The Environment of Electronic Commerce Essay Example

The Environment of Electronic Commerce Essay Example The Environment of Electronic Commerce Paper The Environment of Electronic Commerce Paper These elements have helped governments create the legal concept of jurisdiction in the physical world. Because the four elements exist in somewhat different forms on the Internet, he jurisdiction rules that work so well in the physical world do not always work well in the online world. 2. In about 300 words, describe the differences between subject-matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction. * Subject-matter jurisdiction is a courts authority to decide a particular type of dispute. For example, in the IS. S, federal courts have subject-matter jurisdiction over issues governed by federal law (such as bankruptcy, copyright, patent and federal tax matters) and state courts have subject-matter jurisdiction over issues governed by state laws (such as professional licensing and state tax matters). If the parties to a contract are both located in the same state, a state court has subject- matter jurisdiction over disputes that arise from the terms of that contract. The rules for determining whether a court has subject-matter jurisdiction are clear and easy to apply. Few disputes arise over subject-matter jurisdiction. * Personal jurisdiction is, in general, determined by the residence of the parties. A court has personal jurisdiction over a case if the defendant is a resident of the state in which the court is located. In such cases, the determination of personal jurisdiction is straightforward. However, an out-of- state person or corporation can also voluntarily submit to the jurisdiction of a particular state court by agreeing to do so in writing or by taking certain actions in the state. 3. The advantages and disadvantages of issuing business process patents have been hotly debated by legal scholars and business people. One compromise proposal advanced by Jeff Bozos, founder of Amazon. Com, is to allow the issuance of business patents, but only allow them to be effective for a short time, perhaps two or three years. In about 300 words, present logical ND factual arguments that support the issuance of such limited-term business process patents. * The business process patent, which protects a specific set Of procedures for conducting a particular business activity, is quite controversial. Many legal experts and business researchers believe that the issuance of business process patents grants the recipients unfair monopoly power and is an inappropriate extension of patent law. In 1999, Amazon. Com sued Barnes and Noble for using a process on its Web site that was similar to the I-click method. The case was settled out of court in 2002, but the terms f the settlement were not disclosed. In 2007, a federal judge entered a final judgment of $30 million against eBay in a business process patent case. A company that makes a business of buying patents and attempting to enforcing them, Merchantmen, had sue eBay for its use of a fixed price sales option that eBay calls Buy It Now. Merchantmen believed that one of its patents covered the mechanism of offering a fixed price option in an online auction. Merchantmen is continuing to press for an injunction (in addition to the monetary damages already awarded) that would prevent eBay from using he feature at all. 4. Define product disparagement. In two or three paragraphs, present an example of product disparagement. A defamatory statement is a statement that is false and that injures the reputation of another person or company. Product disparagement is defined as: if a defamatory Statement injures the reputation off product or service instead of a person. * In some countries, even a true and honest comparison of products may give rise to product disparagement. Because the difference justifiable criticism and defamation can be hard to de termine, commercial Web sites should consider he specific laws in their jurisdiction (and consider consulting a lawyer) before making negative, evaluative statements about other persons or products. . In about 300 words, explain the idea of nexus. Why is it an important concept in state and international taxation? In what ways is it similar to jurisdiction? * A government acquires the power to tax a business when that business establishes a connection with the area controlled by the government. For example, a business that is located in Kansas has a connection with the state of Kansas and is subject to Kansas taxes. If that many opens a branch in Arizona, it forms a connection with Arizona and becomes subject to Arizona taxes on the portion of its business that occurs in Arizona. This connection between a tax-paying entity and a government is called a nexus. The concept of nexus is similar in many ways to the concept of personal jurisdiction. The activities that create nexus in the U. S. Are determined by state law and thus vary from state to state. Its issues have been frequently litigated and the resulting common law is fairly complex. Determining nexus can be difficult when a company conducts only a few activities in or has minimal contact with the state. In such cases, its advisable for the company to obtain the services of a professional tax advisor. Companies that do business in more than one country face national nexus issues. If a company undertakes sufficient activities in a particular country, it establishes nexus with that country and becomes liable for filling tax returns for that country. The laws and regulations that determine national nexus are different in each country. Companies will find the services of a professional tax lawyer or accountant who has experience in international taxation to be valuable.

Origami and Geometry Lesson Plan for Grade 2

Origami and Geometry Lesson Plan for Grade 2 Help students practice origami to develop a knowledge of geometric properties. This is meant for a second-grade class for the duration of one class period, 45-60 minutes. Key Vocabulary:  symmetry, triangle, square, rectangle Materials origami paper or wrapping paper, cut into squares of 8 x 8a class set of 8.5 x 11 paper Objectives Students will use origami to develop an understanding of geometric properties. Standards Met 2.G.1. Recognize and draw shapes having specified attributes, such as a given number of angles or a given number of equal faces. Identify triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes. Lesson Introduction Show students how to make a paper airplane using their squares of paper. Give them a few minutes to fly these around the classroom (or better yet, a multipurpose room or outside) and get the sillies out. Step-By-Step Procedure Once the airplanes are gone (or confiscated), tell students that math and art are combined in the traditional Japanese art of origami. Paper folding has been around for hundreds of years, and there is much geometry to be found in this beautiful art.Read The Paper Crane to them before starting the lesson. If this book cant be found in your school or local library, find another picture book that features origami. The goal here is to give students a visual image of origami so that they know what theyll be creating in the lesson.Visit ​a  website, or use the book you selected for the class to find an easy origami design. You can project these steps for students, or just refer to the instructions as you go, but this boat is a very easy first step.Rather than square paper, which you usually need for origami designs, the boat referenced above begins with rectangles. Pass one sheet of paper out to each student.As students begin to fold, using this method for the origami boat, stop t hem at each step to talk about the geometry involved. First of all, they are starting with a rectangle. Then they are folding their rectangle in half. Have them open it up so that they can see the line of symmetry, then fold it again. When they reach the step where they are folding down the two triangles, tell them that those triangles are congruent, which means they are the same size and shape.When they are bringing the sides of the hat together to make a square, review this with students. It is fascinating to see shapes change with a little folding here and there, and they have just changed a hat shape into a square. You can also highlight the line of symmetry down the center of the square.Create another figure with your students. If they have reached the point where you think they are able to make their own, you can allow them to choose from a variety of designs. Homework/Assessment Since this lesson is designed for a review or introduction to some geometry concepts, no homework is required. For fun, you can send the instructions for another shape home with a student and see if they can complete an origami figure with their families. Evaluation This lesson should be part of a larger unit on geometry, and other discussions lend themselves to better assessments of geometry knowledge. However, in a future lesson, students may be able to teach an origami shape to a small group of theirs, and you can observe and record the geometry language that they are using to teach the â€Å"lesson.†

Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Philosophy, Enlightenment and Education - Essay Example This discussion declares that studying educational history is essential in the enhancement of contexts of institutions and ideas by underscoring the traditions that provided the foundations of early education. In speaking of the existence and development of formal education, Plato has a specific consideration given that his main ideas of education have over history formed the basis of educational influences that children are aesthetically imparted with. Plato helped in musing the educational ideas by focusing on the role of play to children and the aesthetic influence of early education. Basically, the view according to Plato with regard to education was that it was a rightly disciplined feeling of pain and pleasure in a child that enabled them to acquire core societal values. In this essay, the core concept shall be on the highlighting the reasons why Plato put much emphasis on the controlling of the children’s exposure to aesthetic influences in early education.  From the report it is clear that  Plato is a great and renowned Greek philosopher and mathematician of the medieval times whose philosophy is considered to have had a great impact on the level of education in practice by most educational systems right from the early childhood stages. In the traditional Greek settings, the idea of education for the young children was founded on the need to educate them to be able to know how to use swords, ride on horses, be equipped for warfare and use hunting tools accordingly.

Employment Relations 2 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Employment Relations 2 - Essay Example Ever since the need for the department has become prominent, it has made great strides and has evolved completely, the functions that we see any human resources department performing today are very different from the functions that it performed 2 or 3 decades ago, this is ample evidence to judge the importance of the role that human resources departments now perform in any given company. Employment relations means the relationship that exists between the employer and the employees and the factors that affect this bond are some institutional factors which would be discussed in detail later on in the paper, these factors are basically the economic, political and the cultural factors and how they affect the relationship of the employer and the employee and the role of the human resources department in tackling the various issues that may arise due to the impact of these factors is looked into in detail. The employment relation also looks into the rights that the employees have over the employer and the rights that the employer have over the employee, it also defines what needs to be done in different situations when a breach has been made by either party. Economic factors can also have an effect on the employment relation of the firm, for example in the micro economic context if the demand for the firms products goes down rapidly due to substitutes being now available at a cheaper market price then the firm would have to react to this negative factor in the environment and reply by having either lower prices or higher quality goods, but if the price has to be decreased some of the labor might have to be laid off and that can really hurt the relationship between the firm and its employees. If a labor union is involved then it would definitely protest against laying off for this reason and might threaten to halt all labor activities if the decision of the firm is not taken back. These are some decisions that the firm has to make very carefully and take the union into full confidence before announcing any such decision. On the other hand macroeconomic factors can also have a bearing on the firm and its relationship with the employees or trade unions, if the inflation level is extremely high and the company finds that it needs to cut down on costs or close a wing down then the same problems would ensue as those that have been mentioned above, but with measures such as negotiations and direct dialogue between the company and the trade unions such barriers can be overcome but there might be times when the issue would have to be resolved by putting the foot down, in that case the firm might have to pay a hefty price in the short term but in the long run it would be beneficial for the firm (Ed. 2008). Employees of any company have the right to join a labor union and that labor union has the right to represent that employee. Demand factors may reduce the facilities that are given to employees by the employer as this would translate into lower costs for the employee, this might be an alternative solution for laying off people and there have been examples where labor unions have accepted or brokered such deals where the w hole labor force would accept a lower wage when economic conditions are bad so that no one from the organization is laid off. Another factor is the political scenario or the political situation of the country that the firm is

The History of Guns in America Essay -- Exploratory Essays Research Pa

The History of Guns in America What is the importance of the gun? The gun is one of the most important tools in the defense of our nation. Guns are responsible for a lot of death and injuries, but these things were going on before the existence of the gun. Guns aren't the reason for the death and injuries, they are just a means to it. They are tools and an engineering marvel of our age. The gun has evolved from a simple weapon that caused limited destruction to the modern gun that is so fast and powerful it is capable of mass destruction. Through the evolution of the gun, it has become a political tool. The first guns used in America were a simple machine where the person did most of the work. The user measured and put the powder down the barrel of the gun. Next some shotgun pellets were put in the same way. This was then all compacted and the gun was ready to fire. This reloading took over a minute before each shot could be fired and the guns weren't very accurate by today's standards. If too much powder was used then the gun could explode or if the powder were wet then the gun wouldn't fire. One of inventions during the Revolutionary War was a way to reload faster. The powder was already pre-measured and kept in little sacks. This made reloading faster because the user no longer had to measure the powder between each reloading. These guns were crude but in that day was a powerful modern invention that was considered very useful. The American Revolution was a political war to obtain what the people of that era wanted. By today's standards the destruction of gun was minimal so war w as used to obtain political objectives. The next real step in the evolution of the gun came during the Civil War. Rifles were invented that ... ... capable of killing in small numbers. Now, however, they are able to destroy whole buildings. Politicians can and do use the power of the gun to force others to do what they want. Guns have become such an effective killing machine that they can kill anyone anywhere at anytime and, to fulfill any political cause. Â   Works Cited * Hogg, Ian. The Story of the Gun. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996. * Lavarone, Mike. "Armory." http://www.worldwar1.com/arm005.htm. July 1997. * "New Guns and Gear for '98." American Rifleman. May 1998: 38-41 an 62-63. * Professional Web Designs. "Guns." http://www.usscod.org/gun.html. December 1997. * "Tank Weapons Gunnery Simulation System/Precision Gunnery System." http://www.stricom.army.mil/PRODUCTS/TWGSS-PGS. April 1998. * "WWII Battleship Gun Data." http://www.uss-salem.org/navhist/battleships/guns.html. April 1998.

Marketing to the Bottom of the Pyramid Essay

Professor C. K. Prahalad’s seminal publication, The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid, suggests an enormous market at the â€Å"bottom of the pyramid† (BOP)—a group of some 4 billion people who subsist on less than $2 a day. By some estimates, these â€Å"aspirational poor,† who make up three-fourths of the world’s population, represent $14 trillion in purchasing power, more than Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France, and Japan put together. Demographically, it is young and growing at 6 percent a year or more. Traditionally, the poor have not been considered an important market segment. â€Å"The poor can’t afford most products†; â€Å"they will not accept new technologies†; and â€Å"except for the most basic products, they have little or no use for most products sold to higher income market segments†Ã¢â‚¬â€these are some of the assumptions that have, until recently, caused most multinational firms to pay little or no attention to those at the bottom of the pyramid. Typical market analysis is limited to urban areas, thereby ignoring rural villages where, in markets like India, the majority of the population lives. However, as major markets become more competitive and in some cases saturated—with the resulting ever-thinning profit margins— marketing to the bottom of the pyramid may have real potential and be worthy of exploration. One researcher suggested that American and European businesses should go back and look at their own roots. Sears, Roebuck was created to serve the lower-income, sparsely settled rural market. Singer sewing machines fashioned a scheme to make consumption possible by allowing customers to pay $5 a month instead of $100 at once. The world’s largest company today, Walmart, was created to serve the lower-income market. Here are a few examples of multinational company efforts to overcome the challenges in marketing to the BOP. Designing products for the BOP is not about making cheap  stuff but about making technologically advanced products affordable. For example, one company was inspired to invent the Freeplay, a windup self-power–generating radio, when it learned that isolated, impoverished people in South Africa were not getting information about AIDS because they  had no electricity for radios and could not afford replacement batteries. BOP MARKETING REQUIRES ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY The BOP market has a need for advanced technology, but to  be usable, infrastructure support must often accompany the  technology. For example, ITC, a $2.6 billion a year Indian conglomerate, decided to create a network of PC kiosks in villages. For years, ITC conducted its business with farmers through a maze of intermediaries, from brokers to traders. The company wanted farmers to be able to connect directly to information sources to check ITC’s offer price for produce, as well as prices in the closest village market, in the state capital, and on the Chicago commodities exchange. With direct access to information, farmers got the best price for their product, hordes of  intermediaries were bypassed, and ITC gained a direct contact with the farmers, thus improving the efficiency of ITC’s soybean acquisition. To achieve this goal, it had to do much more than just distribute PCs. It had to provide equipment for managing power outages, solar panels for extra electricity, and a satellite-based telephone hookup, and it had to train farmers to use the PCs. Without these steps, the PCs would never have worked. The complex solution serves ITC very well. Now more  than 10,000 villages and more than 1 million farmers are covered by its system. ITC is able to pay more to farmers and at the same time cut its costs because it has dramatically reduced the inefficiencies in logistics. The vast market for cell phones among those at the BOP is  not for phones costing $200 or even $100 but for phones costing less than $50. Such a phone cannot simply be a cut-down version of an existing handset. It must be very reliable and have lots of battery capacity, as it will be used by people who do not have reliable access to electricity. Motorola went thorough four redesigns to develop a low-cost cell phone with  battery life as long as 500 hours for villagers without regular electricity and an extra-loud volume for use in noisy markets. Motorola’s low-cost phone, a no-frills cell phone priced at $40, has a standby time of two weeks and conforms to local languages and customs. The cell-phone manufacturer says it expects to sell 6 million cell phones in six months in markets including China, India, and  Turkey. BOP MARKETING REQUIRES CREATIVE FINANCING There is also demand for personal computers but again, at very low prices. To meet the needs of this market, Advanced Micro Devices markets a $185 Personal Internet communicator—a basic computer for developing countries—and a Taiwan Company offers a similar device costing just $100. For most products, demand is contingent on the customer  having sufficient purchasing power. Companies have to devise creative ways to assist those at the BOP to finance larger purchases. For example, Cemex, the world’s third-largest cement company, recognized an opportunity for profit by enabling  lower-income Mexicans to build their own homes. The company’s Patrimonio Hoy Programme, a combination builder’s â€Å"club† and financing plan that targets homeowners who make less than $5 a day, markets building kits using its premiumgrade cement. It recruited 510 promoters to persuade new customers to commit to building additions to their homes. The customers paid Cemex $11.50 a week and received building  materials every 10 weeks until the room was finished (about  70 weeks—customers were on their own for the actual building). Although poor, 99.6 percent of the 150,000 Patrimonio Hoy participants have paid their bills in full. Patrimonio Hoy at tracted 42,000 new customers and is expected to turn a $1.5 million profit next year. 8/27/10 2:14 PM Cases 3 Assessing Global Market Opportunities One customer, Diega Chavero, thought the scheme was a scam  when she first heard of it, but after eight years of being unable to save enough to expand the one-room home where her family of six lived, she was willing to try anything. Four years later, she has five bedrooms. â€Å"Now I have a palace.† Another deterrent to the development of small enterprises at the BOP is available sources of adequate financing for microdistributors and budding entrepreneurs. For years, those at the bottom of the pyramid needing loans in India had to depend on local moneylenders, at interest rates up to 500 percent a year. ICICI Bank, the second-largest banking institution in India, saw these people as a potential market and critical to its future. To convert them into customers in a cost-effective way, ICICI turned to village self-help groups. ICICI Bank met with microfinance-aid groups working with  the poor and decided to give them capital to start making small loans to the poor—at rates that run from 10 percent to 30 percent. This sounds usurious, but it is lower than the 10 percent daily rate that some Indian loan sharks charge. Each group was composed of 20 women who were taught about saving, borrowing, investing, and so on. Each woman contributes to a joint savings account with the other members, and based on the self-help group’s track record of savings, the bank then lends money to the group, which in turn lends money to its individual members. ICICI has developed 10,000 of these groups reaching 200,000 women. ICICI’s money has helped 1 million households get loans that average $120 to $140. The bank’s executive directory says the venture has been â€Å"very profitable.† ICICI is working with local communities and NGOs to enlarge its reach. BOP MARKETING REQUIRES EFFECTIVE DISTRIBUTION When Unilever saw that dozens of agencies were lending microcredit loans  funds to poor women all over India, it thought that these would-be microentrepreneurs needed businesses to run. Unilever realized it could not sell to the bottom of the pyramid unless it found low-cost ways to distribute its product, so it created a network of hundreds of thousands of Shakti Amma (â€Å"empowered mothers†) who sell Lever’s products in their villages through an Indian version of Tupperware parties. Start-up loans enabled the women to buy stocks of goods to sell to local villagers. In one case, a woman who received a small loan was able to repay her start-up loan and has not needed to take another one. She now sells regularly to about 50 homes and even serves as a miniwholesaler, stocking tiny shops in outlying villages a short bus ride from her own. She sells about 10,000 rupees ($230) of goods each month, keeps about $26 profit, and ploughs the rest back into new stock. While the $26 a month she earns is less than the average $40 monthly income in the area, she now has income, whereas before she had nothing. Today about 1,300 poor women are selling Unilever’s products in 50,000 villages in 12 states in India and account for about 15 percent of the company’s rural sales in those states. Overall, rural markets account for about 30 percent of the company’s revenue. In another example, Nguyen Van Hon operates a floating sundries distributorship along the Ke Sat River in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta—a maze of rivers and canals dotted with villages. His boat is filled with boxes containing small bars of Lifebuoy soap and  single-use sachets of Sunsilk shampoo and Omo laundry detergent, which he sells to riverside shopkeepers for as little as 2.5 cents each. At his first stop he makes deliveries to a half dozen small shops. He sells hundred of thousands of soap and shampoo packets a month, enough to earn about $125—five times his previous monthly salary as a junior Communist party official. â€Å"It’s a hard life, but its getting better.† Now, he â€Å"has enough to pay his daughter’s schools fees and soon . . . will have saved enough to buy  a bigger boat, so I can sell to more villages.† Because of aggressive efforts to reach remote parts of the country through an extensive network of more than 100,000 independent sales  representatives such as Hon, the Vietnam subsidiary of Unilever realized a 23 percent increase in sales last year to more than $300 million. BOP MARKETING REQUIRES AFFORDABLE PACKAGING As one observer noted, â€Å"the poor cannot be Walmartized.† Consumers in rich nations use money to stockpile convenience. We go to Sam’s Club, Costco, Kmart, and so on, to get bargain prices and the convenience of buying shampoos and paper towels by the case. Selling to the poor requires just the opposite approach. They do not have the cash to stockpile convenience, and they do not mind frequent trips to the village store. Products have to be made available locally and in affordable units; fully 60 percent of the value of all shampoo sold in India is in single-serve packets. Nestlà © is targeting China with a blitz of 29 new ice cream  brands, many selling for as little as 12 cents with take-home and multipack products ranging from 72 cents to $2.30. It also features products specially designed for local tastes and preferences of Chinese consumers, such as Nestlà © Snow Moji, a rice pastry filled with vanilla ice cream that resembles dim sum, and other ice cream flavors like red bean and green tea. The ice cream products are distributed through a group of small independent saleswomen, which the company aims to expand to 4,000 women  by next year. The project is expected to account for as much as 24 percent of the company’s total rural sales within the next few years. BOP MARKETING CREATES  HEALTH BENEFITS Albeit a promotion to sell products, marketing to BOP does help improve personal hygiene. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that diarrhea-related diseases kill 1.8 million people a year and noted that  better hand-washing habits—using soap—is one way to prevent their spread. In response to WHO urging, Hindustan Lever Company introduced a campaign called â€Å"Swasthya Chetna† or â€Å"Glowing Health,† which argues that even cleanlooking hands may carry dangerous germs, so use more soap. It began a concentrated effort to take this message into the tens of thousands of villages where the rural poor reside, often with little access to media. â€Å"Lifebuoy teams visit each village several times,† using a â€Å"Glo Germ† kit to show schoolchildren that soap-washed hands are cleaner. This program has reached â€Å"around 80 million rural folk,† and sales of Lifebuoy in small affordable sizes have risen sharply. The small bar has become the brand’s top seller.

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