ShantanuT01/DACTYL-Pretraining huggingface dataset:
Introduction With escalating support for democracy and capitalism, value of competition has been absorbed in the society. Competition has emerged as an economic aspect in the society. Competition has positive and negative effects on the society. Notably, competition has reduced cooperation levels in the society. Loewen attempts to provide answers that revolve around the structure of the society. He discusses different behaviors of people and impacts of social structures on the society. The book provides ideal recommendations on changes that the society should adopt. The essay will highlight benefits of competition in the society. Negative aspects associated with overemphasis on competition will also be presented. Advantages of cooperation and convergence of ideas will be scrutinized. A valid conclusion on whether the society can adopt cooperation model will be made. Discussion Diversity is one of positive effects of competition on the society. There is a variety of products and services bringing the increase of consumer satisfaction. Diversity is embedded on innovation or creativity that every firm adopts, so as to enjoy competitive advantage. Prices of products and services are reduced, thus affecting consumers positively. Notably, price is competitive and salience is proportional to price of products. In this regard, consumers are more likely to purchase products that are cheap than buy the expensive ones. As a result, products are relatively cheaper since there are available substitutes as opposed to a situation of monopoly. High quality has also been embraced by firms as a way of satisfying consumers. Firms compete to deliver goods of high quality and low price to consumers so as to enjoy large market share. Competition has shifted the focus from compliance to ethics. Businesses not only concentrate on satisfying existing legal concepts, but also wining over consumers. In process of maintaining loyalty and salience, businesses assume humanistic approach of doing what is morally right and acceptable by the society. Moreover, there is an inclination to the emotional aspect as the focus is on ensuring that products foster a long term and intrinsic relationship with consumers. As opposed to monopoly, competition ensures that needs of consumers are met in the best way possible. Businesses have to establish trust with consumers and ensure that presence of their products is felt rather than seen. Competition has shifted the focus from services provided to relationship fostered. Competitive advantage is dependent on the extent, to which a firm adopts emotional approach. For marketing strategies to be effective, emotional element has to be present. Adoption of emotion by firms has increased consumer satisfaction thereby benefiting the society. Despite emergence of many firms, consumer’s welfare has been addressed in a humane way. All firms focus on fulfilling needs of consumer
4G standards refer to the shared specifications used with fourth-generation mobile telecommunications technology. Their purpose is to allow mobile phones and cellular networks to interact based on a common set of features. Multiple competing standards have emerged and evolved throughout that generation’s development. LTE and WiMAX (or IEEE 802.16) families include the most widely used 4G standards, though they face competition from others like HSPA+. This paper examines the capabilities of LTE-A, the latest iteration of LTE, within the context of other 4G standards. LTE-A stands for Long-Term Evolution Advanced, a version of LTE updated to meet the International Telecommunication Union’s official IMT-Advanced standard. Its primary distinguishing feature compared to its predecessors is its increased speed, with the current version offering a peak download rate of over 3 Gb/s (Djordjevic, 2018, p. 548). By contrast, LTE-A’s principal rival IEEE 802.16 m has a 100 Mb/s data rate for mobile and 1 Gb/s for stationary reception (Djordjevic, 2018, p. 4). Despite improvements, HSPA+ remains a third-generation system as far as its speed is concerned. LTE-A’s speed is achieved through a coordinated multipoint transmission system, with 8-layer MIMO signal processing and a 128-QAM format (Djordjevic, 2018). Unlike WiMAX, LTE-A uses fixed frequency bands, increasing its security and reliability. It also has a wider service area than any of its competitors due to the support of major telecommunications companies. Though its rivals have their niches, LTE-A’s advantages give it a decisive edge in mobile telecommunications. Despite the arrival of 5G networks, 4G technology is likely to remain in widespread use for the near future. Having been painstakingly refined over many years, it has attained a high level of sophistication and flexibility. LTE-A represents one of the pinnacles of this technology’s accomplishments and a historically important step towards 5G. Its main advantages are its reliability, security, and speed, supported by an original coordinated multipoint transmission system. Combined with institutional support from telecommunications service providers and manufacturers, those advantages have made LTE-A a dominant fourth-generation standard.
Chechnya 1994: Propaganda Advance in technology and easy access to the internet has resulted in increased cyber crime and terrorism. Hackers are on a daily basis getting access to information that belongs to organizations and government agencies without prior consent. This jeopardizes the security of information and data since the data is either made available to everyone or it is used for malicious purposes. The attackers of websites and other sites on the internet use the internet as a tool to spread propaganda (Denning 2001; Bednarz, 2004). The major aim of cyber attacks other than the spread of propaganda is to sabotage organizations, political reasons, alterations of data and information, economic espionage, monetary gains, revenge, and black mail (Henry, 2010; Denning 2001) The report is based on the 1999 hacking of the Kosovo military that affected NATO’s websites and computer servers, as well as the websites of both the US and the UK governments. The paper addresses the motivation behind the attacks, the methods of attack, and the responses of the defenders to these attacks. The motivation of the attacker(s) The 1999 Kosovo military hacking by the Serbian Groups (Geers, 2008) was aimed at deleting information and data stored in the NATO database. Although this was not the major motivation of the attack, it is believed that the hackers’ “goal was to disrupt the NATO’s military operations” (Geers, 2008). The kind of motivation where information is destructed through unauthorized entry into organizational systems has been supported by Henry (2010). With the information on logistics of the NATO’s operation under siege, the organization could not undertake its military operations conclusively as they were compromised. Database information was lost upon the attack and pictures and anti NATO messages posted on NATO’s website (Nuttall, 1999). Basically, the attack was a form of propaganda that was being used to dent the public relations of NATO and the Yugoslavia military. Sabotage was another motivator to the attacks. This has been acknowledged by Nuttall (1999) who reports that the Serbia based Black Hand group attack of the NATO’s website was to sabotage the organizations military operations. The attack methods used The attackers infiltrated NATO’s database and website by the use of a virus. According to the case study report, the UK, the US, and NATO computers were invaded through “ email-of-service and virus-infected email (Geers, 2008). The attacks were reported to have defaced the White House website. It was also reported that NATO’s websites at its headquarters in Belgium were inoperable. The virus that was used on the email had twenty five virus strains. From a single email infected with the virus, it had multiplied within a very short period of time. The email server of NATO’s become chocked as a result of multiple emails streaming in (Nuttall, 1999; Geers, 2008). Following these attacks, NATO was forced to upgrading its system in a bid to ensure that its computer servers and network remain secure. Unfortunately, the network attacks started to spread to other parts of the glob
Alice Walker’s critically acclaimed short story The Welcome Table portrays life in America during the 1960s, a symbolic time for the African-American population. The nation was largely divided with the black communities resisting racial segregation and the dominant groups promoting white supremacy and repelling against the ideas of equality. With the use of symbolism, imagery, and a slightly mournful tone, the author depicts the last journey of an old black woman as she struggles to find peace. After being forbidden to enter an all-white Church, she finds solace in Jesus Christ and dies. The story is an allegory of American society at large, where even the Church becomes an instrument of racism and oppression. It further alludes to the notion that humans are all created equal in God’s eyes and one can find that true faith must prevail over a person’s surroundings. The main character of the story, an old African-American woman is a symbol of all the oppressed members of the Black community that have suffered humiliation and prejudice. Walker notes that “they gazed nakedly upon their fear transferred; a fear of dying black and the old, a terror of the unknown as well as of the deeply known.” This metaphor that refers to the woman’s eyes clearly illustrates how the Black elderly community was met with ingrained fear during uncertain times when social structures within society were being transformed. Furthermore, the theme of oppression and injustice is expressed through the unorthodox portrayal of the Church. Historically the Church has promoted values of race and gender equality, where one can come and pray for salvation regardless of their ethnic or social background. Here, however, the Church is a secluded, secular institution where members carefully select unwanted guests. Walker writes: “It was the ladies who finally did what to them had to be done. Daring their burly indecisive husbands to throw the old colored woman out they made their point.” With this description, she shows how the white ladies view themselves above the black woman, assuming they have more privilege. Walker’s short story further illustrates the theme of the afterlife and finding peace and harmony in faith. Death
The transatlantic trade which mainly took place across the Atlantic ocean was a major event in world history. Transportation of human cargo into European countries to work in the plantation fields was a popular form of trade. Since Europeans had vast lands to cultivate, it meant that they required plenty of workers. This was the main purpose of the slave trade across the Atlantic ocean. The Chesapeake plantation was among the many plantations where slaves worked. Slaves worked by force in the plantations while living in unacceptable conditions. Africa was a primary source of slaves and the transatlantic trade mainly targeted areas in West Africa. Most of the West African slaves worked across the Chesapeake plantation (Walsh, 2003). This paper will explore the various conditions and adaptations that the African slaves acquired while working in the Chesapeake plantation. Most of the slaves who worked in the plantation had different cultural backgrounds. Understanding each other was a problem due to language barriers. This led to the development of groups by people who spoke the same language. Group formation fostered the progress of native West African cultural practices. This included song and dance for entertainment purposes. Singing was mainly done by communities such as the Igbo, Moko, and Efik (Walsh, 2003). The discovery of evidence showing the existence of drums and other musical instruments by historian Benjamin Latrobe acts as proof. Spirituality was a significant factor that brought the African slaves together in their native lands. They upheld their spiritual practices at their own free time away from the plantation works. Evidence of this exists in the Chesapeake plantations where archeologists have unearthed various artifacts. Among these include wine bottles, tobacco pipes, animal teeth, and white stones (Walsh, 2003). According to the contemporary West African cultures, the uses of these objects were to perform rituals honoring the ancestors. Healing charms were also worn during these days and this portrays how they believed in spiritual beings while in captivity. Slaves in Chesapeake shared a common geographical origin. Most of the slaves mainly originated from the West African region. This is a reason that mainly promoted their unity and continuity of various practices in the plantation. The people from the Northern, Southern, and Central parts of West Africa were mainly settled in the upper Chesapeake plantation. This helped the slaves adapt to the environment faster and easier. Those who were in the lower Chesapeake region
Many companies do not receive the results they desire due to applying intuition rather than factual data when approaching the process of decision making. In order to reach the best outcomes, it is crucial to employ the basics of enterprise and corporate performance management (EPM/CPM). The term CPM, which was coined in 2001, was expected to address such aspects of a unified management system as efficiency, alignment, visibility, accountability, and focus (Dimon, 2013). EPM involves several aspects, among which there belong enterprise planning, business intelligence, the connection between reporting and planning, and the balanced scorecard. Thus, EPM/CPM now means seamless integration of various approaches employed by management to gain the necessary operational improvement. With the help of EPM/CPM, Conair will be able to arrange its production and distribution in the most effective way. No matter how successful a business is, it cannot work on the established premises for a long time. Change management is crucial to enhance the processes and motivate employees. Behavioral change management may involve certain risks and challenges, such as people’s resistance to new methods of work (McCalman, Paton, & Siebert, 2016). However, in the long run, the effectively introduced change can alter the organization’s productivity and profits to a great extent. The following table presents the factors related to behavioral change management that could be implemented in Conair and offers their explanation: Resistance                                Some employees may view change as a threat to their autonomy. To eliminate this risk, the manager needs to predict the possible complications and explain to the team members that their apprehensions are unwarranted.                              Consistent communication                  Communication plays a significant role in any organization, but i
Summary The current analysis is dedicated to Germany and Japan as two potential countries for the MNC Widget’s business expansion and international trade. The paper covers major historical, political, economic, and social aspects that affect business in these countries. The aim of the comparative analysis is to assess these factors and identify the country with a better environment for the MNC Widget’s expansion and collaboration. The result of the comparative analysis is formulated in the form of a recommendation and its rationale, presented at the end of the paper. Brief Description of the Countries Before proceeding with the comparative analysis, it is necessary to briefly describe the two countries. The first one is Germany – one of the largest European countries, with an area of 138,063 sq mi and a population rate of 83,200,000 people (Schleunes et al.). Germany is an influential member of the North Atlantic Trade Organization (NATO) and one of the founding members of the European Union (EU) (Schleunes et al.). Nowadays, the country has significant political and economic weight despite several crises and downfalls that it went through throughout its history. Germanic peoples have inhabited the present-day territory of Germany since ancient times. However, those were separate political entities for centuries, which were brought together only in the 19th century (Schleunes et al.). Thus, the history of Germany as a state started in 1871, when Prussian Prime Minister Otto von Bismarck unified the territories of various Germanic peoples in the form of the German Empire (Schleunes et al.). The German Empire started to gain more political and economic influence and aimed to change the established power balance, which led to World War I. Germany was defeated and entered the following period of economic depression in a weakened state (Schleunes et al.). At this time, the Nazi Party led by Adolf Hitler used the public’s dissatisfaction and suffering to gain power and start World War II, which also ended with Germany’s defeat (Schleunes et al.). Germany was divided into two parts: the Federal Republic of Germany (the western part) and the German Democratic Republic (t
After having looked at quantitative data collection, Grinnell, Williams and Unrau move into a critical and important step in social research which, in this case, involves analyzing quantitative data covered in chapter 15. Quantitative data analysis is the process of making sense out of numbers in order to allow meaningful interpretation. This process involves four key steps which include data organization, doing calculations, interpreting information and explaining limitations. The authors break down each step of analyzing quantitative data, through explaining what quantitative data entails, definition of terminologies in quantitative data analysis and expounding on the steps involved in quantitative research. The authors also show how the analysis of quantitative data is significant by giving various examples of data sets to illustrate the process of data analysis. The authors begin by stating that quantitative data is the type of data that measure a quantity or an amount. The process of measuring quantities or amounts involves using specific rules to assign labels or numerals to the attributes of observations, events or objects. There are various levels of measurement in the analysis of quantitative data. These levels, according to the authors, determine degree to which characteristics of a data set can be modeled mathematically. Grinnell et al list four measurement levels as nominal, ordinal, interval and ratio. The nominal classifies variables by assigning names as compared to the ordinal which classifies variables by rank. The interval has an arbitrarily chosen zero point while the ratio has a non-arbitrary, fixed zero point. After defining the levels of measurement with illustrations, the authors examine the three main measures of central tendency which are the mean, the median and the mode. The mean is the average score in a data set. The median is the middle value of a specific data set arranged in order of magnitude. The mode is the most frequent score in a given data set. In addition the authors illustrate how these measures of central tendency are useful in the analysis of quantitative data. Quantitative data analysis also involves the use of variables in measuring data. A variable, according to the authors, is a concept with attributes that can take on different values. Variables are classified according to their attributes and the type of data set to be analyzed. The relationship between the variables is then determined using the measures of variability. There are two main types of measures of variability that are common in quantitative data analysis. These methods are variance and standard deviation. The authors demonstrate how to derive these measures of variability and their role in the analysis of quantitative data. The anal
Enron’s scandalous fall in the late 1990’s is a classic example of how corporate can exploit loopholes in regulations to portray a rosy picture of performance and deceive investors. In the period between 1990 and 1998, the price of Enron shares shot by a whopping 311%. In the year 1999, it rose by a further 87% while 2000 rose by 87%. For these years the index rose by a 20% and a decline of 10% respectively. In the end of year 2000 the share price for Enron were valued at $83.13. The company also registered a capitalization beyond $60 billion. These figures were clearly exorbitant. This represented about six times the company’s book value and 70 times the company’s earnings. This indicted the very high expectations on the company’s future. In fact it was rated the most innovative company according to the fortune magazine. However in a period of one year, the company’s image was badly scared, share prices fell to almost zero. The company did several things wrong which culminated in the downfall. First, it went into acquisitions using a team of financial market speculators mainly charged with the task of hedging the risks taken by the parent company in field operations. The team speculated in the market and earned lots of profits which made the top executives think that those earning could be depended upon. Consequently, they retained this team as core contributors to the company’s earnings but deliberately disguised their operations. This shows that had the top management accepted the hard facts that these earning were not reliable and could not be integrated in the company, then the company would have effectively avoided the scandal (Berlau, par5). Secondly, the company through the leadership of Jeff Skilling adopted the mark to market accounting mainly as a way of covering up the operating losses made by the company. This provided another avenue enabling the company put up flawed financial and other reports which misguided the investors into overvaluing its stock prices. This was through the overvaluation of earnings. Clearly, this model of accounting should not have been adopted as this was a clear source of flawed reports. There was also emphasis on developing special purpose entities outside the umbrella of the company’s core business. Little information on the operations of these entities was understood by investors yet their operations represented significant portion of the company’s investments. This structural arrangement enhanced possibilities of deceit. All operations should have been conducted within company’s defined tasks and incorporated in order to ensure integrity. Clearly, officers at Enron acted in contravention of the laws and the scope of their authority. First, Jeff Skilling on rising to the top management insisted on the use of mark to market accounting. This form of accounting is legal but applicable in companies dealing in buying and selling of securities. This form of accounting is known to be very fatal for organizations whose core functions include building of projects. It goes against the prudence principle of accounting. There were also numerous cases of extravagant expenditures and in t