After lunch, Virginia took the two women out for a walk, and Eric and Chris got into the study together.
"Emily's reaction just now seems to be a little bit wrong, isn't she embarrassed to hear the topic of marriage before?" Eric sat down at the desk and asked curiously.
Chris shook his head and said with a smile: "Maybe it's because they're pregnant. When you told me the news, I talked to Emily about something," Chris said, shaking his head helplessly , obviously the result was not very good, so he quickly changed the subject: "What about you, what's going on in Europe? There's such a big commotion?"
Eric briefly told Chris about the situation in Euro Disneyland.
Chris also began to shake his head after listening: "The budget of one billion dollars has expanded to five and a half billion dollars, which is indeed out of control. If you still can't make profits after the rectification, what are you going to do
Eric shrugged and said: "That has to be sustained. This project is related to the jobs of 30,000 people, and consumes so many resources of the French government. If I dare to shut it down, it will be tantamount to tearing face off with France."
Chris nodded and agreed with Eric's opinion. Because of the sudden closure of Euro Disney, Chris has also inquired about ￥⊙ and related information about Euro Disney these days.
The French government not only sold a land equivalent to one-fifth of the area of Paris to Disney at an ultra-low land price in the 1970s, but also provided more than one billion US dollars in project subsidies. In addition, the French government even built a high-speed railway between downtown Paris and Disneyland, which is another multi-billion dollar investment. And all this stems from the optimism about the prospect of Euro Disneyland, which consumes such a huge amount of public resources. If Disney dares to retreat because the park’s profitability is not as expected. Facing the pressure of public opinion. The French government had no choice but to completely turn against Disney.
"Michael Eisner's ability is unquestionable, but judging from his actions in the last few years of Disney, he has been completely dazzled by Disney's success. If Michael Eisner continues to control Disney , it will not be a good thing for Disney, but judging from the series of actions he went to Universal, he seems to have calmed down again," Chris thought of Michael Eisner who initiated the Disneyland project. Can't help but comment.
Eric recalled a little, and it seems that this is the case. In the middle and late 1990s of the original time and space, although Disney's market value was still rising, it was only because of the general trend when the overall economic situation in the United States improved. Disney's profit However, it has been declining year after year, and the abc TV station acquired by a huge sum of money has also become a drag on the Disney Group, and it has increased Disney's debt ratio to a very dangerous value.
It was after Michael Eisner stepped down that Disney revitalized this major film company through a series of reform measures implemented by his successor leader Robert Iger.
Right now Michael Eisner was kicked out of Disney by Eric and went to Universal. It can be said that it is a good thing for both Michael Eisner and Disney. Disney can let go of Michael Eisner's constraints. Continue to develop rapidly. Michael Eisner, who has calmed down, can also start to make another career with Universal as a platform.
In the current Hollywood, Eric feels that there are not too many people with outstanding abilities. Most of the directors of several major film companies are more conservative than aggressive. Although, there are only three people at present, Barry Diller, Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner.
Judging from the current information, the possibility of Barry Diller acquiring Paramount is extremely low. It will not be easy for the Hollywood tycoon to return to Hollywood. Katzenberg still stays at Disney. Katzenberg will be forced out of Disney just like Michael Eisner did in the past. From this point of view, his biggest competitor in Hollywood will undoubtedly be Michael Eisner.
"I heard that Steve Ross is dying?" Thinking of this, Eric suddenly said.
Chris was a little puzzled, but nodded: "It shouldn't last this year."
"Without the suppression of Steve Ross, Warner's already fierce internal disputes will probably be exposed on the table. Such a Warner will definitely not be able to compete with Firefly. In the future, Firefly's biggest enemy in Hollywood will probably be the around the world."
"Judging from your tone, you don't seem to hate Michael Eisner?"
"It doesn't matter whether you hate it or not, but I have always admired people with outstanding abilities, and it's a good thing to have an opponent, otherwise life would be too boring," Eric said truthfully, he knew very well what he was currently facing. Everything I own is obtained by relying on the golden fingers of time travel, so I admire those tycoons who can dominate the world without relying on golden fingers.
After chatting about Hollywood trivia, Eric remembered what Chris said when he came here at noon, and asked, "Didn't you say you have good news for me? What is it?"
"Can you access the Internet here?" Chris stood up with a smile and asked.
Eric nodded and immediately understood: "Is there a result?"
"Yeah, wait a minute," Chris said with a smile, then walked out of the study and quickly returned with a laptop from the car.
Eric pushed his Apple notebook on the desk aside, pulled out the network cable and pulled it over. Seeing Chris open the notebook, he was a little surprised and said, "Is this an IBM ThinkPad?"
The famous thinkpad series antique machine ah.
Eric vaguely remembered seeing in a magazine not long ago that ibm was about to launch its own series of notebook computers to compete with Apple, but he did not expect it to be released, and it was still the ThinkPad series. In his previous life, because the notebook business of ibm was acquired by Lenovo, Eric also I bought a thinkpad laptop, and it is estimated that the thinkpad brand is the longest-existing laptop series.
"Thinkpad 700c, just released not long ago, I bought one for trial use. The configuration is similar to Apple's powerbook. But this notebook is loaded with the latest Windows 3.1 system. I think it is much easier to operate than Apple's ,” Chris said, because Firefly Investment focuses on investing in computer and network-related high-tech fields, in order to be able to participate in it at a deeper level, Chris also spent a lot of thought on researching knowledge in this area.
Some familiar windows interface appeared in front of him, and Eric found the eye-catching e icon on the light blue background desktop at a glance.
Chris skillfully connected the laptop to the Internet cable, saw that Eric had already started to operate the mouse and clicked the software shortcut key, and explained with a smile: "This is the software logo they designed according to the drawing you gave. At present, this software is still The alpha version for internal testing and the beta test version for users will be released at the end of November, and the official version will not be released until next year after user testing and feedback, and appropriate adjustments."
Listening to what Chris said, Eric has connected to the Internet and opened this graphical interface browser that appeared two years earlier than the original time and space. After a brief loading, the browser interface mainly in gray tone appears on the screen. On the upper left border of the software is the eye-catching 'inter explorer' logo, and below it are the menu bar, shortcut icons such as forward and backward, and the address bar.
When the homepage was loaded, the page that surprised Eric appeared again.
"Unexpectedly, Yahoo's homepage was also completed."
Chris nodded. He shook his head again: "If it's just a simple directory collection website, it won't take long. But the plan you gave is more than that. The team is currently testing and optimizing the engine algorithm of the search function. They also feel that this Function will be one of the core technologies of Yahoo, so be very cautious. What you see is only the test server we set up. At present, we have collected and organized more than 8,000 websites, divided into news, finance, technology, education and other sections .”
Eric clicked on several websites in the directory and tried them, and the opening speed was very smooth. Moreover, the homepage designed by the Yahoo team also followed the brief and clear design ideas given by Eric, not like Eric In the previous life, I saw those portal websites full of redundant information. However, Eric also knew that the root cause was that the current technical conditions could not meet those. Thinking of this, Eric looked at the homepage again. Although it was very simple, he always felt that something.
"Pictures, by the way, the website can't be full of text, there should be pictures?" Eric said, and opened a few websites at random, and he saw pictures on other people's website pages.
Chris seemed a little surprised, but quickly explained: "I thought you wouldn't pay attention to this. The management of ie is currently negotiating with a company called Puserve, planning to acquire this company. I originally planned to report the related The file was given to you."
"Puserve?" Eric read it again, but couldn't remember the name of the company at all: "What do they do, is it related to pictures?"
Chris nodded: "This company has developed a picture format that is very suitable for the current slow Internet speed. It can compress pictures by 50% without losing image quality at all. The name of this picture format is It’s called graphics interchange format, which is generally called gif, and you just saw pictures used on several websites, most of them use this picture format.”
When Eric heard the name of the gif image, he immediately understood it.
So familiar!
Chris saw Eric's obviously raised eyebrows, paused with some doubts, and continued: "After the ie team plans to acquire this company, it will optimize the algorithm of the gif image format again, and Apply for relevant patents, and then use the ie browser as a carrier to promote."
Although Chris didn't point it out, Eric quickly understood that the promotion of an image format using ie as the carrier will definitely prompt a large number of websites to actively use this format. And this algorithm format has been applied for a patent, so other companies who want to use the gif image format algorithm to develop commercial software must obtain the authorization of IE, which forms a technical barrier that can block most technologies Companies with insufficient strength enter the browser field, and even a powerful software company like Microsoft must spend a lot of time and money to bypass this layer of technical barriers and develop a graphical interface browser that can display gif format pictures. Money for technology public relations, in the era of technological explosion, even if you are a few weeks behind, you may be far behind by competitors, let alone months or years.
"By the way, have you applied for a software patent on the IE kernel?"
Chris nodded: "Of course we have applied for those who can apply. Tim Berners-Lee also promised to favor the technical standards of IE when promoting the World Wide Web. However, many technologies are still free and open, so we have to bypass our It is not too difficult to patent, what we can do is to set up some technical barriers on the surrounding related applications, such as the gif format just now.”
Eric felt a little regretful when he heard this.
Chris comforted: "However, as long as we maintain our technological and time advantages, we can still maintain our leading position. What's more, ie does not charge. Speaking of which, the ie team doesn't understand this. They feel that this software It’s fantastic, and if it can be run commercially, it will definitely bring in a lot of profits.”
"This is what I promised Tim Berners Lee, and you are here," Eric said. He didn't care too much about the profits of IE software sales. The key is the huge potential user base: "And , in the future you will understand the benefits of my doing so."
"I hope," Chris didn't say anything more. There are only 20 million Internet users in the world, which is far lower than the number of personal computers. Therefore, Chris doesn't feel too distressed about giving up the profit of IE software sales.
After reading the results of Yahoo and IE, Eric asked: "What about the online email service? To be honest, I am looking forward to this more. With online email, many things are much more convenient to communicate. "
Chris shrugged: "I can't show you this one. The chief engineer of hotmail named Steve Mitnick is a perfectionist paranoid. I asked several times but it didn't stop me. The core program of hotmail It has been written a long time ago, but that guy felt that the security performance of the system was not good enough, so he has been conducting a closed test on a hypothetical server within the company, and I only tried it when I went to the hotmail headquarters in Cambridge last time."
Eric laughed: "Another paranoid named Steve!"
Knowing that Eric was referring to Steve Jobs, Chris also laughed and said, "Yeah, but that's fine, as hotmail is an online communication tool, if the security performance is not guaranteed, there will definitely be problems. So I just let that guy go back and forth, I heard he is still a very good hacker.” (To be continued..)