Saturday, December 21, 2019

Analysis of Differnt Forms of Liberty - 1723 Words

The concept of liberty is important to this very day. Liberty initially means to be fundamentally free within ones society from any types of oppression, either from higher authority or from having different form ideologies that can be political or social. Liberty is a form of power that lets one act on their sets and values. In this paper, concept of liberty will be discussed on behalf of two philosophers, John Locke and Jean- Jacques Rousseau. Although liberty provides one to act as they please, there can be different forms of liberty, which are developed naturally by the state of nature and socially through development of human reasoning; state of nature is based on absolute freedom, while socially liberty is restricted. Firstly, John†¦show more content†¦One may destroy an individual if he takes away ones liberty where he makes him into a slave. This compels the individual to hurt or kill that person because that individual is taking the individual preservation, where t hey do not want to be controlled by any one and have their own way of life. For one not to kill another individual that individual also has to demonstrate that he is not enforcing power over him. For example, Locke claims, â€Å"But when the actual force is over, the state of war ceases between those that are in the society, and are equally subjected to fair determination of the law.†(Locke, 1690, p. 15). For this reason, in a civil society if the force to kill by both parties is over and one has conducted a crime, they can be prosecuted for the crime they have done, and prevent future occurrence of this type of event to happen again. Thus, state of war generally means state of conflict, where if one is threaten by any way they have the right to protect themselves by any means necessary even killing. If the conflict has stopped between either conflicting individuals or groups they have the right to have a trail to prosecute that individual or group that was threatening their liberty and preventing this type of conflict to take place again. There are two different forms of liberty one is the natural liberty that is provided by nature to be free from any type of power or authority. The second liberty is in a civil

Friday, December 13, 2019

Systems Analysis and Design Free Essays

ACME Financial is a fast growing company that owes part of its growth to several recent acquisitions. ACME Financial now wants to consolidate the companies’ information technology resources to eliminate redundancy and share information among the new companies. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) has oversight responsibility for the project and has hired Client/Servers R Us to develop the architecture for the new corporate information system. We will write a custom essay sample on Systems Analysis and Design or any similar topic only for you Order Now Joe Consultant of C/S R Us presented 3 client/server designs to the CIO and is requesting the CIO to select one. The CIO is not sure which middleware design is best for the company’s goals. The CIO has asked Chris Consultant to present the advantages and disadvantages for each of the alternatives. Background ACME Financial Incorporated (AF Inc. ) is an investment banking company that provides an on-line service that allows their clients to access account and market information. ACME Financial Inc. recently acquired several small and medium sized companies throughout the country, each with their own financial and accounting systems. Almost all of the companies have developed their own application software for their analysts’ use in their daily jobs, but only a few provided on-line account service. The analytical tools rely on near-real time market data and historical market data. The CIO wants to consolidate the financial and accounting information into a corporate information system that can support decision support applications for corporate management. Naturally, since the computer hardware is different for different companies, the CIO expects to upgrade the hardware to accommodate the new Information Technology (IT) system. The CIO will select the best analytical software as the standard software used by all company analysts. Each local site will be expected to provide an on-line service for their customers. Customers will be given the necessary application software to access their account information. Finally, ACME Financial has developed special data mining software that gives them a competitive advantage. AF Inc. offers their customers investment advice based on the information derived by the data mining software. Each account manager receives the information and then provides tailored recommendations  to each customer based on their portfolio. System Requirements The following list of system requirements reflects the system’s priorities (listed roughly in order of priority): 1. Availability: The CIO’s number one priority is high availability. AF Inc. markets their reliability and feels that most clients choose them for their dependability. The CIO wants to maximize the system’s availability. To achieve high availability, if a regional office cannot provide support then a customer must always have access to the on-line service through a different office. 2. Data Integrity: The requirement for data integrity varies within the system. The most important data are customer’s transactions. It is essential that a customer’s transaction is never lost and the system must guarantee that each transaction is completed. In contrast, data lost from the high data rate inputs, such as Reuter’s and the NYSE, are easily recovered during the each broadcast so it is not critical if some data are lost during a broadcast. 3. Performance: Financial markets are highly volatile; time sensitivity of data is measured in minutes. Millions can be lost if information is delayed getting to the analysts. The system must be able to support information broadcast throughout the network. 4. Security: The CIO is concerned about the security of the data mining software and the information produced by the data mining software. The Chief Executive Officer thinks the data mining information software provides a competitive advantage for the company. If an unauthorized user had access to the information they could steal the data mining applications or steal the information produced by the data mining software. In either case, the perpetrator could make the same investment recommendations as AF Inc. account managers. Therefore, if competitors had access to the information the results could be financially devastating to the company. The CIO is concerned that a competitor could pose as a customer and hack into the highly sensitive information through his on-line service account. 5. Growth: The CIO envisions an incremental migration process to install the new system due to the magnitude of the change. Also, he expects that AF Inc. will continue to grow and acquire more companies. The CIO wants to be able to develop more application software as new customer services are added. The CIO also wants to add more near-real time information sources to  the system. 6. Backup and Recovery: The CIO understands that the system will encounter problems from time to time. A key factor in determining the system’s success is how quickly the system can recover from a failure. Backup and recovery must be smooth and non-disruptive. One way to ensure that the system can easily recover from a system crash is to make sure the data is duplicated elsewhere on the system. The corporate database is the primary back up for each of the regional offices. Configuration Each local office (Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, Southwest) has accesses a regional information hub. Local offices use client software to access the local application server. These application servers access the local databases for almost all of the information needed on a daily basis. For access to information needed less frequently the application software should access the central database at corporate headquarters. Each regional database has only the subset of information that is relevant for its area, whereas the corporate headquarters maintains all of the information from each region as well as data that is unique to corporate applications, such as additional accounting and company financial information. The corporate office is also responsible for the data mining software and information. Each of the regional databases is connected with high capacity links to the corporate database. Finally, the corporate office receives information from Reuter’s, NYSE, NASDAQ, and other financial markets. The information flow fluctuates daily from 30 – 40 KBps to 4 – 5 MBps. Twenty-five percent of the information is immediately broadcast to the regional offices to support the on-line account service. All the information is filtered and stored in the database. Architectural Alternatives Alternative I: The Database Management System This alternative takes advantage of the extended functionality provided by the popular relational database management companies, such as Oracle and Sybase. All information is delivered into the system where it is immediately stored into one of the databases. The relational database management software is responsible for the distribution of information throughout the system. Clients communicate with the databases through Standard Query Language (SQL). Corporate and regional databases are kept synchronized using features supplied by the RDBMS software. Transactions are guaranteed by using special Transaction Processing Software. The vendor-supplied RDBMS software is responsible for back-up and recovery of all the databases. Data security is handled at the row level within each database. This means that clients can only receive records for which their user has permission. Existing application software may have to be modified to use SQL. Alternative II: Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) This solution depends on CORBA to tie together the clients and databases. CORBA is responsible for distributing data across the system. The RDBMS software is still responsible for the back-up and recovery, but the databases are kept synchronized using CORBA as the primary transport mechanism for the data. Clients, application servers, and databases communicate to each other through CORBA’s transport mechanism. Existing application software would be wrapped in IDL to communicate with other applications. Special near-real time handling application software would send the information to each of the regional offices where it would be directed to clients that subscribe to the information. Alternative III: Message and Queuing (MQ) The message and queuing design uses commercial M Q software combined with a transaction processing product to ensure customer’s transactions are completed. Dec Message Queue and MQ Series are some of the leading products for messaging and queuing software. Clients communicate to other entities using messages. Messages are deposited in queues and the message and queuing middleware is responsible for message distribution to the appropriate clients. The software applications will be modified to send and receive messages from queues. Questions to Answer (Total 100 points) The case study must be discussed covering the designs and these questions with your teammates, but your final write-up should be your collaborative work. Doing research on specific products for the assignment should certainly be a team activity. The total length of the write-up should probably not exceed 5 pages. 1. Describe in more detail the architecture of each architectural alternative. To do this you will need to flesh out the specifics of the various parts. This will require some research on the  products indicated (or other comparable products that you locate). Note that some services are automatically provided when a particular product is purchased, while others must be developed to satisfy the system requirements. You should describe what services are automatically provided by the products, which services would need to be developed, and how services should be distributed across the network. (40 points) 2. Evaluate each of the alternatives against the system requirements, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of each. (You may assume that the hardware will support all solutions.) In your analysis you might consider issues such as which alternative gives the system developers the most flexibility, which alternative provides easiest maintenance, and which alternative requires the least modification to the current system. Other hints for system comparison are listed below. (40 points) 3. Prioritize each alternative or suggest a different solution if you think it superior to the presented alternatives. (20 points) Suggestions on how to proceed 1. There is not enough information to make an informed decision about each of the alternatives. As a team, allot a percentage of your time to discover which products offer what type of services. You do not have enough time to do a complete market survey so be selective. 2. If you depend only on marketing information you may find that the alternatives are equivalent. So you might want to go beyond the market literature in doing your research for this assignment. 3. As you do your analysis, pay particular attention to some of the following kinds of issues: a. How well does the architecture support the basic system functionality requirements? b. How much run time performance overhead does the architecture impose? c. How well will specific products handle the high volume of data? d. How will each architecture handle occasional peak loads? e. How easy is it to customize the system to new requirements? 4. In your analysis, when you are considering costs, you do not need to consider the actual product cost. (It may be impossible to get actual product costs anyway. ) Instead, evaluate cost with respect to the amount of customized software that will be necessary to implement each alternative, and how this might affect long-term maintenance costs, time to implement, flexibility, etc. How to cite Systems Analysis and Design, Papers

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Hindsight Bias and its Effect

Question: What is "hindsight bias," and how might it affect. Answer: Hindsight bias is a psychological term that is used in order to explain individuals tendency to overstate their ability to predict the outcome that was not possible to be predicted beforehand. For example, a boy passes the examination with good marks and his mother says that she predicted that her son will pass the examination with good marks. Therefore, it can be said that hindsight bias is a psychological bias that influence the people to over-represent their ability to predict something. In 2004, it was identified that HealthSouth Corporation has conducted near about $4.6 billion accounting fraud. However, if the hindsight bias took place, then it might have been possible to protect the organization from this kind of accounting fraud. Hindsight bias is such a psychological ability that would have helped the internal auditors of HealthSouth Corporation and the higher financial authority of the company to predict the worst situation by identifying the financial ratios such as net margin, receivable turnover and assets turnover (Barry, 2009). Hindsight bias might have helped the higher authority to take proper decision and steps so that the accountants of the organization could improve their accounting calculations. Due to this, the financial ratios of the company might have been rechecked and the situation could be handled in better way (Weld, Bergevin Magarth, 2004). Therefore, the company might not have to pay the penalty for accounting fraud. This would have helped the organization to maintain their reputation in the marketplace. Reference list: Barry, K. (2009). HealthSouths Corporate Accounting Scandal: A Case Study in Fraudulent Financial Reporting. Journal of Accounting Faud-at-HealthSouth. Weld, L. G., Bergevin, M. Magarth, L. (2004). Anatomy of a Fianncial Fraud. Journal of CPA.

Thursday, November 28, 2019

Leader Analysis Sheet Essays (500 words) - 1st Millennium

Leader Analysis Sheet Name of Leader: Justinian Lifespan: c. 482 AD - November 15th, 565 AD Title: Justinian the Great Country/region: Byzantine Empire Years in Power: 527 AD - 565 AD (38 Years) Political: Many former Byzantium lands were lost due to invasions. The Western half of the empire was broken off. The capital was moved to Constantinople. Contact and trade is basically cut off entirely from Western Europe. Social: The Byzantine Empire followed its own branch of Christianity, Orthodox Christianity. Orthodox Christianity was entirely cutoff from the papacy and its power. Economic: The byzantine empire had one of largest and wealthiest economies in the world. The economy was mainly influenced by trade with Constantinople being a major trading hub for the whole world. The Byzantine Empire was a bridge between Europe, Asia, Africa, and other Northern Lands. Agriculture was included but development was slow and there was no major production. Justinian was intent on bringing the Byzantine Empire to a Golden Age and making unified, prosperous, and vast. His goals were to construct a well-developed legal code and system, and conquer lost lands. He also aimed to Beatify Constantinople. -Justinian extended the Byzantine Empire dramatically. He extended the empire back into areas that had previously been part of the Western Roman Empire.-Justinian successfully codified Roman Law. He gathered all the laws, rules etc. and collected them as a base for Byantine law.-He constructed the building of the Hagia Sophia, an extremely elegant and beautiful Church that still stands today. Short-Term Effects: Almost immediately upon his accession Justinian inaugurated a policy of restoration of the Roman Empire, the western part of which had been lost in the barbarian invasions of the 5th century. The eastern front of the empire was secured by an "eternal peace" signed with Persia in 532. Internal unrest was crushed by the great general Belisarius. In 533 an imperial army set out against the Vandal kingdom in North Africa, which was reincorporated into the empire in 534. The following year another imperial army attacked the Ostrogoths in Italy; the Ostrogoths, however, resisted annihilation for another 20 years. A third campaign, undertaken against the Visigoths, reconquered southeastern Spain. By the emperor's death most of the former Roman territory around the Mediterranean Sea, except for Gaul and northern Spain, was again part of the empire, despite a resumption of the Persian war in 540 and gradual Slavic infiltration in the Balkans. Long-Term Effects: The centralized empire envisaged by Justinian required a uniform legal system. Therefore an imperial commission headed by the renowned jurist Trebonianus worked for ten years to collect and systematize existing Roman law. Their work was incorporated into the enormous Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law), also called the Justinian Code, promulgated in 534 and kept up to date by the addition of new decrees, or Novellae. This formidable legislative codification still remains the basis for the law of most European countries. Simultaneously with this legal reform, attempts were made to rectify administrative abuses.

Monday, November 25, 2019

The Process of Information System in Apple

The Process of Information System in Apple Introduction Information Systems is a crucial component of many organizations. It is notable that information and communication within the corporate company remains an important aspect of its success. In addition, lack of information communication may present challenges to the decision makers.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Process of Information System in Apple specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More Apple is a technology-based organization with a global presence. Its activities include product development, production, assembling, selling, and supply chain management. However, Apple’s research and development has enabled it to retain the market leadership in innovation. Company Background Three people founded Apple as an incorporated company in April 1976. They included â€Å"Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne† (Linzmayer 5). The company started with little financial investment that hindered its ability to compete effectively with other firms that were already large market players. The company managed to set up a new headquarter in California. The company’s original Apple II product had become the source of success since 1970. The product remained common with clients and enabled the company to develop its original customer base (Linzmayer 8). The company’s expansion has been unprecedented since then. It started selling computers in the international marketplace. The role that Steve Jobs played in research and development was critical for the generation of highly innovative and exciting products. The company grappled with operational and management challenges that were associated with communication within and outside environment (Daft, Jonathan and Hugh 114). Analysts have argued that the entry of new investors presented challenges with clarity in communication. The company focused on products and significantly ignored organizational functioning. The company c ompartmentalization initiatives were guided by product orientation rather than organizational functioning needs. The companys core activities are supported through diverse activities such as infrastructure, information systems, management of materials, and human resources (see figure 1) (Daft, Jonathan and Hugh 114). Figure 1: Apple Organizational Structure and Core ActivitiesAdvertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The company is highly dynamic in terms of altering the organizational structure to fit with activities. However, the latest organizational structure entails different positions as depicted in the diagram. The corporate structure favors the existence of departmental competencies as opposed to organizational functioning (Daft, Jonathan and Hugh 114). The leadership structure at Apple provides low-level managers with the task of ensuring innovations and direction in every department. The company also facilitates market leadership in other geographical locations through the creation of mid-level management positions. This helps the firm in enhancing leadership within different geographical locations in order to promote a localized market competitive advantage (Daft, Jonathan and Hugh 114). However, the corporate structure presents challenges to strategic communication. The structure creates a double reporting channel. This takes place through ensuring that organizational functioning matters are reported to corporate directors while operational issues are reported to regional directors (Daft, Jonathan and Hugh 114). Information Systems Management at Apple The corporate structure of Apple that comprise of the global presence and departmental level leadership presents a unique situation. The structure necessitates a type of information systems that can facilitate the distribution of appropriate communication through the right channels and in a timely manner. Furthermore, this is critical to promoting consistent and informed decision making at diverse levels. The right information systems can enhance proper communication. The company has a philosophy of being the leader in marketplace on matters related to innovativeness (Wade, Scott and Yogesh 399). The company also applies the same philosophy in its communication and information transfer. Apple manages its internal communication in a manner that enhances its superiority.Advertising We will write a custom essay sample on The Process of Information System in Apple specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More The company has implemented virtual business designs that integrate communication and information management (Hamilton 58). The company has used virtualization as a factor in gaining an edge over competitors. The company has used intranet system that enables workers to gain all information they need at their workstations. Furthermo re, the system allows Apple to interact with external stakeholders such as suppliers (Monczka, 15). The company has created unrestricted information exchange system that virtually links suppliers to the product development team and the retail units. Furthermore, information exchange takes place between the retail unit and the customer service center. It is notable that customer service center are always equipped with information about suppliers and company product range (Monczka, 15). The customer center provides services to clients based on the virtually available information. This strategy has enabled Apple to maintain a value chain information exchange system that links different components on an end-to-end basis. The virtually available information in the company enables the reduction of costs involved in transferring information between the people who need it (Hamilton 58). Furthermore, it saves the time of the company and its staff for everything to do with information exchang e takes place virtually. The implementation of a computing utility system also helps Apple minimize costs because it limits the volume of assets that are used in information exchange (Gitman and Carl 506). The company has ensured a lean and efficient information management strategy. Recommendation The company should constantly work on improving its information security management. The expansion of the company means that the information it manages also escalates. The company’s use of software based information management presents potential challenges associated with hacking. Hacking activities are highly dynamic (Stair and George 30). Hackers can hack into the virtual information management system if its not well secured. Apple should focus on creating a robust and insecurity proof systems to enable it secure its information management system.Advertising Looking for essay on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More Daft, Richard L, Jonathan Murphy, and Hugh Willmott. Organization Theory and Design. Andover: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2010. Print. Gitman, Lawrence J, and Carl D. McDaniel. The Future of Business: The Essentials. Mason, OH: Thomson South-Western, 2008. Print. Hamilton, Cheryl. Communicating for Results: A Guide for Business and the Professions. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2008. Print. Linzmayer, Owen W. Apple Confidential 2.0: The Definitive History of the Worlds Most Colorful Company. San Francisco, Calif: No Starch Press, 2004. Print. Monczka, Robert M. Purchasing and Supply Chain Management. Mason, OH: South-Western, 2009. Print. Stair, Ralph M, and George W. Reynolds. Principles of Information Systems. Australia: Course Technology Cengage Learning, 2012. Print Wade, Michael R, Scott L. Schneberger, and Yogesh K. Dwivedi. Information Systems Theory: Explaining and Predicting Our Digital Society, Vol. 1. New York, NY: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 2012. Print.

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Information Technology Architectures Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Information Technology Architectures - Essay Example CORBA is the standard software that supports distributed objects. It is a complex and a more difficult to learn software than any other communication infrastructure. COBRA offers a lot of functionality such as, programming language independency and the operating system. On the other hand, CORBA possesses the binding power to arrange of standardized programming languages as a communication format (Papadopoulos, 2009). Among the advantages of CORBA process, is its level of maturity, CORBA developed by the Object Management Group and its standard is neither too lax nor too restrictive. CORBA does not endanger the interoperability of some products nor the portability and space for optimization. Therefore, it offers a real international tested and proven power, flexibility and performance. CORBA offers a modularization facility to write objects in different programming languages that provide a service to users that do not require details of implementation of the object(s). CORBA also offers a facility that allows different clients to use the same interface thus working together transparently (Papadopoulos, 2009). CORBA’s disadvantages include its architecture complexity and specification which do not give a clear implementation details. It offers vertical features, which target some users and applications, but not all technology users thus insufficient (Papadopoulos, 2009). Java2 Enterprise Architecture (J2EE) is a mainframe scale computing platform which made for large firms. It simplifies thin client tiered environment application development (Papadopoulos, 2009). It decreases the need for programming, and programmer education by enhancing the tier to perform many programming aspects automatically. The Java 2 Enterprise Architecture (J2EE) consists of a security model which protects data both in web-based application and also locally. It is portable since it consists of a write once and Run anywhere