- Amazon UK pays $3.7 million tax on $6.5 billion sales (Reuters, May 15, 2013):
Corporate tax avoidance has risen to the top of the political agenda in Europe following revelations in the past couple of years about how little big names like Apple Inc., Starbucks, Google and Microsoft pay in tax in markets where they reap billions of dollars in sales.
Tags: Amazon, Corporations, Economy, Taxes, U.K.
- How Amazon Followed Google Into the World of Secret Servers (Wired, Nov 30, 2012):
Chris Pinkham was walking through a data center that would one day house Amazon’s seminal cloud computing service — the Elastic Compute Cloud — when he came face to face with a cage of Google machines.
This was a decade ago, when Pinkham oversaw the hardware and software that ran Amazon, and the company was considering a spot in the data center, which housed machines for many web operations and other businesses. Google would later pull a curtain around its data-center hardware, moving much of it into private facilities, but in those days, it was easier for competitors like Pinkham to lay their eyes on Google machines.
Pinkham was struck by how different the machines looked — and how hot they were. Even then, Google was running its website on dirt-cheap, stripped-down servers slotted into extremely tight spaces. They didn’t even have plastic cases.
“They were clearly not your average Dell, HP, IBM servers. They were white box machines, very densely packed. They weren’t in containers. They were just blades jammed into these custom racks,” remembers Pinkham, who went on to lead the team that built the Elastic Compute Cloud and now runs a cloud software startup called Nimbula. “And I remember a lot of heat coming off them — an indication of a lot of concentrated power.”
Tags: Amazon, Economy, Global News, Google, Internet, Technology
- iPass away – do my digital downloads die with me? (Which Conversation, Feb. 20, 2012):
If you’ve built up a proud collection of books, records and DVDs, you’d expect to be able to pass them on to your next of kin. But what happens to all of the downloads you’ve paid for during your life?
The digital afterlife is an uncertain business, it seems. We challenged both Apple and Amazon on whether digital downloads could be passed on after death, and neither could give us a definitive answer.
As more and more purchases are made in a digital, rather than physical form, we think it’s time for the main digital retailers to clear up our rights to pass on property we’ve paid for.
Purchasing a product, or renting a licence?
As it stands, the rights of iTunes and Amazon customers look pretty shaky when it comes to passing on downloads. If you buy a music track from a digital store, you’re essentially buying a licence to play that track – a licence granted to you only, which isn’t transferable upon death.
Legally you’re essentially just renting tracks – you don’t actually own them, as Matthew Strain of law firm Strain-Keville pointed out to us in the latest issue of Which? Computing:
‘We do not “own” what we purchase on iTunes, we only have the right to use it. The right to the “product” is therefore limited and passing it on to someone else is not likely to be accepted by Apple.’
Tags: Amazon, Apple, Global News, iTunes, Kindle, Society, Technology
For your (dis-)information.
– Will Google, Amazon, and Facebook Black Out the Net? (FOX News, Dec. 30, 2011):
In the growing battle for the future of the Web, some of the biggest sites online — Google, Facebook, and other tech stalwarts — are considering a coordinated blackout of their sites, some of the web’s most popular destinations.
No Google searches. No Facebook updates. No Tweets. No Amazon.com shopping. Nothing.
The action would be a dramatic response to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill backed by the motion picture and recording industries that is intended to eliminate theft online once and for all. HR 3261 would require ISPs to block access to sites that infringe on copyrights — but how exactly it does that has many up in arms. The creators of some of the web’s biggest sites argue it could instead dramatically restrict law-abiding U.S. companies — and reshape the web as we know it.
A blackout would be drastic. And though the details of exactly how it would work are unclear, it’s already under consideration, according to Markham Erickson, the executive director of NetCoalition, a trade association that includes the likes of Google, PayPal, Yahoo, and Twitter.
“Mozilla had a blackout day and Wikipedia has talked about something similar,” Erickson told FoxNews.com, calling this kind of operation unprecedented.
Tags: Amazon, Barack Obama, Dictatorship, Facebook, Global News, Google, Government, Internet, New World Order, Obama administration, Politics, Society, SOPA, Twitter
- Vietnam Era Weapon Being Used to Clear the Amazon (Tree Hugger):
Agent Orange is one of the most devastating weapons of modern warfare, a chemical which killed or injured an estimated 400,000 people during the Vietnam War — and now it’s being used against the Amazon rainforest. According to officials, ranchers in Brazil have begun spraying the highly toxic herbicide over patches of forest as a covert method to illegally clear foliage, more difficult to detect that chainsaws and tractors. In recent weeks, an aerial survey detected some 440 acres of rainforest that had been sprayed with the compound — poisoning thousands of trees and an untold number of animals, potentially for generations.
Officials from Brazil’s environmental agency IBAMA were first tipped to the illegal clearing by satellite images of the forest in Amazonia; a helicopter flyover in the region later revealed thousands of trees left ash-colored and defoliated by toxic chemicals. IBAMA says that Agent Orange was likely dispersed by aircraft by a yet unidentified rancher to clear the land for pasture because it is more difficult to detect than traditional operations that require chainsaws and tractors.
Last week, in another part of the Amazon, an investigation conducted by the agency uncovered approximately four tons of the highly toxic herbal pesticides hidden in the forest awaiting dispension. If released, the chemicals could have potentially decimated some 7,500 acres of rainforest, killing all the wildlife that resides there and contaminating groundwater. In this case, the individual responsible was identified and now faces fines nearing $1.3 million.
Tags: Agent Orange, Amazon, Crime, Deforestation, Environment, Global News, Health, Monsanto
- Bilderberg Group 2011: Full Official Attendee List:
“Thanks to the fantastic work of Bilderberg activists, journalists and the Swiss media, we have now been able to obtain the full official list of 2011 Bilderberg attendees. Routinely, some members request that their names be kept off the roster so there will be additional Bilderbergers in attendance.
Belgium
China
Denmark
Germany
Tags: Airbus, Amazon, Bilderberg, Bilderberg 2011, Daniel Vasella, Deutsche Bank, Economy, Eric Schmidt, Fiat, George Osborne, George Papaconstantinou, Global News, Government, Henry Kissinger, Herman Van Rompuy, James Wolfensohn, Jean-Claude Trichet, Jeff Bezos, John Elkann, John Kerr, Josef Ackermann, Kevin Warsh, Klaus Kleinfeld, Marcus Agius, Mario Monti, Novartis, Peer Steinbrück, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter Löscher, Peter Mandelson, Peter Orzag, Peter Sutherland, Politics, Queen Beatrix, Queen Sofia, Richard Perle, Robert Rubin, Robert Zoellick, Rockefeller, Siemens, Society, St. Moritz, Switzerland, Thomas Enders
- Amazon rainforest activist shot dead (Guardian, 24 May 2011):
José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva fought against illegal loggers and had received death threats but was refused police protection.
Six months after predicting his own murder, a leading rainforest defender has reportedly been gunned down in the Brazilian Amazon. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva and his wife, Maria do Espírito Santo, are said to have been killed in an ambush near their home in Nova Ipixuna, in Pará state, about 37 miles from Marabá.
According to a local newspaper, Diário do Pará, the couple had not had police protection despite getting frequent death threats because of their battle against illegal loggers and ranchers.
Tags: Amazon, Brazil, Crime, Environment, Global News, Society
Several websites, including YouTube, have been blocked from U.S. military computers in Japan to free bandwidth for recovery efforts.
Washington (CNN) — The U.S. military has blocked access to a range of popular commercial websites in order to free up bandwidth for use in Japan recovery efforts, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN and confirmed by a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command.
The sites — including YouTube, ESPN, Amazon, eBay and MTV — were chosen not because of the content but because their popularity among users of military computers account for significant bandwidth, according to Strategic Command spokesman Rodney Ellison.
The block, instituted Monday, is intended “to make sure bandwidth was available in Japan for military operations” as the United States helps in the aftermath of last week’s deadly earthquake and tsunami, Ellison explained.
U.S. Pacific Command made the request to free up the bandwidth. The sites, 13 in all, are blocked across the Department of Defense’s .mil computer system.
“This is a response to a time of extreme demand for networks,” Ellison said.
Tags: Amazon, Barack Obama, eBay, Global News, Googlevideo, Government, Internet, Japan, Military, MTV, MySpace, Politics, U.S., YouTube
Illegal goldmining is laying waste to Madre de Dios, the most biodiverse region in the world Photo: Miguel Bellido
We sped across the jungle along a narrow manmade path. ‘Quick! Hide the camera! If they see this, they’ll beat us up,’ shouted the motorcyclist who was driving me.
Visitors are not welcome in Guacamayo, one of the biggest illegal goldmining sites in the world, so large it is visible from space. Above the noise of the bike we could just make out a distant rumble of machines.
A sharp turn of the wheel later and the trees vanished, replaced by a vast desert dotted with shacks covered in blue plastic sheets where thousands of miners live. We were at the heart of a 21st-century gold rush that, environmentalists warn, is rapidly destroying the Amazon’s Madre de Dios (Mother of God) region in south-east Peru, 33,000 square miles of low-lying, dense rainforest containing the richest biodiversity on earth.
Tags: Amazon, Economy, Environment, Global News, Gold, Peru
Interesting news, but global warming is a scam, no matter how those warmists try to sell it.
A child plays with a paddle on the dried bed of the Rio Negro in northern Brazil. Photograph: Euzivaldo Queiroz/AFP/Getty Images
One of the most important tributaries of the Amazon river has fallen to its lowest level in over a century, following a fierce drought that has isolated tens of thousands of rainforest inhabitants and raised concerns about the possible impact of climate change on the region.
The drought currently affecting swaths of north and west Amazonia has been described as the one of the worst in the last 40 years, with the Rio Negro or Black river, which flows into the world-famous Rio Amazonas, reportedly hitting its lowest levels since records began in 1902 on Sunday.
In 24 hours the level of the Rio Negro near Manaus in Brazil dropped 6cm to 13.63 metres, a historic low.
The Solimoes and Amazonas rivers have also seen their waters plunge since early August, stranding village dwellers who rely on the Amazon’s waterways for transport and food and marooning wooden boats on brown sand banks.
According to local authorities nearly half of Amazonas state’s 62 municipalities have declared states of emergency, among them Manaquiri, one of the worst hit areas during the last major drought in the region in 2005. That year thousands of families were forced to abandon their homes and schools closed for lack of students.
Tags: Amazon, Brazil, Climate Change, Drought, Earth Changes, Environment, Global News
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