"(ebook) Anthony Piers - Xanth 23 - Xone Of Contention" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

XONE OF CONTENTION

Copyright й 1999 by Piers Anthony Jacob

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this hook, or portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

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New York. NY 10010

www.tor.com

Torо is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates. LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Anthony, Piers

Xone of contention / Piers Anthony.Ч 1st ed.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-312-86691-7 I. Title

PS3551 .N73X66 1999 99-22200 813'.54Чdc21 C1P

First Edition: October 1999

Printed in the United States of America

098765432 1

I

LEMON

E

dsel struggled with the program, but it just wouldn't jell The problem really was in the software, which was unusually unintelligible How could he make it seem easy and user friendly, when its programmers had evidently labored decades to make it difficult and hostile' This was of course how he earned his living designing software to make other software seem nice But in this case he needed to tweak a default in the computer operating system, and access to the key level was barred That was the fundamental bone ol contention

"Damn you, Macrohard," he swore softly "Just once, couldn't you give a person a break9 I'm not trying to steal Doors Irom you, just to put a special function on the keypad 'Enter' key so Grundy Golem can work independent of the mouse There are folk who don t like being chained to the mouse, you know this isn't Dizzy World Would it hurt you so bad to let someone have it his own way for a change1' But of course he knew the answer yes it would truly pain the company to let a user ever ha\e it his own way Macrohard never wanted anyone to forget ior half an instant exactly who was the master, and who was the least important person in the universe It couldn t stop third party programmers like Edsel from trying to alleviate things but it could and did make sure that they were unable to make any significant improvements So the bone became a whole zone of contention