DQ52 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

DQ52 - Essay Example The business needs to understand its overhead and should be looking at this from a fixed cost perspective. If the wage rates are fluctuating in this or different departments, the element of fixed costs is removed and makes this practice unpredictable for maximizing the reporting of financial health. Measuring overhead has to do with the health of the operating environment which relies on understanding costs that are generally not variable. These costs can include administration, groundskeeping, machining and assembly (Horngren et al, 2008). When looking at administration overhead, it is going to be practical to want to know if their wages are fixed. If wage rates continue to fluctuate, deciding where to allocate the total overhead costs is going to be highly difficult if the goal is to maximize financial reporting data to show better corporate health at the accounting level. For example, the monthly or weekly groundskeeping maintenance required could be looked at as a fixed cost, especially if contracted at x dollars per month/week. This overhead cost would be a necessity as part of operations and could be predicted for financial reporting based on the contract cost negotiated throughout the business operating year. Direct-labor cost would be an appropriate cost allocation opti on here if the wages, such as for administration, remained constant. This method would also give the senior business leaders more accurate overhead costs, if they were needed, for strategic review or for assessing the health of certain divisions. Direct labor costs should be seen as costs which are directly incurred by the organization and should have an element of predictability surrounding them. It would be a guess that most real-life organizations do not have varying wages for certain things such as administration, unless they had structured some sort of bonus system where wages were subject to bi-annual

Choicepoint and Sony, an Ethical Analysis Essay Example for Free

Choicepoint and Sony, an Ethical Analysis Essay Ethics refers to what comes off as right or wrong to an individual’s conscience .The internet age has brought about new ethical issues, not only for an individual but for the society as well as it has eased anonymous manipulation and distribution of information, creating new and easier paths for committing crimes like piracy, identity theft, infringement of an individual’s privacy etc. In this paper we will be analyzing the Choice-point case and the ‘Sony data breach ‘case from an ethical point of view. (Laudon Laudon, 2010, p.128) Background: The ChoicePoint Data breach: On September 27 of 2004, ChoicePoint,a company that aggregates and stores personal information, suspected that some of its small business customers were involved in suspicious activities and informed the police. (Paine, Phillips, 2008)On February of 2005, ChoicePoint only notified those residents of California whose data had been leaked to the illegal customers, since a certain law in California requires it. A protest from the public, however, forced the company to notify the details of the breach to the other involved parties residing in the other states. The swindlers who scammed ChoicePoint had created over 50 accounts with previously stolen identities over the course of a year or even longer. (Pantesco, 2006) Look more:  the issues concerning identity theft essay Changes in business practices (Otto, Anton Baumer, 2007): ChoicePoint made numerous changes after the 2004-2005 data breach. The company closed the 50 fake accounts and made a policy to refuse any faxed business licenses in the future .The Company formed a new policy, that all nongovernmental organizations need to be re-credentialed in order to do business with it, and increased its procedures in verifying the identity of the company. More stringent and better business policies in ensuring the safety of their customer’s data, for e.g. partial masking of social security numbers were employed. The company continued its investigations of its databases for further indications of foul play and brought in outsiders to assess and rectify their practices. The Sony Data Breach: The Sony data breach was a result of an intrusion from an outsider party, causing an outage in the PlayStation Network and Qriocity’s services between 17th April 2011 and 19th April, 2011.A confirmation from Sony revealed that pieces of personal information had been stolen from each and every 77 million accounts. This breach resulted in Sony shutting off the PlayStation Network for 23 days. (Hirai, 2011) Sony stated that the chairman of the company had submitted explanations wanted by United States House subcommittee regarding the attack and that they were taking some measures to prevent further breaches. When questioned about the delay in making the breach public, Sony explained that they’d sought help from outside officials to conduct an investigation in order to comprehend the nature and magnitude of the incident; and hence forensic analysis and investigation had caused the delay since they wanted to have all the necessary details before making the breach public. On May 14, 2011, Sony released a security patch called PlayStation 3 firmware version 3.61 requiring users to change their password upon signing into their account in the PlayStation Network. (Seybold, 2011) Compensation: In compensation for this outage, Sony announced hosting of special events for their users. Sony wanted to appreciate the loyalty of the customers who stuck to using Play Station network and didn’t look for other alternatives. Hence Sony announced an extension of free 30 days of its various services for its existing users. Also, few of their games in the PlayStation network were made free, though these games are available only in some regions or countries. In addition to that Sony also offered one year’s worth of â€Å"free identity theft protection’ to all of its customers. (Wesley, 2011) Ethical Analysis According to Culnan and Williams (2009, p.679),the two aspects of morality that are principal to the relationship between information aggregators and information providers are vulnerability and avoiding harm. Aspect of Vulnerability Analysis: Since the customer gives away his data in exchange for something in return, he loses control on how that information would be used in the future.(Culnan Williams, 2009, p. 681) The firm that is aggregating the data has the duty to exercise caution in protecting the consumer’s vulnerability, not only for the sake of the customer but also to build its own reputation. However, in the cases of both ChoicePoint and Sony breach, the consumers were vulnerable. Individuals whose data ChoicePoint and Sony stored lacked knowledge about the risks posed by Choice Point’s credentialing procedures or the way personal information was stored by Sony. Aspect of â€Å"Do No Harm† Analysis: Most ethicists are of the opinion that data aggregators have the minimum duty of doing no harm whenever there is an issue concerning information privacy rights (DeGeorge 2006; Goodpaster 1987; Marcoux 2003; Valesquez 2003 as cited in Culnan Williams, 2009), even more so when their treatment of the consumer’s sensitive personal information makes the consumers unnecessarily vulnerable. (Culnan Williams, 2009, p. 682) In both the cases of ChoicePoint and Sony Data breach however, the ‘DO NO Harm’ principle was violated and moral responsibility was clearly absent in the behavior of the officials of these firms. (Culnan Williams, 2009, p. 682)ChoicePoint’s questionable intentions in delaying the notification of the breach to the public and the fact that ChoicePoint only bothered to search records that were leaked within 15 months to the date of the search ,until pressurized, were criticized heavily.( Evers, 2005)Further investigations revealed that ChoicePoint had been subjected to a similar scam in 2002.( Paine, Phillips, 2008) The fact that ChoicePoint could be duped so easily within two years proved that ChoicePoint hadn’t done anything to improve its practices since the last breach. Similarly, Sony also had a delay in notifying the users of PlayStation network about the breach. The public disputed Sony’s reason for its delay by speculating that, if Sony judged the situation to be so grave that it felt the need to shut down its PlayStation network, then they should have warned the public without any delay as well. Moreover, Sony failed to give any concrete reports regarding the breach and merely stated that they cannot rule out the possibility of a ‘username or password ‘leak. One more thing to be noted is that the fiends could have possibly gotten information like email addresses and first names of the customers who had consented to receiving information about new deals or products from Sony or its partners.Now, there is a pretty good chance that the fiends might send emails in the format of a Sony webpage template and extract valuable information from those customers. Hence this breach indirectly paved the way for more unintentional breaches in the future. (Eddy, 2011) According to, (Laudon Laudon, 2010,p.135),the basic Concepts of ethics are as follows: Responsibility: where the individual or the organization should accept the duties, costs and obligations for the decisions that it made. Accountability: where the organization should be aware of what decision is taken by whom. If it is impossible to find out who was responsible for what action then that organization is basically incapable of ethical analysis. Liability: this basically extends the concept of responsibility to legal actions where the affected individuals should be able to get compensation for their damages. Analysis : In my opinion, both ChoicePoint and Sony showed half-hearted ethics on these incidents as a whole. While Choicepoint did inform officials about the breach as soon as it found out, yet it only felt necessary to inform the public because of the California law. The people in the other states were notified because of public outcry. Also limiting the search results for leaked records to only 15 months prior to the date of the search just because it was necessary by the law was another mistake on ChoicePoint’s part. Thus ChoicePoint violated the ethical concepts of responsibility and accountability yet they seemed to have understood their mistake when they were making changes in their policies and practices after the 2004-2005 breach, and were willing to take corrective actions. But it is debatable whether ChoicePoint’s corrective measures were taken to save its own business or whether it genuinely cared for the affected individuals. Similarly, though Sony did do necessary investigations, it failed to concretely identify which parties had been affected or what kind of information have been stolen. Similar to ChoicePoint, there was a delay in notifying the public regarding the breach. Hence, there is a dearth of responsibility and accountability from Sony’s side as well .The compensations given can similarly be argued to be a ploy for keeping itself in the market. While, ChoicePoint and Sony offered free credit monitoring and free identity theft protection respectively for one year, they disregarded the possibility that the thieves might lie low and take advantage of the stolen information after the passage of a year. Hence these companies showed half-heartedness in being ethically liable as well.

The Effect Of Pokemon On Childrens Culture

The Effect Of Pokemon On Childrens Culture The impact on childrens culture of anime, manga, video games and trading cards of Pokà ©mon Japans popular culture industry is very vigorous in recent years. The popular culture consists of anime, manga, video games and trading cards. These media have a great impact on childrens culture in Japan and also other countries. Pokà ©mon is a very successful case. Pokà ©mon first appeared in the game of the Nintendos Game Boy, and then quickly diversified into manga, anime, movies, trading cards and toys in those years, and Pokà ©mon phenomenon is appeared in Japan in 1996. These products revolved mainly around children and youths and had impacts on them. This essay will examine the impact of Japanese popular media culture on childrens culture using Pokà ©mon as an example. The impacts which will discuss in this essay are effects on childrens literacy, the social effects, effects of addiction and violence. I will use two case studies to argue some effects on childrens literacy. Data have been collected from two articles. The author of the articles was a primary school teacher and she collected data from the classes she was teaching. Besides childrens literacy, there are many impacts in other aspects. Furthermore, negative impacts are much more than positive impacts. This will be discussed at the end of the essay, also the future of childrens culture under the influence of Japanese popular culture. The anime Pokà ©mon is diversified from its video game. This anime talks about Satoshi, a 10 years old boy, and his friends travels the world catching Pokà ©mon and battling Pokà ©mon trainers. This is the primary source of the essay. Allison, A. 2004. Cuteness as Japans Millennial Product. In: Tobin, J. Pikachus Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokà ©mon. Durham: Duke University Press: 34-52 Anne Allison is a Professor of cultural anthropology at Duke University in the United States, specializing in contemporary Japanese society. Her current research is on the recent popularization of Japanese childrens goods on the global marketplace and how its trends in cuteness, character merchandise, and high-tech play pals are remaking Japans place in todays world of millennial capitalism. In Cuteness as Japans Millennial Product, she finds that Pokà ©mon is a successful case of childrens entertainment product with media mixes. Its success follows the previous waves of successful Japanese products which started in the late 1980s, and have impacted childhood consumption around the world. These products impacted childrens lifestyle in new interactive ways. Pokà ©mon is game-based makes it more interactive than a mere anime or movie. This article provides information that supports my arguments, children buy lots of Pokà ©mon-related products other than video games or comics, and Po kà ©mon create or facilitate a common culture among children. Arthur, L. 2001. Popular Culture and Early Literacy Learning, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 2(3): 295-308 Dr Leonie Arthur is a senior lecturer in early childhood education at the University of Western Sydney. She has taught in long day care, preschool and school and is an active member of a number of peak early childhood organizations, including Early Childhood Australia. She currently works with undergraduate and postgraduate students at the University of Western Sydney in areas of early childhood curriculum and literacy. This article reports on research findings which indicate that while childrens home and community literacy experiences and texts are increasingly digital and connected to popular media culture experiences and texts in educational settings are predominantly book-based and generally exclude popular media culture. In practice, childrens literacy is affect by television, videos, computers, comics, trading cards and magazines rather than childrens books. It also examines the role of popular media culture in childrens lives. This article provides support for my arguments whi ch related to childrens literacy and violence: media restricts childrens creativity and promotes violence. Buckingham, D. and Green, J.S. 2003. Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy in Childrens Media Culture. Culture and Society 25(3): 379-399 David Buckingham is the Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media at the Institute of Education, London University. His research is on childrens and young peoples interactions with television and electronic media. Julian Sefton-Green is the Head of Media Arts at WAC Performing Arts and Media College, an informal learning centre in North London, England. He has researched and written widely on many aspects of media education and new technologies. The authors point out that Pokà ©mon as a phenomenon is a controlled and calculated commercial strategy aimed manipulatively at the childrens market. They examine some positive and negative effects of the Pokà ©mon phenomenon on children. Pokà ©mon engages children visually through television, video games and as consumers through the range of products available. This article provides information that support my argument, Pokà ©mon create common culture among children, makes children spend lots of money to collect valuable trading cards and children bully others to grab their cards. Ito, M. 2006. Japanese Media Mixes and Amateur Cultural Exchange. In: Buckingham, D. and Willett, R. Digital Generation: Children, Young People, and New Media. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates: 49-66 Mizuko Ito is a Japanese cultural anthropologist who is an Associate Researcher at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of California, Irvine. Her main professional interest is the use of media technology. She has explored the ways in which digital media are changing relationships, identities, and communities. She sees the move toward new media as an interaction between long-standing and emergent media forms, rather than a shift from old analog to new digital media; while most of the essay explores the low-tech media of trading cards and comic books, The article is about young peoples relationship to media. Ito argues that these analog media forms are being newly infected through digitally enabled sociality. She also examines the trading cards activities. This article supports my argument that children play trading cards class whenever they have time and a people as their competitor. Marsh. J. 2009. Writing and Popular Culture. In: Beard, R. and Myhill, D. and Riley, J. and Nystrand, M. The SAGE Handbook of Writing Development. London: SAGE Publication Ltd: 313-324 Jackie Marsh is Professor of Education and Head of the School of Education at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the role and nature of popular culture in young childrens literacy development. She has conducted research projects that have explored children ´s access to new technologies and their emergent digital literacy skills, knowledge and understanding. This chapter examines the potential role that popular culture can play in writing curriculum in schools. She examines how popular culture affects children and young peoples written texts in classrooms. She considers the adaptation of out-of-school popular cultural writing practices for educational purposes, and explores the way in which these practices are challenging the boundaries of writing as it is instantiated in the curriculum. This article provides information that support my argument, popular culture restricts childrens creativity/ McDonnell, K. 2000. Kid Culture: children and adults and popular culture. Annandale: Pluto Press. Kathleen McDonnell makes her living writing in a variety of genres, from playwriting to junior fiction to social criticism. Besides her many books, she writes articles and opinion pieces for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Chatelaine, Macleans, and Utne Reader, and also contributes to CBC Radio and Canada AM. Her plays have been produced throughout Canada. She explained that the reason she writes about children: I find that childrens stories are usually the best medium to express what I want to say; and about because I have a burning interest in kids and their culture, how they think and feel about the world theyre growing up in. The book explores children and popular culture and help adults better understand the role of popular cultures plays in childrens lives. Kathleen McDonnell offers a balanced and engaging perspective on the power and influence of childrens culture. This book supports my argument that trading cards encourage gambling addiction. McGray, D. 2002. Japans Gross National Cool. Foreign Policy. June/July 2002: 44-54 Douglas McGray writes about social and political issues, science, and culture for the New Yorker, This American Life, the New York Times Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly, the Los Angeles Times, Wired, and Time. He is a contributing writer of Foreign Policy magazine. He spent the spring of 2001 in Japan as a media fellow of the Japan Society. In Japans Gross National Cool, McGray argues Japans street culture, from fashion to art to music, has become ever more vibrant and is having an unprecedented influence on the rest of the world. He analyzes what made Japan a superpower more than just a wealthy country. He examines the globalization of Japanese culture. This article provides information of how Japanese popular culture affects other countries. Squire, K. 2003. Video games in education. International Journal of Intelligent Simulations and Gaming (2) 1. Dr. Kurt D. Squire is an associate professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Director of the Games, Learning Society Initiative, and best known for his research into game design for education. The article examines the history of games in educational research, and argues that the cognitive potential of games have been largely ignored by educators. Contemporary developments in gaming, particularly interactive stories, digital authoring tools, and collaborative worlds, suggest powerful new opportunities for educational media. Squire analyzes educational games refers to some checklists ad frameworks. He promotes case studies and design experiments as a research method that doesnt study isolated variables. He states that there are four concerns of video games, which are encouraging violent or aggressive behavior, employing destructive gender stereotyping, promoting unhealthy attitudes and stifling creative play. This article provides information that support my argument, popular culture restrict childrens creativity and children imitate violence in media. Willett, R. 2004. The Multiple Identities of Pokà ©mon Fans. In: Tobin, J. Pikachus Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokà ©mon. Durham: Duke University Press: 226-240. Dr Rebekah Willett is a lecturer in Education on the MA in Media, Culture and Communication and the MA in ICT at the Institute of Education. She is a member of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. She has conducted research on childrens media cultures, focusing on issues of gender, literacy and learning. Willett discusses the multiple identities of Pokà ©mon fans. She uses a cultural studies model to make sense of the identity work children do in their story writing. She finds that Pokà ©mon thrives in childrens culture by providing a variety of subject positions for children to adopt as they perform and shift their identities in a variety of context in their daily lives. This article supports my argument, children use too much dialogue and insufficient amount of description when writing story because of popular culture, and children isolate others who do not familiar with Pokà ©mon. Willett, R. 2005. Baddies in the classroom: Media education and narrative writing. Literacy 39, 3: 142-148. Dr Rebekah Willett is a lecturer in Education on the MA in Media, Culture and Communication and the MA in ICT at the Institute of Education. She is a member of the Centre for the Study of Children, Youth and Media. She has conducted research on childrens media cultures, focusing on issues of gender, literacy and learning. This article relates findings from a classroom study focusing on childrens media-based story writing. The study examines how children write their own stories under the effects of media, that is, how they consume media and how they produce new media texts. Willett finds that childrens media-based stories make explicit some of implicit knowledge of new media forms. Baddies in the classroom: Media education and narrative writing provides information that support my argument, children write too much dialogue and insufficient amount of description, story with unpronounceable names and incomprehensible plots, also unnecessary violence.

A Student Evaluates the Websites of Three Shoe Companies :: Sell Websites Buy Web Sites

A Student Evaluates the Websites of Three Shoe Companies Many companies now use websites to advertise their products. In this essay I will evaluate the effectiveness of several shoe websites. Three websites that I have been looked at are: www.nike.com (niketown), www.reebok.com, and www.adidas.com. They all are big companies that provide many kinds of shoes. Their websites looked similar in the first sight, but they are actually very different in several ways. My evaluation will be based on the navigation, contents, organization and layout of the websites, target audiences, user satisfaction with the websites, and how long the page takes to load. Navigation is one of the most important aspects in creating a good website. Navigation consists of several terms, such as: ease to use, internal link, broken link, internal search engine, and return to homepage from any page. Nike seems to have the best navigation from these threes websites. I can find things easily and I can go back to the homepage from any page. Reebok also has good navigation in its website, but it does not have a direct link to the homepage from any page. On the other hand, Adidas seems to be the most complicated website in terms of navigation. I need to spend a couple minutes to find a certain product. It has many internal links inside its website. Besides that, Adidas uses pop up windows in its website. Both Nike and Reebok also have a search engine at the top bar of their websites. This search bar can help consumers to find their desired product quickly, which I think that is very helpful. Unlike Adidas, which does not have a search engine in the website, so consumers have to browse all over the website in order to find the desired product. . The good thing about these three websites is they do not have a broken link, because they are being maintenance and updated all the time. Besides navigation, content is also a good consideration in order to create a good website. As I go into these three websites, I found that they all basically have the same content. They provide such important information about their products. They all also provide some details about their product such as, prices. The content that is provided by these websites is very attractive. They provide the image of the products that can be enlarged so consumers can look clearly at the desired products.

First Day of High School Essay

The beeping of my alarm clock sounded like a countdown. The first day of high school was only two hours away. I was excited, but a lot more nervous. I got out of bed, got ready, and then was on my way to the bus stop. All I could think of are the stories I heard about high school being so horrible with all the strict teachers, the really hard tests, and of course being a freshman doesn’t help either. The bus ride to the school was only ten minutes, but it seemed a lot longer. When we finally got there, I was more nervous than ever. The day ahead of me was about to get a lot more complicated though with all the work, finding a seat at lunch, and getting lost. After already being late to my first period and all of the not-so-bad classes afterwards, it was lunch time. I dropped off some books at the locker I shared with my boyfriend, and walked down with him. We were a little late when we got there so we ended up sitting somewhere we didn’t want to because the tables were already filled up. We went up to get our lunch and came back to find our seats were taken. We soon found out getting up meant risking your seat. The whole lunch period everyone was talking about how their day went so far. Most of them were complaining, including me. Then the bell rang and it was time to go to the next period. I really didn’t want lunch to end. But on the other hand, at least there were only about two hours left of the day. Finally, it was the end of the day. Finding my next class was easier. I still wasn’t in time, but neither were the other kids. When my 6th period ended, it was a huge relief. I thought the day was finally over. But I still had to get on the bus again to go home; therefore it still wasn’t completely over. I went to our locker, grabbed my take-home textbooks and checked to make sure I didn’t lock the combination in there again. I forgot which way to go, so I followed around my boyfriend. When I got outside, all the buses were in line. I walked back and forth trying to find mine or at least someone who was on the same bus as me. After most of the kids already found their bus, I started to get nervous. I still couldn’t find mine. Finally I saw someone who also took my bus. He was standing there clueless too. After a couple minutes, we finally found it. Our bus wasn’t in line like all the others were, it was behind some of the all of the buses. When I go t on, I knew the day was really over. To sum it all up, my first day of high school was a challenge. It’s a new school with new people, new teachers, new subjects, and new schedules. I also missed the school orientation so I was less experienced than most of the other students. I faced many problems such as the loads of work, finding a seat at lunch and keeping it, and getting lost. It was a long day, but I can now say I survived freshman year and the rest of High School.

Pueblo Bonito essays

Pueblo Bonito essays The famous Pueblo Bonito is located in North West New Mexico and contains some of the most spectacular Indian ruins of North America. Some archaeologists say that this lone fact makes this site one of the most valuable and important places, especially for reconstruction. Archaeologists and researchers, in fact, have already proved this to be true. They have found pottery dating back to 920 A.D. that can tell us about the technology and trade of the Anasazis in the Chaco Canyon region. Kivas, partly underground chambers used for religious ceremonies, can be found all throughout the ruins of Pueblo Bonito. The kivas tell about the Anasazi religion and how they worshipped. The Anasazi Indians are known for building great houses such as Pueblo Bonito, which, in fact, are towns within themselves. These great houses are an important aspect of the research of Pueblo Bonito because of how much the architecture can tell archaeologists about these ancient peoples. For example, archaeologists can tell that characteristics of the great houses include planned layouts, distinctive masonry, multi-story construction, and kivas. The location that the Anasazi people chose for Pueblo Bonito also contributes to the importance of Chaco Canyon and Pueblo Bonito. The location was unusual because they built it under a separated piece of a cliff wall. This piece was called Threatening Rock, standing 97 feet high and weighing about thirty thousand tons. The Anasazi people knew of this threat and built a supporting terrace which slowed the erosion of the soil. This worked well for them, because Chaco Canyon has a desert-like climate. The terrace worked quite well for the Anasazis, because the Threatening Rock did not fall until 1941. From the first excavations of Pueblo Bonito by Richard Wetherill, a rancher, and archaeologist George Pepper, to the most recent, archaeologists have ...