T w e n t y S i d e d

It’s the year 2000, and I’m still working on the virtual mall. The original plan called for lining up deals with distributors, or retailers, or existing online storefronts. I think the idea was that John Business would rent virtual storefronts to people who wanted to sell goods in our mall. I’m guessing those deals have been hard to come by, since it’s been ages since I’ve been given pictures of new stores and products to translate into 3D. At the start of the project I made a couple of demonstration stores, and I haven’t been given any real ones since then.

The lack of new content has given us some breathing room in the timetable. It’s been weeks since Roger – my boss and also a pretty good friend – stopped by my cubicle with a question or request from the people representing John Business, which means I have time to spend on other projects.

Security Through Obscurity

Roger really likes my work and has often wanted to get me the source code for our software. The coders guard the source jealously. Roger – being an executive of the company – technically has access to the source, but only in the sense that he has access to the machine where the source is hosted. He could drive an hour to downtown Boston to our hosting company, go through the layers of biometric securityWhich all seems pretty Star Trek here in 2000. and look directly at the machine in question, but he has no idea where the files are stored, what they look like, or how to access them.

Whenever he asks, the coders always reply with, “Why would you need that?”

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Crash Dot Com Part 7: The Source”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

It’s late in the year 2000. While I haven’t heard the term yet, the dot-com crash has just begun. The first wave of ill-advised internet ventures are going out of business. At this point people generally seem to think of this as a mild hiccup. This is a perfectly normal part of the New Economy. Sure, a few Bad Ideas are flaming out, but that just leaves more room for our Good Ideas, right? Everything is fine.

I’m still working on making a virtual mall. After the uncomfortable meeting, I’ve been shy about challenging the design. I’ve washed my hands of the whole thing and resigned myself to spending months building this sad, doomed thing. It’s soul-crushing to put all this effort into something that’s just going to make people miserable, but I don’t know what else I can do.

I’m dreading launch day.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Crash Dot Com Part 6: The List™”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.