The book Gap Creek Essay Example for Free

The book Gap Creek Essay The main objective of the book Gap Creek is to educate people about the trials and challenges of marriage. The speaker of the book, Julie Harmon tells about her story as a teenager and continues till the time she met Hank and married him. Till then, the story focuses more on their lives as a couple. The story is narrated from the perspective of the main character Julie. It started on her life as a teenager. At an early age she started to help in chores and in some of his father’s work. She lives with her father, mother Delia, baby brother Meseiner, young sister Rosie and baby sister Carolyn. Meseiner, being the only boy, was spoiled by her parents. However, it was not long when he passed away following her father being sick. Since then her mother was not able to do the things she used to and it was up to her and her sister Rosie to do the house works since her sister Carolyn is now the one being spoiled by her mom. She works hard like a man since she knows that if does not take charge and do her father’s work, nobody would get it done. Unfortunately, her father didn’t make it and passed away too. Her family was having a hard time adjusting to her father’s death but later on found a way to still keep the family intact. One day when Julie and her mother were working on a field, a man came by asking for directions. Hank Richards, who came from downtown, went to look for the Willards on the mountains since they are selling sweet taters. Later on, he and Julie took a special interest on each other, and after spending time with each other twice, Hank asked Julie to marry him. Julie agreed, not bothered by her age and current life situation. Her mother did not approve of this for she thinks that Julie is not ready for a married life. Nevertheless, her mother failed on convincing her to back out of the marriage. After Julie and Hank got married, they move to Gap Creek and her sister Rosie took over on the family obligations. The bad news is that the new couple didn’t have a place to live, so they agreed to live with Mr. Pendergast who allowed them to live with him in exchange for household services. Hank works all day and Julie does the chores. When Hank’s mother came to visit, Julie accidently caught fire while preparing dinner for Hank’s mother. When all of them were safe outside the house, Mr. Pendergast rushed inside to get is pension money. Sorry to say, Mr. Pedergast didn’t make it for the fire was to big. When the fire was cleared, they were able to retrieve Mr. Pendergast’s body, burned and lifeless. Julie and Hank, uncertain of their future, with a baby on the way didn’t know how long they could stay in the house before the heirs take it. Hank Richards, though a supporting character, is the one being talked about in this paper. Some of his actions showed defense mechanisms studied by Freud. When he was in the field asking directions from Julie’s mother, he showed displacement for he used Julie’s mother in order to get close to Julie. Displacement is defined as the redirection of an impulse to a substitute target. Another example was when Hank and Julie for fighting on Christmas. Hank who’s originally angry at Julie for constantly asking nonsense question, instead directed his anger to the flood and the storm leaving an angry and sarcastic response to Julie – â€Å"If the creek rises we won’t be able to get out of the house without a boat† – when asked what to do if the flood rises. He also showed projection when he was talking to Julie’s mother like an old man. He also illustrated this when they were in the forest and said that there are a lot of varmints in there, in which he referred the varmints to the Willards. When we say projection, we tend to deny our thoughts and feelings by attributing them to somebody else. Hank however showed isolation a lot of times. First was when he was a Julie’s house for dinner and she invited Julie to go to the spring for he said that drinking cold water is good after hot dinner, isolating the fact that Julie spilled coffee in his pants. It is possible for someone to portray to characters at once. In this case, Hank also showed reaction formation for he â€Å"believed the opposite†, meaning even after Julie spilled hot coffee on his new bought pants, he came to love her more. He also showed reaction formation when during a storm, he said that they never had floods on Christmas even if he knows that that happens because they live on a mountain before. To make it more clear, isolation is defined as stripping or isolating the emotions from a difficult memory or threatening impulse. Reaction formation, as mentioned earlier, â€Å"believing on the opposite†. Most of Hank’s attitude shows intellectualization or rationalization. Some of these were when Hank was asked by Julie about banjos. Hank, having a bad memory with his father when talk about banjos becomes rather more focused on the idea on how the banjo was made out of the skin of a cat. When he and Julie went to the spring to drink, instead of commenting on how refreshing the water was he prefers to compare the idea the water’s taste from rubies and emeralds. When Julie talks about his father using wine for rheumatism, Hank engaged on the conversation that pokeberry is better for its therapeutic on the joints and explains how the wine can warm and soothe the joint. Intellectualization is defined as analyzing instead of feeling and reacting, which Hank showed most of the time when he answers intelligent but unrelated answer. On the situation when Julie asked Hank to sing a Christmas carol, Hank answered him that he can’t remember how to sing depicts denial and at the same time, repression. He was in denial that he can’t sing and at the same unconsciously repressing the idea that he can sing for he is more focused on the flood at that time. Denial is defined as falsifying reality which is somewhat close to repression. Repression however, means not being able to remember things. Gap Creek was truly wonderful and a lot of values can be learned. The trials and challenges that Julie and Hank overcome were really admirable for with each obstacle that would come to them, both of them always want to manage to put their lives back again. Works Cited Cherry, Kendra. ‘Defense Mechanism’. About. com: Psychology. Web. 18 May 2010. http://www. psyhology. about. com

The Mailbox And Postal System Information Technology Essay

The Mailbox And Postal System Information Technology Essay The hardware and software benefited in this project are the physical mailbox itself, a microcontroller, infrared sensors, and MySQL database management system. This chapter will give brief introduction of the mailbox and postal system, fundamental of microcontroller and sensor, and database management system (DBMS). 2.2 Mailbox and Postal System 2.2.1 Introduction of Mailbox Mailboxes are tools for sending letters (Postbox Solutions, 2007). They are very common in human communities. It provides people with one of the most practical way of communicating with other people around the world. There are so many varieties of mailbox regardless of shapes, colours, fonts, logo and etc. However, no matter how different or how strange the mailbox may look like, it still does its job with no compromises. 2.2.2 Relationship of Mailbox and Postal System in History Research by Cornerstone (2010) said that mailboxes is started to be used in the late 1700s in Paris, France. As time passed by, it became popular in the Europe in middle-late 1800s after the British Post Office asked people to install mailboxes at their offices and residents and decided to begin mail delivery. Previously, people have to pick their mails at the local post office by themselves and there were no postmen during that time. The story is different in the U.S in 1863 when the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) began the Free City Delivery. People in the U.S at that time had no mailboxes installed at their houses. Postmen delivered mail to each houses door by door waiting  for a patron  to answer the knock. This method of mail delivery took extra time and patrons were not always home or able to answer the door.  Patrons began to install mail slots and mailboxes at their doors. According to Cornerstone (2010), the U.S. Postal Service in 1896 introduced Rural Free Delivery (RFD). The USPS researched ways to save time and solve the problem with mail-carriers delivering mail to the scattered rural patrons.  They proposed that mailboxes for people lives in the area to be placed at curb sides and roadways. Later in 1923, USPS mandated that every household to have a  proper mailbox to receive mails. In 1915, Roy J. Joroleman, an employee of the post office invented the curved, tunnel-shaped mailbox.   The shaped was designed to prevent water and snow from collecting in the mailbox.  Soon after, the Postmaster General released the design for manufacture and production and this design has been the top-selling type of mailbox (Cornerstone, 2010). Figure 2.1 : A curved, tunnel-shaped mailbox 2.2.3 Centralize Mailbox System The development of the country has seen that there are so many tall, multiple-storey building been built all over the country. Single type mailbox that can always be spotted at each household and offices during the early days is no more practical for residential apartments and office complexes. In order to overcome this problem, centralize mailbox system was introduced. Centralized mailbox system often found at the ground floor of each tall building where every owner of each residential apartment or office will have one for his or her unit. central mailbox.PNG Figure 2.2 : Centralize mailbox system. 2.3 Microcontroller 2.3.1 Introduction to Microcontroller In simple words, a microcontroller is a computer (Brain, 2000). The terms computer can be wide in definition. It can be a desktop personal computer, a laptop computer, a handheld-sized smartphones or the microcontrollers themselves. A microcontroller can be interpreted as a computer due to the reason that it has several similarities as compared to a computer. Generally, the basic architecture of a microcontroller involves four main parts; central processing unit (CPU), random access memory (RAM), read-only memory (ROM), and input output ports (I/O ports). In the case of computers, all computers have a CPU that executes programmes such as a web browser or a word processor. The computer has some RAM installed where the CPU can store variables while doing its work. It also has I/O ports that connect many types of input and output devices, for example the keyboard the input device, and the monitor the output device. inside a microcontroller.PNG Figure 2.3 : The architecture of a microcontroller (Engineers Garage). However, with certain comparison in terms of features, microcontrollers and computers can be differentiated. The desktop computer which often can be found at offices and homes is a general purpose computer, while a microcontroller is a special purpose computer (Brain, 2000). Due to its relatively small size, microcontrollers are embedded inside some other devices and work as the controller of the features of the product. Microcontrollers are also dedicated to run one specific programme only; the programmed that is loaded into the ROM. Finally, often in most of the cases, a microcontroller is small and low in cost, hence good for mass production of products that utilize microcontrollers. 2.4 Sensor 2.4.1 Introduction to Sensor A sensor is a device that measures the physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or an instrument. Ideal sensors are designed to be linear. The output signal of such a sensor is linearly proportional to the value of the measured property. The sensitivity is then defined as the ratio between output signal and measured property. A good sensor obeys the following rules: Is sensitive to the measured property. Is insensitive to any other property. Does not influence the measured property. 2.4.2 Applications of Sensor Sensors are widely used in our daily life nowadays. There are many types of sensors today. These sensors can be categorized into specific types. Lists of sensors use nowadays are as below: Acoustic sensor such as Geophone, Microphone and Seismometer. Electric current sensor such as Ammeter, Voltmeter and Multimeter. Environment and weather sensor such as Gas detector and Rain sensor. Optical, light and imaging sensor such as flame detector, Infra-red sensor and Photodiode. Pressure sensor such as Barometer, Hydrometer and Pressure sensor. Temperature sensor such as Thermometer. 2.5 Database 2.5.1 Introduction to Database The database is one of the technology terms that most people have become accustomed to hearing either at work or while surfing the internet. The database term used to be an extremely technical term. However, database has become a household term with the rise of computer systems and information technology throughout the culture. Selena (1998) has highlighted the definition of database as a computerized way of keeping collection of records or data. The true usefulness of database is seen especially if the data stored in the database in big volumes because the stored data is easily accessible. Moreover, adding new information and updating any changes should also be considerably painless. Besides that, on-demand record searching in the future will be piece of cake. Another advantage of a database is it can be shared all over the network where the computer that holds the database is connected. At this point, the presence of a Database Management System (DBMS) is very important in order to have a highly systematic database system. DBMS is a program that handles the queries and data stored inside the database. 2.5.2 Types of Databases There are four types of databases that are commonly used where each type of database represents its own data model. Data model means how the data inside the database is structured. The four types are; Flat Model, Hierarchical Model, Relational Model, and Network Model. 2.5.2.1 The Flat Model Database As written by Smith (2010), a flat database is a database that utilizes only one table for the fields of records. For example, a spreadsheet is used to store all the data and records. The information is separated into columns of its category, and each line represents one record. This type of database might be sufficient for small database, but a spreadsheet will seem to be not practical, notably for ones with large amount of records. 2.5.2.2 The Hierarchical Model Database As its name hints, the hierarchical model database resembles a hierarchically-arranged data (Selena, Introduction to Databases for the Web: Pt. 1, 1998). It links records together in a structure like a tree, or like an organizational chart. In this model, each data will be categorized and stored as a sub-data of its category. Every data must fall into only one category. Hierarchical structure database were widely implemented during the early time of database management systems. However, this model of database became irrelevant for some certain data types. For example, in a college environment, the administration might stored student information and sorts them according to their courses. Database operation will be smooth if every student is enrolled in one course only. But, problem will arise whenever a student enrolled in more than one course. Hierarchical database is unable to put a record into two categories, or otherwise, it will be considered as duplications. Figure 2.4 shows an example of the structure of hierarchical database. hierarcy engineering.png Figure 2.4 : The tree structure of hierarchical database model. 2.5.2.3 The Relational Model Database The relational model is the most popular type of database the most database system in use today. As appointed by K. Powell (2010), the relational database concept was derived from the principal of relational algebra, which was realized by Dr. E. F. Codd in his paper, A Relational Model of Data for Large Shared Data Banks. This database model is a very powerful tool, not only to store records, but to access it as well. All the data were stored in tables. Each table contains of rows and columns. A single record will be recorded in one row, and the details of the data are separated in columns, in the table. Every column has a unique name and the content within the column must be of the same type. A table is able to hold many records, and sometimes tables are referred as relation. A database may have more than one table. Each of the tables can be linked or related to each other by referring to the primary key. A primary key is a unique name that every record must have that acts as its identifier. 2.5.2.4 The Network Model Database A network database model is not far different from the hierarchical model. The difference between network and hierarchical model is, in network model, a record may fall into more than one category. Figure 2.5 shows the structure of network database model which is a bit different from relational database models. hierarcy engineering2.png Figure 2.5 : The structure of network database model. 2.6 MySQL 2.6.1 Introduction to MySQL MySQL is a probably the most popular database management system. Referring to the MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual (2010), to perform an operation onto a database such as adding, accessing, and processing data stored in a computer database, ones will need a database management system such as MySQL. A DBMS plays a central role in computers at handling large amounts of data. 200px-MySQL.svg.png Figure 2.6 : The MySQL logo. MySQL is a relational database management system or so called as RDBMS. For the sake of speed and flexibility, a relational database stores data in separate tables compared to flat file database that puts all the data in one big file. The SQL abbreviation in MySQL word stands for Structured Query Language (MySQL 5.0 Reference Manual, 2010). Badurina (2010) stated that MySQL is open source and it falls under GNU Not Unix (GNU) General Public License (GPL). Open source means that anyone is possible to use and modify the software.

Swot Analysis Of Company Practices: PayPal

Swot Analysis Of Company Practices: PayPal The online payment systems provider that we have chosen is PayPal. PayPal is an e-commerce business that allows payments and money transfer to be made through the Internet. PayPal serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper methods such as cheque and money orders. The service allows members to send money without sharing financial information, with the flexibility to pay using their account balances, bank accounts, credit cards or promotional financing. PayPal is an example of a payment intermediary service that facilitates worldwide e-commerce. PayPal is an eBay subsidiary company and is made up of three leading online payment services: the PayPal global payment service, the Payflow Gateway and Bill Me Later. The companys open payment platform, PayPal X, that allows developers to build innovative payment applications on multiple platforms and devices. PayPal performs payment processing for online vendors, auction sites, and other commercial users, for which it charges a fee. It charges transaction fee for receiving money. The fees charged depend on the currency used, the payment option used, the country of the sender, the country of the recipient, the amount sent and the recipients account type. In addition, PayPal is also the preferred way to send secure payments on eBay. With PayPal, customers who have an online account can makes it easy to send money from a variety of sources to a variety of recipients without sharing his or her financial information. Besides that, the recipient never sees their credit card number or their banking information. So, as a buyer, customers can pay for their item online through PayPal. They have the choice of funding their payment with their debit card, credit card, bank account or PayPal balance. Sellers are notified by email of their PayPal payment immediately, and can confidently post the goods to them right away. As a seller, he or she can withdraw those funds to their bank account or use them to send a payment to someone else. If for any reason a refund is required, a seller can quickly and easily send a refund to the buyer directly into their PayPal account. PayPal is the result of a March 2000 merger between Confinity and X.com. Confinity was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek, and Ken Howery, initially as a Palm Pilot payments and cryptography company. Both Confinity and X.com launched their websites in late 1999. X.com was founded by Elon Musk in March 1999, initially as an Internet financial services company. Both companies were located on University Avenue in Palo Alto. Confinitys website was initially focused on reconciling beamed payments from Palm Pilots with email payments as a feature and X.coms website primarily featured financial services with email payments as a feature. In October 2002, PayPal was acquired by eBay. PayPal had previously been the payment method of choice by more than fifty percent of eBay users, and the service competed with eBays subsidiary Billpoint, eBay has since phased out its Billpoint service in favor of retaining the PayPal brand. Currently, PayPal operates in 190 markets, and it manages over 223 million accounts, more than 73 million of them active. PayPal allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 19 currencies worldwide. These currencies are the Australian dollar, Brazilian real, Canadian dollar, Euro, pound sterling, Japanese yen, and others. PayPal operates locally 13 countries, residents in 194 markets can use PayPal in their local markets to send money online. SWOT Analysis of company practices Strengths The strengths of a business are positive elements, something they do well and are under their control. The following we will see the main strengths of the PayPal. The first strength we will talk about is the business alliance of PayPal. Because of social website that has users from all over the world- Facebook has brings the PayPal to manage its payment make PayPal increase more revenue. Facebook find out that 70 percent of its 400 million users live outside the United States, so it can be hard for them to transfer money to the company online. While PayPal has more than 81 million active accounts, it can help Facebook to collect money easily. Having alliances with other strong and popular IT businesses is a major plus point for PayPal as it helps bring in new customers and make business more effective. PayPal appear as the only online global payment system in the world. It is a key to success for PayPal to work hard for it boosts reputation, profit and market share. PayPal has an impressive growth from year to year. It has around 70 million active users in 2008 and it is 23% more than 2007. PayPal operates in 190 markets, 17 local languages, and transacts in 19 currencies and it operates with 27 global financial networks and 15,000 local banks around the world. No other companies have this advanced system except the market leader- PayPal. It has a high percentage of the market share, meaning it is ahead of many competitors. Competitive pricing is a vital element of PayPals overall success. With the cost effective payment system online such as the Pay as you go system that allow customers pay only if they are making money online unless they are using more advanced options. Such pricing keep PayPal above its rivals. PayPal need you just simply pay a percentage of the payments received, typically between 1.4 and 3.4% plus a fixed amount of 20p per transaction. And it is totally free to set-up a PayPal account for your business with no hidden start-up costs or yearly subscription fees. It is often the case that a potential customer may not heard of your business, but they certainly have seen or heard of PayPal before. PayPal logo can be easily seen by the users of internet because it appears in almost every auction website and even in many website that provide services as the payment method. They are therefore more likely to consider purchasing from your website as they some more do not have to give their financial details if use PayPal. A strong brand is an essential strength of PayPal as it is recognized and respected. Now the system has 100 million satisfied users worldwide and more websites use PayPal than any other payment gateway. The other strength of PayPal is convenience it brings to the public. PayPal website and payment service is user friendly. It is easy and simple to use, even for those who have no or little experience in selling or buying online. PayPal main focus is on the ease of use for both receivers and senders of cash. It also uses its securing system to help protects consumers personal information, and provides payments to merchants without ever providing your personal financial information. Merchants will not get the credit card information of the consumers, it decreasing the chance of breaching personal information. The ability to accept online payments typically only afforded to larger businesses with traditional credit card services but with the appeal of PayPal, it offers merchants, specifically smaller businesses can afford online payments. In essence, PayPal provide a per-to-peer payment channel by acts as a mediator between consumers and merchants. Weakness The first weakness of PayPal is the weak system of it. Currently, PayPal is not using a database-driven ordering system. For most of the online merchants with 25 to 500,000 products for sale online set up a spreadsheet or database that contains their product information by using specialized software. They make changes to the database on a desktop computer, such as price increases, inventory on hand, adding or deleting a product, altering color choices, initiating special sales, etc. These changes then will replace the older product database and show up the new product database on the website. But the PayPal system stores the order buttons of customers in an online database of sorts, but customers can only access it by using the web interface. It works quite smooth if customers only making one or two changes. But if customers have a lot of products, they forced to make the changes constantly. It will cause customers waste too much time while the time is most conscious for business. The other weakness is the bad communication between PayPal and its customer. The complaining system and the customer service at the PayPal website are too ineffective. Many complaints from time to time claim that PayPal has shut down a customers account arbitrarily and wont listen to any reason. But its not hard to know that PayPal works very hard to keep its system secure and fraud-free. When it finds out customers doing things that skid along the edge of its policies, it may shut them down arbitrarily. As PayPal is act in such way for good reasons, it should try to communicate with customers and let them know more about their action like send e-mail or phone call them so the misunderstand can be decrease. The limited flexibility of the PayPal system is due to its inflexible Hosted Ordering Interface. It provides an inflexible ordering interface that can be confusing to shoppers. PayPal allow customers to customize the interface a bit by adding their logo, selecting background colors, and border styles but customers ability to customize the order page is only in cosmetic ways. PayPal does not have an ordering system with open code that a programmer can manipulate to suit customers particular e-commerce needs. Some of the strongest conversion rate gains can be made by testing and streamlining an order interface in this way. Thats the reason why the PayPals order interface is clunky and can be confusing. Opportunities Acquisition is one of the opportunities for PayPal as it can bring more customers to PayPal especially with company that also run IT business. eBay announce that it will phase out its own competing service to PayPal that is eBay Payments by Billpoint and has acquire online payments company PayPal in a deal valued at $1.5 billion. This is very beneficial to PayPal as bulk of its business comes from eBay auctions. This event sure will result in improving PayPals profit, market share and reputation. Innovation of new technology can be defined as an opportunity to the PayPal. PayPal has reached an agreement with USAA Federal Savings Bank (USAA Bank) that will allow it to start developing a person to person payment solution for USAA members. This payment solution is something that USAA Bank plans to deliver in 2011. In future, USAAs members will be able to pay almost anyone with an e-mail address or mobile phone number, in real-time, and directly from their mobile phone. By keep working hard to provide more innovative product to the public, PayPal can gain more and more potential customer. Another example we can see is by releasing new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), PayPal is challenging the developer community to change the way we pay through innovation and new technologies. As the only open global payment platform, PayPal is unlocking the door to an unparalleled business proposition to developers that is create new, innovative ways to pay and get paid. And, the globa l payments market represents a $30 trillion opportunity according to a recent McKinsey report. Furthermore, the efforts of PayPal on product and services expansion have upgraded its own mainframe system to every corner of the world. To show its efforts in product and services expansion, PayPal has expanded its micropayments pricing, available to any member with a PayPal Business or Premier account. Micropayments fees for US dollar transactions are 5% + 5 cents per transaction. When compared to PayPals standard fees (2.9% + 30 cents), the micropayments rate can save money for merchants whose average selling price is below $12. Although micropayments is not new to PayPal, but this micropayments pricing was previously available only to account holders in select countries. With this expansion, PayPal are making it available to any PayPal Business or Premier account holder worldwide using any of PayPals 19 supported currencies. In addition, this micropayments pricing can be used with any of PayPals payment products including Website Payments Standard, Website Payments Pro and for e Bay sellers. The massive power of the Web can be recognized in its global effect on commerce. A global commerce for business exchange known as PayPal has been required because this medium is so strong worldwide. PayPal is recognized as an actual commerce with value around the world, and it makes someone in Europe can purchase a product from the United States while the neither party without PayPal has to struggle with the transfer of money options or exchange rates. The creation of a global commerce exchange system at a local consumer level makes this result happen. Threats The actions of a competitor could be a major threat against PayPal, for instance, if they bring in new technology or increase their workforce to meet demand. PayPal has several competitors such as eMoney Mail, Ecount and payMe. eMoney Mail provide delivers payments faster than the competition and its additional security ensures money doesnt end up in the wrong hands. Ecount lets customers specify the day they want money to arrive and provides payees with an online account to spend money on the Web, and it provide 24/7 toll-free customer support too. payMe deposits money in credit card and checking the accounts and it do not limit to the amount you can send overall. Both of the competitors try to give their best services, if PayPal do not work hard and efficient enough, it will lose its market share and reputation. Price wars between competitors that occur due to competitor keep invent new technology could damage profits for PayPal. As in year2006, Google plans to use Checkout, a service released in June that lets users buy items from multiple stores using a single account. Its purpose is to generate commissions and encourage more merchants to buy advertisements. At that time, the PayPal payment unit was EBays fastest-growing business in the third quarter. PayPals revenue climbed 41% to $350 million, outpacing a gain of 22% in auction revenue to $1.02 billion. Google Checkout wants to attract customers and therefore make charges a 2% commission and a 20-cent fee per purchase. While PayPal, which EBay acquired in 2002, charges a 30-cent rate, plus transaction fees of 1.9% to 2.9%, depending on the total value of payments processed each month. But in EBays promotion announced, customers receive as much as $20 in cash-back rebates from PayPal when they make online purchases on EBay.com and certain merchant websites in North America. As we all can see, price wars will cut off the profit of the company. PayPal do not invest in the advertising on the internet causes the brand image of PayPal is not very well. So it also has a need to strengthen its brand through the Web. In the image of the public, PayPals brand is closely associated with smaller merchants, low-cost auctions, and P2P money transfer. As a result, some larger firms might not want their brands associated with PayPal brand image. They may think that by this way public could devalue a corporations stronger brand. The fact remains that consumers associate its brand with less expensive, cheaper items even though PayPal is an enormous corporation. In order to solve this problem, PayPal should look to network with larger companies through the possible branding of a service associated with corporations. Furthermore, PayPal has the ability to introduce and market a new brand, such as CorpXchange or CorpCash by promoting the same services but without the low-cost auctions associated with PayPal. Porters Five forces of company practices The threat of the entry of new competitors Nowadays, barriers to entry of e-commerce business is low because of anything that internet technology eliminates or makes easier to do reduces the barriers to entry such as in the need for a sales force, access to channels and physical assets. Besides that, internet applications are difficult to keep proprietary from new entrants. This lead to a flood of new entrants has come into many industries, and one of the industries is e-commerce business. There are many new companies which provide similar services as PayPal such as Billpoint, Citibanks c2it, whose service was closed in late 2003, Yahoo!s PayDirect, whose service was closed in late 2004, and BidPay, which was shut down in 2006. However, there are still some new and former competitors such as Google Checkout, Wirecard, Moneybookers, The InstantPay (launching Jan 2011), 2Checkout.com, CCNow and Kagi still remain in business. But this does not affects PayPals revenue as it has impressive growth throughout many years. In 2008, it s revenue is US$ 60 billion, which increased 27% compared to the previous year, and US$ 71 billion in 2009, an increase of 19% over the previous year. During the early year of PayPal, there are lesser competitors, which means PayPal has a bigger market shares and this lead to more customers are using PayPal for their services. As time goes on, internet technology has grown more advance and this makes internet applications are very easy and attract more new entrants. New entrants join the market make the market shares of PayPal is getting smaller. This is because customers have more choices when choosing a right online payment service provider to process their payment. Besides that, some of the competitors got better offer than PayPal, such as cheaper charges and safer transaction process. This leads to the decrease of customers loyalty to PayPal and becoming a threat to the company. Google Checkout is one of the new entrant and main competitors with PayPal. It is an online payment processing service provided by Google aimed at simplifying the process of paying for online purchases on 28 June 2006. Users store their credit or debit card and shipping information in their Google Account, so that they can purchase anything at participating stores at the click of a button. It also offers fraud protection, as well a unified page for tracking purchases and their status. It also provide service with lower cost compared to PayPal. Unlike who only provide fraud protection for sales of more than $50, Google Checkout provide 100% fraud protection and 100% refund, but users must report it within 60 days. All these has make Google Checkout to become a threat to PayPal. Another new entrant is Wirecard AG, a global financial services and technology company founded in 1999. In November 2006, Wirecard has launched an internet payment service called Wirecard. By registering online, consumer can opens an account at Wirecard Bank which he can load by cash, cards, direct debit, wire transfer or various local payment schemes. The service includes a free virtual prepaid MasterCard for consumers that can be used to pay at millions of MasterCard locations worldwide. Apart from standard MasterCard products, the Wirecard system also let users to send each other money in real-time. There is also optional physical MasterCard enables users to pay at 24.7 million MasterCard brickmortar acceptance points and to withdraw cash at nearly 1 million ATMs worldwide. People may consider to use Wirecard because it is operated by a true bank. Unlike PayPal, Wirecard cannot simply freeze or limit customers accounts without a reasonable explanations. It may get suit by customer s. Therefore, PayPal should start to consider not to be just protecting its own interest, but protect its customers interest as well so it would not lose its customers. PayPal has some solutions to overcome the threat of losing customers loyalty to the company. One of the solution is PayPal has acquired a company named Fraud Sciences, which is expert in online risk tools to enhance eBay and PayPals proprietary fraud management systems and accelerate the development of improved fraud detection tools. On the other hand. eBay, as the parent company to PayPal, has added Google Checkout to its banned payment methods list to prevent eBay users from using Google Checkout. With this way, PayPals competitors will become lesser, thus the market share of the company will become bigger and also secure the customers loyalty to PayPal. The intensity of competitive rivalry As internet technology become more advance from time to time, it reduces the differences among competitors as offerings are difficult to keep proprietary. Therefore, PayPal used the alliance strategy to get larger percentage of market shares than other competitors. For example, on 18 Feb 2010, Facebook announced a partnership with PayPal in which users can now pay for their Facebook Credits by using the payment provider. Facebook had test other payment solution before making decision to have a partnership with PayPal, however the ability to pay for the virtual transactions through PayPal is great considering they have more than 81 million accounts. this prove that PayPal is good enough to handle massive amount of online transactions. Thus the company is intensifying pressures to other rivals as this partnership give many benefits to PayPal its market shares are getting bigger. PayPal also intensify pressure on its mobile payment service rivals too. Obopay is the company founded in 2005 that provide mobile payment service in United States. It is a service that allows the transfer of money between mobile phones. After a customer creates an Obopay account, they can add money from a credit card, debit card, or a bank transfer. This make people a lot easier because most of the people will carry a hand phone with them. However, PayPal announced its inclusion in Sprint Nextels MyMoneyManager suite of mobile financial services in 2008. It is the innovation strategy that it used to attract new customers and provide a wider range of services to its former customers too. PayPal and partner mFoundry are on deck to provide banking services for Sprint, making it the first major operator in United States to have mobile money transfers between subscribers. Its fee is also cheaper than Obopay too. By doing this, PayPal has intensified pressure to Obopay and also show its i ntensity of competitive rivalry is very strong. Besides that, internet advance technology also leads to migrates competition to price among competitors. Although PayPal charges and fees for online payment processing are slightly higher than the other competitors, it can still have a lot of loyal customers and new customers using its services. The reason is currently, PayPal operates in 190 markets, and it manages over 223 million accounts, and more than 73 million of the accounts are active. PayPal also allows customers to send, receive, and hold funds in 19 currencies worldwide and it operates with 27 global financial networks and 15,000 local banks around the world. It also operates in 13 countries. The wide range of services provided by PayPal is a better choice than its competitors as none of them can provide such services. Customers with a PayPal accounts can also make payment for many other services and products which make things a lot easier. Customers do not have to open another account for just that particular payment. The threat of substitute products or services This analysis will identify the likelihood that customers to your industry will switch to purchasing an alternative product or use an alternative services from outside your industry. With the advance of internet technology, the proliferation of internet approaches creates new substitutions threat in many industries. There are many alternative apart from online payment providers in the e-commerce market such as, credit card, debit card, checks, money order and e-banking. For local transactions, consumers will use these kinds of traditional methods rather than PayPal. If a person buy a product with credit card, all he need to pay is the price of the product and interest charged by bank. However, if he pay the bank early, he would not be charged with any interest and this method will be cheaper than using PayPal. If a person does not has a credit card, they can use online banking to make their payment as all they need is just a saving account in the particular bank. Besides that, having a saving account at a bank are better than having a PayPal account as there are many complaint from its customers that PayPal freeze its users account arbitrarily and wont listen to any reason. PayPal can freeze its users account easily without giving prior notice because it is not supervise by the bank regulation. Therefore, this will lead to a higher threat to PayPal for its users to change to use other substitute services. There are also many complaint from its users that PayPal security against fraud is not good. Users are easy to get scam or the confidential data are easy to be stolen. To avoid this situation happens, buyers can use money order to make payment as well. money order As for merchants, their substitute service apart from PayPal is merchant account. Merchant account is a type of bank account that allow businesses to accept payments by debit or credit cards. A merchant account also serves as an agreement between a retailer, a merchant bank and payment processor for the settlement of credit card and/or debit card transactions. PayPal charges fees by per transaction, while merchant account is charging fees monthly and fix. Therefore, PayPal usually used by small business merchant as payment processor as the cost is cheaper. While for merchant that have massive transaction, most of them use merchant account as their payment processor because it will be cheaper than using PayPal. The bargaining power of buyers The bargaining power of customers is the ability of customers to put the firm under pressure, which also affects the customers sensitivity to price changes. The advanced internet technology has reduced switching costs of buyers and this makes the buyer would not simply switch to use other companies services. Although the fees charges to PayPal users are more expensive than its competitors, it still does not lower down the fees. This is because of PayPal provides to its users better services than its rivals, such as providing customers to hold up to 19 currencies of different countries so they can make their payment easily. It is the only company that can allows users hold that much currencies and requires high fixed costs to maintain this type of services. Customers that wishes to bargain for lower fees are maybe just a small portion among all the PayPal users too. If PayPal lower down its fee just for such small portion of unsatisfied customers, it may bring huge losses to the compa ny. Therefore, even though some users maybe price sensitive and bargain for a lower fees, PayPal will not make any changes as it would not greatly reduce its profit by losing a small portion of its users. The bargaining power of suppliers For PayPal, its suppliers are the banks and companies that provide financial networks in worldwide. The bargaining power of suppliers is low because with the internet, all companies has equal access to suppliers, and gravitate procurements to standardised products that reduce differentiation among competitors. standardised products or services makes the suppliers cannot charged high prices because there are too many similar products that other suppliers can provide. The banks, which are the suppliers to all online payment providers competing to each others with quality of services and low interest rates. Therefore, PayPal has many choices to choose for which suppliers is best suits with it. However, PayPal try to make deals with most of the local banks so it can have a wider range of services that can attract customers to use PayPal. It will not have to worry about the suppliers that charge excessive high price on unique products or service because if they do so, PayPal can just try to find another suppliers that charge reasonable price. Besides that, suppliers concentration to firm concentration ratio for PayPal is high because of its brand equity is high. Brand equity is brands power that derived from the goodwill and name recognition it has earned over time, and which turns into higher sales volume and higher profit margins against competing brands. PayPals high brand equity will keep attracts customers use PayPal services and this will lead to more services must be provided by the bank to PayPal. Banks will earn more profit by providing more services to it and indirectly makes the bargaining powers of suppliers become low as they need PayPal to generate more profit. Customer Relationship Management Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a widely-implemented strategy for managing a companys interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It includes one-to-one relationship between a customer and a seller which encourage customer participation in product development. CRM create one simple idea Treat different customers differently, which means that different customers are treat based on their different needs and different value to company. Besides that, CRM using information technology strategy aimed at identifying, acquiring, targeting and retaining the best mix of customers. CRM also describes a company-wide business strategy which including customer-interface departments as well as other departments. Furthermore, CRM also helps in understanding customer needs and building relationships with them and by providing the most suitable products with a high level of customer service. It integrates back and front office systems to create a database of customer contracts, purchases, information requested and technical support. This database helps the firm to present a unified face to its customer and improve the quality of the relationship. The primary goal of CRM is to improve long-term growth and profitability through a better understanding of customer behavior. There are 3 phases in which CRM support the relationship between a business and its customers are to acquire, enhance and retain. CRM can help a business acquire new customers through contact management, selling and fulfillment. A web enabled CRM combined with customer service tools offers customers service from a team of sales and service specialists, which offers customers the convenience of one-stop shopping. CRM software and databases enable a business to identify and reward its loyal customers and further develop its targeted marketing and relationship marketing initiatives. For any business to be successful employers need to look into various objectives which are beneficial for the customers. A good customer employee relationship always leads to positive outcomes for the business. CRM is a new introduction in E-commerce and played major rule in the development of e-business specially the CRM stands for customer relationship. It is a strategy used to learn more about customers needs and behaviors in order to develop stronger relationships with them. Good customer relationships are at the heart of business success. A primary objective of CRM is to provide the entire organization with a complete and 360-degree view of the customer, no matter where the information resides. The benefits of adopting CRM processes are develop better communication channels, create detailed profiles of individual customers, increased customer satisfaction, customer service and support and increased revenues of the organization. There are 3 types of CRM which are operational CRM, analytical CRM and collaborative CRM. Operational CRM describes the technology strategy of managing and interacting with customers across channels through client facing applications and integrated channel management. Operational CRM applications are technologies that enable sales force, marketing and customer care automat

Attitude Towards Women in Virgils Aeneid :: Aeneid Essays

Attitude Towards Women in Virgil's Aeneid In Susan Wiltshire's essay, she accuses Virgil as being a woman-hater. "Vergil is seen to portray female characters on both the human and the divine levels as irrational and subordinate, while male characters are rational and hierarchially superior" (Wiltshire) While trying to prove her conviction of Vergil's epic, she goes on to say, "for example, Perkell hypothesizes that Vergil altered the traditional stories about Creusa and Dido expressly in order to portray women as victims of the Roman mission and Aeneas's inattention." (Wiltshire) While she does admit that Vergil did not only discredit women, but men too, she felt that his feeling towards women was much more prejiduce than men. While women are labeled to be quite unstable, Virgil gives us such an indepth look at the private lives of these characters that you can't help but wonder if he was merely trying to capture what is "real" in society. "It is extraordinary that Vergil takes any account, much less the extensive account he does, of the struggles, pains, hopes, and diappointments of relationships in the private realm." (Wiltshire) I have to agree with this statement because it is quite abnormal to see this type of intamacy between characters in an epic. You can truly relate to this story. These characters are not seen just as heroic, but human. You see jealousy between women because of looks, much like we see today. Women, as sad as it is, really can be quite shallow when it comes to physical appearance. We see it all over the media with women paying thousands of dollars for cosmetic surgery so they can "feel better about themselves", but really, they are just trying to win some type of competition. We also see in the story what someone must sacrifice in order to fulfill their goals. Though Aeneas's destiny was much more grand than many of our own, we still must make choices that can sometimes hurt others. I really thought that Vergil captured our inner emotions with the affair between Dido and Aeneas.

The Rough Riders :: essays papers

The Rough Riders Towards the end of the nineteenth century, William McKinley defeated Grover Cleveland for the presidency and there was a huge push for the United States of America to expand beyond its continental boarders. (Lorant, p. 281) With an enthusiasm for a new urge for international Manifest Destiny, the American people wanted to match Europe^s imperial power by making America^s weight felt around the world. (Boger p.714) The extent of expansionism was felt in the Pacific Ocean with the occupation of the Hawaiian Islands and Guam, but the most famous example of Americas enthusiasm for international assertiveness came in the Caribbean with the war for Cuban independence against Spain. (Boger p.714) The Spanish-American war was a war that made the United States emerge as a world power and has sense been thought of as the most popular war in American history. (Lorant, p. 281) As John Hay had said, ^It has been a splendid little war, begun with the highest matters, carried on with mag! nificent intelligence and spirit, favored by the fortune which loves the brave.^ (Lorant, p. 297) Words that truly captured the feelings of all Americans at the time. In the American people^s eyes, the war was not won by political jargon or a decisive Naval campaign, but by a rugged Lieutenant Colonel and his band of outlaws, cowboys, and Harvard polo-players, more commonly known as the Rough Riders. (Lorant, p. 295) Although the war was not won by Roosevelt^s Rough Rider charge up San Juan Hill, the battle gave the war its romantic essence, which still fills history books today. Roosevelt^s Rough Riders were a key part in the fight for Cuban Independence by brave yet unconventional means that made them one of the most popular fighting forces in American history. Soon after McKinley^s presidential victory in 1896, he appointed Theodore Roosevelt to the office of Assistant Secretary of the Navy under John D. Long. (Lorant, p. 281) The main problems of the time were the occupation of Cuba by Spain and the fact that relations with Spain were steadily worsening. American sympathy was with the Cubans who were rebelling against the corrupt and evil Spanish overlords. (Lorant, p. 281) Americans attitude towards the Cuban people was mainly on humanitarian motives, but other reasons came into play to push the United States into a fight. The first reason was being economic. (Lorant, p. 281) The trade with Cuba, which had been one hundred million dollars in 1893, was badly disrupted by the insurrection. (Lorant, p. 281) Another reason was geo-political.

Lotus Versus Zen Buddhism

William Bettley 4/3/2013 Cul 260 Prof. Grohe Zen (or Chan) and Lotus Buddhism A Comparison Essay Buddhism, like many other major religions has expanded past a simple definition. There are a large number of regions that practice this astronomically large religion, and throughout the years since its introduction to the world it has developed a large number of ways to practice the belief system. The sect with the largest number of temples in Japan is Zen Buddhism, the second largest number belong to the Lotus, or Nichiren Sect.Zen, being the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese character Chan, falls into a much larger sect of Buddhism, with many different branches; this paper will look into the Japanese Zen branch and the Soto-Zen branch. These branches will be compared to the almost exclusively Japanese sect of Buddhism, Nichiren. The Nichiren sect, that borrows its name from its founder, is an extremely large sect of Buddhism whose main sutra is the Lotus Sutra. The Nichiren sect of Buddhism is any denomination of Buddhism that derives its beliefs from the teachings of the ancient Japanese teacher Nichiren. Nichiren is comprised of more than forty different independent religious institutions. Nichiren, originally a monk of the Tendai doctrine did not see himself as the creator of a sect, nor did he give his followers a name. It was in his death that his teachings, based on the Lotus Sutra, were denominated to be the Lotus sect of Buddhism† (Buswell Vol. 2). The largest of the Nichiren branches has its largest temple in Yamanashi and is called Nichrenshu. â€Å"Nichiren adopted the Tiantai School doctrine of reality as three thousand realms in a single thought to explain the theoretical basis upon which ordinary people can reach Buddhahood.He found this single thought doctrine not as an access from meditation, but as concrete manifestations from the three great secret dharmas. He derived these three secret dharmas from the latter half of the Lotus Sutra, or the origin teachings, thus these three secret dharmas became the core of his teachings. † (Buswell Vol. 2) The Daimoku, or name, is the Myohorengekyo or name of the Lotus Sutra. Nichiren believed this to embody the essence of all Buddhist teachings. He felt that all that Buddha is and was and ever will be can be embodied in a practitioner through the faith and chanting of this name.He felt that through reciting this mane, the essence of the Buddhist teaching can be transferred to the practitioner in a moment of faith. This was the first dharma of lotus teaching. As with most major religions, and religious sects, there is an identifying object. The Lotus sect of Buddhism is no different. The second dharma of Lotus teaching was the honzon, or object of worship. During Nichiren’s lifetime he developed a calligraphy Mandala, an example of which you can see above. This is an example of the item of worship you would bear reverence to in this sect of Buddhism, and this can be found in every Lotus Buddhist temple.Namu Myohorengekyo is inscribed down the center, and to the left and right are inscribed the names of Buddha, along with the representatives of the assembly of the Lotus Sutra. The third dharma is the most controversial. The kaidan is to some a platform of belief, while to others it is a physical thing. By definition it is a platform loosely described in Nichiren’s writings. It is more definitely an ordination platform. In the esoteric sense it means that wherever one embraces the Lotus sutra is the Buddha land.There is not much to say about this but to say that Nichiren has mixed reviews on what he believed this to be. â€Å"Zen is the Japanese pronunciation of the Japanese character Chan† (Buswell Vol. 2). This was one of the first quotes in my paper, and allows us to look at Zen in a different light. While it remains the Zen school of Buddhism in Japan, it is a branch of the Chan school of Buddhism, thus to look at Zen, you mu st first see Chan. This section will look into both the Japanese Zen Buddhism, and the Soto Chan Buddhism.Japanese Zen Buddhism is almost exactly like the original Chan School, because it took upon itself Chan concepts in Japanese style. There is not much of a difference between the Chan School and central Buddhist practice, and thus I will not look deeply into it. One of the primary notable things about the Zen school is that it, much like other schools, incited much violence between the schools because of a difference of views. Soto Chan Buddhism takes as its main concept that one is already Buddha, and to take up the mantle, you must sit in meditation without the attempting to become Buddha.This is interesting and much different from what we have learned prior in this paper. Most schools of Buddhism do not see themselves already being Buddha, and most strive to achieve Buddhism, and that takes a huge parting path from original Buddha teachings. Thus far in this paper we have brok en down many branches of Buddhism schools and how they differ in belief. That being the target of the paper would imply that this is the end, but I must make a few additional remarks. In Buddhism one strives to achieve enlightenment. In that cause Buddhism is different from many religions.It takes a walk away from heaven, and strives towards the land of Buddha. But like many other religions there is discrepancy, and thus there is conflict. That does not mean that Buddhism is bad, just normal. There is much more depth this paper could look into, but doing so would make this a Buddhism paper, and not just the cores of the sects I am looking into. To see more of how this paper applies to Buddhism, would much improve the knowledge of the coherency of this paper. References Buswell, Robert E. Encyclopedia of Buddhism Vol. 1 Macmillan Reference USA. 004 PP, 134-135 Buswell, Robert E. Encyclopedia of Buddhism Vol. 2 Macmillan Reference USA. 2004 PP, 595-598, 293 Princeton EDU Nichiren Budd hism, Author Unknown, https://www. princeton. edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Nichiren_Buddhism. html Yusa, Michiko. Japanese Religious Traditions. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002. Print. All images belong to their original owners and no profit will be made from their inclusion in this paper. Any profit from this paper will be distributed to the owners of the original image holders at their request.

The Iks

The Iks by Lewis Thomas In the essay â€Å"The Iks†, author Lewis Thomas tells the story about the small tribe of hunters in Uganda who had to struggle to live with others after they were forced by the government to give up their living and working area and move to the poor hills and become farmers. Because of this, the Iks did not know how to live together, and they made each other’s lives very miserable. The individual Ik was selfish and heartless and cared for no one but himself.They didn’t share things with each other and found joy in the other’s misfortunes. They even went as far as to let their children go on their own and take food from the elders. To make things worse, an anthropologist, who hated the Iks, decided to study them for two years to write a book about them. Thomas thought the behavior of the Iks was unmoral and animalistic. He then went on to say that he now sees their behavior as being similar to small groups such as a gang and large g roups such as cities and nations.I find that Thomas’ comparison of the Iks’ behavior to some small groups to be unreasonable, whereas I can see the similarities between their behavior and that of larger groups like cities and nations. I didn’t think the comparison of the Iks’ behavior and that of all small groups was accurate. Now, I have seen some small groups, such as gangs, express the same type of selfish and heartless behavior as Iks, like when they kill innocent people as an initiation and their joy when another gang is broken up.But I have also seen some small groups, such as social clubs, come together to raise money for other organizations and to supply needs to needy communities. Therefore, I can’t see the comparison of all small groups as being fair. As for the comparison of the Iks and larger groups, such as cities, I can agree with that to a certain extent. I could never forget what happened in this city on August 29, 2005. Our familie s, homes, jobs and schools was taken from us. The city decided to save one part of the city, and flooded out the poor part.Sure there was help from other cities and nations, but the help only went to certain areas of the city. The poor areas was left to fend for themselves, and that caused those citizens to make their own laws and they became very defensive and offensive to each other during this time. They broke into the neighbors’ homes and stole whatever was salvageable and they actually raped the women who was stranded with them. There was elderly people who was dead in there for days and no one knew because they was too busy trying to stay alive.So I can agree with the comparison of the Iks and larger cities after being put in a bad situation. I wonder what it would be like if we was put in a situation like the Iks†¦ again? Would we be able to get along in order to help each other out of the bind we’re in, or would we carry on like selfish, savage beasts and destroy the little that we have? Although I can understand Thomas’ point about all humans having the ability to act out like the Iks did, I think that we have come so far in our society that we would not want to act like that, because we know that behaving in such a manner will not help us make the situation better.