Tuesday, August 6, 2019

To His Coy Mistress Essay Example for Free

To His Coy Mistress Essay The poem is a deductive poem written by a much older person to the little mistress. The 46 line poem can be said to be divided into three different parts where the author tries to make a point. The first part, lines 1- 20, introduces the limitation of time in for the poet to sing of the mistresses’ beauty and shyness. This is seen in line 1 where the poet says â€Å"Had we enough time† and â€Å"†¦an hundred years should go to praise†¦Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze†. Generally, the poem is an argument that follows procession of the poet’s thought. In the second part of the poem, lines 21-32, poet says that with the poet arguing that time is indeed short and unfavorable to lovers as they can not enjoy their love for long as â€Å"†¦time is winged† â€Å"†¦And you quaint honor turn to dust, And into ashes all my lust†. In the third part, lines 33-46, the poet draws a conclusion that due to the fact that life is short and time unlimited, they should throw away any care and tear their pleasure with rough strife. The tone of the poet used a flirty and seductive tone in conveying his message to his beloved mistress. The setting of the poem is in medieval times when it was socially unacceptable for ladies to express their desire for a man even though they are in love with him. They are to show some â€Å"coyness† at first so feign indifference to the romantic advances of men. He used seductive words like â€Å"†¦two hundred to adore each breast† (line 15), â€Å"†¦and your quaint honor turns to dust†¦ and into ashes all my lust† (lines 29 and 30). The poet uses rhyme scheme that follows the aa, bb, cc pattern. He also uses metaphorical expression in the poem. This can be seen in lines 11, 22, 35 and 36. In addition to this, the poet used imagery as a tool in the poem. This can be seen in lines 6, 12, 16, 24, 27, 29, 30, 36, 38, 39. He also used simile in lines 34 â€Å"†¦like morning dew†, and lines 38 â€Å"†¦like amorous birds of prey†. He also used allusion in line 11 where he said â€Å"†¦vegetable love†.

Monday, August 5, 2019

History Of The Work Breakdown Structure Information Technology Essay

History Of The Work Breakdown Structure Information Technology Essay Projects developed with available time and budget are more useful for own as well as customers satisfaction. This process is completed through the mechanisms of planning, monitoring and also re-planning. This report supports the project scheduling, planning and analysis methodologies, modeling concepts and analysis technique. The report is presented using a theoretical contribution on process simulation to assist design planning. We have highlighted the design planning using Microsoft Project Design with key challenges of project management. The Microsoft Project is a flexible and competent program designed to administrate the projects and help to plan effectively. We can organize the lists of task and set the time frame and facilitates with quick planning of projects. Large and complex projects are more significant for the project management. The consequence decisions of projects as how the project is managed and role of the managers are portrayed. When the schedule is tight more need is magnified. Technical design of projects requires different skills and for the complex projects the technical aspects are out these areas which need to be well managed. For this reason project management is more emphasized backed by the specialized resources. The management team is responsible for the development, designing and delivery of the projects. Our project is based on the case study of the Pharmaceutical industrys Software development in Switzerland. Pharmaceutical industry management needed the software development for their indigenous business and in other countries of the world. It also addresses all the critical processes and operations which are required for its performance and successful business. The management system approaches to quality management and all the successful operations of Pharmaceutical industry. In this process the decommissioning of the business is considered to achieve the mandate and objectives. Work breakdown Structure Work breakdown structure (WBS) defines the total scope of our project. The WBS subdivides the project into smaller and manageable piece of work. This concept of the WBS is used to produce the work packages scheduled, cost estimated, monitored and controlled. The development team uses the WBS from the previous projects and works as a template for new project. The WBS involves the following activities Identifying the deliverable and other related work; Organizing and structuring the WBS; The decomposing of the upper work breakdown structure into lower level detailed components; Assigning and developing the identification codes to WBS. Finally verifying the degree of decomposition which is necessary and sufficient. Schedules Projects are complex endeavors and plan is a necessary guide for the execution of the project. The progress of the project is recorded on a project and remaining work is reassessed in the light of new information. It is rare that execution of a project proceeds as initially set plans. The purpose of the scheduling is to show a road map that when and how the project will deliver the products in the limits of the scope defined by the project team. For the project management planning and analysis the scheduling is one of the basic requirements. Its main aim is to set the time for the required project. The project management sets the time to complete the project. The management team engaged with our project manages the processes as given following. Many activities are performed by the management team accomplishing the project undertaken. Activity: To produce the deliverable projects many specific schedule activities are identified. Activity sequencing: The schedule activities are dependent and activity sequencing identifies these dependencies among the schedule activities. Activity resource estimating: This type of activity defines the resources to perform these schedule activities. Activity duration estimating: It identifies the number of work periods which are entirely needed to complete the individual schedule activity. Schedule Development: The process of analyzing the activity sequences, resources requirement, durations, and other schedule constraints required to create the project schedule. Schedule Control: It controls the changes made in project schedule. For our project we use the Microsoft Project 2010 where Gantt chart gives us visual representation. It represents the tasks and products deliverable within the time specified in schedule. It also provides the roadmap to execute the product its delivery, tracking the changes and also managing the changes. Microsoft Project Management has very powerful tools in it to perform the activities very quickly as in figure 1. Fig 1: Project professional 2010 We can manage the schedule tasking manually using the Project Professional 2010. Fig 2: Improved Top to down scheduling Managing team has option to schedule the task automatically as shown in figure 2. The design and developments tasks of our project are scheduled automatically. The project professional 2010 is more useful for the business managers and productivity of project. The concept of Precedence Diagramming Method (PMD) is used to represent the activities and show the dependencies of the activities with sign of arrows. There are four types of dependencies or called as precedence relationships. Finish-to-Start: Successor activity starts which depends upon the completion of predecessor activity. Finish-to-Finish: the completion of the successor activity depends upon the completion of predecessor activity. Start-to-Start: The successor activity starts and depends upon the completion of the predecessor activity. Start-to-Finish: The completion of the successor activity depends upon the beginning of the predecessor activities. Time constraints are very important during the schedule development. Start and Finish activities can be restricted by imposing the dates which affects the completion of the activities. Many other constraints are also present in the project management software but in our case Start No earlier than and theFinish no later than constraints are specifically used. Project customer, sponsor and stakeholders dictate the major milestones and affect the certain deliverable components to a specific date. The scheduled dates become the expected dates and only can be changed through the approval. Milestones only provide the schedules interface and are not part of the project data base. Fig 3: Milestone and Tasks Project is actually a list of tasks and manager reports and keeps track of it. Our project is broken into phases by the managers and completion of these tasks is called as milestone. Milestone of our projects are documented at the end of each phase which reduces the project operating cost. Planning and Control The planning process consists of the project maturity, scope, development and project management plan and schedule of project activities occurring within project. While control techniques are used to compare the actual performance with planned performance. It also analyses the variances and trend assessment to improve the process improvements and recommending the adequate corrective actions required. Monitoring and Controlling a Project When a project is planned then it requires to be started according to plan. Formal changes in plan are permitted and customers are informed about this change. If this process is not completed then it is not possible to get the approval for the extension of time. In our case the monitoring project ensures: development of the required products is ensured The required standard and quality are being met Products are ready in time according to the budget and planned resources Business case is achieved by the project products Using the planning and scheduling software three components are measured as Time, Resources and cost Planning Time Resources Cost The analysis of the project schedule is not taken lightly. Budget and timeline are the basic measures to analyze the quality of schedule. The budget and timeline are kept on track, if it is not on track then manager takes immediate action to cure the problem. For the project schedule a baseline was established, this baseline is used as starting point and performance on the project is also measured. This technique is used during the project execution when the project is on track. Cost Performance Baseline costs compared and variances are shown between these two variances. Earned Value Management (EVM) technique is used to monitor the IT projects in some ways as other projects. For the effective performance measurement EVM has proven itself and also feedback tool to manage the projects.EVM also informs us that where the project is and its comparison with the proposed project. Value of accumulated cost is also measured by the EVM as the amount of work and amount spent on it. PERT Analysis Project Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) back to its history was used to control the large complex projects in USA. PERT has become now the combination of the Critical Path Method (CPM) and is thus know as the PERT/CPM. For project in discussion Pert Chart is a five step process. Identifying the all tasks for the entire project i.e. planning to execution of the product. Amount of work required to complete the each task in development of the product. Identifying the immediate predecessor tasks. Entering each task in PERT/CPM chart. Calculating the time and duration based on the resources and durations. In above tasks first two tasks are always manual and completed in brainstorming session. Last three tasks are interacted with MS Project. The best advantage of the PERT is used for the most probable effort for the tasks. We want to know the ways of estimating the effort for each task. Pessimistic, most likely and optimistic estimates are combined together into a single value which gives the expected effort for the task. A weight average simply ensures that any deviation from the optimistic or pessimistic estimates is not so much effective to take away the duration from expected duration. These estimated are more valuable when right people are involved in it. First task needed the two days and second one 1 day each with two people working. We can say that first task requires the 4 person-days of work and second task needed two. Three kinds of dependencies are found during the third task. These dependencies include the (1) project mandatory (2) external mandatory (3) discretionary. It is clear that start of the new task depends upon the success or output of previous task. External dependencies are due to non-project occurrences for example the arrival of the new hardware and interface definition of another project. Discretionary dependencies are troublesome. These dependencies are based on the flexibilities which are used to build the schedule; but also add some complexities. When all rearranging and juggling is completed and hand written information is transferred to computer based applications like MS project. Toggling between views optimistic pessimistic Calculating the Pert Entering the weight for PERT calculation Entering the durations of optimistic, pessimistic and expected in one sheet Entering the durations of optimistic, pessimistic and expected Figure 4: Pert Analysis in MS project We have found that PERT methodology has number of limitations. The first problem lies in calculating the accurate estimates of duration of tasks. When a single dominant path is selected then it yields very accurate results. In case when there are number of parallel paths then it gives overly optimistic estimation. It is recommended that classical PERT model for the quantitative for the risk analysis when you require the accurate estimation for the optimistic, pessimistic and most like durations and our project has a dominant path through the entire network. Conclusions In this report we have discussed the project scheduling, planning and analysis methodologies, modeling concepts and analysis technique using the Microsoft Project. Delivering the IT projects on time and budget is very critical to companies success and their effective management of scheduling. The concept of WBS is an essential part of this report which has determined the scope of our project. Activities and tasks with allocated time and budget are also discussed in this report. For these tasks and activities Gantt chart makes a best visual representation and used to manage and track the changes in schedule. Earned Value Management (EVM) is a best tool to measure the progress of the project. PERT analysis is also a major part of this report to represent the tasks and durations using the MS Project.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

Gender Inequality in Business

Gender Inequality in Business In todays business world, there has been a lot of change in the number of women participating in the labor force. For the past years, the number of women in the workforce rises dramatically. Unfortunately, women are still being treated lower than men when comparing their wages, and gender inequalities in the workplace have been very considerable. Women continue to earn considerably less than men, even though they are in the same occupations as men. Most of them dont have convincing reason why they are paying less to women; the only reason clarification that can be given for this income gap is discrimination. Gender preconceptions in the workplace are erroneous assumptions and should not be continued because women are just as efficient as men are in doing a task and gender equality is beneficial to workplaces. As a female myself, I genuinely advise women to prepare to address the challenges and prepare to meet a few challenges to their success. In recent decades, women have graduated from college in greater numbers than men. Therefore, it would seem that there are women who are as qualified as men if not more. Women should not be treated as less than men, mainly when they have the same potential and knowledge to do work as the men. According to a 2015 study by Institution For Womens Policy Research showed that, on average, female full-time, year-round workers made only 80 cents for every dollar earned by men, a gender wage gap of 20 percent. This record seems unfavorable for women when both males and females are doing the same amount of work for the workplace. I personally think that to have women who get paid less than men is illogical, acknowledging the fact that women are earning more degrees. I think the gender discrimination in the workplace is not only leaving women jobless, but also affecting the business that could gain more benefit from educated and passionate women. Gender inequality in the workplace is the main reasons why womens jobs often have lower pay and status. Women are less probably to have higher paying professional, technical, and managerial jobs. Women usually have a much greater representation in secretarial and service positions. They outnumbered men in office jobs in, even though a relatively small percentage of women are in the labor force. For so many reason women are less likely to be promoted to the job with a higher wage, even if they are qualified the same as the men. Part of this inequity is accounted for by the responsibilities that women have at home. Family and home commitments often limit the time, and energy women can devote to work, which makes them appear less committed or competent than men, who can spend more time at their jobs. To start a new job with gender inequality in the workplace could significantly affect womens motivation to achieve their task in a correct way. I advise to women beginning a career in business to develop negotiation skills stand to speak out against the gender discrimination for their benefit and others. As an employee, they should have to understand the law in place to prevent discrimination in the workplace. An example is an equal pay, discrimination based on their gender. Negotiation is a part of daily life whether we are aware of it or not, we all negotiate for the thing we want. For example, people may negotiate to get higher salaries, better service, and for so many different reasons. In most case women afraid to negotiate, because they believe that there will be a social backlash against them. However, negotiation skills help to ensure that all parties are equally advantaged from the inequality that occurs. Always women have to prepare for any negotiation. One of the keys to any negotiation is to do research on the issue in order to develop your strategy. I advise that women should improve their negotiating skills by practicing objectivity. I encourage women to do some research about the job that gets offered before they accept the job. We all know many companies pays less money for women than men for doing the same job. First, research the market and be aware what your skills and knowledge are worth. The more knowledge or information you get from you research will help to you to decide wisely and will also give you the chance to become a better negotiator. The second thing I would like to advise is to speak out loud against the gender discrimination. I believe women are naturally gifted for networking and skilled in building communities. Today, many people use social media for different purposes, and it seems to play a crucial part of peoples lives around the world. I think many women can use the social media to promote the discrimination and business at lower cost with high target impact. In conclusion, gender inequalities in workplaces are rough in contemporary society and are illogical. Numerous studies support that women are capable of doing a task as well as a male can, and even performing better than them. There are so many reasons that show that the issue of gender discrimination in the workplace is significant and negatively impacting. One of the disadvantages working in a place with gender inequality could have a high impact on womens motivation. Second, gender discrimination or inequality in the workplace could affect the effectiveness of the companys corporate. Therefore, to solve gender discrimination in the workplace, everyone has to take responsibility. Womens have to develop their negotiation skill and to speak out loud for their right. Further, Companies should give the opportunities equally to everyone without any isolation.

Communication in Health Care Essay -- Healthcare Communication

Introduction This is an analysis of a taped interview between a nurse and a patient who is taking pre-employment medicals. The information given during the interview, including her name, Pink Cloud is fictitious because of the need of confidentiality. During the interview, objective and subjective data will be collected. The areas of communication focused on in the analysis are verbal, questioning and listening skills. Analysis will be made and later suggestions and recommendations will be made on how to make improvements in the future. To achieve this, direct quotations from the will be used to make references to the three theories being analysed and will be supported by the literature. Analysis of the interview An interview is a planned interpersonal conversation with a purpose between two people who interact largely through a question and answer format to achieve specific goals. Verbal communication is a way in which people communicate face to face. The key components of verbal communication are words and phrases, intonation and clarity and brevity. Different words and phrases have different meanings. The denotation meaning is shared by individuals who share a common language while connotative meaning is the interpretation of a word’s meaning influenced by feeling and thoughts of people. Therefore, Nurses should carefully select words that cannot be interpreted, especially when explaining a client’s medical condition (Taylor & Crisp, 2006). Additionally, other concepts of verbal communication skills such as questioning and probing, paraphrasing and understanding are used when talking to patients. Questioning and probing is where various types of questions and statements... ...Apler, J. P. (2006). Professional nurse communications skills sets in health care team interactions. Journal of Professional Nursing , 22 (2), 180-189. Boyler, D. &. (2004). Enhancing collaborative communication of Nurded and Psysican Leadership. Journal of Nursing Administartion , 34 (2), 60-70. Dixon, J. &. (2006). Skilled communication:making it real.Advances in critical care. Journal of Continuing Education In Nursing , 17 (4), 376-382. Robertson, K. (2004). Active listening:more than just paying attention. Australia: Australian Family Pysician. Roter, D. (2004). The enduring and evolving nature of the patient-physician relationship. Journal of clinical oncology , 22 (13), 10-15. Stein-Parbury, J. (2009). Patient and person. New York:Churchill Livingstone. Taylor & Crisp. (2006). Fundamental of Nursing. Sydney , New south wales, Australia: Vaughn Curtis.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

The Real Sex Addiction Essay -- sexual compulsive behavior

In this time period, there are many different disorders and illnesses that go unnoticed, and unknown. Society creates stereotypes about illnesses such as obsessive compulsive disorder, clinical Depression, and many other mental afflictions. Another that seems to remain controversial and misunderstood is sexual compulsive behaviors. Many see it as an excuse to act a certain way, or think a certain way; in reality it is a serious mental disorder that can cause devastating effects on the people that are consumed by them and the people who are around them. Something that is however, known about sexual compulsive behaviors is that there are certain things that can emotionally damage a person and cause them to have these behaviors. The three major causes of sexual compulsive behaviors are trauma during childhood, insecure personal relationships, and improper or undeveloped coping mechanisms. Sexual compulsive behaviors have been around as long as many of the other disorders. However, there are certain specifics surrounding the issue that makes it more controversial, and therefore harder to diagnose and treat. The main argument is that it is an excuse for men that makes it okay for them to have affairs. This argument has been made partly because of certain movie stars and professional athletes, who use â€Å"sex addiction† as a way to save their careers and their relationships. However, this argument isn’t attributable to this subject because of the terminology that is used. The term â€Å"sex addiction† is not accurate for many reasons. When using the term, â€Å"addiction† one must be careful, because there is technical definitions of the word that need to be observed; these definitions are determined in Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Ment... ...5 Oct. 2013. The author has her CNM, PhD, RN, and CNP. She has worked in many different hospitals and areas helping women with sexual abuse and sexual compulsivity. This article’s purpose is to bring to light the problem of sexual compulsive behaviors in women that go largely unnoticed. It breaks down this problem in women, and addresses all the different aspects of it. She focuses on how to treat it, and how nurses can play a large role in this. This article was written for nurses who are going to encounter women who have these sexual compulsive behaviors. It is meant to counsel them and give them the necessary information to make them able to help these patients. It is a very good source because it focuses on women, who mostly go undetected in sexual compulsive behavior studies. It has valuable information about the potential causes of these behaviors.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Google Inc. is an American multinational corporation Essay

These include search, cloud computing, software, and online advertising technologies. Most of its profits are derived from AdWords. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. Together they own about 16 percent of its shares. They incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4, 1998. An initial public offering followed on August 19, 2004. Its mission statement from the outset was â€Å"to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful†, and its unofficial slogan was â€Å"Don’t be evil†. In 2006 Google moved to headquarters in Mountain View, California, nicknamed the Googleplex. Rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions and partnerships beyond Google’s core search engine. It offers online productivity software including email, an office suite, and social networking . Desktop products include applications for web browsing, organizing and editing photos, and instant messaging. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system and the browser-only Chrome OS for a netbook known as a Chromebook. Google has moved increasingly into communications hardware: it partners with major electronics manufacturers in production of its high-end Nexus devices and acquired Motorola Mobility in May 2012. In 2012, a fiber-optic infrastructure was installed in Kansas City to facilitate a Google Fiber broadband service. The corporation has been estimated to run more than one million servers in data centers around the world and to process over one billion search requests and about 24 petabytes of user-generated data each day. In December 2012 Alexa listed google.com as the most visited website in the world. Numerous Google sites in other languages figure in the top one hundred, as do several other Google-owned sites such as YouTube and Blogger. Its market dominance has led to criticism over issues including copyright, censorship, and privacy. History Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the two theorized about a  better system that analyzed the relationships between websites. They called this new technology PageRank; it determined a website’s relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. A small search engine called â€Å"RankDex† from IDD Information Services designed by Robin Li was, since 1996, already exploring a similar strategy for site-scoring and page ranking. The technology in RankDex would be patented and used later when Li founded Baidu in China. Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine â€Å"BackRub†, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Eventually, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word â€Å"googol†, the number one followed by one hundred zeros, which was picked to signify that the search engine was intended to provide large quantities of information. Originally, Google ran under Stanford University’s website, with the domains google.stanford.edu and z.stanford.edu. The domain name for Google was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998. It was based in a friend’s . In January 2013, Google announced it had earned $50 billion in annual revenue for the year of 2012. This marked the first time the company had reached this feat, topping their 2011 total of $38 billion. Financing and initial public offering The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. Early in 1999, while graduate students, Brin and Page decided that the search engine they had developed was taking up too much time and distracting their academic pursuits. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million. He rejected the offer and later criticized Vinod Khosla, one of Excite’s venture capitalists, after he negotiated Brin and Page down to $750,000. On June 7, 1999, a $25 million round of funding was announced, with major investors including the venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 per share. Shares were sold in an online auction format using a system built by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse, underwriters for the deal. The sale of $1.67 billion gave Google a market capitalization of more than $23 billion. The vast majority  of the 271 million shares remained under the control of Google, and many Google employees became instant paper millionaires. Yahoo!, a competitor of Google, also benefited because it owned 8.4 million shares of Google before the IPO took place. There were concerns that Google’s IPO would lead to changes in company culture. Reasons ranged from shareholder pressure for employee benefit reductions to the fact that many company executives would become instant paper millionaires. As a reply to this concern, co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page promised in a report to potential investors that the IPO would not change the company’s culture. In 2005, articles in The New York Times and other sources began suggesting that Google had lost its anti-corporate, no evil philosophy. In an effort to maintain the company’s unique culture, Google designated a Chief Culture Officer, who also serves as the Director of Human Resources. The purpose of the Chief Culture Officer is to develop and maintain the culture and work on ways to keep true to the core values that the company was founded on: a flat organization with a collaborative environment. Google has also faced allegations of sexism and ageism from former employees. The stock performed well after the IPO, with shares hitting $700 for the first time on October 31, 2007, primarily because of strong sales and earnings in the online advertising market. The surge in stock price was fueled mainly by individual investors, as opposed to large institutional investors and mutual funds. The next year, against Page and Brin’s initial opposition toward an advertising-funded search engine, Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords. When the company changed names to Overture Services, it sued Google over alleged infringements of the company’s pay-per-click and bidding patents. Overture Services would later be bought by Yahoo! and renamed Yahoo! Search Marketing. The case was then settled out of court; Google agreed to issue shares of common stock to Yahoo! in exchange for a perpetual license. In 2001, Google received a patent for its PageRank mechanism. The patent was officially assigned to Stanford University and lists Lawrence Page as the inventor. In 2003, after outgrowing two other locations, the company leased an office complex from Silicon Graphics at 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway in Mountain View, California. The complex became known as the Googleplex, a play on the word googolplex, the number one followed by a googol zeroes. The Googleplex interiors were designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects. Three  years later, Google bought the property from SGI for $319 million. By that time, the name â€Å"Google† had found its way into everyday language, causing the verb â€Å"google† to be added to the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary, denoted as â€Å"to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet.† 2013 onward Google announced the launch of a new company called Calico on September 19, 2013, which will be led by Apple chairman Arthur Levinson. In the official public statement, Page explained that the â€Å"health and wellbeing† company will focus on â€Å"the challenge of ageing and associated diseases†. As of September 2013, Google operates 70 offices in more than 40 countries. Google celebrated its 15-year anniversary on September 27, 2013, although it has used other dates for its official birthday. The reason for the choice of September 27 remains unclear, and a dispute with rival search engine Yahoo! Search in 2005 has been suggested as the cause. The Alliance for Affordable Internet was launched in October 2013 and Google is part of the coalition of public and private organisations that also includes Facebook, Intel and Microsoft. Led by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the A4AI seeks to make Internet access more affordable so that access is broadened in the developing world, where only 31% of people are online. Google will help to decrease internet access prices so that they fall below the UN Broadband Commission’s worldwide target of 5% of monthly income. The corporation’s consolidated revenue for the third quarter of 2013 is reported in mid-October 2013 as US$14.89 billion, a 12 percent increase compared to the previous quarter. Google’s Internet business was responsible for US$10.8 billion of this total, with an increase in the number of users’ clicks on advertisements. Acquisitions and partnerships Since 2001, Google has acquired many companies, primarily small venture capital-funded firms. In 2004, Google acquired Keyhole, Inc. The start-up company developed a product called Earth Viewer that gave a three-dimensional view of the Earth. Google renamed the service to Google Earth in 2005. Google acquired Urchin Software in April 2005, using their ‘Urchin on Demand’ product to create Google Analytics in 2006. In October 2006, Google announced that it had acquired the video-sharing site YouTube  for US$1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13, 2006. Google does not provide detailed figures for YouTube’s running costs, and YouTube’s revenues in 2007 were noted as â€Å"not material† in a regulatory filing. In June 2008, a Forbes magazine article projected the 2008 YouTube revenue at US$200 million, noting progress in advertising sales. On April 13, 2007, Google reached an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for $3.1 billion, giving Google valuable relationships that DoubleClick had with Web publishers and advertising agencies. Later that same year, Google purchased GrandCentral for $50 million. The site would later be changed over to Google Voice. On August 5, 2009, Google bought out its first public company, purchasing video software maker On2 Technologies for $106.5 million. Google also acquired Aardvark, a social network search engine, for $50 million, and commented on its internal blog, â€Å"we’re looking forward to collaborating to see where we can take it†. In April 2010, Google announced it had acquired a hardware startup, Agnilux. In addition to the many companies Google has purchased, the company has partnered with other organizations for research, advertising, and other activities. In 2005, Google partnered with NASA Ames Research Center to build of offices. The offices would be used for research projects involving large-scale data management, nanotechnology, distributed computing, and the entrepreneurial space industry. Google entered into a partnership with Sun Microsystems in October 2005 to help share and distribute each other’s technologies. The company also partnered with AOL to enhance each other’s video search services. Google’s 2005 partnerships also included financing the new .mobi top-level domain for mobile devices, along with other companies including Microsoft, Nokia, and Ericsson. Google would later launch â€Å"AdSense for Mobile†, taking advantage of the emerging mobile advertising market. Increasing its advertising reach even further, Google and Fox Interactive Media of News Corporation entered into a $900 million agreement to provide search and advertising on the then-popular social networking site MySpace. In 2007, Google began sponsoring NORAD Tracks Santa, displacing former sponsor AOL. NORAD Tracks Santa purports to follow Santa Claus’ progress on Christmas Eve, using Google Earth to â€Å"track Santa† in 3-D for the first time. Google-owned YouTube gave NORAD Tracks Santa its own channel. In 2008, Google developed a partnership with GeoEye to launch a satellite providing  Google with high-resolution imagery for Google Earth. The satellite was launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base on September 6, 2008. Google also announced in 2008 that it was hosting an archive of Life Magazine’s photographs. Some of the images in the archive were never published in the magazine. The photos were watermarked and originally had copyright notices posted on all photos, regardless of public domain status. In 2010, Google Energy made its first investment in a renewable energy project, putting $38.8 million into two wind farms in North Dakota. The company announced the two locations will generate 169.5 megawatts of power, enough to supply 55,000 homes. The farms, which were developed by NextEra Energy Resources, will reduce fossil fuel use in the region and return profits. NextEra Energy Resources sold Google a twenty-percent stake in the project to get funding for its development. In February 2010, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission FERC granted Google an authorization to buy and sell energy at market rates. The order specifically states that Google Energy—a subsidiary of Google—holds the rights â€Å"for the sale of energy, capacity, and ancillary services at market-based rates†, but acknowledges that neither Google Energy nor its affiliates â€Å"own or control any generation or transmission† facilities. The corporation exercised this authorization in September 2013 when it announced that it will purchase all of the electricity produced by the not-yet-built 240-megawatt Happy Hereford wind farm. Also in 2010, Google purchased Global IP Solutions, a Norway-based company that provides web-based teleconferencing and other related services. This acquisition enabled Google to add telephone-style services to its list of products. On May 27, 2010, Google announced it had also closed the acquisition of the mobile ad network AdMob. This occurred days after the Federal Trade Commission closed its investigation into the purchase. Google acquired the company for an undisclosed amount. In July 2010, Google signed an agreement with an Iowa wind farm to buy 114 megawatts of energy for 20 years. On April 4, 2011, The Globe and Mail reported that Google bid $900 million for six thousand Nortel Networks patents. On August 15, 2011, Google made its largest-ever acquisition to-date when announced that it would acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion subject to approval from regulators in the United States and Europe. In a post on Google’s blog, Google Chief Executive and co-founder Larry Page revealed that the acquisition was a  strategic move to strengthen Google’s patent portfolio. The company’s Android operating system has come under fire in an industry-wide patent battle, as Apple and Microsoft have sued Android device makers such as HTC, Samsung, and Motorola. The merger was completed on the May 22, 2012, after the approval of People’s Republic of China. This purchase was made in part to help Google gain Motorola’s considerable patent portfolio on mobile phones and wireless technologies to help protect it in its ongoing patent disputes with other companies, mainly Apple and Microsoft After the acquisition closed, Google began to restructure the Motorola business to fit Google’s strategy. On August 13, 2012, Google announced plans to layoff 4000 Motorola Mobility employees. On December 10, 2012, Google sold the manufacturing operations of Motorola Mobility to Flextronics for $75 million. As a part of the agreement, Flextronics will manufacture undisclosed Android and other mobile devices. On December 19, 2012, Google sold the Motorola Home business division of Motorola Mobility to Arris Group for $2.35 billion in a cash-and-stock transaction. As a part of this deal, Google acquired a 15.7% stake in Arris Group valued at $300 million. On June 5, 2012, Google announced it acquired Quickoffice, a company widely known for their mobile productivity suite for both iOS and Android. Google plans to integrate Quickoffice’s technology into its own product suite. On February 6, 2013, Google announced it had acquired Channel Intelligence for $125 million. Channel Intelligence, a technology company that helps customers buy products online, is active globally in 31 different countries and works with over 850 retailers. Google will use this technology to enhance its e-commerce business. The official confirmation of Google’s acquisition of the Israel-based startup Waze occurred in June 2013. Waze is promoted as a â€Å"community-based traffic and navigation app†. Following the acquisition of Waze, Google submitted a â€Å"10-Q† filing with the Securities Exchange Commission that revealed that the corporation spent US$1.3 billion on acquisitions during the first half of 2013. The filing also revealed that the Waze acquisition cost Google US$966 million, instead of the US$1.1 billion figure that was initially presented in media sources. The 2012 acquisition of WIMM Labs, a company that previously made an Android-powered smartwatch, was confirmed in August 2013. As of August 31, 2013, Google has not publicly commented on the news concerning WIMM Labs. The acquisition of  Flutter, a creator of hand gesture recognition technology, was confirmed by the corporation in early October 2013. The reported price is US$40 million and Google spokesperson stated: â€Å"We’re really impressed by the Flutter team’s ability to design new technology based on cutting-edge research.† Flutter’s technology allows users to enact hand gestures to control navigation for apps such as iTunes, Windows Media Player, and Winamp. Google data centers As of 2011, Google Inc. owned and operated six data centers across the U.S., plus one in Finland and another in Belgium. On September 28, 2011, the company announced plans to build three data centers at a cost of more than $200 million in Asia and purchased the land for them. Google said they will be operational within two years. Products and services Advertising For the 2006 fiscal year, the company reported $10.492 billion in total advertising revenues and only $112 million in licensing and other revenues. In 2011, 96% of Google’s revenue was derived from its advertising programs. Using technology from the company DoubleClick, Google can determine user interests and target advertisements so they are relevant to their context and the user that is viewing them. Google Analytics allows website owners to track where and how people use their website, for example by examining click rates for all the links on a page. Google advertisements can be placed on third-party websites in a two-part program. Google’s AdWords allows advertisers to display their advertisements in the Google content network, through either a cost-per-click or cost-per-view scheme. The sister service, Google AdSense, allows website owners to display these advertisements on their website and earn money every time ads are clicked. One of the criticisms of this program is the possibility of click fraud, which occurs when a person or automated script clicks on advertisements without being interested in the product, causing the advertiser to pay money to Google unduly. Industry reports in 2006 claimed that approximately 14 to 20 percent of clicks were fraudulent or invalid. In February 2003, Google stopped showing the advertisements of Oceana, a non-profit organization protesting a major cruise ship’s sewage treatment practices. Google cited its editorialpolicy at the time, stating â€Å"Google does not accept advertising if the ad or site advocates against other individuals, groups, or organizations.† The policy was later changed. In June 2008, Google reached an advertising agreement with Yahoo!, which would have allowed Yahoo! to feature Google advertisements on its web pages. The alliance between the two companies was never completely realized because of antitrust concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice. As a result, Google pulled out of the deal in November 2008. In an attempt to advertise its own products, Google launched a website called Demo Slam, developed to demonstrate technology demos of Google Products. Search engine According to market research published by comScore in November 2009, Google Search is the dominant search engine in the United States market, with a market share of 65.6%. Google indexes billions of web pages, so that users can search for the information they desire through the use of keywords and operators. In 2003, The New York Times complained about Google’s indexing, claiming that Google’s caching of content on its site infringed its copyright for the content. In this case, the United States District Court of Nevada ruled in favor of Google in Field v. Google and Parker v. Google. The publication 2600: The Hacker Quarterly has compiled a list of words that the web giant’s new instant search feature will not search. Google Watch has criticized Google’s PageRank algorithms, saying that they discriminate against new websites and favor established sites. The site has also alleged that there are connections between Google and the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. Google also hosts Google Books. The company began scanning books and uploading limited previews, and full books where allowed, into its new book search engine. The Authors Guild, a group that represents 8,000 U.S. authors, filed a class action suit in a New York City federal court against Google in 2005 over this service. Google replied that it is in compliance with all existing and historical applications of copyright laws regarding books. Google eventually reached a revised settlement in 2009 to limit its scans to books from the U.S., the UK, Australia, and Canada. Furthermore, the Paris Civil Court ruled against Google in late 2009, asking it to remove the works of La Martinià ¨re from its database. In competition with Amazon.com, Google sells digital versions  of new books. On July 21, 2010, in response to Bing, Google updated its image search to display a streaming sequence of thumbnails that enlarge when pointed at. Though web searches still appear in a batch per page format, on July 23, 2010, dictionary definitions for certain English words began appearing above the linked results for web searches. The â€Å"Hummingbird† update to the Google search engine was announced in September 2013. The update was introduced over the month prior to the announcement and allows users ask the search engine a question in natural language rather than entering keywords into the search box. Productivity tools Gmail, a free webmail service provided by Google, was launched as an invitation-only beta program on April 1, 2004, The service was upgraded from beta status on July 7, 2009, at which time it had 146 million users monthly. The service was the first online email service with one gigabyte of storage. It was also the first to keep emails from the same conversation together in one thread, similar to an Internet forum. The service offers over 15 GB of free storage, shared with other Google Apps, with additional storage ranging from 20 GB to 16 TB available for per 1 GB per year. Gmail uses AJAX, a programming technique that allows web pages to be interactive without refreshing the browser. Steve Ballmer, Liz Figueroa, Mark Rasch, and the editors of Google Watch have criticised the privacy of Gmail, but Google claims that mail sent to or from Gmail is never read by a human being beyond the account holder and is only used to improve relevance of advertisements. In 2004, Google started opensource software project hosting, called Google Code, which allows developers to download incomplete programs at no charge. Google Docs, another part of Google’s productivity suite, allows users to create, edit, and collaborate on documents in an online environment, similar to Microsoft Word. The service was originally called Writely, but was obtained by Google on March 9, 2006, and was released as an invitation-only preview. On June 6 after the acquisition, Google created an experimental spreadsheet editing program, which was combined with Google Docs on October 10. Enterprise products Google Search Appliance was launched in February 2002, targeted toward providing search technology for larger organizations. Google Apps allows  organizations to bring Google’s web application offerings, such as Gmail and Google Docs, into their own domains. The service is available in several editions: a basic free edition, Google Apps for Business, Google Apps for Education, and Google Apps for Government. In the same year Google Apps was launched, Google acquired Postini and proceeded to integrate the company’s security technologies into Google Apps under the name Google Postini Services. Other products Google Translate is a server-side machine translation service, which can translate between 35 different languages. The software uses corpus linguistics techniques, where the program â€Å"learns† from professionally translated documents, specifically UN and European Parliament proceedings. Google launched its Google News service in 2002, an automated service which summarizes news articles from various websites. In March 2005, Agence France Presse sued Google for copyright infringement in federal court in the District of Columbia, a case which Google settled for an undisclosed amount in a pact that included a license of the full text of AFP articles for use on Google News. In 2006, Google made a bid to offer free wireless broadband access throughout the city of San Francisco along with Internet service provider EarthLink. Large telecommunications companies such as Comcast and Verizon opposed the efforts, claiming it was â€Å"unfair competition† and that cities would be violating their commitments to offer local monopolies to these companies. In his testimony before Congress on network neutrality in 2006, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf blamed the tactics on the fact that nearly half of all consumers lack choice in broadband providers. Google currently offers free wi-fi access in its hometown of Mountain View, California. In 2010, Google announced the Google Fiber project with plans to build an ultra-high-speed broadband network for 50,000 to 500,000 customers in one or more American cities. On March 30, 2011, Google announced that Kansas City, Kansas would be the first community where the new network would be deployed. In July 2012, Google completed the construction of a fiber-optic broadband internet network infrastructure in Kansas City, and after building an infrastructure, Google announced pricing for Google Fiber. The service will offer three options including a free broadband internet option, a 1Gbit/s internet option for $70 per month, and a version that  includes television service for $120 per month. The project, called Android, turned out not to be a phone but an operating system for mobile devices, which Google acquired and then released as an open source project under the Apache 2.0 license. Google provides a software development kit for developers so applications can be created to be run on Android-based phones. In September 2008, T-Mobile released the G1, the first Android-based phone. On January 5, 2010, Google released an Android phone under its own company name called the Nexus One. A report in July 2013 stated that Google’s share of the global smartphone market, led by Samsung products, was 64% in March 2013. Other projects Google has worked on include a new collaborative communication service, a web browser, and a mobile operating system. The first of these was first announced on May 27, 2009. The company described Google Wave as a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web. The service is Google’s â€Å"email redesigned†, with realtime editing, the ability to embed audio, video, and other media, and extensions that further enhance the communication experience. Google Wave was initially in a developer’s preview, where interested users had to be invited to test the service, but was released to the general public on May 19, 2010, at Google’s I/O keynote. On September 1, 2008, Google pre-announced the upcoming availability of Google Chrome, an open source web browser, which was then released on September 2, 2008. On July 7, 2009, Google announced Google Chrome OS, an open source Linux-based operating system that includes only a web browser and is designed to log users into their Google account. Google Goggles is a mobile application available on Android and iOS used for image recognition and non-text-based search. In addition to scanning QR codes, the app can recognize historic landmarks, import business cards, and solve Sudoku puzzles. While Goggles could originally identify people as well, Google has limited that functionality as a privacy protection. In 2011, Google announced Google Wallet, a mobile application for wireless payments. In late June 2011, Google soft-launched a social networking service called Google+. On July 14, 2011, Google announced that Google+ had reached 10 million users just two weeks after it was launched in this â€Å"limited† trial phase. After four weeks in operation, it reached 25 million users. At a launch event on July 24, 2013 in San Francisco, U.S., a newer version of the Nexus 7 Google tablet device was released to the public, alongside the  Chromecast dongle that allows users to stream YouTube and Netflix videos via smartphones. In 2013 Google launched Google Shopping Express, a delivery service initially available only in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. Moto X  Speaking at the D11 conference in Palos Verdes, U.S. in late May 2013, Motorola CEO Dennis Woodside, a former Google employee, announced that a new mobile device will be built by his company, which is wholly owned by Google, at a 500,000 square-feet facility in Texas, U.S. formerly used by the Nokia company. The facility will employ 2,000 people by August 2013 and the new phone, named the â€Å"Moto X†, will be available to the public in October 2013. The Moto X features Google Now software, and an array of sensors and two microprocessors that will mean that users can â€Å"interact with in very different ways than you can with other devices,† in the words of Woodside. Media reports suggest that the phone will be able to activate functions preemptively based on an â€Å"awareness† of what the user is doing at any given moment. Corporate affairs and culture On Fortune magazine’s list of best companies to work for, Google ranked first in 2007, 2008 and 2012 and fourth in 2009 and 2010. Google was also nominated in 2010 to be the world’s most attractive employer to graduating students in the Universum Communications talent attraction index. Google’s corporate philosophy includes principles such as â€Å"you can make money without doing evil,† â€Å"you can be serious without a suit,† and â€Å"work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun.† Employees After the company’s IPO, founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and CEO Eric Schmidt requested that their base salary be cut to $1. Subsequent offers by the company to increase their salaries have been turned down, primarily because their main compensation continues to come from owning stock in Google. Before 2004, Schmidt made $250,000 per year, and Page and Brin each received an annual salary of $150,000. In 2007 and early 2008, several top executives left Google. In October 2007, former chief financial officer of YouTube Gideon Yu joined Facebook along with Benjamin Ling, a high-ranking engineer. In March 2008, Sheryl Sandberg, then vice-president of global online sales and operations, began her position as chief operating officer  of Facebook. At the same time, Ash ElDifrawi, formerly head of brand advertising, left to become chief marketing officer of Netshops. On April 4, 2011, Larry Page became CEO and Eric Schmidt became Executive Chairman of Google. In July 2012, Google’s first female employee, Marissa Mayer, left Google to become Yahoo!’s CEO. As a motivation technique, Google uses a policy often called Innovation Time Off, where Google engineers are encouraged to spend 20% of their work time on projects that interest them. Some of Google’s newer services, such as Gmail, Google News, Orkut, and AdSense originated from these independent endeavors. In a talk at Stanford University, Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Products and User Experience until July 2012, showed that half of all new product launches at the time had originated from the Innovation Time Off. Googleplex  Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, is referred to as â€Å"the Googleplex†, a play on words on the number googolplex and the headquarters itself being a complex of buildings. The lobby is decorated with a piano, lava lamps, old server clusters, and a projection of search queries on the wall. The hallways are full of exercise balls and bicycles. Each employee has access to the corporate recreation center. Recreational amenities are scattered throughout the campus and include a workout room with weights and rowing machines, locker rooms, washers and dryers, a massage room, assorted video games, table football, a baby grand piano, a billiard table, and ping pong. In addition to the recreation room, there are snack rooms stocked with various foods and drinks, with special emphasis placed on nutrition. Free food is available to employees 24/7, with paid vending machines prorated favoring nutritional value. In 2006, Google moved into of office space in New York City, at 111 Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. The office was specially designed and built for Google and houses its largest advertising sales team, which has been instrumental in securing large partnerships. As of February 2012, a significant engineering team is based in New York City, and has been responsible for more than 100 engineering projects, including Google Maps, Google Spreadsheets. As of September 2013, Google’s East Coast office is located at 76 Ninth Ave, New York City, New York. In November 2006, Google opened offices on Carnegie Mellon’s campus in Pittsburgh, focusing on shopping-related advertisement coding and smartphone applications and  programs. By late 2006, Google also established a new headquarters for its AdWords division in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Other office locations in the U.S. include Ann Arbor, Michigan; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas; Boulder, Colorado; Cambridge, Massachusetts; New York City; San Francisco, California; Seattle, Washington; Reston, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Furthermore, Google has several international offices. In October 2006, the company announced plans to install thousands of solar panels to provide up to 1.6 megawatts of electricity, enough to satisfy approximately 30% of the campus’ energy needs. The system will be the largest solar power system constructed on a U.S. corporate campus and one of the largest on any corporate site in the world. The idea of trimming lawns using goats originated from R. J. Widlar, an engineer who worked for National Semiconductor. Google has faced accusations in Harper’s Magazine of being an â€Å"energy glutton†. The company was accused of employing its â€Å"Don’t be evil† motto and its public energy-saving campaigns to cover up or make up for the massive amounts of energy its servers require. Easter eggs and April Fools’ Day jokes Google has a tradition of creating April Fools’ Day jokes. On April 1, 2000, Google MentalPlex allegedly featured the use of mental power to search the web. In 2007, Google announced a free Internet service called TiSP, or Toilet Internet Service Provider, where one obtained a connection by flushing one end of a fiber-optic cable down their toilet. Also in 2007, Google’s Gmail page displayed an announcement for Gmail Paper, allowing users to have email messages printed and shipped to them. In 2008, Google announced Gmail Custom time where users could change the time that the email was sent. In 2010, Google changed its company name to Topeka in honor of Topeka, Kansas, whose mayor changed the city’s name to Google for a short amount of time in an attempt to sway Google’s decision in its new Google Fiber Project. In 2011, Google announced Gmail Motion, an interactive way of controlling Gmail and the computer with body movements via the user’s webcam. Google’s services contain easter eggs, such as the Swedish Chef’s â€Å"Bork bork bork,† Pig Latin, â€Å"Hacker† or leetspeak, Elmer Fudd, Pirate, and Klingon as language selections for its search engine. The search engine calculator provides the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the  Universe, and Everything from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. When searching the word â€Å"recursion†, the spell-checker’s result for the properly spelled word is exactly the same word, creating a recursive link. When searching for the word â€Å"anagram,† meaning a rearrangement of letters from one word to form other valid words, Google’s suggestion feature displays â€Å"Did you mean: nag a ram?† In Google Maps, searching for directions between places separated by large bodies of water, such as Los Angeles and Tokyo, results in instructions to â€Å"kayak across the Pacific Ocean.† During FIFA World Cup 2010, search queries including â€Å"World Cup† and â€Å"FIFA† caused the â€Å"Goooo†¦gle† page indicator at the bottom of every result page to read â€Å"Goooo†¦al!† instead. Philanthropy In 2004, Google formed the not-for-profit philanthropic Google.org, with a start-up fund of $1 billion. The mission of the organization is to create awareness about climate change, global public health, and global poverty. One of its first projects was to develop a viable plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that can attain 100 miles per gallon. Google hired Larry Brilliant as the program’s executive director in 2004, and the current director is Megan Smith. In 2008 Google announced its â€Å"project 10100† which accepted ideas for how to help the community and then allowed Google users to vote on their favorites. After two years of silence, during which many wondered what had happened to the program, Google revealed the winners of the project, giving a total of ten million dollars to various ideas ranging from non-profit organizations that promote education to a website that intends to make all legal documents public and online. In 2011, Google donated 1 million euros to International Mathematical Olympiad to support the next five annual International Mathematical Olympiads . On July 2012, Google launched a â€Å"Legalize Love† campaign in support of gay rights. Tax avoidance   Google uses various tax avoidance strategies. Out of the five largest American technology companies it pays the lowest taxes to the countries of origin of its revenues. The company accomplishes this partly by licensing technology through subsidiaries in Ireland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands. This has reportedly sparked a French investigation into Google’s transfer pricing practices. Following criticism of the amount of  corporate taxes that Google paid in the United Kingdom, Chairman Eric Schmidt said, â€Å"It’s called capitalism. We are proudly capitalistic.† During the same December 2012 interview Schmidt â€Å"confirmed that the company had no intention of paying more to the UK exchequer.† In 2013, Schmidt responded to questions about taxes paid in the UK by pointing to the advertising fees Google charged UK companies as a source of economic growth. Google Vice president Matt Brittin testified to the Public Accounts Committee of the UK house of commons that his UK sales team made no sales and hence owed no sales taxes to the UK. Environment Since 2007, Google has aimed for carbon neutrality in regard to its operations. In June 2013, the Washington Post reported that Google had donated US$50,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank. In July 2013, it was reported that Google had hosted a fundraising event for Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe, who has called climate change a â€Å"hoax†. See also Comparison of web search engines Criticism of Google Don’t Be Evil Google Google Balloon Internet Google Catalogs Google China Google Chrome Experiments Google logo Google platform Google Ventures – venture capital fund Google X Google+ Googlebot – web crawler Googlization List of Google domains List of mergers and acquisitions by Google Ungoogleable References External links not add links –> at the Internet Archive at Hoover’s Bibliography: Wikipedia

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Silence: Silence: a Thirteenth-Century French Romance

The writer begins Silence by calling himself Master Heldris of Cornwall and saying his wish not to have his work spread among wealthy people who don’t know how to appreciate it. He refers to them as â€Å"the kind of people†, which clearly shows his negative attitude toward those who he describes as â€Å"prize money more than honor†, or â€Å"want to hear everything but do not care to make a man happy with some reward they might wish to give†.The phrase â€Å"at the beginning of the work†, or â€Å"before I begin to tell my story† are repeated three times throughout the opening: one at the start, one at the center, and one at the end right before the writer starts telling the story. This, together with strong words such as â€Å"command†, â€Å"request†, repeatedly reminds the readers of the writer’s demand to preserve his work and of his deep hatred toward greedy people. The writer’s strong feeling against avaric ious men is expressed clearly: â€Å"I feel tremendously compelled, stung, goaded [into talking about this]†, and â€Å"It bothers me terribly†.Several different negative words and phrases are also used to depict those people throughout the text: â€Å"greedy†, â€Å"nasty†, â€Å"petty†, â€Å"fools†, â€Å"intoxicated with Avarice†, â€Å"those hateful men†. He tells problems relating to those people from the perspective of a poet: â€Å"serve them well, as if they were your father: then you will be most welcome, judge a fine minstrel, well-received†, or â€Å"very bad cheer and a sour face, that’s what you’ll always get from them† when you ask for something. The bitterness in each sentence and the clear descriptions shows that the writer seems to have experienced those problems himself.He disgusts greedy people and views them as pathetic creatures that have a dreadful life as they try to â€Å"pi le up wealth† and â€Å"yet afraid of losing it†: â€Å"a man afraid is not at peace he is miserable and ill at ease. Wealth only makes a man mean-spirited and makes him toil without profit. All he does is soil himself† Greedy men â€Å"rob† world â€Å"of all pleasure†, and lost their trust in everyone, even their own wives: â€Å"he doesn’t want her spend any of it, â€Å"for one missing penny would mar the perfection of those thousands marks he lost sleep over†.The writer emphasizes that owning property does not make life easier nor brings one any â€Å"joy and festivity† if one do not know how to use and share it wisely: â€Å"lost sleep†, â€Å"ill†, â€Å"miserable†, â€Å"stingy†. Capitalizing Avarice, the writer refer to Avarice as a dangerous goddess who traps fools in her maze of wealth, let them honor her as â€Å"their sovereign lady and wet nurse†, but betrays them, leaves them â €Å"drunk† and â€Å"intoxicated† and â€Å"driven to disgrace themselves†. While hating those fools, the writer is seriously concerned and cry :†O greedy people, alas! las! †. He repeatedly refer to the â€Å"locked away† wealth as â€Å"disgrace†, â€Å"shame†, and even a dirty substance: â€Å"dung†. Comparing unused wealth and dung, he further devalues property: â€Å"at least dung enriches the soils†, while greedy men â€Å"abuse this earthy life† and â€Å"enclosed their courts with shame forever†. Dung is often referred to as dirty and worthless, yet it has a function that benefits the planet, while wealth, often related to luxuriousness and enjoyment, neither brings comfort to its owner nor influence the world positively at all.Several comparisons are also used near the end of the opening to address the same point: â€Å"assets are worth less than manure†: â€Å"just as wheat is worth m ore than weeds†, rose† more than daisy, goshawk more than falcon more than buzzard, good wine than stagnant water, bittern than magpie, and most of all â€Å" honest poverty is of greater worth than a thousand marks without joys and festivity†. The comparisons start from small plants to birds to the main subjects: honest poverty versus useless wealth.This proves that wealth and greed are inferior and shameful, while praises generosity as superior and honorable. At the end of the opening, after all the hatred has been expressed, the writer says he now can begin his story â€Å"without a lot of fuss and bother†. Since the overall theme of the story relate to property and the problems relating to the right to own it, it appears that the writer does not just simply tell us his feeling toward greed and wealth but his main goal is to prepare us with a basic background of the story.The transition from the opening to the story is thus smoother. The story begins wit h the description of King Evan as a wise king who â€Å"maintained peace in his land† and apply strict rules to control his people. What King Evan has is wealth, power and respect so obviously troubles are unavoidable. This obviously connects to the theme mentioned in the opening, therefore, readers can catch up with the story more easily.