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That was the title of a song from some years back that looked at all the bad news that was for ever being reported by the media. For those guys bad news is good news because it sells papers and that seems somehow appropriate as I look back over the week that's just gone. It certainly was a week of bad news.

That was the week that China experienced an incredible earthquake that has killed many thousands of people, Burma found that over 133,000 people were killed or missing after a cyclone hit the country and here in Australia we were warned to prepare for a future that includes petrol rationing within 10 years.

That last one may not sound so terrible compared to the other two stories I mentioned but think about it for a few moments ... if we in Australia are going to be facing petrol rationing in the future then so is everyone else. That's going to have a far greater impact than anything else that hit the headlines this week

If you live in a densely populated city and can get around without your own car then petrol rationing may not seem to be much of a big deal to you but do a little more thinking. Every one of us relies on petrol for our existence and when the supply of fuel starts to run out we will really begin to feel the pain. If we do see petrol rationing then we won't be able to jump in the car on a whim and head down to the mall ... we won't be able to live on one side of the city and work on the other ... and living out in the suburbs will be like living out in the boonies.

The cost of producing and transporting everything will go up. Traveling around won't be as easy as it is today either. Of course you might think that when the supplies of petrol begin to dwindle we'll be able to switch over to electric power and bio-fuels but the infrastructure that would be needed to cope with such a change isn't there yet and probably won't be in 10 years time either.

So we could be seeing a major shift in lifestyle for just about everyone on the planet. The way we live our day to day lives will change too and, for those of us who are already doing business on the Net that really could be good news. Sure there are going to be some hard times ahead as we all have to adjust to a different way of living our lives but you and I are probably in a better position than most because we can take advantage of the fact that more and more people will be doing everything they possibly can online.

Dumping affiliates
The news last week wasn't all that good for some affiliate marketers either. If you remember a few weeks back I talked about the new tax that New York State was seeking to impose on all goods purchased by New York state residents via the Internet. Under the new law it didn't matter whether the online business had a physical presence in the state or not ... the tax was due and payable.

Amazon was the first online retailer to be the target of the new law but it was only going to be a matter of time before other online stores started to feel some pain too. Now there has been some evidence that Overstock is drifting into the crosshairs of the tax collectors of New York State too and, like Amazon, they're trying to claim exemption based on the fact that they have no physical presence in the state.

But when you think about it, all online retailers who use an affiliate model to advertise their products do have a physical presence in New York State ... even sponsors in this industry have a physical presence in the state. That physical presence is every affiliate who happens to live in the state and last week Overstock decided to do something about that slight problem. They cut loose every one of their affiliates who live in the state in the hope that they might then be able to avoid paying the tax.

It's nice to see how little Overstock thinks of their loyal affiliates.

999 errors
If you use Yahoo! ... and many of us do in one way or another ... then you may have got a 999 error message if Yahoo! couldn't process your request. Now it seems that at least one SEO expert has begun to see more and more of those 999 error messages when he does regular searches.

That's not a positive sign for the future of Yahoo!

And that's it for me today, now I'm off to drive a couple of hundred kilometers to see a potential client ... something I probably wouldn't be able to do if petrol was rationed.