Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Mar 18, 2013 (2)

choi

(1) Eduard Gismattulin, Cradle of Mankind and The Next Big Oil Patch.
http://www.businessweek.com/news ... uries-of-oil-energy

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: Oil companies estimate East Africa holds up to 10 billion barrels
(b)
(i) Great Rift Valley (geographical concept)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_Valley_(geographical_concept)
(a name given in the late 19th century by British explorer John Walter Gregory)
(ii) Great Rift Valley, Kenya
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Rift_Valley,_Kenya
(c) Uganda
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uganda
(Uganda is bordered on the east by Kenya, on the north by South Sudan)

choi

(2) Julie Cruz, An Online Food Fight, Big Apple-Style
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... s-online-food-fight
("FreshDirect doesn’t take issue with a newspaper report that its drivers amassed $600,000 in parking tickets during the company’s first two years. * * * FreshDirect’s sales hit $100 million after two years * * * its sales to about $400 million last year, according to the company")

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: FreshDirect and Peapod face off over the city's well-heeled stomachs
(b) FreshDirect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreshDirect
(founded by Joe Fedele and Jason Ackerman, a former investment banker who specialized in the grocery industry; Introduced to the New York market in 2002)
(c) 
(i) Gruyère cheese
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruy%C3%A8re_cheese
(named after the town of Gruyères in Switzerland
(ii) Gruyères
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gruy%C3%A8res
(which is French spelling; a town in the canton of Fribourg in Switzerland; Gruerius, the legendary founder of Gruyères, captured a crane (in French: “grue”) and chose it as his heraldic animal inspiring the name Gruyères)

(d)
(i) Peapod
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peapod
(based in Skokie, Illinois; owned by Royal Ahold [which owns two main American chains, Stop & Shop and Giant Food]; founded in 1989 by [brothers] Andrew and Thomas Parkinson [and acquired in 2000-2001])
(ii) Ahold
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Ahold
(based in Amsterdam; started in 1887 by Albert Heijn Sr; In 1973, the holding company changed its name to "Ahold", an abbreviation of "Albert Heijn holding)
(iii) Company History. Stop&Shop, undated.
http://www.stopandshop.com/about_us/company/company_history.htm
("Stop & Shop's roots can be traced back to 1914, when the Rabinovitz family founded the Economy Grocery Stores Company in Somerville, Massachusetts. * * * By 1947, Economy Grocery Stores had grown into a flourishing chain of 86 supermarkets and the name of the company was changed to Stop & Shop, Inc. * * * In 1996, Stop & Shop was acquired by Ahold")
(iv) Giant Food
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Food

Both now subsidiaries of Ahold, Giant-Carlisle and Giant-Landover had different origins but shared the same name Giant.

choi

(3) Giles Broom, Extremely Safe Geneva Now Just Very Safe.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... -crime-free-anymore
(paragraph 2: "Geneva is no longer the idyll it long fancied itself. Ever since Switzerland joined Europe’s passport-free Schengen Area in 2009 and began allowing people to drive across the border without stopping at immigration, property crime in Geneva—home to 132 banks and some of the world’s richest financiers (not to mention their watchmakers and jewelers)—has swelled. Bag-snatching increased 28 percent, and pickpocketing climbed 43 percent in 2011, according to Geneva authorities")

My comment:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: A rash of muggings is tarnishing the city's sterling reputation
(b) There is no need to read the rest.

choi

(4) Vernon Silver, The Kid, the F-Bomb, and the Skype Code.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... o-dot-k-dot-with-it

(a) Excerpt in the window of print: The list of terms used to intercept messages offers a rare glimpse of Chinese surveillance

(b) Quote: "When Internet users in China try to access Skype.com, they are diverted to the TOM-Skype site. While the Chinese version bears the blue Skype logo—and provides services for online phone calls and text chats—it’s a modified version of the program found elsewhere. The surveillance feature in TOM-Skype, which has 96 million users in China, scans messages for specific words and phrases. When the program finds a match, it sends a copy of the offending missive to a TOM-Skype server, along with the account’s username, time and date of transmission, and whether the message was sent or received by the user, Knockel’s research shows. Whether that information is then shared with the Chinese government is unknown."  paragraph 7

(c) Note:
(i) summary underneath the title in print: A 27-year-old unlocked a secret wordlist employed to monitor Chinese Skype users
(ii) TOM Online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOM_Online

appears not to have Chinese name.
(iii) In prit but NOT online is a graphic
WHICH I'LL ADD TOMORROW

choi

(5) Peter Burrows and Aaron Ricadela, Dell's High-Wire Enterprise Act.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... -business-computing

Note:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: The PC giant bets its future lies where it's unproven and late
(b) summary in Table of Contents: Dell's betting on corporate computing

Paragraph 1 of the text shows "corporate computing" is not about selling PC to corporates--the traditional mainstay of Dell the company (as opposed to Dell the person). Rather, corporate computing--the new focus of Dell the company, is "servers, network switches, storage gears, and software." Paragraph 1.
(c) The article says, "Two years ago, Taiwan-based Quanta Computer stopped manufacturing Dell-designed servers and began selling its own to Facebook (FB) and other large Web services customers, say two people familiar with the Facebook deal who aren’t authorized to discuss it."
(i) Nancy Gohring, Building an internal cloud? Forget HP and Dell, think Quanta. IT World, Mar 13, 2013.
http://www.itworld.com/cloud-com ... d-dell-think-quanta
(ii) Cade Metz, Facebook’s Mystery Hardware Maker Expands Worldwide Empire. Wired, Mar 15, 2013
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/03/quanta-growth/

sang almost the same tune, making me think this is a Quanta's charm offensive.

choi

(6) Venessa Wong, Living Small in the Big City.
http://www.businessweek.com/arti ... city-a-trend-builds

My comment:
(a) summary underneath the title in print: US cities are developing residences under 400 square feet
(b) summary in Table of Contents: A coming wave of urban micro-apartments
(c) The article states Avi Friedman, a professor and director of the Affordable Homes Research Group at McGill University’s School of Architecture "calls the new fashion for micro-digs the 'Europeanization' of North America. In the UK the average home is only 915 square feet. In the US the average new single-family home is 2,480 square feet."

It is amazing. A space of 915 square feet is 10 yards by 10 yards, with a yard equals 3 feet.
(d) COMPARE Taiwan.

九十八年家庭收支調查報告  Report on the Survey of Family Income and Expenditure, 2009. 行政院主計處 (DGBAS), October 2010 (ISSN 1011－694X).
http://win.dgbas.gov.tw/fies/doc/result/98.pdf
(i) "表1 家庭收支綜合結果: 每戶人數(人) 3.34 [in] 98年 [2009 AD]"
(ii) "98 年擁有自有住宅家庭占全體家庭87.9％，租賃或押租者占7.9%，配住及借用占4.3％；平均每戶住宅建坪44.0 坪，每人可居住13.2 坪。" p 12
(iii) "表6 家庭設備普及率及住宅狀況 [listing historical figures each year from 1991 to 2009]  平均每戶住宅坪數(坪)44.0; 低所得組 35.9; 高所得組 52.2 [all three figures in 2009])  p 13
(iv) "第8表 家庭住宅及現代化設備概況按區域別分  平均每戶建坪(坪): Taiwan as a whole (43.96); 台北市 (30.95); 高雄市 (43.64); 臺北縣 (32.24); [and other jurisdictions])  p 87
(v) "建坪：係指房屋總樓地板面積的總坪數，包括樓梯間、陽臺、走廊。" p 129
(vi) questionnaire: "三、住宅概況 * * * 6. 住宅面積佔地 [fill in the blank] 坪[;] 建坪 [fill in the blank] 坪")  p 154

* Taiwanese units of measurement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwanese_units_of_measurement
(坪 is after Japanese area unit 坪 (pronounced "tsubo"; size of two tatami mats; 3.306 square meters))

1 square meter = 10.76 square feet
* So 44 坪 = 145.2 square meters = 1562.35 square feet
(e) Sarkar M et al, How American Homes Vary By the Year They Were Built. US CEnsus Bureau, June 2011.
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/ ... %20Year%20Built.pdf
(i) My recommendation is you read "Types of Homes" (at page 1 of 6) and the next section "Size of Homes" (at page 2 of 6), as well as Figures 3 ("Types of Homes by Year Built") and 4 ("Median Home Size by Year Built") that accompany the text.
(ii) Back in Taiwan, we thought American homes were big, but this notion is not borne out by data (though it is true that size of homes also increases by the year in Taiwan.)