Development of Conflict between Members of a Small Team and the Essay

Development of Conflict between Members of a Small Team and the Measures Taken To Solve the Impasse - Essay Example This paper illustrates that a recent experience that forms the main basis of this reflection forms the researcher’s experience of a workplace conflict in a team of four and the associated measures the author had to take to intervene in the situation being the supervisor. Mr. Michael, a new employee at the company, was recently transferred from another branch to the environmental department of that comprised of three members of staff and the researcher, as the supervisor in the department. Mr. Michael was African and as the author would later discover his arrival resulted in tension and misunderstanding in the department. Mr. Moses, the department long-serving officer was involved in a heated discussion with Michael on the jobs allocated to Mr. Michael that turned out to be more than the other two were given and in the process, Moses used a racial slur. Mr. Michael believed that the other members of the department were in a collision since they did not agree to share work equal ly resulting in hostility developing into workplace conflict among the four members of the department. Mr. Moses and the other department members believed that they were superior having only interacted with department members of the same color since Mr. Michael was the first employee in the company of a different ethnic community. In hindsight, it has come to my view that the author could have taken different measures that could have resulted in a better solution to the situation. After the confrontation, the work environment was edgy and filled with anxiety that no work was being completed successfully owing to the no-talking terms between Mr. Michael and the other members of the department including Mr. Moses. After meetings with the department members and one-on-one conversation with Mr. Michael and Mr. Moses to help resolve the situation to no avail, the author felt that he need to step in and solve the issue for the benefit of the organization and the success of the department. Since the department was running well before Mr. Michael’s arrival, the author requested his transfer, which he previously requested when the discrimination occurred since he believed he could not effectively work with the team. On reflecting on the solution, the author believes it was not morally correct to have undertaken that decision.

Finance for managers essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Finance for managers - Essay Example There are generally no hassles when owned capital is employed for executing budgetary plans. But problems arise on use of debt capital. These problems of debt financing are as under: 3. Financial leverage or gearing of the capital employed affect future funding for the business. For example during periods of depressions the entities will find difficulties in raising capital through issuance of equities. On basis of study conducted by Catherine Stenzel and Joe Stenzel (page 82)2, it may be observed that irrespective of model of the budget adopted, budgets normally incorporate three mistakes that limit the scope and decision taking abilities of the entities. Those three mistakes are as under: It is seen that budgets do not align resources to strategic objectives of the firm. Budgets do not reveal the business strategies. Logically the budgets should translate the strategic goals into actionable operations in quantitative terms. But this does not happen. Budgets and strategic objective some time appear far apart in planning the use of resources. Budgets are constructed keeping in mind the resources in hand. There is no planning under budgetary process to create resources to meet strategic objectives. Entities declare mission statements and strategic objectives enthusiastically in big way. It is seen that during budgeting, very few so called flaccid budgets, that are presently in operations, care for business plans and plan activities to achieve those strategic goals. In words of Catherine Stenzel and Joe Stenzel ‘one final flaw that can reduce budgeting relevance and lead to flaccid budget centers on parochial claims to resources.’ That is to say resources under budgetary process are allocated on competitive basis and not as per preferences set out in the strategic objectivity. Conventional budgets do not describe methods for arriving at budget proposals or at allocation of funds. The methodology

The Theory of special relativity Essay Example for Free

The Theory of special relativity Essay Abstract: Prior to albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity there was always an idea about relativity. Through Galilean transformations, which worked perfectly with the newton’s laws of motion, people had formed a vague idea that all motion in this world is relative to something else. There came up the mysterious thing called aether — the medium through which light propagated. The belief in aether had caused a mess of things, in Einstein’s view, by introducing a medium that caused certain laws of physics to work differently depending on how the observer moved relative to the aether. In 1905, Albert Einstein published the theory of special relativity, which explains how to interpret motion between different inertial frames of reference — that is, places that are moving at constant speeds relative to each other. Einstein explained that when two objects are moving at a constant speed as the relative motion between the two objects, instead of appealing to the aether as an absolute frame of reference that defined what was going on. If you and your friend, say AA, are moving in different spaceships and want to compare your observations, all that matters is how fast you and AA are moving with respect to each other. Special relativity includes only the special case (hence the name) where the motion is uniform. The motion it explains is only if you’re traveling in a straight line at a constant speed. As soon as you accelerate or curve — or do anything that changes the nature of the motion in any way — special relativity ceases to apply. That’s where Einstein’s general theory of relativity comes in, because it can explain the general case of any sort of motion. Einstein’s theory was based on two key principles: * The principle of relativity: All objects move in a motion relative to one another. No motion except the speed of light is fixed. And the laws of physics don’t change, even for objects moving in inertial (constant speed) frames of reference. * The principle of the speed of light: The speed of light is the same for all observers, regardless of their motion relative to the light source. (Physicists write this speed using the symbol c.) Explaining theory of relativity and related concepts Classical Relativity (mechanics theory) Experiment: (Self thought and practically conducted) An everyday life situation when you are moving in a straight escalator. Standing on next to an escalator, I measured the speed of my mother, who was standing still on the straight escalator, using a Doppler’s radar. Speed measured by the radar= 3 km/h Then standing on the same escalator I measured the speed of my mother a few meters from me. Speed Measured by the radar= 0 km/h Explanation: Classical relativity states that all motion in this universe is relative to one another. Nothing is fixed. As measured by the radar the escalator and hence my stationary mother on it was moving at a speed of 3km/h. But when I measured the speed with myself on the escalator, the radar measured 0 km/h. This is because although my mother was still moving with the escalator’s speed her state of motion with respect to mine was stationary. Maxwell’s theory and the abolishment of aether theory Maxwell was a scientist who gave various laws with respect to electromagnetic radiation. He, through his equations, proposed that like all other EMRs even the speed of light could be calculated. James Clark Maxwell (1884) devised his famous equation, showing that the four basic equations of electromagnetism (one of which Maxwell invented so his equation would work, but it turned out to be correct), can be combined into a single wave equation. The speed of the wave is determined solely by a term involving known constants that appear in the original formulas. Thus, Maxwell showed that the speed of light was a constant and that its speed could be measured using electromagnetic experiments that were already in place to determine those constants. Nobody really believed that the speed was actually constant; they assumed that it was constant in some preferred reference frame, called the ether. But Michelson, together with Morley, attempting to measure the speed of the earth through the ether by measuring the speed of light in many different directions at once, found that the speed was constant in all directions. Nobody knew what to make of that in 1887. Then Lorentz gave his 3 sets of explanations to prove Maxwell’s observations. But all these three explanations were proved wrong by Einstein as he gave the theory of relativity. He believed light to be a constant at all times and abolished the idea of aether. His explanations involved the principles of Spacetime where he unified space and time to create a four-dimensional view of the universe with three dimensions of space and one dimension of time. Spacetime Einstein’s theory of special relativity created a fundamental link between space and time. The universe can be viewed as having three space dimensions — up/down, left/right, forward/backward — and one time dimension. This 4-dimensional space is referred to as the space-time continuum. If you move fast enough through space, the observations that you make about space and time differ somewhat from the observations of other people, who are moving at different speeds. According to Einstein, Space and time were a single unit and not absolute but relative. The movement in space affected the movement in time. The faster one moved through space the slower one goes through time. Thought experiment: (self-thought and data input based on other examples to explain concepts): Imagine a car moving at say a 100/s along the east direction and at zero speed toward the north direction. Then in one second it moves 100m towards east with no progress towards the north. Now say it moves north-east at the same speed. Because its speed is now diverted in two directions, it only moves 50 towards east and 50 m north. Same applies for space and time i.e. the faster you move through space the slower you pass through time. If you move at the speed of light then you make no progress in time and if you move at a speed that is greater than the speed of light, you can go back in time! Therefore, Einstein in order to measure distance between two objects chose to use a single entity called spacetime. Different observers would see different events in space in different ways. Some would see 2 events occurring at the same point in time but far apart in space, whereas other would see the same two events occur in very close to each other in space but far apart in time. Maxwell, using his 4 equations of electromagnetism proved that the speed of light was a constant. But his idea was rejected and everybody thought the speed of light was relative to a constant frame called aether. Also a concept called ether drift developed whereby light through all other media except aether would undergo a drift called ether drift opposing its speed. This was dependent on the velocity of the object. The more the velocity of the media, the less was supposed to be the speed of light through the media. Using this when Michelson, together with Morley, attempted to measure the speed of the earth through the ether by measuring the speed of light in many different directions at once, they found that the speed was constant in all directions and equal to the constant calculated by Maxwell. Now a question arose: how was this possible? The explanation to this was given by Einstein who abolished aether and said that the speed of light was a constant and through his theory of relativity demonstrated that how this was possible. To understand the fact that speed of light is a constant, we need to change our perspectives on distance and time from them being a relative quantity from a fixed quantity. This introduces to us two new concepts of time dilation and length contraction. Both time dilation and length contraction are immediate consequences of the Lorentz transformation Time Dilation Thought experiment: (taken from YouTube video on relativity) Consider this thought experiment. You and AA are in 2 different spaceships in space. Both of you are measuring trying to measure the speed of light. Your spaceship is stationary while your friend’s spaceship is moving at a constant speed, say 0.5c. To calculate time (which can be calculated by using any device that measures a certain event periodically) both of you are using 2 plates reflecting light against each other. (Look at the diagram below) Now in the (1) clock is the clock in the stationary clock i.e. the one on the stationary spaceship whereas the (2) clock is on the moving spaceship. Both clocks are identical. It is known that the speed of light is the same at all times. Therefore here in the stationary clock light moves up and down in a perpendicular distance the shortest distance. If the clock moves by 5 min every time the light touches the bottom plate then the clock would run at a certain speed and change appropriately. Now in case of the moving clock the light beam is travelling diagonally as the plates are constantly moving along with the spaceship in which they are present. Therefore the light takes a longer time to hit the bottom plate (as the speed of light is constant and light has to travel a longer path). Therefore the (2) clock runs slower than the (1) clock despite them being exactly identical. This phenomenon is known as time dilation, where the time on a ship moving very quickly appears to pass slower than on Earth. Length contraction The theory of special relativity revolutionized not just our understanding of time but our understanding of space too. I have already described the phenomenon of time dilation, whereby pairs of clocks in uniform relative motion each tick more slowly with respect to the other. A closely related effect is the phenomenon of length contraction (sometimes known as â€Å"Lorentz contraction†, â€Å"FitzGerald contraction† or even â€Å"Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction† after the physicists who predicted it on the basis of a crude forerunner of special relativity). Thought Experiment: (Taken from You tube Video But self-data input) Now in the spaceships example I have been using it can be said that if the two spaceships when at the same point i.e. when one is directly below the other and they release a beam of light and measure the speed of light after 12 seconds on the clock on the stationary ship which would be around 9 seconds on the clock aboard the moving ship if we calculate it using Lorentz’s transformations. Since the stationary ship is at rest in the space dimension therefore the rulers or any distance measuring instrument used would show that light travelled 12 light-second (the distance light travels in one second). The actual speed of light is 1light-second per second. Since the total time measured was 12 seconds. Therefore the speed would that would be calculated is 12 light second per second which is nothing but one light second per second. Since the second spaceship was moving at a speed half the speed of light it should calculate the distance of the light beam from the ship after 12 seconds on the clock aboard the stationary ship to be 6 light-second. But the actual distance measured by the rulers or any other measuring instrument onboard the moving ship will be 9 light-second. This is because of a phenomenon called length contraction. When an object moves at a very high speed i.e. a speed which is equal to or greater than 30% of c, then this length contraction can be seen up to some extent. Since the second spaceship was moving at 0.5*c, therefore the ship and all rulers or the measuring instruments used shrunk and the light beam was measured to be a distance of 9 light-second in 9 seconds, which is nothing but 1light-second per second. Conclusion As strange as it seems, this example (and many others) demonstrates that in Einstein’s theory of relativity, space and time are intimately linked together. If you apply Lorentz transformation equations, they work out so that the speed of light is perfectly consistent for both observers, i.e. one in motion at a constant speed and other stationary or at rest. This strange behavior of space and time is only evident when you’re traveling close to the speed of light, so no one had ever observed it before. Experiments carried out since Einstein’s discovery have confirmed that it’s true — time and space are perceived differently, in precisely the way Einstein described, for objects moving near the speed of light. The Consequence of Theory of Relativity: Unifying mass and energy (E=mc2) The most famous work of Einstein’s life also dates from 1905, when he applied the ideas of his relativity paper to come up with the equation E=mc2 that represents the relationship between mass (m) and energy (E). Einstein found that as an object approached the speed of light, c, the mass of the object increased. The object goes faster, but it also gets heavier. If it were actually able to move at c, the object’s mass and energy would both be infinite. A heavier object is harder to speed up, so it’s impossible to ever actually get the particle up to a speed of c. for example consider a proton accelerating towards the speed of light. As is moves closer to the speed of light its mass increases thus acting as a hindrance to the movement of the object. Until Einstein, the concepts of mass and energy were viewed as completely separate. He proved that the principles of conservation of mass and conservation of energy are part of the same larger, unified principle, and conservation of mass-energy. Matter can be turned into energy and energy can be turned into matter because a fundamental connection exists between the two types of substance. Thus if an object moves at a speed of light then it would have an infinite mass, negligible length and would make no progress in time.

Role Of Semantics In Communication English Language Essay

Role Of Semantics In Communication English Language Essay The word semantics means the study of meaning. It typically focuses on the relation between the signifers, such as words, phrases, signs and symbols, and what they stand for. Linguistic semantics is defined as the study of meanings that humans use language in expression. Other types of semantics include the semantics of programming languages, formal logics, and semiotics.The word semantic itself denotes a range of ideas, from the fashionable to the highly technological. It is frequently used in ordinary language to denote a problem of understanding that comes down to word collection or connotation. This problem of understanding has been the subject matter of many formal investigations, over a long period of time, most especially in the field of formal semantics. In linguistics, it is the study of interpretation of signs or symbols as used by agents or communities within particular situation and contexts. Within this observation, sounds, facial terminology, body language, phonemics ha ve semantic (significant) content, and each has several branches of study. For instance in written language, such things as paragraph structure and punctuation have semantic content; in other form of languages, there is other semantic content .As mentioned above. the official study of semantics intersects with many other fields of inquiry, including lexicology, syntax, pragmatics, etymology etc though semantics is a well-defined field in its own context, but is often with artificial properties. In language philosophy, semantics and reference are related fields. Further related fields include philology, communication, and semiotics. With the interrelationship between them the formal study of semantics is therefore multifarious in nature. Semantic is in contrast with syntax, the study of the combinatory of units of a language (with no reference to their meaning). In the scientific vocabulary semantics is also known as semasiology. Introduction One of the major reasons for agent abstraction importance in engineering purposes is that it allows necessary complication and disability of todays computer systems to be dealt with better than before. Also the most conventional perspective of agents that intelligent software components, acting on an erratic environment. The typical solution to this problem is to employ a black-box approach, e.g., describing the agent behavior solely by means of its inputs and outputs. Modeling agent behavior within MAS introduces taxing issues, since both the agent internal behavior and interactive behavior are concerned. This is the problem that is addressed by formal semantics of agent communication languages (ACL) (Kone, Shimazu, and Nakajima 2000).This relationship between an agent abstract structural design and the specification of ACL semantics can be highlighted by considering the case of current semantics for ACLs such as, FIPA ACL (FIPA 2000) and KQML (ARPA Knowledge Sharing Initiative 1993; Labrou and Finin1997a; Labrou and Finin 1997b), which relate agent communications to agent mental state (Sadek 1992). For instance, in FIPA ACL, each communicative act specification is equipped by a feasibility precondition (FP).that must hold for the sender, and a rational effect that the sender may suppose to occur on the receiver, even though such an effect is not actually mandatory for the receiver, so as to preserve its autonomy. Both these specification, as well as the actual message content, are given in terms of a quantified, multi-modal logic with modal operators for beliefs (B), desires (C), uncertain beliefs (U), and intentions (I), called Semantic Language (SL) (FIPA 2000), which has its root from the work on the BDI framework. Despite FIPA not mandating any actual architecture for agents, FIPA ACL Semantics perfectly assumes that the agent behavior can be interpreted in terms of a BDI-like architecture,1 which can be pictorially represented. The agent internal machinery should be clearly aware of any communicative act sent or received by the agent (Act). It should be noted that since rational effect are not obligatory for the agent, their logics are not conceptually part of the represented portion of the agent. Instead, details about rational eà ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬ ects can be used by an agent internal machinery to assume the effect on the receiver of the acts it sends, whereas details about the feasibility preconditions can be used to infer the mental state of the sender. Decoupling Specification from Implementation Almost all the known semantics for ACLs are based on the concept of agent mental state, which may result in sending a communicative act, and how the reception of a communicative act may affect the receiver mental state or at least, which are the effects on the receiver that the sender may suppose to occur. In spite, these semantics do not mandate any specific architecture for agents, and are meant to be applicable in general fashion; they implicitly promote the concept of mental state as a notion in the specification of ACLs. This is likely to provide a good support for the cooperation of agents built over BDI frameworks. In fact, these specifications may drive the design of agent protocols (Bergenti, Botelho, Rimassa, and Somacher (2002), may help designing agent planners exploiting the notions of feasibility preconditions and rational effects to understand the effect to communications (Bergenti and Poggi 2001), may provide support to the verification of conformance of an agent implementation with respect to a specification, even though, at this time, this problem has yet to be faced (Wooldridge 1998).On the other hand, serious limits in the workability and applicability become apparent when the ACL specification has to support cooperation among agents built over different architectures. In practice, in those cases where the agent wraps a physical resource, a legacy system, an information system, and so on, it is unclear what is the benefit of supposing its behavior can be understood. Viroli and Omicini (2001).For instance, it is unclear how do feasibility preconditions apply in these cases, and what is the benefit of supposing that some rational effect may occur. Also, this kind of specification is useless to the end of designing the agent wrapper, and makes the problem of proving conformance even more complex. As far as an ACL is concern to help standardizing age nt cooperation, it is clear that the agent abstract architecture implicitly assumed by the ACL. Semantics should be as much abstract and implementation-decoupled as required in order to provide for a widely applicable specification tool. To this end, this easy consider the abstract architecture for agents derived from the ontology developed in Viroli, Moro, and Omicini (2001), which captures the very notion of observation in computer systems. By this framework, agents are represented as observable sources of information, providing their unique individual viewpoint over the world and making it available to other agents. Here the roles of semantic in communication could be explained succinctly by examine the following sequences of communication conversation with the use of semantic set. There are certain number of magnitude of semantic in term of space in this case is four: the normative positions of the speaker and hearer before and after the utterance. Therefore, if d = 4, the number of possible communicative acts is 22352! (Computation of this figure may not be necessary in this context). Consistency is to be anticipated in a domain in which, assumption that agents can observe a common scene and ground their utterances in it, is simply irrational .The focus of that consistency needs to be squarely upon how communication can be described, rather than up library of communication primitives. The aim is to provide agents with a system by which they can tune a language with great accuracy to the needs at hand, and the ability to do this outweighs the potential pitfalls of any particular language. Const ruction process, such as Support Vector Machine (SVM) is thus well suited to domains in which agents might reasonably be expected not to suggest a huge number of different primitives. Primitives were to be submitted for consideration. This would bring down the complexity dramatically (it would no longer be necessary to work on the power set of the points in semantic space), but at the cost of requiringlonger sequences of primitives in from it is one of the advantages of the approach. To explain the function of SVM, three agents could be considered, each of them wishes to introduce communicative acts such as commands, permissive, and co missive acts into a shared communication language. Each act specifies (or partially specifies) transitions of the speaker and hearer acts are represented Lindahl (1997).Here with a set of transitions for the speaker and an equivalent set for the hearer. For instance, an act may state that, before the act, the speaker, i is permitted to remain passive toward the propositional content of the act and after the act, i is committed to remain passive. In other words, i is, before the act, in any of the Lindahl states 1, 2, or 4 and after the act in the state 6. Thus, the set of transitions for the speaker is: {(1, 6), (2, 6), (4, 6)}. For the hearer j, before the act, j is permitted to bring about p and after the act, j is committed to bring about p. In other words, j is, before the act in any of the states 1, 2, or 3 and after the act i n state 5. Thus, the set of transitions for the hearer is: {(1, 5), (2, 5), (3, 5)}. This particular communicative act results in the hearer being obliged to bring about p and the speaker being obliged to remain passive toward p: the hearer must bring about p and the speaker cannot interfere. The initial state of the semantic fixing between these three agents is that agents 1, 2, and3 are interested in the following sets of communicative acts being included in the language: Agent 1. This agent wishes to introduce two actions into the language. 1. a, A command that commits the hearer to bring about p such that the hearer is not a priori forbidden from doing so. Speaker: {} Hearer: {(1, 5), (2, 5), (3, 5)} 1.b An act that commits the speaker to bring about p such that the agent is a priori forbidden from doing so. Speaker: {(1, 5), (2, 5), (3, 5)} Hearer: {} Agent 2. This agent wishes to introduce two actions into the language. 2. a An act that permits the hearer to bring about p such that the agent is a priori committed to remain passive. Speaker: {} Hearer: {(6, 2)} 2.b An act that commits the hearer to remain passive toward p such that the agent is a priori permitted to doing so or remaining passive. Speaker: {} Hearer: {(2, 6)} Agent 3. This agent wishes to introduce two actions into the language: 3. a, A command that commits the hearer to bring about p and the speaker cannot Interfere. Speaker: {(1, 6), (2, 6), (4, 6)} Hearer: {(1, 5), (2, 5), (3, 5)} 3. b A put-option act. Speaker: {(2, 6)} Hearer: {(6, 2)} SVM then proceeds in the following way: Round 0. Agent 1 broadcasts initiate (1, 2, and 3) (1-2-3 is the casting vote sequence). The language, L is initialized. Each communicative act specification refers to the changes in normative position of the agents that will take on the roles of speaker and hearer when the act is used during communication. This could be seen in this conversation between three agents Round 1. Agent 1 has the casting vote. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (1.a); agent 2 broadcasts suggestion (2.a); and agent 3 broadcasts suggestion (3.a). There is a tie. However, rather than using its casting vote to compel the inclusion of 1.a, agent 1 decides to endorse agent 3s suggestion. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (3.a), and so this act is included in L. Round 2. Agent 2 has the casting vote. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (1.b); agent 2 broadcasts suggestion (2.a); and agent 3 broadcasts suggestion (3.b). There is a, tie, and so the agent with the casting vote, agent 2, broadcasts suggestion (2.a). 2.a is included in L. Round 3. Agent 3 has the casting vote. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (1.b);agent 2 broadcasts suggestion(2.b); and agent 3 broadcasts suggestion(3.b). There is tie, Although 2.a and 2.b use the same transitions as 3.b, 3.b is being introduced for a different purpose-for the trading of options-and so agent 3 uses the casting vote to broadcast suggestion (3.b). 3.b is included in L. Round 4. Agent 1 has the casting vote. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (1.b); agent 2 broadcasts suggestion (2.b); and agent 3 broadcasts suggestion (null). There is a tie, and so agent 1 uses the casting vote and broadcasts suggestion(1.b). 1. b is Included in L. Round 5. Agent 2 has the casting vote. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (null); agent 2 broadcasts suggestion (2.b); and agent 3 broadcasts suggestion (null). 2.b has the only vote, and so this is included in L. Round 6. Agent 3 has the casting vote. Agent 1 broadcasts suggestion (null); agent 2 broadcasts suggestion (null); and agent 3 broadcasts suggestion (null). SVM terminates. L = {3.a, 2.a, 3.b, 1.b, 2.b}. Here, suppose that agent 2 is responsible for access to an information source. The two acts introduced by these agents, 2.a and 2.b, allow it to permit and forbid access. Although agent 3 is not in control of this information source.. Agent 2, the manager agent is interested in issuing commands and allowing agents to commit to activities, hence its interest in 1.a and 1.b. It does, however, accept the inclusion of 3.a rather than 1.a-it accepts that it should not interfere with agents to whom it has given commands. This simple example explains sorts of communicative actions that can be included in a common language and how the simple voting mechanism may be used to construct such a language. This language can be seen as a subset of a more complete language for managing the activities of agents within an organization. Indeed there all kinds of slight distinctions, but these distinctions have real operational value, which can be exploited by the agents themselves. Finally, the work of Steels and Kaplan (1999) tackles the problem of language acquisition by an axes .Thus focus on a specific semantic space, having axes of color and position. The individual primitives discussed have either specific values on one or more axes (red, blue and on the edge), or have ranges of values on one or more axes (toward the center, close to the left and toward the top). This easy advocated a new approach to agent communication languages. Rather than viewing the specification as an off-line, design-time process, it is clearer now that open multi-agent systems should be a dynamic, run-time process.. Thus, agents can use their knowledge of the dialog type, their communication objectives, and their social relationships with one another to tailor the communication language to their prevailing circumstances hence the role of semantic cannot be underrated in communication.

Privacy of Personal Information on the Internet Essay -- Compare Contr

Privacy of Personal Information on the Internet . Introduction Due to the rise of the internet, information privacy has become a first level social and political issue gaining a global position. Globalization of the privacy issue has been driven by worldwide trade, communication, travel, and marketing. As computer networks make it easier to find, store, and process information, it is becoming harder for individuals to keep their data private. The regulatory approach for protecting information varies by nation. The differences especially standout between the European Union (EU) and US. The EU sought to protect itself and cross border trading in the 90's with a Data Protection Directive. This directive states that transfers of personal data take place only in non-EU countries that provide an adequate data protection regime. Although the US and EU share the same vision - enhancing privacy protection for their citizens, the US strategy takes a different privacy approach. The US relies on a sectoral and industry specific approach with a mixture of legislation and regulation. In the US sectoral laws are focused on telecommunications, health care, and financial services. This paper will look at the key differences between US and EU Policies and some of the pros and cons of each. However, first off, it is important to address "What is privacy and why should we protect it?" II. What is Privacy & Why Should We Protect It? Privacy is hard to define and many different versions of a definition reside out there. Definitions range from as simple as "the fundamental of all liberties" and "the right to be left alone" to the "claim of an individual to determine what information about himself or herself should be kno... ...ar2002, Vol. 16 Issue 1, p23, 12p [3] On-line privacy in Europe--new regulation for cookies. By: King, Ian. Information & Communications Technology Law, Oct2003, Vol. 12 Issue 3, p225, 12p [4] Privacy as a Trade Issue: Guidelines for U.S. Trade Negotiators. Solveig Singleton. Economic Freedom Project Report #02-02 [5] Privacy is good business. By: Sturdevant, Cameron. eWeek, 10/13/2003, Vol. 20 Issue 41, p67 [6] RFC 2804 "IETF Policy on Wiretapping" ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfc2804.txt [7] Social and Political Dimensions of Privacy. By: Westin, Alan F.b Journal of Social Issues, Jul2003, Vol. 59 Issue 2, p431, 23p [8] Using Organizational Safeguards to Make Justifiable Privacy Decisions when Processing Personal Data. By: Olivier, Martin. Proceedings SAICSIT 2003, p275–284 Flags from http://www.eurunion.org/legislat/agd2000/agd2000.htm

How We Find Meaning in Life Through Love Essay -- Essays Papers

How We Find Meaning in Life Through Love Life’s offerings such as: interests, talents, jobs, religion, or relationships are the catalysts through which we put meaning into our lives. When we find someone or something that we love or feel passionate about that puts meaning into life. It makes people feel as though they are fulfilling a want or desire, which would also lead to feeling very accomplished and happy. Finding a passion gives life a purpose. Jay Earley said it best when he wrote, â€Å"I define life purpose as a contribution to the world that uses your whole self fully and gives your life passion, fulfillment, and meaning through dedication to something larger than yourself† (Early 6). We are able to feel that we are here for a reason. Everyone needs something in their life that they strive for or love to execute. If we weren’t to look for these passions then there would be no purpose in living. We don’t want to go through life not caring about anything and having nothing that br ings great joy to our life. Not having a passion would put a void in one’s life and a feeling of emptiness. There are many ways to achieve this love or to find a passion. Many people obtain their purpose in life by seeing their interests or talents and pursuing them. Other people find meaning through their job. Many people turn to religion, primarily I would say that people find meaning in life through relationships. Finding love or fulfilling a passion in an interest or talent is an easy thing to do. Lots of people are able to find meaning through their interests. Collecting coins, stamps, comic books, porcelain dolls, magazine articles, spoons ect. are interests that some love to pursue. The spoons, or other collections, are a ... ...ave some one else’s company and having them to talk to makes life easier. Close friends that are with a people through everything give them a purpose in life. Whether people have a hobby, a talent, a job, religion, or if they have a close relationship with another person there is something that they are passionate about or love to do. It could even be finding a support structure or finding something that helps you escape from reality. Finding a passion or interest in life fulfills your purpose. There is a meaning in life and something that contains value for each person. Others might not understand what you think brings meaning to your life, while you might not understand how they find meaning in their life. That is why you have to know what you love hold that close and make it important in life, and this will help you with a more pleasant enjoyable life.

Promotional Strategy Essay

There are various ways to communicate with potential customers. Promotional strategy includes a mix of advertising, publicity, sales promotions, personal selling, and public relations. Each component of the promotional mix plays a role in your effort to have potential customers learn about your business and buy your goods or services. Your promotional strategy must address the who, what, when, where, and how much money to spend. The â€Å"Who† of Your Promotional Strategy No business can be all things to all people, and no business has an unlimited amount of money to spend on its promotions. You will need to be sure you direct your effort and money to your target market. The better you can identify who is in your target market, where they live, what magazines and newspapers they read, what television stations they watch, and what radio stations they listen to, the higher the probability that you will be able to get their attention and influence their behavior. If you can identify your target market’s demographics, then you can check the listenership, viewership, and readership profiles for various media, including local radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and television stations. For example, if you are opening a clothing store and the primary target market is teenage girls, then you should review the rating of radio listenership in your geographic area. Most radio stations have a copy of the ratings. You will be able to determine which radio station has the highest listenership in that age category. The A. C. Nielsen rating service does the same for television viewership. The â€Å"What† of Your Promotional Strategy The â€Å"what† involves determining the message you should communicate to your target market. Your promotional strategy is intended to take people who may have varying degrees of interest in your type of goods and services and get them to become your customers. You will need to know who they are, who they are currently buying from, why they are buying the goods and services, and to what extent they are still â€Å"customers in search of a business.† Your promotional strategy is intended to get the people in your target market to modify their behavior. The â€Å"message† you send to the people in your target market must be tailored to their mental frameworks. Your message must also provide the incentive for them to do business with you. Your promotional strategy should be based on: (1) Who do you want to influence? (2) What do you have to offer them that is better than the competition? and (3) What do I need to communicate to them to get them to become my customers? Your promotional strategy should emphasize your competitive advantage(s). Successful promotional strategies are based on the concept, â€Å"If everyone is offering a steak, then you must sell your sizzle!† You must know what your target market values. Your strategy should highlight your business’s â€Å"unique selling points/propositions.† The â€Å"When† of Your Promotional Strategy There are four major intervals for promoting your business. The first is preening promotion. It is very important for a new business to generate customer interest before your business opens its doors. You want your target market to be anxious for your business to open. Some businesses do â€Å"teaser† advertising. A teaser ad may be, â€Å"the countdown has begun; there are only 60 days until Company of Miami opens.† This business may do teaser advertising by erecting a sign where the business will be located. Your business will also need to provide ongoing promotions. Your existing customers will need to be kept informed about developments in your business. You will also need to let potential customers learn about your business and its sizzle. Most new businesses tend to have a token grand opening promotion and do little after that. You need to develop an ongoing promotional program that will keep your business in your target market’s minds. If the world doesn’t know about your mousetrap’s advantages and the market doesn’t know where your door is, then you will not sell a single mousetrap. The â€Å"Where† of Your Promotional Strategy Your promotional strategy will only be effective if its message gets to your target audience at the appropriate time. The â€Å"where† of promotional strategy involves the media you use to communicate with your target market. There are numerous avenues or media available for promoting your business. The key is to know which media will produce the best results. The media to be used will depend on to whom you want to direct your message, the nature of the message, and when it needs to be presented. Each type of media has advantages and disadvantages. Television offers color, movement, sound, and broad geographic coverage. Radio offers a means to get to a large number of people at various times of the day and night. Newspapers offer daily coverage to a large percentage of an area’s households. Direct mail permits you to send your message to a specific group of people. Billboards take advantage of a captive audience while people are in their automobiles. There is no one best medium for all businesses. There is no one best medium for every type of message. When asked which medium is the best, the answer can only be, â€Å"The one that does the best job of attracting customers per dollar cost.† Your promotion budget also influences media selection. You want to get the best return per dollar invested in promotion. One medium may cost less than another, but you need to determine which one will do the most effective job of getting your message to your target market. businesses frequently evaluate media in terms of the cost of reaching each 1000 potential customers. The â€Å"How Much† to Spend Part of Your Promotional Strategy The question of how much money to spend on promoting your business is very difficult to answer. Some businesses spend a certain percentage of projected sales on promotion-related activities. If, for example, you are trying to generate sales of $ 100,000 for the first year, then you may want to review trade data on your type of business to learn what percentage of sales you should spend on advertising. Bank of America reports that the average ad expenses for apparel stores is 2 to 3 percent of sales; for bookstores, 1.5 to 2.5 percent of sales; and for gift stores, 1.5 to 2.5 percent of sales. These figures reflect annual budgets for existing businesses. Your first year’s promotional budget will need to be a larger percentage of sales because your business will be unknown and you will be trying to divert customers from other businesses. The percentage-of-sales method may provide a general idea of how much to spend, but spending a certain percentage of sales on promotion does no t guarantee that you will generate that level of sales. The best way to determine your promotional budget is to identify what you want to accomplish. This is known as the â€Å"target† approach. If you want to have 8 people come to you each week, then you need to determine what type and amount of promotion you will need to do to achieve that goal. You may find it will take 3 primetime radio spots per day on two different radio stations; a two column, 3inch ad in the local newspaper on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; 2 billboards located on two major thoroughfares; and 1000 direct mail promotions per month to achieve your goal. The target approach recognizes that you must reach a â€Å"critical mass† before your promotions will have an effect on the market. The percentage-of-sales approach indicates what businesses spent. The target approach determines what you think it will take to achieve your sales goal. The target approach is particularly appropriate for a new venture. There are two other approaches businesses may use to determine their promotional budgets. Some businesses simply try to match their competition. They monitor the number of radio spots aired and the amount of ad space in the newspaper. The businesses then match their major competitor’s promotional program. This approach has two flaws. First, it assumes that your competitors are doing the right type and amount of advertising. Second, if you don’t do a better job of promoting your business than your competition, why should your target market do business with you? The other approach to developing a promotional budget is based on how much you can afford to spend. This may be the least effective approach. It assumes that you have allocated money to all of the other aspects of your business. Any money that is left is what you can spend on promoting your business. You must recognize that you need to do promotions to generate sales. If you hope to have enough sales to leave you with enough money to do promotions, then you have things backwards. It is interesting to note that most people are reluctant to spend much money promoting their business. This reluctance is quite natural. Money spent on promotions offers no assurance that it will bring in enough customers to justify the expense. One of the sayings about advertising is, â€Å"Only one-half of advertising works. The problem is that you don’t know in advance which half it will be!† However, promotions should be viewed as an investment that is necessary to generate the level of sales needed to produce your targeted level of profit. The Promotional Mix Most of the discussion of promotional strategy has been focused on advertising. Promotion also includes the name you choose for your business, its sign, personal selling techniques, point-of-purchase displays, special sales promotions, public relations, and publicity. Publicity may be particularly important for a new business. Publicity is defined as media coverage for which you don’t pay. Many radio stations, newspapers, and television stations do features on new businesses when they open. If your business is the first of its kind in your area or if it has some special â€Å"sizzle,† you may be able to get the media to do a special feature on it. You should make every effort to get in touch with the media before your business opens. Publicity can be equivalent to thousands of dollars of free advertising. Publicity is also valuable because potential customers tend to pay more attention to features than to advertisements.