Problems with Mobile Commerce

Problems with Mobile Commerce The recent years have seen an explosive growth in the mobile phone industry. Research has shown that the number of mobile phone subscribers at the end of the year 2004 has passed 1.6 billion. Mobile commerce more popularly known as m-commerce has made the business mobility a reality. The concept of anytime and anywhere internet facility with an inexpensive and comparatively smaller computing infrastructure is the driving force towards mobile commerce. With the advancements in the Wireless communication, mobile commerce has become a new paradigm for personal communication without any constraints in location. There are no age limitations in conducting mobile commerce. Starting from the teenagers to the retirees, everyone is depending on mobile devices. Mobile Commerce is defined as any direct or indirect transaction conducted through the handheld devices such as PDAs and mobile phones facilitated through mobile or wireless telecommunication networks. It is a subset of electronic commer ce. E-Commerce and M-Commerce differ in the way the business is conducted. In E-commerce, online auction systems act as an intermediary between the buyer and a seller whereas mobile commerce is more personalized and is ideal for the location based services. The characteristics of mobile devices such as mobility, cost, portability, voice, more personalization and global positioning system (GPS) have made the establishment of new business models around mobile devices. Many applications such as mobile payment systems, entertainment, content distribution and business services have been developed. Consumers can use mobile phones as an ATM or debit card to purchase tickets or pay the bills online. Content distribution services such as real time information and notifications and location tracking systems are increasing every day. Consumers can get real time information such as stock quotes, traffic information, news and weather forecasts anywhere anytime on their mobile phones via the internet. In addition to the real time content services, mobile phones have become an entertainment medium. Entertainment services such as ringtone downloads, watching live TV broadcasts, online games and music downloads has become a youth trend today. A report from Screen Digest Ltd., a global market research company, shows that Korea and Japan accounted for 80% of the worldwide online game downloading revenues (approx. 380 million Euros). According to Juniper research, a company that specializes in mobile market and technologies, adult mobile services and mobile gambling services accounted for total revenue of US $1 billion and US $ 15 billion respectively. Mobile Commerce has a great impact on business services and applications. Extending the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems to have mobile functionality will provide the sales personnel and marketing staff with real time management and corporate data. Mobile inventory management applications benefit the logistic related business in their supply chain management. Also, no time and location based constraints helps in making the offices going paperless in which case a sales person need not have to carry loads of paper for the client delivery. Mobile Commerce is creating new opportunities for the mobile service providers as well as for mobile users. Experts have proposed that the next wave of computing would be mobile commerce and the first decade of 21st century would be considered as the decade of mobile computing and mobile commerce. The driving factors of mobile commerce include various interrelated forces. The social trends where every person is depending on his or her mobile for communication (mobile society), technological advancements and economics are some of the driving forces of mobile commerce. The success of the electronic commerce itself is another major driving factor for mobile commerce. Consumers have embraced the web based e commerce in their day to day life in such a way that they cannot think of doing their tasks without any electronic channel and this has made businesses to extend their services beyond electronic channel into mobile channel. In addition to the above factors, the lowered provider costs, increased internet speed and reliability, availability of content and information anytime through an instant access and reduced time to market have contributed for the growth of mobile services. Although the above mentioned factors indicate that mobile commerce is creating various opportunities for businesses, users and service providers, a report from the Business Studies 2009 shows that only 7% of the 90% of the Americans who own a mobile phone have used their mobile phones to conduct mobile commerce transaction. Electronic Commerce can be divided into four different categories such as Business to Business (B2B), Business to Consumer (B2C), Consumer to Business (C2B) and Consumer to Consumer (C2C). Mobile commerce is mainly concerned with the B2B or B2C market. With the widespread adoption of mobile phones, mobile commerce has a prosperous future in business to consumer (B2C) category. As Business to Consumer (B2C) is considered the future of mobile commerce, businesses and consumers are becoming more concerned about security issues since identity theft has become a growing problem. The wireless telecommunication industry has seen enormous advancements in technology and hence the development of standards. But a question arises on whether the early adoption of the standards may hinder future developments in mobile commerce. Let us have a look at the major differences between mobile commerce and electronic commerce and what drives the consumer to adopt m-commerce over e-commerce. The attributes such as ubiquity that is anytime, anywhere availability, high interactivity, convenience, personalization, that is mobile phones are more personal with most probably a single owner when compared to home computers or internet cafes which is shared between a number of people, and finally localization are some of the benefits of mobile commerce which is driving the consumer market. In short, mobile commerce offers more enticing market opportunities than e- commerce. While live internet on the mobile may sound intuitively appealing, it is very difficult to estimate the utility and the extent of its usage. Businesses, governments, service providers, mobile users and stakeholders still need to address many issues and obstacles before mobile commerce pervades in to our daily lives. The next section of the paper discusses the major issues in mobile commerce such as application issues, network challenges, consumer privacy and trust, security concerns, infrastructure problems and legal and regulatory issues. Key Issues in Mobile Commerce * Security in mobile commerce * Location management issues * Limitations of mobile devices * Ethics and Privacy * Wireless Infrastructure * Usability * Legal and Regulatory challenges * Consumer Trust * Interoperability and Compatibility Analysis Security in mobile commerce Wireless communications are more vulnerable than wired communication. Although most of the wireless data networks provide reasonable encryption, security has become a major concern with the introduction of high end mobile devices in the market and the anticipated increase in the number of devices. Many issues exists with the use of mobile devices to conduct transactions such as: Data could be lost and the mobile terminals itself could be misplaced or stolen due to its smaller size and contents stored in the device could be accessed by anyone who possesses the device due to lack of proper authentication techniques . Although mobile commerce enjoys mobility, it raises many serious security threats. In particular, as it plays a very important role in business and personal life, security issues have to be considered seriously. There are many aspects to consider in security which includes physical security, risk assessment, secure wireless transmission, secured access and malware. The built in security features such as passwords and locking keypads are not used by majority of wireless users and the data stored on these handheld devices are often not encrypted which makes it easy for anyone to access the information stored without any authorized access. The article Mobile Commerce: issues and obstacles mentions that Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia did provide industry standard digital signature for authentication but was discarded in 2006. Data transmitted over the wireless medium is more vulnerable for attacks. Wireless transmission can be intercepted and if is not encrypted or encrypted with a flawed protocol, then the information can be made known. Unsecured data transmission may be exploited by hackers for eavesdropping or à ¯man- in-the-middle attacks. Tradeoff between performance and security remains an issue of concern for low power mobile devices. Communication between mobile devices is in the form of ad hoc networks where one node communicates with another without a fixed infrastructure. Network decision making in ad hoc networks is decentralized, as a result all the network protocols rely on the cooperation between the nodes. An attacker can utilize this to compromise a single node with false routing information or can instruct all the routing to go through the compromised node. In addition to compromising the nodes, hackers may route the mobile users to download malicious or miscellaneous information or may even launch denial of service attacks. An attacker need not always target a mobile user but instead if a mobile user roams in an attackers zone he or she is vulnerable to attacks. Roaming in an attackers zone may lead to the alteration or stealing of data and information without the end users knowledge. The difficulty in tracing the wireless devices as they roam in different wireless zones, no fixed geographic points and the ability to go online and offline easily gives the malicious users an excellent advantage to launch the attacks. A question of who would be responsible for the financial or data loss remains a challenge in security. Is it the user or the wireless provider or the financial institution or the software provider held responsible for the loss? Someone has to be responsible for the loss and it is quite costly and becomes a risk for stakeholders. Hence there is a need for wireless risk management. There are some false impressions that only laptops or computers are exposed for viruses and cell phones or handheld devices such as PDAs and smart phones are immune to viruses. These viruses when downloaded by cell phones drain battery life or can simply increase the load on the network.28 The compromised security function may affect not only the network but also can lead to the loss of revenue in business. Location management issues Mobile Commerce is an emerging field which involves many applications such as financial applications, user applications, entertainment, mobile inventory management applications, mobile business re-engineering, mobile games and location specific mobile advertisements. All these applications require the support of location tracking to track devices, products or the people. The following figure shows possible mobile commerce architecture. The important components of mobile commerce include wireless infrastructure, user interfaces, devices, database, mobile middleware and servers. In general, mobile commerce is very dependent on the location information of the users, devices, products, services and servers. Because of the mobility involved in mobile commerce, the location management becomes a challenging task. With the varying requirements in precision, scalability and delay between different m-commerce applications, tracking becomes more challenging. Issues in location management include precision in tracking, updating the location, storage and access of the tracked information, updating of the existing location management schemes with few modifications, difficulty in modeling the context-awareness related to the location management, the overhead of location management for various mobile commerce applications under different network size, mobility patterns and transaction size. There are a number of location intensive mobile commerce applications which require location management support as their primary requirement in wireless network. The article Addressing Location Issues in Mobile Commerce identifies some of the location intensive mobile commerce applications which include mobile advertising, mobile financial applications, mobile inventory management and proactive service management. One of the most important components of mobile commerce is financial applications which include mobile banking, mobile money transfer, brokerage services and mobile payments. If implemented properly, these applications may eventually become a business tool. Mobile advertising is another category of application where advertising is targeted to the users depending on the demographic information collected by the wireless service providers and the location of the user. Location sensitive advertisements such as shopping deals or on-going specials can be accomplished depending on the surrounding area of the mobile users. Issues in mobile advertising are: who owns the location information, how to share this information between wireless providers, what are the storage requirements and how to satisfy the need of real time processing in order to capture the user information. Mobile inventory management is tracking the location of products, goods and services. This application is very helpful for logistic providers to determine the time taken for delivery to their customers in order to provide a better customer service and to compete against other businesses. Amongst different inventory management applications, rolling inventory is one of the interesting applications which involve tracking of multiple trucks carrying large amount of inventory which helps for just in time delivery of goods when a store needs certain goods or services. Another category of mobile commerce application is proactive service management which involves collecting pertinent information of current or future needs of a user and providing the service proactively. Some of the issues in these applications are security, reliability and the cost of deployment. Limitations of mobile devices Mobile phones, hand held devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and pagers, palm sized computers and laptops such as tablets and vehicle mounted interfaces are some of the examples of the current wireless devices. Although mobility and flexibility are the main advantages of the mobile terminals, they lack in several aspects when compared to personal computers. Most of the mobile devices have constrained display capabilities with low resolution and small screen size. Limited and complicated input options due to small and multifunctional keypad. The requirement of mobile devices to be physically light and small hinders the development of user friendly interfaces and graphical applications. Mobile devices also have limited processing and computational power, memory and disk capacity, limited battery life and surf ability. All these drawbacks which do not support complex applications and transactions may lead to the limited usage of mobile commerce. Some of the must have features of smart phones are as follows: In order to satisfy multi-tasking and multi-application nature in smart phones, multi-tasking operating system is a necessary feature. Second feature for smart phones to conduct mobile commerce is a real QWERTY keyboard. The third feature is the QVGA or a high resolution display which is necessary for web browsing, gaming and MMS. Business productivity tools and application software for smart phones is a necessary feature to access business, sales, financial, inventory and real time information. Support of the 3rd generation technology for internet access is another important feature. Video and audio streaming, GPS and navigation capability and digital camera are another set of requirements which needs to be incorporated into the ideal client platform. Packing the above mentioned functionalities into a small handheld device with the multi-tasking operating system and a user friendly interface is a formidable task. Figure 2 shows a graph of the global cell phone and the smart phone shipment. As seen from the figure the percentage of the fully featured handsets are growing every year. Although the growth of the smart phones makes smart phones an ideal client platform for mobile commerce, the specifications of todays smart phones are not adequate for the transactions required for conducting mobile commerce. The success of the mobile commerce lies in the user satisfaction and the user experience in the new technology. Thus mobile device limitations have to be overcome for the widespread adoption of mobile commerce. Figure 2: Global Cell phone and smart phone graph Ethics and Privacy In the recent years ethics and privacy have become a major and touchy issue where consumers do not want to expose every aspect of their daily lives. Web applications such as maps and financial applications require personal information from the users which has created a negative impact with consumers. The risk of openness is comparatively more in a mobile environment which has created higher demands of privacy protection amongst the users. Being able to control information about oneself is what has made privacy a major concern for the society. Inappropriateness of the ringing of cell phones such as in a meeting is one of the annoying situations. This raises an ethical concern of the intrusion of cell phones at inappropriate circumstances. This gives rise to several questions on if mobile commerce evolves in such a way that it follows us around, monitors us and tries to anticipate our needs and delivers services, how much does it intrude in our private lives and the lives of people around us? Will there be a boundary between the work and the personal life? These issues if not addressed in a satisfied manner may become the obstacles for the adoption of mobile commerce. The article Mobile Commerce Adoption in China and the United States: A Cross Cultural Study states in its hypothesis 4 as Privacy Perception is positively associated with consumers intention to use mobile commerce which is in fact a true analysis. Federal Trade Commission has to increase its efforts in the inspection on mobile marketing industry. It is the responsibility of the wireless providers to protect the privacy of the consumers in the services they provide. A recent report shows that Verizon Wireless (VZW) customers were billed for downloading the ringtones and other mobile content which was advertised as free by the online marketers. Privacy has to be protected by the mobile service providers in order to make consumers feel comfortable doing business using mobile devices. It is very important for the wireless operators to protect their customers to the fullest and to stand by their word on treating every customer with respect. Mobile devices provide convenience to the consumers with the slimmer and compact style. In addition to that with the increase in the storage capability consumers are able to store more and more data. Research shows that ninety four percent of the mobile users stored phone numbers, eighty three percent stored digital photos, sixty five percent stored contacts and addresses, fifty five percent stored videos and forty eight percent stored their calendar appointments and music and other important information. With the vast amount of private data stored on the mobile devices raises a question of the protection of these mobile devices. If lost or stolen or damaged there is no way to back up the data. Wireless Infrastructure The wireless communication infrastructure required for mobile commerce is complex. The development of appropriate services and standards determines the success of mobile commerce. The technologies used for mobile commerce include wireless local area networks and wireless telecommunication. Bandwidth and data transmissions are some of the obstacles for mobile commerce. Wireless networks bandwidth are less when compared to the wired network. Although applications are created in such a way that it functions effectively in both the wired and mobile environments organizations still need to research on the interaction of the users through the wireless devices and network. Applications running successfully in a wired environment may encounter new problems such as data availability, fault tolerance, concurrency control and processing efficiency when ported to a mobile environment. The table below shows some of the wireless networking issues. Table 1: Comparison of mobile and wireless networks As seen from table 1, bit rate and coverage are two important factors. In addition to that the wireless quality of service which affects the performance in terms of delay and loss, reliability and survivability of wireless networks where a user can access mobile commerce application even during the network failures, roaming capabilities where a user can have access to multiple heterogeneous networks other quality attributes are some of the specific requirements of wireless infrastructure in order to conduct mobile commerce. Wireless Application Protocol or WAP is the protocol used as a standard for mobile commerce in the United States. WAP uses a set of common protocols to facilitate the interoperability among different wireless networks, applications and devices. But in reality WAP has failed to fulfill the technological promises. WAP cannot handle complex transactions such as sequencing of several services distributed over different networks. WAP is not suitable for a distributed networking environment. Another issue with WAP is it tends to be slower since it was not originally designed for broadband communications. The last problem with WAP is its charges are minute based; hence time consuming activities may become expensive. GPRS was designed as an alternative to WAP which is faster than WAP but it has its own downside. Since the charges are based on kilobyte download (kb) in GPRS, it may become expensive if mobile commerce service download volume is considerable. As there is an increase in the demand for bandwidth for new and existing applications, a lot of problems arise on how to obtain the unused airspace. Although reuse of frequency is increasing today the availability of frequency and bandwidth may become more limited in future. Wired devices such as laptops and PCs use a set of established wireless standards such as IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.11b. Will the mobile devices have the ability to interface with more than one communication environment? Will the communication technologies itself have the ability to interfere with one other? All these questions remain as a challenge. The table below consolidates the wireless infrastructure and communication issues. Table 2: Wireless Infrastructure Issues Usability Usability and user experience issues are often neglected in most of the businesses. It is necessary to understand and improve the usability of the web interfaces exposed through the mobile devices. Users conduct communication such as information search and transactions via user interface. Hence user interface is an important pre-requisite for satisfying customers sensory and functional needs. While mobile devices today can access a variety of applications, they enforce limitations in screen size resolution and have cumbersome input mechanisms. A survey from an internet on mobile internet users indicates usability as the biggest source of frustration. A complete understanding of different aspects of usability and how it might differ in a wireless context is necessary for all the designers and the organizations before leveraging the commercial benefits of mobile commerce. Device inefficiency may become a major issue for the adoption of mobile commerce. User interfaces if not properly designed may lead to a fifty percent transaction reduction via mobile devices. Addition of what is called cool features may make mobile devices less convenient for use. There are a number of guidelines available on web site usability such as on how to improve the layout and design of a web page, how to improve the components of a webpage. However these guidelines do not specify which aspects are critical and also the criticality may differ for different contexts and for different users. Furthermore there are limited guidelines on specific situation implementations. Thus it is necessary to understand what is important to users in order to create a more compelling mobile commerce and to drive revenues. The following figure shows the linking of usability, context and value. Figure 3: Linking of usability, context and value Relevance, Structure and Personalization are the important factors for a successful wireless interface experience. In addition to that it is necessary for the designers to understand the value the consumers derive from these three relevance, structure and personalization aspects in order to provide that value. Web presence is not equal to wireless web presence i.e. e # m. Mobile experience differs from web experience in both designs as well as in usage. Legal and Regulatory challenges Mobile commerce raises various legal and regulatory issues and challenges which is very broad as it includes safety along with many others. The difficulty in the application of the traditional laws and principles in the usage of wireless technologies is an issue facing mobile commerce. One particular case is when a seller tries to sell goods or services through a portal which is allocated to receive requests from wireless devices through specific network providers or when a person uses his or her mobile device (cell phone or a PDA) to purchase something poses many legal challenges between various parties as to who is responsible for regulating them and how should they be regulated. There are various legal issues need to be considered in mobile commerce, among them are the m-commerce contracts and identification of contracting parties and their legal capacities. Another legal issue in mobile commerce is determining the ideal method for payment. What methods need to be devised for the payment of a purchase from ones mobile? Another important question is what is the applicable law and jurisdiction if mobile devices are used for business transactions? The article on mobile commerce legal issues gives an example for the above question. What law would apply if a person residing in Lebanon who is a customer of Emarati uses his or her mobile to purchase software from a German firm whose server is located in the USA? Is it the law of the server location or the law of the country of citizenship of the customer or the law where the customer resides or the law of jurisdiction where the customer purchased software? If there is any dispute between the buyer and the seller, which court is responsible for the jurisdiction? Is it the court of the buyers country or the sellers country or the court agreed by both the parties? Digital cameras in mobile devices can be used for taking the photos and exchanging or sharing them over the internet instantly. The sharing or exchanging of the photos done without the proper authorization may result in the violation of the intellectual property rights including the copyright law. In that case who is liable for the infringement? The person who exchanged the photos on the internet or the network providers or the operators who facilitated the exchange? Is it possible to identify the person sharing the photo? Another aspect of mobile commerce issue is the safety and health risks. Safety includes many regulatory concerns such as terrorism and exposure to wireless devices. Today cell phones and other handheld devices are used in airplanes, automobiles, boats and more. This convenience has made the transactions on the go, but is this safe? Cell phones or other mobile devices installed in an automobile or a motor vehicle can distract the user from driving. Mobile commerce in the context of driving may pose serious safety concerns. Health risks of using mobile devices for conducting m-commerce include cancer. A research from the Foster and Moulder from the medical college of Wisconsin indicated that the radiations produced by the wireless devices may cause brain cancer. Cell phones are being used to set off the bombs remotely. A report from a Cellular news showed that terrorists used a cell phone to detonate the bomb in a min bus in Indonesia. Another recent bombing in London England was attempted by cell phones. A slight different issue in legal and regulatory is privacy. Todays wireless technologies provide a lot of information about the users to the network operators which include tracking of the users location. Competitive companies can purchase such information from the network operators which may lead to a privacy breach. The last but not the least issue in mobile commerce is the risk of crime. Hackers can steal the data and information from the mobile devices or simply overload the wireless network traffic to deteriorate the service. Is there any criminal law to incorporate these new types of crime and how will these penalties be enforced? Consumer Trust Trust plays an important role in mobile commerce. Trust is part of security issue but it is more of a business and psychological issue than a technical issue. This does not mean that trust has nothing to do with the technology, however it is necessary for the potential mobile commerce users to perceive wireless environment as a secure environment in order for the mobile commerce to reach its potential. Business relationships would not exist today without the trust which exists in many forms in business context such as laws and regulations, contracts, company policies and personal reputations. Building consumer trust in mobile commerce is a daunting task for the organizations, network providers and mobile vendors. E commerce is also facing the same issue because even today users do not trust technology. They are afraid to do any kind of financial transaction or any purchases using mobile handhelds. Trust plays an important role in business transaction too as trust lays the foundation between the businesses and the customers. The key characteristics in forming the trust include convenience, cost-efficiency, motivation, capacity and integrity. They all play an important role in gaining the consumer trust. Interoperability and Compatibility Interoperability is the ability of a mobile device to be used anywhere around the world. Compatibility as defined by the Gera and Chen is the degree to which an innovation is consistent with existing facilities and practice. Mobile commerce applications are said to be compatible if the applications and services satisfy the needs or lifestyle of a user. Compatibility can be classified into two types: Behavioral and Needs Compatibility. Behavioral compatibility is achieved when an innovation is consistent with the current technology and the users existing value. Needs compatibility is achieved when an innovation satisfies the needs of the users. Both behavioral and needs compatibility play a very important role in the adoption of mobile commerce. An example for the lack of the interoperability is when a network provider offers a text message acknowledgement within their own network and not on other network carriers. Mobile commerce is impeded by the existence of a variety of network communication standards. Applications are developed around the network standards and device characteristics which is the main cause for the interoperability issues. Efforts are being made to overcome

Relay Services for the Deaf Essay -- essays papers

Relay Services for the Deaf In America, there are more than 28 million deaf people but there are many different services available to meet their needs. A hearing person can have a casual conversation without even realizing the difficulties that 202,613 (5.58%) hard of hearing people might face in the world (Stat. on Deafness). It doesn’t have to be so difficult for a deaf/hard of hearing person to have a conversation even if the person they are talking to is in another state. With popular services such as Maryland Relay, the TTY and various telecommunications relay services- it is now possible for deaf people to have a phone conversation. In 1984, of the 85 million telephones in the United States and Canada, less than one percent were used regularly by deaf people (Lang). Advocates for deaf, Robert H. Weitbrecht, James C. Marsters and Andrew Saks â€Å"started the process that led to deaf people around the world having an affordable phone system they could use† (Lang). The new technology that is coming out assist deaf people is amazing and very helpful. Robert H. Weitbrecht led the way to developing one of the most popular technology services for the deaf- the teletypewriter using shortwave radios. If more than 1/3 of the U.S. population has a significant hearing impairment by age 65, it is evident that something needed to be done to help people in the world better communicate with the deaf/hard of hearing population (Stat. on Deafness). One advancement in the world of relay services is the teletypewriter-TTY, also called text telephones, which looks similar to a typewriter with a text screen. It enables deaf or hard of hearing people to make phone calls that they wouldn’t normally be able to make on a standard teleph... ....rm Overview of the Maryland Relay. (2003). Retrieved October 17, 2004, from http://www.mdrelay.org/relay/mdrelayoverview.htm PR Newswire. "Hands on Expands Video Relay Services to include Videophone Users." Deaf Today. http://www.deaftoday.com/news/archives.html. â€Å"Statistics on Deafness & Hearing Disorders in the U.S.† (n.d) Deaf and HOH culture information. Retrieved December 5, 2004, from, http://members.aol.com/deafcultureinfo/deafstatistics.htm. Texas School for the Deaf goes to the head of the class...with Installation of Sprint Empowered EducationSM. (n.d.). Retrieved October 17, 2004, from, http://www.relaytoday.com/admin/previewnewsletter.php?ID=2#27 â€Å"Ultratec Public TTY Hearing Impaired Telephones -Vandal Proof Motorized or Shelf Top Units.†(n.d) Phone Merchants. Retrieved December 4, 2004, from http://www.phonemerchants.com/ulpubttyhear.html.

Rochester as the Rake in Charlotte Brontes Jane Eyre Essay -- Jane Ey

Rochester as the Rake in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre    The rake became one of the most recognized figures of the Restoration Comedies. The rake character was seen as unmarried, cynical, coarse but with the manners of a gentleman, manipulative and self serving. By the twentieth century the rake had given away to the Regency dandy and the dark Byronic hero of Victorian literature. However, the rake does not completely disappear from twentieth century novels. Charlotte Bronte resurrects the Restoration hero in the creation of Edward Rochester in Jane Eyre. Edward Rochester exhibits many of the qualities associated with the Restoration rake; he manipulates the woman around him and his actions are self serving. Bronte’s rake varies just enough that she can present her character as both hero and villain which eventually allows for his reformation. Readers are often deceived into believing that the rake should be viewed as a villain, hence their resistance in accepting Edward Rochester as a rake. However, as Harold Weber suggests that readers should not be concerned "with whether or not the rake emerges as a hero or a villain – he must [. . .] be both" (Weber 53). The rake’s mistreatment of women categorizes him as villain. Rochester’s mistreatment of Jane and the other women in the story is detestable. He confesses that he used Blanche Ingram to make Jane jealous. Rochester admits that he "feigned courtship with Miss Ingram" (261; ch.24). Rochester deceives Blanche into believing his intent was marriage; yet she was merely a pawn in his romantic conquest of Jane. The whole time Rochester pursues Jane he is already married to Bertha. Rochester hides his marriage in an attempt to find his definition of a more suitable wife. He t... ...tion. In the creation of her hero, Edward Rochester, Charlotte Bronte resurrected the Restoration rake. Rochester posses many characteristics associated with the rake. His past life is nonexistent without discussing some former lover. He deceives Jane into believing he is unmarried. Like many rakes, Rochester can be viewed as both villain and hero. While his actions towards the other characters in the novel are villainous, Bronte presents them in such a manner that the reader’s sympathies lie with Rochester. Rochester repents for his debauched lifestyle and is rewarded by the death of Bertha and his marriage to Jane.    Works Cited Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Ed. Beth Newman. Boston: St. Martin’s, 1996. Weber, Harold. The Restoration Rake-Hero: Transformations in Sexual Understanding in Seventeenth-Century England. Madison U of Wisconsin P, 1986.

Bluest Eye

A few decades ago, racial discrimination has been a great concern for many, as it existed in all aspects of the society. What we know of discrimination is that a certain race, color, or ethnicity views themselves superior to others, and the ones who often get discriminated often are the blacks, because of their history of slavery and abuse from the whites (Kuenz). This is the most common form of discrimination at that time. What some wouldn’t know is that discrimination is not limited to one race discriminating another.The other form of discrimination is racial self-loathing, or hating one’s own race because he views it to be inferior, ugly, poor, and the like. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, racial self-loathing in the black community is exposed and attacked through the development of Pecola Breedlove’s character. This development was clearly shown through her desires and aspirations of becoming white – of achieving the bluest eye, in order to a ttract attention and live a happy life. The idea of racial self-loathing was exposed and attacked when eventually her desires and aspirations were destroyed, driving her to insanity.Pecola Breedlove is a picture of a dreamer who seeks a better life at the start of the novel. All throughout the story, it was shown that she desires a few things, hoping that it could change her and her surroundings. One of these desires is to learn how she would be able to make people love her. Being born black, and experiencing a short stay with the MacTeers who are whites, she was able to understand how different she was. Her stay in the white household was very important because she was able to develop hatred for her race.She wanted attention, just like the attention being given to the white kids in the household. Pecola views that it was the overall features that would attract the attention of other people. She hated the color of her skin and her eyes. She thought that if her skin was white and her eyes were blue, more people would be able to notice her and love her (Wills). It was narrated in the story that â€Å"It had occurred to Pecola some time ago that if her eyes, those eyes that held the pictures, and knew the sights—if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different† (Morrison).At this point of the story, we now see the intensity of her desire to shed her physical features as a black girl. We may judge that her desires were only skin deep, and that it was only her childish jealousy speaking. But still, she would grow up with this mentality, and one proof of this was her mother. It can be seen that this racial self-loathing can transcend age, and it doesn’t get any simpler, in fact, it gets worse. Pecola’s mother also hated her color and features, and the indirect effect of this is her fights and arguments with her husband.It was the fights between her parents that insinuated Pecola’s desi re to disappear. She often witnesses her mother and father beating up each other. She feels that it was again caused by their color, intensifying her desire to be different. She taught that if she was white or at least she has the bluest eyes, her parents would be happy and love each other. Her brother wouldn’t run away, and everything would turn out well. Somehow, she uses her racial self loathing as a means to an end. She thinks that the problem is rooted on color, and it would be resolved by color.Looking closely at Pecola’s understanding of her situation, we may say that she uses her desire for the bluest eyes as an escape. She wanted a new, different life, one rooted on love, care, and attention. She sees no difference between her and the white children except well, they’re white. It was pointed out by Claudia when she said â€Å"Nobody paid us any attention, so we paid very good attention to ourselves† (Morrison). If that is so, then the only thing that she wanted to change was her appearance, and she thinks that this would be the solution to all of her problems.At the end of the story, Pecola was driven into madness because her desires were never fulfilled. Instead, the entire world seemed to turn against her. She was sexually violated by her father two times. Her mother didn’t believe her, and even beat her up. She bore the fruit of the abuse, but it was lost in a miscarriage. Looking at the start of the story, we see a big change in Pecola. The hopeful child from the start was almost destroyed by violence in the end. This development in her character was the author’s take on the existing idea of racial self loathing at that time.For Toni Morrison, Pecola embodied every black person who hated their color. Toni Morrison’s take on racial self loathing is evident in the character of Pecola. Desiring for a better life by hating yourself would bring you more harm than good. Well, in the case of Pecola, it see med that it was brought upon her by her society. In her eyes, she sees people ignoring her, making fun of her, and even hating her because of her color. But then again, Pecola’s eyesight is clouded by her desire to be different, to be white, and to have the bluest eyes.Instead of being true to herself, she wanted to change everything. For her, it was a means to an end, the only way for her to accept by the people around her. For the author Toni Morrison, it was not. Hating one’s race and color wouldn’t change anything, instead, it would just attract more hatred, more cruelty, and more violence. Pecola shouldn’t have lost sight of the people around her. Not everyone overlooked and hated her. The MacTeer household, especially the children, loved her despite her color.This is one way for the author to say that color is not everything, and it shouldn’t be the reason for people like Pecola to hate. Works Cited: Kuenz, Jane. â€Å"The Bluest Eye: Notes on History, Community, and Black Female Subjectivity † African American Review Vol. 27. No. 3 (1993). Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. , 1993. Wills, Joy. â€Å"Genealogy of Rejection in Morrison's the Bluest Eye†. 1999. March 23 2009. .

Communication and interpersonal interactions Essay

Explain strategies used in health and social care environments to overcome barriers to effective communication and interpersonal interactions Sometimes in health and social care, professionals find it hard to be able to communicate with patients and clients because of reasons such as disabilities. Sometimes people with certain disabilities need help and support in order to communicate with professionals effectively. People with learning difficulties may need to have a advocate with them who talks behalf of the person who may feel nervous or uncomfortable because they have learning difficulty. They may also feel confused because of the terminology that the professionals may use that the patient may not understand. There are also many types of services that help people with disabilities in order to interact effectively with the professionals such as, signers, translators, physiologists, and mentors. Some patients or clients may have different types of disabilities such as being death. People who have ear imperilment often have signers who will sign whatever is being said by the professional and to the patient who is unable to hear to be able to interact effectively with what is being said by the professional. People who are unable to speak English will have a translator with them who is someone who translates one language into another for the patient so the patient and professional is able to communicate with each other. Some patients use some forms of technologies such as hearing aids and mobile phones to be able to text and communicate. Hearing aids are made for people with hearing imperment, to be able to hear clearly by adjusting the volume to a good level to be able to help them hear clearly. Texting is also another form of communication as some people that are death may prefer communicating with professionals through text. Patients and clients may have preffered languages which may include first language, braile, makaton and sign. People that are paralised E. G. Steven Hawkins, they would use a makaton to be able to communicate which is a language programme for people who are not able to speak efficiently that patients may use to be able to communicate with professionals. Another form of preferred language may be first language, people who speak more than 1 language may prefer speaking their own language with a professional that speaks it too as they may feel that they are able to communicate better with their first language. People who are blind will use a braille which is a form of system that has alphabets of dots which can be read through touch. People with visual impairment will use a braille that needs to be provided to them by professionals to be able to communicate with them. Active listening is also another strategy that is used to interact effectively as it can show a clear understanding of what has being said. Active listening involves listening to patients and then reflecting back on what has been said to make it clear the message they have received is understood. As a individual, all patients have the right to be treated in a caring way by the service workers that they access. Health professions support patients and clients in many ways such as promoting rights, maintaining empowerment, and maintaining confidenialty. Maintain confidentiality under the act of confidentiality y is very important and MUST be maintained to all patients and clients of care and under the law. All patients and clients have the right to confidentiality meaning they have the right to access what information is being held by them, to change any inaccurate information, and to have the right to private information being locked up safely where know one can access. All health professions maintain confidentiality by storing private information about patients in a safe place, not sharing or talking about anyones information with people from outside other than colleagues. Professionals also make sure that they maintain confidentiality by giving patients and clients privacy to be able to have their own personal space. When services users access services, professionals try their best to make them feel pleased about the service so they try the best as they can to make patients feel like they are at home by maintaining empowerment. Empowerment means being able to give choices of freedom to be able to make patients feel pleased about the service and happy. All professionals are aware that everyone has individual differences such as religion, so they make sure that they provide different types of choices to people from different religions such as Muslims and also provide different types of choices according to peoples preferences.

India and China: Are catch-up theories relevant? Essay

For many decades, Japan has been the dominant power in Asia. Since 1945, America with the help of its close ally, Japan has dominated Asia. The spectacular rise of China during the past two decades has the potential to change this status quo. During the past 6-7 years, with impressive economic growth, India also has emerged as a nation to reckon with. USA and Japan see a stronger India as a means to limit China’s freedom to maneuver in the region. In short, Asia is becoming an arena for balance of power politics. After more than a century of relative stagnation, the economies of India and China have been growing at remarkably high rates over the past 25 years. In 1820 the two countries contributed nearly half of the world’s income; starting from roughly equal levels of per capita real income in 1870, India forged ahead of China until the outbreak of the First World War. Though both experienced declines in their per capita incomes thereafter (China more so than India) by 1950, India’s per capita income was about 40% higher than that of China. During the same period, the industrialized West pulled away, India and China had a share of less than one-tenth of the world income. It took roughly the next three decades for China to catch up with India. Since 1980, China has forged much farther ahead. China and India were the star performers in aggregate GDP growth in the 1980s and 1990s. China’s average growth of 10. 6% per year during the 90s had slowed slightly since to 9. 4%. India on the other hand albeit much lower rate of 6% in the 90s has a slight improvement since to 6. 2% (see Exhibit 1). Today, India and China are in 154th and 121st positions in a listing of the 230-odd countries ranked by per capita GDP. But their share in world GDP is around 2% and 5% respectively thanks to their billion-plus populations . Two countries account for 37. 5 percent of world population and 6. 4 percent of the value of world output. India and China have sustainable growth rates 7% and 10% respectively whereas the developed countries (USA, Japan, Germany, UK, France, Italy, Spain, and Canada) have only 2% even though they contribute nearly 66% of world GDP. Given the kind of dramatic growth relative to the rest of the world, it has become very fashionable to compare India and China and indulge in a bit of crystal ball gazing. The two countries with one third of the world’s population is not only dominating the world statistics but also attracting the due attention of everyone like policymakers, industrial corporate, and economists alike. Understandably, there is a great deal of interest in learning about what has enabled China and India to grow so rapidly while many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have languished during the same period. Their growth already started showing its effect on global resources and if it continues as is expected for next two decades, it will have major implications on the world economy and hence for other countries. China’s economic reforms: During his tenure as China’s premier, Mao Zedong had encouraged social movements such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution which had had as their bases ideologies such as serving the people and maintaining the class struggle. However, two years after Mao’s death in 1976, Chinese leaders were searching for a solution to serious economic problems produced by these movements which left China in a state where agriculture is stagnant, industrial production was low, and the people’s living standards had not increased in twenty years. Communist Party leaders saw economic reform as a way to regain their and their party’s moral virtue and prestige which was eroded by the traumatic experience of the Cultural Revolution (Shirk, 1993). The initial reforms were not that radical in nature. The central government retained the dominant power in economic resource allocation and responsible local officials worked for the interest of the units under their control (Solinger, 1993). However, as time passed, some aspects of the old system were altered. In 1985, further reforms were introduced. The first part of Chinese economic reform involved implementing the household responsibility system in agriculture, by which farmers were able to retain surplus over individual plots of land rather than farming for the collective. Some commodities were freed from government controls so their prices could respond to market demand (Shirk, 1993). This allowed a great percentage of the populace to become involved in private enterprise and investment in family or group ventures. The conditions also allowed rural Chinese to leave the villages and become involved in industry in urban centers. The economy grew so quickly that inflation occurred and the government had to reinstitute price controls. China’s economy retains these characteristics of potential for growth–and inflation–to this day. Another important aspect of Chinese economic reform was the decision of China to join the world economy. Deng Xiaoping and his allies hoped to affect this 1979 resolution in two ways: by expanding foreign trade, and by encouraging foreign companies to invest in Chinese enterprises. The Open Policy, which designated limited areas in China â€Å"as places with preferential conditions for foreign investment and bases for the development of exports† (Nathan, 1990), was extremely successful in the areas where it was implemented. The implementation of the Open Policy was so successful that by 1988 the leaders of the CCP were encouraged to create a new program called the â€Å"coastal development strategy. † In this program, even more of the country was opened up to foreign investment-an area which, at the time, included nearly 200 million people. Moreover, by involving more overseas investors, â€Å"importing both capital and raw materials,† and â€Å"exporting China’s cheap excess labor power,† the new policy was one of â€Å"export-led growth or export-oriented industrialization†. It was explicitly modeled on the experiences of Taiwan and the other Asian ‘small dragons’ (Nathan, 1990). China took another step in the late 1990s and early 2000s, by the closing of unprofitable state-owned factories and the development of social security systems.

Boston Tea Party Essay

On December 16, 1773, a monumental event took place that was crucial to the growth of the American Revolution. This event was known as The Boston Tea Party, taking place in Boston, a city in the British colony of Massachusetts. Massachusetts Patriots were in immense disapproval on how parliament was trying to monopolize the market on American tea importation granted to the East India Company (Boston Tea Party). The East India Company was a failing British corporation. This Company was on the verge of bankruptcy. They had millions of pounds of unsold tea that sat in warehouses. The idea was to persuade English and colonial consumers to buy East India Company tea to save one of Britain’s largest corporations. In order to make this happen, British Parliament proposed the Tea Act of 1773. The Tea Act allowed the East India Company to sell through agents in America without paying the taxes normally collected in Britain, which allowed the company to undersell even smugglers in the colonies (David Goldfield). What drew major controversy with the Tea Act was that it retained the three pence Townshend duty on tea imported to the colonies. The colonists objected to the Tea Act. They believed that this act violated their rights to â€Å"No taxation without representation,† which meant that they would only be taxed by their own elected representatives and not by the British Parliament that did not represent them. Regardless of what the colonists thought, consignees were selected in Boston, New York, Charleston, and Philadelphia, and then 500,000 pounds of tea were shipped across the Atlantic in September. The first tea ship, Dartmouth, reached Boston November 27, and two more were sent shortly after that. There were several meetings held demanding that the tea be sent back to England with the duty not paid for. Tension was rising when patriot groups tried to persuade the consignees and the governor to accept this approach. On December 16th, citizens, some disguised as Mohawk Indians, pushed toward Griffin’s Wharf and boarded the tea ships (Boston Tea Party). In a course of three hours they dumped three hundred and forty two chests of tea into the harbor, turning it into a teapot (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). The chests held more than 90,000 pounds of tea, which would cost nearly $1,000,000 dollars today (Boston Tea Party). There were certainly several participants and witnesses to the accounts of what occurred at the Boston Tea Party. Although all of the participants were taking part in the same event, their memories of their accounts do seem to differ. The first thing that I noticed was the number of participants. David Kinnison, the longest surviving participant from the Boston Tea Party, claims that there were only 24 men involved (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). His statement matches up well with Samuel Cooper, a participant that was just 16 at the time, who claims that there were around 20 men (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). Then you have John Andrews, claiming that there were around 200 citizens dressed as Indians. Another thing that seems unclear is the way the ships were taken over (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). George Hewes, a Boston shoemaker and participant, states that they were divided into 3 groups, one for each ship. Joshua Wyeth, also a participant, who was only just 16, also states that they took to the three ships at the same time. On the other hand, the Massachusetts Gazette states that they worked their way from ship to ship, after emptying one ship they would move to the next. There are many differences in the accounts of what exactly happened at the Boston Tea Party, which I think helps decipher the truthful accounts from the fabricated ones (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). Most of the witnesses that were actually a part of the Boston Tea Party had testimonies that were exceptionally similar. I believe the only thing that may have caused them to be slightly different would be the fact that it was a little over half a century later when they were trying to recollect the events. I also think that the participants swearing to secrecy had an impact on some of the misleading information, such as the discrepancy on the number of participants. Most of the participants had mentioned around 20 men being involved, when in fact the number was found to be a lot greater than that. The participants in the destruction did not even acknowledge each other even when boarding the ships, breaking open the chests and dumping the tea, so of course they are not going to be truthful about how many citizens were actually involved. I also believe that some of the information misinterpreted for fabrication might be due to the participant not writing their story themselves. George Hewes account of what happened was written by him, Joshua Wyeth’s account was recorded from his words, Samuel Cooper’s came directly from him also. All of these accounts seemed to be relatively similar; where as accounts that were retold by biographers may have changed along the way. Also, participants stories did not coincide on what time the event was actually over. John Andrews wrote that before nine o’clock every chest was destroyed, but Samuel Cooper’s account placed the end of the destruction at ten o’clock (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). Considering that Samuel Cooper had a role in this momentous event, I would give him the benefit of the doubt as to telling the truth of when the event actually came to an end (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). Another person who played an interesting role in the Boston Tea Party was Paul Revere. Revere felt strongly about the movement toward political independence from Great Britain. He was a very well rounded artisan and intellectual. Revere was a silversmith whose work brought him in close contact with patriots like John Hancock and Samuel Adams. He used his talents to support the colonial struggle against Britain. Revere soon assumed the role of a leader, along with Adams, of the Sons of Liberty. The Sons of Liberty were a secret patriotic organization formed in 1765 to prevent the Stamp Act (Paul Revere). The Sons of Liberty also organized the Boston Tea Party. Revere was also one of the many patriots who dressed up as an Indian and took part in the Boston Tea Party Protest against parliamentary taxation without representation (Boston Tea Party Historical Society). After the Tea Party, Revere was sent by the citizens of Boston to deliver news of the party to the other colonists in New York and Philadelphia. When he returned, he was appointed one of 25 men by the citizens of Boston to stand guard over the tea bearing vessels, in order to prevent the overexcited townspeople from doing further damage to the ship (Facts on Paul Revere). I would say Paul Revere played a significant role in the Boston Tea Party; he played the part of a ringleader and was a very influential role model. The acts that he participated in would not be condoned by Britain. The Boston Tea Party ultimately captured the attention of Parliament and produced a furious reaction. A lot of people in America and also in Britain were surprised about the destruction of property in the Tea Party. Parliament decided that this epic event demanded an immediate display of power. In the spring of 1774, parliament passed a series of totalitarian measures to be known as the Coercive Acts. These acts included the Boston Port Act, which closed the port of Boston until Bostonians paid for the tea and uncollected duties. The Massachusetts Government Act, this act stated that members of the governor’s council and sheriffs would be appointed rather than elected and limited the number of town meetings that could be held without the governor’s prior approval. The Administration of Justice Act, which allowed any British soldier or official who was charged with a crime to be tried in England, where they would most likely receive a slap on the wrist. The Quartering Act of 1774 permitted the army to lodge soldiers in any civilian building if necessary. All of these acts were in response to the Boston Tea Party and attempts of Britain to gain royal control. Most colonists referred to these acts as the Intolerable Acts rather than the Coercive Acts, they viewed these acts as a threat to liberty in the colonies. The spirit of protest began to spread, more and more colonists became politicized. They began to realize their common interests as Americans and their differences from the British. America was starting to rebel, but had not yet launched a revolution (David Goldfield). Although, the acts they were taking were starting to have a major influence on America. The Boston Tea Party effected America in many ways. There were a lot of different factors and rebellious acts that eventually snowballed into war, but I would say the Boston Tea Party was the most significant. The passing of the Coercive Acts and parliaments refusal to revoke them led to a great deal of disgruntlement from the colonists. The Boston Tea party most definitely sparked the Revolution, which may have otherwise been delayed or never happened at all.