I’m in Hollywood

Eric asked back: Which city do you think is suitable?

Chicago, Paul Albert obviously prepared, replied: Similar to Manchester, Chicago is also an industrialized city. At the same time, due to the gradual decline of heavy industry and the increase in unemployment, the city's class division is very serious, with A large class of poor people.

Then Chicago, Eric nodded in approval, and said: In addition, in terms of the script, I hope that this story will have a stronger dramatic conflict and a strong contrast between morality and reality. So, you need Focusing on highlighting the contrasting and contradictory personalities of the characters in the script, the audience will have a complex emotion that these people are hateful, pitiful, and even cute.

Shameless once gave Eric the greatest feeling that even if life is a pile of shit, it is worth us to continue, but after persistence, life is still a pile of shit.

Speaking of which, most of the TV dramas after Showtime's style matured basically gave people the same feeling.

Countless men and women run blindfolded and blindfolded in scenes of erotic or violent uninhibited lives. They seem to be enviable, but they are always on the verge of collapse. Occasionally, some peace and warmth indicate that a greater collapse is coming. The audience was tortured to death during this process, but they couldn't stop.

Although the production plan of Showtime TV's original three TV series was cut off at one time, Eric only intends to let this TV station launch the TV series Shameless for the time being, and the rest of the time will be produced by a specially selected batch of movie content. filling. Showtime's main work in the second half of the year is still on rearranging the entire TV station's program schedule and formulating a new marketing plan.

The project was formalized after Eric spoke with Shameless screenwriter Paul Ebert.

Showtime's production team and Paul Albert went to Chicago in the next few days to conduct on-the-spot inspections and select suitable locations for script revisions. The casting of the series was also carried out in New York and Los Angeles at the same time.

On the other hand, although the negotiation with Eric broke up unhappy, Damen, as expected, was unwilling to give up the share subscription contract for nothing. Therefore, after all, Microsoft did not immediately turn against Yahoo. Microsoft President Steve Ballmer, who had been appointed as Gates' successor, quickly took over the negotiation work and continued to contact Yahoo.

However, although both parties kept a low profile, with the arrival of July, news about Microsoft's upcoming acquisition of 30% of Yahoo's shares spread rapidly and became the hottest topic in the new technology field that has entered the final crazy stage.

The industry does not know the details of the original forward equity subscription contract, but it can roughly make guesses.

Moreover, a considerable part of the media will focus on this topic on whether the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission will approve this equity transaction. After all, Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop operating system is already very serious, but Yahoo is the company with the largest market share in the emerging Internet industry. If the industrial giants across these two fields join forces, it will definitely form a stronger monopoly power.

Although U.S. Department of Justice officials said at a press conference that they would pay close attention to possible transactions between Microsoft and Yahoo, the two new technology giants, and even intervene or stop them if necessary, the success of AOL and Time Warner There is a precedent for the merger. Although Microsoft has been burdened with a series of antitrust investigations, the industry still generally believes that the transaction between Microsoft and Yahoo is likely to actually happen.

As a result, relevant speculation was quickly reflected in the stock prices of the two giants.

There is usually a very obvious rule in corporate mergers. Once the news of a possible acquisition comes out, the stock price of the party that initiates the acquisition will often fall.

The share price of the acquired company will basically rise sharply.

However, because it is at the cusp of the most turbulent wave of new technology, Microsoft's stock price has not fallen, but the growth rate has slowed down significantly, but Yahoo's stock price has been rapidly increased.

In the first week of July, in the five trading days from July 5th to July 9th, Yahoo’s stock price continued to rise by 27%, and its market value broke through the 200 billion mark from 182.5 billion before the opening of the market on July 5th. , and finally reached 231.7 billion US dollars.

In comparison, Microsoft's stock price rose by only 3.9% during the same week. But in the end, the market value of 588 billion U.S. dollars will still throw off Cisco, which is closely behind.

At the same time, when the Nasdaq index closed on July 9, it also reached a high of 4911 points.

As long as there are no accidents, the Nasdaq index is destined to break through the 5,000-point mark next week.

Faced with the madness of the entire technology stock market, although some investors who were sober-minded and resisted the temptation began to sell and leave the market, it is obvious that most investors in the market have completely lost their minds.

After all, just like the stock price of Yahoo, it only takes one week to invest 100 million US dollars, and a 27% increase in the stock price is enough to bring investors a huge profit of 27 million US dollars. The realized profit target can be reached in only one week. How could investors who have been completely immersed in the bubble of technology stocks and cannot extricate themselves give up willingly.

Even, not only professional investors, due to the strong temptation of stock profits in the new technology market, in recent months, there has been a wave of stock speculation in the United States, which is rarely seen in the history of North America.

You should know that although most middle-class Americans can be regarded as investors, due to the different consumption patterns of residents, Americans usually hold very little cash in their hands, and their investments are basically indirect through pensions and other models. invest.

Under normal circumstances, only the wealthy class with excess cash in their hands will make separate financial investment. But now, countless ordinary Americans have begun to raise funds through various means, and then entered the Nasdaq market without hesitation. In order to obtain more profits in the short term, many wealthy people have used investment leverage on a large scale to expand their own capital as much as possible.

Due to the rapid increase in trading activity in the Nasdaq market, the Clover Fund has accelerated the cash out of 3.36 billion US dollars in the first week of July, and the departure of more than 3.3 billion US dollars of funds did not even cause any waves in the market. The selling orders of the trading studio were quickly digested by the increasingly active demand of the entire market almost immediately.

In the hustle and bustle of the big world, there are always some people who can quietly immerse themselves in their own small world.

Washington DC.

An unmarked Gulfstream V landed at a private airport in suburban Washington on the last day of June.

Two slender figures who had undergone makeup and looked ordinary and could not even see the characteristics of Russian girls got off the plane, and personally moved a complete set of expensive spy equipment in the cabin to a small container truck that had been prepared in advance by the runway of the airport. Then he drove away silently.

During the whole process, no one in the airport, which had been arranged in advance, disturbed the work of the two women. It was not until the truck left the airport that a person in charge of the Firefly Group in Washington, D.C., took a few assistants to the Gulfstream V airliner on the runway of the airport. It was dragged into the hangar for storage, and two additional groups of security guards were sent to guard it in turn.

After more than an hour, the truck arrived at the affluent area of ​​Kalorama not far northwest of downtown Washington, and then drove into a house shaded by green trees. The rich area of ​​Karoma is a gathering area for many wealthy politicians, and the federal judge Thomas Jackson's family happens to live nearby.

After carefully inspecting the house inside and out, the two women began to arrange various equipment. In the evening, in the study room on the second floor of the residential villa, the wiretapping equipment had already intercepted and recorded the first call made by Judge Thomas Jackson.

Mobile phone eavesdropping usually involves eavesdropping methods such as built-in bugs, copying SIM cards, and using walkie-talkie mode at close range, but the most advanced method is to directly intercept the target's mobile phone signal from the communication base station, which is also a common wiretapping mode used by professional spy agencies.

Of course, in the face of eavesdropping equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, this kind of eavesdropping method is completely out of reach for ordinary people, but in front of the powerful Firefly Group, there is no obstacle at all.

Some time ago, after Eric encountered eavesdropping, he immediately replaced the cdma network standard blackberry mobile phone that uses two-way encryption and is more difficult to crack, in order to avoid this most difficult eavesdropping. However, a poor middle-aged judge obviously did not have this kind of vigilance, but used the most popular gsm mobile phone that is most likely to be similarly bugged.

As a result, the twins have begun to easily record the target's mobile phone communications without even using the more dangerous close contact methods.

In the next three days, the twins quickly and accurately figured out the daily behavior and habits of Thomas Jackson's family.

In the middle of the night on the third day, an ordinary Ford SUV was parked in front of an apartment in the Kalorama community. Two nearby street lights 'just happened' to be broken, and they hadn't had time to fix it. The front appears even darker.

Two silent figures deftly opened the locked door, accurately released vaporized tranquilizers into several living bedrooms, and then started their own work.

The middle-aged judge’s watches, mobile phones and other personal belongings were unknowingly replaced. Hidden cameras were installed in the living room, study room, bedroom, etc., and even the soles of several pairs of leather shoes were cut open and bugs were implanted.

The two figures in the darkness left quietly after finally modifying several cars in the Jackson's garage.

Therefore, in the days that followed, every word and every move of the Jackson family was clearly recorded by various electronic instruments in a room in another house in Kalorama.

The twins also skillfully changed several different cars, followed Thomas Jackson for more than twelve hours a day, quietly listening to the middle-aged judge speak in court, cursing a colleague in the bathroom, and at home Perfunctory his wife, flirting with his lover on the phone...

In the chaotic information flow, the twins finally captured the information Eric wanted on the ninth day of monitoring. The head of a lobbying company in Washington made several tests on Thomas Jackson for two consecutive days. Afterwards, the two They met privately in an underground parking lot, and a sixteen-minute video of the meeting was perfectly recorded by the twins' cameras in Jackson's car.

Eric, who had been concerned about the whereabouts of the two girls, immediately ordered the twins to stop after watching the video.

He still took back all the equipment installed around Thomas Jackson in an orderly manner, and watched with his own eyes that several cars used in recent days were dismantled and destroyed before the twins re-boarded the Gulfstream V airliner. The whole process was as if it had never happened Show up at Washington General.

When the twins returned to Los Angeles, it was already July 12, another Monday.

Gulfstream V landed at Ventura Airport, and Eric was already standing by the runway of the airport. He was completely relieved to see the twins get off the plane with his own eyes. Don't do this kind of thing again, the manor hasn't been cleaned for two weeks, and I found a layer of dust in the kitchen yesterday, which is really uncomfortable.

Natasha broke away from Eric's embrace with some embarrassment, and said softly: Master, let's go back and clean up.

Let's take a few days off first, Eric shook his head: I just happen to be able to overcome my cleanliness a little bit.

Um.

After Eric finished speaking, he took Natasha's little hand and said, Let's go, come home with me first.

Natasha grabbed Eric's hand, shook her head and said, Master, we need to do it ourselves for the things on the plane.

Can't tomorrow?

Mr Cromwell said no.

Okay, Eric said helplessly, Then I'll wait for you.

So it was busy again, and it was already evening when I returned to Jianjiao Manor.

Eating the dinner prepared by the twins at night, watching the two girls who didn't even intend to ask him what to do with the video he got, Eric felt a very strange feeling in his heart.

So after a good inspection that night, I was sure that the girl in my arms was a real person, not a machine.

According to the information in the video, entering this most critical week, Eric did not make any further arrangements, and even canceled Yahoo's second quarter financial report that was originally planned to be released in advance, and patiently waited for things to develop according to the established steps.

Opening on Monday, the Nasdaq index, which closed at 4911 points last week, continued to rise. In the following five consecutive days, the entire Nasdaq market showed no sign of a collapse.

Finally, on July 16, when the week ended, the Nasdaq index finally rushed to a high of 5,056 points, officially breaking through the 5,000-point mark.

After the market closed on this day, according to statistics, the market value of all the new technology companies in the Firefly system has also reached an astonishing level.

Among them, Cisco's market value was finally fixed at 611.5 billion U.S. dollars, successfully surpassing Microsoft, and became the super enterprise with the largest market value in the Nasdaq market and even in the world.

Followed by Yahoo's market value reached 257.9 billion US dollars.

The market value of Nokia, which is listed in multiple trading markets such as Europe and North America, also exceeded 200 billion U.S. dollars, with a comprehensive market value of 221.7 billion U.S. dollars.

The most surprising thing is Qualcomm. Qualcomm, which only had a market value of billions of dollars two years ago, has reached the peak of 83.6 billion dollars at this time, which surprised everyone and had to admire Eric's again. Investment vision.

In addition to these, Firefly invested heavily in technology companies such as Amazon and sprint, and their market value has also reached new highs.

Affected by the surge in the stock prices of this series of technology companies, Eric's personal net worth eventually reached an unprecedented $625 billion.

At the same time, Clover Fund also successfully completed all liquidation operations before July 16.

The continuous investment of up to 7 billion U.S. dollars for three consecutive years finally brought a huge income of 45.3 billion U.S. dollars to the Clover Fund. After removing all handling fees and taxes, Firefly Group can still maintain a huge cash reserve of more than 36 billion U.S. dollars in the end.