happen, they needed to finish the testing.
The second test involved audio. For this, Peter bought a list of email addresses from a guy who created mailing lists of people who regularly bought CDs online. Peter had zoned in on a select group of people and contacted them to see if they would participate in the trial in return for free Cheyenne service for a year when the system was fully operational. To his amazement, the majority of them said yes.
The inaugural audio file, T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong,” was sent to a 20-year-old girl named Karin, who worked in her father’s insurance company in Maastricht. “Ladies and gentleman,” Peter said as he was about to hit the button, “I give you T. Rex.” His assistants tittered. The girl reported having some difficulty detaching the file, which they identified as a problem with her computer.
Dozens of albums followed. They downloaded Elvis collections to a fry cook in Tilburg. They sent Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Live at Gruene Hall” to an accountant in Haarlem. They sent John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” to an artist in Breda. Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” went to a builder in Apeldoorn. A secretary in Rotterdam had requested “Trafalgar” by the Brothers Gibb. Peter guessed that the woman must have just had a bad break up, because that album contained what was, in Peter’s mind, one of the better bust up songs of all time: “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.” Peter began to hum as he sent the file, and then stopped himself. Shit, I’m a saddo , he thought.
He moved on to the next portion of the testing — data. He chose material from authors who tended to write long — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gibbon, Vidal, Faulkner. Then came the granddaddy of them all — the complete unabridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. It worked beautifully, even as a handful of bearded ethical hackers that Peter had contracted attempted to bring down Cheyenne’s network.
The final test was video. For this, Peter chose one of his favorite movies of all time — “True Grit” with John Wayne. “It’s going to be hard to squeeze a man of the Duke’s stature through a water pipe, but here we go,” Peter said to one of his assistants. Another assistant began a drum roll. Another made an embarrassing attempt at whooping like a cowboy. “Fill your hand, you son-of-a-bitch,” Peter shouted as he hit the button.
It was the kind of moment that geeks live for and non-geeks shake their heads at. Peter was proud. The conviction he felt began to surge from some darkened place within him. He was pretty sure that he had a hard-on.
They were ready, or at least getting close. The tests were telling them what they needed to know. The glitches were being addressed, at least the ones that they could predict. It would only be a matter of time before they were ready to put the first satellite in the sky. The satellite would fill in the gaps in the network where signals could not flow through municipal water supplies, or act as a backup when terrestrial signals failed. Cheyenne’s system would not function without a satellite. They needed one fast.
A satellite was important for two other reasons: one, to create the kind of momentum that would make Eatwell and the European Commission think twice before rejecting Lyrical’s eventual acquisition of Cheyenne. Two, rumor had it that N-tel, the state-run Dutch telecom carrier, was working hard on a technology that also promised to deliver unlimited bandwidth to the masses, although the scope of its technology was unclear because N-tel was keeping it under tightlyguarded wraps.
Under normal circumstances, it could take a year for delivery of a new satellite. Cheyenne didn’t have that kind of time. They needed a satellite now. Aaron could live with a refurbished bird. He told Timmermans to make the necessary calls to get the ball rolling.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A Swiss banker named Otto Jagmetti who was fond of
The second test involved audio. For this, Peter bought a list of email addresses from a guy who created mailing lists of people who regularly bought CDs online. Peter had zoned in on a select group of people and contacted them to see if they would participate in the trial in return for free Cheyenne service for a year when the system was fully operational. To his amazement, the majority of them said yes.
The inaugural audio file, T. Rex’s “Bang a Gong,” was sent to a 20-year-old girl named Karin, who worked in her father’s insurance company in Maastricht. “Ladies and gentleman,” Peter said as he was about to hit the button, “I give you T. Rex.” His assistants tittered. The girl reported having some difficulty detaching the file, which they identified as a problem with her computer.
Dozens of albums followed. They downloaded Elvis collections to a fry cook in Tilburg. They sent Jerry Jeff Walker’s “Live at Gruene Hall” to an accountant in Haarlem. They sent John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme” to an artist in Breda. Dvorak’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” went to a builder in Apeldoorn. A secretary in Rotterdam had requested “Trafalgar” by the Brothers Gibb. Peter guessed that the woman must have just had a bad break up, because that album contained what was, in Peter’s mind, one of the better bust up songs of all time: “How Can You Mend A Broken Heart.” Peter began to hum as he sent the file, and then stopped himself. Shit, I’m a saddo , he thought.
He moved on to the next portion of the testing — data. He chose material from authors who tended to write long — Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gibbon, Vidal, Faulkner. Then came the granddaddy of them all — the complete unabridged edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. It worked beautifully, even as a handful of bearded ethical hackers that Peter had contracted attempted to bring down Cheyenne’s network.
The final test was video. For this, Peter chose one of his favorite movies of all time — “True Grit” with John Wayne. “It’s going to be hard to squeeze a man of the Duke’s stature through a water pipe, but here we go,” Peter said to one of his assistants. Another assistant began a drum roll. Another made an embarrassing attempt at whooping like a cowboy. “Fill your hand, you son-of-a-bitch,” Peter shouted as he hit the button.
It was the kind of moment that geeks live for and non-geeks shake their heads at. Peter was proud. The conviction he felt began to surge from some darkened place within him. He was pretty sure that he had a hard-on.
They were ready, or at least getting close. The tests were telling them what they needed to know. The glitches were being addressed, at least the ones that they could predict. It would only be a matter of time before they were ready to put the first satellite in the sky. The satellite would fill in the gaps in the network where signals could not flow through municipal water supplies, or act as a backup when terrestrial signals failed. Cheyenne’s system would not function without a satellite. They needed one fast.
A satellite was important for two other reasons: one, to create the kind of momentum that would make Eatwell and the European Commission think twice before rejecting Lyrical’s eventual acquisition of Cheyenne. Two, rumor had it that N-tel, the state-run Dutch telecom carrier, was working hard on a technology that also promised to deliver unlimited bandwidth to the masses, although the scope of its technology was unclear because N-tel was keeping it under tightlyguarded wraps.
Under normal circumstances, it could take a year for delivery of a new satellite. Cheyenne didn’t have that kind of time. They needed a satellite now. Aaron could live with a refurbished bird. He told Timmermans to make the necessary calls to get the ball rolling.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A Swiss banker named Otto Jagmetti who was fond of
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