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One user, Matt Whiz wrote: “Price aren’t even competitive”.
Why is Toys R Us closing in the UK?
Toys R Us was put into administration after attempts to sell the business failed and some stores could shut in the next few days.
More than 3,000 jobs were put at risk as it was revealed store closures would take place among ALL its outlets nationwide.
An "orderly wind-down of the company's store portfolio" is due to take place over the coming weeks.
On March 2, 2018, Moorfields Advisory, the firm in charge of the closure of the retail chain, confirmed it was commencing a nationwide closing down sale at all stores.
What is the history of Toys R Us?
Toys R Us was founded in 1957 by American businessman Charles P Lazarus.
It quickly expanded from its first store in Wayne, New Jersey, to become a chain of more than 1,500 stores worldwide.
Toys R Us mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe - originally known as Dr G Raffe - was introduced in 1969.
But the company filed for bankruptcy in the US in September 2017 and announced the closure of hundreds of American stores.
Bankruptcy announcements soon followed in Canada and in the UK.
Toys R Us in the UK went into administration on February 28, 2018, putting 3,200 jobs at risk.
Telecommunications giant CenturyLink has made another acquisition in the cloud computing market, this time of innovative public IaaS provider Tier 3. It adds to the company's arsenal of cloud computing offerings and shows the dynamic nature of companies jostling for position in the market.
CenturyLink's cloud platform is already built on Savvis, another IaaS provider the company bought for a reported $2.5 billion in 2011. Earlier this year CenturyLink also bought AppFog, a platform as a service (PaaS) vendor. The purchase of Tier 3 makes it clear that CenturyLink wants to not only host virtual machines and storage, but be a platform for application development.
The move also represents the latest consolidation in this market: IBM bought SoftLayer earlier this year, while in the past couple of years Verizon has bought Terremark and other companies like Rackspace have snapped up a plethora of startups.
Tier 3 is a small and nimble IaaS cloud provider that offers some PaaS services as well, which are based off of the Cloud Foundry open source project. AppFog, which was more of a pure-play PaaS offering, is also based on Cloud Foundry. The combined IaaS/PaaS platform from both companies has the potential to fit together nicely.
Tier 3's offering has some innovative features that make it stand out in the crowded cloud market. According to Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant report for the IaaS market, Tier 3 has the ability to auto-scale virtual machines without shutting them down and the option to automatically replicate virtual machine images across data centers for backup. Tier 3, according to Gartner, is also the leading backer of Iron Foundry, the .Net extension of Cloud Foundry, giving the company's integrated PaaS an enterprise-aimed application development framework for Windows apps.
Gartner noted that Tier 3 was being held back because it was not big enough to devote the marketing and outreach resources to attract users to its platform compared to some of the industry heavyweights. Being bought by CenturyLink could help fix that though.
Jared Wray, the founder and CTO for Tier 3, will serve as CTO for a new group within CenturyLink called the Cloud Development Center. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
BLAST FROM THE PAST: Former Bruins coach Don Cherry throws out the ceremonial first pitch on Canada Day yesterday in Toronto.
TORONTO — After making enough of a run over the final days of June to climb back toward contention, Red Sox owner John Henry yesterday told the Herald that adding to the club’s nearly $200 million payroll for more help in key areas is a possibility.
Henry said the Sox will be “realistic” in their approach to the July 31 deadline, perhaps signaling the next 10 days before the All-Star break will go a long way toward determining whether they are full-fledged sellers or buyers.
Indeed, imagine if the same Red Sox team that’s gone 9-5 over the last two weeks, had another hot starting pitcher and an additional late-inning relief option for manager John Farrell.
They might be one pitcher short in both the rotation and the bullpen, which was apparent in this series against the Blue Jays, when Rick Porcello blew an opportunity to extend the Sox’ winning streak to four games one day after journeyman left-hander Tommy Layne was used in a difficult situation, facing two switch-hitters and two right-handed hitters in a set-up role in a tight game.
Porcello’s 6.08 ERA is the worst of any starter in the American League by a large margin. He might help the Sox down the road, but he’s not helping them right now.
Layne is an effective lefty and has been dominant against left-handed hitters, but righties are hitting .273 against him with an .896 OPS. An additional reliever could help the Red Sox match up better in late-game situations.
The Sox could also use another right-handed bat, perhaps to play first base or right field, depending on Shane Victorino’s ability to help out when he returns from the 15-day disabled list next home stand. The Sox rank 28th with a .228 average against lefties and yesterday used five hitters who entered yesterday’s game with a .222 average or lower against southpaws against lefty Mark Buehrle.
So Henry’s stance is well-founded. If the 36-44 Red Sox are going to make a run at contending this year, they’ll probably have to be buyers at the trade deadline.
But the Sox owner also said yesterday that significant roster changes could be made after the nonwaiver deadline in the event that the Sox’ fortunes change dramatically in August.
It was a month ago tomorrow — with the Red Sox off to a 22-29 start — that Henry made a rare appearance before the media at Fenway Park and issued votes of confidence for Farrell, GM Ben Cherington and a roster full of underachieving players.
After the Sox won four-of-five games entering yesterday, it appeared the owner’s patience was finally being rewarded.
While it’s premature to say the Red Sox have turned around their dispiriting season, they have at least achieved a measure of stability.
Ryan Hanigan was supposed to make his return from a two-month recovery from a broken knuckle, but his flight was delayed due to bad weather and he spent Tuesday night in Philadelphia.
Hanigan made it to Toronto just before the getaway matinee against the Blue Jays and is expected to play tonight.
The Sox remain uncertain if they’ll carry three catchers, option Blake Swihart back to the minors or try to pass Sandy Leon through waivers, though he could be picked up by another team.
Hanley Ramirez returned after a week off due to a sore left hand and showed no signs of the injury, going 1-for-4 with a hard-hit triple to right-center.
Ramirez hit fourth while David Ortiz moved up to third and Xander Bogaerts moved from third to second.
Brock Holt received a rare day off, which gave him a chance to rest a variety of injuries that have begun building up on the 27-year-old.
Holt has been filling in at second base for Dustin Pedroia, who is on the 15-day disabled list with a strained right hamstring that is improving by the day. Knowing Pedroia, Farrell is expecting the veteran to push himself to get better as soon as possible, but with the All-Star break presenting an additional opportunity for rest, the Sox may wait until after the break to bring him back.
“He’s making good progress,” Farrell said. “We’re hopeful he’s going to take BP on the field (today) and he’s started to move around a little more with each passing day. The discoloration and swelling after the injury to the hamstring has started to move out of there so he’s making solid progress, but as we get closer to the end of the 15 days that’s going to bring us closer to the Yankees series and that’s an important one.
Virginia supporters of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) launched the campaign for recognition of gender equality in the United States Constitution. The campaign seeks to press Virginia lawmakers to approve the 22nd amendment, and make history providing the 38th state vote needed for national ERA adoption. The campaign, “VAratifyERA” (www.VAratifyERA.org) includes a ten-day bus tour mirroring the suffragists 1916 special train tour. A listing of the bus tour scheduling and stops is available at: https://varatifyera.org/tour-schedule.
Will Apple, Inc. Lose Out in the Internet of Things?
Some analysts believe Apple's focus on devices will hurt the company in the Internet of Things market -- here's why they're wrong.
The Internet of Things -- where previously unconnected things are connected to the Internet, where they can collect and analyze data, and sometimes automate systems -- has the potential to bring in massive amounts of revenue for tech companies. According to IDC, the Internet of Things (or IoT) will be worth $7.1 trillion by 2020. Other more lofty estimates from Cisco Systems say IoT could have a combined cost savings and revenue creating worth of $19 trillion by 2025.
But not everyone is on an equal footing in the IoT space, and at least one analyst group thinks Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) will miss out on the next big tech trend. According to a research note put out by the Maxim Group this month, Apple will lose out in the Internet of Things (to companies like Facebook and Google) because of its focus on high-end device sales rather than in collecting and analyzing massive amounts of consumer data.
In our Apple initiation, we cited the IoT as a long-term threat to Apple, as we believe the most viable route to monetizing the IoT not to be in the sale of the items at a premium price to alternative items, but the synthesis of their data streams.
But is this really true? To find out, let's take a look at one Apple's greatest Internet of Things opportunities right now.
One of the biggest plays in the Internet of Things is wearable technology, and Apple is already coming out swinging in the market.
BI Intelligence expects Apple to take 40% of the smartwatch market share this year, and up to 48% by 2017. Apple hasn't released any sales numbers of the watch yet, but KGI Securities estimates that pre-order sales of the Apple Watch topped 2.3 million. If that proves true, it'll be nearly twice the amount of all Samsung -- the current leading smartwatch vendor -- smartwatch sales in 2014.
Keep in mind that Apple is just weeks into this new market, which is expected to be worth nearly $33 billion by 2020, and the company is already showing itself as a market leader. That makes me question why anyone, especially so early in the IoT game, and with Apple's new smartwatch just launching, would consider the Internet of Things a "threat" to Apple.
Basically, Apple could parlay sales of its watch into other IoT uses. Take Apple's connected home device protocol, HomeKit, for example. It allows iPhone and iPad users to control devices using Siri, whether at home or away. The Watch could help build out this system by offering new types of connected-home commands or automated processes that are unique to smartwatch capabilities.
I think the idea that Apple isn't well positioned in the Internet of Things market just because it doesn't collect troves of data on its users is a bit flawed.
Apple has always been primarily a devices and services company, and time and time again, it has found a way to successfully enter new tech markets -- whether it be mobile, digital music, and now the Internet of Things -- and make money from it.
The company is already proving with the Apple Watch that it knows how to create a successful IoT device, and I expect Apple to use it to further expand its Internet of Things services.
It's far too early in the IoT game to start calling out winners and losers -- and if I had to bet, it certainly wouldn't be against Apple.
Cinderella opens in the top spot this weekend with $70 million, while Run All Night debuts in second place with $11 million.
Disney's Cinderella squares off against the action-thriller Run All Night and last week's winner Chappie at the box office.
Laim Neeson predicts that he only has 2 years left before he gives up action movies for more dramatic roles.
Liam Neeson stars as a mafia hitman who goes on the run with his estranged son in new photos from the action-thriller Run All Night.
Two fathers go to war over their sons in the latest look at the action thriller Run All Night, in theaters this April.
Liam Neeson will let no sin go unpunished in the action thriller Run All Night, which gets a new poster before it's release this spring.
A retired mobster sets out to save his son in the action thriller Run All Night, which stars Liam Neeson and Joel Kinnaman.
Liam Neeson and Joel Kinnaman are featured in the first images from Run All Night, which follows a hit man trying to protect his son.
Liam Neeson stars in Run All Night as an aging hitman who takes on his deadly boss to protect his family at all costs.
Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart will star in the Warner Bros. comedy Get Hard, with Liam Neeson and Joel Kinnaman headlining the thriller Run All Night.
Joel Kinnaman co-star in this action-thriller for director Jaume Collet-Serra. The story centers on a hitman trying to protect his son.
Liam Neeson, Joel Kinnaman and Ed Harris are attached to star in this action-thriller about a hitman who goes after his dangerous employer.
Jaume Collet-Serra is directing this thriller about a hitman who takes on his dangerous boss to protect his family.
Unknown director Jaume Collet-Serra is in talks to take the helm of this thriller about a hitman trying to protect his family from a mob boss.
Brooklyn mobster and prolific hit man Jimmy Conlon (Liam Neeson), once known as The Gravedigger, has seen better days. Longtime best friend of mob boss Shawn Maguire (Ed Harris), Jimmy, now 55, is haunted by the sins of his past—as well as a dogged police detective who’s been one step behind Jimmy for 30 years. Lately, it seems Jimmy’s only solace can be found at the bottom of a whiskey glass. But when Jimmy’s estranged son, Mike (Joel Kinnaman), becomes a target, Jimmy must make a choice between the crime family he chose and the real family he abandoned long ago. With Mike on the run, Jimmy’s only penance for his past mistakes may be to keep his son from the same fate Jimmy is certain he’ll face himself...at the wrong end of a gun. Now, with nowhere safe to turn, Jimmy just has one night to figure out exactly where his loyalties lie and to see if he can finally make things right.
IMAX plans to create at least 25 interactive virtual reality content experiences for virtual reality over the next three years. The VR content will be available in their VR centers which will open as a part of their cinemas. The company announced that they have secured $50 million for this project.
IMAX is already cooperating with Swedish Starbreeze on virtual reality content and the StarVR device. Starbreeze is at the moment promoting their VR game John Wick: Chronicles at Reboot InfoGamer in Croatia and they told us they are very pleased with their partnership with IMAX.
IMAX, which is already in advanced discussions with numerous content developers - including Hollywood studios and gaming publishers - intends to utilize the cinema-grade virtual reality camera that it is currently developing in partnership with Google for several of the projects.
With VR in its ascendancy, this initiative is a key step in ensuring that more high-quality content makes its way to various VR platforms, including IMAX VR centers. We were extremely pleased with the significant interest we received from such a prominent group of investors, and together, we look forward to helping usher in the next generation of highly differentiated, highly immersive VR content experiences to audiences worldwide.
IMAX is in the process of launching its first pilot IMAX VR centers in Los Angeles and Manchester, England. They are targeting additional test facilities in Japan, China, the Middle East and Western Europe in upcoming months.
This virtual experiences, which will include games or movies, should last around 10 minutes and IMAX plans to charge a fee between $7 and $10.
Why the fossil fuel industry fights so hard.
If we could see the world with a particularly illuminating set of spectacles, one of its most prominent features at the moment would be a giant carbon bubble, whose bursting someday will make the housing bubble of 2007 look like a lark. As yet—as we shall see—it’s unfortunately largely invisible to us.
In compensation, though, we have some truly beautiful images made possible by new technology. Last month, for instance, NASA updated the most iconic photograph in our civilization’s gallery: “Blue Marble,” originally taken from Apollo 17 in 1972. The spectacular new high-def image shows a picture of the Americas on January 4, a good day for snapping photos because there weren’t many clouds.
In the face of such data—statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet—you’d think we’d already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we’re witnessing an all-out effort to… deny there’s a problem.
Most of the media pays remarkably little attention to what’s happening. Coverage of global warming has dipped 40 percent over the last two years. When, say, there’s a rare outbreak of January tornadoes, TV anchors politely discuss “extreme weather,” but climate change is the disaster that dare not speak its name.
And when they do break their silence, some of our elite organs are happy to indulge in outright denial. Last month, for instance, the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by “16 scientists and engineers” headlined “No Need to Panic About Global Warming.” The article was easily debunked. It was nothing but a mash-up of long-since-disproved arguments by people who turned out mostly not to be climate scientists at all, quoting other scientists who immediately said their actual work showed just the opposite.
It’s no secret where this denialism comes from: the fossil fuel industry pays for it. (Of the sixteen authors of the Journal article, for instance, five had had ties to Exxon.) Writers from Ross Gelbspan to Naomi Oreskes have made this case with such overwhelming power that no one even really tries denying it any more. The open question is why the industry persists in denial in the face of an endless body of fact showing climate change is the greatest danger we’ve ever faced.
Why doesn’t it fold the way the tobacco industry eventually did? Why doesn’t it invest its riches in things like solar panels and so profit handsomely from the next generation of energy? As it happens, the answer is more interesting than you might think.
Part of it’s simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron’s not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.
Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem, one that’s become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.
When I talked about a carbon bubble at the beginning of this essay, this is what I meant. Here are some of the relevant numbers, courtesy of the Capital Institute: we’re already seeing widespread climate disruption, but if we want to avoid utter, civilization-shaking disaster, many scientists have pointed to a two-degree rise in global temperatures as the most we could possibly deal with.
If we spew 565 gigatons more carbon into the atmosphere, we’ll quite possibly go right past that reddest of red lines. But the oil companies, private and state-owned, have current reserves on the books equivalent to 2,795 gigatons—five times more than we can ever safely burn. It has to stay in the ground.
Put another way, in ecological terms it would be extremely prudent to write off $20 trillion worth of those reserves. In economic terms, of course, it would be a disaster, first and foremost for shareholders and executives of companies like ExxonMobil (and people in places like Venezuela).
If you run an oil company, this sort of write-off is the disastrous future staring you in the face as soon as climate change is taken as seriously as it should be, and that’s far scarier than drought and flood. It’s why you’ll do anything—including fund an endless campaigns of lies—to avoid coming to terms with its reality. So instead, we simply charge ahead. To take just one example, last month the boss of the US Chamber of Commerce, Thomas Donohue, called for burning all the country’s newly discovered coal, gas, and oil—believed to be 1,800 gigatons worth of carbon from our nation alone.
What he and the rest of the energy-industrial elite are denying, in other words, is that the business models at the center of our economy are in the deepest possible conflict with physics and chemistry. The carbon bubble that looms over our world needs to be deflated soon. As with our fiscal crisis, failure to do so will cause enormous pain—pain, in fact, almost beyond imagining. After all, if you think banks are too big to fail, consider the climate as a whole and imagine the nature of the bailout that would face us when that bubble finally bursts.
Unfortunately, it won’t burst by itself—not in time, anyway. The fossil-fuel companies, with their heavily funded denialism and their record campaign contributions, have been able to keep at bay even the tamest efforts at reining in carbon emissions. With each passing day, they’re leveraging us deeper into an unpayable carbon debt—and with each passing day, they’re raking in unimaginable returns. ExxonMobil last week reported its 2011 profits at $41 billion, the second highest of all time. Do you wonder who owns the record? That would be ExxonMobil in 2008 at $45 billion.
Telling the truth about climate change would require pulling away the biggest punchbowl in history, right when the party is in full swing. That’s why the fight is so pitched. That’s why those of us battling for the future need to raise our game. And it’s why that view from the satellites, however beautiful from a distance, is likely to become ever harder to recognize as our home planet.
Since leaving Williamsburg, I have been adding the finishing touches to my book and I am proud to say it looks just like I imagined it would. Seven weeks of work has created a book that is 201 pages long and explores the disaster cultures of Japan and Hawai’i. The book is at the printers now and hopefully I’ll get the final product before the August 29th deadline. Now that my summer of research has come to an end, I can reflect back on all that I’ve learned.
My foray into research and writing has led me to the conclusion that volcanic eruptions and earthquakes can act as triggers for cultural change. When analyzing natural phenomena as cultural phenomena the issue of correlation versus causation arises. Correlation refers to when a catastrophic natural event just happened to occur around the same time as an observed cultural change, whereas causation refers to when the observed cultural change stemmed directly from the natural event. This makes assessing whether natural disasters act as agents of cultural change difficult. For example, in Japan during the late nineteenth century, the series of earthquakes and natural disasters that plagued the shogunate could have just been a coincident but were interpreted as a sign of divine disfavor. The 1855 Ansei-Edo Earthquake in particular seemed to bring these connections into focus and triggered a cultural and political discussion that would help generate the appropriate political milieu for the Meiji Restoration. The connection between the 1855 earthquake and the Meiji Restoration twelve years later seems tenuous at best. The time gap between the two events imply that they are mostly unrelated yet if one looks deeper, a clear thread of discourse binds the two events.
On the other hand, sometimes too much emphasis is placed on individual disruptive natural events. Trying to find direct correlations between particular natural disasters and observed cultural change can obscure broader cultural themes. One can’t see the forest for the trees. While specific events can act as a catalyst for cultural change, larger trends in an environmental setting of an area can also shape larger cultural developments. Areas with a proclivity for certain natural phenomena, like Japan and Hawai’i, develop cultures that hinge on the instability of their natural surroundings. This is in part why I explored specific natural events in the case studies as well as larger environmental circumstances for both Japan and Hawaii. The chapter on Mount Fuji approached the volcano as a symbol of Japan. No specific eruption was linked to any specific cultural occurrence. Rather the entire volcano was explored in is relationship to the development of art and mythology in Japan. The 1855 earthquake case study on the other hand looked at the affect that a specific event had on the cultural landscape of Japan. In essence it looked at an individual “tree.” Although the affect of the general frequency of earthquakes had on the development of Japanese culture, aka the “forest” was also explored later in my book.
In Part III: Hawai’i, the volcanic landscape’s impact on the endogenous culture was investigated. The ever-changing nature of the fiery landscape of Hawai’i leads to the fusion of creation and destruction into one deity, Pele. This connection between the procreative powers of nature with the destructive creates a unique culture that lives in concert with natural forces. The destructive forces of nature are thus perceived as an overall positive power that can create new land as it destroys old land. Volcanoes are therefore seen as the source of life—for from their fiery maws lava spews out to form the Hawaiian Island chain—as well as the source of death as its glowing lava smothers forests beneath its flowing black skirts.
The Great Ka’u Earthquake of 1868 and the 1880-81 eruption of Mauna Loa are individual trees in the larger forest of natural events that shape the culture of Hawaii. The western reports that dominate the coverage of these events view them as terrifying catastrophes that upset the otherwise paradisiacal island life. Yet to the Hawaiians they are just another occurrence in a long string of eruptions and earthquakes that reach back to the beginning of life on the islands. Pele must be appeased but otherwise life continues on. The destruction caused by the 1868 earthquake is portrayed as an act of retribution by the beautiful yet hot-tempered Pele, rather than a unpredictable act of nature. These events can also highlight tipping points for cultural change. For instance, the account of Kapi’olani’s defiance of Pele set the stage for the expansion of Christianity throughout the islands. Christian missionaries also took credit for the sparing of Hilo during the later 1880 eruption even though a stronger case can be made for Princess Ruth.
Interestingly, both cultures associate female deities with volcanoes. These deities are also closely linked to short-lived flowers. The Japanese Shinto goddess Konohana Sakuya Hime is the goddess of flowering trees and volcanoes. Her sacred flower is the cherry blossom, a symbol of delicate earthly life. Likewise, Pele is associated with several flowering trees and berry bushes that thrive in the harsh conditions of fresh lava fields. In Japan, the eternal nature of Mount Fuji is juxtaposed against the ephemeral beauty of the flowering cherry blossom tree. Similarly in Hawai’i, the desolate lava fields are linked to several flowering pioneer species. The ability of nature to destroy, as embodied by the destructive power of fiery volcanoes, is integrally linked with nature’s ability for growth and change, as symbolized by the impermanence of flowering plants and the procreative energy of female deities. This discovery has led me to conclude that Nature is inherently impermanent. Thus it can be argued that both disaster cultures in Japan and Hawai’i value the ephemeral and view the destruction caused by natural disasters as an opportunity for regrowth.