Category: Business

Death of the Music Store

Spinning Into Oblivion – New York Times
Our intention was to offer a haven for all kinds of music lovers and obsessives, a shop that catered not only to the casual record buyer (“Do you have the new Sarah McLachlan and … uh … is there a Beatles greatest hits CD?”) but to the fan and oft-maligned serious collector (“Can you get the Japanese pressing of ‘Kinda Kinks’? I believe they used the rare mono mixes”). Fourteen years later, it’s clear just how wrong our assumptions were. Our little shop closed its doors at the end of 2005.

In the late ’90s, our business, and the music retail business in general, was booming. Enter Napster, the granddaddy of illegal download sites. How did the major record labels react? By continuing their campaign to eliminate the comparatively unprofitable CD single, raising list prices on album-length CDs to $18 or $19 and promoting artists like the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears — whose strength was single songs, not albums. The result was a lot of unhappy customers, who blamed retailers like us for the dearth of singles and the high prices. Continue reading “Death of the Music Store”

If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | George Monbiot: If we want to save the planet, we need a five-year freeze on biofuels
Oil produced from plants sets up competition for food between cars and people. People – and the environment – will lose.

Farmers will respond to better prices by planting more, but it is not clear that they can overtake the booming demand for biofuel. Even if they do, they will catch up only by ploughing virgin habitat.

Already we know that biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum. The UN has just published a report suggesting that 98% of the natural rainforest in Indonesia will be degraded or gone by 2022. Just five years ago, the same agencies predicted that this wouldn’t happen until 2032. But they reckoned without the planting of palm oil to turn into biodiesel for the European market. This is now the main cause of deforestation there and it is likely soon to become responsible for the extinction of the orang-utan in the wild.

But it gets worse. As the forests are burned, both the trees and the peat they sit on are turned into carbon dioxide. A report by the Dutch consultancy Delft Hydraulics shows that every tonne of palm oil results in 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces. I feel I need to say that again. Biodiesel from palm oil causes 10 times as much climate change as ordinary diesel.

There are similar impacts all over the world. Sugarcane producers are moving into rare scrubland habitats (the cerrado) in Brazil, and soya farmers are ripping up the Amazon rainforests.

Cingular launches U.S. mobile banking

Cingular launches U.S. mobile banking | Technology | Reuters
AT&T Chief Operating Officer Randall Stephenson talked about the mobile banking service in a keynote speech at the CTIA wireless technology conference on Tuesday. In Japan they use their cell phone like a credit card at Soft Drink Machines and parking meters. While this announcement was interesting and you can click on the link to see if your bank is participating, what really blew me away was this quote from Stephenson :

“…while four babies are born every second in China, about 25 people are signing up for wireless services in the country.”

Tastemakers: Chefs

Tastemakers: Chefs – Forbes.com
You no longer have to live in New York or California to taste the best food in America. That’s because young chefs have set up shop in smaller cities and rural areas, many in order to be closer to the farmers and ranchers who supply their raw materials. For others, it’s because the palates of small town diners have grown more sophisticated.

It’s no wonder Americans now dish out nearly half their food budgets on dining out, according to the National Restaurant Association. Sales in the industry have grown steadily for more than 15 years and are expected to increase 5% in 2007, to $537 billion, with $181.6 billion of that coming from full service restaurants. Click on the link for the list of chefs in pictures, as well as the rest of the article.

Another Inconvenient Truth

Another Inconvenient Truth  Behind the feel-good hype of carbon offsets, some of the deals don’t deliver
More broadly, the proliferation of suspect RECs and offsets may persuade consumers and businesses that preventing climate change comes cheap, says Anja S. Kollmuss, outreach coordinator of the Tufts Climate Initiative, an advocacy group affiliated with Tufts University. “We cannot solve the climate crisis by buying offsets and claiming to be climate-neutral,” she adds. “Nature does not fall for accounting schemes.”

Many people have commented that modern environmentalism is basically a religion. The carbon offsets are the modern equivalent of the Catholic Church selling indulgences.

Russia to Iran: Pay Up

Russia Blog: Russia to Iran: Pay Up
The Islamic Republic of Iran is apparently running short on cash. According to the International Herald Tribune, the Iranian regime has twice failed to pay $25 million in monthly payments to Rosatom, Russia’s atomic energy agency, for work already completed on the Bushehr nuclear reactor.

Rosatom executives have confirmed that the Iranians failed to make their payment in full for the month of January and have not paid at all for this month. As a result, Rosatom has cancelled plans to deliver civilian-grade nuclear fuel to the reactor next month and is threatening to delay work at Bushehr. Russia is not willing to subsidize Iranian energy projects anymore than it was willing to keep subsidizing the former Soviet republics with cheap natural gas.

The Council on Foreign Relations recently released a report describing the decline of Iranian oil and gas production due to mismanagement and a lack of new investment. Last month MSNBC reported that the U.S. has secretly cut a deal with Saudi Arabia to boost Saudi production, thereby decreasing world oil prices and putting more economic pressure on Tehran (it costs the Saudis about half as much to pump a barrel of oil out of the ground as the Iranians). Russia Blog predicted that the U.S. might pursue this strategy to financially squeeze the mullahs in our post The Long War in the Middle East and Russian Oil back in August 2006.

High-tech slots could transform gambling

High-tech slots could transform gambling
Roughly half the 835,000 slot machines nationwide have video displays and many are networked, but industry officials acknowledge that most are flops, lacking the visceral “clunk-clunk-clunk” of wheels hitting the payline.

Video slots with an authentic feel are the holy grail for manufacturers.

Ed Rogich, an IGT vice president, said players who tested video display prototypes earlier this year could hardly tell the difference between them and manual reels. That’s a good sign: Many old-school gamblers prefer low-tech slots.

Hydrogen Storage Technology Breakthrough

Hydrogen Storage: UNBF Researchers Achieve Technology Breakthrough — March 7, 2007 – News@UNB
Hydrogen gas is typically stored under pressure in large metal cylinders, approximately four feet high. These cylinders are heavy and expensive to transport. Since they are under pressure, they also pose a safety hazard.

“We’ve reached a milestone with our ability to condense hydrogen into a usable solid,” said Dr. McGrady. “The next step is to produce a safe, compact storage system for the compound that is both lightweight and affordable.”

The research is expected to produce reversible hydrogen storage materials that can be processed into a powder for use in limitless commercial applications. Continue reading “Hydrogen Storage Technology Breakthrough”

NIST bans Vista in major blow to Microsoft

NIST bans Vista in major blow to Microsoft | ZDNet Government Blog | ZDNet.com
The National Institute of Standards and Technology isn’t just another federal agency – it sets the standards for federal computing. And NIST doesn’t like Vista. In fact it has banned it from its internal networks, according to document obtained by InformationWeek. IW obtained a copy of the formal agenda for an April 10 meeting at which tech staffers will explain their concerns and discuss “the current ban of this operating system on NIST networks,” the newsweekly said.

This follows news that the Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration are also banning Vista. FAA CIO Dave Bowen told InformationWeek he wold consider running a combination of Linux and Google Apps. Among other things, Bowen said he is concerned that Windows Vista may be incompatible with many software applications already in use at the FAA

To Have, Hold and Cherish, Until Bedtime

To Have, Hold and Cherish, Until Bedtime – New York Times
Not since the Victorian age of starched sheets and starchy manners, builders and architects say, have there been so many orders for separate bedrooms. Or separate sleeping nooks. Or his-and-her wings.

In interviews, couples and sociologists say that often it has nothing to do with sex. More likely, it has to do with snoring. Or with children crying. Or with getting up and heading for the gym at 5:30 in the morning. Or with sending e-mail messages until well after midnight.

In a survey in February by the National Association of Home Builders, builders and architects predicted that more than 60 percent of custom houses would have dual master bedrooms by 2015, according to Gopal Ahluwalia, staff vice president of research at the builders association. Some builders say more than a quarter of their new projects already do.