KOT Task #2: Medicare Essay

Though Medicare plans are typically for persons over the age of 65 years old, they do not come without costs to the patient. If the patient has enough work credits, Medicare Part A is automatically available to the patient once he or she reaches age 65. Medicare Parts B and D, however, require the patient to navigate through an application process and the patient may incur penalty fees if he or she does not sign up for the plans during the allotted time frame once they have reached the age of 65. For Medicare parts B and D, the patient is responsible for paying the designated premiums. The Medicare Part B premium ranges from $96.40-110.50 monthly and the Part D plan ranges from $28.60-$38 monthly. There is also additional Medicare plans available for the patient to purchase through insurers such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield or Etna, however there are additional premiums in varying amounts (Medicare.gov, 2012). In most cases, Medicare Part A will cover inpatient hospital stays, rehabilitation centers, and long-term care facility stays. For Mrs. Zwick, Medicare Part A would apply to the rehab and inpatient hospitalizations. Medicare Part A will cover Mrs. Zwick’s five day hospital stay and the first 20 days of her stay at the rehabilitation facility. Each day following the first 20 days of rehab, a fee of $144.50 per day will accumulate at the rehabilitation facility for a total of $2890.00 which the facilities will be responsible for due to the patient acquiring a preventable infection during her stay (Medicare.gov, 2012). Medicare Part B is similar to medical insurance; covering medically necessary services such as MD visits and services, outpatient care, durable medical equipment, home health services, and sometimes preventative care services. In Mrs. Zwick’s case, Medicare Part B would cover the prescribed walker or other assistive devices if needed. However, based on Medicare Part B plan coverage, Mrs. Zwick will be responsible for a deductible of 20% of the cost of the walker (Medicare.gov, 2012). Medicare Part D is an elective prescription drug coverage plan available to Medicare recipients. There are various prescription drug plans offering medication coverage based on the plan’s preferred drug list. Though Mrs. Zwick’s plan coverage was not specified in the case study, she may be responsible for a co-payment for prescription drugs. If Mrs. Zwick does in fact have a co-payment, it would be a set amount; for example $10 per prescription or less if she receives generic drugs. Or, depending on if Mrs. Zwick has entered a coverage gap or â€Å"donut hole†, she will then be responsible for 50% of the costs of her prescription medications (Medicare.gov, 2012). Though Mrs. Zwick does have Medicare coverage, the plan may not pay for Mrs. Zwick’s extended stay or additional care required related to a hospital-acquired condition. In recent years, Medicare began refusing to pay for preventable, hospital acquired infections; making hospitals and other facilities accept responsibility for preventable infections acquired during the patient’s stay. However, in Mrs. Zwick’s instance, there may be some debate as to which facility will be held accountable for the preventable urinary tract infection (UTI). Though the case study reads that Mrs. Zwick was diagnosed with a hospital-acquired UTI, it also states that she was diagnosed 10 days into her stay at the rehabilitation facility and that there were complaints that Mrs. Zwick was not receiving proper catheter care. If the rehab facility was not following the current evidence-based protocol related to the patient’s catheter care, there is a strong possibility Mrs.Zwick did not acquire the urinary tract infection until after she was transferred to the rehab facility. Therefore, the hospital would not be responsible for the costs of care related to the UTI. However, Medicare would still not cover the costs and the nursing facility would then be held accountable for the extra costs incurred during the patient’s extended stay. Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, also known as COBRA, is a plan available to persons who have a loss of employment and health coverage. The COBRA plan will allow Mr. Davis to continue his health coverage beginning the original date his coverage was ceased and is usually available for approximately 18 months. However, the Cobra plan is not free of charge to the unemployed patient. The plan typically offers identical plan coverage to the patient; however the plan is more costly than the original premium the patient was used to paying. The cost of the COBRA plan is usually the amount of the previous premium in addition to the amount the employer contributed plus a 2% administration fee. The premium amount the patient would be responsible for would be quite a bit more costly, yet still less expensive than an individual rate. In order to for the patient to be covered by the COBRA plan, he would have to submit all the proper paperwork within the allotted time frame and pay t he monthly premiums without monthly payment reminders (FAQs for Employees About COBRA Continuation Health Coverage). Though COBRA is a way for Mr. Davis to continue his health insurance coverage once he became unemployed, it is not likely to be affordable. This then becomes a challenge that state or local governments are faced with. Two challenges state or local government may be faced with in providing care for patients like Mr. Davis with pre-existing conditions and lack of insurance coverage are increased costs and decreased health maintenance of the patients. Patients with long-term, chronic illnesses like Mr. Davis’s, care can be very costly, especially when the patient is unable to maintain routine medical care or visits and medications. Without routine medical care and maintenance medications, patients like Mr. Davis tend to have more frequent emergency room visits and hospitalizations; increasing costs for state and local government as well as tax payers. Though Mr. Davis is able to receive care during an emergency room visit, the providers are not fully aware of his health history and are only able to provide a temporary fix of his symptoms and not address his health care needs. One possible solution for the state and/or local government to consider would be to offer state funding for patients with chronic illnesses to be covered by a state funded insurance plan based on the patient’s income. This would allow for Mr. Davis to be seen for routine care, in an attempt to keep him healthy and reduce emergency room visits and hospitalizations. Another possible solution would be for local and state governments to fund healthcare facilities and/or clinics designated to care for patients with chronic health conditions; providing public health nurses who are available to visit the patients in the home in order to educate him or her on disease and disease processes. Though Mr. Davis is frustrated with the healthcare delivery in the United States and may think he would be better served in another country, he may be gravely disappointed by in their healthcare delivery systems even more. Countries such as Great Britain, Japan, Germany, and Switzerland offer public health insurance, however coverage does not come without strain. The universal health care coverage plans not only causes great deficit to the economy, but they also come with premiums, delays in care, and often times no choice of providers. Specialty appointments are nearly impossible to obtain, and in many cases terminally ill patients die prior to receiving the needed care. The plans cover the person and his or her dependents (plans including dependents have higher premiums), but the insured is still responsible for a portion of the services or bill; this applies to the elderly as well. The universal health care plans not only affect the insured, but the healthcare providers as well. In many cases, the healthcare workers are paid lower wages and work less hours in order to help offset some of the costs. The universal health plan in Great Britain offers residents no choices in regards to providers or facilities in which care is received and it is required for the patient to wait 122 days just to receive a routine appointment regardless of their condition (Healthcare Economist, 2008). Japan’s National Health Insurance covers those individuals and their dependents that are not eligible for employer-based insurance. However, the focus of coverage is on the older population; benefiting the retired community. If the insured is not of retirement age, the costs of premiums are higher (Fukawa). In Germany, less than 1% of the population is not covered by the Public Health Insurance. Germany’s healthcare plan offers the insured free choice of outpatient care physicians and hospitals if referred with the focus of care being on chronic care (Busse). Germany offers coverage for the following services: preventative care, inpatient and outpatient care, physician services, mental health care, dental care, prescription drug coverage, medical aids, rehabilitation services, and sick leave compensation (Busse). In Switzerland, there is no choice of providers or facilities in which the patient receives care due to private sector. This means patients like Mr. Davis would incur increased premiums and resulting in limited access to routine care and extended services (Clarke, 2011). Based on the different types of coverage available to patients offered under universal healthcare plans, Mr. Davis would be better served and cared for with the German Healthcare System due to the type of disease he has and his particular health care needs. References Busse, R., MD, MPH. The German Health Care System. Berlin University of Technology & Charite’. Clarke, E. 2011. â€Å"Healthcare Systems: Switzerland†. CIVITAS Institute for the Study of Civil Society. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from www.civitas.org.uk/nhs/switzerland.pdf[->0] FAQs for Employees About COBRA Continuation Health Coverage. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/faqs/faq-consumer-cobra.html Fukawa, T. Public Health Insurance in Japan. Healthcare Economist, 2008. Health Care Around the World: Great Britain. Retrieved fromhttp://healthcare-economist.com/2008/04/23/health-care-around-the-world-great-britain/ Medicare.gov, 2011. Retrieved May 5, 2012 from http://www.medicare.gov/navigation/medicare-basics/medicare-benefits [->0] – http://www.civitas.org.uk/nhs/switzerland.pdf

Week paper study mode

This allows for real-time monitoring as well as report enervated analyses. However, there are a few cornerstone components that should be explored. The Manager, Agent, NIB, Probe, SNAP, and ROOM are probably the most valued components. Let us start with the Manager and Agent. These terms are very similar in concept to the client/server relationship. The Manager/Agent relationship is an asymmetric communication type that works in a way, much like a selectiveness. Take a look to the anaphoric (Figure 1). You can see how the manager acts as a client while the managed system acts as a server per SE.However, while animal, there is a difference from the client/server that should be noted when applying it to the Manager/Agent relationship. Where there typically is many clients to one server, there are many agent to one manager. (Clime 77) So now that we have that straightened out, let us look at each role a little closer. The Manager acts as the controller and reporter of the Network Manage ment System. It can physically be either an application or a user. Typically the manager is an application that monitors various devices also known as Network Elements, (NEST) on a network.Theses network elements managed by he manager are considered Agents. Agents respond back to requests from the manager for information. They send back vital information about the devices and the overall network to the manager. This is how the manager updates the data it can produce to be later analyzed by the Network Administrator or monitored in real-time. (Clime 77) If you look to the right (Figure 2), you can see an example of what the information might look like when reported back to the user. A Probe is the way the NIB retrieves the instances it stores.While the term probe may have many definitions, for our reposes, we will define it as: â€Å"A probe is a program or other device inserted at a key juncture in a network for the purpose of monitoring or collecting data about network activity. à ¢â‚¬  (â€Å"Probe†) So a probe can be used to gather information that will later be stored virtually in the NIB. A simple example of a probe is the very common â€Å"Ping† command. It sends out a packet to check for the existence of the EN on the Network. Next, let's look at one of the common protocols used in the Network Management System.Simple Network Management Protocol, commonly abbreviated as SNAP, is the rotator that enables a manager to communicate with the many agents on the network. SNAP operates on the application layer of the OSI model, due to it being a TCP/IP protocol. Every SNAP packet sent contains a community string a version number, and a command or response for the manager. (â€Å"Network Monitoring Sofa;are by Management Manager†) Finally, the last Common component to discuss is the ROOM. ROOM is short for remote monitoring. â€Å"ROOM is basically a special SNAP NIB that enables managers to delegate certain management tasks to so-called R OOM probes. (Clime 307) As you can tell, the ROOM utilizes and interacts with a few of the other key component ants already mentioned. Some of the ROOM probe functions are the ability to create dividing lines of certain thresholds for alerts or creating a probe to run hourly for status of a certain instance. In conclusion, the Network Management System is used to monitor and manage a network's stability and smooth operation. The Manager, Agent, NIB, SNAP, and ROOM are five of the main components to a MS. Through the utilization of these components, a Manager can interact with agents on the network.

MARKETING PLANNING; The international market place Case Study

MARKETING PLANNING; The international market place - Case Study Example This has been through given customers value for their money and offering cheaper products. Since it was established the company set out goals of becoming strong food and nonfood earlier in the UK market. Since then it has grown to be the largest online retailer in the world with more that 1 millions customer in the word. The company also set goal of diversifying its operations in the external market and a 30% of the stores are found out side the UK. The company also set out a goal of having the more loyal a committed staff in all its operation. In the international market the company has been using same strategies as it has been using in the domestic market although it has not tended to be more personal than in the domestic market. The company has been using direct marketing approach in the internal market same as it has been done in the local market. What have been the features of the international marketing strategy First it has been implementing direct marketing strategy with the aim of reaching the consumers in their homes. This has been enabled through the implementation of on line marketing in all its stores. This strategy has been focused on ensuring that consumers have access to the products of the company from their homes and that the process is simple and easy. Online marketing has been one of the most effective ways that has been used by the company to reach all customers in the international market. Through the strategy, the company can sell its products to all the consumers in the world. This strategy was first tested in the local market and has been extended in the international market. Tesco has been able to rise to become the leading online retailer in the UK. After a success initial start, the company has been able to expand its operation to all its new branches. Therefore the international marketing approach that has been used by the company has been direct marketing with a special focus to providing consumer with quality products in order to meet the basic aim of marketing. The company has been opening shops in different places in order to make sure that it meets the needs of the consumers. The company has also been using personal selling strategy to reach all the potential market. Through the strategy the company has been selling directly to the consumers. Though it has not been carrying out persons to person communication, the company has been engaging in promotion activities that are aimed at reaching all consumers.Q2. A comparison of the international and domestic marketing mix decisions within the organization There has been no much difference between the company domestic market and international market approaches. The same approaches that the company has been carrying out in the domestic market have also been employed in the international market as well. This has been due to the fact that there is similarity in all the market according to its line of operation. In this regard the company has been carrying out marketing approaches which have been aimed at selling the same products to the consumers. The company has been using a marketing approach which has been aimed at reaching its customer in the extern market. The similarity in the approaches used by the company in both market is because it has been using similar trend as has been observed in the market. Based on its

The Portrait Of The Leadership In The Movie Backdraft Essay

The Portrait Of The Leadership In The Movie Backdraft - Essay Example It is a matter of turning one's antennae to things that interest an individual. The most effective ways that leaders can convey their messages is through past experiences that form the human history. This can say in form of stories (DuBrin 18). These stories form parables that draw an inner message that can inspire the junior staffs in an organization or even the political leaders. More and more staff members are always looking for inspiration from their line managers. From the Film backdraft, John ‘Axe’ Adcox (Glenn) is a character full of inspiration. In scene 4 (25:13) he demonstrates is part of life and the way he takes control of this life-threatening career in firefighting. The good control he has on Engine 17. The way he is tactful in breaking on top of the roof such that ones the fire engine is up and running the foam would go directly killing the fire (DuBrin 40). Leaders need to borrow these tactics in dealing with hot issues in their organizations. It is clear that running away from the problem does not solve the problem either. It’s our leader’s responsibility to fight the problem head-on. In the scene (43:14), Stephen ‘Bull’ McCaffrey (Russell) is the most elderly and experienced person as seen in the film. The vast knowledge he has towards firefight has brought yields in solving the mess in this fire in Chicago. He is a true role model in the great mind and courage he has to keep on fighting with this bad master the fire (DuBrin 43). It is a lesson that will remain in books of history that fire is a good servant but a bad master. The metaphor here is that when our leaders take this noble responsibility their duty to maintain calmness in the areas that matter most. This can give our political leaders a reason to sit back and rethink what they do preach. The community can go into frames, race against race due to poor leadership skills (DuBrin 50).

There are questions and i need to answer .I will write it in Essay

There are questions and i need to answer .I will write it in assignment criteria - Essay Example Employees, like the employers, want to feel being part of the organization and the products produced. However, in many organizations, employees are isolated and only reduced to production machines, with no attachment to what they do. This leads to low employee morale and other major challenges in the working environment. According to several theories of motivations, such as the drive theory, employees need to be motivated. When this term is used, many employees tend to think that high salaries are the only means of motivating the employees. While this act may produce positive results, this will however, work in the short term. Other main areas that need to be addressed include creating an effective and convenient environment in which the employees can work. This is especially through ensuring safety of the employees. Constant communication between employees and employers is also vital. It enables the two addresses the current challenges affecting employees, and the company early befo re it can become a challenge. Operations management becomes imperative when dealing with some of these issues. It is the process through which the management seeks to increase quality, reduce the cost of operation, and use as minimal resources as possible. Employers are focusing on increasing productivity, while at the same time ensuring that all the factors are considered. In terms of performance, the employees focus on speed, flexibility, dependability, cost, and quality. These five performance objectives of operations management are imperative in ensuring that the company becomes more productive. Customers focus on efficiency and quality. The speed at which the company supplies foods and services to the customers is vital. The kind of technology that is employed in any given company also becomes imperative. It must be flexible and dependable. This means it must be ready to accommodate the changes and new demands in the market. However, reducing the cost of operation is one of the major issues that the operations management seeks to solve. As the cost of operations reduces, so do the profits increase. For this reason, the operations managers may decide to employ strategies such as outsourcing. It is the process through which employers seek higher employees who can provide quality services but at a low cost. This is mostly done through acquiring employees from abroad. This has assisted many companies to solve the problem of increased cost of operation. Other areas of focus include the means of transportation used to deliver goods and services to the employees. The means but is both cost effective and efficient. Goods must reach their intended destination within the intended time. It is upon the operations manager to organize, control, and coordinate all the operations within the organization. This is vital if the company is to realize its goals and objectives. However, it will be difficult to achieve some of this goals, speed, and quality of goods unless the right technology is employed. Integration of information technology is important. Apart from increasing productivity, it also leads to high quality work at a minimum time. Challenge facing our manufacturing company This manufacturing company has become ineffective due to the problems of high employee turnover and general reduction in productivity. As a result, the profits of the company have decreased, with the increased cost of operation. With this problem likely to escalate, there is need to address it objectively.

Law Of The Workplace Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Law Of The Workplace - Case Study Example t and should therefore be viewed as such. To this end, Dillon L.J was quoted as saying: I have no hesitation in concluding that the relationship between a church and a minister of religion is not apt, in the absence of clear indications of a contrary intention in the document, to be regulated by a contract of service. I do not doubt that there probably are binding contracts between the Methodist Church and its ministers in relation to some ancillary matters, such as the compulsory superannuation scheme and the obligation, of which Mr. Parfitt told us, on trainees to repay a proportion of the expense of their training if they do not remain in the ministry for at least 10 years. These however are no part of the contract of service, either on reception into full connection or on appointment to a circuit, which Mr. Parfitt seeks to set up. Page 183H. It is therefore in the light of the foregoing that the central focus of this paper is to conduct an exhaustive analysis of all the contending issues that have risen with the dawn of this case. The paper will be using theological and legal references to buttress points where they are essentially relevant for serving the purpose of the thematic framework of the essay. It should also be noted that whilst, the essay is cautious not to engage in too many technicalities that are perhaps beyond the scope of this essay, much of the theological and legal references will be made intermittently and in some instances it will be done concurrently in order to reduce verbosity and enhance simplicity for the comfort of the reader. According to the Employment Relations Act 1999 section 23, the government of the United Kingdom has being bestowed the power of employment and its rights to people and institutions who are not defined within the conventional group of employees. This category includes among others, office holders such as the clergy and ministers of religion, casual workers, agency workers, homeworkers and what have you. By this Act, it is not intended that an entirely new strand of labour force was being introduced. On the contrary, the thrust of this Act stipulates that this category of workers should be given the privilege of being a part of the rights mainstream employees enjoy. The Archbishops' Council of the Church of England gave a laudable contribution to a 2002 discussion document under the auspices of the Department for Trade & Industry concerning Employment Status that concerns Statutory Employment Rights. The Council said "the clergy are entitled to terms and conditions of service which adequately protect their rights, recognize their responsibilities and provide proper accountability arrangements." In the light of this a number of observers argued that some clergy men had an additional

Statement of purpose Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words - 2

Statement of purpose - Essay Example background has heightened my awareness of ethnic diversity, and, at the same time, shown me the basic similarities in thought and values which characterize all people, whatever be their nationality. I am very alive, especially in these tumultuous economic times, to the role that the economy plays in the everyday life of every individual. In this scenario, I am confident that my pursuit of Psychology and Economics will equip me to meld my interest in people, and in the economy, into a set of skills which will enable me to contribute my own share towards the betterment of society. Sometime in the future, I see myself using the English language proficiency I have gained in the USA to make a difference in the lives of Korean children. Despite my time in Korea being confined to summer vacations with my family, I am deeply conscious of my identity as a Korean. I even attribute my love for golfing (I was varsity at golfing for three years at High School), to my ethnic identification with Tiger Woods! I am inordinately proud of the technical prowess, dedication and hard work, which have gone into the making of Korea’s enviable reputation on the world stage as an economic power house. My own parents’ success as business entrepreneurs is living proof of Korea’s strengths. Above all this, I love the culture of personal and family relationships, and the feeling of belonging. Very simply, Korea is home to me! It is where I plan to spend my life after my academic career. That said, I must confess to a deep regret that my knowledge of Korea - its culture, history, art, people, cuisine - is very superficial. I am passionate about my desire to discover myself and my country anew, and explore every facet o f my nationality. Seoul National University’s direct international exchange program is the perfect opportunity for me to continue my academic pursuits in my field of choice and, at the same time, discover my roots as a Korean. SNU’s acknowledged position as the most

Rethinking the social responsibility of business Essay

Rethinking the social responsibility of business - Essay Example Every organization works with the goal of making some money. Either they consider that as profit earned or that contribute to the society by providing value addition to their stakeholders or they need that money to re-invest and cover the cost of their running business. But in any-case money is required. Thus, if a businessman complies to the social responsibility only, he/she will be required to behave in many ways which provide no benefits and in some cases loss to the owner of the business. For example, if he starts hiring hardcore unemployed people in the organization for contributing to reducing unemployment from the society and not well equipped and highly qualified workers, the company’s performance will greatly suffer and the owner will be in great debts ultimately. Jhon Mackey has made a major mistake in statement where he openly declared that the shareholders have the right to leave the company and invest their money elsewhere. This portrays his un-professional attitude, as the investors and the shareholders are the major assets for the company form where all the funding is coming in. For any business, it is very essential that the shareholders and the investors remain happy with the company’s and its employee’s performance, else the company will not survive and go bankrupt.

Neo-liberal Critique of the Welfare State Essay Example for Free

Neo-liberal Critique of the Welfare State Essay The welfare state refers to the initiative of the government in a country to take care of the wellbeing of the public. Under the welfare state, the government undertakes the responsibility of protecting and promoting the economic and social welfare of its people (Kuhnle 2000). The welfare state is based on the equality of all. In a welfare state, the government is involved in the lives of its people on all levels. The burden of providing for the physical and social needs of the people is almost fully placed on the government. The main objective of the welfare state is the creation of economic equability and striving to improve the standards of living. The government ensures fair distribution of resources, provision of equal opportunities, and provision of public services to those who lack the means to acquire them. The government in this case takes the accountability for the wellbeing of its people (Gooden et al. 1999). Hypothetically, the responsibility is supposed to be inclusive given the fact that the welfare of the people is generally considered as a right. This is to say that citizens are entitled to the welfare state. This can also be taken to refer to the establishment of â€Å"social safety net† (Rice, Goodin and Parpo 2006). Neoliberals have attacked the welfare state from different angles with some advocating for its complete abolishment and others claiming that it should be partially eradicated (Barrow 1998). They have given very many reasons as to why the welfare state should be reviewed and necessary measures taken. They have provided a number of reasons as to why the welfare state should be reconsidered. Neo-liberals are the advocates of economic liberalization as the means by which social progress can be achieved (Niggle 2006). This paper evaluates the neo-liberal critique of the welfare state. The neo-liberals advocate for a free and liberal economy where every person is involved. It is from this perspective that the welfare state is criticized for failing to give the citizens a chance to participate in the liberal market economy (Rice, Goodin and Parpo 2006). It is argued that the welfare state makes people reliant on the government and thus fail to labor for their own needs. Most developed countries have established welfare states for providing for the needs of their people. As a result, most people do not see the need to toil when their needs can be met freely. Nevertheless, there have been studies that have provided the claim that there is no connection between the economic performance and appending on welfare in the world economies. This means that there is no proof of the fact that the welfare state hinders social progress (Niggle 2006). When the progress of some of the developed countries that provide welfare is analyzed, it is clear that some of the countries that spend less on welfare are doing worse than those that spend more. For example, the US performs worse than a country like Netherlands. This is despite the fact that the latter spends more on welfare state than the former. This therefore shows that the welfare state could contribute, but is not responsible for uneven social progress (Gooden et al. 1999). The opponents of the welfare state claim that it tends to put the burden of providing for the citizens on some people while others sit back and enjoy. This is supported by the fact that the welfare state is financed through the taxpayers’ money (Kuhnle 2000). This is from the people who are employed and working hard to earn an income. Their income is taxed to provide for the people in the country who are not able to work through the welfare state. This can however be countered by the fact that there is a great income inequality in the society today. Inequality exists between executives and the average workers, between male workers and female workers and between people of different races. The welfare state is one way of ensuring that there is redistribution of resources and income for uniform development and also to take care of the marginalized groups in the society (Rice, Goodin and Parpo 2006). There has been criticism on the welfare state based on the dispensations made by the capitalists. This is done in the efforts to redirect the working class away from the need to follow an entirely socialist society and economy. This is what has been evident in a country like Germany. Additionally, the socialist class is a strong believer in patching up the inefficient capitalist economy and revealing the loopholes in the capitalist economy. They believe that the welfare system will not be necessary where government and ownership of the means of production is implemented (Kuhnle 2000). The critics also claim that the welfare state and the contemporary social democratic programs stifle the motivation of the market. This is so because of the provision of resources like unemployment insurance policies, minimum pay, profits on taxes, and reduction of the reserved labor. The result of this is that there is very little motivation to invest. Basically, the opponents claim that the welfare state demoralizes the capitalist economy and its incentive organization. There is no capitalist who will be motivated to invest his capital in order to feed the entire society (Itoh 1995). Another criticism views the welfare state as stealing of the wealth of slavery. This is based on the classical liberal fundamental right to obtaining and property ownership. From this point of view, it is a fundamental right of every person to be in ownership of his own body and thus be allowed to enjoy the fruit of the labor of that body (Cook 2001). This is where the transfer of money from one person to another by the state in the name of the welfare state is considered stealing. It is also a form of forced labor where some people have to work hard only for the benefit of others. Despite the fact that the welfare state is created by a democratically elected government, it infringes this fundamental right that every person is entitled to. This leads to less motivation to work, where one begins to view his or her labor as being for the benefit of others. The welfare state imposes what is referred to as Servile Law (Waarden and Lehmbruch 2003). This law shares the element of the ancient slavery. According to this law, positive law states that some individuals must toil for others, who in the same way must take care of them. This is unfair because one group of the public works for one that does not work. The group that is fed from the sweat of others is mostly comprised of people who have intentionally refused to work (Mendes 2003). Some other critics argue that the welfare state tends to offer its benefactors with the same rate of income as the minimum payment (Gould 1993). This has encouraged more people to sit back and wait for the welfare. The dependants of the welfare state do not find the need to work for minimum wage where even without working they will receive the same amount. This has led to the creation of a class of citizens that are fully dependant on the welfare state. This is despite the fact that the welfare is available only for the citizens who are not able to work. In the United Kingdom for example, the idea of the welfare state was aimed at poverty alleviation by offering certain individuals basic necessities (Niggle 2006). The state of affairs currently is that the welfare state has extended to provision of finances to a large number of individuals than the nation is able to afford. There is a feeling by some supporters that this argument is ideally untrue. They argue that in the United Kingdom, the welfare system offers people very little finances compared to the minimum wage in the country. However, the dependants of the social welfare in this country have the feeling that they need to access more benefits from the government. If the government bends to these demands, it is evident that the country could be in a very huge financial trouble. People have become so dependant on the welfare state until they feel that it is their right to make demands (Cook 2001). Neo-liberals criticize the welfare state for leading to increase in taxes. This criticism is logical because the finances for the welfare states come from taxes. Enough money has to be availed for the system to operate well and ensure that all the benefactors are covered. This can only be done through ensuring that enough money is obtained through taxation from those who are working. This leads to an increase in taxes. This is basically true from case studies like in Denmark, where the tax level went up to 48. 9 percent of the country’s GDP in the year 2007. Another similar case is Sweden where the tax level was as high as 48. 2 percent of the country’s GDP in the same year (Xu 2007). This however does not mean that there is a reduction in the income of the people in the countries in question. It is argued that this is so because the state taxes ideally return to the workers it is obtained from. This is from the fact that most of the money from tax is used in the provision of public amenities that are enjoyed by the same people who are the tax payers (Barr 2004). The opponents believe that the welfare benefits offered by the government are more costly and less effective than if the same were offered by the private sector. This is in line with a liberal economy where the private sector is offered an important part to play in the economy. In the year 2000, Louis Kaplow and Steven Shafell produced two articles with the argument that any social program founded on the elements of equality and impartiality would lead to an economical system that is Pareto inefficient (Barr 2004). It is obvious that every commodity that is offered free of charge at the consumption point would obviously be highly demanded. There would be efficient allocation of resources if stipulation reflects the charges (Mendes 2003). There have been arguments that the welfare system undermines the conventional family life. Dependence on welfare state encourages over-reliance on the government and increment of social evils. Single parenthood has been encouraged since people know that they will be taken care of by the state. It has been argued that the welfare state fails on moral, social and economic grounds. The welfare system has led many people to relax and wait for the free income. As a result, people have become reluctant to get education and employment. This has led to the increase of social evils as a result. This shows that the welfare state does the society more evil than good (Cook 2001). Conclusion The welfare state was established with the needs of the people who are not able to work in mind. It is a fact that most of the criticisms against the welfare state are true. The welfare state has led to over reliance on the government, making people less inclined to work. It is also true that they have tended to discourage capital investment where people will work to benefit those who are not working. The welfare state has also led to an increase in taxes, as more finances are needed to fund the welfare state. These are some of the neo-liberal criticisms of the welfare state. This does not mean that the welfare state should be completely abolished. As mentioned in the paper, there is great income disparity in the community today. This is not the fault of those who are unfortunate to have low income and those who are not able to access employment. There is dire need to redistribute resources and income in the society. There is no better way of doing this than taxation for provision through the welfare state. The welfare state was also created for a noble objective that is, benefiting those who are unfortunate and marginalized in the society. This group is still in the society and abolishment of the welfare state will be a problem to them. It is however undeniable that something needs to be done to make this system more effective and efficient for economical development. One of the ways forward is to restrict the spending on the welfare state. This will be achieved through restructuring of the policy and reviewing the benefactors. Neo-liberal critics agree that there is need for minimum provision for those in need. This means that the system cannot be entirely abolished, but there is need for serious changes on it. This way it will be able to meet its objectives to the society, while at the same time allowing for economical development. Studies need to be carried out to find the best way forward as far as the welfare state is concerned. Barr, N. 2004, Economics of the welfare state, Oxford University Press, New York. Barrow, C. 1998, State Theory and the Dependency Principle: An Institutionalist Critique of the Business Climate Concept, Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 32. Cook, P. 2001, Discrediting Neo-Liberalism: The Social Democratic Welfare State Of The Netherlands. Available on May 12, 2010 from http://www. wlu. edu/documents/shepherd/academics/cap_01_cook. pdf Gooden, R. et al. 1999, The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Gould, A. 1993, Capitalist Welfare Systems, Longman, New York. Itoh, M. 1995, Political Economy for Socialism, St. Martins Press, New York. Kuhnle, S. 2000, Survival of the European Welfare State, Routledge, New York. Mendes, P. 2003, Australias Welfare Wars: the Players, the Politics and the Ideologies, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney. Niggle, C. 2006, â€Å"Neo-Liberal Economic Policy: Critical Essays,† Journal of Economic Issues, Vol. 40. Rice, J. , Goodin, R. Parpo, A. 2006, â€Å"The Temporal Welfare State: A Cross-national Comparison,† Journal of Public Policy 26 (3): 195–228. Waarden, F. Lehmbruch, G. 2003, Renegotiating the Welfare State: Flexible Adjustment Through Corporatist Concertation, Routledge, New York. Xu, Q. 2007, â€Å"Globalization, Immigration and the Welfare State: A Cross-National Comparison,† Journal of Sociology Social Welfare, Vol. 34.

Hat Task Essay Example for Free

Hat Task Essay The population as of 2011 was totaled to 608,453. The majority of this population consisted of people between the ages of 15 and 44 years old. Kent County consist of mostly white persons at 83. 8%. The next larges group consists of African Americans at 10. 3% and Hispanics at 9. 9%. The median household income is $50,801, with 14. 8% of the population being listed below poverty level. The unemployment rate is at 8. 52% (2011, US Census Bureau). It is reported by adults that 13. 6% have not accessed healthcare within the past 12 months. 10. % of adults reported they have no healthcare coverage. It was also discovered that the county only has 29% of what is needed in the dental care community(2011, Michigan Department of Community Health). The second assessment piece is labeled cultural assessment. Once again this was information I collected on a County level. In Kent County there are slightly more females than males, 51% versus 49% respectively. The populations consists predominately of white Christians, while the subgroup is Roman Catholics (2011, Kent County Health Department). Obesity was noted to be on the rise due to lack of physical activity and inadequate fruit and vegetable consumption. More specifically 31. 3% of adults are obese, and Michigan as a whole is the 5th most obese state in the US. 19. 7% of adults reported adequate physical activity with 23. 6% stating they lived a sedentary lifestyle within the past month, and 17. 8% report they consume fruits and vegetables at least 5 times a day (2011, Michigan Department of Health). African Americans voiced distrust among healthcare providers however they did support and agree for a universal healthcare system. Hispanics voiced concern for the lack of translation services due to language barriers and issues surrounding documented legal status and the difficulty this poses to accessing healthcare (2009, Michigan Department of Health). I discovered that in the area there are over 50 parks with various indoor and outdoor activities for all to enjoy. The third assessment piece is entitled neighborhood and community safety. This information was obtained from local agencies. I noted the Health Department and local hospitals are very involved in providing health services, education, and discussions for the community free of charge. The air quality for Kent County is considered poor. We have had at least 7 air pollution days per year due to fine particulate matter and ozone. The water quality in the last 5 years has been excellent. 0. 09% of public water supplies exceeded contamination levels during this time frame (2011, Kent County Health Department). The wild life in the area can cause a potential for disease, and the many surrounding lakes, rivers and streams can cause a potential for drowning. Due to the location of Kent County we risk potential severe weather events. The violent crime rate in the area was 0. 4% significantly lower than the national average. It was also noted that the local police and fire response is at or exceeds standards (2013, Kent County Sheriffs Department). The fourth assessment piece is the disaster assessment and planning status. This information was gathered on a City and County level. The disaster command is headed by the Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security loca ted in Grand Rapids. They included the requirements of National Response Plan and NIMS. I discovered they are following all federal regulations by the Department of Homeland Security. 3 County, and other regional collaborations were noted in the planning. The Kent County area is at risk most for these natural disasters; severe winter weather, thunderstorms, tornados, riverine flood, and urban flood. The are is at risk most for these other disasters; electrical failures, communication failure, intentional acts, transportation accidents, and hazardous material. The city and county provide public education through CERT classes, brochures, and coordination with school districts to relay safety information at a young age (2011, Kent County Health Department). From the information obtained above I believe that Kent County Michigan is an overall healthy community. Areas for improvement would be to increase the access to dental care and healthcare for at risk and poor underserved families, to decrease the prevalence of obesity and ensure access to healthful foods, and to establish a plan to deal with language barriers for other populations living within West Michigan. This information that I have obtained and explained above is listed below in my community genogram. The genogram highlights the pertinent information in an easy to view graph with each assessment topic listed. It discusses once again the community as a whole from population and economic status, to the cultural assessment, to the neighborhood and community safety to lastly disaster assessment and planning. It provides an overview of the community as a whole, strengths and weaknesses. The community assessment is how I feel the community is and the areas that are at risk or I feel can be improved upon. Resources: 1. ) 2011. Kent County Michigan. US Census Bureau. Retrieved from http://www. uickfacts. census. gov/qfd/states/26/26081. html 2. 2013. Kent County Michigan. Kent County Health Department. Retrieved from http://www. accesskent. com/emergencymanagement. html 3. 2011. Michigan Behavioral Risk Factor Survey. Michigan Department of Community Health. Retrieved from http://www. michigan. gov/brfs 4. 2009. Community Conversation Executive Summary. Michigan Department of Community He alth. Retrieved from http://www. michigan. gov/minorityhealth 5. 2013. Kent County Sheriffs Department. Retrieved from http://www. accesskent. com/lawenforcement/sherrif_emergency. htm

Disadvantages Of Traditional Media Tools Marketing Essay

Disadvantages Of Traditional Media Tools Marketing Essay Since television has born, it has already become the most useful media tools among others over many years. Most of the convention company thinks that featuring a television advertising campaign may reflect their companys brand or status at a prestige level. The Advantages Television advertisement is a tool that provides high frequency potential where in a day a single advertisement can reach millions of viewers instantly. This is because television is the highest reach of other kinds of media since each house own a television. Furthermore, television also offers advertisers the most extensive coverage compare to other media. The Disadvantages Television advertisement may be a good tool to reach millions of people but the cost for an advertisement is high. High cost probably comes from the production cost because commercials usually need more time, idea and resources to produce it. Therefore, creating a commercial is expensive. 1.0.2 Radio Radio is not as effective as television and it is more difficult to attract more potential consumers because mostly people only focus on listening to the music rather than advertisement. Meanwhile, the most effective way to transmit the message from an advertisement is when a driver stuck in the middle of the traffic. At the same time, many smaller local companies use radio advertising because the cost of creating a radio advertisement are less costly compare to television. The Advantages Mostly radio advertisers help the listener to store the message easily. Method such as repeating the advertisement can successfully helps the listener to remember it. From time to time, the more the listener stay on the radio, the message will goes deeply into the person mindset and soon from short-term to become long-term memory. Adding sound effect in the advertisement may effectively help consumers to well so every time they heard the sound they may recall back to the advertisement. The Disadvantages Radio advertisements have few chances to reach national audience because there is only a short exposure time of transmitting the message. Usually an advertisement is about 15 to 30 seconds. Most of the times listener involved in other activities such as working, paying attention on driving or just using radio as a restaurant or shops background music to provide their customers a nice and comfortable environment. Therefore, most of them will not pay much attention or skip the advertisement part. 1.0.3 Outdoor Advertising Commonly some companies will use billboards to advertise along the side of the highway in Malaysia. Other than that, banners outside a restaurant, on public transportation and even hanging on the pillars under the flyover also an example of outdoor advertising. The Advantages An outdoor advertisement is an effective way to transmit message towards large group of people. For local companies, these advertisement is an efficient way to transmit the message to their local target because usually local audience able to see them everywhere. The location of setting up these advertisements will affect the outcome such as placing nearby a restaurant, inside cities area, hanging on tall buildings, railway station and amusement park. The Disadvantages The major drawback of an outdoor advertising is short exposure of time. When the advertisement is set by the road side, drivers may only have a quick look on it. They cannot get the full message from the advertisement unless they stop their car. 1.0.4 Magazines In old days, advertise in magazines is also a best way to transmit information towards target audience. Advertise in different magazine allow to target to different consumers according to demographic and lifestyles. The Advantages Magazines advertisements often provide high-quality color on the pictures. Colors and images can attract attention because mostly people love to look at colorful things instead all with words. Besides that, the main function of magazines is to allow readers to read it during leisure time. With viewing colors and images, it can benefit in relaxing themselves like reducing stress after a working day yet they may have longer time to go through with advertisement. The Disadvantages Due to high-quality color in every magazine, the cost of production and printing is way higher compare to newspaper. Therefore, the magazine advertisement prices are also expensive because advertiser needs to generate more idea and time to advertise it in different magazine and different target. If some advertisement target to two consumer, it may effectively target to children in child magazines but if the same idea advertise in adult magazine, the outcome will be different and thats why advertiser need to create another advertisement to focus on their parents. 1.0.5 Newspapers Newspaper has been centuries as a role of transmitting local, nation and global news to the public. Newspaper is a best tool to advertise because the price greatly cheaper compare to others and it is distributed on daily basis. The Advantages Local sellers rely heavily on newspaper advertisement because this is the only tool that targets more on locals. The key factor that advertises in newspaper is that you can list our all your information like promoting sales, business retail hours, and physical store location in a single page yet the price is cheaper than magazine. The Disadvantages Newspapers advertisement also have a shorten lifespan like as outdoor advertising. Normally a person will set the newspaper aside once they finish reading it. Normally a person will not re-read second time on any information unless the object or article able to attract the reader. Therefore, pass by advertisement will remain unnoticeable if it fails to attract the reader. 1.1 The Advantages and Disadvantages of Non-Traditional Media Tools 1.1.1 E-Mail Newsletters E-mail newsletters can be an excellent way to build brand awareness to the public. Newsletters can be subscribed in some branded company web site. The newsletter must be in a form of addressing offers value to the subscribers. Besides that, some company will corporate together so they can share the newsletter by adding in their own advertisement together with their partners advertisement. The Advantages E-mail newsletter is near instant delivery compare to printing newspaper and magazine. The company can share and send the e-mail to their customers at any time they want. Meanwhile, the company may also send the newsletter to multiple customers just in few clicks time. Hence, recipient can forward the news easily to their friends and family if the offer given by the company is beneficial. The Disadvantages The actual deliverability to the recipients can be low due to SPAM filters or e-mail address changes. Nowadays, there are many potential hackers in the web. To prevent and protect customers privacy, many e-mail browsers using advance filter technology to filter incoming message. So whenever the mail browsers detect something suspicious inside the newsletter, it will automatically direct it into the junk box. 1.1.2 Blogs Some company use web logs to promote their products. A blog advertise can be effective when spreading positive work-of-mouth communications. Meanwhile, using a blog is easier to check the companys news or process and the content mostly will be updated regularly compare to a weekly or monthly e-mail newsletters. The Advantages Company blogs provide an easy access to company news. By doing so, they encourage their customers to view their blogs frequently because some company will regularly update their latest product, upcoming events and latest promotions. Hence, a company that shows their latest detail will gain loyalty from existing customers. The Disadvantages When a blog that dealing with transaction, small local business company may face difficulties with it. If the company is branded, customers will spend more time on the blogs page to browse what they looking for and they can make payment securely because usually well-know company allow people to feel more reliable and secure. In other words, when a small local business company with a least well-know brand, customers confidence level towards the company will not as much as branded company. 1.1.3 Online Advertising Since 1990s, online advertising have increased steadily. Due to the power of internet, marketers think that online advertising is the newest and highly effective method to reach consumers. Types of online advertising are popup, web banner, media feed or video advertisement. The Advantages Online advertising can allow advertisers to reach significantly more people than traditional advertising media in a shorter time. Advertisement can be more targeted than some traditional media because there are variety of people with different age, race and culture surfing the web daily. The Disadvantages Heavy online advertising will cause web users to slowly immune to advertisement. When user are immune to advertisement, the number of people who respond to advertisement will steadily decrease and those advertisements will become not important to everyone anymore. 1.1.4 Online Social Networks Recent years, online social networks have become extremely popular among people. Some company will use social networking site to communicate with consumers. The most well-known social networking site is Facebook, MySpace, Google+ and Twitter. Instead of communicate with consumers, companies also making product and event announcement. The Advantages Since the network is unlimited, advertising in social networking sites are great for attracting more customers. When a customer is connected to your company, your company profile and information will spread among their family and friends too. The speed on spreading news in social sites is getting faster so the network can soon grow wider and even more when the advertisement has successfully build awareness in public. The Disadvantages Despite of building brand awareness, social sites are not that effective because it need to depend on how a user remembers a company brand. When your company brand is not as famous in the market, people will not aware of your product. Meanwhile, brand awareness is usually created from big advertisement on TV, banners, billboards, newspapers, magazines and other repeated advertisement tools. However, social sites may attack from bad comment when a product dissatisfied the customers and since everyone able to comment on something easily. So, this may pull down the companys image easily. 1.1.5 Couponing Coupon can be found in newspaper, magazines, or online advertisement. At most company will encourage consumer to cut or print out these entire coupon and collect for certain amount so that you can redeem the offer. Some companies like McDonald will request consumers to print out the coupon from their webpage so they can enjoy the rebate. The Advantages Heavy Couponing user will save up their monthly expenses effectively. When a smart spender collected lots of coupon, they may get the amount of offer goods in lower price. During the period of collecting coupons, collectors may request their friends and family together for help out in collecting it. By doing so, the promotion news will spread to others by word-of-mouth. The Disadvantages Some people will feel embarrassing due to self-respect. They might feel that why I need to spend time to collect the entire coupon and use it to save just a few ringgit which they may afford to pay. It is wasting time to collect it and sometimes some coupon occurs in magazines so consumer will need to purchase the magazine every week to collect it. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Different_types_of_non_traditional_market 1.2 Promotional Mixes Used by Proton Company Advertisement is important to every company. Effectively using advertisement will not just creating awareness to the public but also potentially increase market sales. The Proton Company is using this method to gain profit and increase market share. The company has used five ways to advertise their product such as television, banner, newspaper, social media networks and sales promotion. First of all, many company still believing advertise in television is the most successful way to reach the audience. Since every household own a television, the percentage of people watching television everyday will remain at an upper rate. Proton normally advertises their product during some peak hours like during 6p.m. to 10p.m. Every family will start to watch television during that period because everyone already back to house from working and having dinner with families. By that time, each of them may come across with the advertisement. Protons even pick some festive seasons to promote their product like the recent Chinese New Year. Proton has purposely create a commercial for celebrating Chinese New Year by showing a German engineer driving the Proton Preve safely back to his wifes hometown. Secondly, Proton is also heavily using banner to advertise. By placing banner in certain heavy traffic, cities such as Kuala Lumpur and even fly over in highways. Catching eye banner normally the best way to transmit message into viewer mind even there is only a short time exposure. The best banner that Proton has created is advising drivers to drive safely on the road. Once the driver read the message, the next day when they pass by again they will check which company is concerning the public safety. By doing so, Proton has already create a brand awareness to the public. Thirdly, in knowing most of the consumers will be reading newspaper in the morning or anytime in a day. Protons advertisement sometime will be seen in a newspaper. They usually will used up whole page to advertise their product or service. Normally they will not choose front or second page but they will choose middle part of the newspaper so that can easily capture the readers mind with colors and pictures after reading tones of words in the previous page. Besides that, Proton also advertises their service center location so readers may find their service center easily. By grabbing the golden opportunity of using web in this 21st century, advertise in social media networks is as simple as effective. The large audience in the web has brought Proton to find more potential customers to promote their services and products. Simple steps like sharing in Facebook, Twitter and Youtube will efficiently transmit all the information to its audience. No matter they accept it or not, once they view the message already transmit into their mind. Proton owns a Facebook and Youtube page. On Facebook page, they often use to upload recent promotions photos and reply consumers comment. While on Youtube channel, they are posting their products commercial or videos during their recent event. Lastly, sales promotion is a value adding activities designed to boost short term sales and usually include point of sales activities such as in-store and event displays, product trial and distributing leaflets in public. Before launching the new Proton Preve, the company has organized a huge event named Power of 1 at Stadium Bukit Jalil Kuala Lumpur. The purpose of creating that event is to raise the awareness of their Proton brand and to show the public how well their product perform, demonstration is provided on the spot. At the same time, the Preve also shown up but is covering up by stripe form cover so that can maintain at a mysterious stage. Every time after the launch of their products, they will conduct a road show too by issuing brochure to allow consumer to know more about the product. Therefore based on all of these promotion strategies from Proton, the chances to convince a viewer to buy the product is largely depend on the buyer expectation on the product, level of brand loyalty or brands reputation and how great is the quality of the product. Even though sometimes it might not convince a viewer but at least theyre aware of your brand, product and services. So when times goes on follow by the enhancement of a company product, the chances to convince a buyer will also increase. In conclusion, Proton Company should continue to advertise their upcoming product so it may show the growth and improvement of the company. With these reason, the chances of people to buy their product is higher. 1.3 Effectiveness of Advertisement There are two concepts that ensure the times of advertise to reach target audience is the effective reach and effective frequency. Effective reach is the percentage of an audience that must be exposed to a particular message to achieve a specific objective. While the effective frequency refers to the number of times a target audience must be exposed to a message to achieve a particular objective. (Clow, 2011) Effective frequency and effective reach are crucial as when too few exposures will cause the advertiser fail to gain its intended objectives. Whereas if too much exposures will occur in the way of wasting resources. The most effective in advertising is achieving the intended objective successfully without experiencing wastage or marginal return from extra advertisement. Effective reach can be used under situation like a company wants to increase brand recognition. Then the advertisers will emphasis on the visual presentation on the product or the company logo. In this way may allow a person to recognize easily on the brand name together with the companys logo. The main objective of using this method is to nearer a gap in a persons knowledge with the brands. Therefore, if an advertiser wants to increase reach then they have to advertise to a large group of target audience and keep mentioning the brands name and logo as a selling point. Media tools that can cause this happen effectively are by advertising in television, outdoor advertising, magazines, internet, and direct mail. On the other hand, the objective of effective frequency is to increase brand recall. Usually repetition in advertising method is needed so that consumer can remember well of the brand in their mind or memory. Besides that, repetition can increase the times that particular brands will automatically popup in your mind. The more time the audience sees or heard about the advertisement is more easily to remember than he or she heard once in a life time. Examples of media tools that can be used are by television, radio, newspapers and Youtube advertisement thats play first before showing the actual video content.

Simultaneous Multithreading :: Threads Caches Hyper Threading Essays

Simultaneous Multithreading Simultaneous multithreading  ¡Ã‚ ª put simply, the shar-ing of the execution resources of a superscalar processor betweenmultiple execution threads  ¡Ã‚ ª has recently become widespread viaits introduction (under the name  ¡Ã‚ °Hyper-Threading ¡Ã‚ ±) into IntelPentium 4 processors. In this implementation, for reasons of ef-ficiency and economy of processor area, the sharing of processorresources between threads extends beyond the execution units; ofparticular concern is that the threads share access to the memorycaches.We demonstrate that this shared access to memory caches pro-vides not only an easily used high bandwidth covert channel be-tween threads, but also permits a malicious thread (operating, intheory, with limited privileges) to monitor the execution of anotherthread, allowing in many cases for theft of cryptographic keys.Finally, we provide some suggestions to processor designers, op-erating system vendors, and the authors of cryptographic software,of how this atta ck could be mitigated or eliminated entirely.1. IntroductionAs integrated circuit fabrication technologies have improved, provid-ing not only faster transistors but smaller transistors, processor design-ers have been met with two critical challenges. First, memory latencieshave increased dramatically in relative terms; and second, while it iseasy to spend extra transistors on building additional execution units,many programs have fairly limited instruction-level parallelism, whichlimits the extent to which additional execution resources can be uti-lized. Caches provide a partial solution to the first problem, whileout-of-order execution provides a partial solution to the second.In 1995, simultaneous multithreading was revived1in order to com-bat these two difficulties [12]. Where out-of-order execution allowsinstructions to be reordered (subject to maintaining architectural se-mantics) within a narrow window of perhaps a hundred instructions,Key words and phrases. Side channels, sim ultaneous multithreading, caching.1Simultaneous multithreading had existed since at least 1974 in theory [10], evenif it had not yet been shown to be practically feasible. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Page 2 simultaneous multithreading allows instructions to be reordered acrossthreads; that is, rather than having the operating system perform con-text switches between two threads, it can schedule both threads simul-taneously on the same processor, and instructions will be interleaved,dramatically increasing the utilization of existing execution resources.On the 2.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 with Hyper-Threading processor,with which the remainder of this paper is concerned2, the two threadsbeing executed on each processor share more than merely the execu-tion units; of particular concern to us, they share access to the memorycaches [8]. Caches have already been demonstrated to be cryptograph-ically dangerous: Many implementations of AES [9] are subject to tim-ing attacks arising from the non-constancy of S-box lookup timings [1].

The Truth About the Quebec Issue :: essays papers

The Truth About the Quebec Issue The Canadian unity crisis involving Quebec has been a controversial issue since before the country^s confederation. Surrounding the seemingly unsurpassable dilemma of unity there are three main obstacles. The significant lack of action for Canada on the part of many francaphone Quebecois, prevents any profound attachment to the country on their behalf. A mood of intransigence on the part of Canadians outside Quebec serves to alienate and anger the individuals within the province. A perceived leadership vacuum throughout Canada on behalf of its citizens contributes to a widespread feeling of hopelessness (Reid, 1991). The complexity of, and speculation towards, the Canadian unity crisis masks the infallible truth that while presently, there is no solution to the problem there is some hope for the future. Within the province of Quebec there is a significant lack of patriotism or any real attachment for Canada. In 1995, The Angus Reid Group asked a national sample of Canadians to describe how they personally felt about Canada. Four options were given: * I am strongly attached to Canada-I love the country and what it stands for; * I am attached to Canada, but only so long as it provides me with a good standard of living; * I am not attached to Canada and would prefer to see it split up into two or more countries; and * I would prefer to see Canada amalgamate with the United States. (Reid, 1995) Outside of Quebec, there was evidence of a high level of patriotism with over 85% of Canadians saying that they are deeply attached to the country and what it stands for. In the province of Quebec, only one-third of the population and only 20% of the francophones, displayed this level of affection for Canada. While there is debate over the cause for these statistics, some individuals believed that the statistics were as a result of lingering wounded pride because of the failed Meech Lake accord in 1991. Many Quebecois were insulted by the way that many Canadians outside of Quebec trivialized the situation, and the province^s demands. Others believe that this problem is indirectly the result of Canada^s official bilingual status. The reasoning behind this is that biligualism serves to even further alienate and differentiate the French within the country. This poses a difficult conundrum. Bilingualism can not be abolished because while it serves to alienate, it is also perceived! by the French as preserving their unique culture and identity. One hope is that through Canadian media a new stronger more unified identity can be achieved. Arguably, the CBC is this best forum for this shift in values because of its

How Does William Shakespeare Utilise the Genre of Tragedy

How does William Shakespeare utilise the genre of tragedy in the play, Macbeth. The utilisation of the genre tragedy in William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is apparent through the actions that lead up to the tragic death of the plays hero. Other elements needed to classify a play as a tragedy are abnormal conditions of the mind and both inner and outer conflicts. The play consists of prophecies given to Macbeth, leading to the murder of innocents King Duncan, Banquo and Macduff’s family.Insanity takes a hold on Macbeth and his wife, as she kills herself. Macduff, not being born of a woman, slays Macbeth and restores the throne of Scotland to Malcolm. Through the plot, and other aspects of this play, Macbeth contains the correct standards for it to be classed as a tragedy. Macbeth can be classified as a tragedy, as it contains the death of a hero. The hero is Macbeth, an honourable man, loyal to the crown, before being corrupted by his wife, Lady Macbeth and the prophecie s brought onto him by three witches. Gentlemen rise; his highness is not well† (III, IV, LII), is stating that Macbeth is becoming mentally distorted and is losing his heroic traits, until he is killed in a duel, which brings harmony back into Scotland. Through the life and death of Macbeth, the use of the genre tragedy is apparent in the play. The genre tragedy is also evident in Macbeth by the progressively deteriorating mental conditions of the characters after the murder of King Duncan.This is shown through abnormal conditions of the mind, in which Lady Macbeth sleepwalks during Act 5 Scene 1, mindlessly rubbing her hands together, portraying the action of hand washing. â€Å"What, will these hands ne’er be clean? † (V, I, XLII) is a line in Macbeth which signifies the never-ending guilt that Lady Macbeth felt, which she had hoped would have been inexistent after the physical blood of Duncan had been washed from her hands.In the closing stages of the play, â €Å"By self and violent hands took off her life† (V, VII, XCIX) states Lady Macbeth commits suicide as the guilt was too much for her to bear, which is why Lady Macbeths death assists the play in being classed as a tragedy. The inner and outward conflict that is apparent in Macbeth is another reason that this play can be classed as a tragedy. The outward conflict consists of the ongoing vow of revenge by Macduff towards Macbeth for killing his beloved family. â€Å"Macbeth! Macbeth! Macbeth! Beware Macduff;Beware the Thane of Fife. Dismiss me. Enough. † (IV, I, LXXI) Stated by an apparition sent to Macbeth from the witches, this line in the play resulted in the assassination of Macduff’s family by Macbeth. Macduff escapes the same fate as he earlier fled to England in hope that he can join Malcolm’s mission to overthrow Macbeth. When told the shocking news about the death of his loved ones, Macduff claims â€Å"Bring thou this fiend of Scotland and mysel f; within my swords length set him; if he escapes, heaven forgive him too! † (IV, III, Line CCVVVIII).From the loss of his cherished family, Macduff becomes enraged, as his desire to slay Macbeth intensifies, in hope that vengeance will be served. The conflict between these two characters is a perfect example of Shakespeare’s utilisation of the tragedy genre. Inner conflict is evident in the play as Macbeth slowly loses his sanity, being faced with the consequences of his rash actions to assassinate Banquo. â€Å"Thou shalt get kings, though thou be none: So, all hail, Macbeth and Banquo. † (Act 1, Scene 3, Line 67) In the first, Banquo is illustrated as being Macbeth’s close and loyal friend.Because of the prophecy that Banquo will also be the father of kings, Macbeth chooses to have him killed. The inner conflict is noticeable in the dining room, where Macbeth sees The Ghost of Banquo sitting in the seat designated for Macbeth. This supernatural element of the ghost coming back to haunt his murderer is the inner conflict Macbeth feels, in which he is made to come into the realisation and consequences of his actions. Through the remorse he carries with him till his death, the genre tragedy is enforced in the play Macbeth.In conclusion, William Shakespeare has utilised the genre tragedy in the play Macbeth in a number of ways. Some of these include the life and death of Macbeth, who was thought to have been a hero before corruption and abnormal conditions of the mind, like Lady Macbeth’s sleeping walking and suicide and Macbeth’s hallucinations of a Banquo coming back to haunt in. Inner and outer conflict are also present, in Macduffs longing for revenge on Macbeth for killing his family, and in the murder of Banquo, making Macbeth suffer for his immoral actions.

Kant the Sublime Essay

The Sublime In Lyotard’s reading Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, he explains how critical thought exists within an infinite amount of creativity with no principles but in search of them. Lyotard understands the Kantian sublime as a way to comply with the standards that critically analyze postmodernism using deconstruction. Kant differentiated the sublime between the vastness and greatness and the dynamic sublime. The vastness sublime is so great we can’t just use our senses like we normally do; it requires us to heighten our senses beyond comprehension. The dynamic sublime is the way in which rationalizes things and his perceptions. Lyotard describes the boundlessness of the imagination and reason as a ‘differend’ and this is ‘to be found at the heart of sublime feeling: at the encounter of two absolutes equally present to thought, the absolute whole when it conceives, the absolutely measured when it presents. ’ (Lyotard) Our imagination understands forms and measures while reason understands something without form of an infinite nature of something. There is a separation of imagination and reason and when we use the ‘enigmatic’ power of critical thought we can reflectively judge something. Kant’s presentation of the sublime has been taken up by Lyotard and he explores different ways of finding a philosophical understanding of different artworks. Through Longinus and Burke we can explore the pre-modern and modern conceptions of the sublime and through all these critiques we can draw different manifestations of the sublime in art. Kant questions how can someone judge an object before knowing how to properly judge that object and how do they know what proper judging is? Longinus in part of his critique implies that man can go beyond his limitations as a human being by experiencing emotions and language. The art or technical talents was described, as the human while the sublime was something that escaped our experience of art. ‘Sublimity consists in a certain excellence and distinction in expression’ (Longinus, pg 100). To understand and have knowledge of the sublime, there needs to be a vague understanding of something that is beyond our experience or senses. He explains that there is more to the human ordinary life because we feel this through the senses, but these senses are an incorrect interpretation caused by a physical perception as opposed to a psychological one. If you think about the sublime, it cannot be pictured or imagined but we have translated and suggested through the arts and poetry. Longinus tells us that nature is the creative and the first principle of the sublime and what follows is a matter luck and good mentors. In Goodbye Lenin, a German film directed by Wolfgang Becker, Lenin tries to hide the unification of Germany during the 1990’s from his mother who was in a coma throughout those months and has to stay in bed. He successfully conned her into thinking nothing had changed by using tricks like old product bottles and filming his own news broadcasts. This film successfully executes the idea of the sublime in what was going on between his mother and the rest of the world. ‘Our faults spring from the same place as our virtues. ’(Longinus)She believed everything around her was real and time had not changed but the people around her were well aware that this was a deception of reality. The way in which Lenin created the same world and reality his mother had always known is overwhelming to the senses and questions what is really for real? Burke believes that the ideas of pain and pleasure cannot be defined, but pleasure of every kind satisfies quickly. He goes on to say that there are two kinds of pleasure: the first that simply is and has no relation and the second that cannot exist without relation. The film has preserved and stopped time that defies nature and in reality cannot be done. The son is so scared and terrified that his mother will die that he tries to please her by keeping the world exactly the same. This terror is the source of sublime because it creates the most emotion and he imagines the worst. The fear that his mother will die has caused him to be terrified. It explores different areas of the mind by letting her believe this lie. His mother would not survive the fact that everything she has believed in had crumbled while she was asleep and that the world she once knew was suddenly a capitalistic society that now included Burger king, Pepsi and Coca-Cola. Lenin did not want to devastate his mother and cause another heart attack so he had to make everything appear, as it always was wile the outside world was growing and expanding at such an accelerated rate. The kitsch setting of the typical German 1989 apartment filled with yellow flowered wallpaper and dark wood furniture brings calmness to his communist mother. The film captures the nature of humans and their strong social beliefs and how it can affect the human psyche. Burke believes that terror is the source of the sublime and that pain is the more powerful than pleasure. Lyotard believes that pain is not the end point, there is the ‘movement’ of pain to ‘pleasure’ In Joseph Turners Impressionistic painting titled Slave Ship, he has created a seen of vastness that relates to the Kantian sublime but moreover he has demonstrated the use of color and dynamic composition to create a sense of horror. The brushstrokes give a natural look to the painting and the seemingly unintentional brushstrokes create an organized composition. We are aesthetically pleased when we look at the painting because an overwhelming response is experienced when looking at the picture. Burke believed that the Beautiful was very different from the sublime. â€Å"All privation is great because they are all terrible: Vacuity, darkness, solitude, and silence. Low and intermittent sounds and shadows bring about feelings of the sublime. Above all, the actions of the mind are affected by the sublime. â€Å" The way in which Turner has used rough brush strokes and lots of contrast between moods and contrasting colors creates the Sublime as opposed to the Beautiful. The use of purple and blue shadows that cast over the foggy night, the bloodline skyline, the flaming enraged sea and the insignificant ship create a sense of horror. The Sublime is experienced in this painting because it is detached from the actual danger of being in an actual situation and rather experienced through the visual arts and poetry in its overwhelming vastness. There is a sense of elation and intimidation when traveling through the painting. Thomas Cole’s Landscape with Tree Trunks create a struggle to be able to understand what is being implied. It becomes uninviting to the viewer as the scary tree trunks in the foreground block our path into the painting and we get further into only for our view to be blocked again because of the mountains that come right into the middle part. The painting does not accommodate to human feelings. These are sublime components such as the scary trees, the contrasting light and dynamic sky create frustration in entering the painting make us feel that we are not welcomed and that we are in a wilderness that we cannot control. The overwhelming tree and sky not only creates and unexplained phenomena but also implies that time and power of nature is vast and infinite and these unpredictable forces can in themselves become sublime. The painting composition seems to have been distorted by Cole yet it feels genuine and believable. In the Pianist directed by Roman Polanski we are safe to knowing the reality of the actual circumstance of Jewish victims trapped in a concentration camp but we still enjoy the horrific actions taken against them caused by the overwhelming power of human nature. We are awed, disgusted and in disbelief by the question: â€Å"How can human beings do such things? † ‘There is no explanation for the communication of passion, but it is concluded through the experience or premonitions of others. ’(Burke) there is no way to rationalize how the Jews were treated during this time of suffering and we can’t even fathom such events to reoccur, but it still exists today. The pain and suffering that we experience as a witness is subliminal and in cannot be justified. Within the film Szpilman is able to detach from the war and all the pain and suffering he has experienced by playing the piano. When different men have a common faith in the object of admiration we come to the Sublime’ (Longinus). Szpilman creates his own sublime world through the piano. He creates a stimulus of powerful and inspired emotion and he seems to be dignified and elevated when playing the piano, not guilty or ashamed for being a Jew. His talent brin gs even his worst enemies to respect him and be in completely awestruck by his music breaking all boundaries of human laws and standards and elevating itself to a much higher place that is universal. The unknown and unbound is created in the film when everyone is awestruck and in total admiration of the music. In the end, art has the vastness that allows the mind to be free of obstacles of distraction. Basically, I understand Kant in his way of thinking of art as a way of means to letting the senses experience a feeling far greater than the everyday ordinary life and sublimity only exists in our minds and not in nature, and if we are conscious of this we can become superior to nature within and to nature which does exists without us. Lyotard explains that art should work with no rules and that it therefore cannot be judged and instead be combined and pluralized. Longinus explains that the human is the technical aspect of art while the sublime is the existential part of the human psyche that goes beyond our experience of art. Burke’s modern view of sublimity in art can only be experienced through actual knowledge an actual experience where things are only recreated and reordered. He thinks that death and fear are feelings of the sublime and that what one might expect is very different to what actual really happens and that expectation creates fear which in turn makes us unreasonable and therefore brings about the sublime.

The Roman town

The Roman Town was laid out with straight roads and it was in a grid pattern. The shape was a sort of square aswell. It was enclosed with a wall, which had four gates and eighteen towers including the two, which were at the sides of each gate. In the town there would have been an amphitheatre, a theatre, the main temple, the forum, a little temple, a bathhouse, a games room and some shops (small shops not like the NAAFI or Tesco). In the town centre the theatre, forum, a temple and the amphitheatre. The town was defended with a wall, which went all the way around the town. The armies, which guarded the wall and gates, defended the town. Shops, market and forum. Butchers, bakers, pieshops, wine shops, pottery shops, clothes shops, and fruit shops, coal shops, drink shops and food shops were the roman shops. The goods were made at the villa and workshops at the back of the shops. The things only few people could afford were glass vases, nice and well-decorated pots, vases, silk and jewellery. Shoes, woollen cloth, normal pots, food and drink were the things many people could afford. On the streets there would have been beggars begging, soldiers marching, guarding things and arresting people, shop keepers shouting out what they're selling, people buying things, people weighing things and children and people running about. It would have been very busy with all the selling, buying and running about going on. I really like to live during the roman times in those busy streets. The forum was important aswell as lots of other things. It was important because it had the basilica (town hall and law courts), the curia (where the town council meets), the treasury (where all the towns' money is) and the tabularium (all the official documents were kept there). Temples. People believed temples were important God or Goddess' homes. The things that went on at the temples were praying, killing of animals and then examining of the dead animals to see if the gods were pleased or angry. Vesta was the Goddess of purity, fire and hearth. A sacred flame burns in her temple in Rome. Juno was Jupiter's wife and sister. She was Goddess of women and children. Mars was god of war and was always dressed as a Roman soldier. He is the son of Juno. Jupiter was the chief god. The god of the sky and thunder, he carries thunderbolts around to throw. The temple had 27 decorated pillars holding it up and a tiled roof lying on top. At the front of the temple there would have been a gold statue of the god or goddess whose temple it was. Inside the floor was made of marble and stone blocks with fire in the middle would have lit the temple. The walls both inside and outside would have been nicely decorated. The Amphitheatre. An amphitheatre was an oval arena where gladiators fought each other or wild animals. The word amphitheatre means â€Å"theatre in the round†. The Coliseum is Rome's most famous amphitheatre. The amphitheatre had seats like steps but bigger going up all around the sides of it. There are 3 types of gladiator, they are Retiar, Throcian and Mirmillo MY TIMETABLE OF THE AMPHITHEATRE. 09:00-10:03 The Circus 1 10:08-10:55 Warm Up Fight 11:00-12:00 The Death Fight 12:05-13:00 The Circus 2 13:05-14:05 No-man Fight1 14:10-14:30 Executions 14:35-15:55 Lunch Break 16:00-17:00 Wild Beast Hunt 17:05-18:20 Animal Or Human DEATH 18:25-18:45 Executions 18:50-19:50 No-man Fight2 Homes And Houses. The Slums In Rome flats were about 7 storeys high. They were usually dirty. As the storeys went up they got smaller. The poorest people lived on the top floors (the smallest apartments). People hanged their washing on lines which went from one window to another. The very top was open (no-roof) and it was used to store things on like chickens, crops and other things. In a flat the kind of furniture you would find was beds, tables, chairs, draws, shelves and cupboards The disadvantages of living in a flat are flats aren't very big and you have to trust everyone not to go and take or eat your food or steel any of your things and plus there was a lot of noise. The Merchant's House The two biggest areas in the merchant's house were the impluvium and the atruim. The floors were mosaic and that made them well decorated. The walls were also decorated, but they were decorated with stucco. The Villa. The villas were on the outskirts of the town. Although they were luxurious houses they were usually at the heart of a working farm they were well furnished and had mosaic floors.

Without Pity

September 4th 2012 RH 200 / Merar REACTION PAPER (JOURNAL) by Raymond Alvarez, Jr. I though the people profiled in  Without Pity: A Film About Abilities represented a fair cross-section of disabled individuals struggling against the world's obstacles, to gain control of how they will eventually live. One story that really hit home with me was Charlie. Being born with no legs and arms, Charlie showed great adaptation and intelligence and had such a go-getter attitude.He attends school with the help of a special wheelchair, and aside from his obvious disability, was very well accepted by everyone who got to know him. Charlie inspired me tremendously. His Mom and Dad are also very admirable in how they chose to let Charlie live a great life, and with so much determination to be a normal kid. I got teary eyed, not because of his disability, but because of his triumph in life. God has big plans for such a little guy. Charlie has a great message to deliver to this world.The other story, which I could most relate too was Josh. In his mid 20's, a motorcycle accident paralyzed him. (I grew up riding motorcycles, and at any moment could have had a life changing accident. ) With obvious and understandable frustration, Josh shares the pains of being a quadriplegic. It took so much courage to share (on camera) the anger he suffers. He lost the love of his life amidst it all. The Victory was seeing him overcome to become, and eventually finishing his dream of college.I only pray to have that much courage to persevere if ever to face a life changing disability. I could only imagine it being much harder experiencing a major disability later in life as Josh did. Charlie never experience life with arms and legs, so in a graceful way, that may have made adjusting to his disability easier. Either way, they were a great testimony to (in my opinion) God's loving grace, and the tremendous power of the holy (and human) spirit! What a great movie!

Business Communication Essay Example for Free (#11)

Business Communication Essay His vision to give young, fashion forward men and women a unique way to express their individuality through style resulted in millions of customers worldwide and propelled his designs to the forefront of the fashion industry. It all started in 1990, with a mere $1,100 in his bank account, Madden started crafting shoe designs from his Queens-based factory and the  Steve Madden  brand was born. With a lot of courage, years of experience in the footwear industry, and unique creative designs,  Steve Madden  formed his own successful enterprise. A year later, Madden introduced a redefined version of platform shoes, resulting in one of the most spectacular success stories in the early 1990’s. Inspired by his favorite rock and roll stars of the 1970s, the thick, chunky heel became  Steve Madden’s  signature and a phenomenon in women’s shoes. Madden’s footwear vision is continuously evolving. Steve once said, â€Å"What inspires me is what I see people wearing on the streets of the world from New York to London and beyond. I get my ideas and inspiration from pounding the pavement all over the world. Today, fashion is dictated by individual style. To me, the fashion of the future is anything that a young guy or girl feels good wearing as long as  it’s put together in the right way. † (www. stevemadden . com) Today, the  Steve Madden  brand represents a lifestyle. It is about embracing fashion while still maintaining that funky independence that first defined the brand 20 years ago. Expanding now into apparel and other accessories such as dresses, handbags, belts, sunwear, cold weather, outerwear and hosiery,  Steve Madden  is always looking toward to the future. As 2013 begins, more exciting opportunities are on the horizon including re-packaging, new store design rollout and expansion in global markets. The days when the future did not seem so bright In April 2002, Mr. Madden found that neither his investors nor federal judges take too kindly to stock manipulation and securities fraud. Steve Madden’s talents as a shoe designer helped him build a 240 million dollar empire in his own name. But by his own admission, that wasn’t enough — he was greedy for more. His greed cost him about eight million dollars and control of the very company that brought him such riches. Madden was sentenced in 2002 to 41 months in prison for his role in a stock swindle scheme coordinated by the now-closed brokerage, Stratton Oakmont. His wrongdoings include conspiring to manipulate the stock prices of more than 20 companies, including his own. And, he did it at the expense not only of the public but his own investors who lost more than 100 million. Besides paying restitution, Madden had to resign as CEO of Steve Madden Ltd and leave the board of directors. He is also barred from holding a position as officer for seven years. However, he did retain a creative position until his prison sentence began that fall and will likely fill that capacity upon release later this spring. Meanwhile, those left to keep the company going in his absence quickly started their damage control efforts. A new board of directors was quickly assembled. Among those elected were Madden’s brother and a corporate accounting guru. Once their former leader began repaying his debt to society, company heads began cleaning Steve Madden Limited’s financial house; making sure stock prices accurately reflected the health of the business. The company fully cooperated with the SEC’s investigation and hired an independent auditing company to keep watch over the process. Those days and even today, the company’s financial practices are an open and well-kept book. Anyone could get the latest financial news from the same site by loging on to for the latest shoe designs. After heading off anymore potential legal woes, management began to focus on keeping the business itself walking tall. If the company’s sales reports were any indication, not having â€Å"Steve† hasn’t really hurt Steve Madden Limited. While the founder has been in a Florida prison, the company’s management built on his vision by expanding into other areas. â€Å"Steve† by Steve Madden moved the company from the trendy 16 to 24 year old demographic into upscale footwear for a more mature crowd. The company licensed Candie’s and Unionbay footwear for men. Rather than try and replace or substitute Madden’s design eye, they took what they had and introduced it to new markets. It worked. According to company reports, nearly all of the brands have increased profit margins and inventory levels. In a press release, management expressed hope that their profits would have increased in 2005 as compared 2004 (which actually happened). 2. Corporate Communication after the Bad Publicity But prison didn’t break Steve Madden—or his company. Like so many of today’s celebrity convicts, from Martha Stewart to Paris Hilton, Madden says he emerged a changed person. He served out his sentence, doing yardwork, teaching business classes to other inmates, reading four books a week (from â€Å"The Devil Wears Prada† to David McCullough’s â€Å"Truman†) and pumping iron obsessively. I used to wear this tank top in prison,† he says. â€Å"And I’d stare at myself and flex. I never did that before. † He even got married, to a Madden employee who came for regular visits. And when he was released in April 2005, Madden says, he was â€Å"stronger physically, mentally, spiritually† than he’d ever been. After the return of Ste ve Madden from prison, he decided not to shy away from the imminent release of its namesake founder from prison. The company was promoting the return of its creative leader in a series of eye-catching posters and print advertisements, and is having some fun with it in the process. While the ads do not say where Madden has been, one suggests, in a wink-wink kind of way, that Mr. Madden has not been on a sabbatical, a secret mission or up the  Amazon  collecting snakes: â€Å"A new meaning for the word spring time. Steve returns. Spring 2005. † The company had launched a rather interesting press campaign celebrating Steve Madden’s upcoming release from prison. One features a girl wearing an ankle bracelet and another features an empty pair of shoes with the words, â€Å"There’s one pair of shoes that’s been impossible to fill. Steve returns Spring 2005. Others allude to Madden getting â€Å"sprung† in Spring 2005. Financial Dynamics, the shoe retailer’s investor relations agency, says the campaign is a positive way of dealing with the prison sentence. It makes light of the company’s troubles, sending a message that the board is over it and customers should feel the same way. It’s also a sure fire way t o get people talking about the brand. When it comes to sales, the only bad publicity is no publicity. Once upon a time, a company, particularly one that sold products to the public, would shun publicity if it possibly could when a senior executive encountered legal woes. The idea that a company – especially one like Steve Madden, which sells shoes mostly to teenage girls and women in their 20’s – would actually run ads calling attention to its leader’s prison past would have flabbergasted experts in fields like brand identity, advertising and public relations. â€Å"I love controversy; I love pushing the envelope, but when you have a younger customer you have a responsibility to take the law and authority seriously,† said James LaForce, partner at LaForce & Stevens in New York, a marketing communications agency specializing in fashion and entertainment clients. That was of course before Martha Stewart, whose public image has, by initial measures, seemingly gained in stature after her release from federal prison. A colorful paper flap decorated with a photograph of her cradling a chicken, declaring â€Å"Welcome home, Martha,† was attached to the cover of April’s Martha Stewart Living magazine, published by  Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Companies like Mr. Madden’s and Ms. Stewart’s may also be more likely to embrace their convicted executives, since those executives have plenty of influence in the boardroom. Reticence about an executive’s past also predates a world in which rappers can find the sales of their music increasing in seeming lock step with the severity of their scrapes with the law. â€Å"It’s in now to be out, out of prison, that is,† said Paul Cappelli, chief executive at the Ad Store in New York, an advertising agency that creates campaigns for brands like  JetBlue. â€Å"I could see myself suggesting something like this to a client,† Cappelli said, â€Å"that instead of ignoring the 5,000-pound elephant in the corner, you might as well bring it out into the open and make hay of it. Robert Passikoff, who has been tracking consumer response to the Martha Stewart brand as president of Brand Keys in New York, a brand and customer-loyalty consultant, said that his index of its value had recently risen. The index has climbed to 96, Mr. Passikoff said, compared with a bottom of 62 – â€Å"lower than  Enron,† he said – before she entered prison. (The peak was 122 in May 2002. ) Is the new badge of honor, I served my time? We are not sure it doesn’t ultimately hurt, even if the American public is largely forgiving when people serve their time. The campaign is trying to make him the face of the brand but who wants the face with numbers under it? † Steve Madden is different from Martha Stewart, because unlike her, he was never the brand. He was the label, so a lot of people don’t know who the guy was and didn’t know he went to jail. That has worked to Steve Madden’s advantage so far,, citing the history of the Madden brand index: It was 110 before Madden went to prison and fell only slightly, to 106. However, it is worth mentioning that consumers seem to be more forgiving about men than women. Brian Russak, a senior editor at Footwear News in New York who covers Madden, said: â€Å"It seems like an obvious play to Martha Stewart, but I have to wonder whether that resonates with Madden’s consumers. We often say here the target consumer doesn’t know there is a Steve Madden. † Trey Laird, president and executive creative director at Laird & Partners in New York, an advertising age ncy that creates campaigns for fashion and apparel brands like DKNY and Gap, also drew distinctions between Madden and Stewart. The Madden ads â€Å"are kind of cute and clever, but this is not a Martha Stewart situation, when the whole country is watching because she’s a cultural icon. † â€Å"I don’t feel most consumers know about† Steve Madden’s sentence, he added, â€Å"or if they knew, they forgot about it. † The Madden campaign can be perceived as a parody of Ms. Stewart’s story meant â€Å"to get people talking about the brand,† Laird said, particularly because â€Å"the Madden brand has never been a brand that has taken itself seriously. † For instance, a recent Madden campaign featured caricatures of its customers with comically oversized heads. A statement by Financial Dynamics read: â€Å"Steven Madden Ltd. looks forward to the much anticipated return of the unique talent and creative design expertise of Steve Madden in the spring of 2005. Further, the company believes the current advertising campaign embodies and enhances the Steve Madden brand. † If the rise in Martha Stewart stock is any indication, getting out of prison seems to be â€Å"in. † The publicity generated by Madden’s return could translate into increased exposure and, in turn, increase sales in the future. Plus, having him back at the head of the creative team will bring his company something it hasn’t had in a while†¦ his ability to give the millions of women who buy his shoes what they want. So, If there’s one thing Americans enjoy more than watching the mighty fall, it’s granting them forgiveness. â€Å"You have to go through a process. You made your mistake, you did your time,† Madden says. â€Å"You have to be a little contrite to get redemption. † To judge from the recent performance of his company, Madden’s been forgiven—at least by that segment of the population that favors shoes with animal prints, polka dots and four-inch heels. Sales were $475. 2 million in 2006, up from $375. 8 million the year he was released, while net income more than doubled to $46. 3 million. Madden is quick to admit that he’s made mistakes. But he says he wouldn’t change a thing about his life. â€Å"Everything I’ve done has gotten me to where I am today,† he says. His prison experience has clearly had an impact on his designs. The next offering from the prison groom: wedding shoes, called I Do. â€Å"It’s a huge market,† he says. â€Å"Marriage is sort of back on track. † And so is Steve Madden. . The Crisis 3. 1. Chain of events In summer 2004, Madden’s luck turned when he was indicted for stock fraud and money laundering in both the Eastern and Southern Districts of New York. According to the charges, Madden secretly purchased stock on behalf of the principals of two corrupt penny-stock brokerage firms — Stratton Oakmont Securities of Lake Success, Long Island, and Mon roe Parker, of Purchase, Westchester — helping them manipulate 29 initial public offerings, including that of his own company. That same day, the Securities and Exchange Commission came after him with a civil suit alleging Madden had employed â€Å"devices, schemes, and artifices to defraud. † If convicted in either of the criminal cases, Madden would face up to more than twenty years in prison and several million dollars in fines. If he were to lose the SEC case, which was put on hold until the criminal cases were completed, he could be forced to pay millions more. Even worse, he ran the risk of being barred from serving as an officer or director of any public company, including his own. On the day of his arrest, while Madden was busy pleading not guilty to all charges and pledging his East Hampton country house and the Long Island homes of two friends in order to make bail, shares of Steve Madden Limited fell almost 15 percent to $11. 85 before nasdaq halted trading. Two days later, when the stock (which trades under the ticker SHOO) reopened, it fell to $6. 88. Though the stock has traded up as high as $13. 88 due to a recent rally in the footwear sector, it has yet to regain its pre-indictment momentum. â€Å"The story’s sad. It’s a great story. It’s a real American story. My old friends took me public, they turned out to be crooks, and I’m innocent†, Madden has been quoted to say. While the indictment has severely damaged Steve Madden Limited’s standing on Wall Street – there was a consolidated class-action shareholder lawsuit pending against the company, and it has hired Bear Stearns to explore â€Å"all possible strategic options,† including an outright sale — it hasn’t tarnished Steve Madden’s reputation as a design and marketing genius. â€Å"He has some special knack at figuring out what teen girls want to wear,† says Sanford Bernstein analyst Faye Landes. According to teen-market consultant Irma Zandl, who ranks Madden with Nike and Adidas in the top five brands that girls favor, his shoes are popular because they are fabulously over-the-top. â€Å"Steve Maddens are not for the conservative girl,† she says. â€Å"If he’s going to add leopard skin, he’ll do it ten times more outrageously than anybody else. It’s for people who think less is less. † Every week following his indictment, Madden used to get more than a thousand e-mails from his customers, only a handful of which referred to his legal predicament. In fact, the company not only refused to retrench, instead it was aggressively expanding. At that year’s Grammy Awards, the company made a bid for high-profile customers by giving out fluffy leopard-print slippers to special guests. Three days later, at the Western Shoe Association show in Las Vegas, Madden introduced his newest product line at the time: Steve Madden Mens. 3. 2. The players While Madden was working his way up in the shoe industry, his best friend, Danny Porush, was stuck in a rut. After five years at Boston University, he left without getting a degree and bounced from job to job, working for, and starting up, a variety of small businesses, including an ambulance company called SureRide Ambulette. In 1988, while watching his son in the playground of his Bayside, Queens, apartment complex, he met an unlikely mentor: a dental-school dropout and former door-to-door meat and seafood salesman named Jordan Belfort. A short, brash, young Jewish guy, Belfort boasted he was making $50,000 a month selling penny stocks out of a boiler room in Great Neck. As Porush would later testify, Belfort confided the business was â€Å"half a scam,† but the chance to increase his income tenfold was a siren call Porush couldn’t resist. Two days after they met, he closed down SureRide and joined the firm. Using fanciful scripts, the brokers — Belfort’s childhood friends from Queens, Porush’s golf buddies, money-crazed kids recruited from Long Island college campuses — sold and manipulated tiny, high-risk IPOs, according to testimony, by grossly exaggerating their prospects, boasting that they had inside information, and generally saying whatever was necessary to make a sale. Their underwritings encompassed a vast array of low-rent businesses and all had the same trading pattern — the stocks would soar when they touted them but then come crashing down when the brokers unloaded their stakes. In 1992, Steve Madden made a decision that at the time seemed natural enough: He hired his best friend’s firm to be his banker. While Madden knew that the SEC had already accused Stratton of engaging in price manipulation and employing high-pressure sales tactics, he considered it a legitimate company. â€Å"They cleared through Bear Stearns,† Madden recalls, pointing out that Stratton’s link to the giant firm gave it an aura of respectability. Besides, Stratton was not only willing to raise capital for Steve Madden Limited in the private markets, it wanted to take the tiny, unproven company public. Like his friend Porush, Madden was going to enter the big leagues. On December 13, 1993, only seven months after the first (and, at that time, only) Steve Madden shoe store had opened on Broadway in SoHo, Stratton Oakmont took the company public at $4 a share. The most active stock on the nasdaq on the day of its offering, SHOO closed at $8 a share, a huge gain in the pre-Internet era. Just a few months later, it sunk to $3. With only $5. 3 million in sales, a net loss of $900,000, and a boom-bust trading history, the company simply seemed to be nother one of Stratton’s overhyped IPOs. But it wasn’t. In 1994, Madden surprised his critics. With hardly any advertising, Madden increased sales by almost 40 percent. The next year, sales tripled to $39 million, prompting Madden to hire Rhonda Brown, the former merchandise president of Macy’s East, to become his chief of operations. Soon, Madden had celebrity customers — Carmen Electra, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Nev e Campbell, Alyssa Milano, Mary J. Blige. By 1997, the company was generating $59 million in total sales, operating seventeen stores, and introducing a clothing line designed for â€Å"a customer who doesn’t break the law — but does break the rules. † That spring, in a lengthy profile in  Footwear News,  Madden compared his company to â€Å"an underground rock-and-roll band that gets its first hit single. † Meanwhile, over in lake success, Porush and Belfort were struggling to stave off failure. While they were still raking in tens of millions a year from stock manipulations, regulators were working to put Stratton out of business. In March 1994, they nearly did: As part of a settlement with the SEC, Belfort was barred from the securities industry for life. But Porush managed to garner a lighter sanction, barred for just one year from supervising other brokers. In the wake of the ruling, Belfort continued to control the firm through Porush. Inevitably, though, the relationship between the partners soured. In January 1997, the company eventually filed for bankruptcy. By that time, Gregory Coleman, an agent in the FBI’s securities-fraud squad at 26 Federal Plaza, had been investigating Stratton for several years. In 1995, under instructions from federal prosecutors, Coleman sent out a flurry of subpoenas to some of Stratton’s clients, including Madden, in an effort to create a panic that would culminate in a race to the government’s door. One year later, U. S. Customs officers in Miami arrested a young French private banker who worked for Union Banquaire Privee in Switzerland. The arrest was made as part of an unrelated money-laundering sting operation, but hoping to win a lighter sentence, the banker began to talk. By sheer coincidence, he had two clients who were of particular interest to the government: Jordan Belfort and Danny Porush. On September 2, 1998, just a few minutes after pulling out of the driveway of his Old Brookville mansion to take his 5-year-old daughter to the video store, 36-year-old Jordan Ross Belfort was arrested for conspiracy to commit money laundering and securities fraud. The next day, 41-year-old Daniel Mark Porush was nabbed down in Boca Raton. Faced with maximum sentences of twenty years in prison, both men came to the same conclusion: After only a week in jail, they decided to flip. â€Å"It was like taking down the heads of a major crime family,† says former assistant U. S. ttorney Joel Cohen, the prosecutor in the indictment. â€Å"But in this case, the organized crime was the brokerage business. † Porush and Belfort secretly wore wires to record their friends and dragged down dozens in their wake: lawyers and accountants, bankers and brokers. 3. 3. Effects For the government, Steve Madden was one of the biggest catches in the dragnet. The shoe mogul had been a focus of the investigation for some time; the SEC had cited his company’s IPO as one of those that had been manipulated, and believed that Madden was routinely getting, and flipping, stock in other Stratton deals. Although some of Stratton’s IPOs had grown into profitable businesses, only Madden’s company had become a significant success. But according to Belfort, the celebrity CEO was also a â€Å"rat hole,† a place to hide stock. Porush, his P. S. 1 buddy, didn’t hesitate to give him up either. Madden, as he recently testified at the trial of Stratton’s former auditor, was â€Å"deep into the fraud with us. † According to the Madden indictments, the designer’s personal connection to Stratton began in 1991, when Madden agreed to secretly buy and sell stock in Stratton deals on Porush’s behalf with â€Å"the understanding that he would incur no risk. (Porush, as a principal of the firm, was restricted in his ability to trade stock in these companies. ) The deal was that Madden would earn a â€Å"predetermined profit on each transaction,† then kick back to Porush a significant portion of the proceeds, either in cash or by purchasin g stock from Stratton that was deliberately overpriced. Once Belfort was barred from the securities industry in 1994, Madden allegedly entered a similar agreement with him regarding the Stratton spinoff Monroe Parker. But according to the SEC, Madden wasn’t only ripping off the general investing public, he was ripping off his own shareholders as well. In early 1993, the SEC alleges, Madden agreed that the IPO of his company would â€Å"be a manipulation similar to previous Stratton IPO manipulations . . . such as Master Glazier’s Karate International. † In exchange for his agreement to â€Å"follow Porush and Belfort’s instructions,† they allegedly promised â€Å"that even if SHOO . . . went bankrupt, Madden would make money on the SHOO IPO. † In addition, as Belfort recently testified at the Stratton auditor’s trial, Belfort â€Å"had a secret deal with Steve Madden to maintain control of his company after it went public. Because Belfort and his partners had financed Steve Madden Limited’s early development, they owned a majority stake in the company before it went public. But the National Association of Securities Dealers refused to list SHOO unless Belfort — then under investigation for securities fraud — dramatically reduced his stake. As Belfort testified, he agr eed to sell his shares to a corporation controlled by Madden to placate the NASD, but it was a bogus transaction. â€Å"Under the secret deal which we had written down and legally signed,† says Belfort, he was the true owner. Belfort exerted an extraordinary influence over the company. Stratton’s auditor, who was a friend of Belfort’s, also became Madden’s auditor. In 1994, after Belfort was kicked out of the securities industry, he even joined SHOO as a consultant. In addition, according to Porush’s testimony, key Madden employees were given stock in Stratton IPOs as part of their compensation. (A Madden spokesperson denies such an arrangement existed. ) As Porush explained, â€Å"Part of the package when we recruited people for Steve Madden was . . . because you’re in with us, you’ll make money on every new issue. In 1997, the Belfort-Madden friendship ended abruptly around the time Belfort asked Madden to sell some of the SHOO stock he secretly owned. Madden refused, and the dispute quickly turned into a bitter lawsuit, during which Belfort produced the deal they had signed. Madden admitted the signature was his but insisted he had been â€Å"manipulated† and â€Å"tricked† into signing by someone he had â€Å"trusted as my friend, business associate, underwriter, and confidant. † According to Madden, the demise of the friendship actually preceded the lawsuit, â€Å"when Belfort started showing up stoned for work. â€Å"I have no intention of allowing Jordan Belfort to ruin SML’s bright future by threatening me or by tarnishing the company’s reputation,† Madden vowed at the time. Ultimately, he settled the suit for $4. 3 million in cash, an outcome that favored his adversary. In the fall of 1999, around the time the government went public with the news that Porush and Belfort had been secretly cooperating, the U. S. Attorney’s Office approached Madden’s personal attorney, Joel Winograd, to discuss its case against his client. Soon, rumors that Madden might be indicted began wending their way around Wall Street. . Assessment As many people saw it, the fact that Madden had an account at Stratton doesn’t mean he knew what Porush and Belfort were doing, let alone that he was in any way involved. Madden â€Å"was buying stock and making money, buying stock and losing money. He made more than he lost, but he didn’t know what improprieties they were involved in. † As Madden himself put it in the course of his lawsuit with Jordan Belfort: â€Å"My strengths as a businessman lie in the design and sale of women’s shoes, and I have never been comfortable with complicated or technical legal or business documents . . . I have always relied on the people around me. † When asked why Madden employed Belfort as a consultant at Steve Madden Limited in 1994, after he was barred from the securities industry, his lawyer replies, â€Å"Steve Madden is a loyal friend and a devoted human being. He didn’t turn his back on Jordan Belfort in his time of need. † And what about the $80,000 cash kickback Madden allegedly gave to a Stratton golf buddy in the locker room of the Engineers Country Club in Roslyn, Long Island? â€Å"It’s totally ridiculous,† says Winograd. â€Å"Cash? The government can explain from here to kingdom come. There is no way Steve would have had that amount of cash, and he wouldn’t have had that in a bag walking around a country club. I think these fellows have watched too many spy thrillers. â€Å"Let’s say Steve was fooled,† Mr. Madden’s lawyer summarizes. â€Å"You can be savvy in business, but you may not be savvy in love and friendship. † In any case, â€Å"Steve will overcome,† he vows. â€Å"His company will continue to have record quarters of sales and earnings, and this will have a fairy-tale ending. † Perhaps. But even if Madden was acquitted in both of his criminal trials, he still lost the civil case and, control of his company. For Steve Madden Limited, such an outcome might be manageable. â€Å"Mr. Madden is extremely talented and a tremendous business partner, and he’s wonderful,† says the company’s president, Rhonda Brown. â€Å"But we could continue to grow our business profitably . . . whether he’s on the golf course, or whatever. † For Steve Madden the man, it could be devastating. â€Å"My life,† he says, â€Å"is my company. † 5. Conclusions Throughout the paper, we have researched and debated both sides of the issue and conversely presented both approaches by those involved or ever taking interest in the matter. Some say that the fashion mogul got what he deserved, bashing him for being a fraud under a publicly endearing persona, while others, close friends and devoted customers alike, stood behind him and helped if not the man, the company itself from disaster. Should a great visionary not content himself with being the image upfront and the genius behind the empire he built and instead take charge of other key areas that make a business successful rather than trusting others, trusted friends or proven experts with managing them? That may be true and perhaps this was where Mr. Madden made the biggest mistake of all. While the case was and still is controversial, the company succeeded in overcoming the crisis and continues to be among the most profitable and booming shoe fashion business in the States. Business Communication. (2018, Oct 18).