A one-day power outage is scheduled for the community tomorrow due to electrical maintenance, so we've decided to take the kids out. Therefore, our updates for the next three days will remain at a basic two chapters. However, rest assured, we will definitely meet our goal of extra chapters this month. Thank you for your support!
"Hoo!" Chen Shoufu breathed a sigh of relief. The most damning evidence was gone, and Chen Shoufu felt that Huang He wouldn't be able to control him anymore. At this point, he needed to give Huang He a way out, otherwise, he would be tormented to death. So, Chen Shoufu said, "I know I was wrong this time. I admit my mistake and accept the punishment. Boss, just let me be an ordinary programmer. Even if I do it for a lifetime, I'll be diligent and won't complain."
"Heh heh!" Huang He let out a dry laugh. "Teacher Chen, you really have a good plan. The entire team was trained by you. If you become an ordinary programmer, who would truly consider you a programmer!"
"Then I can switch to another company. There are so many companies in Jiangnan that need programmers!" Chen Shoufu said weakly.
"Alright, Teacher Chen, stop dreaming about working for 10 years and then taking 10% of oo's shares from me. You won't even get one share!" Huang He said through gritted teeth.
If this Chen Shoufu had voluntarily declared that he wanted nothing and left immediately, Huang He might have considered letting him off the hook. But this fellow was still thinking about 10% of the shares. That was truly wishful thinking.
"..." Chen Shoufu fell silent. His thoughts couldn't be hidden from Huang He, but he also felt emboldened, believing that Huang He had no way to deal with him.
"Teacher Chen, have you noticed? In the framework code of oo space, there are about a dozen lines of code, and each line contains a useless letter. Each line of code is hidden within hundreds of continuous lines of code. It's hard for ordinary people to find this letter even if they stare with their eyeballs wide open?" Huang He suddenly retorted.
"What are you trying to say?" Chen Shoufu's entire body turned cold.
"I'm saying that these dozen useless letters, and the hundreds of lines of code where these letters are located, all appear verbatim in QQ space's framework code," Huang He said with a smile.
"But this is also normal. After all, Tengda only had less than 15 days. They managed to replace 80% of the code, and they probably exhausted all their energy. They wouldn't be interested in checking the extra letters in the remaining 20% of the framework code."
Chen Shoufu's mind was in chaos. He hadn't expected Huang He to have such a trick up his sleeve, planting hidden traps in the code.
It was important to know that this code had been written half a year before oo space was even established. This meant that as early as half a year ago, Huang He had secretly arranged for personnel to plant traps in the code.
"This is normal!" Chen Shoufu said with difficulty. "When writing code, there are always various probabilities of invalid code appearing. It's just a few extra identical letters; it doesn't prove anything, let alone that this code leaked from Jiangnan Group."
"Oh! Then what if these letters, from front to back, are j·i·A·n·g·n·A·n·j·i·t·u·A·n..." Huang He recited the letters one by one, and with each letter he uttered, Chen Shoufu's face grew more panicked. Finally, he completely collapsed, slumping onto his chair.
Because if these letters were interpreted using Pinyin, they would perfectly form "Jiangnan Group!"
Having the same invalid letters might be a coincidence, but when these invalid letters perfectly formed the Pinyin for Jiangnan Group, it was simply too direct. No one could deny the issue here.
"Are you going to call the police?" Chen Shoufu looked at Huang He pitifully. If Huang He called the police, he would probably have to spend at least three years in prison.
"Teacher Chen, I'm actually very grateful to you. After all, without you, there would be no oo. I don't want things to get so ugly between us!" Huang He said calmly. "How about this, let's part on good terms. You resign yourself, and I won't call the police. At the same time, I won't leak what happened today. You can still find a job at other companies."
"As the chief engineer of our oo, with this resume, I think you can find a good job at any network company!" Huang He said. "Otherwise, if we both go down, wouldn't it be embarrassing?"
"Okay!" Chen Shoufu nodded. This was the best outcome he could accept. Huang He then produced a resignation agreement that he had prepared earlier and handed it to Chen Shoufu. Chen Shoufu signed his name with trembling hands, thus ending his life and work at Jiangnan Group.
An hour later, Chen Shoufu left the company with all his personal belongings. Many people in the company were unaware that the company's veteran, Chen Shoufu, had left so abruptly. It wasn't until several days later that they noticed something was amiss.
---
"Brother-in-law, thank you for letting Teacher Chen off the hook. Otherwise, his later life would have been very miserable!" Leng Zhimeng sighed as she watched Chen Shoufu leave.
She remembered that it was she who had brought Huang He to Beijing to find Chen Shoufu, who was then a university teacher. Together, they had hastily set up the prototype of oo in a disused factory building of Jiangnan Leather Factory, and it had since developed into the largest network company in the country.
But now, things had changed. Chen Shoufu had made a mistake and could only leave in disgrace.
"No, I'm not that kind!" Huang He shook his head. "If I could, I would definitely send him to jail, but unfortunately, I can't do that!"
"Ah..." Leng Zhimeng was stunned. "Don't you have evidence against Teacher Chen? Coupled with our relationship, Teacher Chen would definitely be sentenced, wouldn't he?"
"No, I don't have any evidence!" Huang He shrugged. "As he said, the most direct audio evidence is not admissible in court, and the court will not accept this evidence, so this evidence is meaningless."
"But don't we still have the hidden trap in the code?" Leng Zhimeng retorted.
"That evidence is fake, it doesn't exist at all. I just tricked him!" Huang He chuckled. "If I had really planted these hidden traps in that program half a year in advance, I would have filed a lawsuit against Tengda Group by now. After all, this is also evidence of Tengda copying and stealing our Jiangnan Group's products. Even with only 20% similarity, it's still irrefutable evidence."
"So you used this method to trick Teacher Chen into obediently signing the resignation agreement and giving up his 10% stock options?" Leng Zhimeng finally realized and understood Huang He's intentions.
"Yes, that's right!" Huang He nodded and admitted it.
"Brother-in-law, if you were to be reborn into the imperial palace in the future..."
"What about it?"
"You'd definitely be number one in palace intrigue!" Leng Zhimeng stuck out her tongue.
---
"What? The resignation agreement you signed, Huang He already knows about our dealings? And there are hidden traps from Jiangnan Group in our code??" A few hours later, Xiao Ma Ge received a call from Chen Shoufu and learned the whole story from him.
Then, Xiao Ma Ge hurriedly sent people to check the code. After checking for about a day, they still couldn't find those useless letters. However, Xiao Ma Ge didn't dare to be careless. So, he decided to have his subordinates continue working overtime and replace the remaining 20% of the structural code, thereby completely obliterating all evidence.
Xiao Ma Ge also invited Chen Shoufu to join Tengda, but Chen Shoufu refused. Afterward, Chen Shoufu completely disappeared. This founder of oo never reappeared in the online world.
While checking the code, the promotion of QQ Space also reached its most critical stage.
At 10:00 AM on January 2, 2002, QQ Space officially launched online. QQ introduced the entrance to QQ Space in its main UI through a hot update. A large number of eager QQ users began to decorate their QQ Spaces.
At 12:00 PM on January 2, 2002, users browsing their favorite celebrities' Facebook pages suddenly found that when they tried to open a sub-page, they were prompted with "This information has been deleted."
And when they tried to refresh the entire Facebook space, the page turned blank, with a prompt stating, "This user has deleted all space content."
Even the usernames had changed from the celebrity names to meaningless code. The celebrity's space had been completely wiped clean!
At first, many people thought it was an isolated incident. But then, more and more celebrities who had been officially announced began to have their spaces disappear and be cleared one by one.
Finally, except for a few remaining celebrities in mainland China and Zhang Rong, all other celebrity spaces had vanished without a trace.
The entire network erupted in an uproar, which was dubbed the "Celebrity Disappearance Incident." People speculated whether these celebrities had been abducted by aliens, otherwise, all their spaces wouldn't have been cleared simultaneously.
However, the truth was soon revealed. All QQ users received a system message at the same time: "Celebrity Liu Hua has joined QQ Space," along with the URL to this space.
Thus, users swarmed in and indeed found that Liu Hua's space had reappeared, and almost all the space content that had been posted on Facebook was transferred to QQ Space, word for word.
The only thing missing was probably the comments.
At the same time, users were pleasantly surprised to find that they could add Liu Hua's QQ account as a friend, thus being able to put Liu Hua's QQ Space in their friend list.
However, this also led to a bug. Because a QQ account could only have a maximum of 500 friends at that time, Liu Hua's QQ number was soon prompted that it could not add more friends. If friends couldn't be added, QQ Space couldn't be loaded into the friend list.
This was clearly not a technical bug, but a simple design oversight. However, considering that Tengda Group only took 15 days, such minor oversights were understandable.