One more back number. This one is a bit older than the other two and requires some introduction.
For three years, I edited a magazine called NEWS/400.uk; it’s still going, albeit under another name, and I’ve gone on writing a regular column for it ever since. The mag’s appeal is and always has been fairly specialised, as it’s aimed exclusively at users of IBM’s System i midrange platform (formerly known as the AS/400). There was a brief period – 20 monthly issues, to be precise – when the company I worked for also produced a magazine for users of Windows NT and Windows 2000. I was the launch editor – I left after eight issues – and I’m still convinced it could have been big. For various reasons, it didn’t happen.
Anyway, I had a column in NT explorer as well; it was called “NTWA” and it was written, for reasons I don’t now remember, under the name of Ned Ludd. This is the column from March 1999.
“AH, MR LUDD – I’ve been expecting you.”
A familiar, bespectacled figure greeted me. He was sitting in a swivel chair, which he turned to face me as I entered the room. At first sight I thought he was stroking a Persian cat; after a moment I realised it was a stuffed purple dinosaur. As I watched, he dashed the toy to the floor; it bounced once, squeaked “Say Hi to Barney!” and lay still.
“We meet at last,” he said. “And for you, it really is the last time. I mean, it’s the last time you’ll meet anyone, because I’m, like, going to kill you. I know, it kind of sucks, but what else can I do?”
“You could tell me your master plan,” I suggested.
“Ha!” he riposted. “Tell you my master plan? Ha! And, uh… Ha! And stuff. Oh, what the hell, let’s do it. I mean, I’m going to throw you to the piranhas anyway, right?”
He gestured towards what I had thought to be an ornamental water feature. Then he reached down, picked up the purple dinosaur at his feet and flung it across the room. It gave out a plaintive “I wuv you, Billy!” as it flew, then disappeared into the tank. The water boiled up around it. I shuddered.
He gave a sinister giggle. “So, you want to know my master plan. I guess you know about Y2K?”
“The Millennium Bug? But… your software implements different fixes for the bug in different packages – even in different releases of the same package! You’re on record as saying that the Millennium Bug isn’t a big deal! You’ve even said it can be fixed by subtracting thirty years from all dates, and everyone knows it should be twenty-eight – I thought…”
“You thought I was just like totally clueless, yes?” His accent was changing as he spoke. “And now you are realising, like, nobody is that clueless? And if I am not clueless… Hmm?”
“Incompatible fixes, fixes that don’t work, misleading advice – you’re trying to make things worse!”
“Ha! Correct. And after the Millennium Bug, what happens? When the date rolls over, when the computers of the world are crashing and burning, what then? I’ll tell you – it will be the end of computing as we know it! And, as the cloak of anarchy falls over the smouldering ruins of Western civilisation, only one system will survive. One light in the darkness, one beacon of hope, one operating system which will be fully compatible with the emerging requirements of the new millennium!”
“You mean – ”
“Yes. Windows 2000! Oh, they used to laugh at Windows. They laughed at my dancing paperclip; they laughed at the repeated shipping delays for NT 5.0; they even” – his voice trembled – “they even laughed at my talking Barney. But no more! There was Windows, now there is Windows NT; soon there will only be Windows 2000. The third Windows will last a thousand years! Give or take a few Service Packs.”
“That’s fiendish!”
“I thought it was kind of cool, actually. But enough of this idle chit-chat. There is a second piranha tank beneath your feet: when I press this button the floor will open up beneath you and you will suffer the fate of Barney. I’m clicking on ‘OK’… now. Now I’m doing it again, because the system has not responded. And once more. And now I am being told an illegal operation has been committed, and I am exiting the program to try again. And now the system is hanging, and – hey, where are you going?”
As I made my escape he shouted after me:
“Go, Ludd! Tell the world! They will never believe you! Ha! No one will listen to your ridiculous story, and that’s just like so uncool. Ha! And stuff.”
I think he needs to work on the accent.
Workers’ Playtime 
4 Comments
So: do you have an AS400 purring on your desk, like an intelligent fridge?
Alas, no. IBM did produce a portable 400 for a while, mainly for the trade show market, but they never did manage to put a GUI on the thing – and these days you need to have a Linux box sitting next to a System i to run the partition manager, despite the fact that it’ll run Linux itself in any partition (or all of them). Me, I’ve just got a Mac. (But a PowerPC Mac…)
I quite liked the idea of having an IBM blade with a handle on one edge, and an LCD screen on one side, as the world’s most powerful laptop (for values of laptop that don’t include putting the burnin’ hot heatsink anywhere near your lap). Would look seriously sharp, and useful if you…ah..something or other!
Curiously, last night I passed someone on Hungerford Bridge who seemed to have done something similar – had a rackmount server stuffed in his rucksack..