Reborn America, this is my time

General Tire is a company that sells tires...

Well, that's bullshit because the name says it all.

However, no matter how straightforward its name is, it cannot cover all of its business scope. In the early days, they did sell tires. During World War I, they even provided special tires to the American military and A bunch of competitors were acquired, but since the Great Recession hit, they've transformed.

The impact of the Great Depression on the manufacturing industry made General Tire understand that they could not withstand this systemic financial crisis by sticking to the manufacturing industry, so they tried to diversify their operations. At that time, the most popular industry was radio, so they So I invested in this direction, acquired the Yankee Network in Boston, and then ran wild. By the end of World War II, they had even extended their tentacles to the West Coast and controlled most of the radio stations in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In Detroit, they have ranked first in the city in terms of industry share.

Perhaps it’s because all channel providers want to control content.

When General Tire discovered that their radio network had spread throughout America, they began to think of ways to increase the radio's listening rate. When they learned that CBS, the company next door, was already involved in the music business and was doing very well, General Tire began to imitate the plan and wanted to acquire RKO, which had content but had no intention of running it at the time.

With the completion of this deal, General Tire has officially become the parent company of RKO.

But even so, General Tire did not intervene in RKO's operations. They only came for high-quality broadcast rights and had no interest in the production of movies.

In addition, their main business, tires, can provide them with cash several times greater than that of entertainment. Therefore, all operations of RKO have been handed over to external executives.

For General Tire, as long as RKO doesn't pay too hard, that's enough.

For General Tire, it would be better if RKO can still produce excellent products.

Therefore, when Dino Laurentiis wanted to remake "King Kong", he could easily buy the remake rights from RKO, which did not seek credit but sought no fault.

It is also for this reason that even though RKO is the biggest beneficiary in the infringement case between Universal and Paramount, they can only perform extremely well without operating pressure.

But the problem is, even if General Tire doesn’t care much about the income from the entertainment industry, it doesn’t mean they are stupid! When Universal takes away their "King Kong" in a clever way, everyone will be angry! And now, these guys still want to use their IP to make games?
  This Nima!
  If I don't kill you, I won't even be able to use the word "general"!

If I don’t kill you, CBS will laugh at me!

When new and old grudges emerged, General Tire immediately took Universal Pictures to court with a lawsuit. And when a Fortune [-] company wanted to stare at Universal...

Does Universal want to win this battle?
  It's hard.

"So, you think Universal will definitely lose the lawsuit this time?" Ethan understood.

"Yes." Steve Ballmer nodded: "RKO and General Tire are not companies of the same level. General Tire may not necessarily lose a lawsuit that RKO will lose."

"Of course, this is just a general situation."

"The current situation is that Universal's ownership of "King Kong" was obtained through infringement, and their shamelessness will allow General Tire to gain more victories."

"Moreover, General Tire is also a military-industrial company, with its own rocket and aviation departments, and has maintained a good cooperative relationship with the U.S. Army all year round."

"When General Tire has a military status, courts everywhere will carefully consider it when deciding their interests. But when their interests are actively infringed by others..."

"As long as those judges are not mentally ill, they will make the most fair ruling."

That's right.

General Tire is actually a member of the military-industrial complex.

They also have a rocket department under their name, and they are responsible for the production of the Apollo project and the power system of the Saturn V. This fact alone has made them too big to fail.

When such a company is wronged in serious business?
  As long as it cries twice, its competitors will be hammered to death.

Steve Ballmer's words made Ethan nod slightly.

"Okay, I get it."

He smiled and said: "Although I don't know whether your judgment is correct, the enemy's trouble is our fun, so the more powerful General Tire is, the happier I am."

"Because it makes our opponents miserable."

After making a brief comment, Ethan smiled again and said: "Steve, since this matter is fun for us, please pay more attention to this matter in the next period of time."

"I wonder if Universal and Disney can withstand General Tire's onslaught."

"If you have any news, you can tell me directly, huh?"

"Okay boss." Steve Ballmer smiled when he heard the boss's joy.

While nodding in agreement, he took the initiative to leave without intending to continue disturbing her.

As he left, Ethan, who was leaning on the boss's chair, also hummed a song.

Previously, when Universal blocked him on the release of "Alien" and the representation of Michael Jackson, he got a little angry and wanted to fight back. But unfortunately, he didn't find a suitable way.

And now, before he even takes action, Universal is already in trouble?
  And also dragged Disney into the water?
  This special number is simply awesome!

While he was happy, there was a small problem that also confused him. When General Tire, the parent company of RKO, was so perverted, how did Universal in the previous life resist their attacks?
  Because in his memory, in his previous life, Universal finally got "King Kong"!

This alone can prove that Sidney Sheinberg finally defeated General Tire!

“Is Sidney Sheinberg so awesome?”

Ethan was a little confused.

"Or maybe Universal and American music have some unknown backgrounds?"

"If not...they will win with the head start!"

In Ethan's view, General Tire, which has military status, should have the power to dominate the world. If not, the military-industrial complex would not be so notorious.

In this case, Universal, who had a way to kill himself, was not beaten to death by General Tire, but instead obtained King Kong. This can only prove one thing, that Universal's background is fishy.

But it shouldn't be!
  If Universal really had a mysterious background, how could they be acquired by Panasonic more than ten years later?

Even if this kind of group with huge influence in the world suffers huge losses, it is still a positive asset that can be held for a long time. When a giant owns it, it cannot be easily given up.

and so……

"Where is the problem?"

Ethan was puzzled.

After thinking for a moment, he couldn't find the answer and gave up, "Forget it, I don't want to think about it anymore."

"This matter has nothing to do with me. Why do I think so much about it?"

Ethan shook his head.

I want to put these nonsense out of my mind.

Be prepared to wait for the answer.

However, just when he was expecting General Tire to be more aggressive, try to use Universal's trump cards, and drag Disney into the quagmire of controversy, in early June, a new piece of news attracted all his attention. He was on vacation. Eulisse Noble called and told him——

"Boss, my friend at Neon just called me and told me that Sony and Philips just held a joint press conference in Tokyo to announce their optical disc standard."

"!!!"

This news made Ethan narrow his eyes.

Although he knew that this day would eventually come, he did not expect that these people would come so quickly.

And the next second, he pretended to smile and said, "Oh Julis——"

"Didn't I give you a holiday? Why are you still looking at work?" Yolis: "Boss, I..."

But before she could say anything, Ethan interrupted: "Julis, I know you feel guilty and want to fly back to Neon immediately to continue working, but your nerves don't actually need to be so tense. "

"I'm giving you a holiday not because the company doesn't need you anymore, but because the current Neon is in a wonderful state that doesn't require special attention. After our enemies have shown their fangs, after a long period of time , they will not have any more special behavior."

"So, you can have a good rest at this time."

"And it's for this reason that I gave you a holiday."

"..." Ethan's words caused the guy on the other end of the phone to fall into silence.

After a while, a slightly choked voice came into Ethan's ears: "Oh - boss -"

"thanks--"

"Get a good rest." Ethan continued to warn him.

After hanging up the phone, he called Ballmer again, "Steve, Julis just called me and told me that Sony and Philips held a joint press conference."

"What?" This news made the big bald man a little dazed.

"Really?" He couldn't believe it.

But before Ethan could answer, he had already remembered his duty.

"I know, I'm going to get the news now."

Before the words were spoken, the person had disappeared and returned again, with a hand full of information.

Sony and Philips did hold a joint press conference on the first day of June to jointly announce a standard related to digital optical discs. Because the cover is red, it is called the Red Book.

However, the standards announced by these two companies were not as scary as Ethan imagined, or not as scary as Julis described, because all the standards were only related to sound.

For example, a digital disc allows the storage of up to seventy-four minutes of digital sound, has a sampling rate of 44.1kHz, a transfer rate of 150 kilobytes per second, and can contain up to 99 audio tracks.

As another example, audio data on a digital disc is organized into frames, which are intertwined with other frames to form a spiral so that scratches or defects don't destroy a single frame beyond the scope of correction. Instead, scratches destroy small portions of many frames, all of which can be recovered in other frames.

For example, they divided the CD into three areas, namely the boot area, the program area, and the end area. The location of each audio track is recorded in the directory table of the CD, which is stored in the boot area of ​​each CD. When it is officially run, this area is read first...

After reading these contents, Ethan immediately breathed a sigh of relief.

Although Philips and Sony did announce standards related to digital discs before him, when these standards are only linked to audio, their threat is not great.

If nothing else, at least now they can't take out a VCD from their crotch!

As long as they can't come up with a complete commercial product related to digital storage...

Then everything is within control!
  Of course, even so, he still called Professor Robert Hall.

And then...

Then he heard the old professor's laughter...

"Oh Ethan - I have read the full version of the Red Book - their design is good, but it has nothing to do with us. Again, when they don't hold the patent, all definitions are useless paper."

"However, one thing I want to remind you first is that Sony and Philips have great ambitions."

"Because they set the audio sampling rate to 44.1kHz."

"Ethan, you know, when I saw that number, I almost laughed out loud!"

"Because it has a special meaning. I have calculated it before. It represents monopoly!"

"This specification is compatible with both PAL and NTSC!"

"You know what PAL and NTSC are, right? They are TV broadcast formats! When Philips and Sony make the audio of digital discs compatible with TV broadcast formats in Europe and North America, what they are pursuing must be the world market! And It’s not just the audio market! There’s also the video market!”

"so……"

“Without knowing exactly where they were in their development, I had to speed up.”

Robert Hall's oath made Ethan very happy, but at the same time, he did not understand the meaning of the other party's words. He simply did not understand why Sony and Philips chose 44.1kHz.

And when he knocked on his sister's office door and asked her why...

Evelin immediately rolled her eyes and said: "Due to usage issues, when we store digital audio, we always use video storage devices to store it. Currently, there are two formats for video storage devices. One is The mainstream 25-frame PAL in Europe and the 30-frame NTSC used in our country."

"So, if you want to promote this technology to the greatest extent, you need to make digital audio meet the playback needs of both sides at the same time. Europe's PAL is 625 lines, 50Hz, and ours is 525 lines, 60Hz. After deducting the unusable lines Finally, the PAL side is 588 lines, and our side is 490 lines. According to the interlaced scanning operation process, PAL is 294, and our side is 245."

Having said this, Evelin picked up a piece of scratch paper and started writing.

"When this final data comes out, you will find a very interesting thing."

"Multiply the PAL line number 294 by the Hz number 50, and then multiply it by the sample number 3."

"It would equal 44100."

"Multiply the number of NTSC lines, 245, by the number of Hz, 60, and then multiply that by the number of samples, 3."

"It can also be equal to 44100..."

"Isn't it interesting?"

Evelin raised her head.

This magical algorithm stunned Ethan.

"Is this how maximum compatibility is calculated?" He couldn't believe his ears.

"Otherwise?" Evelin shrugged.

"Isn't this a little too outrageous?" Ethan couldn't accept it.

Although he knew that human technology has never been very advanced and has always been about boiling water, but this standard method of finding products in different formats is too child's play, right?
  and……

Robert Hall seemed to have just said that he had calculated this number before?
  OMG!

Are these academicians doing such nonsense?

And just when Ethan wanted to say something else, and wanted to use all the grooves in his chest, a clear knock on the door suddenly sounded. This situation made both people in the room a little strange.

Because according to normal circumstances, no one comes to Evelin’s office.

This kind of quietness allows her to better develop products.

But since someone knocked on the door, they definitely couldn't sit idly by and ignore it. After Evelin asked "Who?" on the pager, Steve Ballmer's loud voice suddenly appeared——

"Chairman, do you know where the president is?"

"?" This call made Ethan speak, "I'm here, what's the matter?"

"Oh boss! I finally found you!"

Steve Ballmer said loudly: "Roy Disney suddenly dropped by and said he wanted to visit you. I asked him if he had an appointment, and he said no, so I asked him to wait in the reception room... "(End of chapter)