." Tommy said to Jason.
Seeing Jason stopped talking, Tommy continued:
"The second built-in software I insist on is MCI-Mail, which you should be very familiar with. It is a paid email software. What I mean is that as long as users buy our AmigaOS, they can get a free mailbox for MCI-Mail for one year, and the delivery fee of 20 emails will be waived."
The three major telecommunications providers in the United States have all launched paid email services. The annual fee for an email box is approximately thirty-five to fifty dollars, and the cost of an email is charged by character, fifty cents for every five hundred characters. The price of email sounds expensive, but compared to the cost of mailing a physical letter, it is a steal.
In America, the mailing cost of a physical letter is about $2. You don't have to worry about the delivery speed, it is definitely slow enough. If you write a letter and ask the postman to deliver it to your neighbor in the same village, it may take him a week.
If you can't stand the normal speed, you can choose expedited service. For example, if you want to write a love letter in New York and send it to your lover in Los Angeles, and you want your lover to receive it the next day, the fee will jump directly to US$9.
A year's subscription fee to an email account is actually just the price of four expedited physical letters.
"In order to cooperate with their interactions on various classified forum websites, they will probably need to have an online email address to keep in touch. So even though the annual fee is waived, normally the email delivery fee will increase significantly because if they want to chat privately, they either have to use expensive long-distance calls or can only choose a 50-cent, 500-character email," Tommy said.
Jay Minor opened the software interface of MCI-Mail and then asked his own question: "Why don't we develop our own communication software based on the Stanford University Supercomputer Applications Center and embed it into the system? This software is not difficult. It was developed by Professor Winton and his Stanford students. We just need to develop another similar one."
"Software development is not difficult. What is difficult is that we cannot offend MCI for the time being. If we launch a substitute in the current network environment, MCI will only become another competitor of ours." Tommy explained to Jay Miner why he did not build his own email system to make money:
"We can only consider launching similar instant messaging software after the Internet is truly perfected. Otherwise, MCI can just arrange some small tricks to cause trouble for Miss Amiga. But don't worry, we have donated to the relevant development work at Stanford University. As long as the time is right, I promise we will be the first..."
"Tommy, there's a call for you." While Tommy was still talking to Jay, Sophia knocked on the door of the conference room twice and whispered to Tommy.
Tommy stood up and walked out the door. As he walked, he said to Susie, who had been silent the whole time, "Susie, think about how you can promote our Miss Amiga."
Walking out of the conference room, Tommy looked at Sophia: "Is it Susan's call?"
"No, it's Dennis." Sophia shook her head and gave a name that surprised Tommy.
Hearing that it was Dennis, Tommy immediately went back to the meeting room: "I'm not interested in chatting with him. Ask him to pick a good day to call again, or write something in a greeting card and send it to me."
"He said he has an extremely urgent issue to discuss with you. It's more difficult for him to get through to you from his country than it was for Germany to invade the Soviet Union." Sophia covered the receiver of the mobile phone and truthfully conveyed what Dennis told her.
Tommy sighed, "Well, a very urgent question. When he said this, I think he was basically asking me, hey, Tommy, do you know how to get an American call girl to come to my house on the other side of the world?"
As he spoke, he took the phone from Sophia's hand: "This is Tommy, Dennis, tell me about the time you took up my precious time."
"Dude, we're rich. We now have a big business worth 5 million dollars. As long as you agree to split the money between us equally, I will share it with you." Dennis said excitedly on the other end of the phone.
Tommy responded weakly: "I'm not interested in this kind of small business."
"You mean all five million belongs to me? I knew you were my most reliable brother, so I can give Glenn a bigger share. I was originally planning to give him only one hundred thousand. It's like this, I'm still in Lebanon, but something happened recently. I was transferred to the southern region to distribute leaflets and broadcast radio, calling on the Lebanese to stand up bravely and help us foreigners fight their compatriots, block bullets for us, collect intelligence. We will give them money, food, freedom, etc. Of course, in reality, except for some terrible individual rations and verbal promises, we will not give them anything. If there are any benefits, we have to digest them internally, you know..." Dennis chattered incessantly.
Tommy immediately interrupted his long speech: "Get to the point, Dennis."
"It's like this. The great United States of America has a policy of just assistance that began in 1984. If someone provides valuable intelligence or very precious help, the U.S. State Department will give him a large cash reward. I am responsible for promoting this policy to the Lebanese people with Glenn in the south and encouraging them to provide intelligence. It sounds stupid, right? But I didn't expect that there would be a Lebanese fool willing to stand up and sell out his compatriots for money." Dennis quickened his speech and introduced the situation on his side as clearly as possible:
"Glenn is very familiar with him. They had dealt with each other in Beirut before. The other party trusted Glenn very much and told Glenn that he knew the location where a group of terrorists were holding hostages. Because he was responsible for delivering various supplies to the terrorists in that hideout, he told Glenn the names of the nine hostages held there. I originally thought that the guy was making it up, but Glenn carefully checked the rescue list of the Justice Assistance Policy in Lebanon and found that among the nine names mentioned by the guy, five of them matched the list, three Americans and two Israelis. The Justice Assistance Policy clearly states that if you can help the U.S. federal government rescue the people on the list, each person will be rewarded with one million. Now there are five, so I said we are going to make five million, buddy!"
"Then go and earn the money. Why are you calling me?" Tommy asked suspiciously, "You only call me when you want to spend money these years."
"Because America fucking discriminates against military personnel, it stipulates that American soldiers cannot earn these bonuses. In other words, if I tell the federal government this information myself, the government will not give me a dime. They will tell me that this is my obligation, but if it is an ordinary citizen, they can get a reward. Pam is also a soldier, and he cannot participate. The most suitable person can only be you, so I hope you can call the State Department or the Pentagon to provide information, cooperate with the informant to prove the whereabouts of the hostages, and then collect the bonuses." Dennis said:
"That's it. We only need one phone call to ..."
"I'll think about it." Tommy hung up the phone and threw it to Sophia. "Five million, do you want to make money? It's better to believe that SSD is a student organization that supports racial equality than to believe his lies."
As soon as Sophia picked up the phone, it rang again. Tommy stroked his forehead and said, "If I meet Charles someday, I will ask his father-in-law to help Dennis, that bastard, choose a strong boss. I will assign someone to keep an eye on Dennis 24 hours a day, and if he dares to leave his post without permission, I will shoot him..."
"It's not Dennis, it's Susan." Sophia said to Tommy after she answered the phone.
Tommy picked up the phone. "Susan, did you enjoy chatting with your professor? What is she busy with... the hostage scandal? Someone mocked the president in the newspaper that the former CIA director couldn't even find any information about the hostages? What hostages?... Are you kidding? Shit~... I'll hang up first and talk to you later."
Tommy simply listened to Susan's words and immediately hung up the phone. He then called Dennis back. After Dennis answered the phone, he asked, "Why do you need to think about this for so long? You..."
"Dennis, you are the holy light in my life. Please help me check if there is a Ricky Higgins among the nine hostages your informant mentioned, working in the UN peacekeeping force." Tommy asked immediately without waiting for Dennis to complain.
Dennis flipped through the files and said, "Yes, the Justice Assistance registration information here shows that this guy is from Kentucky and is a scumbag from the Marine Corps."
"Are you sure?" Tommy's breathing subconsciously stopped for a moment when he heard Dennis say that.
Dennis said with certainty: "It's true. This guy's price is one million. It means that as long as you rescue this person, America will reward you one million."
"I mean, is this person really in the hiding place that your lousy informant mentioned? He's not on the wanted list." Tommy said to Dennis unhappily, "Is this person among the real hostages?"
"Informant? Glenn! Is your shitty informant reliable? Reliable? You helped him smuggle his wife and child to Turkey? Helped him smuggle them to Turkey? Sorry, I heard you wrongly. I didn't expect you to be so kind. But I'm also curious. You've seen so many histories of ancestors being trafficked. Have you ever thought of using the same method to take revenge on the world?" Dennis talked to Glenn on the phone, and then said to Tommy:
"Glenn said it was very reliable. He helped that guy send a wife and two children to Türkiye to live a stable life."
"Continue to get more accurate information from the informant. Wait for my call. Don't be impulsive. Don't worry. Even if the U.S. federal government breaks its promise and doesn't give you the bonus, I will still make it up to you." Tommy hung up the phone and called Susan again:
"Tell your teacher that her boss, the former CIA director, no longer has to worry about being laughed at in the newspapers and not being able to find a living person. I can help her with a small favor."
