Approachability as a new supervisor Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Approachability as a new supervisor - Essay Example Approachability: The authentic magnetization of two people based on friendliness and common grounds [1] A very simple and beautiful definition of approachability is given by Scott Ginsberg is; "The word approachability derives from the Latin verb appropriare, which means "to come nearer to." Interesting. It doesn't say anything about the approach-er or the approach-ee. Just "to come nearer to." Approachability is a two way street. It's both you stepping onto someone else's front porch; and you inviting someone to step onto your front porch."[2] A Supervisor in an ideal situation works toward maintaining good and healthy communication between him/her and the rest of the staff in every permutation or combination possible. By ensuring that employees exchange opinions and work related problems, a good supervisor is always in the driving seat to make excellent work group. By dealing with communication as a two way process, a culture based on free opinions and free from conflicts is established. supervisor has many different roles (e.g., organizer, leader, evaluator, director, planner, developer, and resource manager). Supervisor's position allows him/her to combine the talents of employees under supervision to accomplish the objectives of the company. This work group helps to meet two of the most significant challenges - to accomplish the task effectively and efficiently, and to provide fulfilling work experiences that develop employee capabilities and potential. Supervisor works toward identifying common goals of the employees and makes sure that they are occupied in completing those goals. A supervisor has to take entire work force together to achieve professional goals and also inspire the new employees to follow present work culture. He/she should hold an open hand attitude toward others while keeping a strict eye on the workings. Another key personality trait is approachability. This quality is related to your human dimension and to how comfortable that people feel around you. Remember, approachability can be crucial in many situations. Consider scenarios when employees have problems in their work lives or personal lives, when they make mistakes on the job, when they want to discuss their salary and when they want to express concerns about you. Employees also want to approach you with positive feedback and new ideas that can help the organization to improve. If you are not approachable, employees often feel too much distance and discomfort. What is approachability It is a trust between two people that each will be available for the other when needed. Always being open to discuss/help and interact with each other is the central theme of approachability. As one may say, it is a measure of whether the person in question is approachable How easy is the conversation flow with him/her It is how your personality attracts and keeps people wanting to talk to you. In achieving this stage, most important attribute is your attitude and the way you carry yourself among a group. Every person is fond of interesting conversation, and also likes to increase ones knowledge base

Illegal Immigration Essay Example for Free

Illegal Immigration Essay There are 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States today. This number has risen by 3 million in only 10 years. Illegal immigration has been a problem in the United States dating back to the early 1980s. In the 1980s and still until today, the United States has seen a massive increase of illegal immigrants entering the United States. While most of these immigrants were from Latin America and Mexico, they were also from other parts of the world. Many illegal immigrants were crossing the unguarded border between the United States and Mexico. Border security has increased over they years, yet the rise of illegal immigrants coming into the United States is also increasing. Illegal immigration has become a very controversial topic of today’s society, and lawmakers and legislators have been debating the topic for a while now. Their hasn’t been much reform from the federal government; however, many states have passed their own set of immigration laws. States such as Arizona, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Utah, and Indiana have developed their own state immigration laws. These laws are being reviewed by the Supreme Court of the United States and these decisions would be heard in the near future. In Arizona, if any police officer pulls over a immigrant who is suspicious of being illegal; that person has to present documents of being in the United States legally or faced with being detained and presented in front of an immigration court. Some kind of enforcement like this is also being enforced in the other states. Immigration needs to be reformed nationally throughout the country, and the government needs to strike down on illegal immigrants living in the United States because they cost America billions, take American jobs, and also take away student financial aid for citizens and legal immigrants trying to attend college. Using evidence from a wide range of sources, I make the statement that illegal immigration laws need to be reformed in the United States, by using statistics and fiscal numbers. Illegal Immigrants cost the Unites States billions of dollars that the government does not have. Their are 11 million illegal immigrants living within the boundaries of the United States, and only 7.2 million of these immigrants contribute to the workload of America. Those other 3 million plus the 7.2 million immigrants use welfare and unemployment money from the government by having children that are born in the United States. â€Å"Illegal-alien households cost the federal government approximately $26 billion in social services and criminal justice system expenses annually† (Albo). By collecting welfare and unemployment checks from the state and federal governments, illegal immigrants cost the American government significant amounts of tax-payer money. Many immigrants are taking money away from American citizens who need unemplyoment checks in order to survive and to look for a new job. Arizona’s Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Arizona SB 1070) does an excellent job of limiting illegal immigrants and also helps in the addition of illegal immigrants because they can be deported if they ever are suspicious in front of law enforcement. This would decrease the overall amount of money spent on illegal immigrants because it would lower the total amount of illegal immigrants; thus causing a trickle down effect of the amount of money spent on undocumented immigrants. Another way illegal immigration negatively influences the American economy is by the amount of money that the government spends to keep undocumented immigrant children in school. Undocumented children also lead to an increase of overcrowded classrooms in certain states. Illegal immigrants account for nearly 3 billion in more tax-payer money for just California to keep these children in school because of the No child left behind act of the Bush Administration. â€Å"300,000 to 400,000 illegal alien [schoolchildren †¦ account for the estimated $3 billion annual service costs provided to the estimated 1.7 million illegal aliens in the State† (Joch). More states also had to pay more for undocumented immigrant children. â€Å"During the 2003-2004 school year, Minnesota estimated that it spent between $79 and $118 million of its $8 billion state budget to educate an estimated 9,400 to 14,000 unauthorized immigrant schoolchildren. New Mexico spent $67 million of its $3 billion state budget on an estimated 9,200 unauthorized schoolchildren. Colorado claimed that it spent approximately $220 million on social services for unauthorized immigrants but only collected between $159 and $194 million in revenue from that segment of its population.† (Joch) Illegal immigrants have accounted for many millions of dollars in other states also, and this is a sign nationally. There needs to be a immigration law reform that makes sure that undocumented children may be allowed to go to school in the United States only if they were born here. If children come along with their parents are are already in school age, I believe and the stats prove my point that undocumented children take tax-payers money away from where they are supposed to go. Illegal undocumented immigrant workers take away American jobs from the American people. Since the early 1980s, when illegal immigration became a major problem for the United States of America, illegal immigrants have been taking millions of jobs from the American people. â€Å"Today, there are 7 million individuals working in the United States illegally. (Devadoss/Luckstead) Most of these jobs are hard working and low education level jobs; nevertheless it takes away nearly seven million jobs away. The unemployment rate in the United States as of today is 7.8% and seven million jobs are a lot of jobs. During the Great Depression, President Roosevelt created federal program called the Civilian Conservation Corps (commonly known as the CCC) where young adults would work in preserving forests and helping with farmland. This would decrease the United States unemployment rate while also reducing jobs for illegal immigrants. With less jobs, immigrants would naturally self-deport back to their own countries where they might have a better job in finding jobs to support their families. Another way to make sure jobs are going to the American people is to adapt the E-Verify program. The E-Verify program is a program where before employers can hire potential employees they have to enter their documents to make sure that the employee can work in the United States. The E-verify program has already been enacted by five states in the United States and many more states are considering the program as a big immigration law reform. Many other states have partially enacted E-verify. â€Å"More than 404,000 employers, large and small, across the United States use E-Verify to check the employment eligibility of their employees, with about 1,200 new businesses signing up each week†. (Harvard Law Review) I firmly believe that if a nationwide e-verify program be required to check if employees are legally allowed to work in the United States that many of the potential jobs that illegal immigrants would take, would now be filled with Americans. More American jobs would cause less dependency on food stamps, welfare, and also less unemployment checks from the US government. Naturally, this would reduce the national and state debts, while also allowing the government to spend more money on schools and education. Speaking of education, their are many illegal immigrants taking state money for higher education purposes. In a Supreme court decision in Martinez v. Regents of the University of California, the supreme court ruled in favor that illegal immigrants are allowed to use in-state tuition to pay for school and may receive state funding. This is not only in California, but this kind of legislation is available in many different states. â€Å"California gives illegal aliens between $222.6 and $289.3 million dollars in aid to attend college in their state. Texas gives between $80.2 and $104.4 million dollars, Illinois $23.3 and $30.5 million dollars, and New York gives between $28.8 and $37.5 million dollars of aid†. (Kasarda) While many college students are suffering today to pay for higher education, the state has to give illegal immigrant college students aid every year. Along with the education budget cuts, this has sparked controversy in many universities throughout the United States. This needs to end. States should not be giving American dollars to illegal immigrants. By reforming the law in each individual state, less aid will be available to someone who lives in the United States illegally, and more aid needs to be given to more students who are deserving based on merit or poverty. Imagine in California if $270 million dollars was given back to the public universities, how many more teachers would be hired and how much more financial aid would be given to deserving students. Many of the supporters to allow the 11 million illegal immigrants to stay in the United States state that they provide a service that not many Americans would do and they help provide to each individual state economies. Other supporters also say that illegal immigrants pay federal, state, and local taxes in their perspective region. â€Å"about 6 million unauthorized immigrants file individual tax returns each year estimate that between 50 percent to 75 percent of unauthorized immigrants pay federal, state and local taxes†. (Albo) However, thats only about 50% of the total illegal immigrant population. Many supporters are adamant in saying that illegal immigrants pay their taxes; however, that is simply not the case. Yes, six million immigrants pay, but what about the other 5 million illegal immigrants. Supporters need to realize that while the 6 million contribute a small amount to the government, the other 5 million cost more to maintain. If their weren’t as many ille gal immigrants then the US government would not spend as much money on illegal immigrants. Illegal immigration law reform is greatly needed in the United States. Another argument that many supporters of keeping illegal immigrants in the United States is that they do jobs that Americans just simply won’t do. They say the hard labor jobs that illegal immigrants work help provide a spark in local economies throughout the Untied States. â€Å"The absence of the estimated 1.4 million undocumented immigrants in Texas in fiscal 2005 would have been a loss to our gross state product of $17.7 billion. Undocumented immigrants produced $1.58 billion in state revenues, which exceeded the $ 1.16 billion in state services they received†. (Albo) Supporters would show statistics like these that show their services produced more money for the local economy, then taking from the local governments. That illegal immigrants create a surplus for the economy. However, if we look at the same quote, that is just not the case. â€Å"However, local governments bore the burden of $ 1.44 billion in uncompensated health care costs and local law enforcement costs not paid for by the state†. (Albo) If we also look at the healthcare costs and increased law enforcement, the cost of maintaining illegal immigrants, in reality, creates deficit for the local economies. Many supporters twist statistics and truths to make their point about maintaining illegal immigrants, but in the real facts, they are proven wrong. Illegal immigration law reforms need to be discussed in Congress and also in individual State Congress’s. In all, illegal immigration has been a controversial topic ever since the 1980s. Many legislators and lawmakers have tried to reform the law and Congress has even a developed a bipartisan committee to try to develop a reform bill, but lawmakers haven’t gotten past preliminary talks. I believe the only way that Congress is going to reform its immigration laws is that if the American people stand up and petition in every state. Many individuals should talk to their regional representative and try to get talks discussed in the House and also in the Senate. Illegal immigration is a major problem in the United States and they are taking money that simply the United States does not have. Illegal immigration laws need to be reformed as soon as possible.

Americanization of the Australian Media Essay -- miscellaneous

Americanization of the Australian Media The Australian television and media have become americanised through the influence of American media and television programs in Australia. This research will only concentrate on the extent of Americanisation in Australia through the influence on television and the film industry as the aspect of Americanisation covers a wide range from fashion to language. To fully understand the topic of the hypothesis, proper exploration of the definitions of ‘identity’ and ‘culture’ are of relevance. ‘Identity’ and ‘culture’ play an integral role in what an Australian represents as well as how the world views Australians. The meaning of ‘identity’ can be summarized as; ‘The collective aspect of the set of characteristics by which a thing is definitively recognizable or known’ as well as ‘the set of behavioral or personal characteristics by which an individual is recognizable as a member of a group’ (Meriam-Webster 2003). Culture one the other hand, can be simply coined as ‘the way of life’, language and traditions that are common amongst a group of people (Meriam-Webster 2003). The Australian identity and culture is something that is unique and exclusive to its people, word like ‘barby’, ‘g’day mate’ and ‘tinnies’ immediately refers to Australia. Australians pride themselves as hard-working, humourous and jovial people, who love the outdoors and good food. But in recent times we notice that Australians, are not being ‘Australian’ enough. Gone are the days where men wore rabbit-fur and trusty leather work-shoes. New York Yankees caps worn backwards and polished white Adidas Superstar sneakers coupled with denims worn below the hips instead have replaced these. Ten years ago, the mentioned situation could only exist in the United States of America. Today we see it happening in almost all major cities and suburbs in Australia (Mengel 2001, pers. comm., 11 Aug) Throughout the years, we have heard the term Americanisation frequently invoked but seldom defined. Originally, ‘Americanisation’ was the label used to define the assimilation of immigrants and other minorities seeking citizenship in the United States of. In most cases, ‘Americanisation’ was defined broadly as ‘The process by which an alien acquires our language, citizenship, customs and ideas’. (Bell & Bell, 1998:2) The overall term ‘Americanisation’ is most of t... ...sed, as cultural absorbtion not necessarily means that America is exerting dominance over Australia. A somewhat fairer comment on Americanisation would be,â€Å"What’s new about American culture invading Australia? Nothing. Australia might look, absorb, then move on to its own beat† (Mengel 2001, pers. comm. 11 Aug.) According to Mengel, this may be exactly what Australia along with the rest of the world is experiencing. There is no doubt that USA has managed to spread just about everything from fashion to fast food to hip-hop music throughout the world creating a popular culture. Australians may enjoy and appreciate this popular culture, but this by no means making them any less Australian (people still prefer watching cricket to professional wrestling e.g. WWE Smackdown) (Bennett 1999, p.208). An interesting fact is that the USA has its own cultural dilemma, it should be recognized that the US has likewise absorbed diverse cultures and traditions leading to many people to question who or what is a ‘real American’ (Bumbrey S. 1999). The idea of Americanisation should not be ignored but rather regarded as part of the cultural assimilation of the world leading towards globalization.

Case Study: Boeing

Ana Lopez MGT 420 Professor Cathy Ko Assignment #2: Case Study: Boeing 1-Select one or more diagnostic models that you believe provide a framework that succinctly identifies the key factors at the center of the Boeing situations. Explain your choice of model. Boeing has had an array of problems since the 1900’s; from the scandal with the Pentagon in 2003, to the manufacturing crisis when Boeing was required to halt production of the 747 aircraft for 20 days. Let’s not forget the financial dilemma the organization had when investors accused of them of trickery in regard to a merger with McDonnell Douglas and a payout of $92. million was made to shareholders. Technology seemed to be a big issue when in 2001 they decided to implement an automated system of assembly lines. They also hoped to coordinate and facilitate easier channels of communication between Boeing staff and suppliers. The problem arose when information technology within the organization was decentralized an d over 400 systems were being used to meet the needs of various departments. Because of lack of collaboration in regard to product procurement; meant that the same product could be manufactured by Boeing for one aircraft but subcontracted for another.Integration issues came upon because of the many acquisitions which were made; so they decided on diversifying from the traditional commercial airline industry. The goal here was to add more stability to the business by diversifying into information services and the space industry. As time passed it was said by Noel Forgeard, CEO of Airbus, that the process of diversification was â€Å"extremely demoralizing for Boeing employees†, but it was argued by Boeing’s VP of marketing that the cause of their morality was that the company was in a down cycle,.Boeing’s main strategy was to update their technology systems, downsize their operations, and reestablished relationships with their suppliers. Because of these specific issues I decided to go with the Star Model which was designed by Jay Galbraith; who argues that an organization is at its most effective when what he labels â€Å"the five major components of organization design† are in alignment. These components are as follow: 1.Strategy: â€Å"the cornerstone†, if the strategy is not clear†¦there are no criteria on which to base other design decisions. 2. Structure: the formal authority relationships and grouping of activities as represented on an organization chart. 3. Processes and Lateral capability: refer to the process, either formal or informal, that coordinate activities throughout the organization. 4. Reward Systems: seek to align individual actions to organizational objectives. 5. People practices: are the combined human resources practices of the organization. -Explain the Boeing situation in terms of your selected model. The Star Model has all the components that Boeing would need to inherit in order to get out of t heir predicament and a stable organization. Starting with â€Å"strategy† since most of their strategies were not successful. Because of the manufacturing crisis that halted production for 20 days; Boeing was criticized and it was said that the company had â€Å"stubbed its toe†. They had a â€Å"win at any costs† approach that failed miserably.They attempted to revitalize Boeing’s operations by streamlining aircraft assembly and increasing the efficiency of the company. It is apparent that this organization is unstable when it comes constructing a strategy since it is being always changed. When it came to Boeing’s â€Å"structure† the company had many frictions because of their inability to mobilize resources and their loss of competitive advantage. Boeing wanted to go beyond the World War II era and failed at that as well.They wanted to implement an automated system of assembly lines and coordinate and facilitate easier channels of communi cation between Boeing staff and suppliers. That became a battle for Boeing because the information technology within the company was decentralized and over 400 systems were being used to meet the needs of various departments. Their processes and lateral capability was at a jam with their lack of collaboration in regard to product procurement which meant that the same product could be manufactured by Boeing for one aircraft but subcontracted for another.So Boeing decided to device a technological platform to regulate product life cycle. They anticipated that this new system would â€Å"improve collaboration, innovation, product quality, time-to-market and return-on-investment. † The employees of Boeing were very unsatisfied with the way the organization was being run; making them have less morality towards the company. Their reward system was not good at all if the company had to have subcontractor in order for them to make ends meet.This situation would also become a people p ractices since their efforts of overcoming tragedy to the company kept on over exceeding triumph. Boeing is still around making it a wonderful company despite its trail and tribulations. Like any other organization what Boeing needed was a change of heart and they accomplished it by changing their strategies, structures, processes and lateral capabilities, their rewards systems and people practices. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. , â€Å"Managing for Change†. United States. 2011. 126, 155-156 Print.

Comparative Analysis on Erp Vendors

School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend K507–Enterprise Resource Planning – 2008 Fall – ERP Project Comparative analysis of ERP vendors: SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Koenraad Adams, Eric Piazzoni, and In-Saeng Suh [email  protected] com, [email  protected] com, [email  protected] edu Abstract This is a study of the comparative analysis on the enterprise resources planning (ERP) vendors, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. We research on functionalities, cost, features, and target market for each vendor. Keywords: ERP, SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, SME 1 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend . Introduction ERP system is an integrated information system to support the business within different organizational parts of an enterprise. The leading global providers are SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft. ERP packages are designed to be customizable to concrete needs of an organization and to its legacy systems. The customization of ERP modu les for a concrete user is performed with special tools and using specific or standard programming languages. Due to already mentioned general ERP characteristics, customization and implementation usually require specialized knowledge and significant resources.SAP was founded on April 1, 1972, by five IBM employees. It developed its first product (financial accounting software) in close cooperation with its first customer. The company grew initially around ERP and solidified its market leadership by being a pioneer in the move from mainframe to client-server computing with its R/3 ERP solution introduced in the 1990s. From there, SAP expanded into a much broader set of applications for other functions in the enterprise: customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain management (SCM), product life-cycle management (PLM), and supplier relationship management (SRM).By bundling and integrating these applications, SAP became known for high-quality, comprehensive enterprise solution s, which SAP or SAP-trained SI consultants would then customize. Oracle was founded in 1977 as Software Development Laboratories. The first Oracle program was written in assembly language, ran on PDP-11 and with 128k of memory. The software was never â€Å"officially† released though. Version 2 which was released in 1979 was the first to be released. The company had changed its name by then to Relational Software Inc. Business grew and by 1982 they had changed their name again, this time to Oracle and in 1987 the company went public.Today, Oracle remains one of the leaders in the ERP industry. A few of the firsts Oracle brought us are: ? The first commercially-available SQL-based database (1979) 2 School of Business and Economics ? ? ? ? ? ? ? Indiana University South Bend The first database to support symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) (1983) The first distributed database (1986) The first database product tested to comply with the ANSI SQL standard (1993) The first 64-bit data base (1995) The first web database (1997) The first proprietary RDBMS to become available on Linux (1998) The first database to support XML (1999)Microsoft Dynamics AX is a line of business management solutions that provides financial management, business intelligence, human resource management, project management, customer relationship management (CRM), manufacturing, supply chain management solutions, collaborative workspace, and configuration and development. The Information Technology views quadrants Gartner Consulting produces each year as a type of benchmark to see where each provider stacks up against their competition. In 2007, Gartner released the quadrant on the left.While many will argue that Gartner‘s methods are too simplistic and don‘t give a truly accurate view of what the decision makers face, it is still a good place to start when comparing products. Gartner ranks venders in two areas, Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. Using various qualifie rs based on the rankings, the solutions are places in one of four quadrants: ? Leaders score higher on both criteria; the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Typically larger industry developed businesses with vision and potential for expansion 3 School of Business and Economics ?Indiana University South Bend Challengers score higher the ability to execute and lower on the completeness of vision. Typically larger, settled businesses with minimal future plans for that industry ? ? Visionaries score lower on the ability to execute and higher on the completeness of vision. Typically smaller companies that are unloading their planned potential Niche players score lower on both criteria: the ability to execute and completeness of vision. Typically market fledglings In 2007, both Oracle and SAP were placed towards the bottom of the Challengers Quadrant.This would indicate they have the ability to execute, though maybe not that well as they are towards the bottom of the quadrant , and they don‘t seem to have a great deal of vision. But is that all there is to look at? In this study, we focus on functionalities and features, the total cost of ownership, and target market of the ERP vendors: SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics. 2. Functionalities and Features 2. 1 SAP R/3 SAP R/3 is a client-server based application, utilizing a 3-tiered model, the presentation layer, the application layer, and the database layer.SAP R/3 is structured using its own proprietary language called ABAP (Advanced Business Application Programming). ABAP, or ABAP/4 is a fourth generation language (4GL), geared towards the creation of simple, yet powerful programs. SAP R/3 also offers a complete development environment where developers can either modify existing SAP code to modify existing functionality or develop their own functions, whether reports or complete transactional systems within the SAP framework. ABAP's main interaction with the database system is via Open SQL state ments.These statements allow a developer to query, update, or delete information from the database. Advanced topics include GUI development and advanced integration with other systems. With the introduction of ABAP Objects, ABAP provides the opportunity to develop applications with object-oriented programming. SAP ERP redefines enterprise resource planning – delivering role-based access to crucial data, 4 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend applications, and analytical tools. With SAP ERP, we can efficiently deal with business challenges in the following areas: ?End-user service delivery – Ensure that employees can readily access the critical data, applications, and analytical tools they need to perform all their job functions efficiently and effectively while also supporting a shared-services organizational model for human resources, finances, and other key processes. SAP ERP offers role-based access, self-services, and employee interaction center support through SAP Manager Self-Service, SAP Employee Self-Service, Duet and employee interaction center support. Plus, SAP Mobile Time and Travel enables employees in the field to report time and expenses offline. SAP ERP Financials – Ensure compliance and predictability of business performance – so the organization can gain a deeper financial insight across the enterprise and tighten control of finances. SAP ERP Financials automates financial and management accounting and financial supply chain management. The solution also provides rigorous support for corporate-governance mandates such as Basel II and Sarbanes-Oxley. ? SAP ERP Human Capital Management – Optimize the HR processes with a complete, integrated, and global human capital management (HCM) solution.SAP ERP provides this HCM solution for organizations of all sizes and in all industries. You can maximize the potential of your workforce, while supporting innovation, growth, and flexibility. The SAP ERP HCM solution automates talent management, core HR processes, and workforce deployment – enabling increased efficiency and better compliance with changing global and local regulations. ? SAP ERP Operations – Manage end-to-end procurement and logistics business processes for complete business cycles – from self-service requisitioning to lexible invoicing and payment – optimizing the flow of materials. SAP ERP Operations also helps discrete and process manufacturers manage the entire life cycle of product development and manufacturing. The solution automates the entire manufacturing process and reduces costs by controlling and adapting the 5 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend manufacturing process in real time – and increases customer satisfaction by delivering higher-quality products. ?SAP ERP Corporate Services – Helps organizations manage their most costintensive corporate functions by supporting and stre amlining administrative processes in the areas of real estate; enterprise assets; project portfolios; corporate travel; environment, health, and safety compliance; quality; and global trade services. SAP ERP Corporate Services is a complete and integrated solution that maximizes transparency and control, while reducing financial and environmental risks and enhancing safety of employees. ?Performance management – Support the entire life cycle of performance management, delivering real-time, personalized measurements and metrics to improve business insight and decision making. SAP ERP supports financial analytics, operations analytics, and workforce analytics, as well as consolidated financial and statutory reporting; planning, budgeting, and forecasting, strategy management and scorecards, and risk management. 2. 2 Oracle An Oracle database system is a platform with at least one application running n it to access and process the data. Data is stored logically in the form of ta ble spaces and physically in the form of data files. The recommended structure for an Oracle database is the institute RAC–Real Application Clusters. Multiple instances, usually on different servers, attach to a central storage array. This offers better performance, scalability and redundancy for the users. There are various versions of the Oracle database management software. In addition, Oracle divides it‘s product into various editions to track marketing and sales. Enterprise Edition – The full suite of performance, scalability, security and reliability stored on either a clustered or single server. Runs on all standards and available with a large number of applications. ? ? Standard Edition – Provides Enterprise level functions for mid-sized organizations. Sold through Oracles 400 Value Added Resellers. Standard Edition One – low end—minimum five users—entry level package. 6 School of Business and Economics ? ? ? Indiana University South Bend Express Edition – primarily intended for students to learn how to code applications for Oracle.It is small, free and his limited capacity. Oracle Personal Edition – ? High end? functionality but sold to single-use developers. Oracle Database Lite – designed to run on mobile devises. Though this looks like a large number of options, there are really only three true choices and they are based on the size (number of seats) of the organization. Of the other three, 2 are for developers and the other just provides access to database information from a mobile devise. Oracle does, however, offer some other ? flavors? to offer as well.Oracle has grown dramatically mostly through acquisitions. Their product lines include. ? ? ? ? ? ? ? PeopleSoft Enterprise Siebel JD Edwards Hyperion Agile AutoVue Fusion Not counting the other products (PeopleSoft, JD Edwards etc. ) Oracle Business Suites alone have over 140 different applications which can be installed on the ir platform. These include: ? Enterprise Performance Management – A tool which aides in the executive decision making process by supporting a broad range of strategic, financial and operational management processes. Business Process Outsourcing – an application which seems to work as an extranet and allows organizations track the non-core business processes which have been outsourced. ? Customer Relationship Management—tracks what is going on in the sales department. Allows other departments (finance, production) know what they can expect. It will also allow the marketing groups know how effective campaigns have been. 7 School of Business and Economics ? Indiana University South Bend Customer Self-Service Solutions—allow customer place orders themselves without the supplier having to have someone enter the order.This reduces the risk of order entry errors. Production or warehouse groups receive the order right away and can act on it much quicker so turn a round takes less time. ? ? Financial Management Solutions—provides and tracks data for finance operations, governance, risk, compliance, and performance management. Human Capital Management – ? tracks all aspects of the Human Capital needs, from core human resource (HR) transactional functionality through service automation and delivery to complete enterprise talent management solutions.? 1 It provides the needed resources and has proven to reduce the costs. ? Procurement – Insures that the supply chain stays on top of productions needs and maintains the most cost effective method of doing so. Project Management—maintains record of current projects statuses and communicates with those needing the information in order to insure projects are proceeding as they should. ? Transportation Suite—insures shipments reach their destination as well as, ? lowers transportation costs, improves customer service and asset utilization, and provides flexible, globa l fulfillment options.? 2 These are just a handful of the applications available.Essentially, whatever the need, Oracle has a way to meet it. 2. 3 Microsoft Dynamics Financial Management Microsoft Dynamics AX accounting and finance solutions help you track and analyze business information. You can easily manage your general ledger, payables, receivables, inventory, sales process, purchasing, analytical accounting, cash flow, bank reconciliations, fixed assets, and collections. 1 â€Å"Human Capital Management Solutions. † Oracle, The World's Largest Enterprise Software Company. 19 Nov. 2008 . 2 â€Å"Transportation Management. † Oracle, The World's Largest Enterprise Software Company. 9 Nov. 2008 . 8 School of Business and Economics Business Intelligence and Reporting Indiana University South Bend Microsoft Dynamics allows you to manage budgets, create and consolidate reports and look for trends and relationships in any part of the business. Human Resource Management M icrosoft Dynamics allows the management of applicant and employee information: payroll and benefits, skills mapping, recruitment and employee registration, and skills development. In addition the system helps you ensure your organization is meeting government reporting requirements accurately and on time.Project Management Project management and accounting applications allow project managers, accountants and executives to improve their project profitability and adapt to changing conditions. In addition manage resources, forecast costs and budgets, track time, and expenses. Lastly, manage contracts and billing. Customer Relationship Management Customer relationship management solutions enable management of customer groups, create and launch marketing campaigns, track customer activity, manage sales and after sales.It also enables automation of many day to day tasks for sales, customer service, field service, call center, and marketing professionals. Manufacturing It provides an integ rated suite of manufacturing applications that give you the tools to plan, manage, and execute a top of the line manufacturing operation. The manufacturing process consists of product configuration, scheduling and shop floor, and supply and capacity requirements planning. Supply Chain Management This improves inventory management, management of single or multi-site warehouses, demand planning, order processing, and online collaboration with suppliers.Collaborative Workspace This extends the reach of business applications, information and process to employees, customers, and partners with role based delivery through a single web-based portal. Configuration and Development 9 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend Customization capabilities enable programmers and system administrators to add new functionality and modify existing functionality quickly and with limited coding. 3. The total cost of ERP ownership Total cost of ownership (TCO) is a significant factor in ERP strategies and decisions.Yet while both end-users and ERP vendors tend to talk about lower TCO and many vendors claim it as a point of differentiation. Three different elements of total cost associated with ERP implementations are actually important: ? ? ? Amount spent on software Amount spent of external services Internal costs Since as the company grows, the number of users goes up, along with the total cost of software and services, one can naturally expect a correlation between size of the ERP deployment and costs. As shown in Table 1, as the number of users goes up, the total cost of software and services also rises.Table 1: Average Software and Services Costs by Company Size Company Size Under $50M $50M – $100M $100M – $250M $250M – $500M $500M – $1B $1B – $5B Over $5B Average # of Users 38 92 195 344 475 2187 3365 Average Software $176,597 $482,941 $695,395 $985,714 $1,364,286 $2,360,577 $2,652,500 Average Service $126,022 $351,374 $ 581,090 $655,263 $1,110,000 $2,081,000 $2,102,778 Average 3 years Maintenance $81,676 $247,554 $443,066 $346,639 $617,735 $1,479,208 $1,163,531 Average total cost $384,295 $1,081,869 $1,719,551 $1,987,616 $3,092,021 $5,920,785 $5,918,809Source: Aberdeen Group, July 2007 Table 2 displays software and service costs by vendor, since the ratio of services to software costs is indicative of both ease of use and ease of implementation. We just adopted a few major vendors, Infor, Lawson, QAD, SAP and Oracle. Table 2: Software and Service Costs by Vendor 10 School of Business and Economics ERP vendor Infor Lawson QAD SAP Oracle Average Software $703,261 $482,500 $633,871 $1,276,667 $1,929,167 Average Service $494,444 $455,556 $463,158 $1,115,323 $1,694,231Indiana University South Bend Average # of ERP modules 11. 0 10. 8 10. 2 11. 9 11. 5 Average Software + Service per user $9,843 $10,521 $9,741 $11,381 $16,882 Average total costs per user $12,773 $11,826 $12,161 $15,067 $20,983 Source: Abe rdeen Group, July 2007 Functionality and TCO remain significant factors on ERP strategies and decisions. The depth and breadth of functionality deployed, along with the cost of software, services, and on-going maintenance combine to provide a price performance of ERP.Table 3 shows the ERP usage and total cost per user per percentage Point of functionality used by three vendors, SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft Dynamics. Table 3: ERP Usage and Costs per User per Percentage of Functionality Used ERP Vendor SAP Oracle Microsoft Dynamics Average # of Modules Used 12. 4 11. 3 10. 6 Average % of Functionality Used 69. 1% 72. 4% 73. 2% Average # of Users 834 1365 116 Software + Service + 3 Yrs Maint. $702 $513 $607 Source: Aberdeen Group, July 2007Cost Areas of Microsoft Dynamics AX The initial average license price per user for Microsoft Dynamics AX is $3,000. According to Nucleus Research, Inc the average initial license price for a Microsoft Dynamics AX customer was $571,234 with a low of $50 ,000 and a high of $2. 55 million. The consulting average expenditure for Microsoft Dynamics AX deployment was $1,169,745 with a low of $50,000 and a high of $6. 8million. The median expenditure for consulting was $600,000.Pertaining to those customers that made hardware investment, the average hardware costs were $180,188 while the median cost was $84,750 (Nucleus Research, 7). Those companies that invested in the internal personnel for deployment and 11 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend ongoing support for the ERP solution the average personnel costs were $346,667 and the average annual ongoing cost was $192,000. Lastly, training costs on average were $141,375 with one hundred and ninety-five users, twenty-nine hours of training time at a cost of $25 per hour. Table 1.The Average 3-Year Cost of an Microsoft Dynamics AX Deployment Average $571,234 $1,169,745 $180,188 Data Components Average initial license price Average standalone consulting expenditure of customers interviewed Average hardware expenditure of customers interviewed Average number of personnel needed to deploy:4 Average time of deployment:13 months Assumed fully loaded cost of an employee:$80,000 Average number of users: 195 Average training time: 29 hours Assumed fully loaded hourly cost of an end user: $25 Average initial cost of deployment Average maintenance rate: 16% Average initial license price.Average number of FTEs required to support Microsoft Dynamics AX: 2. 4 Assumed fully loaded cost of a support FTE:$80,000 Average 3-year costs of software, consulting, hardware, personnel, training and maintenance. Software Consulting Hardware Personnel $346,667 Training Total Ongoing Costs Software maintenance Personnel $141,375 $2,409,207 $274,192 $576,000 Total 3-Year Cost $3,259,399 Table 2.The Median 3-Year Cost of an Microsoft Dynamics AX Deployment Initial Costs Average Data Components Software $168,000 Median initial license price Median standalone consulting C onsulting $600,000 expenditure of customers interviewed Median hardware expenditure of Hardware $84,750 customers interviewed Median number of personnel needed Personnel $220,000 to deploy:3 Average time of deployment:11 12 School of Business and EconomicsIndiana University South Bend months Assumed fully loaded cost of an employee:$80,000 Median number of users: 120 Median training time: 24 hours Assumed fully loaded hourly cost of an end user: $25 Median initial cost of deployment Median annual cost of license: 15% Median initial license price: $168,000 Median number of FTEs required to support Microsoft Dynamics AX: 1. 25 Assumed fully loaded cost of a support FTE:$80,000 Median 3-year costs of software, consulting, hardware, personnel, training and maintenance. Training Total Ongoing Costs Software maintenance 72,000 $1,144,750 $75,600 Personnel $300,000 Total 3-Year Cost $1,269,950 3. Target market SAP serves 75% of the Fortune Global 1000, but less than 1% of Fortune Global mi llion. The small and medium enterprise (SME) market is a huge opportunity. SAP views SMEs as its main potential source of growth. As of summer 2006, SAP led the midmarket segment, but to reach its goal of having 45% – 50% of order entry from SME customers by 2010, SAP has to address the two most important elements of an SME solution: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and ease-of-use.SAP‘s offering has higher up-front outlays but lower maintenance rates. SAP aggressively expands SME market via the SAP NetWeaver platform strategy toward the goal of doubling SAP‘s market cap by 2010. It would probably be safe to say Oracle targets anyone interested in purchasing an ERP solution. That wouldn‘t be entirely accurate. It‘s obvious that Oracle has achieved it‘s success by building for the large Enterprise organizations but they‘ve also been successful due to their focus on their platform.Enterprise solutions will probably remain a staple target for the m. However, if you look at the products they are now producing making it easier for smaller organizations to get introduced to their product, it‘s an obvious sign they are seeking more small to medium businesses in their portfolio. The 13 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend Standard Edition One with a price of $180 per user is a sign of that. They also have a suite of ? out of the box‘ applications ready to bolt on once the server is in place.Get the business used to the Oracle environment when they are small at a competitive price, then sell more licenses as your software helps them grow seems to be their motto. I can‘t say that‘s a bad one. At the end of the day, selecting the best solution comes down to preference. Obviously, each solution has strengths and weaknesses. But how do you select a solution when one provider is strong in one area you need while another is strong in another? Additionally, there are more solutions coming on the scene.Smaller companies who may be able to provide a different type of service than what the biggest players offer. Another solution many will consider in the future, especially with the current economic situation, is the growing Software as a Service trend. 3 SAP has already got a jump on the market with their ByDesign solution. At the end of the day, it will have to come down to what solution works best for the business making the choice. 3 Maxcer, Chris. â€Å"Is SaaS ERP a viable model for manufacturing? † Manufacturing ERP software and management – SearchManufacturingERP. om. 9 Sep. 2008. 23 Nov. 2008 14 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend References â€Å"Bit on Gartner‘s Magic Quadrants and 2007 report for ERP Vendors† OracleApps Epicenter. 11 Nov. 2008 . â€Å"Compare ERP System/ERP Software Solutions. † Technology Evaluation Centers. 12 Nov. 2008 . Farber, Dan. â€Å"Disruptions in the software fabric. â €  Builder AU – By developers for developers. 25 Nov. 2008 . â€Å"Gartner Consulting Web Site.. † Gartner Consulting. 20 Nov. 2008 . Greenbaum, Joshua. â€Å"SAP beats Oracle? Oracle surrounding SAP?Microsoft raking in new customers?. † ZDNet Blogs. 20 July 2007. 25 Nov. 2008 . Hagiu, Andrei, Pai-Ling Yin, Daniela Beyersdorfer, and Vincent Dessain. â€Å"SAP: Industry Transformation . † Harvard Business Journal N/A (2006): 28p. â€Å"Human Capital Management Solutions. † Oracle, The World's Largest Enterprise Software Company. 19 Nov. 2008 . Jutras, Cindy. ?The Total Cost of ERP Ownership. † Aberdeen Group. 17 Oct. 2006. 10 Nov. 2008 . Jutras, Cindy. â€Å"Aberdeen Group: The Cost of ERP Functionality. † Aberdeen Group. 12 July 2007. 10 Nov. 2008 . Jutras, Cindy. The Total Cost of ERP Ownership in Mid-Size Companies. † Aberdeen Group. 12 July 2007. 10 Nov. 2008 . â€Å"Magic Quadrant for ERP Service Providers, North America, 2007. † Gartner Custom Newsletter Programs. 11 Nov. 2008 . 15 School of Business and Economics Indiana University South Bend Maxcer, Chris. â€Å"Is SaaS ERP a viable model for manufacturing? † Manufacturing ERP software and management – SearchManufacturingERP. com. 9 Sep. 2008. 23 Nov. 2008 â€Å"Microsoft Dynamics: Business management, financial and accounting software solutions (ERP, enterprise resource management). Microsoft Corporation. 25 Nov. 2008 . â€Å"Oracle ERP Benefits and Disadvantages. † ITtoolbox Oracle Knowledge Base. 13 Nov. 2008 . Samuals, Mark. â€Å"Making best use of Gartner's reports – 17 Apr 2008 – Computing. † Insight for IT leaders – business technology news, analysis, reviews and jobs Computing. 12 Nov. 2008 . â€Å"The Real ROI from Microsoft Dynamics AX | Nucleus Research. † ROI Reports, ROI Case Studies, ROI Tools | Nucleus Research. 25 Nov. 2008 . â€Å"Transportation Management. † Oracle, The World's Largest Enterprise Software Company. 19 Nov. 2008 . 16

True or False Essays - Yang, Monkeys In Chinese Culture, Chen, Wa

True or False Essays - Yang, Monkeys In Chinese Culture, Chen, Wa True or False The book American Born Chinese, written by a Chinese-American Gene Luen Yang, was published in December, 2008, and the whole book is composed of three different stories that connect to each other. The main characters in these three stories are the Monkey King, Jing Wang, and Dannys cousin, Chin-Kee. The Monkey King is extremely persistent and arrogant, Jing Wang is a Chinese-American, but he hates his identity as an Asian, and Chin-Kee who is Dannys cousin likes tricks, has an ugly appearance and speaks English with a strong Chinese accent. The criticism in personality, appearance and lifestyle in this book illustrates Americans negative view of Chinese people. The personality of Chinese people in this book was unacceptable. First example was Chin-Kee. Danny was a main character in one of the stories, and Chin-Kee was his cousin. One day, when Dannys mother told him that Chin-Kee came to their house, Dannys facial appearance looked scared and afraid (Yang 47). It was strange because when people have relatives come and meet them, they think it is okay or feel happy. But when Danny knew his cousin was coming, he was so afraid. It made me feel bad and showed me that Chin-Kee was a scary person and Danny didn't want to see him. It let me guess that Danny hated Chin-Kee very much. Another example was Jing Wang. One day, Suzy Nakamura, girlfriend of Jings best friend Wei-Chen Sun, told bad things about herself to Jing. Unexpectedly, Jing kissed her after she said those things (Yang 188). His action was rude and very impolite to Suzy and his friend, Wei-Chen. It confused the readers and caused them to feel that Jing was a bad person. He did bad th ings to his best friends girlfriend, and he didn't apologized to him until they met again a long time later. Both of these showed us that Chinese people were rude and scary, and their actions were different to accept. The drawings of Chinese peoples appearance are bad. As we know, typical Asian people all have black hair, brown eyes, and yellow skin. Jing Wang looks like that. But the face drawing of Chin-Kee in this book is unbearable to be seen. He has a very ugly face, weird behaviors and words. His eyes are very small, we can't even see his eyes. He has a bulbous nose and a big mouth with buck teeth in it. Sometimes when he talks, the saliva will come out of his mouth (Yang 50). He is very good at studying; even so, he always does tricks people, like peeing in Dannys friend, Steves coke, and saying some pretty vulgar stuff to girls. When Chin-Kee saw Melanie, Dannys friend in his house, Chin-Kee said, such pletty Amellican girl whiff bountiful Amellican bosom! Must bind feet and bear Chin-Kees children (Yang 50). His words was very rude for a girl. He also has a heavy accent when he is talking. For example, he says Amellica as America, Da-nee as Danny. These facial and action descriptions of C hin-Kee give many narrow ideas of Chinese people and make me think that all of the Chinese people are like that. This book also shows many prejudices about Chinese people and influences the perspective of Chinese in American peoples eyes . Jing Wang ate dumplings at lunchtime when he was in elementary school. After his classmates saw that, one of them said, Stay away from my dog (Yang 32). That showed American people don't know what a dumpling actually is and his classmate mistakenly assumed it was made with dog. The book suggests Chinese people eat dogs. After that happened, Jing never ate dumplings at school ever, he only ate sandwiches later on. The same thing happened to Chin-Kee too. He ate crispy fried cat noodle when he was in Dannys school. However, thats not common for Chinese people to eat animals. There are also many stereotypes of Chinese people. When the teacher introduced Jing to the class when he came to school in the first day, the teacher spelt his name wrong. The teacher said, Class, Id like us all to give a warm Mayflower Elementary welcome to your new friend and classmate Ji ng

College Freshman Survival Kit

College Freshman Survival Kit Going off to college is an exciting time. Youre looking forward to your freedom and beginning your life as an adult. However, inside, you may secretly be dreading this major change. And thats okay! Without parental guidance, youll have many hurdles to navigate on your own. Nobody wants to come home for winter break with several extra pounds, an unfortunate injury from a hazing prank gone wrong, or a report card full of Fs. Our tips will help keep you on track. Here’s what to pack in your college freshman survival kit. 1. Freshman 15 Fighters All-nighters, parties, and unlimited access to food can take their toll on your health - and your waistline. Dont go off to school with a tote full of candy and soda. Pack healthful, nonperishable snacks instead, such as pretzels, crackers, nuts, dried fruit, and protein bars. Have a refillable water bottle on hand, too. Take advantage of your dorm kitchen’s refrigerator, or purchase a mini version for your room. You will find more helpful tips in our ultimate guide - Â  How to Avoid Freshman 15. 2. Sleep Aids The likelihood of being woken up by someone in your room or hall (or a maintenance worker) is about 100 percent on a daily basis. If you want to maintain your own regular sleep schedule, youll no doubt want to pack some highly rated earplugs and a sleep mask. A fan will keep you comfortable and provide white noise for better sleep. A stuffed animal or favorite pillow will make bedtime more familiar and relaxing. 3. Doctor’s Bag Aside from good nutrition and sleep, basic health care should be a focus when packing for college. You’ll surely have access to a campus health center, but many ailments don’t warrant official medical treatment. Always pack a mini first aid kit: Pain Reliever Alka-Seltzer Cough Drops Tissues Bandages Hydrogen Peroxide or Rubbing Alcohol Cotton Swabs or Squares Tweezers You might consider taking a daily multivitamin if you don’t already. 4. Laundry Loot Good old Mom won’t be around to wash your clothes anymore, so be prepared. Of course, detergent is a must, as is fabric softener if you use it. The most fun college activities often lead to stains, so be sure to take a stain treatment of some type. You’ll also want a travel-size sewing kit to take care of missing buttons and other minor wardrobe malfunctions. And, of course, hangers and a laundry basket or bag. If you have room for it, a drying rack saves money and the environment. 5. Office Supplies In today’s digital world, it’s easy to forget good old-fashioned stationery supplies. Things go wrong, and devices fail. You’ll still want some notebooks or paper, pens and pencils, highlighters, sticky notes, and a stapler. Take a journal with you, too. Write in it whenever you’re stressed or homesick. A journal is a great portable and low-budget therapist. (Just be sure to keep it safe from your nosy roommate!) 6. Organizational Basics You’ll need a few basics to keep everything neat: a power strip or two, a shower tote, Command hooks, duct tape, and Super Glue. You should also pack a few basic cleaning supplies. Mr. Clean Magic Erasers are awesome. Cut up an old T-shirt so you’ll have a few rags for dusting and wiping up spills. And you’ll certainly want some type of air freshener! Just be sure your roommate doesn’t have allergies or hate the scent. 7. Party Picks We know that partying is a part of the college experience. Therefore, you shouldnt leave home without a few fun extras. Playing cards, dice, Ping-Pong balls, a shot glass, Mad Libs, and other small items should be readily available whenever an impromptu party occurs. Surviving is only one side of life of the first-year student. To get tips on other aspects of student life, such as studying and networking, check out this awesome infographics with useful tips for freshmen students. If you missed anything or have limited room for transporting your personal belongings, you can always pick up what you need locally once you arrive at school. But taking care of as much as you can up front leaves you free to focus on more important things.

Business-Technology Alignment - Smart Custom Writing Samples

Business-Technology Alignment - Smart Custom Writing Innovative processThe innovative process is important for companies that want to realize their objective in the competitive and consumer driven market. Hassell (2003) says that the systems used in the innovative process are the most complex both in technical and social terms. Hassell (2003) says that the most commonly used model of the innovation process is the liner model. The four phases include research, development, evaluation or demonstration, and deployment phases. The first phase is known as the research phase. Starbuck will embark on researching on the problem and inventing a solution conceptually and not physically. Shapiro (2002) says that the purpose of this step is to learn how to use data more flexibly and it will help the team at Starbuck to create and find new perspectives on everyday facts and figures as far as their products are concerned.   During this phase the team involved in the innovation process will explore relationships and patterns between the existing products in order to open the door to truly revolutionary insights. Schwartz (2006) says that despite how the innovation is started the problem needs a proper description. Starbuck as a company should involve more people in order to come up with detailed and explicit representation of the problem. The second phase will involve development of a viable prototype of a solution or product protype. During this step Hassell (2003) says that once an invention is found in the first phase through research and brain-storming, it is refined and perfected through the development process. The team at Starbuck will develop a small scale or prototype product that provides a proof of concept that the innovation is technologically sound. In addition, Shapiro (2002) argues that â€Å"during the development phase the company will definitely figure out what is possible and not what would be the right solution† (30). In addition Schwartz (2006) says that during this phase a conceptual model for the implementation is developed which describes its planned solution on a conceptual level. The team at Starbuck will take into consideration the description, the problem and the idea as input. The third phase of the innovative process is the demonstration phase. Hassell (2003) says that â€Å"this phase involves coming up with a full scale prototype to prove not only the innovation’s technical viability but also that it meets the required safety standards, it is appealing to the consumer and can be produced at a reasonable cost† (p. 12). The company (Starbuck) will use this step to carry out an evaluation through independent evaluation and testing organizations which test the product to certify that it is safe and effective. According to Schwartz (2006) the evaluation phase tests the results produced during the innovation process. During this phase Starbuck will undertake a careful planning of the experimental design and analysis to make sure that there is a representative and valid results for the new product. The fourth phase of the innovative process entails deployment of the product. Hassell (2003) says that sometimes this phase is known as diffusion, commercialization, or marketing stage. Hassell indicated that during this phase Starbuck will work towards increasing the production or manufacture of the innovation and making it commercially available (2003). It is important to note that the outcome and success of this phase depends heavily on consumer demand, the cost of the product, regulatory acceptance, marketing efforts, and the cost and performance of competing products among other considerations (Hassell, 2003). Starbuck will in last phase take the newly developed product and will try to market it as profitable as possible or a new process is implemented and integrated into the operational workflow for its improvement and to obtain more cost effective performance (Schwartz, 2006). The company will also explore the technological domain in which it can effectively facilitate new insights and methodologies to be disseminated to the company’s areas of interest as well as the public at large. In conclusion, the above four phases will help Starbuck to go through the innovative process and come up with the required product. The innovative process will determine how the company edges its competitors in the domain of technological advancement and the development of new products that meet the customer needs. The research phase should involve brainstorming sessions as well as intensive research so as to determine what the market demands. After the development phase Starbuck should then carry out a thorough evaluation and then deployment to ensure that the product meets the required standards and demands of the consumers.    References Hassell, S. (2003). Building better homes: government strategies for promoting innovation in housing. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Corporation. Shapiro, S. M. (2002). 24/7 innovation: a blueprint for surviving and thriving in an age of change. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Professional. Schwartz, D. G. (2006). Encyclopedia of knowledge management. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Inc (IGI).

Medical Interview GA Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Medical Interview GA - Assignment Example P. Andrew told that "the germs contaminating hospital environment affects the hospitalized patients and cause Noscomial infections. It is very critical situation, which occur due to the poor sanitary practices and management of medical and paramedical staff within the hospitals, nursing homes or clinics during therapy of the patients† (4). ETIOLOGY: There are many types of Nosocomial infections. Some important are including Urinary tract infections, surgical site infections, Respiratory tract infections, Blood stream infections, Skin infections, gastrointestinal tract infections and Central nervous system infections (3). The common pathogenic agents of nosocomial infections include pathogenic and commensal bacteria of normal flora, Viruses of Hepatitis B and C, respiratory Synctial Virus, rotaviruses and enteroviruses , fungi and other opportunistic organisms which are Candida albicans, Aspergillus, Cryptococcus neoformans, Cryptosporidium (2). PREVALENCE AND INCIDENCE: Nosocomial infections prevail widely all over the world. It is the major cause of death in hospitalized patients (2). Only in the United States, there were 2,000,000 cases of nosocomial infections has reported annually (3). PATHOPHYSIOLOGY: Nosocomial infections come from endogenous or exogenous sources. Endogenous sources include body sites inhabited by microorganisms such as naso-pharynx, Gastro-intestinal or genitor-urinary tracts. Exogenous sources include those visitors, medical personnel, equipment and the healthcare environment (1). PROGNOSIS: In United States annual reported cases of nosocomial infections are about 2,000,000. The annual death rate among these reported cases is 20,000 patients while rest of the nosocomial infections cases found curable (3). TREATMENT: For the symptomatic nosocomial infections, treatment of shock, hypoventilation, and other complications should be provided along with the administration of empiric broad-spectrum antimicrobial, antifungal and

Professional Knowledge and Abilities Paper Essay

Professional Knowledge and Abilities Paper - Essay Example Freidson (1986) found that when an individual knows every thing related to his professional field, only then he is able to achieve the desired goals and objectives from his professional field. There are many factors that contribute to success of an individual and professional knowledge holds the top most importance in that companies and organizations hire only those individuals who are well equipped with technical and organizational skills and capabilities accompanied with certified knowledge base. According to Althoff (2005), professional knowledge not only improves an individual’s professional performance but also helps the individual in making a significant progress in his career. It enables him to add to the company’s reputation. The individual becomes confident enough to tackle with all sorts of organizational conflicts and problems. He is able to communicate with the authorities and negotiate with them. This increases his chances of promotion. Professional knowled ge helps both; employees and the organization (Karagiannis & Reimer, 2002). It helps employees in a sense of career success. And any organization’s success also depends upon employees’ professional knowledge and abilities because they help the organization in establishing a set of core competencies that is essential for distinguishing one organization from the other. My Organization While talking about professional knowledge and abilities, let’s now discuss an association related to the field of information technology which really helped me in increasing my professional knowledge and abilities. The association which we are talking about is MSDN, Microsoft Development Network. MSDN is the organization which not only helped me in increasing my professional knowledge and abilities but also helped me in my career progress. MSDN is a set of those online and offline services, which is designed in such a way that it helps the developers in writing various applications using Microsoft products. Microsoft Development Network provides various training sessions to the information technology professionals. It acts as a part of Microsoft whose purpose is to manage the relationships between various developers and the Microsoft. While developing any application related to Microsoft, MSDN is the key player which plays a vital role in establishing and maintaining relationship between the developers of the applications and Microsoft. I obtained a huge amount of professional knowledge through interacting with many highly qualified programming professionals. I attended many training sessions to improve my professional knowledge and to learn how to survive in a particular organizational culture. It is because of this organization that I am now able to deal with all types of application developers effectively. My abilities have really grown significantly regarding my professional field. When I came to the organization, initially I felt a bit distressed because my knowledge regarding Microsoft and its related products was not very huge. I had little experience and I did not feel confident enough working in teams. I thought I would never be comfortable with supervisors. But as the days passed by, I became more and more efficient not only in computer applications but also in dealing with the developers. All credit goes to the professional know

Logical Fallacies in the World of Advertisement and YouTube Phenomenon Essay

Logical Fallacies in the World of Advertisement and YouTube Phenomenon - Essay Example Advertisement is a birth child of the free market economy although it is not focused in promoting free market. For instance, the advertisers are focused into trying to manipulate consumers so that they buy products or a way of life (Martin, 16). A look at the book Amusing Ourselves To Death by N. Postman gives a clear glimpse of the role and the impact of advertisement in the society today. The people have a tendency of medicating themselves into attaining happiness or bliss; as a result, they sacrifice their rights voluntarily. Aspects of television's entertainment represent a way by which the rights of the consumers for entertainment. This is a similar approach in the area of print media such as the magazines. The issues of politics, as well as religion, can be easily diluted depending on how the advertisement messaged is packaged. This essay paper is an analysis of a particular advertisement in semiotic terms. Therefore, this essay intends to show many ways that advertising works, as well as the extent the impacts of advertisement on the audience and the society. The Lancome advertisement This is an advertisement taken from the Marie Claire magazine. In addition, this advert has appeared in several other magazines. From a reader’s perspective, what catches the eyes of most readers is the ugliness of the model that underwent a makeup (Martin, 22). The image is unattractive but for most people, the choice of color is very fascinating. This advertisement covers a sprawling three pages of the magazine. The image on the first page is of a model who has red hair; this image covers almost the whole page. The female model is a woman although she is quite challenging to guess (Alperstein, 18). The reason for this is that mostly with modeling a 25 year old lady can be made to look like a 25 year old. The model is wearing a hat which is of a blue-turquoise-green. She has a scarf which has shiny palettes and a spiky shape. The background where the model is being photographed is very light colored with rose and peach tones which are dominating the blurring background shapes. The woman seems to move forward, her posture is very dynamic (Alperstein, 21). The following pages which are double ones show the similar model in a dark blue-green make-up (Alperstein, 34). Her picture covers the whole of the left page while on the right page sit indicates a dark blue rose and there is a picture of the cosmetic product which is being advertised (Martin, 31). The advert also gives the web-site address for the product (Martin, 29). By showing information in parts of different elements, the advertisement incorporates fallacies as it is not exclusive on what it is really standing for. In undertaking a semiotic analysis of the advert discussed above, this essay paper intends to apply a framework that was proposed by Chandler, as well as by focusing on the important signifies and what they signify. There are a number of various signifiers that could be easily identified from a critical analysis of the main one obviously being the woman dressed up as an insect. The signified -the mental concept the woman represents is 'change'. Of course, the woman as she is depicted in the photograph also stands for conventional norms of female beauty in the form of a somewhat fragile creature. The woman depicted on the

Where Are You Going Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates Essay

Where Are You Going Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates - Essay Example This story narrates the sexual advances in the midst of a time that represents the idea and philosophy of the beat culture along with its attempt to change and ignore all traditional concepts. However, what comes out of the story is the lust of Arnold and the opportunity to blend the nihilist ideology of the era into personal satisfaction. This process of seduction is well documented in this story and it reflects the complex nature of the juxtaposition within traditional moral and rebellious nature of the generation of the beat culture. It should be mentioned that Larry Rubin's assertion that Connie's encounter with Arnold Friend is only "a dream-like projection of her erotic fantasies" (Rubin, 202) is mistaken for several reasons. Firstly, it is not desperately required for a person of that generation to fantasize when the elements are readily available. Secondly, there is no single instance where it is hinted that Arnold is a metaphor or result of a fantasy. He appears completely real and menacing all the while. Thus it cannot be stated that critic Larry Rubin is correct when asserting that Connie's encounter with Arnold Friend is only "a dream-like projection of her erotic fantasies" (Rubin, 202). It is true that Joyce M. Wegs mentioned that "Arnold is clearly a symbolic Satan" (Wegs, 202) but it appears that he is the product of the era itself. Arnold is no different and his character is well depicted in the story where his ability is low and he seeks a benefit of low interest and he is satisfied with his gains. It can well be stated that are always some negative points in the time of change and people like Arnold are the individuals who are instrumental in incorporating those negative for their momentary and intangible benefits. The doubts, dilemmas, and confusions of the beat culture were gradually, quite slowly indeed, giving way to a new and unique cultural revolution. It was happening all across the Western world and the characters of the story find themselves in the midst of it. People suddenly seemed to realize that there was enough of political warfare to disgrace humanity. The prevailing standards suddenly seemed to be meaningless, and the insurgent youths wanted something different to happen. This 'something' took place in the form of nihilism and beat movement and the story depicts exactly this mood when an opportunist like Arnold took full advantage of the situation of Connie. He tried to justify his acts by yielding bizarre psyche and philosophies, actually fallacy, that was so relevant at the time among mass culture. Arnold's approach to Connie was planned but he placed like an artistic jest with fallacies of philosophy. "Now, put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that That feels solid too but we know better. Be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in-and get away before her people come back" (Oates, 388-9) or for that matter lines like "I'll have my arms tight around you so you won't need to try to get away and I'll show you what love is like, what it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid all right". (Oates, 388) It is evident from these words that the actual intention was to emulate the philosophical concept of the time but the situation and the intention was completely materialistic in nature. No matter how much Arnold poses as a carefree beat and a nihilist by uttering unconventional and anti establishment ideas like "The place where you came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are

Hindu veneration of statues Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Hindu veneration of statues - Essay Example The arms of Lakshmi, for example, remind onlookers of her generosity in caring for her husband Siva. Another common form is the sacred cow who is associated with the goddess Shri, and reminds worshippers of the virtue of gentleness and non-violence. People acknowledge these statues as they pass with a gesture and there is evidence of offerings of gifts like colorful flowers or foodstuffs. The visual nature of Hindu belief can be explained with the concept of â€Å"darsan† which a special kind of reverent seeing: â€Å"the central act of Hindu worship, from the point of view of the lay person, is to stand in the presence of the deity and to behold the image with one’s own eyes, to see, and to be seen by the deity.†1 Eastern people greet each other by putting their hands together, and lowering their heads, as a gesture of respect, and they do this to their religious statues too. Even simple objects like rocks or caves can be revered in this way, and this reverence for natural objects and man-made statues reveals a great sensitivity to the presence of the divine in every person, animal or object in the created world. Hindu believers include ceremonies involving religious statues into all of their festivals and celebrations, some having a special relevance at certain times of year, for example Lakshmi in the Diwali festival. In some ways this is similar to Roman Catholic processions at Easter time, or special mass services in chapels devoted to particular saints or on special saints days or commemorative events. In the Roman Catholic faith the statues are an aid to focusing on God, who is invisible and hard to imagine. In Hinduism there is a very similar approach, whereby the representations of the divine give a concrete and local expression to very general truths: â€Å"The sacred image or symbol of the god represents a means of union with the divine, but is not usually identified with the deity – the god or goddess only temporarily re sides within the fabric of the image.†2 The second part of this observation can be interpreted as idolatry, and this has brought Hinduism into conflict with Christians in the past. Hindu gods are very flexible when it comes to the form that they take, and instead of one single incarnation of the divine into Jesus Christ, there is the possibility that statues can temporarily be an embodiment of the god. The modern usage of the word â€Å"avatar,† which people use across the world to signify a virtual persona on the internet, illuminates the relationship which people have with the statues: the avatars are obviously not divine in themselves, just as computer avatars in video games are not real people, but they are used by the being behind them to interact in a different dimension of experience. The god shows himself or herself through the statue, and in fact each god can take many forms, and sometimes a statue is made of wood, or stone, or any other material, especially to serve as a locus for the god to descend into for the duration of a particular festival in his or her honor: â€Å"†¦ on the full moon day at the beginning of the hot season in March/April, the Sri Vaisnavas of Madras carry the images of Visnu from their respective temples to the sea-shore, where all, including the deities, have a refreshing dip in the surf.†3 Because of the changeable nature of the outward form of their gods, Hindus see no contradiction in seeing different

Where Are You Going Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates Essay

Where Are You Going Where Have You Been by Joyce Carol Oates - Essay Example This story narrates the sexual advances in the midst of a time that represents the idea and philosophy of the beat culture along with its attempt to change and ignore all traditional concepts. However, what comes out of the story is the lust of Arnold and the opportunity to blend the nihilist ideology of the era into personal satisfaction. This process of seduction is well documented in this story and it reflects the complex nature of the juxtaposition within traditional moral and rebellious nature of the generation of the beat culture. It should be mentioned that Larry Rubin's assertion that Connie's encounter with Arnold Friend is only "a dream-like projection of her erotic fantasies" (Rubin, 202) is mistaken for several reasons. Firstly, it is not desperately required for a person of that generation to fantasize when the elements are readily available. Secondly, there is no single instance where it is hinted that Arnold is a metaphor or result of a fantasy. He appears completely real and menacing all the while. Thus it cannot be stated that critic Larry Rubin is correct when asserting that Connie's encounter with Arnold Friend is only "a dream-like projection of her erotic fantasies" (Rubin, 202). It is true that Joyce M. Wegs mentioned that "Arnold is clearly a symbolic Satan" (Wegs, 202) but it appears that he is the product of the era itself. Arnold is no different and his character is well depicted in the story where his ability is low and he seeks a benefit of low interest and he is satisfied with his gains. It can well be stated that are always some negative points in the time of change and people like Arnold are the individuals who are instrumental in incorporating those negative for their momentary and intangible benefits. The doubts, dilemmas, and confusions of the beat culture were gradually, quite slowly indeed, giving way to a new and unique cultural revolution. It was happening all across the Western world and the characters of the story find themselves in the midst of it. People suddenly seemed to realize that there was enough of political warfare to disgrace humanity. The prevailing standards suddenly seemed to be meaningless, and the insurgent youths wanted something different to happen. This 'something' took place in the form of nihilism and beat movement and the story depicts exactly this mood when an opportunist like Arnold took full advantage of the situation of Connie. He tried to justify his acts by yielding bizarre psyche and philosophies, actually fallacy, that was so relevant at the time among mass culture. Arnold's approach to Connie was planned but he placed like an artistic jest with fallacies of philosophy. "Now, put your hand on your heart, honey. Feel that That feels solid too but we know better. Be nice to me, be sweet like you can because what else is there for a girl like you but to be sweet and pretty and give in-and get away before her people come back" (Oates, 388-9) or for that matter lines like "I'll have my arms tight around you so you won't need to try to get away and I'll show you what love is like, what it does. The hell with this house! It looks solid all right". (Oates, 388) It is evident from these words that the actual intention was to emulate the philosophical concept of the time but the situation and the intention was completely materialistic in nature. No matter how much Arnold poses as a carefree beat and a nihilist by uttering unconventional and anti establishment ideas like "The place where you came from ain't there any more, and where you had in mind to go is cancelled out. This place you are

The history of surgery Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

The history of surgery - Essay Example In ancient Greece, surgery was also performed in different ways. The Greek developed various tools and equipment that they used during their surgery processes. This was owing to the fact that they had an easy access to materials such as Iron. The Greek performed various surgeries in order to cure patients from different health complications. For instance, the Greek would undertake different forms of amputations on people. They would also drain the lungs of people, in case these suffered from pneumonia. In addition, the Greek bleed their patients, as well as set the patients’ bones. These processes can be considered to crude today. However, the Greek only turned to surgery as the last resort in order to save the lives of their patients. In the middle ages, the Arabs the Arabs based on the medicinal practices of the Greek in order to develop their own medicine. Nonetheless, this helped the Arabs to become supreme physicians during this age. For this reason, Baghdad was rose to become leading medical and drug centre in the whole world. The Arabs contributed highly to the aspect of drug making. They also used various plants that were believed to have medicinal value. With regard to surgery, the Arabs utilized specific medicinal plants, which had the capability of acting as anaesthetics during the process of surgery. For all patients that were to undergo surgical processes, the Arabs ensured to make them drink anaesthetic mixtures using the anaesthetic sponges. There were diverse procedures in the surgery process in the Arab world. For instance, the Arabs administered sedatives on patients before having them operated. In addition, for those patients that were to undergo amputation, the Arabs offered them to drink diffe rent types of mixtures that acted as sleeping

Treaty of Versailles Essay Example for Free

Treaty of Versailles Essay The 1919 Treaty of Versailles was made by George Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Woodrow Wilson. They were the World War One leaders of France, Great Britain and America respectively, and after the war, made the Treaty to decide what to do with a defeated Germany. Four years of fighting and losses throughout the First World War made decisions difficult, but overall, the Treaty was the best that could have been achieved under the circumstances. The months of arguing, negotiation and compromise that led to the completed Treaty of Versailles were without Germany. She had not been invited to join in in any of the decisions, and the Treaty was presented to the nation on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. This was because the Big Three were arguing with each other so much, and didnt want to seem weak or divided in front of their enemy. Not only did this anger Germany, but there was nothing she could do about it. If the German government refused to sign the Treaty, the war would restart and it would be impossible for them to win. The German leader Friedrich Ebert had to sign it, or inflict inevitable defeat on his country. It was signed on the 28th June 1919. Part of the Treaty was Wilsons League of Nations; his ideal world parliament, to which many of the Germans overseas colonies were given to. Germany was not invited to join until it had shown it was a peace loving country, which insulted them greatly. Another of Wilsons ideas was self-determination for people in Eastern Europe; however German people in the newly-created countries of the other post-war treaties, were treated as second-class citizens and ruled by non-Germans. They thought this was unfair and that the Allies were treating them with double standards. This angered Germany, giving her people another reason for revenge. One of the Treatys other terms was that Germany had to accept full responsibility for starting the war and all of the consequent damage it had caused. Clemenceau and Lloyd George were in favour of this, however Wilson, known for his idealism, believed that Europe as a whole had triggered the war. He was probably right, as America had been an observer for the most part of the war. Germany was outraged at being given all of the blame. The German Count Brockdorff said, We are told that we should acknowledge that we alone are guilty of having caused the war. I would be a liar if I agreed to this. Their army was also restricted to 100,000 volunteers, roughly an twenty times smaller than it had been. The bitter resentment of holding the all of the war guilt hurt the Germans pride, but was also why in the 1930s, Hitlers idea of re-building the German army was so popular. The Treaty did not come down on either side of the fence. Germany was weakened, but no so weakened that it could not rise within a generation to threaten the balance of world power once again, said historian John Sheerer. The Treaty wasnt kind enough so the German people wouldnt be bitter, but not harsh enough to ensure that they wouldnt retaliate. It left the Germans both strong and resentful and the rest of the world in a dangerous position. The Treaty also lost Germany all of its overseas land, ten percent of its territory; population; agricultural land; coal, steel and iron industries; as well as a massive reduction in its army size. The reparations fee was an immense ? 6. 6 billion, which the nation only would have finished paying in 1984, had the fee not been reduced in 1929. Despite this, a treaty the Germans gave to the Russians, the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, demonstrated how harsh the Germans would have been if they had won the war. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk stripped Russia of thirty-four percent of its population, thirty-two percent of its agricultural land, fifty-four percent of its industry, twenty-six percent of its railways and eighty-nine percent of its coalmines, as well as a fine of 300 million gold rubles. The Treaty of Versailles seemed harsh, but was very mild in comparison to Brest-Litovsk. Historian Sally Marks adds, The real difficulty was not that the Treaty was exceptionally severe, but that the Germans thought it was, and in time persuaded others it was. Another point of view is Historian Dr. Ruth Henig, who says: The German people were expecting victory not defeat. It was the acknowledgement of defeat as much as the treaty terms themselves, which the found so hard to accept. The Treaty had not been read from cover to cover by anyone when it was presented to the Germans in the spring of 1919. Nobody knew what its cumulative effect would be, and none of the three leaders were satisfied with their work. Maybe if someone had taken the time to read it, or the Germans had been allowed to negotiate with the Big Three, history would be different. However, this may not have been possible. On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the War to End All Wars ended, and the Allies were left with an unstable defeated nation, on the brink of economic and political chaos. The Big Three were under a lot of pressure to get a Treaty together before Germany totally collapsed, and the Treaty of Versailles may have been the best they could have achieved given the time pressure. It was better to come up with a solution, than not have one at all. The whole world was watching them make a decision that could change history, and that must have been stressful for the politicians. The leaders were also being pressured by their countries. Not being dictators, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Wilson had to represent their peoples views. However, voters often see things in black and white, and in 1919, nothing was different. The citizens of France and England especially wanted to see Germany suffer, but did not understand the complex situation that their leaders did. In fact, George Clemenceau was actually voted out of parliament in 1920 for not being harsh enough on the Germans. Without a doubt, the Treaty was hard to make, and some historians point of view is that Lloyd George and Wilson were forced into agreeing to a harsh treaty. George Clemenceau was famous for being a tough, uncompromising politician, but he also had the moral high-ground. France had been most badly affected by the war. The stomach-turning pictures we see of wounded, shell-shocked soldiers were taken on French soil, not British or American. Large parts of France had been destroyed, and they wanted pay-back. Furthermore, France is geographically closer to Germany than Great Britain or America, and if Germany were to attack, the French would be the first victims. Clemenceau and the French population knew this, and this may have been why a lot of the Treatys terms seem to benefit France; for example, Alsace-Lorraine being returned to France. The Big Three all had very different aims: Lloyd Georges were to weaken Germany, but not cripple it so much, because Germany was Great Britains second biggest trading partner. If they were not able to trade with Germany, many British people would lose their jobs. He also needed France to be rebuilt, as they were long standing allies and when both strong, were useful to each other. As well as this, Lloyd George wanted the Germans to lose their empire, as it threatened the British Empire. Like the British Prime Minister, Wilson didnt want Germany crippled, because he feared that they would want revenge if their punishment were too cruel. He also campaigned for his League of Nations, which would bring world peace; and self determination for the people in Eastern Europe. However, Lloyd George disagreed with this, as self determination in some countries might lead to revolution in the British Commonwealth. Wilsons idea to end all empires obviously didnt go down well with the British or French either. Clemenceau only wanted Germany to be crippled and crushed enough so France wouldnt be attacked. Germany had invaded France twice in the past fifty years, and Clemenceau had been around to witness it both times. He wanted Germany to pay dearly for the damage and suffering it had caused, expand the French industry and to rebuild the towns and villages that had been turned to rubble. This was all going to be hugely expensive. There had to be a compromise. Some of the aims were almost polar opposites, and whichever way it turned out, disappointment was inevitable. If the circumstances had been different, and France, Great Britain and America had all wanted the same things, the Treaty would have been much easier to put together, but this was not the case. With the benefit of hindsight; knowing that the Treaty indirectly caused the Second World War, it is easy to say that the Big Three didnt do enough to maintain the peace they created. There are some elements of the Treaty that could have been handled better (for example, reading it beforehand), but overall, it was the best outcome under the tough circumstances, especially seeing what the Germans would have done if they had been victorious. When you think of the pressure on the politicians, as well as the inevitable anger from the Germans, and three exhausted, arguing, war-weary nations trying to decide what to do with their enemy, the Treaty of Versailles was definitely the best that could have been achieved in 1919.

Development Using XNA Game Studio

Development Using XNA Game Studio Chapter 1: Preface Over the past few years where two dimensional and three dimensional graphic has been utilized consecutively for developing computer games and console games. Two dimensional graphic games have been very popular since the beginning of 1940s and thats where it all started at the first place. It started with 2D games at first which is developed for the use of arcade mainframes and console machines, followed by the development of computer games for mainframe computers. Through the innovation development of dimensional graphic games, 3 dimensional games were to emerge as the most popular game genre which started in the late 80s. But despise all the development of 3D games in the games software industries, 2D games are still being developed in the new market. This is because 2D games are still being preferred by many people in the world, and due to this point, games software vendors are still taking account of 2D games development. In the past few years, starting from the year 2000, 2D games starts to become widely know and played by many users with the development of mobile games and internet web based games. There have been rapid development of 2D technology to create new application games for the growing internet network, more and more website incorporate web based 2D mini games, online games and puzzle games. Its been proven that 2D games are getting more and more popular compared to the years before year 2000, and with more websites trying to incorporate 2D games towards their web as the 3rd party application. Such website is like the ever popular facebook.com incorporating hundreds and even thousands of 2D games as the 3rd party game application to attract more and more people towards joining the social web network. Few years back, Microsoft introduced the XNA Game Studio software distributed across the internet to enable software programmers to develop new games for windows platform and also the new XBOX 360. The XNA game studio is licensed software, but with the MSDN help, the author as a student get to have the chance to obtain a tryout of this Microsoft XNA game studio. According to Microsoft, XNA game studio will need to be incorporated with Microsoft Visual Studio to enable references to be added in the system coding. If we were to look back few years before, developing a game even for a two dimensional game would took probably months and even years, a simple personal computer would not even be sufficient to run the system codes, execute the game, and debug the system. And even with the availability of the development tools, it would surely require serious experts to come out with a game system coding, due to the complicated level of programming language available during the urban times. In other words there are almost none development tools available to reach in the hands of the student, or internet users to develop their own games by themselves. And by looking at the games development now, and comparing them, it is a breakthrough for the games development. As I foresees the development potential for two dimensional games, I am sure that two dimensional game will have plenty of development potential in the future, as its been proven development of two dimensional games did not stop although three dimensional games been around for quite a long time, it didnt manage to replace the two dimensional games market its technology. There are quite a few reasons why two dimensional games are still around developing, which mainly are because of its cheap development cost, simple development process, easy for users to understand and well played. Its one of the reasons why Microsoft, the top player in IT industry is still in for two dimensional games development and searching for the breakthrough for it by creating development tools to support the development of two dimensional games. Chapter 2: Development Tools Introduction This chapter was designed to elaborate the use of each development tools which is related towards developing the XNA BubbleBall Attack 2D game. In order to produce this game system a set of software development tools need to be installed on the developers machine to enable full support to the game system. All identified developing tools which is related in the development process includes DirectX SDK (DirectX Software Development Kit) a set of application programming interfaces designed to handle tasks. It is a development tool containing all DirectX software required to build and produce cutting-edge, rich media interactive applications. Microsoft .NET Framework is required for its library reference of coding solutions to common problems and local machine to manage execution of code written programs specifically for the Microsoft framework. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the development tool used to write for the game system coding. This application is used to build up the game system code, code debugging process, system appearance design, execution of game system, it is mainly the key development tool used in this project. Microsoft XNA Game Studio is utilized by me the system programmer to design the animation, sound, and the entire multimedia enhancement required for the game system. This tool is required to be included in this process to enable the coding languages to add references in its library files and to execute the library files in the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Without this tool, the coding language will never be executed because failure in retrieving the coding files from the library files. Adobe Photoshop C3 is used by the developer to create image file as the two dimensional graphic to be presented in the system. All animation that present in the system is created by this tool and included in the system as the two dimensional graphic. DirectX SDK DirectX SDK is developed by Microsoft with the objective of allowing the creation of application for a certain software package, software framework, hardware plat form, computer system, video game console, operating system or any other similar platform which supports DirectX. DirectX SDK comes in a set of development tools which contains of all the DirectX software needed for a game developer to create DirectX based application using the Visual Basic.Net, C or C++, and C+ coding language which was developed by Microsoft. The reason why DirectX SDK is so powerful was mainly because it was made up from many different system tools which some of the main components includes: DirectX headers and libraries DirectX system runtime components DirectX Application Programming Interfaces Documentations Additional application and source code developed using DirectX compliant Various powerful tools and utilities integrated to the DirectX SDK This development tool allows me to take a complete advantage of DirectX technologies for creating excellent games and graphic applications. DirectX SDK allows developers to utilize its latest technology in hardware innovation for developing powerful games. DirectX SDK will receive update in its version releases to keep up with the latest technology enhanced within the DirectX software this is necessary to boost the codes, tools, library files and the documentation for every Microsoft Platform SDK. Microsoft DirectX SDK comes with an important feature which is the D3DX library acts like a toolkit which provides developers with high level functionality to help create DirectX applications. This feature helps to optimize low level routines so as to obtain the best performance out of Microsoft platform. Incorporated with basic features such as math calculation and texture loading routines, updated technology in art manipulating content including tangent frame generation, mesh optimization and Precomputed Radiance Transfer. DirectX SDK come with many other features such as D3DX effects framework, High Level Shading Languages, Shader Debugger, PIX for Window Platform. These technologies will help developer in all way developing their game system accordingly. DirectX SDK will be able to integrate with Microsoft Visual Studio .Net to enable developers to code their system using it. Pipelining feature will be enabled with the integration of DirectX SDK towards Microsoft Visual Studio .Net, these enable developers to code for pipelining structure for their game application. Certain samples will be included within DirectX SDK to help developers to understand the technologies used in DirectX. In other words DirectX SDK will help developers by providing technical solution, best suitable graphic rendering outcome, graphic localization, code implementation, library files, better and simple developing experience, and also how to render and produce most from interactive audio. Microsoft DirectX SDK comes with all the features and tools needed for the graphic rendering, audio rendering, and visualization for game developers to make use of in order to create powerful DirectX based applications either for a simple game or a complicated game development. Microsoft .NET Framework Microsoft .Net Framework is a platform or so what people called a development environment to seamlessly create applications that accessible through developers computer from all across the world. It is an application adopted to comply with open standards such as eXtensible Markup Languages, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and Simple Object Access Protocol in order to interact with applications that are available in other platform. .Net Framework is platform independent and language independent system which allows the developer to use different programming languages such as VB.Net, C#, Jscript, VBscript, C and C++ to run applications on different platform such as Unix, Mac, Linux, and Window. .Net Framework enables developer to use various libraries to help in developing and application faster, easier and cheaper. As for now, .Net Framework is identified to be able to support over 20 different programming languages. There is a reason for why .Net Framework is built to support multiple different types of programming languages is explained by the concept of Common Language Runtime engine. CLR engine compiles the code into Microsoft Intermediate Language. The MSIL is a set of instructions used to translate the codes into native codes making .Net Framework capable of language and platform independent. CLR is also responsible for run time services such as language integration, security enforcement, memory process and thread management. In addition, .Net Framework provides wide infrastructure to create web applications and non web applications. As for the time being, Microsoft has claimed .Net Framework comes in two different categories which is CLR and .Net Framework class library. Common Language Runtime is responsible to provide common runtime services to all .Net based applications. As for more CLR reduces the developers time to code for an application by utilizing its feature like life cycle management, strong type naming, cross language exception handling, and dynamic binding designed to turn application development software into reusable components. As for .Net Framework class library, it appears that this system consists of predefined sets of functionality that developer can freely utilize to enhance their application. The class library consists of three major components which are: ASP.NET Windows Form ADO.NET Well for this game application project, I will be using CLR and also .Net Framework class library as VB.NET and Window Form will be use for my game application as the two key component. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 was released in 19 November 2007 replacing the older version of Visual Studio with the newer enhanced version of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2008 is focused based on the development for Window Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 system and web applications. Visual Studio 2008 requires .NET Framework 3.5 to run properly and to process compiles assemblies. Visual Studio 2008 will possess the ability to chooses and utilize different .NET framework version depending to the developers choice. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 delivers on Microsofts vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create new applications without ignoring the quality of the application with accounted rich user experiences. Visual Studio 2008 comes with the ability for the developer to capture and analyze information to help make effective decisions. Packed with the ability for developer to rapidly create secured, manageable, and reliable applications is the strongest advantage of using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio 2008 promised to be able to deliver key advances for developers in three primary pillars which are: Rapid Application Development Effective team collaboration Breakthrough user experiences Visual Studio 2008 has received a many users feedback and most of them are identified to be positive. Based on the three pillars, users feedbacks are mostly related to those of the three with different technology area. They are categorized into seven technology areas Focused on Smart Client Application Development Microsoft Office Applications Integrated Window Platform Applications Integrated Enhanced Productivity in Data Handling Enabling New Web Experiences Improved Overall Developer Experience Enhanced Application Lifecycle Management It is the most effective smart client development to begin with good application design. Able to integrate UI designers into development process by supporting most of the popular languages such as VB.NET, C++, C#, Jscript, and many of others. The first reason that I find to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 in my system development are mainly because it has a very good system development tools which is capable of rapid application development and the easy to understand .NET code languages, which is the language I preferred the most among all other programming language. Microsoft XNA Game Studio Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a set of game development tools designed based on supported versions of Microsoft Visual Studio tools that allows developers to build up games supported by Window platform, Microsoft XBOX 360 game console, and Microsoft Zune. XNA Game Studio will require both Microsoft DirectX SDK and Microsoft .Net Framework to run correctly when integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. This tool comes including the XNA Framework which acts as same as Microsoft .Net Framework. The XNA Framework will integrate XNA library files onto Visual Studio 2008 to enable XNA graphic and audio coding to get executed. XNA Game Studio is seamlessly integrated with supported version of Microsoft Visual Studio tools, this integration will enable developers to use new coding structure to develop two and three dimensional games easily due to new library files added to the Visual Studio base library, developers will have a new experience in learning new codes which only works with the XNA Game Studio integration. XNA Game Studio provides three main features which are: Game component models New framework library designed to support Microsoft Windows, XBOX 360, and Zune game development Integration with XNA Framework Content Pipeline. Microsoft XNA Game Studio has become popular since it has been launched years ago, the reason why more and more people are utilizing it is because if new technology in game development breakthrough, the rapid application development, and the game quality produced. Adobe Photoshop C3 Adobe Photoshop is simply an advanced graphic editing program designed and published by Adobe Systems. Adobe Photoshop managed to rise up as the graphic development software after years of competing in the market. Now, Adobe Photoshop is considered to be the top in its market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation software. Furthermore, Adobe Photoshop is known to be the flagship product in its company and the main development focus of the company. Adobe Photoshop is developed to be a software targeting the graphic professional industry, its name has been around the graphic development tool industry for years. For so it gained the fame and popularity through time. Adobe Photoshop is consider to be the best, rated as a killer application for both MAC and Window OS. Adobe Photoshop were born out from its first generation program named ImagePro in 1987. Developed by the Knoll Brothers, Thomas Knoll and John Knoll. The first published Photoshop program managed to sold at 200 copies which is considered a good outcome. And soon, in the following year, after the Adobe is established, the Knoll brothers purchases Adobe Photoshop distribution license to begin distributing Adobe Photoshop worldwide. The reason Adobe Photoshop is used in the project development were mainly to develop image files which serves the purpose as two dimensional graphic rendered to the system. Image files are designed and edited in the Photoshop so that it could be added later to the system as the active two dimensional graphic. Chapter 3: Research on the technology related to 2D games and game systems programming Two Dimensional Graphic Two Dimensional games know as 2D computer graphic games are a computer based graphic images. These images are made up from 2D digital images, 2D texts, and 2D geometric models. Images can vary from image compositions, pixel arts, digital arts, photographs, and texts. 2D graphics are frequently used most in the graphic industry because of its conveniences and simple rendering. Nowadays almost all of the websites incorporates 2D graphic content into its webpage, those graphic content may vary from a tiny graphic image file to a fully functional 2D games. Therefore 2D graphic plays an important part in the information technology field. Two dimensional graphic have certain advantages which makes it to be superior when compared with three dimensional graphic. The three main differences which makes 2D graphic to be superior are: Able to render faster than 3D graphic This point makes developers to choose 2D graphic for low bandwidth consumption. And also why means rendering it also means that 2D graphic is produced faster when compared with 3D development. Thus 2D graphic can be developed with rapid application development tools. Creating simple games such as puzzle, card, and board games where high degree of realism is not required. 2D games are categorized as a simple graphic structure which can be easily developed, thus it does not require the graphics to be truly realistic. Games that is developed using 2D technology will be simple looking, not too complex, and depends a lot on the graphic coloring. Supported by all of the operating system 2D graphic technology is used heavily on the appearance of an operating system to increase system load efficiency. Thus OS such as Window, Mac and Linux implements lots of 2D graphic objects which increases the loading speed and reduces CPU workload in rendering OS graphical interface. Two dimensional graphic started back during 1950s using vector graphic devices. Soon enough raster based graphic technology was introduced and manage to take over the usage of vector graphic. Vector Graphics Vector graphics uses mathematical relationships between points and the paths connecting them to shape the image. Vector graphic emphasizes much more on the quality of the image compared with the raster graphic. Thus raster graphic are usually used to represent photographic images because of the quality it possess. Vector graphic are made from smooth quality images which do not suffers from loss of image quality even after resized. This is the main key point why people prefers vector over raster graphics. The Figure 3.1.1.1 above shows the differences of the vector and raster graphic when the image is displayed in magnified condition. The left side of the picture is represented with vector graphic, the magnified image is displayed which total quality of the source image, produced with full quality of smoothness. Where else raster graphic, is represented at the right side with a bitmap image, which suffers great loss of picture quality due to the source image is produced with arrays of pixels. In other word when judging an image quality, vector based graphic image wins fair. Vector graphics possess four main key advantages that makes it superior graphic which is: Complete Scalability A vector graphic image allows picture resizing without suffering any quality loss. This applies to any size of picture whether it is at a size of a poster or business card. This is the key advantage of vector graphic. Compatibility for both web and print Due to the image quality is always high, for this reason vector images are always compatible with printing specification and also web images. Unlike raster bitmaps which has a limited graphic resolution minimum of 300 dpi to be able to display the image in the paper and also in webpage. Completely editable using imaging tools Vector graphics is completely editable using both vector and raster graphic editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Images can be resized, skewed, rotated, reshaped, combines with other vector model, and other functions that is supported by both vector graphic and the imaging tools. Supporting Background Transparency Vector graphics will support all types of background, with any color or pattern, either it is with another raster graphic or vector. Vector graphics when displayed in computer display will produce results of grids of small rectangular cells called pixels, vector graphics are composed of tiny pixel dots far smaller than raster graphics. Raster Graphics Raster Graphics is a type of graphic in which the image of it is separated into matrix of picture elements which is known as pixels. An image with the present of pixels in the image file is made up by rows and columns of pixels lines up forming an image in the picture. Each of the pixels will be assigned with different or same color which serves the purpose of creating color depth of an image, this is often referred as number of bits needed to encode all the colors. Raster graphics are usually coded in typical bits depth with are used nowadays in: Black and white ( Two Colors ) : 1 Bit Color shades of gray ( Four Colors ) : 2 Bit 16 Colors : 4 Bit 256 Colors : 8 Bit 65, 536 Colors ( 65K High Colors ) : 16 Bit True Color : 24 Bit True Color ( Improved ) : 32 Bit In a raster graphic image, the numbers of row and column determines the image resolution, in other words the more pixels presented in an image the higher the resolution. Image resolutions are calculated using total pixels present in the first row multiplied by total pixel present in the first column. If the image is presented in certain physical size, then the size will combine with the number of pixels resulting with number of Dot Per Inch (DPI) in the image. DPI is a measurement of an images resolution. A high resolution image will present in higher DPI with smaller dot, this makes it harder to be spotted as individual spot in the image. Raster Graphic is much more convenient when compared to vector graphic. They are resolution independent, thus it happens that raster graphic can be used to represent a photo realistic images in a short amount of time. But because of certain limitation in raster graphic, it makes the quality of the image to be vary from different source of quality. Pixels tend to get arranged in a regular pattern, resulting weird shaping pattern displayed in the screen of a computer monitor. Rather if the pixels are assigned with wrong color, the whole image might get displayed weirdly with all the color mixed. If a resolution is too low and the contrast is too high, certain pixels will stand out leaving the image with jaggies. Figure 3.1.2.1 is a raster graphic image which shows clearly the pixel resolutions of the image. As the image shows the rectangular array of dots which is large enough to be identified using the eye of a human, these rectangular are call pixels. The image is displayed by drawing the pixels sequentially in a fixed order either from the left to right or top to bottom. The image of a fish is made up using plain white and blue color which is assigned to each of the pixel dots. Usually a raster image is made up from high resolution in which pixel dots are not visible from humans eye sight. But the above image is a low resolution raster image, thus pixels are visible. Raster graphic are presented in digital file format usually in JPEG images, Bitmap images, GIF images, TIFF images and PNG images. The usage of raster graphic has been popular since the rise of World Wide Web in the internet. This is because raster graphic presents huge advantages when it is utilized within the web network. Advantages of raster graphic are: Widely used in personal computer in displaying images. Most of computer operating system nowadays supports raster image display as the basic image file distribution. Digital images are used widely in operating system as the main graphic image display. This is the strongest advantage of raster graphic. Web standard for image uploading, display, image file distribution and file download due to the small file size. Its one of the main reason raster image is widely distributed across web. Resolution image independent, able to display all resolution types of image file. Can be edited using image developing tools. Throughout all the advantages may be excellent in a point of view, but raster graphic image easily suffers from quality loss due to its pixel dot independent resolution. Most of the image file used to display raster graphic image have a limited color support which disadvantages in image color displayed in the monitor. Raster graphic images that are distributed across the network may be compressed to reduce its file size, this is a drawback as compressing the image file usually will reduce its image quality. Benefits from Two Dimensional Games Programming Over Three Dimensional Games Development Cost This point is obviously correct and without doubt, 2D games development is really cheaper when it is compared to 3D games development due to the difference of content creation. The move towards hi-definition graphic content has brought 3D games a breakthrough in the games technology, but at the same time the cost of development has also double up because of using new developed engines which is expensive. Most 3D games development faces high development cost and they are still in researching of new game engines to cut down the development costs. Unlike 2D games engines, they are sold cheaper than most of the 3D game engines in the market. This point is based on the logical assumption that 3D is a newer technology which need more resources for development and 2D is a traditional game technology which is developed even before existence of 3D, thus making it to be considered not as complex as 3D games development Graphical Processing Performance 2D games development uses lower processing speed and power compared with 3D development. In the old days where personal computers are still not as advance as nowadays, it is impossible to commence development in either 3D or 2D games development. But considering the advance of technologies nowadays which makes most of those not too complex games development of 2D and 3D graphic possible. In the old days personal computer lacks of the processing speed and memory capacity to run the system process. The reason why 2D games requires less graphical processing performance is because 2D games uses less graphical animation which would requires heavy framerate processing with fast processing speed. Shaders capabilities in 2D graphics All thanks to the shaders technology used in the 3D technology, 2D graphics can now implement of shaders. 2D graphics can be enriched with a soft look to the entire scene, bloom effect, glowing effects and graphic effects. Shaders enable 2D graphic animation to improve its quality and technology. Although shaders brings lots of new effects to the 2D graphic, but its still in experimental stage where its relatively unexplored concept that has a lot of potential. Real time audio synthesis 2D games once uses midi and redbook audio for its audio sound effects, its the only available audio technology that is supported by the 2D graphic games. But that was during the old days. With the help of VST instruments, real time synthesis of audio can be implemented towards 2D game development. Music in games can expand beyond playback into performing dynamic arrangements and dynamic synthesis. The game can be implemented with audio music that is suitable with the nature of the game type accordingly. With the advanced processing power, a complete real time audio track can be implemented using VST effects in the form of compressors, equalizers and mixing tables. With this technology, 2D game nowadays could experience rich enhancement to bring new breakthrough. 2D Multiplayer Online Games Despite 2D multiplayer games are being made in application program, there are publishers that release 2D online games which has gained quite the fame among online users. Despite the simple concept of 2D programming, new technologies enable the developers to actually implement 2D online games into website. Incorporating both the 2D engine and game program directly into web browsers nowadays. This is a very convenient and brilliant way into marketing 2D games online as no setups and download are required. This new technology has helps 2D games to be once again gain popularity in the world. Programming Language Programming language is the all time famous programming instructions which are created by developers since late 40s until today which is to serve the purpose to create applications. The so call programming language is actually a set of languages which composed of words, symbols, and numbers which is made up to be algorithms that each type of language differs. In other words Programming Language is actually a set of instructions that constructs the logic of the system, instructs every action of the system and performs of functions. As human language are too difficult for a computer to understand, thus commands of programming language are used to replace human language so computers will understand the way it was designed for the same purpose. In game development, programming process is inevitable, the functional process in the system is fully dependent to the programming code which is written in its way. The way game system reacts will turn out running according to the programming code structure in which the programmer designed it to be. So far in the game development coding technology, only certain programming languages are capable in developing 2D and 3D game system. And most of the p Development Using XNA Game Studio Development Using XNA Game Studio Chapter 1: Preface Over the past few years where two dimensional and three dimensional graphic has been utilized consecutively for developing computer games and console games. Two dimensional graphic games have been very popular since the beginning of 1940s and thats where it all started at the first place. It started with 2D games at first which is developed for the use of arcade mainframes and console machines, followed by the development of computer games for mainframe computers. Through the innovation development of dimensional graphic games, 3 dimensional games were to emerge as the most popular game genre which started in the late 80s. But despise all the development of 3D games in the games software industries, 2D games are still being developed in the new market. This is because 2D games are still being preferred by many people in the world, and due to this point, games software vendors are still taking account of 2D games development. In the past few years, starting from the year 2000, 2D games starts to become widely know and played by many users with the development of mobile games and internet web based games. There have been rapid development of 2D technology to create new application games for the growing internet network, more and more website incorporate web based 2D mini games, online games and puzzle games. Its been proven that 2D games are getting more and more popular compared to the years before year 2000, and with more websites trying to incorporate 2D games towards their web as the 3rd party application. Such website is like the ever popular facebook.com incorporating hundreds and even thousands of 2D games as the 3rd party game application to attract more and more people towards joining the social web network. Few years back, Microsoft introduced the XNA Game Studio software distributed across the internet to enable software programmers to develop new games for windows platform and also the new XBOX 360. The XNA game studio is licensed software, but with the MSDN help, the author as a student get to have the chance to obtain a tryout of this Microsoft XNA game studio. According to Microsoft, XNA game studio will need to be incorporated with Microsoft Visual Studio to enable references to be added in the system coding. If we were to look back few years before, developing a game even for a two dimensional game would took probably months and even years, a simple personal computer would not even be sufficient to run the system codes, execute the game, and debug the system. And even with the availability of the development tools, it would surely require serious experts to come out with a game system coding, due to the complicated level of programming language available during the urban times. In other words there are almost none development tools available to reach in the hands of the student, or internet users to develop their own games by themselves. And by looking at the games development now, and comparing them, it is a breakthrough for the games development. As I foresees the development potential for two dimensional games, I am sure that two dimensional game will have plenty of development potential in the future, as its been proven development of two dimensional games did not stop although three dimensional games been around for quite a long time, it didnt manage to replace the two dimensional games market its technology. There are quite a few reasons why two dimensional games are still around developing, which mainly are because of its cheap development cost, simple development process, easy for users to understand and well played. Its one of the reasons why Microsoft, the top player in IT industry is still in for two dimensional games development and searching for the breakthrough for it by creating development tools to support the development of two dimensional games. Chapter 2: Development Tools Introduction This chapter was designed to elaborate the use of each development tools which is related towards developing the XNA BubbleBall Attack 2D game. In order to produce this game system a set of software development tools need to be installed on the developers machine to enable full support to the game system. All identified developing tools which is related in the development process includes DirectX SDK (DirectX Software Development Kit) a set of application programming interfaces designed to handle tasks. It is a development tool containing all DirectX software required to build and produce cutting-edge, rich media interactive applications. Microsoft .NET Framework is required for its library reference of coding solutions to common problems and local machine to manage execution of code written programs specifically for the Microsoft framework. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 is the development tool used to write for the game system coding. This application is used to build up the game system code, code debugging process, system appearance design, execution of game system, it is mainly the key development tool used in this project. Microsoft XNA Game Studio is utilized by me the system programmer to design the animation, sound, and the entire multimedia enhancement required for the game system. This tool is required to be included in this process to enable the coding languages to add references in its library files and to execute the library files in the Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Without this tool, the coding language will never be executed because failure in retrieving the coding files from the library files. Adobe Photoshop C3 is used by the developer to create image file as the two dimensional graphic to be presented in the system. All animation that present in the system is created by this tool and included in the system as the two dimensional graphic. DirectX SDK DirectX SDK is developed by Microsoft with the objective of allowing the creation of application for a certain software package, software framework, hardware plat form, computer system, video game console, operating system or any other similar platform which supports DirectX. DirectX SDK comes in a set of development tools which contains of all the DirectX software needed for a game developer to create DirectX based application using the Visual Basic.Net, C or C++, and C+ coding language which was developed by Microsoft. The reason why DirectX SDK is so powerful was mainly because it was made up from many different system tools which some of the main components includes: DirectX headers and libraries DirectX system runtime components DirectX Application Programming Interfaces Documentations Additional application and source code developed using DirectX compliant Various powerful tools and utilities integrated to the DirectX SDK This development tool allows me to take a complete advantage of DirectX technologies for creating excellent games and graphic applications. DirectX SDK allows developers to utilize its latest technology in hardware innovation for developing powerful games. DirectX SDK will receive update in its version releases to keep up with the latest technology enhanced within the DirectX software this is necessary to boost the codes, tools, library files and the documentation for every Microsoft Platform SDK. Microsoft DirectX SDK comes with an important feature which is the D3DX library acts like a toolkit which provides developers with high level functionality to help create DirectX applications. This feature helps to optimize low level routines so as to obtain the best performance out of Microsoft platform. Incorporated with basic features such as math calculation and texture loading routines, updated technology in art manipulating content including tangent frame generation, mesh optimization and Precomputed Radiance Transfer. DirectX SDK come with many other features such as D3DX effects framework, High Level Shading Languages, Shader Debugger, PIX for Window Platform. These technologies will help developer in all way developing their game system accordingly. DirectX SDK will be able to integrate with Microsoft Visual Studio .Net to enable developers to code their system using it. Pipelining feature will be enabled with the integration of DirectX SDK towards Microsoft Visual Studio .Net, these enable developers to code for pipelining structure for their game application. Certain samples will be included within DirectX SDK to help developers to understand the technologies used in DirectX. In other words DirectX SDK will help developers by providing technical solution, best suitable graphic rendering outcome, graphic localization, code implementation, library files, better and simple developing experience, and also how to render and produce most from interactive audio. Microsoft DirectX SDK comes with all the features and tools needed for the graphic rendering, audio rendering, and visualization for game developers to make use of in order to create powerful DirectX based applications either for a simple game or a complicated game development. Microsoft .NET Framework Microsoft .Net Framework is a platform or so what people called a development environment to seamlessly create applications that accessible through developers computer from all across the world. It is an application adopted to comply with open standards such as eXtensible Markup Languages, Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and Simple Object Access Protocol in order to interact with applications that are available in other platform. .Net Framework is platform independent and language independent system which allows the developer to use different programming languages such as VB.Net, C#, Jscript, VBscript, C and C++ to run applications on different platform such as Unix, Mac, Linux, and Window. .Net Framework enables developer to use various libraries to help in developing and application faster, easier and cheaper. As for now, .Net Framework is identified to be able to support over 20 different programming languages. There is a reason for why .Net Framework is built to support multiple different types of programming languages is explained by the concept of Common Language Runtime engine. CLR engine compiles the code into Microsoft Intermediate Language. The MSIL is a set of instructions used to translate the codes into native codes making .Net Framework capable of language and platform independent. CLR is also responsible for run time services such as language integration, security enforcement, memory process and thread management. In addition, .Net Framework provides wide infrastructure to create web applications and non web applications. As for the time being, Microsoft has claimed .Net Framework comes in two different categories which is CLR and .Net Framework class library. Common Language Runtime is responsible to provide common runtime services to all .Net based applications. As for more CLR reduces the developers time to code for an application by utilizing its feature like life cycle management, strong type naming, cross language exception handling, and dynamic binding designed to turn application development software into reusable components. As for .Net Framework class library, it appears that this system consists of predefined sets of functionality that developer can freely utilize to enhance their application. The class library consists of three major components which are: ASP.NET Windows Form ADO.NET Well for this game application project, I will be using CLR and also .Net Framework class library as VB.NET and Window Form will be use for my game application as the two key component. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 was released in 19 November 2007 replacing the older version of Visual Studio with the newer enhanced version of Visual Studio. Visual Studio 2008 is focused based on the development for Window Vista, Microsoft Office 2007 system and web applications. Visual Studio 2008 requires .NET Framework 3.5 to run properly and to process compiles assemblies. Visual Studio 2008 will possess the ability to chooses and utilize different .NET framework version depending to the developers choice. Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 delivers on Microsofts vision of smart client applications by enabling developers to rapidly create new applications without ignoring the quality of the application with accounted rich user experiences. Visual Studio 2008 comes with the ability for the developer to capture and analyze information to help make effective decisions. Packed with the ability for developer to rapidly create secured, manageable, and reliable applications is the strongest advantage of using Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. Visual Studio 2008 promised to be able to deliver key advances for developers in three primary pillars which are: Rapid Application Development Effective team collaboration Breakthrough user experiences Visual Studio 2008 has received a many users feedback and most of them are identified to be positive. Based on the three pillars, users feedbacks are mostly related to those of the three with different technology area. They are categorized into seven technology areas Focused on Smart Client Application Development Microsoft Office Applications Integrated Window Platform Applications Integrated Enhanced Productivity in Data Handling Enabling New Web Experiences Improved Overall Developer Experience Enhanced Application Lifecycle Management It is the most effective smart client development to begin with good application design. Able to integrate UI designers into development process by supporting most of the popular languages such as VB.NET, C++, C#, Jscript, and many of others. The first reason that I find to use Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 in my system development are mainly because it has a very good system development tools which is capable of rapid application development and the easy to understand .NET code languages, which is the language I preferred the most among all other programming language. Microsoft XNA Game Studio Microsoft XNA Game Studio is a set of game development tools designed based on supported versions of Microsoft Visual Studio tools that allows developers to build up games supported by Window platform, Microsoft XBOX 360 game console, and Microsoft Zune. XNA Game Studio will require both Microsoft DirectX SDK and Microsoft .Net Framework to run correctly when integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. This tool comes including the XNA Framework which acts as same as Microsoft .Net Framework. The XNA Framework will integrate XNA library files onto Visual Studio 2008 to enable XNA graphic and audio coding to get executed. XNA Game Studio is seamlessly integrated with supported version of Microsoft Visual Studio tools, this integration will enable developers to use new coding structure to develop two and three dimensional games easily due to new library files added to the Visual Studio base library, developers will have a new experience in learning new codes which only works with the XNA Game Studio integration. XNA Game Studio provides three main features which are: Game component models New framework library designed to support Microsoft Windows, XBOX 360, and Zune game development Integration with XNA Framework Content Pipeline. Microsoft XNA Game Studio has become popular since it has been launched years ago, the reason why more and more people are utilizing it is because if new technology in game development breakthrough, the rapid application development, and the game quality produced. Adobe Photoshop C3 Adobe Photoshop is simply an advanced graphic editing program designed and published by Adobe Systems. Adobe Photoshop managed to rise up as the graphic development software after years of competing in the market. Now, Adobe Photoshop is considered to be the top in its market leader for commercial bitmap and image manipulation software. Furthermore, Adobe Photoshop is known to be the flagship product in its company and the main development focus of the company. Adobe Photoshop is developed to be a software targeting the graphic professional industry, its name has been around the graphic development tool industry for years. For so it gained the fame and popularity through time. Adobe Photoshop is consider to be the best, rated as a killer application for both MAC and Window OS. Adobe Photoshop were born out from its first generation program named ImagePro in 1987. Developed by the Knoll Brothers, Thomas Knoll and John Knoll. The first published Photoshop program managed to sold at 200 copies which is considered a good outcome. And soon, in the following year, after the Adobe is established, the Knoll brothers purchases Adobe Photoshop distribution license to begin distributing Adobe Photoshop worldwide. The reason Adobe Photoshop is used in the project development were mainly to develop image files which serves the purpose as two dimensional graphic rendered to the system. Image files are designed and edited in the Photoshop so that it could be added later to the system as the active two dimensional graphic. Chapter 3: Research on the technology related to 2D games and game systems programming Two Dimensional Graphic Two Dimensional games know as 2D computer graphic games are a computer based graphic images. These images are made up from 2D digital images, 2D texts, and 2D geometric models. Images can vary from image compositions, pixel arts, digital arts, photographs, and texts. 2D graphics are frequently used most in the graphic industry because of its conveniences and simple rendering. Nowadays almost all of the websites incorporates 2D graphic content into its webpage, those graphic content may vary from a tiny graphic image file to a fully functional 2D games. Therefore 2D graphic plays an important part in the information technology field. Two dimensional graphic have certain advantages which makes it to be superior when compared with three dimensional graphic. The three main differences which makes 2D graphic to be superior are: Able to render faster than 3D graphic This point makes developers to choose 2D graphic for low bandwidth consumption. And also why means rendering it also means that 2D graphic is produced faster when compared with 3D development. Thus 2D graphic can be developed with rapid application development tools. Creating simple games such as puzzle, card, and board games where high degree of realism is not required. 2D games are categorized as a simple graphic structure which can be easily developed, thus it does not require the graphics to be truly realistic. Games that is developed using 2D technology will be simple looking, not too complex, and depends a lot on the graphic coloring. Supported by all of the operating system 2D graphic technology is used heavily on the appearance of an operating system to increase system load efficiency. Thus OS such as Window, Mac and Linux implements lots of 2D graphic objects which increases the loading speed and reduces CPU workload in rendering OS graphical interface. Two dimensional graphic started back during 1950s using vector graphic devices. Soon enough raster based graphic technology was introduced and manage to take over the usage of vector graphic. Vector Graphics Vector graphics uses mathematical relationships between points and the paths connecting them to shape the image. Vector graphic emphasizes much more on the quality of the image compared with the raster graphic. Thus raster graphic are usually used to represent photographic images because of the quality it possess. Vector graphic are made from smooth quality images which do not suffers from loss of image quality even after resized. This is the main key point why people prefers vector over raster graphics. The Figure 3.1.1.1 above shows the differences of the vector and raster graphic when the image is displayed in magnified condition. The left side of the picture is represented with vector graphic, the magnified image is displayed which total quality of the source image, produced with full quality of smoothness. Where else raster graphic, is represented at the right side with a bitmap image, which suffers great loss of picture quality due to the source image is produced with arrays of pixels. In other word when judging an image quality, vector based graphic image wins fair. Vector graphics possess four main key advantages that makes it superior graphic which is: Complete Scalability A vector graphic image allows picture resizing without suffering any quality loss. This applies to any size of picture whether it is at a size of a poster or business card. This is the key advantage of vector graphic. Compatibility for both web and print Due to the image quality is always high, for this reason vector images are always compatible with printing specification and also web images. Unlike raster bitmaps which has a limited graphic resolution minimum of 300 dpi to be able to display the image in the paper and also in webpage. Completely editable using imaging tools Vector graphics is completely editable using both vector and raster graphic editing tools such as Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Images can be resized, skewed, rotated, reshaped, combines with other vector model, and other functions that is supported by both vector graphic and the imaging tools. Supporting Background Transparency Vector graphics will support all types of background, with any color or pattern, either it is with another raster graphic or vector. Vector graphics when displayed in computer display will produce results of grids of small rectangular cells called pixels, vector graphics are composed of tiny pixel dots far smaller than raster graphics. Raster Graphics Raster Graphics is a type of graphic in which the image of it is separated into matrix of picture elements which is known as pixels. An image with the present of pixels in the image file is made up by rows and columns of pixels lines up forming an image in the picture. Each of the pixels will be assigned with different or same color which serves the purpose of creating color depth of an image, this is often referred as number of bits needed to encode all the colors. Raster graphics are usually coded in typical bits depth with are used nowadays in: Black and white ( Two Colors ) : 1 Bit Color shades of gray ( Four Colors ) : 2 Bit 16 Colors : 4 Bit 256 Colors : 8 Bit 65, 536 Colors ( 65K High Colors ) : 16 Bit True Color : 24 Bit True Color ( Improved ) : 32 Bit In a raster graphic image, the numbers of row and column determines the image resolution, in other words the more pixels presented in an image the higher the resolution. Image resolutions are calculated using total pixels present in the first row multiplied by total pixel present in the first column. If the image is presented in certain physical size, then the size will combine with the number of pixels resulting with number of Dot Per Inch (DPI) in the image. DPI is a measurement of an images resolution. A high resolution image will present in higher DPI with smaller dot, this makes it harder to be spotted as individual spot in the image. Raster Graphic is much more convenient when compared to vector graphic. They are resolution independent, thus it happens that raster graphic can be used to represent a photo realistic images in a short amount of time. But because of certain limitation in raster graphic, it makes the quality of the image to be vary from different source of quality. Pixels tend to get arranged in a regular pattern, resulting weird shaping pattern displayed in the screen of a computer monitor. Rather if the pixels are assigned with wrong color, the whole image might get displayed weirdly with all the color mixed. If a resolution is too low and the contrast is too high, certain pixels will stand out leaving the image with jaggies. Figure 3.1.2.1 is a raster graphic image which shows clearly the pixel resolutions of the image. As the image shows the rectangular array of dots which is large enough to be identified using the eye of a human, these rectangular are call pixels. The image is displayed by drawing the pixels sequentially in a fixed order either from the left to right or top to bottom. The image of a fish is made up using plain white and blue color which is assigned to each of the pixel dots. Usually a raster image is made up from high resolution in which pixel dots are not visible from humans eye sight. But the above image is a low resolution raster image, thus pixels are visible. Raster graphic are presented in digital file format usually in JPEG images, Bitmap images, GIF images, TIFF images and PNG images. The usage of raster graphic has been popular since the rise of World Wide Web in the internet. This is because raster graphic presents huge advantages when it is utilized within the web network. Advantages of raster graphic are: Widely used in personal computer in displaying images. Most of computer operating system nowadays supports raster image display as the basic image file distribution. Digital images are used widely in operating system as the main graphic image display. This is the strongest advantage of raster graphic. Web standard for image uploading, display, image file distribution and file download due to the small file size. Its one of the main reason raster image is widely distributed across web. Resolution image independent, able to display all resolution types of image file. Can be edited using image developing tools. Throughout all the advantages may be excellent in a point of view, but raster graphic image easily suffers from quality loss due to its pixel dot independent resolution. Most of the image file used to display raster graphic image have a limited color support which disadvantages in image color displayed in the monitor. Raster graphic images that are distributed across the network may be compressed to reduce its file size, this is a drawback as compressing the image file usually will reduce its image quality. Benefits from Two Dimensional Games Programming Over Three Dimensional Games Development Cost This point is obviously correct and without doubt, 2D games development is really cheaper when it is compared to 3D games development due to the difference of content creation. The move towards hi-definition graphic content has brought 3D games a breakthrough in the games technology, but at the same time the cost of development has also double up because of using new developed engines which is expensive. Most 3D games development faces high development cost and they are still in researching of new game engines to cut down the development costs. Unlike 2D games engines, they are sold cheaper than most of the 3D game engines in the market. This point is based on the logical assumption that 3D is a newer technology which need more resources for development and 2D is a traditional game technology which is developed even before existence of 3D, thus making it to be considered not as complex as 3D games development Graphical Processing Performance 2D games development uses lower processing speed and power compared with 3D development. In the old days where personal computers are still not as advance as nowadays, it is impossible to commence development in either 3D or 2D games development. But considering the advance of technologies nowadays which makes most of those not too complex games development of 2D and 3D graphic possible. In the old days personal computer lacks of the processing speed and memory capacity to run the system process. The reason why 2D games requires less graphical processing performance is because 2D games uses less graphical animation which would requires heavy framerate processing with fast processing speed. Shaders capabilities in 2D graphics All thanks to the shaders technology used in the 3D technology, 2D graphics can now implement of shaders. 2D graphics can be enriched with a soft look to the entire scene, bloom effect, glowing effects and graphic effects. Shaders enable 2D graphic animation to improve its quality and technology. Although shaders brings lots of new effects to the 2D graphic, but its still in experimental stage where its relatively unexplored concept that has a lot of potential. Real time audio synthesis 2D games once uses midi and redbook audio for its audio sound effects, its the only available audio technology that is supported by the 2D graphic games. But that was during the old days. With the help of VST instruments, real time synthesis of audio can be implemented towards 2D game development. Music in games can expand beyond playback into performing dynamic arrangements and dynamic synthesis. The game can be implemented with audio music that is suitable with the nature of the game type accordingly. With the advanced processing power, a complete real time audio track can be implemented using VST effects in the form of compressors, equalizers and mixing tables. With this technology, 2D game nowadays could experience rich enhancement to bring new breakthrough. 2D Multiplayer Online Games Despite 2D multiplayer games are being made in application program, there are publishers that release 2D online games which has gained quite the fame among online users. Despite the simple concept of 2D programming, new technologies enable the developers to actually implement 2D online games into website. Incorporating both the 2D engine and game program directly into web browsers nowadays. This is a very convenient and brilliant way into marketing 2D games online as no setups and download are required. This new technology has helps 2D games to be once again gain popularity in the world. Programming Language Programming language is the all time famous programming instructions which are created by developers since late 40s until today which is to serve the purpose to create applications. The so call programming language is actually a set of languages which composed of words, symbols, and numbers which is made up to be algorithms that each type of language differs. In other words Programming Language is actually a set of instructions that constructs the logic of the system, instructs every action of the system and performs of functions. As human language are too difficult for a computer to understand, thus commands of programming language are used to replace human language so computers will understand the way it was designed for the same purpose. In game development, programming process is inevitable, the functional process in the system is fully dependent to the programming code which is written in its way. The way game system reacts will turn out running according to the programming code structure in which the programmer designed it to be. So far in the game development coding technology, only certain programming languages are capable in developing 2D and 3D game system. And most of the p