Information Search and Analysis Skills

Information Search and Analysis Skills 1.0 SYNOPSIS The research was carried on one of Microsoft Windows operating systems which is Windows 2000. The various factors such as security, reliability and easy to use interface were discussed. In Windows 2000 security is more improved as compared to previous versions, point-to-point Tunnel protocol (PPTP) and layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP as alternative security for Virtual Private Network (VPN)). Windows 2000 security has significant benefits like confidentiality, authentification, Data integrity, Smarts cards, Encryption and Kerberos. It is a reliable desktop and laptop operating system for business of all types. It is a build on NT technology and offers rock solid reliability and manageability. The operating system provide an intelligent user interface that adapts to the way users work and this makes it more efficient. 2.0 INTRODUCTION According to Silberschatz (2007), Windows 2000 is a type of operating systems released by Microsoft Company for use on business desktops, notebook computers and servers. This operating system was released on 17 February 2000. Windows 2000 was originally named Windows NT 5.0, this is because it was a successor to Windows NT 4.0, then Windows NT 2000 and finally was called Windows 2000. Windows NT 5.0 was the last version of Windows NT. An operating system is a boundary between the hardware and the user that manages and coordinates the activities in order to share the resources of the computer. It acts as basic program for computing applications that are run on the machine. As a basic program some of the tasks it performs are recognizing input from the keyboard, sending output to the display screen, keeping track of files and directory on the disk and controlling peripherals devices such as printers and disk drives. In a nutshell, operating system handles the details of the operation o f the hardware. As it is the successor of Windows NT 4.0 operating system it was titled Windows NT 5.0. This operating system combines the stability and security of Windows NT 4.0 and Plug-and-Play capabilities of Windows 9x. windows 2000 supports new technologies such as Accelerated Graphics Ports, USB devices, DVD drives, multifunction adapter cards and also a full line of PC cards. This operating system also grants a new distributed directory service for controlling resources across an enterprise, FAT 32 support, and the internet Explorer 5 web browser. Crowley C. (1998) said, Windows 2000 has four basic editions, these are Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 server, Windows 2000 advanced server and Window 2000 datacenter server. These editions were targeted for different markets and they share the most significant features and system utilities, which include Microsoft Management Console and typical system administration applications. The entire set of versions sustains Windows NT file system, NTFS 3.0, Encryption File System and disk storage. Windows 2000 might be installed in two ways, that is either manual or unattended installation and it requires at least 133MHZ Pentium class system with 64mb of RAM. BACKGROUND STUDY Security http://www.answers.com/topic/microsoft.windows stated that, it is important to implement security on computing environment so that unauthorized users cannot have access, steal or damage system resources. Implementing security has significant benefits on computer users because only authorized personnel have access. TCP/IP provides security on windows 2000 with internet standards that use cryptographic security services: 3.1.1 Confidentiality: Internet Protocol security (IPSec) traffic is encrypted and can only be decrypted with and encryption key. 3.1.2 Authentification: Before the receiver verifies that the message was sent by IPSec peer, the IPSec traffic has to be digitally signed with the shared encryption key. 3.1.3 Data Integrity: A cryptographic checksum that have the encryption key is found in IPSec traffic. Confirmation on modification of packets can be done by a receiver. 3.1.4 Smart Cards: To protect your network smart card technology is used in windows 2000 environment, unlike using password protection. Tamper-proof storage is offered for a users key pair and an associated public key certificate and these keys are termed as symmetric and asymmetric keys which are protected through Personal Identification Number (PIN) that the users required to enter. If you are a smart card writer you are also a smart card reader, this means you preserve to use a generic smart card reader to write certificate to a smart card. ( http://technet Microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd316363.aspx) 3.1.5 Encryption for data: Windows 2000 offer the ability to make information unreadable that is encryption, by using the techniques of NTFS file system so that unauthorized users can not access your data. Files and folders can be encrypted by setting an attribute under Properties dialog box. Encryption is done through the use of algorithms that mess up, reorganize and encode the data. There is a key pair that has a private and public key. It is used to encode and decode the encrypted information. The user has to designate a recovery agent so that the data can be recovered when the key pair is lost or damaged. If the user has not designated a recovery agent the data cannot be recovered. (http://www.answers.com/topic/microsoft.windows) 3.1.6 Central storage of security policy and account information: the purpose of this policy is to implement security that is required by computer systems and data and grant accountability agenda for users. It also creates, processes and manages sensitive information on daily basis. The appropriate mechanism are developed and maintained to protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of computerized information. (http://www.answers.com/topic/microsoft.windows) 3.1.7 Kerberos: Dr.R.C.Joshi e tal (2005) stated that, these are protocols used to enable users to authenticate without sending a password over the network. A user obtains a special kind of key from the network central security at login. The protocol prevents outside attacks. The name Kerberos comes from Greek mythological three- headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hades. Reliability This refers to the ability of the operating system to protect itself from handling error conditions, protect its users from malfunctioning software. Windows 2000 is reliable on desktop and notebook computers operating system for businesses of all kinds. It is more reliable as compared to Windows 95 and 98. Windows 2000 uses hardware protection for virtual memory to be resistant to failings and attacks. It also uses software protection mechanism for operating system resources. Windows 2000 has local file system, which is NTFS file system and it recovers automatically from many types of file-system errors after system crash, said Dr. Joshi R. C. (2005). Dr. Joshi R.C (2005) also stated that, changes were made on kernel-mode to make windows 2000 reliable. Kernel-mode write protection offers and reads only subsections of device drivers and kernel. It has code signing which verifies the source of system file and existing Digital Signature Cryptographic technology before windows 2000 is installed. There is also Pool tagging where better drivers and cleaner code are produced by kernel mode device drive because memory allocations are made to selected device drivers out of a special pool, unlike a shared system pool. The recovery time is reduced on Faster CHKDSK. An administrator is given one step process to dependably restart Internal Information Server. There is a kill process tree which when a parent process is stopped makes sure that all processes initiated by parent process are removed. Kernel-only crash dumps are added for contents of the kernel to be written optionally to disk after a crash. Users can correct installation problems o r change settings that have caused boot problems when Safe-mode boot uses its minimal services to boot the computer. Easy to use interface The user interface of Windows 2000 id more improved compared to other versions. In Windows 2000 the information is accessed quickly whether it is on a computer or network. Improved wizards of windows 2000 assist users to achieve tough tasks quicker. Only items that are used more frequently are displayed on Start menu and this made the Screen clutter to be reduced. The Dialog box has been improved as words are automatically completed when the user types and most recently used words are listed so that the user can select the appropriate. The Quick launch tool bar can be used to open Microsoft Internet Explorer or to read the e-mail by adding the customizable toolbars. Also with Windows 2000 desktop, it is easy to switch between windows and the desktop because the new Show Desktop button is located on the task bar. My Documents offers a permanent location which store personal files and folders and it also has My Picture folder where photos can be stored and scanned. Windows 2000 support s multilingual, that is it can identify and establish any essential fonts or signs to observe multilingual information. Encryption and decryption methods are made transparent to authorized users because each file is encrypted with its key. Windows 2000 also provide smart cards which require users names and passwords unlike depending on a single factor to authenticate a user. (http://technet Microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd316363.aspx) Windows 2000 offers 25% faster performance than Windows 95 and 98 on systems with 64MB and more memory. Its web intergrated capabilities and broad support for mobile computers and hardware devices make easy for business operators to connect to internet and work anywhere and at anytime. (http://technet Microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd316363.aspx) 4.0 CONCLUSION To conclude on this, Windows 2000 is a far more secure and reliable than previous other version. The process of installation and configuration of hardware is easy compared to NT platforms. It provides centralized management of users and resources over the network and it also offers enhanced security management of users, computers and devices. This makes Windows 2000 to support a security model stronger than those of previous Microsoft operating systems. It is interoperable with various operating systems, like Novell Netware, Windows NT Server 4.0, Macintosh, Linux and UNIX. The operating system runs on a wide variety of computers and users can choose and upgrade hardware to match their budgets and performance requirements without needing to alter the applications that they run. REFERENCE 1. Available: http://technet Microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd316363.aspx (cited on 15 July 2009) 2. Available: http://www.answers.com/topic/microsoft.windows (cited on 17 July 2009) 3. Dr.R.C.Joshi e tal (2005) Operating Systems 4. Crowley C, (1998) Operating Systems, a design oriented Approach 5. Silberschatz A, e tal (2007) Operating System concepts

Disneyland Resort Paris

Disneyland Resort Paris: a development after understanding local cultures The case Disneyland Resort Paris: Mickey Goes to Europe introduced readers to the development of Disneyland Paris during fifteen years. Even though Disneyland Paris had a terrible start in 1994, it had a great improvement and bright future in 2007. The reason for its failure and success is the same: culture. Forgetting to respect local culture caused Disneyland to lose market and revenue in Paris, while adjusting its operations with culture issues put Disneyland Paris in a successful position. The success of Disneyland in AmericaAs a cartoon company which was founded in 1923, Walt Disney Company started its business in America. During the period to develop its business to Americans, Disney created its core values such as innovation, fun and magic. Disney movies which evoked these values are welcomed by audiences and make the company the world leader in animation (Martha, 2011). For the same reason, Disneyland t heme park, a resort to make â€Å"magic† real and tangible, also had big success in America. The universal strategy of Disney Company is to use Disneyland resorts to connect the real world and the magic world.First, the company shows audiences a wonderful and magic world in its animated movie. Second, with the popularity of the movie, the animated world reappears in Disneyland resorts by those famous characters and sidewalks (Martha, 2011). All these factors can provide guests with comfortable experiences of magic and fun that helping them to forget worries in the real life. To adopt above strategy in operation, Disney cares about both the internal and external management. For internal management, Disney offers its employees excellent treatments which create a high employee loyalty to the company.For the external management, Disneyland cares about details in its management and confirms that it transfers core values to its customers through quality services. In this way, Disne y received high customer satisfaction and won great success in America. Both the core values and operation strategy are universal about Disney. Factors such as fun, magic and innovation can capture positive emotions of human beings and make them be touched. Then Disney uses its high quality services to transfer these emotions to guests in the theme park and drive them to become loyal customers.This is the reason Disneyland did great job in California and Tokyo. However, Disney faced failures in Paris at the beginning of the resort opening. The Reason of Failure in Paris The reason of failure in Paris is forgetting to consider the effects of culture different. Disney is not an aggressive company that explores new market blindly. It aware the risk of operating a theme park out of America and thinks carefully about how to spend money and transfer core values to guests in Tokyo. Tokyo Disneyland is the most profitable Disneyland in the world.The park in Tokyo completely copied the busin ess model of the American one. However, due to the success case in Tokyo, the company forgot to consider about cultural differences and lost its market in Europe. What the company states is the strategy works in Tokyo will also works in Europe. However, Disney forgot to consider two kinds of culture differences, the difference between culture in Europe and Japan and the difference between culture in America and Europe. The former difference means even though America model worked in Japan, the same model may not success in Europe.For example, customers in Japan like their park have â€Å"the real thing† (Martha, 2011) not means customer in Europe will also welcome it. For the similar reason, a mode works well in America may not also works well in Europe. For example, the wine issue put Disneyland in Paris in a negative position and brought it infamous effects. An Effective Improvement to Make the Resort to Survive in Europe Disneyland in Paris had five approaches to improve it s business: * Change the name of the park from â€Å"Euro Disney† to â€Å"Disneyland Paris†.This approach weakened the image of park in Europe and strengthened the image of a theme park in Paris . As a result, the effects of culture differences will have lower power to stop guests feel Disney’s core value. * Reduce cost to increase net income under a condition of lower revenue of Disneyland Paris. The culture in Europe restricts the ability of Disney to absorb money form customers. Since it’s hard to change the culture in Europe, a better choice is to adjust financial approach to reduce the lose caused by culture. Redesign services to attract more customers. Disney studio park and Val d’ Europe are two examples of services which capture more customers. The former one tries its best to include European elements in it. The approach provides guests something they were familiar with and attract more tourist to visit the Disneyland park. The latter one created a center to draw customers’ attention and affected their travelling preferences. Both of these two buildings were near Disneyland Paris and work as a transportation to connect the European culture and â€Å"Disney culture†.Buildings with familiar elements will make guests feel comfortable and reduce their unfriendly feelings to Disneyland Park. Therefore the park will get a chance to cross the cultural boundary and bring its customers excellent experiences. * Improve services to bring visitors back. In addition to existing services, Disneyland is doing kinds of improvements to satisfy customers and making them find new attractions in the park. This approach will increase the customer loyalty and get them back to the park. In my opinion, Disneyland Paris did right process to resolve its crisis.At one side, Disney didn’t give up its core values. At the other side, the park improved its operation and management to create an environment which can comfort Eu ropean visitors and expend businesses. Disneyland Paris indentified its main problem, cultural blunder, clearly and reacted to it quickly. Take the Walt Disney studios park as an example, this approach adopted the MBI model perfectly. * Mapping: Notice the culture differences between America and Europe. * Bridge: In â€Å"prepare stage†, Disneyland Paris already understood its customers and plan to use the studio to make it understood by customers.In â€Å"decenter stage†, Disney Company evolved European elements in its products since the empathy made it to offer customers services they like. In â€Å"recenter stage†, an example of inviting European designer to design stunt show expresses its high emotion of establish a common reality (Martha, 2011). * Integrate: the opinion of Peter McGrath (Martha, 2011) illustrates the studio park has high awareness of handle cultural differences and face new cultural challenges. Disneyland Paris also adopted MBI model to its other services and the park generated customer loyalty successfully.The company reprogrammed and reopened existing star attractions to bring visitors back and also draw attention of new customers. The high benefits Disney Paris offering to its employees creates a positive internal company culture and helps employees to provide visitors with high quality services. The high quality services with innovation transferred core values of Disneyland to its customers. For example, the â€Å"summer camps† service, which launched in 2003, brought low cost and high return to the company and at the same time welcomed by customers. A balance of local culture and America StyleI will advise Disneyland Paris to adapt the park in a balance of local culture and American style. Completely copying American model is proved to be a failure case therefore moving Disneyland Paris to this mode is just putting the company in the wrong track of development. A total local cultural mode will cause the pa rk lose its characteristics. If Disneyland doesn’t have any Disney features, why customers prefer Disneyland rather than its competitors? At one side, features like Disney characters and buildings differentiate Disneyland from other theme parks.At the other side, the company needs to design and organize services in a more local way to guarantee that its core values can be transferred and accepted by visitors. To connect Disneyland with local events will be a good choice. For example, Paris will hold music festival every July. Sending band which consisted with Disney characters to play music on the festival can remind people the existence of the park and attract them to visit it. In 2009, German visitors are just 3% of whole visitors (Maznevski, 2009). Therefore to increase German visitors can extend visitors and boost revenue.When Oktoberfest festival is held in German, Disneyland Paris can also hold beer festival in the park to make Germany feel happy and glad to visit the p ark as well as spend money. Bibliography Harry w. Lane, Martha l. Maznevski, Joseph J. DiStefana, Joerg Dietz. (2011). International Management Behavior. Chippenham, Great Britain: CPI Abtone Rowe. Karsten Jonsen, Martha Maznevski. (2009, 06 25). Disneyland Paris – ANNO 2009. Lausanne, Switzerland. Karsten Jonsen, Martha Maznevski. (2011). Disneyland Resort Paris: Mickey Goes to Europe. In M. l. Harry w. Lane, International Management Behavior (p. 137). Chippenham: CPI Antony Rowe.

Describe the effects of the Blitz on every day life in Britain

The Blitz cause many problems across the country, not only in the bombed areas. Rationing and evacuation affected the whole country. Rationing of food helped to improve the diet of some people, as poorer people could now afford to buy better food and their general health improved. Evacuation affected the whole country, as the evacuees families had to cope with the temporary loss of a family member, and also the families where they were evacuated to, had to cope with one or two extra members of the household – anyone4 with space in their house had to take in an evacuee. When air raid precautions such as blackouts were introduced at the outbreak of war, people took them very seriously as heavy fines were handed out if the rules were broken. Censorship was used to improve and build morale. This was done by censoring newspaper reports, photographs in newspapers and radio broadcasts. The role of women also changed greatly throughout the war – they took over men's jobs in factories, volunteered in organisations such as the WVS (Women's Voluntary Service). Rationing was implemented by the government to insure even distribution across the country and to show equal treatment of everyone. In the leaflet ‘Your Food in War Time', the government explains that â€Å"more than 20 million tonnes† of food â€Å"are brought into our ports from all parts of the world†. This says that the government were worried that the Nazis could starve the country, as it was a good way of attacking the country. It affected people as they were only allowed limited amounts of supplies such as food and kitchen utensils. There were ration books and everyone got their set amount of rations, some got more than others e. g. manual workers got more than office workers, and pregnant women got more than other normal women. Some people went to extremes to get more food, like buying extra food and ration books at extortionate prices from the black market. Children were given Cod Liver Oil and orange juice as supplements. Rationing began in 1940 during the Phoney War and gradually got more extreme when the Blitz came about. It got so bad that people were even encouraged to keep allotments and grow their own vegetables to share with others. This was named the ‘Dig For Victory' campaign and there was much speculation on this campaign. It proved to be fairly successful to the people that followed instructions. There was also a rationing on soap and clothes. This was because many clothes factories were converted into munitions and aircraft factories to help the war effort. The people were advised to ‘make do and mend', rather than buying new clothes, as the production of clothes was at a low. Coal was never officially rationed but it was in short supply and the government strictly controlled distribution. It was actually a second wave of rationing which caused these problems, the first one was very confusing for the British citizens and they didn't understand how it worked at first, but the second wave was even more confusing when the government introduced a ‘points scheme'. This point's scheme measured each persons food allowance per day in points and no one was permitted to have more food than the government allocated for them. Evacuation was also another key problem that the citizens of Britain had to do. It affected the whole of the nation including the evacuees and the places they were evacuated to. Some evacuees preferred the places they were sent to, to their homes. This was because they had been treated very poorly in their homes or if their families were poor, some of them had fleas and mites. On the other hand, some families were extremely cruel to their evacuees, as they did not want another child in their house. They were not expecting it and if any household had a spare room they were sent an evacuee, no questions asked. The amount of evacuees was astounding. In a space of 4 days at the beginning of September, there was roughly one and a half million evacuees, most of them being school children and mothers with babies. There were also disabled and blind people evacuated. Pregnant mothers and teachers were evacuated as well as they were considered valuable. Many quiet towns and villages in the country were swamped with ‘down and out' children from the city and the suburbs and their different attitudes on life. Many who weren't evacuated feared their lives would be lost, so began ‘trekking' out of the city at night to try and escape danger. The role of women changed dramatically during the war. They took on men's jobs and organised many events and organisations. They set up better efforts for the evacuation processes and created matches of evacuees and homes, so they would get on with each other. They also worked long, hard factory shifts and they did physical, manual labour, which was previously thought to be jobs that only men could do. The women made do with what they had and tried different ways of coping. One of their tasks was to make people take the rationing seriously and realise that all they had was all they were going to get and no one was an exception; everyone got exactly the same as the rest of the people in their league. The women decided that the answer to this would be to make food seem more interesting and appealing. The women in the home were strongly advised to follow recipes that were distributed by the government. They had to learn how to cook using a low supply of gas, this meant that meals would take hours to cook and so many women prepared them a day in advance. The rationalisation caused food to be in low supply as well so leftovers had to be heated up the next day and eaten for dinner. Many thought they were doing the jobs of men better than the men did. The women did not only do strenuous, tough jobs that they weren't used to in the daytime, they also were made to volunteer to take on more jobs in the night time, as well keeping their families together. Many precautions and everyday ways of life had to be changed. These were things like; street lights. They had to be completely switched off, so did car headlights. This was to protect people from the German bombers, like blackout curtains were also. People were made to get Anderson shelters and create the shelter in their own back gardens. If they did not comply there were stiff penalties. If they did not have their own garden, they were made to manage with the supposedly next best, which were Morrison shelters. These were arc-like shelters made of corrugated steal and supposed to stop flying debris. Obviously if a bomb landed directly on top of an Anderson or a Morrison shelter, there would be no chance of survival. The people had to bear these things in mind as well. Many became cynical about the shelters' effectiveness, but nevertheless got on with it. They were not very strong and provided little protection for people during the war, however, there was no other protection available. Air raid wardens were appointed and they gave the signal for everyone to make a mad dash for their air raid shelters. This was another thing that affected everyday life, as they had to stop absolutely everything they were doing at the time and get into their shelters as quickly as possible. There was a huge wave of fear each time the air raid sirens were sounded. People were strongly advised to stay off the streets to minimise the amount of casualties. Entertainment facilities were out of bounds and cinemas, theatres and concert halls were closed. This caused a horrendous effect on those that ran the entertainment places. They were not allowed to make money off of them so many became bankrupt. Many things, if not complied with, were considered an offence. If someone wasn't wearing a gas mask it was considered an offence. If you weren't carrying an identity card, it was seen to be criminal and a penalty would be brought against you. If you did not have an Anderson or Morrison shelter, or any of the black out equipment (like curtains), you could be charged. This affected peoples lives as they had to adapt to a new way of life and just the slightest thing they did wrong could cause themselves to be charged or even to cause casualties in their town. This is a prime example of showing how seriously the government dealt with people who didn't really care. The government censored a lot of the information and pictures in the media showing the real impact of German destruction. They wouldn't let information be broadcasted which they thought would lower the morale of the British public so they banned it. They also wouldn't let pictures of mass destruction or dead bodies be shown in the newspapers either. One example of censorship was a picture of a school playground in Catford, London destroyed, not allowed in the newspaper as it was said to have had children's bodies on it. This would lower the morale of the British, and so was not allowed in any branches of media. All films, news broadcasts, articles, pictures, etc. were checked thoroughly by the government before being allowed to go in the limelight. The reason censorship was so important was because the British people were eager to hear anything new in the war and if there was any sign of Britain losing the war, there would be a national panic and it would be complete havoc. For obvious reasons the government didn't want this to happen, so they shielded the public from disturbing information. For people to know that an area was completely destroyed or badly hit, they would have to be living in that area or have relatives that would tell them about it. There would be no other way of them finding out.

Introduction to the Electron Microscope