The Heckler
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The Heckler
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Is there anybody out there?!
The International Space Agencies work at a project, verily a gigantic project ... the space station Alpha (ISS), the plunge into the far vastness of space. Back to the Moon, to Mars and (if only Stanley Kubrick had lived up to it) at some time to Jupiter and farther away.
Mankind boasts with haughty pride about big steps into a new era. The sphere of influence of the human hand (and for all I care the feet, too) is extended. Potential extraterrestrial life has been discovered in petrified form in a Mars meteorite. How exciting ...
I'm sitting in front of my Amiga and surfing the Internet. At least I'm trying to. But by and by the lunacy strikes ... I visit the fifth website in a row, every single one of which has tantalized me: "You are using a browser of the third generation. But to visit this site you need a browser of the fourth or fifth generation". Oops ... Best regards from Microsoft and Netscape.
Until now no-one had opened my eyes in such a humiliating manner to the fact that the software I use is in no way state of the art.
Oh I was so smart three years ago, when my first browser (IBrowse 1.2) and my first stack (Miami 2.heaven knows what) conjured up the first signs of life on the global, worldwide net of all nets on my screen. I was top dog among my colleagues, the first one with access to the world. How global! And now? Now I have to fuss around with kids' clobber. Off limits ... Shut out from the world. No website loves me any more ...
Suddenly an idea jumps to my mind ... Wasn't there once a company, which wanted to quickly push a new Amiga operating system to market? Wasn't there a discussion about a new browser?
Yes, of course, only the exact name of this company has slipped my mind. Indeed this name changed so often over the years! And with each change of name new plans arose ... starting with a pencil over the clipboard and working up to the spaceship Enterprise (or was it Voyager?), everything was to work with a boingball.
A snap of the finger, and a new planet (chequered red-white) was automagically to be constructed. And we as a big community, we were so great, so nice, so lovable. This is what they told us.
Back to reality. A final try to check the site of the Amiga news. And indeed ... it works. Mmmh, let's see, what's new. Aha, a new open letter from AMIGA Inc. A so-called "Executive Update". But everything I read sounds more or less like "may-sometimes-be-executed/released-update".
But rescue approaches through an unexpected port.
The phone rings and a friend announces her early visit. Before I am ready to read the open letter, I click on the "Offline" button of Miami, and the last connection with the reservation of beautiful day-dreams is cut. Somehow it does not matter what AMIGA Inc. wants.
Let's see how things proceed in the weeks to come. Perhaps they have just announced in the "Newsletter" the development of an intelligent toilet seat with connection to cable-TV. Something useful ... promotes mankind, and gives the sh.. on TV some stiff competition.
Live long and prosperous,
Yours
Ralf Driesner <global-dries@gmx.de>
