Chapter 865： turn down

Because of leaving Las Vegas, Eric did not bother to leave the two girls alone in the city of sin, and simply sent them to the plane to Los Angeles at the airport, which took the flight with the Firefly Group. The plane rushed to Maryland.

It was nearly two o'clock last night, and Eric began to feel up after the plane took off. Once again, the Gulfstream business jet had arrived in Maryland.

Maryland, located on the east coast of the United States, is adjacent to Washington, DC, and is not too large, only tens of thousands of square kilometers. Looking down from the porthole of the plane, you can see a lot of lush green woodland and farmland, and the landform seems to be closer to the hills, rather than the plains of a plain.

Although it was departing from Las Vegas at 8:00 am, it was already three o'clock in the afternoon when it landed at Frederick City Airport in northern Maryland four hours later.

The Frederick City Airport is small in size, has no fences, and is completely open. There are only two runways in the airport, and most of the parked moorings are just mini-propellers.

After the plane stopped on the runway, Eric walked down the ramp, wearing a cowboy hat and wearing a simple Jeffrey, who had already greeted Chris and others. At first glance, Jeffrey seemed to be thinner. However, the spirit is obviously more embarrassing. If you ride the horse on the left wheel at this time, it is obviously the appearance of a western old cowboy.

Just approaching, Jeffrey gave Eric a big bear hug without hesitation: "Hey, Eric, you are finally here."

"Yeah, there are always too many things," Eric explained, taking a picture on Jeffrey's back and laughing: "Jeffrey, you look younger."

Jeffrey also smiled humbly: "Haha, everyone thinks so."

Simply chilling a few words, Eric hugged with Chris again, ridiculed: "It is the day after tomorrow, how is it?"

"It's numb," Chris laughed and laughed at himself. He introduced the two young men behind him and Jeffrey, his cousin.

Eric shook hands with two young people who were quite restrained by his peers. Chris said: "Everyone is waiting for you on the farm, let's go."

Eric nodded, with his assistant Peter Ritchie and four bodyguards, respectively, leaving the airport to go to Jeffrey's farm in four cars that Chris had driven.

Drive north along the highway that crosses Frederick City. From the ground, the surrounding hills and lands are more obvious. The woodland and farmland are intertwined. It is the early summer season, and the pieces are full of vitality. Feeling refreshed. Half an hour later, a few cars left the highway and walked less than five kilometers east to reach the destination. There was a small farm with about a dozen families, and the farm was surrounded by Jeffrey’s farm. The area is about 2,000 acres, equivalent to eight square kilometers.

Along the way, Jeffrey was excited to introduce the farm, saying that it is a farm. In fact, only a quarter of the land is planted with crops such as wheat, in addition to some dense woodland, others are In the pasture, many horses, cattle and sheep can be seen in the distance. The dozens of residents in the farm are basically farm workers and tenants.

At the entrance to the farm, there are more than a dozen people standing on the asphalt road. After Eric got off the bus, he probably recognized more than half of them. Joanna, Virginia, and Emily stood together, and of course three. Little guys, others are John Chambers, Steve Case, Jorma Ollila, Ian Gnair, and other high-level fireflies. Others, it’s estimated that they should be Chris and Amy. Relatives of both sides.

Everyone was just chilling, and a little figure shouted that Dad had rushed over. In the laughter of all the different expressions, Eric did not evade, and kissed Emma with relatives and asked: "There has been no naughty recently. ?"

"No, Emma is very embarrassed," the little guy glared at Eric's neck and said: "I also learned to ride a horse. Dad, let's go riding together."

"Oh, Emma is awesome, but it can't be done now," Eric boasted, handing the little guy to Joanna, who came over, and it was with everyone, and by the way, I met Emily's parents and grams. Other relatives of the Reese family.

Most of the guests will come on the wedding day. The guests at the farm are not too many. They talked for more than ten minutes and everyone dispersed. Jeffrey’s house is on the east side of the farm, Eric and Jeffrey and others. Walk towards the residence together.

All the way to Kevin, who came from Virginia, passed by the farm center. Eric noticed that a group of people who were obviously agents were checking around, curiously looking at Chris, John Chambers and others. Certainly, there will be some security, but it should definitely not be so arrogant.

Eric didn't need to speak, Chris understood his doubts and explained: "The president and the couple will come over, these are the Secret Service people."

Eric raised his eyebrows slightly: "What did you invite?"

Chris shook his head and said: "I got a call from the White House three days ago. I said that the President and the 20th are just free. Washington is very close to here. So, you understand, I can't refuse."

Eric smiled and didn't say anything.

In addition to corporate executives such as John Chambers who have already arrived, due to Chris’s recent years of business, on the wedding day, there will be heavyweight business executives such as Warren Buffett who will come to Chris’s wedding. . At that time, the business executives gathered in this small farm, just the firefly system, control the enterprises with total assets of more than 200 billion US dollars. The two people in the White House can even attend other people as long as they donate a Zhengzhi contribution. The activities will naturally not let go of this opportunity to exert their influence.

Although Eric will not completely disengage from politics, he will not be too active to make contact with the top management. However, the other party took the initiative to join in, and it would not refuse. It has no relationship with the president and there is no harm to the fireflies.

Many American tycoons have the habit of buying land as a farmer. In the media industry, CNN's major shareholder, Ted Turner, is one of the largest private farmers in the United States, with tens of thousands of square kilometers of private land. Jeffrey’s farm was also taken from a merchant. The other party used to be a summer resort. Therefore, this farmhouse for living has a very fine masonry villa, which not only looks good. Beautiful, and the biggest feature is that the room is particularly large, more than ten or twenty guests are more than enough.

However, at this time the villa was mainly home to the relatives of both Chris and Emily, and John Chambers and others were arranged in several other houses.

Eric naturally belongs to the family level as well, so the same house is the Jeffrey family.

After being fully settled, the time is already late.

The day after tomorrow is the wedding. There are still a lot of trivial things to be prepared tomorrow. In the evening, everyone just gathered together and they will rest early.

Although I want to get rid of busy business for a while, it is not too easy.

Early the next morning, it happened to be a new week. Eric just got up and had no time to eat breakfast. Peter Ritchie sent a document together with several newspapers specially marked.

It turned out that after nearly a month of review, the Federal Court of San Francisco, California officially rejected the request of Sony, EMI, and BMG to ban the MP3 audio format player. The official press conference will be officially held at nine o'clock in the US West today, but the news has been revealed in advance and has landed on important pages of major US newspapers.

Less than two months after its launch, Firefly's Fireflyer has sold 250,000 units, far more than the speed of portable players such as Walkman and MD Walkman, and this is due to limited Fireflyer capacity.

Thanks to the wide-ranging social influence of Fireflyer's hot sale and the use of hunger marketing, everyone realizes the huge potential of the Fireflyer player to replace the mainstream portable player, so starting from several joint lawsuits by Sony, The entire music industry is closely watching the possible reaction of the federal court in San Francisco.

Chris also got up early and got the news.

Just after seven o'clock, Eric and Chris stepped on the path around the farm and looked at the lawsuit filed by the Federal Court of San Francisco on dismissing the three Sony companies.

After reading a few thin pages of documents, Chris rolled the paper up in his hand, and said to Eric: "Sony will not be reconciled. Although the case is dismissed, they will not go to a higher level. The federal courts submitted the same lawsuits to be useless, but they will certainly find other breakthroughs."

The Sony Group currently has more than $50 billion in market capitalization. Most of it is supported by portable music players and related affiliates. It is certainly impossible for Sony to give up the Fireflyer so easily.

Eric is not too worried. From this lawsuit, it can be seen that the United States is the home of fireflies. Even if Sony finds a breakthrough, it will be weakened by its own away game.

"Actually, if I am out of the well, I will immediately give up this unnecessary action that is bound to fail, and decisively promote the development of digital music players. Although we have already taken a big advantage, if Sony has enough determination, Still able to pose a threat to us."

Chris said: "Maybe I’m going to have such an idea, but he wants to push the implementation of the specific program is difficult. Sony’s corporate structure is too fragmented, the hardware department has the interests of the hardware department, and the entertainment department has The interests of the entertainment sector, and the desire to sacrifice the interests of either party to promote industrial upgrading will only be strongly rebounded by internal conservative forces, so this is basically impossible."

Eric smiled and looked at Chris and said, "Do you think that my layout of fireflies is too distracting?"

Chris didn't answer this question directly, just said: "Victor and Bill have told me more than once that I want to return the online music store to Firefly Electronics."

Eric asked: "What do you mean?"

Chris said: "Yahoo is only about 50 million registered users in North America. The number of users who use the Yahoopay platform to implement online payment is more than 5 million. This is the online music store that can sell 1 million in 5 days. The basis of the first song, if Firefly Electronics is to do it alone, it may only be a waste of years in terms of user development, and it is a long way to achieve stable revenue."

Yahoo's registered user resources began to accumulate almost since the release of IE browsers and portals in 1992. It took five years for users to grow to 50 million. The large registered user base is also Yahoo's most valuable resource. If Firefly Electronics operates an online music store alone, Yahoo has no reason to open its own user resources to Firefly Electronics without reservation.

Chris is obviously more thorough than Firecracker's Victor McNealy and Bill Olsen. Or, Victor McNealy and Bill Olson are aware of this, but as managers of Firefly Electronics, they are only instinctively more inclined to fight for more benefits for their own companies, even if these benefits will even Block the overall development trend of the firefly system.

Speaking more seriously, selfishness is the nature of all people, and this is impossible to change even at the end of the world.

Shaking his head slightly, Eric said: "I don't talk about this for a while, how is the operation in Southeast Asia?"

Chris said: "The opening of the warehouse is nearing completion. We are probably able to establish a short position of $3 billion, most of which are semi-annual foreign exchange contracts."

It is now in late May, and there is only one month left before the international hot money attack on the Southeast Asian monetary system. The short position of the entire Southeast Asian monetary system may have exceeded 100 billion US dollars. The $700 million builds a $3 billion position, which is only about 4 times leveraged. Although I did not meet Eric's expectations, he also knew that it was not easy to achieve this level in the case of the wolves.

When I mentioned this, Eric remembered Apple's business and said: "There is one more thing. I met Larry Ellison the night before. He is currently raising money to buy Apple. I think this is a good opportunity. So, I promised to invest a part, um, about $300 million, which is the money in the foreign exchange market."

There was a slight flash in Cris's expression, but it quickly returned to calm. After all, this is not the first unexpected investment by Eric.

However, he still said: "About Larry Ellison wants to acquire Apple, the news has been heard more than once in the circle, but the other party has not had much substantive action. He and Apple's founder history Tiff Jobs is a very good friend and always wants to let the other person re-direct the company. However, Chris shrugged with a smile and said: "Eric, although I don't know what you think, I still It is not recommended that you do this. Although it is hampered by the anti-monopoly case, Microsoft will not kill Apple. However, with the current strong position of Windows system, it is difficult for Apple to have too much power unless it actively falls to the Windows camp. There is room for development."

"In fact, I am more optimistic about the return of Jobs, so I promised to invest this money. Perhaps you also know that Jobs is a paranoid, I always think that paranoia is always easier to succeed than others," Eric explained: " Moreover, Apple’s own fixed assets are still very large, and we will not lose too much even if it is really bankrupt in the future.”

Chris nodded and said, "Well, I have recently taken the time to pay attention to this matter."

Eric tweeted: "So, you really don't plan to go honeymoon with Emily?"

Chris shook his eyes around and smiled. "The scenery here is good. We are going to stay here for two weeks after the wedding. It is a honeymoon and you can accompany your father."

The two chatted like this, and they unknowingly strolled to the end of the path. In front of the dense woods, there are said to be wild boars, and certainly can’t go anymore. Just turned around and there were few cloths. Joanna’s sister, Eva Pakula, waved to them from afar. It seemed that she had to eat breakfast. Eric and Chris stepped up and returned to the farm.