Rebirth of the Tech Madman

Since last year, British Prime Minister John Major went to China for the construction of the new airport in Hong Kong, holding his nose, and became the first head of government among Western countries to visit bj in the latest round of sanctions. The current Hong Kong Governor Wilson Wilson has finally settled the bill.

On New Year's Day this year, 57-year-old Wilson was on the list of honors and was named a noble for life.

This honor is of course a great thing. In life, who can really transcend fame and fortune, not to mention it is also an affirmation of Wilson.

It's just that the intriguing situation arises. Normally speaking, after the first term of office, the Governor will usually be renewed by the British government as an affirmation of his political achievements. Wilson, who is still a few years away from the 60-year retirement age set by the British Foreign Office, should receive this re-appointment after he was awarded the honor. However, 10 Downing Street announced that his term as the Governor of Hong Kong will end this year. .

What is even more imaginative is that at the time this decision was made, the candidates for the next governor were not announced.

In other words, Wilson was taken by the British Prime Minister John Major.

In the process of calling Tang Huan, the dissatisfaction and irritation of this old man were beyond restraint.

It seems that for the remaining few years before Xiangjiang’s return, Tang Huan sighed secretly, and instead comforted Wilson, who was the last Hong Kong governor whose dreams were broken, "This is the end, then face reality." Right. If you are unwilling to continue to hold public office, I still have many positions in the UK waiting for you to help. For example, the chairman of the Chelsea club, not necessarily worse than the Hong Kong Governor."

After being so teased by the richest man, Wilson finally didn't lose his mind so much, and after another conversation, he hung up the phone.

Tang Huan shook his head, the temple's small Yin and windy Xiangjiang, for the time being, he didn't need to worry about it. He had better arrange the United States first and then talk about other things.

…

From Christmas in the West in 1991 to the Lunar New Year in 1992—February 4th, Tang Huan focused his energy on dealing with network resources—for example, the activities of the "Hundred People's Association" organized by the Chinese-American elite in the United States. .

Since the 70-year-old Wang An died of esophageal cancer on March 24 of the previous year, the richest man in the Chinese circle has inevitably lost an equal it partner with a common topic. Fortunately, Wangan Computer Company did not go bankrupt as it did in the original time and space. It has a remarkable business in the fields of personal computers, workstations, and office equipment.

Taking the opportunity of the event, Tang Huan launched an advocacy, that is, starting this year, specifically to provide guidance and help for the conflicts that Chinese business people may encounter in the daily business process.

Of course, it is impossible for the richest man to say so for no reason. There is a background in this.

On March 16th last year, 15-year-old African-American girl Latasha Harris, in a grocery store in Koreatown, Los Angeles, was caught by a 51-year-old Korean-American because she put a bottle of orange juice into her backpack. The shopkeeper Dou Shunzi believed that she was stealing, and the two sides clashed.

Finally, Dou Shunzi, the female shopkeeper, took out a pistol and hit Latasha Harlings in the head at a distance of about one meter. The black girl died on the spot.

During the Los Angeles court trial on November 15, 1991, the jury found Dou Shunzi guilty of intentional homicide and sentenced him to 16 years; however, the presiding female judge Joey Scarlin did not think so, so the sentence was reduced to five. Annual probation, 400 hours of community service, and a fine of 500 dollars; the California Supreme Court upheld the results of Joey Scarlin's trial after accepting an appeal.

The impact of this incident is obvious. It has aggravated the contradiction between African Americans and Korean Americans, and even affected the entire Asian Americans-thinking that everyone is a minority, they will naturally love each other. Wishful thinking. In fact, blacks who have been enslaved by whites for a long time still have a sense of superiority in front of Asians.

Tang Huan’s starting point was based on this incident, which was quite in line with the actual situation, and it could be described as having a definite target, so he passed it smoothly with a voice of approval.

…

After just one year, Intel CEO Andy Grove came to visit.

The research and development plan of intel80486's next-generation microprocessor has reached its fourth year this year, and has finally entered the testing phase.

Originally, Intel planned to call this generation of products intel80586 logically. After all, naming with numbers is a long-standing habit of the entire semiconductor industry. Just like amd, its corresponding x86 architecture compatible microprocessors are am286, am386, etc.

But the problem lies in that Intel wants to register these numbers as trademarks, so that they can only use it by themselves in the future, so as to kick out those competing competitors who ride a ride.

As a result, pure digital trademarks were not allowed, and the plan suddenly fell through. As a result, this new product has never had an official name, and can only be called by the Intel fifth-generation microarchitecture code name p5 for the time being.

Compared with the previous generation of intel80486, the most obvious improvement of p5 is that it supports superscalar architecture and has a breakthrough in parallel execution.

Intel, which puts its treasure on microprocessors, naturally attaches great importance to p5. It was designed by the Santa Clara team that developed intel80386 and intel80486. At first, dozens of engineers participated, but now it has increased to 200 engineers.

According to the plan, if the test is successful, p5 will participate in the exhibition in June this year, and then officially released in September this year.

Andy Grove came this time, in addition to reporting the progress of the project to Tang Huan, who valued the significance of the p5 Fangyuan personal computer, there is also a more important purpose, that is, to use the most advanced manufacturing technology mastered by the richest man. -800nm ​​process and 8-inch wafers, carry out some tests.

You should know that among the CPU products used in personal computers over the years, Intel’s microprocessors have been lagging behind Motorola’s microprocessors in performance, that is, maintaining a good performance-to-power ratio at high operating frequencies. p5 will naturally continue this tradition.

Furthermore, compared with the original time and space, Intel, which provides microprocessors, is in the personal computer ecosystem composed of microprocessor manufacturers, other chip manufacturers, personal computer manufacturers, operating system manufacturers, and application software developers. , Is no longer irreplaceable, Gein provides operating system philosophers, at least supports Motorola, Intel, Wang Xuehong's VIA three CPUs.

In other words, although the Fangyuan personal computer standard has become the industry standard, Fangyuan personal computer and its compatible computers have become the mainstream of the market, and even ibm has surrendered in a sense of current affairs, but Tang Huan did not "knife and gun in the warehouse, let the horse go to the south". Relax the other party's control over the standard of personal computers.

In this case, the market's acceptance of p5 depends on the operating system.

"It's better to wait until other platforms have been tested." The richest man poured cold water on Andy Grove, who was in a good mood.

Due to the increasing complexity, Intel’s x86 family of microprocessors, especially starting from intel80286, have never gone smoothly during the birth process. Basically, they will be officially released due to an unbearable bug. "Bounce tickets."

The richest man, who didn't want his most high-end equipment to be busy for nothing, asked with a slight dissatisfaction: "Why doesn't p5 add native command support for multimedia."

A set of digital multimedia standards formulated by Tang Huan requires hardware support from the underlying architecture in addition to the implementation of the software system to provide the best performance.

"P5 is a brand new micro-architecture. We plan to wait for it to be improved and stabilized before adding support for multimedia commands." Andy Grove explained carefully: "The Haifa R&D team in Israel is doing this. Aspects of work."

"This shows that at the beginning of the design, you did not take into account the native command support for multimedia. The market share can not be seized only by the early launch of the product." Tang Huan unceremoniously criticized.

In the end, Intel’s CEO left in a dingy way.

However, this trip by Andy Grove reminded Tang Huan of an invitation sent by Gates the other day.

Following the release of windows3.0 in 1990, this year Microsoft launched an upgraded version—windows3.1, which mainly added support for basic multimedia devices for sound input and output, such as providing a cd audio player.

This is not the point. What attracts attention is that Microsoft announced that starting from windows3.1, its own operating system began to support the intel_x86 microprocessor branch of Fangyuan personal computers.

This move is not difficult to understand. The market share of ibm-pc compatible machines is shrinking day by day. If Microsoft does not adjust, it will lose its job of operating system. What's more, the current threat of competition from Novell, a developer of network operating systems, has made its head a big deal.

Windows 3.1 will be released on March 18th. Gates invited Tang to attend, which mainly expresses a kind of courtesy of the dock-windows can't pose a threat to philosophers at all, just to make a living and ask for a meal.

Tang Huan has never really relaxed his vigilance against Gates's courage and forbearance. How he greeted ibm in the first place, now he will entertain himself.

It's just that after Fangyuan's personal computer standards dominate the world, users really need to give users one more choice in terms of operating systems to alleviate the pressure from antitrust.

As long as windows is still the 3.x architecture, it is still a "toy", so let it serve as a foil for the time being.

Tang Huan put down the invitation and looked at the itinerary. Before that, he first needed to attend the related activities of AOL ipo.

…

Thanks to the rise of the Internet concept driven by all walks of life, AOL, a money-burning company, is very popular with investors. The preparations for the ipo are very smooth, and the listing time is finally set on Thursday, March 5.

The management of AOL changed a little last year. Tang Huan found a helper for Steve Case, Robert Pittman, and made him the CEO, and Steve Case as the chairman of the board of directors.

Robert Pittman belongs to a market genius, and mtv-Music Television Network started to shine in his hands.

To a certain extent, AOL is operating a media business, and it does require an executive who is well-versed in this field.

On the other hand, Steve Case, a workaholic, is not good at strict enterprise micro-management. As the company grows, he also needs an experienced partner to cooperate.

Not to mention, after the two people got together, a subtle chemical reaction occurred, and the tacit agreement at work was very good, which made the richest man very satisfied.

On March 5, AOL went public as scheduled, with an issue price of US$17.25, which easily raised the planned US$120 million. UU reading www. uukanshu.com

There are naturally reasons why investors are so sought after. In their view, compared with other similar online service companies, AOL’s uniqueness is not its technological advancement, but the user’s non-professional nature. Many people are attracted to it because they still don’t know much about personal computers. In the virtual community of AOL, these people are just real consumers.

Regarding the usefulness of this financing, Steve Case preached ambitiously-mainly used to expand the network capacity of AOL, so that all Americans can get the convenience of Internet services from AOL.

At the subsequent internal conference to celebrate the success of AOL ipo, Steve Case, who already had more than 3 million dollars in paper wealth through the company’s stock, couldn’t restrain his excitement, jumped onto the chair and moved everything. People thanked for a circle, saying that today is the most meaningful day, and wishing this will be one of the many good days in the future.

"Enthusiasm, that's good!" Tang Huan, who took a sip of red wine comfortably while appreciating the lively scene, smiled and thought: "AOL finally didn't have to throw money in by himself, but started to become A rake that can hold money."

…

Next, Tang Huan took a gentle posture and revealed a little bit at the windows 3.1 press conference. He said unselfishly that Microsoft’s software products have brought more to users of Fangyuan’s personal computer platform. Choice and more freedom is a positive industry development signal.

Of course, everyone's true thoughts under the blessed smiling face are unknown.

In addition, Tang Huan received a message at this product launch that Windows 3.1 will launch a simplified Chinese version.