Bee Season

The story of â€Å"Bee Season† is focused on an apparently warm home which will prove to be in fact a mere holding pen for four individuals spinning in completely separate universes. It is the kaleidoscopic portrait of a modern American family whose picture-perfect surface conceals an underlying world of secret turmoil.The focal center of the novel is Eliza Naumann, the nine-year-old student who discovers that she has a talent for competitive spelling. Although the book is set in the competitive world of spelling bees, the contest is just one of the many plot devices in this family drama.On the surface, the Naumann family appears to be ideal – upper middle-class, highly accomplished, deeply spiritual, and seemingly tightly knit. But it will gradually reveal that the picture-perfect family is, in fact, comprised of individuals on disparate (and often desperate) paths toward their own notions of transcendence – quests that lead them to pursue intense and even dange rous spiritual experiences. Eliza's unlikely emergence has the effect of tearing the fragile fabric that has thus far held them together. The plot examines faith, spirituality and what happens to a family's own belief system when changes occur.Eliza was â€Å"a student from whom great things should not be expected†; thus when Eliza is forced to compete in her first spelling bee, she is certain that this event, like so many others, exists only to â€Å"confirm, display or amplify her mediocrity. † Yet when the words start coming, she realizes she can not only spell the words directed at her but, as if by magic, everyone else's words as well. She wins the school's contest, and then a few district and regional ones, before heading to Washington for the national bee.Her father Saul, the cantor at Beth Simcha synagogue, sees Eliza's skills and begins training her for spelling competitions and for greater, more spiritual challenges ahead. Saul's obsessive attention to Eliza comes at the expense of her older brother Aaron, who is being bullied at school and who feels his own religious aspirations, closely modeled on his father's, unfulfilled. Miriam is the Naumann wife and mother, who’s already pronounced remoteness from her husband and children, grows apace while Eliza and Saul are sequestered in his study, poring over dictionaries.Apparently, like most families, the Naumanns seem to have settled comfortably into a routine, each member playing an accepted role in the day-to-day family drama. Saul is the family anchor, preparing the meals, running the household, and nurturing his son Aaron's interest in Judaism. Miriam, a brilliant high-powered lawyer, with a voracious intellect and a compulsion toward order slips easily into the role of wage-earner, happy to leave the emotional demands of family life and parenting to her husband. Aaron is the smart, socially isolated, and physically awkward teenager who thrives under his father's attention.Amid this dazzling display of intellectual power and intensity, Eliza, an unremarkable student, is resigned to remaining in the shadows. She's among those sad-sack C students who â€Å"never get picked for Student of the Week† and â€Å"never get chased by boys at recess. † While other kids are singled out for gifted-and-talented programs, Eliza is shuffled off into classrooms where the walls are covered with posters of kittens dangling from ropes above slogans like â€Å"Hang in there† and â€Å"If at first you don't succeed. . . .† Even her mother considers her â€Å"a gosling born into a family of ducks.† But her surprising triumph launches Eliza into the spotlight, radically altering the family dynamics. Through her success in the contest she becomes her father’s protege, thus taking the place of her brother, in which point the fragile equilibrium of forces in the family is shattered. The image of perfect consensus is changed as Eliza’ s new discovered talent places her in the center of her father’s preoccupations. It propels her from the ignominy of being an ordinary pupil to the triumph of shining in local, state, and national spelling competitions.Because she can spell — intuitively, hypnotized by the combining and recombining letters — she replaces her older brother Aaron in the attentions of their cantor. In considering the composition of the action, which for much of its part takes place inside the characters' hearts and minds, winning the contest represents the crucial element that triggered the demise of the equilibrium that was apparent in the Naumanns house. By shattering the image of harmony and consensus the proof of parallel existences emerged for each member of the family.Eliza, when replacing her brother in her father’s perception, destroyed the silent consensus that ordered their lives up until then. From that moment, her family would grow apart. Thus, more realities sur face in perceiving her family. The myth of the perfect family falls to pieces. Faced with a sudden change and forced by the circumstances to adapt to the new situation, each of the characters would show that their personality has a three dimensional development. Therefore, each of them is portrayed in three circumstances: in relation with his own self, with his family and in connection to the outside world.In dealing with the new reality, the characters receive a multiple perspective for analysis. On the one hand, there is Miriam, Eliza’s mother. Her character, defined by the three dimensions of her life, seems quite contradictory. In relation to the outside world, she is a brilliant, long hours working lawyer. In a slightly opposing image is her attitude which unfolds in relation with the other members of her family. It is obvious that her children baffle her; she is so uncomfortable with them that when one of them asks her about the boyfriends she'd had before marriage, she blushes.â€Å"She wishes there were a book on the subject, slim as it would be, a ‘Mother's Dating Life' she could substitute for conversation in the tidy manner of ‘Where Do Babies Come From? † In the relationship with Saul she is a complex yet mysteriously troubled wife. She always saw him as the man who talked about fixing the world, â€Å"restore what had been shattered† and she thought he could heal her. Social exchange theory explains the relationship with another person as depending on the perception of the balance between giving and receiving.The fact that Miriam never felt saved by her husband, that her expectations were unanswered and somewhat betrayed can explained the estranged connection and the unspoken sadness between them. She finds Eliza and Saul's shared focus on studying with their father a painful reminder of the connection she once had with her husband and her own parents, who died tragically when she was a young girl. The sudden disco very of her daughter's ability to apply the concentration and the desire for perfection that define her own self-image triggers a flood of contradictory emotions and sends her life spiraling out of control.Always emotionally absent, she falls deeper into her secret life of petty theft, thus revealing her most hidden side. Therefore, a central theme for Miriam becomes the kaleidoscope from her childhood that she brings to Eliza. The kaleidoscope is important to Miriam because it is a device that gathers shards together and no matter their movement, they stay together. When Miriam gives the kaleidoscope to Eliza after the spelling bee she wants to share an important and precious secret of how to survive.Secondly, there is Aaron who is defined through the social relationship as facing typical teenager problems; inside the family his father’s attention is a guiding light in his pursuit of becoming an eminent rabbi. When this place is taken by Eliza and he is exiled from his fathe r's inner sanctum of Jewish music and Hebrew learning, he seeks out other forms of spirituality than the Naumanns' Judaism. Formerly his father's assistant at the synagogue, he comes to see the family as an encumbrance for reaching perfection.Exploring his spiritual needs he hungers for his own means of transcendence and he finds a community of Hare Krishnas, who’s chanting, rituals, and self-abnegation appeal to his need for a warm community, near to God and thus detaching himself from the family. Yet, the center element of the novel is the developing relation between Elisa and her father. At a first glace, Saul is the distracted father, who spends most of his time in his study, researching forms of Jewish mysticism and worrying about the transcendence he'll never achieve.His relationship with his daughter was mostly based on her achievements at school and the image depicted by those, therefore he could not have taken her into consideration, as â€Å"he only learns of his d aughter's exclusion through one of his congregants who, after Shabbat services, announces loudly enough for the people on the other side of the cookie table to overhear that her son has been identified as Talented and Gifted†. Thus, his attention was focused on Aaron because â€Å"Eliza hasn't tendered Saul the congratulatory note Aaron delivered at her age, the one that made Saul feel like a sweepstakes winner†.But when Elisa wins the spelling bee, he begins to take notice of her. Motivating her talent as having religious connections, Saul sees something Kabbalistic in the way Eliza can intuit spelling words by having the letters fall into place all on their own — a hint of a talent far beyond his own abilities. As they practice together for the national spelling competition, he leads her carefully through an old Jewish mystical text and toward a state of biblioglossic transcendence in which the alphabet begins to crack open and reveal a hint of the light of God .He feels that Eliza is breaking through the illusion of reality and getting closer to God – something he has wanted to do all his life. He begins to see Eliza as able to fulfill his own dreams of transcendence. The scenes with Eliza and the Abulafia exercises in the reading room were compelling for showing the crossing form the family perspective in which Saul is just happy father to a superior one in which he is trying to take Eliza into his personal spiritual quest. Their relationship transcends the ordinary world. He wants to be her spiritual teacher, but he doesn't see the effect on her and the family.Throughout the novel, he sees his family as a means of achieving a higher goal, of transcendence to a superior apprehension of the world. And he sees this possibility first in Aaron, then in Eliza, whom he considers to be â€Å"pretty special†. In their house of closed doors, Eliza pursues her father's tutorials, as he directs her study for the spelling bees. First d ictionaries, then incantatory repetitions of letters and combinations of letters, then initiation into the meditation of the medieval mystic Abraham Abulafia:â€Å"Letters,† Saul says. â€Å"Abulafia believed that, by concentrating on letters, the mind could loose itself from its shackles to commune with a presence greater than itself. â€Å"Do you mean,† Eliza whispers, â€Å"that I'll be able to talk to God? † (pp. 172-73) She masters the techniques of mystic concentration: â€Å"She could feel the different vowels in her marrow, her bones chimes through which the letters blew† (p. 190). Then she surpasses her father's knowledge.Alone with Abulafia she experiences a religious ecstasy that rips through her body and mind, with visions, pain, â€Å"crawling Sects and crashing waves† (p. 268), her own disembodied voice, â€Å"infinite human and animal possibilities† (p. 269). Possibly, she sees God: â€Å"the shape's face is every face ever formed† (p. 269); she feels herself disintegrate and return anew. In fact, the experience is for her a try to find a new place in the world, one which leads away both from the front stage reality of the spelling bees contests and from the hidden, back stage of his father’s personal quest.In uniting the contemporary realistic tradition in which â€Å"Bee Season† is written-the tangible world of cereal boxes, grade school hallways, kaleidoscopes, Friday night synagogue services-with an ancient discipline derived from wonder and longing for God, Goldberg has painted a original picture of the particular unhappiness experienced by one family as a result of resistance to change. Bibliography Goldberg, Myla. Bee Season. New York: Anchor, 2001.

Reificaition Case Essay

Wikipedia defines reification as â€Å"(Lat. res thing + facere to make) n. the turning of something into a thing or object; the error which consists in treating as a â€Å"thing† something which is not one. Hypostatization, treating an abstract entity as if it were concrete, is a case in point†. In Marxist terms, it is the consideration of a human being as a physical object, deprived of subjectivity. According to Marxists, this is one of the pitfalls of the capitalist system because in such a system the laborers and their work are not valued to their proper extent. Their work is treated as a commodity and is valued according to the unpredictable needs of the market. This concept is closely tied to the Marxist idea of commodity fetishism which Wikipedia describes as â€Å"an inauthentic state of social relations, said to arise in complex capitalist market systems, where social relationships are confused with their medium, the commodity.† Marxist writer, Georg Lukà ¡cs, writes thus: The transformation of the commodity relation into a thing of ‘ghostly objectivity’ cannot there ore content itself with the reduction of all objects for the gratification of human needs to commodities. It stamps its imprint upon the whole consciousness of man; his qualities an abilities are no longer an organic par of his personality, they are things which he can ‘own’ or ‘dispose of’ like the various objects of the external world. Simply put, Marxists criticize capitalist systems for stripping the human person of his social nature. He is transformed into a commodity or a product. One’s labor is transformed into money which is in turn used to purchase the products of other people’s labor. Although this may facilitate the exchange of goods, the problem of the system lies in the fact that because of this abstraction, the use-value (the actual usefulness of the object) is oftentimes totally different from its exchange-value (the value of the object in the marketplace). For example, a person who creates a hammer (which has a variety of uses) will be paid less than a person who makes jewelry (an object which has less use than a hammer). The value given to the work of the laborer is incommensurate to the work and effort that he made in order to produce the good. How can reification be avoided? Marxist measures against reification have proven themselves to be ineffective (including complete control over the market and standardization of wages). This is because these measures tend to remove the element of competition from the formula, thus, causing production to suffer instead. An alternative mode by which reification is avoided is through the respect of human rights. According to John Locke, each person has the natural right to life, liberty and estate which must be protected by the government. These rights must ensure that each person shall be given his due. By treating persons as individuals with human rights and dignity, people will be treated as an end and never as a means. The theory of human rights has been upheld and accepted by most of the world and are embodied in international instruments and conventions, most notable is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the field of labor and employment, modern societies have integrated this idea of human dignity by setting minimum standards and conditions to be strictly followed by employers under the pain of appropriate sanctions should they be defied. For example, there could be a law saying that any employee who works beyond eight hours in a single day shall be given additional overtime pay. Another instance would be a law that would lay down a minimum wage based on the living standards and conditions of the locality where the worker belongs. By recognizing the human dignity of every person, reification is completely obliteration because persons are then given the respect they deserve. They are no longer treated as cogs in the machinery of production but are considered partners in the enterprise. By holding that each person deserves to be treated with dignity, they are esteemed as subjects never objects, and will be given their due.       Bibliography Lukà ¡cs, Georg. 1967. History & Class Consciousness. Translated by Andy Blunden. Merlin Press. Smith, John, Bob Snider, and Diane Hill. 2005. A study of physics. New York: McGraw Hill. Wikipedia. 2006. Commodity fetishism. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_fetishism. Ashcraft, Richard. 1986. Revolutionary Politics and Locke’s â€Å"Two Treatises of Government†. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Wikipedia. 2006. Georg Lukà ¡cs. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Luk%C3%A1cs. Wikipedia. 2006. Human Rights. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights. Wikipedia. 2006. John Locke. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_locke. Wikipedia. 2006. Reification. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification.

Customer Knowledge Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Customer Knowledge Management - Essay Example Customer knowledge gained from firsthand customer contact is very persuasive. Smart CEOs at firms like IBM, Cisco, and EMC intuitively realize this, and their senior managers contact their major customers on a regular basis. These firms also act on that information to improve relationships with those important customers. The benefits of customer knowledge management have concentrated at the individual level. For example, Dreyfus, like other mutual fund firms, keeps track of client activity, claiming that they can predict when a client is going to shift money out of their mutual funds. Clients receive a call from a Dreyfus representative, who wants to know how the client feels about the investment and if his or her goals are being met. If Dreyfus is able to track clients at all stages of the consumption process, then the firm has a better chance of retaining the customer. A number of CRM - and ERP-type software programs allow companies to track processes in the life of a specific sale s order from order entry all the way to delivery to customer. Of course, FedEx introducing package tracking is a well-known example from years ago. There are a number of benefits of information technology for firms of any size. The marketing research practice has undergone a major transformation in recent years. A primary function of marketing research activities is to collect and analyze customer information. Technology has enabled all phases of the marketing research process ranging from sampling and data collection to analysis and reporting. With newer technologies and faster cycle times, firms conduct research at all stages of the product lifecycle and not just at the product development stage or the test marketing stage.  

Article Review 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Article Review 1 - Essay Example The study by The Employment Policies Institute, a nonprofit research organization, proves that for every 10 per cent increase, the unemployment among minorities like the Hispanics, teenagers and African Americans has increased considerably. Moreover, low-skilled unemployment among high school drop-outs has also grown. Studies by Dr. David Neumark, a University of California, Irvine economist, support these findings and states that the law has â€Å"the largest negative effects on low-skilled employees, such as teens and minority teens†. By destroying the opportunities of entry-level jobs for many, the law robs them of the right to learn skills and develop good work habits which would help them develop a career. James Sherk, a labour policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, points out that the law also has the negative effect of reducing many workers’ job opportunities and working hours. He observes that â€Å"wage hikes cause businesses to reduce the number of workers they hire and the hours they ask their employees to work†. Though there are some workers who initially earned near the minimum wage experience gains, the general impact would be a negative one for those who seek entry-level jobs, as Neumark’s study suggests. According to the Hoover institution, 20 per cent could lose their jobs unless there are offsetting tax cuts for small businesses. Lambro points out that there is an increasing tendency among industries to replace workers with machines, computers and the internet facility, to avoid the extra expenses they would have to meet by paying the minimum wages to a large number of people. Such job reduction will accelerate if the law continues to impose burde n on small businesses. Moreover, Sherk’s study also points out that the general benefactors of the law are not poor, dispossessed people, but teenagers from affluent families. This again reduces the

1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 10000 words

1 - Essay Example The economic theory dictates that the value of property is dependent on its demand. This also encompasses intangible property. According to Sople (2003), the brainchild of human intellect and wisdom is IP. IP is generally divided into two categories. Industrial property is that which encompasses patents, trademarks, industrial designs and geographic indications of source (WIPO 2010). On the other hand, copyright, the second class of IP, covers all literary and artistic works that are to be protected; copyright includes poems and plays, musical compositions, paintings, photographs and sculptures (WIPO 2010). The protection of IP is a major concern for policy makers. Countries like the US, Japan and the Netherlands attach great importance to the safeguard of IP. As discussed in detail in the following paragraphs, the protection of IP is important for economic growth and stability. Protection of IP also provides channels for the sustainment of technological advances, and in attracting investments in the country; this in turn leads to the creation of more jobs. The World Banks Global Economic Prospects Report for 2002 recongnized the growing importance of IP in the economic sector and how it is necessary for today’s globalized economies. It was observed in the report that â€Å"across the range of income levels, intellectual property rights (IPR) are associated with greater trade and foreign direct investment flows, which in turn translate into faster rates of economic growth† (Field 2008). For instance in the US, researches conducted over the last few years have established that about half of the exports are now dependent on the protection of IP, as compared to only 10% exports 50 years ago (Field 2008). At the national level, the system of intellectual property is regarded as one of the most important foundations of the current economic policy. Over the time, its importance has been recognized in sustainable development in

Robert W Baird Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Robert W Baird - Essay Example Today, the company has a special place in all the businesses in America, and the Fortune magazine has included the company in a prestigious list of 100 best places to work. Robert W. Baird & Co is an asset management company. Its special focus is on middle market investments, capital markets investment, fixed income investments and provision of a broad range of other services to its clients such as Private Wealth Management, Mutual Funds and a company’s own special fund. The company performed extremely well in the fiscal year ending 2010. It earned $847 million in revenues, a figure which is 18 percent more than in the previous year. The principal competitors of Robert W. Baird & Co are all the investment firms operating in America. The major rivals of the company are Jefferies Group, Inc, Piper Jaffaries Company Inc. and Raymond James Financial. However, RWB&CO has outsmarted its competition in the last few years, and especially in 2010. While other companies downsized and contracted, RWB managed to grow by an impressive figure of eighteen percent. Robert W. Baird & Co does not only have strong presence in the entire United States but is also present in other countries around the world. The company operates extensively in the UK, Greece and India. In these countries, it is involved in the development of risk-averse portfolios and making investments throughout the world. The greatness of the company lies in the fact that despite strong recessionary pressures, the company has managed to grow and within a few years, it has doubled in size in terms of revenue. This achievement puts RWB ahead of its competition. The company is currently an employee- owned business, meaning that the largest shareholders of the company are people working for the organization. It has a flexible structure. Each unit works independently and is controlled by the head of the department. Project teams are developed to sense

First-borns V Later-borns Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

First-borns V Later-borns - Term Paper Example But it is only in the recent century that scientific evidence is brought to bear on the subject. Today, based upon numerous surveys and scholarly studies conducted on the subject, it is fairly clear that birth order impacts aspects of personality. But there is disagreement among scholars as to the exact correlations between personality traits and birth order. The rest of this essay will peruse source work and Internet sources to arrive at current understanding on the relationship between birth order and personality. The CBS News article titled Birth Order Affects Smarts, Personality (2010) forwards the view that the eldest among siblings tend to have superior intelligence while the younger ones â€Å"get better grades and are more outgoing†. Using robust methodology, a team of researchers from Lawrence High School in Cedarhurst, N.Y., surveyed 90 pairs of siblings in high school. After crosschecking for facts, the team found that the â€Å"first-borns had higher test scores i n math and verbal ability, while the later born children had better grade point average in English and math.†. (CBS News, 2010) In a similar experiment conducted on a separate set of students, the research team further found that younger siblings are more â€Å"extroverted, sentimental and forgiving† their seniors (who are also more likely to be perfectionists). They also observed that older siblings act as mentors to the younger ones and are generally less competitive – this perhaps explains their lesser grades. Those low in birth order also express an adventurous streak in them, which reflects a greater sense of security that they possess. Thus far, the findings are in line with logic and conventional wisdom has hinted in history, mythology and literature. But these findings are by no means comprehensive and are not backed up by universal consensus from the community of psychologists and sociologists. The journalist teams of Geoffrey Cowley and Karen Springen h ave reviewed the subject of birth order and have assembled interesting points in their Newsweek article titled First Born Later Born which appeared in July 2011. Drawing key insights from Frank Sulloway’s book Born to Rebel, Cowley and Springen place forward the view that â€Å"firstborns, whatever their age, sex, class or nationality, specialize in defending the status quo while later-borns specialize in toppling it† (Cowley & Springen, 2011). This implies that those with same birth-rank share more things in common compared to what they share with their own siblings. Many of Sulloway’s educated surmises would be proven by his findings. Some of it is as follows. Sulloway believed that firstborns grow up with the understanding that they are â€Å"bigger, stronger and smarter than their younger siblings† (Cowley & Springen, 2011) This leads them to develop a dominant and assertive personality. Given that their younger siblings intrude on their existing rela tionship with their parents, there is bound to be jealousy and status-consciousness in the elder sibling’s mental makeup. In the same vein of argument, Sulloway proposed and proved that the elder sibling is more conscientious and more conservative than the later-borns. This explains why people such as Rush Limbaugh, George Wallace and Newt Gingrich are first-borns and very politically conservative. Conversely, by virtue of being only loosely connected to the existing family hierarchy, later-borns are more socially agreeable and more open to new experience. This correlates to the personalities of such charismatic leaders as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. (both are later-borns). Typifying the group of personality traits associated with first-borns are Oprah Winfrey, Saddam Hussein, Clint Eastwood, Hillary

Characteristics of imprisonment in the nineteenth century Essay

Characteristics of imprisonment in the nineteenth century - Essay Example Characteristics of imprisonment in the nineteenth century During the 17th century, prison was any place that the offenders were held while awaiting the punishment. During the 17th century, London Bridewell house was constructed as a prototype prison that could hold the disorderly poor in order to instill the habits of work through prison labour. The 19th century witnessed the implementation of the first state prison that was the national penitentiary at Millbank in London. The prisoners were kept in separate cells, but were allowed to associate during the day. Pentoville prions was constructed in 1842 with cells measuring 13 feet long, 9 feet high and 7 feet in width and operated a separate system that entailed solitary confinement of the prisoners. Peel’s Gaol Act of 1823 had separated the prisons depending on the status of the offender. The prisoners were confined in a separate cell and were tied with rope and communication to other prisoners was impossible. Select Committee of the House of Lords recommended for the appointment of Prison Inspectorate and implementation of silent prison system. The first stage of silent system was solitary confinement for a period of up to nine months that was coupled with hard labour and prayers in the cells. The second penal stage was the provision of sleep and meals in a separate cell, but the prisoner would be allowed to work with the rest of prisoners. The third stage was consisted the conditional release on account of good conduct and constant police supervision. Under the silent system, food was monotonous, beds were replaced with hammocks in order to cause the offender sleepless nights and hard labour entailed Oakum picking in order to separate the fibres of an old ship’s ropes for reuse.... These systems entailed a lot of brutal punishment methods such as electric shocks, starvation and plugging of prisoners in boiling water. However, many boroughs decided to give up their prisons instead of incurring higher expenses of maintaining the prisoners (Emsley 89). In 1877, the prisons were nationalized and came under the control of Prison Commission. The Prison Commission was of the view that restructuring was essential in order to reduce the number of prisons and stop reoffending. The Prison Commission asserted its won control of prisons and standardised the regulations of all prisons thus leading to uniformity. Conclusion I agree with Sidney and Beatrice that the nineteenth century prison policy was ultimately ‘the fetish of uniformity’. After the passage of Prison Act of 1865, the Prison Commission implemented measures of standardizing services offered to prisoners including the quality of food, the number of labour hours and ensured that prisoners wore unifor ms while in the cells. In addition, the prisons employed new qualified personnel such as psychologists, caseworkers and welfare officers who were tasked with providing counseling services and providing treatment to the prisoners. By mid 1890s, the Prison Commission had successfully implemented uniformity, efficiency in administration and welfare services in prisons. The 1898 Prison Act gave the Secretary of State to make rules governing prisons and a Board of Independent Visitors for every convict prison was established (Emsley 113). Question (b). ‘When we look back, transportation captures our contemporary attention as a sensible, colourful and almost exciting way of dealing with serious offenders. But with the benefit of hindsight, we can appreciate

Organizational Theory Design and Change Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Organizational Theory Design and Change - Essay Example Supervisors and managers define the goals and hold meeting with the employees regarding the amount of effort and budget needed to accomplish those goals. The managers take care of every employee individually and listen to their problems. Dealing with customers with efficiency and skilfully is an important part of my workplace culture. All the employees share a set standard of rules and respect each other’s privacy. Their good behavior is not only a source of competitive advantage but also increases organizational effectiveness by enhancing its reputation in the market. The deadlines are met efficiently because the projects’ tasks are distributed among the team members properly. The best thing with my workplace culture is that the employees use technology based tools to communicate with each other and the supervisors, and also with the consumers and the stakeholders. This increases trust between all the parties. Hence, the overall culture at my organization is very frien dly, healthy and motivating which keeps the employees working hard enough to achieve the organizational goals and objectives, and increase productivity.

Of mice and men-Discuss the importance of the American dream Essay Example for Free

Of mice and men-Discuss the importance of the American dream Essay Dictionary: the American dream An American ideal of a happy and successful life to which all may aspire: In the deepening gloom of the Depression, the American Dream represented a reaffirmation of traditional American hopes Dictionary: dream a cherished desire The American Dream is a dream of success, fame and wealth achieved in the United States of America. Its thought to be achievable by hard work, courage, and determination, or by getting rich quick. The concept often involves moving upward in the social classes, and may involve icons such as car, house, partner and pet. This definition of the American dream is universal, but it can have a different meaning for different classes of people. People have dreams The novel of mice and men, written by John Steinbeck, is set in 1930s California during the Great Depression. The two main characters called George and Lennie are migrant workers travelling from ranch to ranch just to get by and make a little money so that one day they can live their own American dream. Throughout the book, Lennie always asks George to tell him and re-tell him their dream of someday owning their own land. Someday were gonna get our jack together and were gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an a cow and some pigs. The use of the word someday shows a sense of longing and uncertainty; he doesnt know if it will happen soon or even at all. Because of the time the book is set or George and Lennies lifestyle, their dream is not the exact definition of the American dream. It is more to do with freedom and the amount of land owned which equals a higher status in society the more land you owned. George and Lennies dream is motivated by the fact that they have no stability in where they live or work. Being migrant workers, they have a very unsettled lifestyle because they dont know how long they will be needed to work there. After they arent needed or if they get fired, it could take a long time to find another job. Their dream of owning a rural house on their own in the Salinas valley is a comforting thought of stability and not having to worry about nowhere to live. The Salinas valley is not a typical rural setting of America, but as George and Lennie have not traveled far, it is their idea of perfect. There are no comfortable houses, but vast orchards, vineyards, and ranched thoroughly tended. In the book, the Californian countryside is described in vast detail at the beginning and end of every chapter. Steinbeck uses description of the surroundings as he, like Lennie developed a close bond with nature. In my opinion, this is Steinnbecks dream Other characters living on the ranch also have similar dreams. The migrant worker candy for example is afraid of being alone and dreams of living out the rest of his life with company. When he hears about George and Lennies dream asks them if he can join them so he wont be lonely. Spose I went in with you guys. Howd that be? When they can me I wont have no place else to go an I cant get no more jobs. He is desperate so he pleads with them even though he hasnt known them very long. Another person on the ranch with a dream is Curleys wife. Her dream is of fame and fortune Nother time I met a guy-he was in the pitchers. He said hed put me in the movies. Said I was a natural. Soons he got back to Hollywood he was gonna write to me about it. I never got that letter. I always thought my ol lady stole it. She has this dream as an escape from her husband who is very sexist and discriminatory against women. At the time the book is set, women were treated poorly and only thought of as housewives for bringing up children and were used commonly for sex purposes. Curley treats Curleys wife poorly so she dreams about being rich and famous being a movie star. Ironically, this is the dream of many American people nowadays; to be rich and famous as they aspire to be the everyday celebrities we see today. Another dream of hers is also not to be lonely. She explains to Lennie I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely. This shows that she is lonely because she confides in him about her problem and she doesnt know him at all. Crooks is the Negro stable buck. He has a separate room away from the white people living and working on the ranch. This also shows the amount of racism at the time the story is set. It seems his dream is to not be treated differently because of his skin colour. He says I aint wanted cause Im black. They play cards in there, but I cant play because Im black. They say I stink. It is obvious that he doesnt agree with these comments by the way he speaks. He speaks sharply showing he is angry about these comments. He talks about everyone else except for him playing cards implying that he would like to play cards too, along with everyone else. In conclusion, I think that the American dream is important to different characters in different ways and different interpretations.

Africa’s Physical Geography

Africa’s Physical Geography Africas Physical Geography Africa is a continent rich in beauty, culture, and wealth. It has several diverse and singularly captivating landscapes including vast savannah and desert, lush rainforest, and sun-kissed beaches. There is potential for great wealth and prosperity, due to the resources in this luminous continent. North and South Africa are split into almost two equal parts by the equator, and the climate and physical features in both the north and the south repeat themselves. For example, the Sahara and Kalahari deserts, the Cape region and the Mediterranean, and the Karoo and the Maghreb. It is incredibly hot in most places, and insanely bright. Although it is so diverse, Africa is mainly made up of rolling flat plateaus. There is not a great variety of physical features, though those that are there can be quite remarkable. Compared to other continents, there are few broad coastal plains. It is an enormous mass of land, connecting at the Isthmus of Suez to Asia and almost to Europe at Gibraltar. Africa is the only continent which lies in all four hemispheres, lying on the equator at zero degrees latitude and Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude. It has no deep indentations and very few well defined peninsulas. Africa is surrounded by major bodies of water such as the Mediterranean Sea in the north, the Red Sea in the northeast, the Atlantic Ocean in the west, and the Indian Ocean in the southeast. The coast, stretching 18,900 miles is largely level. There are few islands, Madagascar being the largest and the thirteen Canary islands being the largest group. The major landforms of Africa include the Nile River System, Atlas Mountains, Great Rift Valley, Sahel, Congo River Basin, Kalahari Desert, and the Sahara Desert. The Nile River is the longest river in the world with a length of 4,160 miles. It runs north, rising from the highlands of the southeast, and then draining into the Mediterranean Sea. It is made up of multifarious dams, rapids, streams, swamps, rivers, rapids, and tributaries. The major rivers making up the Nile are the Albert Nile, Blue Nile, White Nile, and the Victoria Nile. The great Nile River is a lifeline for the inhabitants on its banks. It provides nourishment for crops which are both food and a means of business. The Atlas Mountains are located in Northern Africa and stretch from southwestern Morocco across the coast of the Mediterranean, to the extreme east of Tunisia. These mountains are made up of several smaller mountain ranges namely, the High Atlas, Middle Atlas, and Maritime Atlas. The highest in the entire range is Mt. Toubkal located in western Morocco at a height of 13,671 feet. The Great Rift Valley is a dramatic depression in the surface of the earth which extends from an area near the Red Sea in Jordan in the Middle East, to the country of Mozambique in Africa, which is a length of about approximately 4,000 miles. The Great Rift Valley is essentially a series of depressions caused by volcanic activity thousands of years ago, which also created what is now called the Ethiopian Highlands. Some of the highest peaks in the continent are found in the Great Rift Valley including Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and Mount Margherita. The Sahel is a great expanse of land running across north and central Africa, across the extreme southern Sahara. The Sahel is the transition between the desert conditions of the north and the tropical conditions of the south. The region receives very little rainfall, about six to eight inches annually, and vegetation is relatively sparse. The Congo River Basin dominates the landscape of the Democratic Republic of Congo and a large portion of neighboring Congo. It also stretches into Angola, the Central Republic of Africa, Cameroon, and Zambia. This fertile basin contains about twenty percent of the worlds rainforest. The Congo River Basin is about 1,400,000 square miles in size. The Congo River is the second longest river in Africa and is made up of multiple tributaries, streams, and rivers that help intertwine the people in the cities along the banks of these waterways. The Kalahari is the major desert of southern Africa. It extends about 100,000 square miles and covers much of Botswana, the southwestern region of South Africa, and all of western Namibia. Dry river beds and shrubs crisscross along the desert plateau. A few small mountain ranges are located in the Kalahari Desert: the Karas and the Huns. The Kalahari Gemsbok Wildlife National Park in southern Africa near the border of Namibia hosts large herds of animals. The Sahara Desert covers about one-third of Africa, making it the largest desert in Africa and is around 3,500,000 square miles in total size. Elevations range from one hundred feet below sea level to mountains which exceed 11,000 feet (the Ahaggar and Tibetsi mountains). The Libyan, Western desert of Egypt, and Nubian deserts are regional deserts located just west of the Nile. The area receives almost absolutely no rainfall, although a few rivers flow from the Atlas Mountains underground which assist in irrigating alienated oases. The water of the Nile helps fertilize the eastern parts of the landscape. These landforms occupy a large section of the land, and the climate, resources, and vegetation of these are similar to those of the countries they stretch through. The people are largely reliant on the natural resources the earth yields in their country. Agriculture makes up a huge part of the economies of several countries. Each country has its own unique characteristics and although each separate one cannot be listed here, it is accurate to say that Africa is a diverse country which could be rich due to the resources the breathtaking country yields, and which the inhabitants can manipulate to their profit. Bibliography: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/aflnd.htm

Online Marketing :: Marketing

1- Paper Free Marketing A very effective form of direct marketing is email marketing which uses electronic mail to send a sales pitch to potential customers. Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on electronic mail marketing each year in the United States alone. Marketers work diligently to develop a mailing list of customers they can send mail to repeatedly without incurring the cost of printed newsletters or traditional direct mail. The delivery time is often just a few seconds or minutes compared with the days it takes the post office to deliver a piece of mail. Email is paper free making it attractive to environmentalists and conservationists. 2- Professional Marketing Sometimes an email campaign sent by a novice is considered spam and deleted at once by the recipient. Professional email marketing services can provide effective campaigns that entice potential customers with quality newsletters, testimonials and other marketing materials. A good service has the most current development features available to help you through every step of the process. They will provide many templates from which to choose or they may guide you through importing your own HTML page. They will help you add images, sound, background images and attachments for a polished professional look. Another big advantage to using an online service is the ability to track the emails. 3- Social Networking Web based marketing tools may be the perfect email marketing solution to grow your business and increase sales. Even beginning marketers will benefit from user friendly email development methods. New ideas are always on the horizon such as email social sharing. Social networks are a gold mine for a business person who effectively shares his email on these sites. You are able to get the information in front of hundreds if not thousands more people on the social sites. Using the opt-in mailing list you can develop a loyal following for your newsletter or other promotional items. You can even get reports on who opened the emails or simply deleted them. 4- Increasing Online Sales There are many ways to advertise your business, and direct email marketing is very effective for increasing web traffic and online sales. Advertisements for your product are sent to a targeted list of clients through email. Attractive and compelling ads do not give the impression of being spam, so the recipient is more likely to take a look and possibly make a purchase. The sender is able to track the metrics of his campaign such as how many emails were actually opened, how many messages bounced and how many requested removal.

Online News and Print’s Future Essay -- Technology Computers Essays

Online News and Print’s Future The Internet’s influence on our lives has spread throughout. Researching, shopping, job searching, and more can all be done with a keyboard and a few clicks of a mouse. But this ease of use casts a shadow on the future of printed information. The Web’s instant knowledge has changed our reading and writing habits and has made print media seem old-fashioned. One of the first industries to lead the change was journalism. As the Web expanded in the mid 90’s, online editions of popular newspapers surfaced and opened a new field for seeing and telling the world's events. Even before the Web boom, the advance of another technology had already started to threaten print newspapers’ survival. In his essay â€Å"Deadline,† Nicholson Baker shares his frustrations with libraries who destroy newspaper archives in favor of microfilm backups. For years, he tried to buy as many of these collections as he could before they were destroyed. He says in the essay, â€Å"Sometimes I'm a little stunned to think that I've become a newspaper librarian†¦But at the moment nobody else seems to want to do what needs to be done† (Baker 33). As libraries adapted the new technology, they felt less of a need to keep the old style. Disregard for newspapers took on a new form with the growth of the Internet. Journalism and the news have frequently taken on new forms as communication technology advances. Beginning with oral tradition, friends and family use to tell the news to each other without mass audiences or recording instruments, like pen and paper. But as new technologies emerged, the early methods declined in usage. One such shift happened in Socrates-era Greece when writing culture overtook oral culture (Birkerts 63). As m... ...lied. Using it like it's print media won't do any good. Champions of old media need to realize that before they declare doom. Works Cited Baker, Nicholson. â€Å"Deadline† Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 9- 34. Birkerts, Sven. â€Å"Into the Electronic Millennium.† Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 62-74. Mitchell, Stephens. â€Å"Complex Seeing: A New Form.† Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 418-442. Sosnoki, James. â€Å"Hyper-readers and their Reading Engine.† Writing Material: Readings from Plato to the Digital Age. Ed. Evelyn B. Tribble and Anne Trubek. New York: Longman, 2003. 400-417.

Graduation Speech: We are Blessed to Live in the USA :: Graduation Speech, Commencement Address

Dear fellow students, faculty, friends, and family, My name is Sam Myers and I'm from Albania. Coming here was a great experience for me. I grew up in a poor country where the chances to get a good education were extremely limited. I went to schools with broken windows, and did homework by candlelight because we had no power. I was raised in a simple family by parents who loved me dearly, cared for me, and taught me life values that I carry with me. I wish they were here today. My parents had no educational background and could barely read or write. I had nothing compared to what young people in America have. But my parents communicated to me the importance of a good education, and today I am graduating from Marefat Community College in the United States of America. What a huge difference! The fall of communism in Albania in 1990 brought Albanians hope for the future. As every young man, I had dreams and one of them was studying abroad. God brought me here in a miraculous way. While providing medical care for the Kosovo refugees during the war of 1999, I met the people who provided the financial support I needed to come to America. It was exciting and scary at the same time. I had lived all my life with my family in the same country, but it was time for big changes and new adventures. I cherish the wonderful feelings of my first days on the Marefat campus. The easy access of many resources on campus including the library, computer labs, and many others made my learning process easy. I have learned that the key to success is working hard and focusing on your goal. Despite the many distractions this country offered me, I reminded myself that I had a goal to reach and I was here for a specific purpose. Marefat Community College opened many new doors for my future. One of my greatest experiences was working at the Office of Student Life as a student programmer. I learned to work in a business environment, coordinating events and communicating with students and staff. Working as a team with students from different cultures and backgrounds opened my eyes to get a better picture of the world. For the first time in my life, I met people who did not look like me. As I got to know them, I was able to break the stereotypes I had built growing up in a country that was closed to the rest of the world for 50 years.

Humanities: Art and Visual Arts Essay

The word humanities comes from the latin humanus, which means human, cultured and refined. To be human is to be have or show qualities like rationality, kindness and tenderness. It has different connotations in different historical eras. Today, however, we know of humanities as a loosely defined group of cultural subject areas. Unlike other subjects, it is not a group of scientific or technical subjects. The Scope of Humanities The humanities is a many-faceted subject. It is consist of the visual arts, literature, drama and theater, music, and dance. 1. Visual Arts The visual arts sre those that we perceive with our eyes. It involve not only painting and sculpture but include such things as clothes, household appliances, and furnishing of our homes, schools, and buildings. They may be classified into two groups; graphic arts (flat or two-dimensional surface) and plastic arts (three-dimensional). a. Graphic Arts Broadly, this term covers any form of visual artistics representation, especially painting, drawing, photography, and the like or in which portrayals of forms and symbols are recorded on two-dimensional surface. Printers also use the term graphic art to describe all process and products of the printing industry. b. Plastic Arts This group includes all fields of the visual arts in which material are organized into three-dimensional forms. 2. Literature The art of combining spoken or written words and their meanings into forms which have artistics and emotional appeal is called literature. 3. Drama and Theater A drama or play is a story re-created by actors on a stage in front of an audience. 4. Music The art of arranging sounds in rhythmic succession and generally in combination. Melody results from this sequence and harmony from the combinations. Music is both a creative and a performing art. The common forms are song, march, fugue, sonata, suite, fantasy, concerto and symphony. 5. Dance Dance involves the movement of the body and the feet in rhythm. Some important types include ethnologic, social or ballroom dances, ballet, modern and musical comedy. Method of Presenting of Arts Subject 1. Realism In painting, this is the attempt to portray the subject as it is. Even when the artist chooses a subject from nature, he selects, changes, and arranges details to express the idea he wants to make it clear. Realists try to be as objective as possible. Here the artist’s main function is to describe as accurately and honestly as possible what is observed through the senses. However, in the process of selecting and presenting his material, he cannot help being influenced by what he feels or thinks. 2. Abstraction It means â€Å"to move away or separate. †Abstract art moves away from showing things as tey really are. The painter or artist paints the picture not as it really looked. The picture is not just like life. It is not â€Å"realistic. † This is used when the artist becomes so interested in one phase of a scene or a situation thet he does not show the subject at all as an objective reality, but only his idea or his feeling about it. 3. Symbolism A symbol in general is a visible sign of something invisible such as an idea or a quality. It can be simply an emblem or sign like: % to represent percent, a lion to represent courage, a lamb to represent meekness. Fauvism This was the first important art movement of the 1900’s. the fauves flourished as a group only from about 1903 to 1907 but their style greatly influenced many later artists. Henry Matisse led the movement and other important fauves included Andre Derain, Raoul Dufy, George Rouault, all from France. 5. Dadaism A protest movement in the arts was formed in 1916 by a group of artist and poets in Zurich, Switzerland. The Dadaist reacted to what they believed were outworn traditions in art, and the evils they saw in society. 6. Surrealism This movement in art and literature was founded in Paris in 1924 by the French poet Andre Breton. 7. Expresionism A manner of painting and sculpting in which natural forms and colors are distorted and exaggerated. This method was introduced in Germany during the first decade of the twentieth century that is characterized chiefly by heavy, often BLACK lines that define form sharply contrasting over the vivid colors. 8. Impressionism A style of painting developed in the last third of the 19th century characterized by short brisk strokes of bright color to create the impressionism of light on objects. It portrays the effect of experienced upon the consciousness of the artist and audience. Elements of Visual Art 1. Line It is an important element at the disposal of every artist. Through the lines of painting or sculpture, the artist can make us know what the work is about. Line always have direction. They are always moving. Lines, as used in any work of art, may either be straight or curved. 2. Color Of all the elements of art, color has the most aesthetic appeal. Delight in color is a universal human characteristics. Color is a property of light. The light of the sun contains all the colors of the spectrum: violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. These colors are so blended that they yield no sensation of color. 3. Texture It is a color element that deals more directly with the sense of touch. It has to do with the characteristics of surfaces which can be rough or smooth, fine or coarse, shiny or dull, plain or irregular. Texture is best appreciated when an object is felt with the hands. It is found in all the visual arts. 4. Perspective It deals with the effect of the distance upon the appearance of objects, by means of which the eye judges spatiaql relationships. It enables us to perceive distance and to see the position of objects in space. There are two kinds of perspective: linear and aerial perspective. To get depth or distance, an artist uses both linear and aerial perspective. 5. Space In painting, as in architecture, space is a great importance. The exterior of a building is seen as it appears in space, while the interior is seen by one who is inside an enclosing space. Painting does not deal with space directly. It represents space only on a two-dimensional surface. Sculpture involves verylittle space relationship or perception of space. 6. Form Form applies to the over-all design of a work of art. It describes the structure or shape of an object. Form directs the movements of the eyes. Since form consists of size and volume, it signifies visual weight. 7. Volume The term volume refers to the amount of space occupied in three dimensions. It therefore refers to solidity or thickness. We perceive volume in two ways: by contour lines or outlines or shapes of objects, and by surface lights and shadows.

Servervault Case

ServerVault Case Servervault is a company in the hosting industry located in the United States which has been in operation since December 1999. A hosting company provides its customers with physical space for servers and supporting services. Servervault chooses only to operate in the managed hosting section which gives more value-added services to customers. ServerVault attracts Internet-reliant and security-savvy customers. It also provides end-to-end solutions to customers. Servervault differentiates itself from competitors by offering high level of security protection.It also has enough bandwidth and power supply to ensure the Internet access is always available. Servervault has three sources of revenue: one-time setup fees for new customers, monthly hosting fees and fees for additional value-added services. Although the variable cost of serving an additional customer is relatively low, it requires large funds to build facilities upfront. Recently, the president/CEO and CFO want t o raise some capital for its expansion. The potential investors want to learn more about ServerVault’s projected cash needs to make the investment decision.Macroeconomic analysis Economic background As it can be seen from Appendix A(1), the NASDAQ composite peaked at 5048. 62 in March 2000 before dropped dramatically to 3205. 11 in April. The major contributor to the loss is the internet bubble. The increasing stock prices over the last few years made some investors too confident in IT companies. However, the collapse of the bubble took place in 2000, when a lot of IT companies failed. As a result, the NASDAQ composite witnesses a huge loss in the stock market. Hence, it is a good opportunity for ServerVault to get more market share.On the other hand, Appendix A(2) illustrates that the US GDP has kept growing during the last six years, which suggests that the loss may only occur in the IT sector. The growth in GDP brings more business capital spending. (Please see Appendix A( 3)). Some of these capital spending may be used to hire third parties to strengthen firms’ IT departments. Therefore, it is a good news for ServerVault since it may have more customers in the future. Social background An analysis in social background will help ServerVault to determine what customer needs.The number of internet users worldwide was only about 30 million in 1995, but it increases to around 280 million in 2000. Please see Appendix B. The popularity of internet offers businesses a new way to advertise and sell their products. Nowadays, people like to shop online so that more and more companies need reliable internet servers to handle complex transactions. Since ServerVault specializes in this area, the increase in the number of internet users is definitely good. Microeconomic analysis Competitors Competitors are a major threat to the business.Therefore, to gain some insights of competitors’ businesses can help ServerVault to determine where it stands in rel ation to the industry. According to the information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, ServerVault faced intensive competition in 2000, as the number of establishments in the data processing and web hosting industry was approximately 28000. However, that number decreases by 46% to around 15000 in late 2011. (Appendix C(1)). As the demand for web hosting services has kept growing, during the 10-year period, some firms in the industry become very large while a lot of them failed.In 2000, the leaders in the managed section of the web hosting industry were Digex, IMB and Data Return. The major service provided by Digex is largely the same with the one offered by ServerVault. However, Digex also has revenues from value-added services including firewall management, stress testing, consulting services. It also provides computer hardware, software, network technology, and systems management necessary to customers. In the year of 2000, it had revenues of 168 million and a net loss of 143 m illion. As it can be seen from its balance sheet, it has huge investment in capital assets.Its property and equipment account for 77% of its total assets. (Please see Appendix C(2)). IBM operates in five business segments. Web hosting services would fall in the system and technology segment, which provides clients with business applications requiring computing power and storage capabilities. The total number of signed strategic outsourcing contracts valued at more than $100 million increases from 24 in 1997 to 58 in 2000. In 2011, the system and technology segment had revenue of 20 billion with pre-tax income of 1. 6 billion. (Please see Appendix C(3)).Data return also offers ongoing maintenance of hardware and software, including content back-ups and system upgrades, in addition to its web hosting service. It has total revenue of $7. 1 million and a net loss of $12 million in 2000. (Please see Appendix C(4)). Customers Customers are very important to ServerVault, because they are t he source of revenue. Small companies usually have simple internet needs and can be satisfied by shared hosting services. Those who already owned and managed their own servers but lack a suitable space and a reliable internet connection are customers of the co-location segment.The customers in the managed section would be companies with significant internet presence and high volume e-commerce. E-commerce in the United States grows at a fast speed during the last decade. Please see Appendix D(1). Since each e-commerce company has the possibility to outsource their web host, the demand for managed web hosting service will also grow at a fast pace. In addition, globalization, deregulation, and technological innovation force companies to find outsourcers to get ready for the future. Please see Appendix D(2).Therefore, ServerVault can attract lots of customers with custom services that fit customers’ needs at reasonable cost. Substitute If there are many substitutes, the demand fo r the managed web hosting service will decline as customers are able to switch between different services. Therefore, it is important to determine if there are any substitutes to the managed web hosting industry. To operate internet-based applications, companies only have two options. They can either outsource that work to a third party or do it by themselves.Outsourcing has several advantages. Firstly, companies should focus on the goods and services that they sell or provide. The time spend on developing internet-based application could be better spent to make their products and services more competitive. Secondly, there is financial advantage to outsource the work to a third party. Digex, one of the major competitors, spent around $170 million to purchase property and equipment. (Please see Appendix E). For many companies, it is a significant amount of cash flow.In addition, companies can cut the number of employees required in the IT department. Meanwhile, the outsourcing expens e is tax deductible under tax law. Lastly, the technology used in the web hosting industry is usually far from clients’ core business area. It is not wise to spend time and money in this technology. Suppliers Since server is an important input to the business, the server price will have an impact on the profit. There is much competition in the server market, as the total number of the server manufacturer amounts to 14132 worldwide.The majority of them are located in China and other Asian countries. Please see Appendix F(1). However, IBM, HP, Dell, Oracle, Fujitsu have almost 90% of the total market share. Please see Appendix F(2). Therefore, it is likely that ServerVault will choose to buy servers from these manufacturers, and it needs to carefully monitor the market price to make wise purchase decision. New entrants To learn more about the possibility of new entrants is beneficial to ServerVault, because new entrants will have downward pressure on prices which may affect the earnings negatively.The major factor that will prevent new entrants to the industry will be labor shortage. Please see Appendix G. In 2000, the labor shortage of computer professionals may limit the growth of the IT industry. As college graduates prefer to work for large companies, newly-founded companies will find it very hard to hire suitable employees. Therefore, it is very unlikely that the web hosting industry will have many new entrants in the next a few years. Appendix A A(1) Source: http://www. google. com/finance/historical? q=INDEXNASDAQ%3A.IXIC&histperiod=weekly&ei=cKBjULDdL4mQkwPTwwE A(2) Source: the raw data come from US Department of Commerce-Bureau of Economic Analysis http://www. bea. gov/national/index. htm#gdp A(3) Business capital spending. U. S. corporations are primary purchasers of information technology, and they often require the help of computer services vendors in order to use it effectively. Therefore, any long-term decline in the level of business capita l spending would result in fewer computers being set up and maintained and would have a negative impact on the computer services industry.Figures for U. S. business capital spending (categorized as â€Å"nonresidential fixed investment†) are available quarterly from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. During the past few years, business spending has risen faster than the economy. In 1999, such spending was up 8. 3% over 1998. Source: http://www. netadvantage. standardandpoors. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/NASApp/NetAdvantage/showIndustrySurvey. do? code=ccs&date=/ccs_0600/ccs_0600. htm Appendix B Source: http://www. netadvantage. standardandpoors. com. myaccess. library. toronto. ca/NASApp/NetAdvantage/showIndustrySurvey. do? code=cox&date=/cox_0300/cox_0300. htm Appendix C (1) Source: http://www. bls. gov/ces/data. htm Calculation: (28000-15000)/28000=0. 46 C(2) Co. is a provider of managed Web hosting services to businesses operating mission-critical, multi-functional Web sites. In addition, Co. offers Web hosting services to the rapidly growing number of application service providers, enabling them to more efficiently deliver their application services to their customers over the Internet.Co. also offers related value-added services, such as firewall management, stress testing and consulting services, including capacity and migration planning and database optimization. Co. services include providing the computer hardware, software, network technology, and systems management necessary to offer Co. ‘s customers comprehensive outsourced Web site and application hosting solutions. http://www. new. mergentonline. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/companyfinancials. php? compnumber=90285 C(3)International Business Machines operates in five business segments: global technology services, which provides information technology infrastructure services and business process services; global business services, which provides professional services and application management services; software, which consists of middleware software that enables clients to integrate systems, processes and applications, and operating systems software engines that run computers; systems and technology, which provides clients with business applications requiring computing power and storage capabilities; and global financing, which facilitates clients' acquisition of Co. ‘s systems, software and services. http://www. new. mergentonline. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/companyfinancials. php? compnumber=4427 C(4) Co. provides Microsoft-based Internet hosting services to businesses, web site developers, application service providers and other organizations. Co. ‘s advanced hosting services enable its' customers to establish and maintain e-commerce and other applications through which they can conduct transactions and manage information on a worldwide basis over the Internet. Co. rovides management services for its' customers' hosting ne eds, including: consultation and recommendations on standardized system architecture; installation, configuration and stress testing of hardware and software; ongoing maintenance of hardware and software, including content back-ups and system upgrades; a broad array of system and network monitoring and reporting services; and technical support designed to respond to both simple and complex system issues. http://www. new. mergentonline. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/companyfinancials. php? compnumber=98629 Appendix D(1) Source: www. destevenwhite. com D(2) According to IDC, slightly more than half of all outsourcing worldwide occurs in the United States. Demand is being driven by globalization, privatization, deregulation, and technological innovation. These factors are leading to increased global competition, which is forcing companies to focus more on cost-cutting measures.However, companies aren’t using outsourcing just to cut costs and get out of trouble. Now they a re also turning to outsourcers to prepare for the future — and to avoid trouble down the road. Source: http://www. netadvantage. standardandpoors. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/NASApp/NetAdvantage/showIndustrySurvey. do? code=ccs;date=/ccs_0600/ccs_0600. htm Appendix E http://www. new. mergentonline. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/companyfinancials. php? compnumber=90285 Appendix F(1) http://www. alibaba. com/trade/search? SearchText=SERVER;IndexArea=Products;fsb=y F(2) http://www. fool. com/investing/general/2011/03/12/server-market-share-the-strong-get-stronger. aspx Appendix GHowever, a major impediment to sustained growth is the shortage in skilled technology labor. Computer professionals, including programmers and system designers, are in short supply. Computer and data processing added 8,000 jobs in March 2000, a rise of only 0. 4% (or 4. 8% on an annualized basis), representing a slowdown in the rate of growth from 1999. Over the next few years, demand for talented computer services professionals is expected to outstrip supply, leaving many positions unfilled overall. Source: http://www. netadvantage. standardandpoors. com. myaccess. library. utoronto. ca/NASApp/NetAdvantage/showIndustrySurvey. do? code=ccs;date=/ccs_0600/ccs_0600. htm

Managing Ethically Essay

Today’s business world often requires that employees work longer hours and travel extensively. This forces many to sacrifice family time and other personal responsibilities for their careers. In a one to two page paper, answer the following: What are the ethical implications of requiring that employees dedicate long hours and extensive travel time to their careers? What obligations, if any, does a manager or employer have to enable employees to create a balanced professional and private life? Support your answers with examples. Understanding, that ethics is about fairness and equity. Businesses are cutting labor, but not cutting the amount of work that has to be done. I work for a very large company, and three years ago there was a large reorganization. The team I was on went from 22 people down to 12, but the workload did not drop. We were required to pick up the extra work. There was no choice, the work had to be done, and someone had to do it. Managers do not have any obligations to their employees to provide balance for them, but it creates a bad working environment. Employees that are not happy at their jobs are not as productive. It can also bring down morale for the entire team. There are things that can be done to help eliminate some of the ethical issues that could arise. There are plenty of workaholics out there that want to work longer hours and travel extensively, find out who wants to do it, and who does not. This is not a guarantee, but could stop a problem before there is one.

History of the Olympic Games

The modern Olympic movement has been shaped by many differentiating factors over the years. It has been altered by social, political, and economic factors. More specifically, warring times, changes to social structures, and economic activity that varies by country have been the overall leading factors that have shaped the Olympics over the years. The Olympics have shown over the decades that they can be affected by political conflict. However, it seems that this is the point of the Olympics, to illustrate national pride, by competition.Bloodshed should not be the way for pride of one’s country to be shown, but it should be shown through competition, in the words of the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Pierre de Coubertin(1). The games have been used as a weapon for denouncing a country’s sportsmanship, such as in 1956 when Arnold Lunn, a British Olympic team official accused the Nazis of cheating in the 1936 Olympic games that were held in Germany. He went on to allege that the competitors of Germany went onto the course while it was closed to athletes.Though the fact that they were trying so hard to practice, could be an example of the importance placed on the games at the time before war period. This is implied by the statement by Arnold Lunn that victory was the only thing that mattered to the Nazis, and how they achieved it did not matter as long as they did(3). The use of the Olympics to show off one’s country was further demonstrated during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union were itching to outdo one another.Bob Matthias gives insight through an interview into the United State’s yearning to win over Russia. The competitor told of the spirit of winning throughout the team, even in the athletes that were sure to win for the United States(4). This is a stark contrast to an information guide provided by the Soviet Union regarding the olympics being held in Moscow that year. It tells of seeking peace wi th the U. S. , and how the Olympics were a beacon for social progress and democracy(6). This resulted in the U. S.boycotting the Olympics, due to the obvious bias in the information. Ali Kabir, finally, told of how the rise and fall of his nation’s hockey team reflects the lack of unity in his own country, even going as far as stating that it’s players are clueless and have tarnished Pakistan’s name(10). This further demonstrates how the Olympic Games reflect political events at the time they are being held. Not only do the Olympic games make a habit of displaying the events of the world through it’s ‘friendly’ competitions, but it also lets economic factors manifest in it’s events.Ryotaro Azuma, mayor of Tokyo, spoke in an interview in 1972 regarding the 1964 Olympic games held in Japan. He told of how his country finally had a chance to get out of the losing spirit after World War II and rise as a world trade power. The Olympic Games in this case, were used to boost a country’s economy and wealth as well come back as a leading power(5). A Japanese newspaper editorial in 1988 commented about the use of industrial powers by South Korea in that year’s Olympic games, or lack thereof.It comments negatively on the fact that South Korea did not have the funding to set up the games as well as display it’s industrial and economic power to the world, implying that no matter the medals one, the industrial power by the U. S. , Japan, and other countries will make a lot of profit and leave a memorable impression on the world while South Korea will not(7). The International Olympic Committee provided statistics lending insight into the fees provided into Olympic events, showing an expected trend.In 1980, it is useful to know that the U. S. and Soviet Union were locked in the Cold War, and as stated previously, the U. S. refused to come to the Olympic Games held in Moscow as well as Russia refusing to att end the one in Los Angeles. The shockingly low fees paid to have viewing and advertising rights to the games held in Moscow reflects the war. Many countries boycotted the Olympics that year, so the severely low amount of fees paid further demonstrates this tense time in during the 20th century.However, the dramatic increase in the fees paid to broadcast Atlanta’s games illustrates the time of peace after the Cold War ended, with over 800 million dollars being given to broadcast the games(9). Finally, the Olympic games are altered by the diverse and changing social structures in the world. For instance, in 1908 a photograph of British competitor Sybil Newall shooting her bow was found on newspapers across England(2). Whether this photograph was staged to sell newspapers or not, it cannot be denied that this photograph indicates the beginning of women’s movement, which was obviously an important issue during this time in the world.With more leniency being given to women during this time, they were eventually being allowed to compete in the competitive events, though only 2% of the athletes were women. This factor also continues to show during the 1992 games held in Spain, where by then 29% of women were competing. Hassiba Boulmerka was an Algerian competitor during this time and spoke in an interview about her critics, and how being the first Algerian to win an Olympic title did not depend on her gender, but simply on her strength in her mind and in body.Boulmerka was heavily criticized by Muslim groups in Algeria for wearing shorts as she ran in the events. Despite this, the games illustrated the decreasing requirements for dresses and increasing requests for appropriate attire, no matter what gender the competitor identifies as. A helpful addition to analyzing the Olympic games would be an article reflecting the point of view of a German athlete during the 1936 games being held in Germany. They could explain why the competitors went onto the cour ses to practice while they closed, or if they did at all.He or she could balance the point of view by pointing out that they did not cheat, and that they simply were practicing and either did not know the rules or were just doing what they thought would be okay. Another helpful article would be to add on to the statistics provided by the International Olympic Committee by showing how many countries that competed versus the countries that actually paid for broadcasting rights, especially during the 1980’s games.This would show whether there is an actual correlation between the lack of countries participating and the lack of money being put into the broadcasting rights of the games. The Olympic games have been shown to be altered and influenced by the social, economic, and political events happening all around it. It seems to be the central point of tension and friendly competition every four years. It was intended to be that way, reflecting the world’s ever changing vie ws on life and each other.

Are cloud storage solutions irrelevant for a large organisation of Essay

Are cloud storage solutions irrelevant for a large organisation of 1,500 staff - Essay Example Among these technology products and services, Information Technology (IT) forms a key part, with organisations, irrespective of the sector they are operating, have been incorporating IT in a strong manner, by having a separate IT infrastructure inside the organisation. Although, in-house IT infrastructure is the norm in many large organisations, due to advent of advancing technology services like Cloud Computing and their resultant benefits, virtual IT infrastructure are being considered and also favoured. That is, to complement the in-house infrastructure and even also to maximally replace it, Cloud Computing is being utilized. As this service appears to be a cost-effective, secure, quality enriched, operational effective, etc., it is being used by varied organisations from large ones to the small ones. Thus, the discussion will be on how these Cloud computing solutions can be relevant to a large organisation of 1500 staffs. Cloud computing is the term given to the web-based virtual computer structure, which can host data, softwares as well as other applications, with the organisational employees accessing and utilizing it without the need for the organisation to have an in-house IT structure. â€Å"Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends ITs existing capabilities by increasing capacity or by adding capabilities on the fly without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software.† (Knorr and Gruman 2010).The Cloud architecture that is needed for delivering Cloud Computing to an organisation consist of various hardwares as well as softwares, and these cloud components are categorized as front end and back end. The front end will be set up in the organisation, and includes employees’ computer, servers and the other applications that run in the computer particularly web browser.

Police Corruption, Misconduct, and Brutality Essay

Police Corruption, Misconduct, and Brutality - Essay Example The reason for this is associated with the fact that the nature of police work is a fertile ground for growth of corruption. Walker and Katz (2011) note that, police corruption is as old as policing itself and is not limited to the present day. His argument is supported by Sherman, who argued that police corruption has been in existence as long as have there been the police. Goldstein also cites that corruption is prevalent to policing and that the nature of police work is bound to force police officers to tempting bribes. The first police corruption was reported in 1970s in New York by Knapp Commission, from which two types of corrupt officers were identified. These include the grass-eaters and meat-eaters. It was observed that grass-eaters are very submissive and accepts any kind of bribe offered to them. Meat-eaters, on the other hand, are so aggressive and will always look out for opportunities to exploit for their own financial gains. However, research reveals that most corrupt officers in the US are grass-eaters. Some forms of police corruptions having been reported are those ripping off drug dealers or dealing drugs themselves. Others receive bribes to cover evidence while others have been convicted for covering their own acts of torture, brutality and murder (Dempsey and Forst, 2010). One case involving police corruption is that Joseph Miedzianowski, a former Chicago police officer who has entered the history books as one of the most corrupt corps in America’s history. During his 22 years of work as an officer in Chicago, Miedzianowski was accused of having planted guns and drugs on suspects, brutally tortured them with hot coat hanger and even hit them using lead-knuckled gloves, steeling their drugs, and other possessions. During his trial, he was also accused of fixing criminal cases against his gang members, and secured their release from prisons for sexual rendezvous with girl friends. He was also convicted of having assisted wanted criminal s flee the state, supplied guns, and ammunitions to gang members. The other count leveled against him in court was that he betrayed his workmates by undermining investigations of his gang members and telling them to burglarize the homes of corps’ and steel their guns (Lighty, 2003). Outcome of the case Despite initially denying the charges, Miedzianowski later confessed of having been guilty of the charges and was convicted for 10 counts including conspiracy, drug and racketeering in April 2001. The federal judge then sentenced him to life imprisonment (Lighty, 2003). My position regarding the outcome I agree with the charges handed to Miedzianowski. The reason being, investigations conducted proved beyond the reasonable doubt that the accused was involved in the alleged corruption and misconduct. Therefore, handing him life sentence was the best since it will make other police officers and citizens stop engaging in corruption, knowing very well that if convicted, they may al so be incarcerated for life. Police Misconduct in USA Police misconduct refers to illegal and improper actions on the part of the police officer. Police officers are expected to adhere to ethical principles set to them. In addition, police officers should be role models in showing exemplary behavior to the rest of society. Police officers should understand that they are not above the law; they can be prosecuted when they engage in improper behavior. In most cases, police conduct arises due to abuse of

How did the plan to put a man on the moon by 1969 succeed, or was it Research Paper

How did the plan to put a man on the moon by 1969 succeed, or was it the moon landing faked - Research Paper Example Arguments from both sides have led to the dilemma whether man was able to land on the moon with the level of technology back then the manned landing was planned on earth for reasons of fame and power. Most of the conspiracy theories argue that The United States faked the moon landings to beat the Soviet Union and assure Americans that J.F. Kennedy has achieved his long-term goal. It was clear that the moon landing was faked until NASA counter-attacked the critics on behalf of the government. The landing of man on the moons surface was not a hoax. NASA claimed that it had it had carried out various researches on sending astronauts to the moon and the 1969 program was its first successful landing on the moon after the Apollo 1 program failed. According to NASA sources, the first program was not successful due to a fire in the cabin that led to the deaths of all astronauts. Improvements and renovations were made to the Apollo 11 making it possible for humans to land on the moon using the Lunar module (Braeunig). Kennedys administration funded the programs leading to the construction of two space centers, the Kennedy Space Center and the Johnson Space center. Funding of these centers at the time led to advances in technology in NASAs computers, avionics, and telecommunication systems. These technological advancements led to Armstrong and Aldrin landing on the moon on July 20, 1969 (Braeunig). Michael Collins was left at the command spacecraft to ensure departure preparation s for the Lunar Module. To present proof, the astronauts took pictures and recorded videos. They also took rock and soil samples from the moon and Neil Armstrong left the American flag on the surface of the moon (Knight 500). Above all, the Americans were the first to take a man to the moon and were ready to provide proof. Critics emerged as soon as NASA started transmitting the

Healthcare Economics Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Healthcare Economics - Case Study Example It is therefore apparent that the answer of the said question applies the same. It is easy to measure of effects of smoking on individuals than to measure the effects of antismoking campaigns on health. You cannot measure the effects of antismoking campaigns on health before measuring the effects of smoking on individuals. Measuring the effects of smoking on individuals is what derived the antismoking campaigns. Knowing the effects of smoking on individuals led to a derived demand of anti-smoking campaigns on Health, once the effects of smoking on individuals is measured then the need of antismoking campaigns arises and that is what positively contributes to health. Therefore, without measuring smoking effects on individuals, it is hardly possible to know even whether there is a need of antismoking campaigns because it is not assured how harmful it is for the individuals. Through having a price elasticity of less than 1, supply is not so sensitive to prices and based on the high-inco me target market of individuals with $250,000 per annum. Ideally, a price increase for a luxury maternity unit will still be viable and there is bound to be a sure market for the good. With a decrease in income, the income elasticity of demands is bound to change. It will be grater than 1 thus implying that demand for a good becomes more sensitive to a change in income. This only happens in an ideal environment but the economy is always sensitive to changes and employers who are profit minded would go for better pay to their employees.

Chinese Economic Reform Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Chinese Economic Reform - Essay Example This led to a situation, where by 1978 seventy five percent of the industrial output was state controlled, and there was hardly any private enterprise worth mentioning. The foreign trade of China was restricted, and consisted of only those items that were not available, or could not be produced in the country. The economy remained stagnant and inefficient, as a result of the policies followed by the Chinese government. There was hardly any competition, and the price and production controls by the government led to severe distortion of the economy. All these factors led to the living standards being extremely low in comparison to all its neighbors. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping took over the reigns of the country, which saw the start of the reform era. The realization of the poor economic state of the country, and the need for economic reforms to revitalize the country, and maintain its strategic importance caused the Chinese government to reconsider its policy of centrally controlled economy, and initiate economic reforms. The Chinese government set about a gradual reform process in the belief that this would cause significant economic growth, and raise the living standards in China, and restore its importance in a region, where its traditional rivals like Japan and South Korea, were displaying steady economic growth, and as result boosting their relevance in the region. (Morrison, M. Wayne, 2006). The economic reform in China has two sides to it. The positive side of the reform has seen greater efficiency in the economy, which has led to the boosting of output, and increased resources for even more investment in the economy. The Chinese have traditionally demonstrated a high rate of savings, and the boost in the economy has seen these savings rates rise to forty percent of the GDP, making the domestic savings rate in China rank among the highest in the world. The GDP of China for 2005 was estimated at $1.9 trillion, and its per capita GDP at

Hazardous Waste Contamination & Treatment Risk Assessment Geohydrology Essay

Hazardous Waste Contamination & Treatment Risk Assessment Geohydrology & Contaminant Transport - Essay Example In 1981, it was discovered by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, that the company was disposing its waste inappropriately, through pouring the waste sludge on the parking lot, while also disposing the solvents into an a drain leading to an abandoned septic system (NPL, 2013). The health department of the state then tested the wells in the vicinity of the company and found them to be contaminated with Trichloroethylene (TCE). The company then installed carbon filters on its well system and those of some neighboring homes, but later closed down in 1985, without fulfilling the requirement for the waste and toxic contaminant cleanup (NPL, 2013). b. How it was contaminated The sludge dumped by this company on the drainage system and parking lot was found to contain a hazardous contaminant called Trichloroethylene (NPL, 2013). The company found its way on the Superfund Site List in December 1982, after having dumped waste products in the form of sludge and solvent s on its site, since 1968 to 1981 (NPL, 2013). c. The contaminants of concern Trichloroethylene (TCE) is a colorless liquid that is used as a solvent to remove grease from any metallic components, and is also used as a component in spot removers, paint removers and also adhesives (NPL, 2013). This colorless liquid has a sweet scented smell and is inflammable, and the sweet scent is even projected when the substance is burning. Trichloroethylene as a contaminant dissolves in little water, but remains longer in ground water, especially in the water wells (NPL, 2013). However, considering that it is vaporizable, whenever it comes into the surface of soils or water, the chemical components vaporizes into the air, but it vaporizes slowly from the soil than surface waters, considering that it attaches to particles and can remain there for long. Despite the fact that it does not build-up easily in plants and animals, trichloroethylene sticks to water and soil particles, which eventually ca uses it to settle down at the lower sediment levels in a water body or a water wells (NPL, 2013). The trichloroethylene exposure can occur through breathing in air that contains the vapors of the chemical, or even through drinking or swimming in the water that is already contaminated by the chemical (NPL, 2013). It can also be contacted through using showering water that is already contaminated with the trichloroethylene chemical component, this time through breathing in the vapors and also through skin contact. The health effects of trichloroethylene on humans depends on the amount that is ether ingested or breathed in. when small amounts of trichloroethylene are breathed in, they may cause the individual to suffer from headaches, dizziness and lung irritations (NPL, 2013). However, when the amount of the trichloroethylene breathed increases, it may cause more fatal health conditions, such as unconsciousness and impaired heart functions and to the extreme, death (NPL, 2013). Additi onally, whenever trichloroethylene is breathed for long, notwithstanding that it could be in small amounts, it can easily result to the damage of the nerves, as well as the damage and impairment of the kidney and the liver (NPL, 2013). The same effects of breathing large amounts of trichloroethylene are also felt whenever large amounts of the same chemical compound is ingested through drinking, where impaired heart

Web Software Testing Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Web Software Testing - Research Paper Example Moreover, all the applicable tests are performed according to approved test procedures on approved test cases. However, the software testing process can be assisted with software tools that can be used in order to make the software testing process automated (Mustafa, Al-Qutaish, & Muhairat, 2009; Pressman, 2001). Web based software applications are one of the most evolving type of software systems now a days. In addition, these web applications have been built to support wide range of activities such as business related transactions such as product sale, transactions and delivery, scientific processes such as information transfer and sharing, and medical related activities such as expert system-based diagnoses. Because of the significance of these activities in everyday life, faulty web applications may have negative impact on businesses, economies, scientific evolution. For these reasons, a web application must be completely tested to guarantee that the web application is reliable and complies with its original requirements (Qian, Miao, & Zeng, 2007; Mao, 2009). The properties of web applications include distributive nature, hypermedia, and multi-platform, dynamic, the possibility to generate software components at run time (web services) and interaction with a large number of users. Additionally, web applications are different from the traditional software in the sense that their operating environments are always diverse, heterogeneous and independent. In this scenario, web applications should be tailored to such heterogeneous and diverse client environments, to satisfy the different requirements of the users. However, the main focus of web applications remains usually on the information publication, searching, and indexing as compared to the traditional software. This makes their functionalities comparatively weaker but requires faster up-dating speeds in their contents and

In the book aptly titled Hannibal Essay Example for Free

In the book aptly titled Hannibal Essay In the book aptly titled Hannibal, Serge Lancel provided a nitty-gritty exposition of Rome’s Great Commander life history. Through this book, Lancel aims to provide a concise account of Hannibal’s greatness to enlighten some misconceptions about the hero, and to outline how Hannibal reached the summit of success, in terms of war. The book explicates Hannibal’s historical biography from childhood up to the moment of his downfall, to give the reader a clear picture of Hannibal’s attributes, strengths, weaknesses, and most especially his essential characteristics that made him a true hero. Lancel does not only establish Hannibal’s internal complexities but he also provided a precise status quo of the Carthaginian world throughout the progression of the Great Commander’s life history. With this, Lancel successfully sketched the annihilation of Hellenistic world and the ascension of Rome. Hannibal was brought in to world in 247 BCE at Carthage, which was experiencing a tremendous loss from Rome during the First Punic War (264-241). The domination of Rome during this period has a great influence to young Hannibal’s life because he was the eldest son of a Carthaginian general named Hamilcar Barca. At the age of ten, Hannibal witnessed the step by step triumph of his father through the latter’s accomplishment of other territories for the expansion Carthage empire. Many believed that Hamilcar compelled Hannibal to make a promise that the latter will have a perpetual abhorrence to the Roman Empire. Lancel posited that these could be hearsay only but this event could be true since Carthaginians have all the reasons to detest the Romans. When Hamilcar died in 229 BCE, Hasdrubal the Fair (Hamilcar’s son in-law) assumed the position, and during his reign he changed the landscape warfare by promoting diplomatic means. Eight years after, Hasdrubal was assassinated, which paved way for Hannibal’s commandership over the Carthaginian militia in Iberia. From diplomatic practice, Hannibal went back to his father approach of battle, which is aggressive in nature. His first attack was towards the natives of Salamanca in 220 BCE, followed the seizure Santagnum, which led to a conflict with the Romans because during Hasdrubal supremacy, Carthage and Rome made a treaty to prevent any disagreement between the two empires. Carthage and Rome underwent a negotiation, and while it is going Hannibal continued his goal of extending his territory. When he completely invaded the Iberian Peninsula the Carthage-Rome relationship worsened and catapulted the Second Punic War. Rome sent out reinforcement in Sicily, while Hannibal made a bold move in beleaguering Italy before the former can prepared themselves in the waging war. The existing war gave Hannibal an opportunity to get the support Gaul militia, which in the end made his army more powerful, and resulted, to his second triumph at Trebia River. In March 217 BCE, the Great Commander winning streak perpetuated though in an unfortunate event he lost one of his eyes (some historians posited that this due to opthamalia) during the war. Roman militia’s power diminished as the war went on, in an unexpected happenstance their consul Flaminius was ambushed near the Trasimene Lake. Because of this, Hannibal exterminated two Roman legions, but it did not stop Rome and its allies from engaging and continuing the war. Instead, they aggravated the conflict when Quintus Fabius Maximus was chosen to be Rome’s dictator. The Roman council suggested an end-all be-all war, in which they were successful at its first battle at Cannae but they were eventually defeated when Carthaginian army overwhelmed them in a circular formation. Several of Roman allies was so disappointed with result of the Second Punic War, they decided to turn their back with Rome and decided to join the Carthage Empire. Then at age of thirty, Capua was established as Hannibal’s capital in Italy. He commanded his brother Mago Barca to relate the good news in Carthage and in doing so; Mago decanted hundreds of golden rings taken from the decimated cadavers of Roman army, while he was entering the entrance hall of the Carthaginian senate. Nevertheless, Roman council, along with their remaining allies, still resisted any agreement with Hannibal. Then the Great Commander decided to make an alliance with the Macedonian empire, which he acquired through the approval of King Philip V of Macedonia. With this approval, the Carthaginian forces were joined by Syracuse forces in 214 BCE. Rome did not falter; instead, they started an alliance with the Aetolia since this Greek town has a dispute with Macedonia. In the undying desire of Hannibal to expand his territory, he pursued Cumae and Puteoli ports, in order for him to strengthen his militia, but due to this, Rome found an opportunity to regain its nation’s confidence and to start anew because Hannibal neglected his offensives in Central Italy. In 212 BCE, Hannibal tasted his first failure.