I’m in Hollywood

After having lunch, Virginia took two women to go out for a walk, and Eric got into the study with Chris.

"Just like Emily's reaction seems to be wrong, she wouldn't be embarrassed to hear about the marriage?" Eric sat down at the desk and asked curiously.

Chris shook his head and smiled. "Maybe because they are pregnant. When you told me this news, I talked to Emily about something," Chris said, shook his head helplessly. Obviously, the result was not very good. I quickly changed the subject: "What about you, what happened in Europe, how big is it?"

Eric simply told Chris about the situation in Europe Disneyland.

After listening to Chris, he began to shake his head: "The $1 billion budget has expanded to $5.5 billion. It is really out of control. If it is still not profitable after the rectification, what are you going to do?

Eric shrugged: "That must be supported. This project is related to the rice bowl of 30,000 people, and it consumes so many resources in the French capital. If I dare to shut down, it will be like tearing my face with France."

Chris nodded and agreed with Eric. Because of the sudden closure of Euro Disney, these days Chris also consulted some information about European Disneyland.

The French capital was not only sold to Disney's land equivalent to one-fifth of the city of Paris in the ultra-low land price of the 1970s, but also provided more than one billion dollars in project subsidies. In addition, the French capital has even built a high-speed railway between the city of Paris and Disneyland. This is another billions of dollars in investment. All of this stems from the optimistic outlook for the European Disneyland, which consumes such a huge amount of public resources, if Disney dares to retreat because the park's profits are not as good as expected. In the face of public opinion pressure, the French capital has only completely turned face with Disney.

"Michael Eisner's ability is unquestionable, but from his last few years of action in Disney, he has been completely stunned by Disney's success, if Michael Eisner continues to control Disney. It wouldn't be a good thing for Disney, but from his series of moves to the world. He seems to calm down again," Chris remembered Michael Eisner, who started the Disneyland project. Can't help but rate it.

Eric recalled a bit, but it seems to be the case. In the mid-to-late 1990s, the market value of Disney is still rising. But that is only because of the general trend of the overall economic situation in the United States, Disney's profit has been declining year after year, and the abc TV station of huge capital mergers has also become a drag on the Disney Group, and raised the debt ratio of Disney to a rather dangerous. Value.

It was just after Michael Eisner stepped down that the big film company was revived through a series of reforms by successor Robert Eiger.

At the moment, Michael Eisner has been driven out of Disney by Eric to go to the world. It can be said that Michael Eisner and Disney are both good things. Disney can let go of Michael Eisner's constraints and continue to develop rapidly. Calm down Michael Eisner can also start a new career on the global platform.

In the current Hollywood. Eric feels that there are not too many people with outstanding ability. Most of the directors of several major film companies are obsessed with the lack of progress. In the 1990s, Eric was impressed by several big film company executives. There are currently only three people, Barry Diller, Jeffrey Kasenberg and Michael Eisner.

Judging from the current information, Barry Diller’s chances of acquiring Paramount are extremely low. The Hollywood tycoon’s return to Hollywood is not an easy task. Kasenberg remains in Disney, Eric is not It will be like the original Michael Eisner. Casting Carlsenberg out of Disney, then it seems. His biggest rival in Hollywood will undoubtedly be Michael Eisner.

"I heard that Steve Rose is going to die?" Thinking about this, Eric suddenly came up with a sentence.

Chris had some doubts, but he nodded. "It should not last this year."

"Without the suppression of Steve Rose, Warner’s already fierce internal disputes are estimated to be exposed on the table. Such Warner is certainly not able to compete with the fireflies. In the future, the biggest enemy of fireflies in Hollywood is estimated. Globally."

"Listen to your tone, you don't seem to hate Michael Eisner?"

"There is no hate or hate, but I have always admired the ability of outstanding people, and opponents are also a good thing, otherwise life is too boring," Eric Truth said, he is very clear about his current Everything that I have is derived from the golden fingers that pass through, so I am very impressed by the tycoons who have no gold fingers to rely on but can make a difference.

After chatting about some Hollywood trivia, Eric remembered what Chris had just said at noon and asked: "Don't you say that there is good news for me, what is it?"

"Can you go online here?" Chris smiled and stood up and asked.

Eric nodded and immediately understood: "Is there a result?"

"Yes, wait a minute," Chris said with a smile, then walked out of the study and quickly got a laptop back from the car.

Eric pushed the Apple notebook on the desk to the side, pulled the cable and pulled it over. When he saw Chris open the notebook, he was surprised: "Is this the ibm thinkpad?"

The famous thinkpad series antique machine.

Eric vaguely remembers not long ago in the magazine to see that ibm is about to launch its own notebook series to compete with Apple. I didn’t expect it to be released, and it’s still a thinkpad series. In the past, because of the acquisition of IBM’s notebook business by Lenovo, Eric also I bought a thinkpad laptop and estimated that the thinkpad brand is the longest-lived laptop series.

"thinkpad700c. I just sold it a while ago, I bought one for trial, the configuration is similar to Apple's k. But this notebook is loaded with the latest 3.1 system of windows, I think it is much simpler to operate than the Mac. Chris said that because Firefly's investment focuses on investing in high-tech fields related to computers and networks, Chris has spent a lot of time researching this knowledge in order to be able to participate more deeply.

Some familiar windows interface appeared in front of you, and Eric saw the eye-catching e icon from the light blue background.

Chris skillfully connected the laptop to the Internet. Seeing that Eric has started to operate the mouse click on the software shortcut, he smiled and explained: "This is the software logo they designed according to the drawings you gave. Currently this software is still an alpha version of the internal test, user-oriented beta. The beta version will be released at the end of November, and the official version will wait until next year after the user's testing and feedback, and make appropriate adjustments before releasing."

Listen to Chris's words. Eric has connected to the Internet and has opened a graphical interface browser that appeared two years ahead of the original time and space. After a short load, the gray-tone browser interface appears on the screen. The border on the upper left of the software is the eye-catching ‘explorer’ logo, followed by the menu bar, forward and backward shortcut icons, and the address bar.

When the home page is loaded, the page that surprised Eric appears again.

"I don't think Yahoo's homepage is complete."

Chris nodded and shook his head again: "If it's just a simple directory collection site, it won't take long, but the plan you gave is more than that. The team is currently testing and optimizing the engine algorithms for search functions. They also think that this feature will be one of Yahoo's core technologies, so it is very cautious. What you see is just the test server we set up. At present, we collect and organize about 8,000 websites, which are divided into news, finance, and Science and technology, education and other sectors."

Eric opened several websites in the catalog and tried it. The opening speed was very smooth. Moreover, the homepage designed by Yahoo’s team also followed the design idea that Eric gave the introduction, and it was not like Eric. Past life saw the boring information of those portals. However, Eric also knows. The root cause is that the current technical conditions are not up to those. I think that here, Eric once again looked at the homepage. Although it is very simple, I always feel that something is missing.

"Picture, yes, the website can't be all text, should there be pictures?" Eric said, and he opened several websites at random, and he saw the pictures on other people's website pages.

Chris seems a little surprised, but quickly explained: "I thought you wouldn't pay attention to this, IE's management is currently negotiating with a company called compuserve, plans to acquire this company, I was going to be related next time. The document is for you."

“compuserve?” Eric read it, but couldn’t remember the name of the company: “What do they do, is it related to the picture?”

Chris nodded. "This company has developed a picture format that is very suitable for the current slow Internet speed of the Internet. It can compress the picture 50% without losing the image quality. The picture format name. Called rchangeformat, everyone generally calls it gif. You just saw several images used on the website, most of which use this image format."

Eric heard the name of the gif image and immediately understood it.

Too familiar!

Chris saw Eric's obvious eyebrows, some doubts paused, or continued: "Ie's team intends to acquire this company, then optimize the algorithm of the gif image format again, and Apply for relevant patents and then promote them with the IE browser as a carrier."

Although Chris did not point out, Eric quickly understood that the promotion of an image format with ie as a carrier would certainly encourage a large number of websites to actively use this format. And this algorithm format has been applied for a patent, then other companies want to use gif image format algorithm for commercial software development work, certainly get the authorization of IE, which forms a technical barrier that can block most technologies Insufficient companies enter the browser field, and even a powerful software company like Microsoft has to circumvent this technical barrier to develop a graphical interface browser that can display images in gif format, which certainly consumes a lot of time and Money for technical public relations, in the era of technology explosion, even if it is a few weeks behind, may have to be far away from competitors, let alone months or years.

"Right, is the software patent application for the IE kernel?"

Chris nodded. "Of course we can apply for it. Tim Berners-Lee also agreed to promote the World Wide Web with appropriate technical standards for IE. However, many technologies are still free and open, so we have to bypass us. Patents are not too difficult. What we can do is to set up some technical barriers in related applications, such as the gif format."

Eric heard this and suddenly regretted it.

Chris comforted: "However, as long as we maintain the technical and time advantage, we can still maintain the leading position, not to mention, IE does not charge, say, IE's team does not understand this, they think this software Great, if you can do business, it will definitely bring a lot of profits."

"This is what I promised Tim Berners-Lee, you are there," Eric said. He is not too concerned about the profit of IE software sales. The key is a huge potential user base: "And In the future, you will understand the benefits of doing this."

"I hope," Chris didn't say anything more. The number of Internet users around the world is currently only 20 million, far less than the number of personal computers. Therefore, Chris did not feel too distressed to give up the software sales profits of IE.

After reading the results of Yahoo and IE, Eric asked: "The online e-mail service, to be honest, in fact, I am still looking forward to this, with online e-mail, many things are more convenient to communicate. ”

Chris shrugged: "There is no way to show you the ail. The chief engineer named Steve Mitnick is a perfectionist paranoid. I have asked a few times that I have not blocked the core program of ail. It was written, but the guy felt that the security performance of the system was not good enough. He had been conducting closed tests on the server assumed inside the company. I only tried it when I went to the hotmail headquarters in Cambridge last time."

Eric laughed: "Another paranoia called Steve!"

Chris knew that Eric was referring to Steve Jobs, and he smiled and said: "Yeah, but this is also good as an online communication tool. If the security performance is not guaranteed, it will definitely cause problems. So I I let the guy let go of it repeatedly, I heard that he is still a very powerful hacker." (To be continued)