International call
Farewell to Lin Zhenhua, Ford almost sprinted back to the reception office at a speed of 100 meters, pulling out Li teacher from Shida University who was responsible for his daily translation, and ran towards the post and telecommunications bureau inside the petrochemical plant with a mix of coaxing and deception.
The post office was about to close, Ford didn't care and squeezed his way to the counter, shouting loudly at the clerk who was cleaning up, startling him.
"Comrade shop assistant, our foreign guest has an urgent matter and needs to make an international long-distance call to the United States. Could you please connect the call for him?" Mr. Li explained to the shop assistant with some difficulty.
"Are there any requests from our foreign guests? No problem, I'll take care of it right away."
It's said that it was a matter for foreign guests, the shop assistant had an extremely good attitude, without saying another word, he put down what he was holding in his hand, took out a bill and handed it over to Ford to fill out.
Actually, treating foreign guests well has nothing to do with an inferiority complex. On the contrary, people who are more inferior tend to be more arrogant after they become successful. True nobles are humble and courteous to everyone, especially to distant guests.
China is a civilized ancient country, thousands of years ago, the Chinese were accustomed to showing respect and courtesy to foreigners. During the Han and Tang dynasties when China was at its strongest, neighboring weak countries that came to pay homage to the emperor would often receive good treatment and even be bestowed with generous gifts. This tradition of respecting foreign guests actually reflects the magnanimity of a strong nation, only those who are newly rich would put on airs in front of poor relatives in their hometown.
In those years, the overseas long-distance call was not directly picked up by dialing 001, but needed to be manually dialed by the long-distance bureau. After connecting, they would notify the person on this end to answer. During the contact between the postal and telecommunications staff and the long-distance switchboard operator, Ford paced back and forth in the small business hall like a caged beast, his anxious and irritable appearance making people wonder if there were two skyscrapers in America that had been knocked down by someone's plane.
It was as if half a century had passed when the shop assistant finally spoke up: "Mr. Ford, your call has been connected and the other party has agreed to pay for the call. Please go to that telephone booth to make the call."
Ford rushed into the phone booth, picked up the receiver, and began to speak to the company's deputy general manager on the other side of the ocean: "Peter, something big has happened, about that thing 27... Yes, you don't need to repeat it, you just need to know that I'm calling from China, got it? ...I mean, I've received news that someone is planning to write a paper on this matter and submit it to the CNC machine tool magazine. No kidding, I've already read the paper, and I believe the CNC machine tool magazine will be very interested in such a paper... Oh, don't worry, I've already persuaded him, he's my friend, a very good friend. He promised not to do so within three days, but he wrote a program patch and sent it to me, asking me to take it back to the company for testing. If the company is interested, he is willing to sell this patch to us. Peter, immediately call the technical department manager out of bed, I want to read the program to that bastard and let him record it. Yes, all the people in the technical department are bastards, their programming ability is not even as good as an 18-year-old Chinese..."
The phone call lasted for two hours, fortunately it was paid by the other party, otherwise the foreign exchange coupons Ford exchanged at the customs would not be enough to pay for the phone bill. When Ford came out of the telephone booth exhausted, he saw the shop assistant and Li teacher staring at him in surprise.
"Ah, it's just a technical issue that I couldn't resolve, so I need to consult with the company's technical personnel." Ford said with a smile, "Sorry for keeping you from leaving work on time, this is a small token of apology, please accept it."
As he spoke, he pulled out two $10 green bills and handed them to the salesgirl and Ms. Li respectively. The two women exchanged a glance, tacitly accepting the money.
Americans are really rich, they spend 200 yuan as soon as they take out their hands... Today's overtime is really profitable, the salesperson is delighted.
At this moment, the Spiegel company in the United States was in a mess. The fact that the MK800 machine tool had defects would be a disaster for the company if it were exposed. As the technical department manager held the telephone receiver and recorded the program code dictated by Ford, he already knew that this segment of the program was completely correct, which meant that the other party had thoroughly grasped the control program of the MK800, even more so than all the programmers in the entire Spiegel company.
A bug in the program is sometimes just a thin layer of window paper. Before it's poked through, no one knows what's going on, but once it's poked through, everyone will find that things are actually very simple. The BUG pointed out by Lin Zhenhua is nothing more than a sub-program that will cause an overflow error when the parameter setting is set to a certain group, but if no one points it out, who would have thought that this mistake was hidden so deeply?
In the real history, the program error of MK800 was first discovered and exposed in the practical link, but no one could find out where the specific mistake was. After several years, Professor Yao Heliang from Huazhong University used a high-speed computer to simulate billions of parameter combinations, which finally found the problem and proposed a correction scheme. However, at this time, the case of MK800 had been settled, and Sperry Corporation had lost tens of millions of dollars.
As a student of Yao Helang, Lin Zhenhua remembered many details of this case. Although he couldn't use future disassembly technology to completely restore the Z80 program in MK800, he was able to write patches for several bugs. For the past few days, he stayed in the dormitory, desperately recalling the Z80 syntax he had learned as a hobby during his undergraduate studies, and wrote out several patches. Then, armed with this killer move, he went to challenge Ford.
The technical department of Spiesheger conducted an emergency test, and the results showed that the patch sent back from China was very successful, perfectly solving the defect under special parameters. However, another sentence transmitted by Ford made them tremble with fear, that is, MK800 had not only one defect, and the other party required Spiesheger to come up with a cooperation plan within 4 hours, otherwise, they would have to go to the magazine to find the patch, at which time, claims from all over the world would overwhelm the entire company.
"No, we have to get all the defective patches out of the Chinese man's hands and proactively upgrade the control circuit board for our customers, nipping this scandal in the bud." Ordered Chairman Wilson.
Deputy General Manager Peter said: "Mr. Wilson, Ford said that the Chinese man was very business-minded and proposed that our company pay to buy the program from him."
"Give him the money!" Wilson said, "How much does he want? We wouldn't begrudge him $1,000."
"1,000 dollars..." Peter said with a bitter face, "According to Ford's meaning, his appetite is far from being satisfied with just 1,000 dollars."
"Come on," said Wilson, "I've hosted Chinese officials who had only a few dollars per day for expenses when they traveled abroad. They were so frugal that they saved everything to buy electrical appliances to bring back to China. A Chinese worker getting $1,000 is already very good."
"Pete said, 'The thing is, this Chinese worker isn't your average Chinese worker. Without the source code, he was somehow able to analyze where our bug was and write a perfect patch. A thousand dollars in compensation? I think he won't be satisfied.'"
"We can let Ford talk to him some more, and our bottom line can be relaxed a bit, say two thousand dollars. Let Ford tell him that this is the highest price we are willing to pay, I think he won't give up the opportunity to get such a large sum of money."
"Alright, I'll get in touch with Ford right away." Pete gave in. He didn't have much dealings with the Chinese and wasn't sure if Wilson's judgment was correct. They had been isolated from that mysterious continent for too long and basically knew nothing about it.
The phone number Ford left for the American company was the small reception room of the petrochemical plant. At more than 5 o'clock in the morning, the service staff of the small reception room was awakened by the ringing of the phone. She answered the phone and heard a string of English that she couldn't understand. However, she knew this must be a call for Mr. Ford, because there was only one foreign guest staying at the entire reception house.
Before the waiter went to call Ford, Ford had already come out of the room neatly dressed. He hadn't slept all night and his ears were perked up waiting for the phone call. He heard the ringing of the phone just now and rushed out to answer it.
"Peter, are you saying that Mr. Wilson wants to buy all the patches from the other party? Great, this is also what the other party requires. What about the price? ...What! Two thousand dollars, are you kidding me? The technical department has spent tens of millions of dollars and still can't solve the problem, and we think we can buy these patches for just two thousand dollars?" Ford was almost furious.
Peter said, "Ford, you can't think of this problem with an American mind. If the patch was proposed by an American, I think we could get it for a million dollars, yes, less than a million and nobody else would sell to us. But for Chinese people, it's completely different, their hourly wage is only 10 cents, two thousand dollars is an astronomical figure for them."
"Yes, Mr. Pete, for the vast majority of 1 billion Chinese people, $2,000 is indeed an astronomical figure, but this little friend of mine happens to be an astronomer himself, so astronomical figures are nothing out of the ordinary for him. I still can't figure out how he cracked our program... Alright, alright, I know, since it's the boss's intention, I'll go talk to him, but I'm sure it won't work out. If we end up provoking him, no one will be able to stop him from making the results public."
Ford hung up the phone and went back to his room with a dark face. The waiter faintly heard him mutter a word, "Xu Te".
