Lennies Passion for Soft Objects in Of Mice and Men :: Papers

Lennie's Passion for Soft Objects in Of Mice and Men Works Cited Missing Definition of the word trace: follow, hint, and mark out. In this essay I will trace in detail soft things that Lennie pets in the novel, showing that the petting grows more serious as the novel goes on. In the novel Lennie pets mice, he dreams about petting rabbits, destroys someone's dress in Weed, hurts Curly's hand, kills a pup, and kills Curley's wife. Bad things come in threes, Lennie's two accidental killings of animals foreshadow the final killing of Curley's wife, an accident that seals his own fate and destroys not only his dreams but George's and Candy's as well. In the beginning Lennie used to pet mice that his Aunt Clara used to give him, he would always end up killing them because he didn't know his own strength. Lennie never killed any pet or person purposely; he pets too roughly and kills them accidentally. An example of his rough tendencies is in the first chapter (page7) when Lennie wants to keep a dead mouse and George wouldn't let him Lennie says" Uh-uh. Jus' a dead mouse, George. I didn't kill it. Honest I found it. I found it dead." The dead mouse is also an allusion to the novel's title, a reminder that dreams will go wrong, even petting a mouse.

girl interrupted review Essay -- essays research papers

One popular cultural myth about the mentally ill is the archetype of the "Sexy Crazy Girl", which we've seen in movies, comic books, and music. Losing your grip with reality is not a glamorous subject, but that's not what you get from Girl, Interrupted. It is apparent that all the girls in the movie had some type of dysfunctional personality, and bad things happen to some of them, but it just did not seem realistic. First off, most of the patients prtrayed were young, which made the care facility look like a youth home rather than a mental institution. but only the main (well known) stars, (Jolie and Ryder) were focal piont. I'll also note that about half the young girls in the movie, Ryder and Jolie included, simply don't look like girls in the 1960's. Maybe that's a difficult statement to explain, but it has to do with that certain look each time and generation seems to have; and Ryder and Jolie don't look like girls of the 1960's. Of course, one could easily say that th eir displacement is part of their condition... but I didn't buy it. To finish this paragraph about this film's inconsistent appearances, I'll mention how convenient it seems that with the exception of one extra, nearly the entire cast of patients in this ward are under the age of 25 or so. Mental illness strikes women of all ages, so it was a bit perplexing to see it portrayed as a thing of youth. This also feeds into my prior statement about making "going crazy" look cool... this movie ...

The Message of Quinns Ishmael :: Quinn Ishmael Essays

The Message of Ishmael Quinn gains a unique perspective on humanity through the main character of the novel, Ishmael. Ishmael is a gorilla. And Ishmael is a teacher who communicates with humans telepathically. On the surface, this hardly seems to be a character who would appear in a serious book; more likely a children's story, a fable, or perhaps a bad science fiction novel. Yet Ishmael is none of these, and Ishmael is a strong character, with a powerful intellect and a serious purpose. The character of Ishmael needs to be non-human in order to be effective. Looking in on civilization from the outside gives him a perspective from which to criticize humanity without hypocrisy. To hear the oppressor repent is not nearly so effective as to hear the voice of the oppressed demand freedom and restitution. As Ishmael opens, the author writes of a day in his life when he found what he thought a truly ludicrous advertisement in the personals section of a newspaper: TEACHER seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person. Investigating with the purpose of exposing fraud, he came upon Ishmael in Room 105 of a nondescript office building. Ishmael was sitting calmly, nibbling on a slender branch. Momentarily shocked, Quinn stumbled towards a chair. He glanced into the gorilla's eyes, and much to his disconcertment the eyes calmly spoke to him. Nodding in answer to an unuttered question, Ishmael spoke silently "I am the teacher." In language of the sort one might expect from a well educated man speaking with a friend, Ishmael told Quinn the story of his life. A large portion of it was spent in captivity, before a wealthy elderly man befriended and educated him. At the end of Ishmael's tale, Quinn was still somewhat befuddled. I sat there for a minute, then I said, "I'm trying to figure out what this has to do with saving the world." Ishmael thought for a moment. "Among the people of your culture, which want to destroy the world?" "Which want to destroy it? As far as I know, no one specifically wants to destroy the world." "And yet you do destroy it, each of you. Each of you contributes daily to the destruction of the world." "Yes, that's so." "Why don't you stop?

Nintendo Case

1. What factors do you think enabled Sega to break Nintendo’s near monopoly of the U. S. video game console market in the late 1980s? There are a few different factors that allowed Sega to break Nintendo’s near monopoly of the U. S. video game console market. First, the introduction of a 16-bit system was huge. This was double the original 8-bit systems that were out and consumers were anxious to try it because of the enhanced graphics.Second, Sega made their new system backward compatible with its 8-big Master System games meaning that anyone who already owned these games could play them on the new system as well as any of the new games that were released. Sega also produced their games in-house which saved money. They focused their attention on increasing unit sales to drive game sales instead of focusing on making a large profit on consoles.The combination of in-house games and less focus on consoles allowed them to have over four times the amount of games as Nintend o by the end of 1991 and people ultimately flocked to where the games where. 2. Why did Nintendo choose to not make its video game consoles backward compatible? What were the advantages and disadvantages of this strategy? Nintendo chose to not make its video game consoles backward compatible because this meant that consumers would have to spend money on a new console as well as new games and thus create more revenue.The advantages to this were that they could possibly make a lot more money because of the necessity to sell new games with new systems. The disadvantages is that many people were not interested in having to spend extra money on new games if they were able to purchase a new Sega console that allowed them to use old games as well as new ones. This lead to Sega’s ability to surpass Nintendo in sales. 3. What strengths and weaknesses did Sony have when it entered the video game market in 1995?When Sony entered the video game market in 1995, it was one of the first 32- bit systems, and it had a decent amount of developer support. Although Sony did not have much of an image in the video game market, they did have a huge brand loyalty in other consumer electronics making it fairly easy to gain a following. Because of their previous success in the electronic market, many developers were excited to jump on the bandwagon to develop games for Sony which enabled them to have 800 game titles by the end of 2000. 4.What strengths and weaknesses did Microsoft have when it entered the video game market in 2001? When Microsoft entered the video game market in 2001, they had the advantage of already having some experience in the online gaming world because of the line of PC-based computer games they had already produced. One downfall they did face however was a lack of experience in the arcade environment that Sega and Nintendo both had by this point. A major strength that the Xbox focused on was having more power than the PlayStation2 by offering more memory a nd a faster processor.One other huge advantage that Microsoft had was the price point they offered the Xbox at originally. They marketed it at $299 which was significantly less than its actual production costs, and also less than competitor’s consoles. They also had the advantage of being able to spend $500 million on advertising which is more than they had ever spent on any advertising campaign, and more than other companies of its type could spend. Lastly, they planned to produce 30-40 percent of their games in-house to save on licensing and external costs.5. Comparing the deployment strategies used by the firms in each of the generations, can you identify any timing, licensing, pricing, marketing, or distribution strategies that appear to have influenced firms’ success and failure in the video game industry? Atari took numerous measures to make sure that only authorized games could be played on their consoles which were a main reason for their huge success. Nintendo and Sega spent $15 million in advertising and promoting the new systems.Nintendo made games for in-house systems as well as licensed third-party developers through strict licensing policies, and they also restricted the volume and pricing of the consoles which made the company very profitable. Sega mainly produced games in-house which allowed them to drive game sales and software developer royalties, pushing them ahead of Nintendo. Philips introduced the most expensive console to date starting at $799 which ultimately hurt their sales. They had to decrease the price to under $500, but it was too late. They would not disclose technical information about their system making software development difficult.Because of these strategies they did not last long on the market. When Sony entered the market, they entered relying on their brand image to support them and getting support from numerous game developers. Later, Sega launched the Dreamcast around the same time that Sony launched the PlayStation2. Sega got a head start on sales by launching around the holidays, but still did not hit high sales because of the price point. Even though they ended up dropping the price, Sony’s launch of the PlayStation2 only a few months later crushed any hope for the Dreamcast due to its 128-bit system as opposed to the traditional 32-bit.Nintendo decided to wait on the release of their 128-bit system because they did not offer a backward compatible system like Sony and did not want PlayStation2 sales to hurt the release of the GameCube. Although they targeted different demographics, they wanted to be sure the launch was successful. Microsoft was also launching the Xbox around the same time. They chose to launch it at an extremely low price point that was actually below the cost of production to make sure it hit the market hard. They also chose to launch around the holiday season to get as many initial sales as possible.

A Modified 2-D Logarithmic Search Technique for Video Coding

A Modified 2-D Logarithmic Search Technique for Video Coding With Reduced Search Points Tahmina Akhtar† , Rahima Akter† , Chhalma Sultana Chhaya † , Ashfaqur Rahman †¡ †  Military Institute of Science and Technology/Dept of CSE, Dhaka, Bangladesh, †¡ Central Queensland University/Centre for Intelligent and Networked Systems, QLD, Australia [email  protected] com, [email  protected] com, [email  protected] com, a. [email  protected] edu. au Abstract Video coding is a process for representing video sequences in a compact manner.A significant step in video coding is searching for similar segments in previous frames and use only the difference information for reconstruction thus reducing space requirement. Different search techniques including Full search and 2-D logarithmic search etc. are used in the current literature. Full search restricts its application because of its computational load. 2D logarithmic search is computationally less expensive a lthough there are some spaces for improvement. In this paper we propose a new search technique by modifying the 2-D logarithmic search that requires less search points with insignificant loss in visual quality.Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed technique. Keywords: video coding, 2-D logarithmic search. i. INTRODUCTION Video is a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion. A video is created by capturing a numbers of still images in a short time interval. When these still images are displayed very quickly, it represents the motion of the object in the images. Video represent the huge amount of data. In order to transfer video data from one place to another efficiently it is required to compress the size of video data.One way to compress the size of video data is video coding [ [1] ] [ [2] ]. The principal goal in the design of a video-coding system is to reduce the transmission rate subject to some picture quality constraint. In transmissio n side, the first frame (normally called the reference frame) is transmitted as it is and the remaining frames are sent as a function of the reference frame. The frame to be sent is divided into a number of blocks and the best match for the block is looked for in the search window of the reference frame. This processing is called the search technique in video coding literature.There exist a number of video coding techniques including MPEG-1/2/4 [ [2] ] [ [7] ], H. 26X [ [8] ] etc. uses search techniques like Full search [ [1] ], 2-D logarithmic search [ [3] ], Coarse-Fine-Three-Step search [ [4] ], Conjugate Direction search [ [5] ], and Pyramid search [ [6] ]. Each of these search techniques has merits and demerits in their favor. Full search finds the best match for a block as it searches all the candidate positions in the search window. Full search however is computationally expensive and renders difficulty for real time implementation.Some variants exist that applies some heuris tics to reduce the candidate search points and reduce the computational complexity although compromising the image quality a bit. 2-D logarithmic search is one such search technique that reduces the search points to a subset of the search window (to be detailed in literature review) and finds the near-optimal best match with reduced computational complexity. Although computationally inexpensive it contains some redundancy in the search space. We aim to reduce this redundancy and aim to find a modified 2-D logarithmic search technique with even reduced computational load.Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed technique reduces the number of search points and thus reduces search time with insignificant sacrifice of image quality. The paper is organized as follows. In Section II we elaborate some related works. In Section III we present our proposed search approach. Some experimental results to demonstrate the effective of the proposed approach is presented in Section IV. F inally Section V concludes the paper. II. Related works In this section we present full search technique and the logarithmic search technique.In both cases the frame to be coded is divided into a number of non-overlapping equal size blocks of size p? q. The best match is looked for in a search window of size (2d+1)? (2d+1) in the reference frame . Fig 1: Block matching process in video coding that uses search techniques. * A. Full Search In Full search [ [1] ] finds the best match by inspecting all the (2d+1)? (2d+1) candidate positions within the search window. Full search procedure is brute force in nature. The advantage of Full Search is that it delivers good accuracy in searching for the best match.The disadvantage is that it involves a large amount of computation. * B. 2-D Logarithmic Search Jain and Jain [ [3] ] developed a 2-D logarithmic search technique that successively reduces the search area, thus reducing the computational burden. The first step computes the similarity for five points in the search window. These five points are as follows: the central point of the search window and the four points surrounding it, with each being a midpoint between the central point and one of the four boundaries of the window. Among these five points, the one corresponding to the minimum dissimilarity is picked as the winner.In the next step, surrounding this winner, another set of five points are selected in a similar fashion to that in the first step, with the distances between the five points remaining unchanged. The exception takes place when either a central point of a set of five points or a boundary point of the search window gives a minimum dissimilarity. In these circumstances, the distances between the five points need to be reduced. The procedure continues until the final step, in which a set of candidate points are located in a 3Ãâ€"3 2-D grid.The steps in a 2-D logarithmic search technique are presented in Fig 2. Fig 2: The 2-D logarithmic search tec hnique. The circle numbered n is searched at the n-th step. The arrows indicate the points selected as the center of the search for the next pass. The 2-D logarithmic search hits a maximum of 18 points and a minimum of 13 search points. The advantage of this technique is that it successively reduces the search area, thus reducing the computational burden. One of the disadvantages is that some points are searched more than once thus leave some space for improvement.Moreover, it follows a greedy approach by selecting the minimum dissimilar point at each step thus posing a threat to follow a local minimum trend. Considering these facts we propose to modify the 2-D logarithmic search to overcome the local minimum problem and also eliminate the redundant computing as described in the following section. iii. proposed search technique We mainly modified the 2-D logarithmic search technique to eliminate the redundancy and local minimum problem associated with it. The search technique is ela borated next under the light of 2-D logarithmic search technique.Our proposed search technique starts with the five points in the search window where the one is at the center and other four surrounds center point (Fig 3(a)). Unlike 2-D logarithmic search, our proposed technique selects two points min1 and min2 (Fig 3(b)) that has dissimilarity scores lower than the other three points. We then select a point as the center of search for the next pass that lies on the line in between min1 and min2. This selection reduces the local minimum effect as it simply does not follow the minimum point.Moreover, the five points selected in the next pass does not match with any of the previous points thus eliminates the redundancy that exists in 2-D logarithmic search. Centered at the point selected at the next pass the search continues (Fig 3(d)-Fig 3(f)). The steps of the search are portrayed in Fig 3. Following are some of the merits of our proposed technique: * Successively reduces the search area with no point searched twice * Maximum search points are 12 and minimum search points are 5 – an improvement over 2-D logarithmic search. iv. Results and DiscussionWe have conducted a comparative analysis of Full Search, 2-D logarithmic Search and our proposed search technique as presented next. All the experiments were conducted on MPEG sequences using MATLAB. We used sequences like garden, Akiyo, Table Tennis, Car, and coastguard. Full search, 2-D logarithmic search and our proposed technique applied in these standard MPEG file and we computed the ASNR (Average Signal to Noise Ratio) and Computational load (i. e. number of search points). The results on different sequences are presented next. Akiyo Sequence: Each frame of the Akiyo sequence is of 352? 88 pixels, recorded at 25 frames per second and there are a total of 398 video frames. Fig 4 shows the reconstructed 20th frame of Akiyo sequence coded using Full search, 2D-logarithmic search and proposed search techniqu e. In this video only face portion is moving. Search point comparison for these three search techniques is presented in Fig 5 and ASNR is reported in Fig 6. ASNR achieved using the proposed search technique is almost equal 2D logarithmic search but at reduced number of search points (Fig 5). Number of search points remains almost similar over the different frames.ASNR value shown in Table 1. (a)| (b)| (c)| (d)| (e)| (f)| Fig 3: The different steps of our proposed 2-D logarithmic search technique. (a) five points of search window, (b) the direction of the search in between the direction offered by the two points min1 and min2. (c) Search at step 2, (d) min1 and min2 at step 2, (e) Search points at step 3, and (f) Search ends at the blue point. (a)| (b)| (c)| Fig 4: Reconstructed 20th frame of the Akiyo sequence using (a) Full search, (b) 2-D logarithmic search, and (c) Our proposed search technique.Fig 5: Comparison of # of search points for Akiyo sequence. Fig 6: Comparison of ASNR for Akiyo sequence. Table 1: ASNR value of different search for Akiyo sequence Frame No| Full Search| 2D logarithmic Search| Proposed Search| 1st| 25. 86188| 25. 55678| 25. 46245375| 5th| 24. 84504| 23. 77938883| 23. 57562323| 10th| 24. 37532| 23. 01043038| 22. 67351877| 15th| 24. 38495| 22. 98908004| 22. 5831958| 20th| 24. 4424| 22. 90227928| 22. 56886825| 25th| 24. 44956| 23. 03416597| 22. 51615637| Car Sequence: Each frame of the Car sequence is of 320? 240 pixels and ecorded at 25 frames per second and there are a total of 398 video frames. The reconstructed 20th frame of Car sequence using the three search techniques is presented in Fig 7. In this video sequence the car moves but background is still. Here each repeated two times. Average no of search point is almost 10. 46 for repeated frames and 11. 50 for new frames. Here number of search points vary significantly compared to Akiyo sequence. Overall the proposed technique has reduced search points (Fig 8) although the ASNR is bit low (Fig 9). ASNR value of some frames shown in Table 2. a)| (b)| (c)| Fig 7: Reconstructed 20th frame of the Car sequence using (a) Full search, (b) 2-D logarithmic search, and (c) Our proposed search technique. Fig 8: Comparison of # of search points for Car sequence. Fig 9: Comparison of ASNR for Car sequence. Table 2: ASNR value of different search for Car sequence Frame No| Full Search| 2D logarithmic Search| Proposed Search| 1st| 27. 13312| 26. 5682| 26. 08265| 5th| 26. 68718| 25. 75123| 25. 16904| 10th| 26. 10589| 25. 12647| 24. 27394| 15th| 26. 31185| 25. 16266| 24. 54981| 20th| 26. 28613| 25. 1915| 24. 61234| 25th| 25. 86261| 25. 02255| 24. 12599| Garden Sequence: Each frame of the Garden sequence is of 352? 240 pixels and recorded at 30 frames per second and there are a total of 59 video frames. Fig 10 represents the reconstructed 20th frame of this sequence coded using the three search techniques. In this video the motion is due to camera movement. Fig 11 and Fig 12 reveals that the new search technique reduces the number of search points with minor loss in ASNR. ASNR value of some frames shown in Table 3. Here Average no of search point for each frames required almost same.In frame 20th average no of search point is 11. 6053 and ASNR is 18. 22931. (a)| (b)| (c)| Fig 10: Reconstructed 20th frame of the Garden sequence using (a) Full search, (b) 2-D logarithmic search, and (c) Our proposed search technique. Fig 11: Comparison of # of search points for Garden sequence. Fig 12: Comparison of ASNR for Garden sequence. Table 3: ASNR value of different search for Garden sequence Frame No| Full Search| 2Dlogarithmic Search| Proposed Search| 1st| 24. 27663| 24. 27663| 23. 5971| 5th| 21. 6078| 21. 6078| 20. 49847| 0th| 20. 71779| 20. 71779| 19. 34323| 15th| 19. 9641| 19. 9641| 18. 69269| 20th| 19. 6754| 19. 6754| 18. 22931| 25th| 19. 39791| 19. 39791| 18. 05226| Coastguard Sequence: Each frame of the Coastguard sequence is of 320? 240 pixels and recorde d at 25 frames per second and there are a total of 378 video frames. Here the boat and the camera are moving. Fig 13 represents a reconstructed frame of this sequence coded using the three search techniques. Fig 14 represents the search point required by the three techniques. Our proposed technique shows periodic nature in terms of search points.This is due to the repetitive nature of motion in the video. Fig 15 represents a comparison of ASNR obtained using different techniques. Table 4 shown ASNR of some frames. (a)| (b)| (c)| Fig 13: Reconstructed frame of the Coastguard sequence using (a) Full search, (b) 2-D logarithmic search, and (c) Our proposed search technique. Fig 14: Comparison of # of search points for Coastguard seq. Fig 15: Comparison of ASNR for Coastguard sequence. Table 4: ASNR value of different search for Coastguard seq. Frame No| Full Search| 2D logarithmic Search| Proposed Search| 1st| 24. 8771| 24. 33338| 23. 61801| 5th| 24. 31753| 23. 35416| 22. 54516| 10th| 23. 90367| 23. 03317| 22. 07546| 15th| 24. 36529| 23. 44171| 22. 66604| 20th| 24. 38658| 23. 26823| 22. 50994| 25th| 24. 54524| 23. 91583| 22. 91885| Table tennis Sequence: Each frame of the Table tennis sequence is of 352? 240 pixels and recorded at 30 frames per second and there are a total of 9 video frames. Here ball is moving fast. The reconstructed frames, number of search points, and ASNR of the three search techniques are presented in Fie 16, Fig 17, and Fig 18. Some ASNR of Table tennis sequence shown in table 5. a)| (b)| (c)| Fig 16: Reconstructed frame of the Table tennis sequence using (a) Full search, (b) 2-D logarithmic search, and (c) Our proposed search technique. Fig 17: Comparison of # of search points for Table tennis sequence. Overall the result of ASNR for Full Search is best in all cases but number of search point is so high. The result of ASNR for 2-D logarithmic and our proposed search is almost same but the number of search point of our proposed search is sm aller than the 2-D logarithmic search and thus an improvement over the existing technique.Fig 18: Comparison of ASNR for Table tennis sequence. Table 5: ASNR value of different search for Table tennis seq Frame No| Full Search| 2D logarithmicSearch| ProposedSearch| 1st| 25. 2698| 24. 56416| 23. 90544| 3rd| 23. 60795| 22. 69326| 21. 81273| 5th| 23. 43996| 22. 35007| 21. 29301| 7th| 23. 71878| 22. 71607| 21. 58383| v. Conclusion In this paper we have presented a new search technique for video coding that is a modification of the existing 2-D logarithmic search. The proposed technique reduces the search time of 2-D logarithmic search by reducing the redundant search points.Although ASNR is sacrificed to some extent it had insignificant visual impact as observed from the experimental results. References [1] Shi and H. Sun, â€Å"Image and Video Compression for Multimedia Engineering†, Fundamentals, Algorithms and Standards, 2nd Edition. [2] P. N. Tudor, â€Å"MPEG-2 Video Compre ssion†, IEEE J Langham Thomson Prize, Electronics and Communication Engineering journal, December 1995. [3] J. R. Jain and A. K. Jain, â€Å"Displacement Measurement and Its Application in Interframe Image Coding†, IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. com-29, no. 12, December 1981. [4] T. Koga, K. Linuma, A. Hirano, Y. Iijima, and T.Ishiguro, â€Å"Motion-compensated interframe coding for video conferencing,† Proc. NTC’81, G5. 3. 1-G5. 3. 5, New Orleans, LA, Dec. 1981. [5] R. Srinivasan and K. R. Rao, â€Å"Predictive coding based on efficient motion estimation,† Proc. of ICC, 521-526, May 1984. [6] D. Tzovaras, M. G. Strintzis, and H. Sahinolou, â€Å"Evaluation of multiresolution block matching techniques for motion and disparity estimation,† Signal Process. Image Commun. , 6, 56-67, 1994. [7] MPEG-4, http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/MPEG-4, last accessed in December 2008. [8] H. 264, http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/H. 264, last accessed in December 2008. *

Florence Kelley

Florence Kelley (1859 – 1932) Florence Kelley, A Woman of Fierce Fidelity Florence Kelley is considered one of the great contributors to the social rights of workers, particularly women and children. She is best known as a prominent Progressive social reformer known for her role in helping to improve social conditions of the twentieth century. She has been described as a woman of fierce fidelity (Goldmark, 1953). Kelley was a leading voice in the labor, suffragette, children’s and civil rights movements. She was also a well-educated and successful woman, a rare combination during the turn of the twentieth century.Kelley was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on September 12, 1859 to Quaker parents, William Darrah Kelley and his second wife, Caroline Bartram. Her father was a self-educated man who left his business to become an abolitionist, a judge and an activist for a number of political and social reforms. Kelley had two brothers and five sisters; however, all five s isters died in childhood. The childhood memory of the deaths of her five sisters influenced Kelley’s lifelong fight for government funds for maternal and child health services.The political climate during the life of Kelley and the influences of her family, education, travels and friendships contributed to her commitment to social reform. It was these influences that led this determined woman to have a profound impact on the quality of life for many individuals during her life and thereafter. Let’s examine these influences in more detail for a better understanding of this remarkable woman and reformer. Kelley had the good fortune to grow up in a progressive, cultured and affluent family. It was a family actively devoted to social reform and this devotion influenced Kelley.She was educated at home for most of her childhood due to being sickly as a child. Her father taught her to read at age seven and made his extensive library available to her. Her father also influence d her social conscience by taking the young Florence with him as he toured factories where young boys worked to help manufacture steel and glass. Kelley begins her autobiography by describing her father as a â€Å"companionship which has enriched my whole life† and credited him with encouraging her interest in public life. (Kelley, 1926).It was on the factory tours with her father that Kelley first witnessed the horrendous conditions and danger that children were forced to work under. She often stated that through this experience, she developed her enthusiasm to advocate for child labor reform. While still a young woman, Kelley wrote, â€Å"We that are strong, let us bear the infirmities of the weak. † (Sklar, 2009). At the encouragement of her father, in September 1876, at the age of seventeen, Kelley entered Cornell University, College of Arts and Sciences.After completing her studies at Cornell, Kelley attended the University of Zurich the first European university open to women where she studied politics, economics and law. While in Europe, Kelley formed friendships with people that embraced the teachings of socialism. It was during this time that Kelley began translating the works of known socialists, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Her translation of Engels â€Å"The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844† was published by New York Socialists in 1887.In 1884, while attending the University of Zurich, Kelley met and married Lazare Wischnewetzky, a Russian medical student and member of the socialist party. Kelley and her husband moved to New York City in 1886. Her husband was abusive, and, in 1889 Kelley left her husband and moved to Chicago with her three young children. The marriage ended in divorce in 1891. It was in Chicago that Kelley turned to the study of social conditions taking a special interest in women and children. Florence boarded her three children while she became a resident of the Hull House with Jane Addams and other female social reformers.The Hull House was a settlement house established to ease the suffering of the urban poor, improve unfair and dangerous working conditions and reform government to protect workers. Settlement houses were created to help the urban poor and to assist college educated women to find meaningful employment and to professionalize the social sciences of Sociology and Social Work through collecting statistics, reports and photographs. At the turn of the century, many Americans hoped to improve society for the better. These reform-minded citizens were called Progressives.Kelley was among the Chicago women of her class that strongly believed that they belonged in the public arena calling attention to the working conditions of children and women, social injustice and democracy for all. These Progressives wanted to use the government as an agency of reform and they believed grassroots efforts at the local level would spread to the state and then national level. They embraced strong efforts to address the corruption of government and to make government more efficient. Kelley and the women of the Hull House actively campaigned for civil rights, children’s health and welfare and prohibition.During her years of work at the Hull House, Kelley participated in the documentation of urban poverty. Kelley pioneered the use of scientific data to influence the decision of the U. S. Supreme Court. (Goldmark, 1953). In 1892, Kelley was hired by the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics to investigate the sweat shop activity in the garment industry. In this position, Kelley was responsible for providing the numerical evidence that led to state legislation mandating an eight-hour work day for women and children. The law, enacted in 1894, was repealed the following year under pressure from the Illinois Association of Manufacturers.Kelley held the position with the Illinois Bureau of Labor and Statistics until 1897 when she was appointed the first wom an Chief Factory Inspector by Illinois Governor John P. Atlgeld. Kelley was very successful in recruiting people to socialism. She told Friedrich Engels: â€Å"We have a colony of efficient and intelligent women living in a working men’s quarter with the house used for all sorts of purposes by about a thousand persons a week. The last form of its activity is the formation of unions of which we have three, the clock-makers, the shift-makers,, and the book-binders.Next week we are to take the initiative in the systematic endeavor to clean out the sweating dens. The Trade assembly is paying the expenses of weekly mass meetings; and the sanitary authorities are emphasizing the impossibility of their coping, unaided, with the task allotted to them. † Kelley’s frustration with the repeal of the eight-hour work day law for women and children and the difficulty in prosecuting the sweat shop cases influenced her to enroll at Northwestern University where she earned a law degree in 1894.In 1899, Kelley returned to New York to assume the leadership of the National Consumers’ League, an organization created to use the purchasing power of the consumer to support firms with good labor practices. She remained with this organization for over thirty years. In this role, Kelley, pioneered the use of white labels on clothing to certify garments had been produced without child labor and within the parameters of the legislation regulating factory work. During her time with the Consumer’s League, Kelley traveled extensively, speaking to various rganizations and was responsible for organizing sixty different leagues in twenty different states, plus two international conferences. Kelley played a prominent role in federal legislation for child labor minimum wages. A strong supporter of women’s suffrage and African American civil rights, Kelley helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the Women†™s International League for Peace and Freedom. In September 1905, Kelley joined Upton Sinclair and Jack London to form the Intercollegiate Socialist Society.Its stated purpose was to â€Å"throw light on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism. † Kelley spent the next several years as a frequent speaker on American campuses. She recruited Frances Perkins, a student to the cause and Perkins is the person responsible for bringing an end to child labor in America. Kelley wrote several books including Some Ethical Gains Through Legislation (1905), Modern Industry in Relation to the Family (1914), The Supreme Court and Minimum Wage Legislation (1925) and Autobiography (1927).Kelley also helped establish what became known as the â€Å"Brandeis brief† (named for Justice Louis D. Brandeis), a process of integrating facts and experiences in legal action to demonstrate the need for changing laws according to human realities. Florence Kelley died in G ermantown on February 17, 1932 after a long illness at the age of seventy-three. Kelley was a fascinating woman that dedicated herself to serving the victims of industrial capitalism. She is among the founders of the U. S. welfare system and is considered not only a powerful woman for social justice but also a representative of women’s empowerment.Kelley is quoted as saying, â€Å"In order to be rated as good as a good man in the field of her earnings, a woman must show herself better than he. She must be more steady, or more trustworthy, or more skilled, or more cheap in order to have the same chance of employment. † It is easy to conclude that Florence Kelley was ahead of her time in her ideas and approach to social reform. She laid the groundwork for many social programs that were not implemented until after her death. Her many accomplishments have contributed to an awareness of the rights of children and the working class in America.

Applying Risk Management Essay

Risk management is an important element in managing information systems. Applying risk management principals to business procedures is essential because it helps organizations design and maintain a safe systems environment to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of company data. Kudler Fine Foods has expressed an interest in developing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. The primary objective is to improve business administration by integrating stores and business systems. Kudler Fine Foods has three stores in California and integrating business functions across all stores would be extremely beneficial. This paper will outline the major factors and benefits by applying risk management principles to ensure a secure and effective system. Risk Management Principles According to Whitman and Mattord (2010), risk management is a collaborative effort involving Information security, information technology, management, and users. It is important to involve all of these areas to devise a comprehensive and effective risk management strategy. The major principles include identifying risks, quantifying risks, plan for risks, and monitor and manage risks. The first stage is risk identification. This is when the organization’s managers identifies all of its assets and classifies them into meaningful categories in addition to prioritizing them by importance. Assets include various components such as people, processes, data, and all elements of information technology. Gathering information on assets such as the people aspect processes, and data could be challenging because they are not always documented and readily available. The information gathered for people may include position titles, the title of his or her supervisor, security levels, and skills. Information collected  for processes may include procedure description, purpose, IT connections, document storage location for reference and updates. After listing out the assets, the next step is to classify them into categories such as people, data, software, and hardware and then classify each asset into sub-categories such as confidential, internal, and public. Applying value or impact to each asset is next by determining its criticality to the business. Questions that may help to assigning a value may include; â€Å"Which assets generates the highest profitability?†, or â€Å"Which asset would impede business functions if it were compromised?† Quantifying risks provides the framework for executives to make informed decisions in relation to cost and resources surrounding security. All of the steps outlined above is essential in the risk identification stage (Whitman and Mattord, 2010). After completing the risk identification process where all assets are identified and classified, the next phase is to determine the potential threat source and potential vulnerability. Some common threat sources include natural threats, human threats, and environmental threats. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (2002), a threat is an exploitation of a vulnerability caused by a threat source. The NIST publication suggests the following: identifying a threat source, indicating the motivation of source, and outlining the threat actions. This practice will help determine the likelihood of a threat taking advantage of a system vulnerability. Next in the process is identifying vulnerabilities. Vulnerability is a weakness or flaw in procedures or controls applied to a system. Identifying potential vulnerabilities will help an organization put controls in place to mitigate risks associated with vulnerabilities. Risk mitigation involves a systematic approach in reducing the exposure to a risk and the likelihood of it occurring. Mitigating defined risks is the gateway for the development of processes and controls to reduce the likelihood of a threat. Having prevention mechanisms that include policies and controls is best practice in regard to securing assets therefore it is critical that Kudler Fine Foods determines the best risk management process that fits their business requirements and needs. Because technology is consistently growing and changing, preventative measures must include flexibility to allow for change and growth. Without these considerations, a business could jeopardize themselves by restricting the ability to expand or even update the systems  with necessary security patches. Preventative measures should include future growth. As technology grows, risks increase. Protection mechanisms will change as new threats are introduced to business as well as new legislations. Many security standards are based on data protection regulations and as laws change or new laws are introduced, information technology is the most costly element in ensuring compliance. There could be costly ramifications with poor planning. Risk avoidance can be costly and inconvenient but it would be more costly and inconvenient when a security issue occurs. A risk assessment would be the first step to take when determining whether to chance a certain risk or not. Determining what the assets are and understanding the impact on the business if a security incident occurs is important. It is also important for businesses to understand regulations and what is necessary to comply with certain laws and requirements. Kudler Fine Foods must conduct risk analysis and ask themselves â€Å"What is the risk of not applying preventative measures?† and â€Å"What would it cost to recover from a certain attack?† Legal ramifications could result if a security breach occurs. This could include steep financial penalties as well as jeopardizing company reputation. The table below outlines examples of risk, vulnerability, and mitigation strategy. Risk Vulnerability Mitigation Strategy Hardware failure Hardware could fail and impede business. Systems could be unavailable for an undetermined amount of time. Create security policy to ensure all hardware is kept up to date with current patches and upgrades. User training Insufficient training of end-users leads to improper use of application which could compromise data or systems. Create detailed training documentation and implement a user training program. Ensure all users participate in training. Deliberate network attacks Potential Malware and Denial of Service attacks. Could lead to exposure of sensitive information. Implement policy to ensure adequate firewall  protection, anti-malware software, and install Intrusion Detection System. Conclusion It is important for businesses such as Kudler Fine Foods to employ a risk management strategy to protect its assets and reputation. Without an effective risk management process the company will be vulnerable to various threats. It is Kudler Fine Foods responsibility to determine what mechanisms should be applied and how it will maintain a secure environment for its own business objectives as well as meeting required regulations. The risk management process is the primary method in facilitating security objectives. References Whitman,M.E., & Mattord, H. J. (2010). Management of information security(3rded.). Boston, MA: Course Technology/Cengage Learning National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2002). Retrieved from http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-30/sp800-30.pd