英語學習筆記

Michael Jackson tops album chart

by Jessica E. Vascellaro
　Google Inc. is revamping how it develops and
prioritizes new products, giving employees a
pipeline to the company's top brass amid worries
about losing its best people and promising ideas
to start-ups.
　The Mountain Vies, Calif., company famously
lets its engineers spend one day a week on proj-
ects that aren't part of their jobs. But Google has
lacked a formal process for senior executives to
review those efforts, and some ideas have lan-
guished. Others have slipped away when employ-
ees left the company.
　"We were concerned that some of the biggest
ideas were getting squashed," said Google Chief
Executive Eric Schmidt in an interview.
　Google can no longer afford to let promising
ideas fall by the wayside. The Internet search gi-
ant's once-torrid growth has slowed. At the same
time, it faces fresh competition from Microsoft
Corp.'s new search engine, Bing, and start-ups
such as Twitter Inc., which was founded by for-
mer Google employees.
　In response, Google has recently started inter-
nal "innovation reviews," formal meetings where
executives present product ideas bubbling up
through their divisions to Mr. Schmidt, Google
founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and other
top executives.
　The meetings are designed to "force manage-
ment to focus" on promising ideas at an early
stage, Mr. Schmidt said.
　The efforts have been behind several ser-
vices that Google has recently unveiled, including
software that allows companies to use Micro-
soft's Outlook email and calendar software while
storing their data with Google. Microsoft said
Wednesday the Google software interferes with
an Outlook search function; Google disputed the
severity of the problem, but said it is working to
improve its software.
　Another project, an imaging product that is
based on facial-recognition software developed
inside Google, is expected to be released this sum-
mer.
　Google has also begun to give a few engineers
broad leeway to start big projects of their choos-
ing, Mr. Schmidt said. One result of this ef-
fort: Google Wave, a collaboration tool that the
company previewed last month.
　The moves are a shift for Google. Previously,
its early-stage projects weren't systematically vet-
ted by top executives. Employees with a new idea
would lobby their bosses for resources and time.
Once approved, a project could linger or die without
getting much attention from senior management.
　Google needs new products to jumpstart its
growth. While it remains a juggernaut with one-
third of all U.S. advertising dollars spend online, its
year-over-year revenue growth has slowed from
56% in 2007 to 315 in 2008 and was just 6% in the
first quarter of this year.
　What's more, employees continue to leave Google
as it evolves into a mature company with 20,000
workers. "Most products managers evaluate [wheth-
er to stay] every six months," said Chris Vander
Mey, a senior Google product manager who worked
on the Microsoft Office integration.
　While praising how Google has supported small
projects like his own, he said he still expects to leave
the company over time to explore other interests.
　Google has taken cracks in the past at the reten-
tion problem. In March, it repriced million of em-
ployee stock options whose value had been wiped
out as Google's share price has fallen over the past
two years. The company has also begun testing a
mathematical formula to try to predict which em-
ployees are most likely to leave, based on factors like
employee reviews.
　David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School profes-
sor who studies technology and e-commerce com-
panies, said prioritizing is important for Google.
While Google has launched hordes of new experi-
ments, "in the absence of focus and promotion" few
have turned into blockbusters, he said.
　In the case of Google Wave, the company singled
out Lars Rasmussen and Jens Rasmussen to test its
approach to developing ideas.
　The brothers, who are based in Australia, had
been working on Google Maps. On the side, they
were also thinking about creating a new communi-
cation system to replace email.
　Messrs. Schmidt, Page and Brin where intrigued
and gave the engineers a long leash. "We said go
do something really interesting and take as many
resources as you need," Mr. Schmidt said. Then
gave the Rasmussens dozens of employees, he add-
ed, substantially more people than most early-stage
projects.
　To allow the due to stick to their vision for the
product, the top executives kept Wave secret from
the rest of the company. Wave wasn't opened up to
broader employee feedback until later in the devel-
opment cycle.
　Lars Rasmussen said the conditions freed his
team from concerns such as fighting for engineers
and removed pressure to integrate with other
Google producsts. "We knew we had to do something
different," he said.

by Antony Worrall Thompson

from Saturday Kitchen

by Nick Wingfield
　Microsoft Corp. has shown its Xbox360 console can win with
serious gamers. Now it has to show it can out-play market leader Nin-
tendo Co. in the battle for casual players.
　Don Mattrick, the head of Microsoft's videogames group, on Mon-
day unveiled a plan to expand the audience for the company's Xbox
360 console with a new 3D video camera that will let people play
games with the movement of their bodies.
　The product, expected to be released next year, is a big gamble
that Microsoft can outdo the Nitendo Wii's motion-sensing
wand, which has won new gaming converts intimidated by traditional
button-heavy game controllers.
The new Microsoft camera, codenamed Project Natal, eliminates
the need to hold any hardware at all.
　Mr. Mattrick showed the camera for the first time onstage at the E3
games conference in Los Angeles Monday. Microsoft demonstrated
how a person can use the camera to paint virtual canvases and head
in-game soccer balls. The camera will also recognize voice com-
mands, and be able to identify from facial features which person is play-
ing.
　Microsoft executives declined to say how much the camera will cost.
　In a recent interview on Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., campus,
Mr. Mattrick said a top priority is to make the Xbox more accessible
to people who aren't hardcore gamers. "How do we make it work for
the family?" says the 45-year-old.
"That's aspirationally what we want to do."
　Mr. Mattrick, a veteran of games publisher Electronic Arts Inc., has
had a hand in some huge game hits, helping game designer Will Wright
shape what ultimately become The Sims. EA's blockbuster Need for
Speed racing game franchise came out of a fantasy that Mr. Mattrick,
a car aficionado, had about stealing fancy vehicles like Ferraris and
running from the police.
　Microsoft needs to attract a bigger audience to its console as the com-
pany seeks to keep up profits from a games business that has lost it more
than $5 billion since the original Xbox was introduced in 2001.
　Globally, Microsoft says it has sold more than 30 million of its Xbox
360 machines. While that's ahead of Sony Corp., which says it has sold
more than 23 million PlayStation 3 consoles, it lags Nintendo, which says
it has sold more than 50 million Wii machines.
　Mr. Mattrick joined Microsoft in July 2007, shortly after the company
was forced to reveal a humiliating misstep: widespread malfunctions
with the Xbox 360 that caused it to take a $1.1 billion charge to cover the
cost of repairs for customers.
　But since then, Mr. Mattrick has helped guide the Xbox business to
solid growth, in part by cutting prices on its console in Europe and improv-
ing management in that region. He also led an overhaul of its Xbox Live
online service, which helped win customers with new offerings like a Net-
flix Inc. service for renting movies.
　Mr. Attrick faces skepticism he 'll stay on the job for the long haul.
The executive hasn't moved near Microsoft's campus in the Seattle
suburbs from his home in Vancouver.
Instead, he conducts much of his work through video conferences and
email. One person who works with Mr. Mattrick says he isn't in the office
at Microsoft more than a few days a month.
　"I think most people are a bit surprised at how long he's been there,"
says Larry Probst, chairman of EA, where Mr. Mattrick worked for 14
years after it bought his star-up.
　Mr. Mattrick says he's committed to Microsoft and doesn't feel that
living in Vancouver hurts his performance. He also has the support of his
boss, Robert J. Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices
division.
　"The challenge is to find a guy who can run a business... and help foster
a highly creative environment," Mr. Bach says. He calls Mr. Mattrick "a
wonderful balance of both of those."

by Jason Zweig
　It is sometimes said that to be an intelligent
investor, you must should be unemotional. That isn't
true; instead, you should be inversely emotional.
　Even after recent turbulence, the Dow Jones In-
dustrial Average is up roughly 30% since its low in
March. It is natural for you to feel happy or relieved
about that. But Benjamin Graham believed, in-
stead, that you should train yourself to feel worried
about such events.
　At this moment, consulting Mr. Graham's wis-
dom is especially fitting. Sixty years ago, on May
25, 1949, the founder of financial analysis published
his book, "The Intelligent Investor," in whose honor
this column is named. And today the market seems
to be in just the kind of mood that would have wor-
ried Mr. Graham: a jittery optimism, an insecure
and almost desperate need to believe that the worst
is over.
　You can't turn off your feelings, of course. But you
can, and should, turn them inside out.
　Stocks have suddenly become more expensive to
accumulate. Since March, according to data from
Robert Shiller of Yale, the price/earnings ratio of
the S&P 500 index has jumped from 13.1 to 15.5.
That's the sharpest, fastest rise in almost a quarter-
century. (As Graham suggested, Prof. Shiller uses a
10-year average P/E ratio, adjusted for inflation.)
　Over the course of 10 weeks, stocks have moved
from the edge of the bargain bin to the full-price
rack. So, unless you are retired and living off your
investments, you shouldn't be celebrating, you
should be worrying.
　Mr. Graham worked diligently to resist being
swept up in the mood swings of "Mr. Market" -- his
metaphor for the collective mind of investors, eu-
phoric when stocks go up and miserable when they
go down.
　In an autobiographical sketch, Mr. Graham wrote
that he "embraced stoicism as a gospel sent to him
from heaven." Among the main components of his
"Internal equipments," he also said, where a "certain
aloofness" and "unruffled serenity."
　Mr. Graham's last wife described him as "humane,
but not human." I asked his son, Benjamin Graham Jr.,
what that meant. "His mind was
elsewhere, and he did have a little difficulty in relat-
ing to others," "Buz" Graham said of this father. "He
was always internally multitasking. Maybe people
who go into investing are especially well-suited for it
if they have that distance or detachment."
　Mr. Graham's immersion in literature, math-
ematics and philosophy, he once remarked, helped
him view the markets "from the standpoint of eter-
nity, rather than day-to-day."
　Perhaps as a result, he almost invariably read the
enthusiasm of others as a yellow caution light, and
he took their misery as a sign of hope.
　His knack for inverting emotions helped him see
when markets had run to extremes. In later 1945, as
the markets was rising 36%, he warned investors to
cut back on stocks; the next year, the market fell 8%.
As stocks took off in 1958-59, Mr. Graham was again
pessimistic; years of jagged returns followed. In late
1971, he counseled caution, just before the worst
bear market in decades hit.
　In the depths of that crash, near the end of
1974, Mr. Graham gave a speech in which he cor-
rectly forecast a period of "many years" in which
"stock prices may languish."
　Then he startled his listeners by pointing out this
was good news, not bad: "The true investor would
be pleased, rather than discouraged, at the prospect
of investing his new savings on very satisfactory
terms." Mr. Graham added a more startling note:
Investors would be "enviably fortunate" to benefit
from the "advantages" of a long bear market.
　Today, it has become trendy to declare that "buy
and hold is dead." Some critics regard dollar-cost
averaging, or automatically investing a fixed amount
every month, as foolish.
　Asked if dollar-cost averaging could ensure long-
term success, Mr. Graham wrote in 1962: "Such a
policy will pay off ultimately, regardless of when it is
begun, provided that it is adhered to conscientiously
and courageously under all intervening conditions."
　For that to be true, however, the dollar-cost aver-
aging investor must "be a different sort of person
from the rest of us... not subject to the alternations
of exhilaration and deep gloom that have accompa-
nied the gyrations of the stock market for genera-
tions past."
　"This," Mr. Graham concluded, "I greatly doubt."
　He didn't mean that no one can resist being
swept up in the gyrating emotions of the crowd. He
meant that few people can. To be an intelligent in-
vestor, you must cultivate what Mr. Graham called
"firmness of character" -- the ability to keep your
own emotional counsel.
　Above all, that means resisting the contagion of
Mr. Market's enthusiasm when stocks are suddenly
no longer cheap.

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intelligent　adj.有才智的, 聰明的
turbulence　n.紊流
relieved　adj.放心的
relieve　vt.緩和, 減輕
consulting　adj.任專職顧問的
consult　vt.與...商量
jittery　adj.緊張不安的
optimism　n.樂觀
insecure　adj.不安全的, 有危險的
desperate　adj.情急拼命的, 挺而走險的
accumulate　vt.累積
inflation　n.通貨膨漲
bargain　n.協議, 買賣, 交易
diligently　adv.勤勉地
sweep, swept, swept　vt.清掃
resist　vt.抵抗, 忍耐
metaphor　n.隱喻
euphoric　adj.心情愉快的
miserable　adj.痛苦的, 不幸的
autobiographical　adj.自傳的
sketch　n.速寫, 素描
gospel　n.準則, 真理
aloofness　n.冷漠, 高傲
unruffled　adj.不受騷擾的, 鎮定的
serenity　n.晴朗, 風和日麗
humane　adj.有人情味的, 人文的
detachment　n.分離, 分開
immersion　n.沉浸, 浸沒
mathematics　n.數學
philosophy　n.哲學
standpoint　n.立場, 觀點, 看法
eternity　n.永遠, 不朽
invariably　adv.不變地, 總是
enthusiasm　n.熱心, 熱忱
misery　n.痛苦, 不幸
pessimistic　adj.悲觀的
jagged　adj.有尖突的, 有缺口的
counsel　n.商議, 忠告
correctly　adv.正確地
languish　vt.變得無生氣
startle　vt.使驚嚇
courage　n.勇氣, 膽量
courageous　adj.英勇的, 勇敢的
courageously　adv.勇敢地
discouraged　adj.灰心的, 沮喪的
prospect　n.指望, 預期
satisfactory　adj.令人滿意的
envy　n.妒忌
enviably　adv.妒忌地
fortunate　adj.幸運的
trendy　adj.時髦的
critic　n.評論家
regard　n.注重, 考慮, 關心
regardless　adj.不注意的, 不留心的
adhere　adv.遵守, 堅持
conscientiously　adv.憑良心地
exhilaration　n.愉快的心情
gloom　n.黑暗, 憂鬱的心情
conclude　vt.推斷出, 斷定
gyrate　adj.旋渦狀的
cultivate　vt.耕種, 栽培
contagion　n.接觸傳染, 感染