Since Tang Huan was interested, this meeting was immediately scheduled on the agenda. Symantec's management, who received the notice, did not dare to delay a little time, and rushed over non-stop.

It is said that it is completely because he wants to follow the path of Mr. The richest man, Tang Huan's status in Silicon Valley, his insights into the industry, and even his academic achievements are the deep-seated reasons for everyone's pilgrimage.

Especially after obtaining his doctorate, he still worked hard, which further attracted countless IT apprentices to read articles, which can be said to be more and more grandmaster.

The meeting took place at Tang's Chinese restaurant, not far from Zheru's U.S. headquarters, which recently held a theme - "Taste on the Tip of the Tongue", in addition to carefully selected Chinese dishes, but also played with a retro style, including the element of "Tang Qi".

These waiters are all senior industry insiders who have been invited from Chinese mainland for short-term work, and for Tang Huan, they want to play with characteristic culture, and for them it is a gold-plated overseas work opportunity, which is definitely mutually beneficial and very happy.

Of course, the cousins do not play the role of traditional waiters here, and they don't need to greet them like the "masters, several" in the old days, mainly dedicating skills to performances, one of the highlights is the "roaring hall". The loud and articulate cousin reported the name of the dish smoothly, and the sense of rhythm had broken through the boundaries of language.

The atmosphere of Silicon Valley is one of unfettered openness, and the restaurant's "individuality" makes it a surprise that it attracts a large number of diners and makes it a popular place.

Of course. This type of style is not able to win everyone's favor either. Those who prefer romance and tranquility can head to the French restaurant. The cousins are satisfied with the same guest service.

Seeing a middle-aged master in addition to his left hand from the palm to the arm full of 8 bowls of egg fried rice, the right hand also carried 4 bowls of egg fried rice, and can still show this pile of rice skills, 12 bowls of egg fried rice at one time, everyone who was invited to come was amazed, and hurriedly began to taste.

"The cousin is a high-tech job in an old-fashioned Chinese restaurant, described as 'a monkey's head, a starling's mouth.'" The measure of the elephant, the legs of the rabbit'. Tang Huan talked about various allusions with great interest, "Tang Qi is not a chef, but he must be clear about the taste characteristics and cooking procedures of each dish; He is not a sociologist, but he has to know the customs of different nationalities and social classes. He is not a psychologist, but he has to learn to read his face and speak appropriately. ”

The crowd listened attentively and praised one after another. Gordon, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Symantec Corporation? Eubanks quipped, "Our marketing department. That's what you need. However, the Chinese food is delicious though. But if you do it yourself, it's too difficult. ”

"The process of making Chinese food is really not easy to master. Let's take oil and salt as an example, it's often empirical, it's almost fine, but you definitely want to be able to clearly quantify how many milliliters and how many grams. This difference is like the emerging fuzzy mathematics compared to classical mathematics. Tang Huan's witty remarks caused everyone to laugh, and the atmosphere became more and more casual.

In the original time and space, Symantec's business success, like EA, achieved its own development and rapid market share expansion through continuous mergers and acquisitions.

Just this year, Symantec completed a merger with an IT startup that is also in the early stages of development, in order to get rid of the dilemma that the company's actual main business is too weak.

Fortunately, this change did not cause personnel turmoil, and the founder, Gary Hendrix, and Barry Greenstein and Jerry Kaplan, the backbone of the AI project, all stayed.

And in Tang Huan's view, Symantec's leadership team, which will charge into the market in the future, has taken shape. Except for Gordon? In addition to Eubanks' chairman, Fern Rayburn serves as chief executive officer. And the two also hired Rod Turner as executive vice president, focusing on marketing and other work.

For Symantec, a small company that has begun to change its business because of Tang Huan's golden thigh, its current management can be called talented.

When Symantec and his party came to see Tang Huan, they were still a little uneasy, only Gordon? Eubanks quietly made a small calculation in his heart. As a result, the two sides looked at each other, and the unexpected joy he was expecting really came.

At that time, Tang Huan looked at Gordon? Eubanks, surprised, said, "We must have met before, you're a student of Gary Kildare." ”

"Exactly. When you visited the headquarters of the Digital Research Corporation in Monterey County in 1979, I was with the teacher. "Gordon? Eubanks resisted the ecstasy in his heart and replied calmly.

No doubt, Gordon? The acquaintance of Eubanks and Tang Huan is conducive to enhancing the cooperative relationship between the two parties and helping him consolidate his position in the company.

In fact, for Gordon, who made the switch to Symantec? As far as Eubanks is concerned, being able to talk to Tang Huan face-to-face again has a feeling of being in a dream.

Five years ago, Tang Huan relied on the first spreadsheet software CGrid, rapid rise, due to the development of word processing software WordEasy, directly by the competitor - another word processing software WordStar owner Seymour ? Rubinstein hated him, and then tried to use the connections he had accumulated over the years in Silicon Valley to connect with other companies to ban him.

The first meeting between the two was when Tang Huan visited Gary Kildare to persuade CP/M, the operating system of the digital research company, not to get involved in the dispute.

At that time, everyone was still the same identity and talked about each other as equals, but now one is in heaven and the other is on earth.

Gordon? Eubanks had a knack for technology, and while studying for his PhD with Gary Kildare, he developed a compiler called BASIC-E for BASIC, a programming language that was very popular on personal computer platforms at the time.

In the first stage of development of the personal computer. Cowherd Star Computer seizes the market opportunity. IMSAI is the catch-up of the copycats.

I saw that the Cowherd Star Computer has Microsoft's BASIC to help. Seymour, who was also in charge of IMSAI marketing at the time? Rubinstein, who is tasked by his boss William Millard to find a similar app to fight against, so Gordon? Eubanks' BASIC compiler was hit.

However, BASIC-E is a result of research and development with the help of public resources, and it cannot be used for commercial sales as a rule. Gordon? Eubanks' solution is also very simple, and on the basis of BASIC-E, another more powerful new compiler, CBASIC, has been introduced. It's finally done with IMSAI's business.

With this nice start, Gordon? Eubanks founded his own company to operate CBASIC, forming a pattern of competition with Gates' Microsoft BASIC.

It is not difficult to imagine that the fledgling CBASIC is naturally not as mature as Microsoft BASIC, which has been developed for many years. For example, it has a problem that cannot be ignored in terms of the accuracy required for the calculation of financial functions.

However, CBASIC also has new features that Microsoft BASIC does not have. Gordon? Eubanks introduced the mechanism of the intermediate code P-codemachine. This technology is actually the predecessor of Bytecode used by the famous JAVA more than ten years later, and even the most popular rapid application development tool Microsoft VisualBASIC is also compiling the program. By default, similar intermediate code is generated.

In addition to being independent of a specific machine code, P-codemachine can also protect the results of the programmer's intellectual labor.

CBASIC explains the execution of intermediate code. However, Microsoft BASIC directly interprets and executes the code source files, and it is difficult to protect the intellectual property rights in it when delivering development results.

Therefore, although CBASIC has little experience, it still has the strength to compete with Microsoft BASIC. And when Gates entered the field of operating systems, as a retaliation, Gary Kildare bought his student Gordon? Eubanks, Inc., has integrated CBASIC into the digital research company's operating system, CP/M.

Unfortunately, Gary Kildare has no business talent and can't withstand Microsoft's attack.

Seeing the obvious decline of digital research companies and the bleak future, Gordon? Eubanks flew out on his own, looking for another way out, and was really silent for a while.

Now seeing Tang Huan, who has been separated for five years, so lofty and high-spirited, Gordon? Eubanks' heart is very hot, especially when the other party still remembers him, it seems to be a great opportunity.

Symantec and others, see Chairman of the Board of Directors Gordon? Eubanks was able to easily make friends with Tang Huan, and his heart was naturally extremely excited, and he unconsciously looked at him more and more between his words and deeds.

Tang Huan also brought someone to accompany him, his name is Peter Norton, an excellent programmer and computer book author, and he can be regarded as having similar interests.

Therefore, Tang Huan invested and helped Peter Norton establish a company called Peter Norton Computing, Inc. A cross-platform system tool software company.

Peter Norton has worked for more than a decade for some of the largest organizations, including Boeing and Jet Propulsion Laboratories, and has a deep understanding of the underlying architecture of computer systems.

Although Peter Norton became a monk in a monastery in San Francisco in the 1970s for three years, he quickly adapted to the technological development of the personal computer industry.

At the suggestion of Tang Huan, Peter Norton developed the system program NortonUtilities, which includes two popular tools, the Data Recovery Master and the Computer Information Expert.

The former is to give computer users a chance to take regret medicine and try to help them recover the files that were deleted by mistake; The latter can identify the information of various personal computer hardware devices, and has become an indispensable assistant in the evaluation of major computer professional media.

This kind of system tool must serve as many computer users as possible, supporting Fangyuan computer, IBM-PC, Apple computer and other hardware platforms, so it is not suitable to stay in the system of Zheru and Fangyuan, and it will develop independently from the beginning.

A set of NortonUtilities currently costs $100, and last year it sold more than $1 million. They are also small companies that have been in business for less than three years. It's not a little better than Symantec, which has been developing artificial intelligence but has not been able to bring real commercial profits.

Therefore. After Tang Huan's introduction in the center, Gordon? Eubanks and others have a respectful attitude towards Peter Norton.

Seeing that they were chatting hotly, Tang Huan couldn't help but laugh in his heart, and he didn't know what kind of chemical reaction would spontaneously occur after the two companies got acquainted. In terms of business operation alone, Peter Norton is obviously far inferior to Gordon? Eubanks' team is just a business opportunity that coincides with its current situation, and it has not yet encountered enough competitors to grab food.

After the pleasantries. Tang Huan and Gary Hendrix talked about the topic of artificial intelligence, and Zheru also has similar projects, such as game AI, expert systems, etc., but after all, the other party has been rooted in this field for more than ten years, and he is still quite insightful.

Compared with the artificial intelligence that ordinary consumers can easily experience such as Apple Siri - Apple voice assistant, Microsoft Cortana - Microsoft Cortana, Microsoft Xiaoice and other familiar decades later in the original time and space, the application of this technology at this stage is still relatively cold.

Since the beginning of the research and development of artificial intelligence, it has been sought after by various countries and has invested a lot of money. But after the oil crisis in the 1970s, interest in burning money fell to freezing point.

After entering the 1980s, Japan, which was not short of money, took the lead in making big moves. In 1981, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry announced an allocation of US$850 million to support a large-scale research and development program called "fifth-generation computers." The goal is to create images that can speak to people, translate language, and interpret images. And a machine that can reason like a human. The main programming language used for the project is Prolog.

Other countries have responded: the UK has begun the £350 million Alvey project; A U.S. business association organized the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Group (MCC), to fund large-scale projects in AI and information technology; The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under the U.S. Department of Defense has also taken action by organizing the Strategic Computing Initiative, the Strategic Computing Initiative, to actively invest in AI projects.

The field of artificial intelligence is too broad and profound, and in the new round of research and development boom, Tang Huan mainly focuses on projects that meet the current computer capabilities.

Like the game AI, EA often offers a slightly more code-heavy version in the Deluxe Pack of some classic games to satisfy the player's challenging mentality.

In addition, the database EBase is an extremely important platform, and Zheru uses it as the background to develop information retrieval and expert systems for various fields.

Symantec's natural language AI response program QA is a solution that is not expensive, and since it has been transplanted to Fangyuan's personal computer platform, Tang Huan is also willing to support it.

"I believe that QA will bring good benefits to Symantec." Tang Huan, who clearly expressed his support, optimistically evaluated, and then changed the tone and said: "In fact, artificial intelligence should also be able to help computer systems judge which operations are potentially harmful to a certain extent." ”

Speaking of this, Tang Huan sighed softly, "Fangyuan personal computer has become the most popular number one hardware platform, which has brought countless glory at the same time, but also makes me feel like walking on thin ice about computer security issues. Judging from the feedback from the service department, more and more prank programs began to run quietly in the computer. No one knows when, it will erupt and really threaten the user's data security. I have to be prepared for a rainy day from now on. ”

Tang Huan looked around at Symantec's cadres and others, "Your technical background is good, you might as well take a step ahead in this regard." ”

"Countless examples have proven that Don's grasp of the industry is extremely accurate. Now that Symantec has been pointed, we certainly won't miss this opportunity. "Gordon? "However, Symantec's cash flow is still tight, and if it wants to start a new R&D program, it must consider bringing in new investors." ”

"You're trying to get investment from me." Tang Huan laughed, turned his gaze to Barry Greenstein and said, "You, the poker master, play an extremely important role in the artificial intelligence project. How about a few rounds of play? As long as you win, investing is just a matter of words. ”

Barry Greenstein rubbed his hands together and smiled confidently, "Then you're welcome." (To be continued.) )