Sam purchased an experimental sound system called Vita-phone. They then acquired rights to The Jazz Singer, a popular play about a young man who had a beautiful voice and is offered a Broadway career against wishes of his Old World Jewish father. In play son gave in to his father but Warner's, wishing to reach a wider audience, Americanized story by having son follow his own dreams. Star Al Jolson adlibbed dialogue," Wait a minute, wait a minute you ain't heard nothing, yet!" The Warner's were only intending singing but at last minute they impulsively kept line in film. The Jazz Singer received a standing ovation when it premiered in New York in 1927 and went on to make three and half million dollars at a time when admission costs 20 cents. The sound revolution was under way!

Movie audiences had often been loud and noisy while watching silent films. Now theater's got quiet as people strained to hear every word. Movie Theater's had to be rewired for sound, costing major studios like Paramount and Fox millions of dollars. Movies now had to film mostly at night as any passing truck noise could ruin a sound recording. " How boring!" said Mary Pickford. "At first we moved! Now everyone is standing around talking!" One enterprising actor was hired for one day's work. When director wasn't looking he let a bunch of crickets loose on set. It was five days before crew could round up chirping crickets, and actor kept on hold received five times paycheck.

Then after my return to computer I find out that of course I was "affected" with all those improvements as my old merchant ID and password don't work anymore, so after another round of breaks (including walking with dogs around backyard) - I am able to set up my new user name and password.

Finally I am let inside my new super duper over-secured merchant account only to find out that That's all! I am inside, but I am not allowed to do anything - not even see my personal info, not to mention my products.

Obviously I am not authorized to view my own merchant account because for sure I am breaking some of those newest super-duper efficient security measures, and no doubt breaking also Geneva's peace conventions, not to mention main guidelines of NATO's Supreme Command and a couple of Helsinki's pacts - and everything about me has been documented including my age, sex (yes, I do like it!), location, eating habits (yes, I do eat in front of my computer!), size of my shoes, and matter I haven't washed my hands before I came back to keyboard after playing with my dogs while I was waiting for their page to appear on my screen.

Besides, how do I ever dare to want something from them when they already have my money and number of my Credit card!

After I finally gave up and I wrote a support ticket to them - which went happily ignored for next 28 hours till I was able to fix it by myself next day repeating laboriously all steps again with another ID and another password (obviously my personal name is not liked here in North America) - I attempted to download one .exe file but my favorite monster download program Go!zilla had obviously more important things to do than to be bothered by some boring download.

So I right clicked and attempted to save file through my browser which did at least show me open envelope icon which means in Microsoftese doing "something", but disappeared after few seconds without giving me choice where I actually want this thing to reside on my computer - apparently got lost somewhere inside final frontiers of cyber-space where no human being ever been yet.

3 minutes after my Internet connection was gleefully cut off for 28th time, my computer delivered me another one of it's favorites: Not enough memory!

Not enough memory…?

Right! Evidently that is too much to ask from Pentium III machine, with 550 MHz processor, 128 MB of RAM and 40 GB Hard- drive to run 2 browsers and 2 Notepads simultaneously. How do I dare? I can type, or cut and paste, don't I?

I gave up before blue screen of computer death kicked in.

At least I have a motivation to go for a High speed access… - so I can get my error messages and computer "surprises" much faster!

One of these days….

Copyright © Dagmar Rakos

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