wild 1995

Chapter 26 Getting to know
"Di Ye, Cfido only supports English IDs, what kind of screen name do you want?"

Di Ye stood behind Ma Huaquan, looked at the crude registration page on the computer screen, and said, "Just use my name in pinyin, and call it Di Ye."

"The pinyin of your name is very individual. It's all two letters, making it difficult to tell which one is the surname."

"That's right. Let's change it to LRF. The three letters are all capitalized. Little Red Flower, the abbreviation of Little Red Flower."

Ma Huaquan turned his head to look at Di Ye, and joked: "Your height and shape don't match with Xiaohonghua. Could it be that you want to pretend to be a girl to catch a winner?"

Di Ye smiled and said, "To commemorate the good time when I took the little red flower in the kindergarten."

Ma Huaquan reluctantly accepted this reason, and while typing to help him register, he asked, "Did you not go to Cfido in Yuncheng?"

Di Ye spread his hands and explained: "I don't have a landline at home yet, so I can't access it, but I just made a fortune recently, and I plan to open a Cfido site at home after the Spring Festival."

Feeling a sense of confidant, MCA nodded and said, "I also plan to set up a website at home after the Spring Festival. We can keep in touch through Cfido then."

The two were chatting, when a middle-aged woman opened the door of the study with a fruit plate, and greeted with a smile: "Xiao Ye, come and eat some fruit."

"Thank you, Aunt Huang."

In the afternoon, Di Ye used the way of making headlines to create an avant-garde and maverick personal image, and then used hackers, DY-ZIP, and several plagiarized open source software articles as topics, successfully breaking the psychological defense of Ma Huaquan, thinking that he is a computer expert worth making friends with. After dinner, he brought Di Ye to his home to access Cfido.com.

Cfido is not the Internet, but an original BBS system connected by telephone lines. It was developed by American Tom Jennings in 1984 and is called FidoNet. In 1991, Taiwanese Luo Yi set up a Chinese website in the capital.

At the beginning of 1995, there were less than 10 Cfido sites in the country, with about 100 active users, but the quality was very high. They were either people who had already achieved fame in the computer industry, such as Qiu Bojun, or people who would become all-powerful in the future, such as Ding Lei, Lei Jun, and Ma Huaquan.

After Ma Huaquan helped Di Ye register the account, he pointed to the floppy disk on the computer desk and said, "Which of your articles do you plan to publish first?"

Di Ye picked up a few floppy disks, looked at the labels, selected one, and said, "Let's post this first, "Definition of Open Source Software and Related Agreements".

When eating at Shangri-La in the evening, Mahua listened to Di Ye introduce the content of several articles he wrote, but he hadn’t read the text. After opening it now, he found that it was in both Chinese and English. He was a little surprised and asked, “You wrote all these yourself?”

"Yeah, my girlfriend is an English major."

"That's no wonder."

Ma Huaquan didn't notice the ambiguity in Di Ye's words. After reading it for a while, he found that the article was very long, so he said: "Cfido uploads and downloads data very slowly. Too long articles are inconvenient to read. Why don't you make them into serials. I will help you post a part every day, so that it will attract more attention."

"Alright, let me tell you about the serialization order of these articles..."

Since Di Ye decided to take the postgraduate entrance examination, he quickly planned a future route, which is to become a top student, and he is a legendary super student. To achieve such an achievement, he must have a distinctive banner, so as to attract many followers and push him to the altar.

"Open source" is the banner chosen by Di Ye.

Open source has been deeply rooted in the hearts of the people in the 21st century, and has had a great impact on the development of computer software and hardware. It can be said to be mighty and unstoppable. However, this concept only existed after 1997 and had not yet appeared in 1995. Therefore, Dino intends to take the lead and occupy the theoretical commanding heights.

At this time, Ma Huaquan was just an ordinary programmer, ignorant of the importance of this theory. After uploading some chapters of "Definition of Open Source Software and Related Agreements" to Cfido, he started researching DY-ZIP with great interest, and asked while testing: "Are you planning to sell this compression software for money, or are you planning to release it as an open source?"

Although Di Ye has planned the route of being a master of learning, he does not intend to give up business. After all, adults want everything. He said: "I am going to release the source code under the GPL agreement, and then sell it as shareware."

Shareware is a distribution method that emerged in the early days of the Internet era. There is a registration machine built into the software, and then it is released for free, allowing customers to try it out for a period of time.

Mahua Tran is a very realistic person, and said: "You have open sourced, but you still want to sell it for money? Others can use it directly after copying your source code."

"This kind of practice should not work in Europe and the United States, because the copyright belongs to me, and I plan to make money from foreigners."

"Theoretically it is not possible, but in practice it may not be possible. This kind of behavior is difficult to verify, and it is also very troublesome to file a lawsuit across the country."

"It's up to God, I mainly want to gain some fame with this compression software, and I don't expect it to make much money for the time being."

Di Ye stayed at Ma Huayan's house until after 9 o'clock before saying goodbye and leaving. When he returned to Shangri-La, he first called Di Yan to report his safety, and then talked on the phone with Xia Fangfei for a few minutes before washing up and going to bed.

The next day was Saturday, and Di Ye went to the hotel’s built-in fitness center for a while in the morning. He felt a little weak. He didn’t have the vitality that he had just crossed. After careful calculation, he found that he hadn’t participated in sports for nearly 20 days.

After returning to the suite and taking a shower, Di Ye changed into a more casual outfit and took a look in the mirror. He felt that he was in good condition. He looked a bit like a swinger, very suitable for fooling people, so he summoned Xiao Honghua and ordered: "Find out Xu Chaobo's contact information. The closer to 1995, the better."

Xiaohonghua agreed briskly, searched continuously in the light curtain, and finally found a somewhat blurred first-person view image. In this image, a woman in a hospital gown could be vaguely seen, holding a piece of paper, and said, "This is my brother's number in Pengcheng. You can call him to borrow some money."

"Will he borrow it?"

"If he has money, he will definitely borrow it, but I'm afraid he has no money."

Following the conversation, a hand took over the piece of paper, and the piece of paper passed through the center of the light curtain. The blurred handwriting became clear for a moment, and Xiao Honghua fixed it on the light curtain with quick eyes and hands.

Di Ye looked at the image in the light curtain, wondering: "How old is this memory?"

"One month and seven days ago, you were held in your father's arms."

Di Ye was amazed, and asked: "A baby who is only over one month old also has memories?"

"From the moment you are born, everything you see or hear is stored in the electronic watch. It's just that the eyes of babies who are more than one month old have not yet fully developed, and they can't see things in the distance clearly, so they are very blurry."

"So it is."

Di Ye walked to the telephone in the suite, picked up the microphone, looked at the note displayed on the light curtain, and tried to dial the number on it. Fortunately, the call was connected quickly, and a man full of air greeted him and said, "I'm Xu Chaobo, may I help you?"

"Manager Xu, I heard that you can trade overseas stock index futures?"

"Yes, our company provides futures trading services for stock indexes in New York, London, Tokyo, and Hong Kong..."

Di Ye interrupted Xu Chaobo's enthusiastic introduction, and said bluntly: "Manager Xu, I want to short the Nikkei index next Monday. Do you work on weekends? If you do, I hope you can come to Shangri-La, and we will have a face-to-face meeting."

"We provide 24-hour full-service. There is no such thing as a weekend. I will leave now and arrive in about 30 minutes."

"Great, I'll wait for you in the lobby lounge."

Di Ye pretended to ask about Xu Chaobo's appearance, then walked to the window, and while admiring the distant street scene, he calculated the income for next Monday.

Next Monday will be January 1. This day is a small year in northern China, and it is also the day when the Dongying stock market will plunge. The Nikkei index will plummet by 23 points, a drop of 1055%.

Di Ye now has 5 earned from selling IBM internships, 18 from Di Yongchang, and 10 from Fan Dazhi asking him to buy an MPEG decompression card, a total of 33. He plans to use 30 to short the Nikkei index. Calculated with 10 times leverage, theoretically, he can earn about 16.8 yuan.

"Excluding all kinds of handling fees and intermediary fees, it is estimated that I can only earn about 15 yuan, which is a bit small."

At this time, the phone in the suite rang, and it was Ma Huazhun who called, saying that two friends wanted to meet Di Ye and asked him to have lunch together. Di Ye heard the words and asked, "Isn't it your classmate who used to work in Pengcheng Telecom Data Communication Bureau?"

"That's right, it's him. In addition, I have a friend who is studying in South China University of Technology. He also wants to know you."

"Okay, let's get together at noon."

After Di Ye put down the phone, his annoyance about making too little money subsided a lot, and he felt that the first time he came to Pengcheng, he could get to know the three founding employees of Penguin, which was a worthwhile trip.

(End of this chapter)