EU&Middle East Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words

EU&Middle East - Essay Example â€Å"According to an ongoing Euro gauge survey, just a single third of individuals in the UK feel both British and European, while 66% consider themselves being simply British† (Figel, p.3). Jean Monnet, one of the primary organizers of the European Union, concurs that the social contrasts hinder the EU incorporation; â€Å"If I could take advantage of a new open door for the political reconciliation of Europe, I would begin from culture and not from the economy† (Dudt, p.3). There are numerous few distinct religions in European nations, including Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Protestantism, Sunni Islam, Shia Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. These strict elements are distinctive regarding their customs, convictions and belief systems, which impacts the way of life and ways of life of their adherents. Roman Catholicism is the biggest religion in Europe, with supporters generally in the nations of Latin Europe and Eastern Europe. Conventional Christians are intensely populated in Rumania, Bulgaria, and Greece while Protestant Christians are found essentially in nations of Western Europe, including Denmark, Germany, Finland, Sweden and so on. Notwithstanding these extraordinary social decent varieties, the vast majority of the European nations had the option to collect under the banner of EU, what empowered them to increment both the national monetary development and their dealing power in the worldwide exchange exercises. The nations of the Middle East, particularly the Arab States of the Persian Gulf (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman), are generally goof exchanging accomplices of Europe. The Gulf Cooperation Council, a political and financial association which includes all the Gulf nations, is the EU’s fifth biggest fare showcase and the European Union is for the Gulf district the second most significant exchanging accomplice (Gulf locale, 2010). The insights from 2009 uncover that the all ou t EU exchange with the Gulf collaboration chamber adds up to 79.7 billion euro. The EU’s Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which gives creating nations diminished taxes for their products when entering the European market, empowers each of the six Gulf nations to profit by special access to the EU advertise (Gulf area, 2010). With the EU fares of merchandise to the Gulf locale evaluated at 57,8 billion euro, and EU import of products assessed at 21.8 billion euro, the two districts have built up a significant monetary association. Figure 1: GCC, Trade with the European Union Source: GCC, EU Bilateral Trade and Trade with the World, 2011. Figure 2: EU Trade with the World and EU Trade with the GCC (2009) Source: Source: GCC, EU Bilateral Trade and Trade with the World, 2011. Exchange relations between the European Union and the Middle East, for the most part Gulf nations, are influenced by a few monetary, political, and social elements. This paper investigations the ach ievement and disappointments of EU’s exchange tie ups with Middle East throughout the years. The exchange relations between the European Union and the GCC go back to the mid-1980s. In1988, the two associations marked the EU-GCC Cooperation Agreement, which pointed â€Å" to fortify relations between the European Economic Community and the Gulf Countries, to widen and solidify their monetary and specialized participation relations, and to help reinforce the procedure of financial turn of events and

Drinks that Influenced History and Civilization Essay Example for Free

Beverages that Influenced History and Civilization Essay The creator depicts the beginning of six beverages that extraordinarily impacted history and human progress the world over: brew, wine, spirits, espresso, tea, and cola. He clarifies how each drink was the characterizing drink during a recorded period from classical times to introduce day. The liquids are imperative in light of the fact that each had a job of molding the advanced world. They have been utilized as monetary standards, in strict customs, as a political image, wellsprings of philosophical and aesthetic motivation. Some have served to feature the intensity of the first class, and pacify the oppressed. They associated world societies by affecting exchange, economy, religion, and governmental issues. Lager was found through various strategies for cooking and putting away oat grains. At the point when the ice age finished, grounds, for example, the Fertile Crescent gave plentiful oat grains. Such grains gave a solid wellspring of food, and the capacity to store oat grains started to urge individuals to remain in one spot. This brought about perpetual settlements as social orders changed from chasing and assembling to cultivating. In spite of the fact that the occupants of such towns kept on chasing, skeletal proof proposes that they stayed alive for the most part on plant-based weight control plans. Lager was shared, and it was image of cordiality and kinship. To Neolithic consumers, beer’s capacity to inebriate and age appeared to be otherworldly, and it was reasoned that it was a blessing from the divine beings. Brew drinking societies recount stories and fantasies of how it was found. Mesopotamians and Egyptians considered lager to be an old, inherent beverage that upheld their reality, shaped piece of their social and strict character, and had incredible social significance. It was devoured by anybody paying little mind to status, age, or sexual orientation. Brew affected the development and dissemination of the most punctual civic establishments incredibly. The rise of complex social orders, the need to keep set up accounts, and the notoriety of lager all followed from the excess of grain. It was additionally utilized as a type of cash and installment. Lager likewise had an immediate connect to wellbeing. Mesopotamians and Egyptians utilized it restoratively. The Egyptians utilized bread and lager in memorial services. Without the revelation of brew, the soonest human advancements of Southwest Asia and Egypt would not have been as prosperous.

Cloudera

Cloudera INTRODUCTIONMartin: So this time we are in Palo Alto in the Cloudera office. Amr, who are you and what do you do?Amr: So I am one of the founders of Cloudera and I serve as the chief technology officer for the company.Martin: Great. What is your background and what did you do before you started this company?Amr: So let me go back a little bit actually. So, Im from Egypt originally and I came to the US in 1995, so its about twenty years ago, to get my PhD degree from Stanford University. And my goal was to get my PhD and then go back to Egypt to teach. I really liked to teach, that was my dream when I was young is I’m going to be a professor and teach and thats what I wanted to do. But then I frequently would say when I learned in Stanford, the entrepreneurship bug infected me and I got corrupted and I cared more about building companies than teaching, per se.So a few years into Stanford I dropped out from my PhD program and I made my first start-up, which got acquired by Yahoo. So I end up at Yahoo and that was a small company, were about five people. And we were acquired for nine million dollars within one year, which was not bad. And then I spent eight years at Yahoo before I left Yahoo and joined a VC firm called the Accel Partners as was called an Entrepreneur in Resident, EIR. This is kind of a transition role where you go with the VC, and you spend some time researching what should be the thing you should do next. And then after three months with them they give us funding and Cloudera was started. So thats briefly my history before Cloudera.Martin: And two questions. What did you study at Stanford? What kind of topic? And then, the second thing is, in this entrepreneurial residence program, how did you get in touch with Accel? Did you know these guys before or just by accident?Amr: Both are very good questions. So the first question, I was in the computer engineering department and I was studying essentially distributed large scale distributed systems. And I was doing my PhD with Professor Mendel Rosenblum and Mendel Rosenblum actually is one of the founders of the VMware. Hes a very nice guy, I can introduce you to him if you want to interview him as well.Martin: Sure, thank you.Amr: Hes an amazing guy. So I did my PhD. I actually did go back to Stanford and finished my PhD while I was working at Yahoo. So I had dropped out but I go back and finished. So virtual machines and distributed systems is the main topic.And then on the other question about EIR and how do you get to be an entrepreneur residence. So usually, you dont apply to be an entrepreneurial residence. Like VCs dont open like, ‘Hey, we are hiring EIR’. Usually, the EIR thing happens because of connections and because the VC knows you from before and they want you to become and work with them before you do your next company. So in my specific situation, one of my previous managers at Yahoo, he had left Yahoo and joined that Firm as a VC. So he was there, he knew m e very well because he was my manager at Yahoo. So when I was leaving, he said, ‘You have to come here and be in EIR’. My co-founder, Jeff Hammerbacher, who is the my co-founder at Cloudera, he comes from Facebook, a very similar story. So he was one of the early employees at Facebook. Excel Partners was one of the very early investors at Facebook, so same thing, they knew of him and when they heard he was leaving, they said, hey, come to Excel and work as an EIR. And thats how I connected with Jeff, whos my co-founder.Martin: Ok, great. So you met over there at Accel?Amr: Yes.Martin: Ok, great. And how did you come up with this idea of Cloudera?Amr: So it came from my work experience. From my own work experience and Jeffs work experience. And we have two other co-founders, Mike Olsen, who is our chairman of the board and the chief strategy officer. And then a fourth co-founder from Google, his name is Christophe Bisciglia though he left Cloudera two years and hes now doing othe r company. Hes also kind of an interesting guy, I could connect you with him if you want to chat with him. So what was the question again?The idea. Where did the idea come from? Yes. So, the idea essentially In my work at Yahoo, I was responsible for doing BI and data analytics and the data science for Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo finance, Yahoo search, all the different products that Yahoo has. And I had to do a lot of analysis of whats working, whats not working, new features when they launch, how effective they are at retaining their users, etcetera, etcetera. And I had a bunch of challenges in my existing business intelligence data technologies I was using and at the same time, when I was at Yahoo, I was lucky as there was this other open source technology was being built, which is called a Hadoop, the name of technology. And being built inside of Yahoo for Yahoo search, how to build web index at scale.But when we talked to the team, it was very clear that the technology solv es a lot of problems that we had. So I tried the technology in my team, and then very quickly within a year, it just changed everything I do. And for me that was a very clear signal that this is a very good aspirin for anybody that has the headache of how do I manage big amounts of data or big data as its known today. Same thing happened with my co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher at Facebook. He used the Hadoop on his own infrastructure and he saw how effective it was in solving problems for him.Martin: Ok, great.BUSINESS MODELMartin: Lets talk about the business model of Cloudera. How does it work right now?Amr: So first it’s important to note that business models evolve over time as the function of the company and its maturity. The more you understand your customers, the more you understand your business. So at the beginning, when we were first forming Cloudera, our business model was more structured around doing training and doing consulting or professional services for our customers . But then it was very clear that while you can make a lot of money when youre doing training and consulting, its not high margin money because its a people business, you have to go and hire more people to be able to do more consulting and more training, so the margins are limited, how big your margins can be.So we changed our business model to be a combination of still training and professional services but also having a software subscription business model as well. So right now we charge our customers as a function of how many servers our software is running on per year. So it’s a subscription per server per year. Thats how they contract with us today. And I should also note that we had a pivot-shifting Cloudera in our history and thats why our name is Cloudera, by the way. So our name is Cloudera, its because initially, we were going to build this cloud platform where we put our software on the cloud, our customers upload their data, do their number crunching and then download the results. But within six months of doing that, it was clear that all of the big banks we want to work with, the big retailers, they were not comfortable giving out their data.So we shifted company from being a cloud company to being a software company. So we give them software that they can then deploy within their organization or in the cloud if they want to, but most of them choose to deploy within, right now. So that was a big shift for us from being a cloud company to being a software company. But we kept the name Cloudera because it was a cool name.Martin: Okay. What problem that the software solve for your clients?Amr: It’s a very simple value proposition. So if you look at most of the legacy data technology, legacy systems like for example Teradata or Oracle or standard databases, standard databases are very good handling what we refer to as structured data. So its very well defined data where you have columns and the columns have types like that string for names and the n date for date of birth, and then decimal for an amount, for a salary or something. Very well-defined, very well structured. And these systems were very good at doing that.But the reality of the world today is we have multiple types of data. We have structured data that comes from databases but we have a lot of semi-structured data that comes from web servers, that come from mobile devices, and then we have unstructured data like PDF documents or emails or even images and videos. So future data systems which is what our system represent have the capability to absorb any data, whether they be structured, semi-structured or unstructured and then allow you to process that data in many different ways. So in a nutshell, our value proposition is we allow our customers to extract value for their business from all the data that they have and then use that data to ask bigger questions than theyre able to ask today.Martin: And in terms of this unstructured data like form PDF files, do you ne ed to teach your algorithm to extract this data and put them from an unstructured into a structured way or is it manually done by, for example, by the client who is teaching the algorithm? How does it work?Amr: All of the above. So in some cases there are some standard format where we have really have parsers that know how to parse out the content and read out the content from these documents. So in this case there is a library, you just pick the parser that applies to the type of document that youre trying to parse. But then you could have a more sophisticated document where youre trying to extract the sentiment, an email and from that email, youre now trying to extract, maybe that email somebody sent to the support team for a given company. And then, you want to extract was that customer upset? Was the customer happy? Was that customer neutral, when that email exchange took place? So that is more involved, for that you have to write codes that do whats called sentiment. And thats to extract that.And then, theres an ecosystem of partners that we work with now, other companies that are building tools around our platform that make it easier to do that. So for example theres a company called Trifacta, its a very young start-up. Theres another one called Timr, T-I-M-R. Theres a number of one now, trying to make it easier to do that.Martin: Ok. Assuming I have all the data and put it into a data warehouse, what else can the client do then with this data? Are there any kind of pre-defined reports I can generate or does the clients have to connect all the data so we can get some analysis insights on that?Amr: So we are the platform. We are not a front-end application, we are the platform and think of us just like a database, except unlike a database like Oracle, our platform is much more flexible. So it can take data at any time, it is much more scalable, it can really scale to massive amounts of data. And its much more agile in terms of, its not just sequel, you ca n do sequel with it but you can also do search, you can do machine learning and there is many other types of workloads that it can run.But still, its a platform, so now how do you connect that platform to applications? There is a lot of existing applications that just integrate with our platform. So companies like Click Track, Tableau, Microsage and Informatica, theres a lot of companies out there that built applications that do visualizations and do that analysis that then connect into our platform using the APIs that we provide.Martin: And are you also promoting in this type of ecosystem where you have different kinds of apps that once clients subscribe to Cloudera that they can choose from different types of apps, how they can analyze the data that you generated using Cloudera?Amr: Ultimately we will want to have an equivalent of like App Store of big data. Where you just have an App Store and you go and you click on the icon of the app you want. Were not there yet. Today, its st ill an enterprise software sale where well have to go and talk to that company and sign a contract with them and then get the software and deploy it. So its a bit more heavy. But hopefully in the future, yes it will be a simple app within the Cloudera management interface, you’re going to see a bunch of icons for different apps and you just tick the app that you want but were not there yet.Martin: How did you acquire the first customer and convince them to buy with you or try you?Amr: We are lucky in the sense that our business model is also open source in nature. So our core product that we release, which is called the Cloudera distribution for Hadoop is 100% open source as also free. So what that helps do is it helps see the market where developers they look at it, they see its very powerful, they download it, they start to build apps on it and then once they build an app which is viable for their business then they come and they talk with us say, ‘Hey, can we have a relations hip with your company to maintain that software, for us going forward’. And so for us, because of the open source nature of Hadoop, the initial customers were coming to us. And there was no other vendor out there when we started Cloudera that was supporting the Hadoop platform, we were the only one. So we got a lot of our initial kind of growth in the company was organic, just coming from customers that deployed our software.Martin: Okay. What have been your thoughts on when you started out between bootstrapping the company and taking external money?Amr: Thats a very good question. So in our case we, if you follow Clouderas history, we took a lot of money. At Cloudera we actually raised to date more than one billion dollars in funding which is a lot of money for a software company. But that comes because of the fact that this is an exploding market. Like, very quickly, we saw that this market is going so quick that technology is important but having that sales force that can reall y sell this technology worldwide is even more important. And you have to realize that when you are hiring sales, when you are hiring sales people, you have to pay their salaries for the first six, even twelve months before they start making any deals or bringing any money in, you cannot bootstrap when youre doing that, you have to have money to be able to pay their salaries. So from day one, we have been raising money in Cloudera.Almost every year, like in 2008, we raised five million from our Accel partners, which I mentioned earlier. At 2009, we raised another six million. 2010, I think we raised like double that, and just like every year we are raising double what we raised the year before. And mainly doing it as a function of; we want to continue to grow very, very quickly to capture this opportunity because we see this as a massive opportunity. And the one who captures the full opportunity will get the most value in the long term.Martin: Amr, what is a typical customer lead tim e?Amr: So it depends. So in some cases there are customers who already have downloaded our software, as I said its open source and free. So they already downloaded, they already built an app, its already running inside the company and they come to us and they say, ‘Okay its great, we love it, where do we sign?’ And usually that would take like a week until we get them to sign and they pay us, and its great. So that is the case in the early days when this technology was still kind of in the beginning, and there were lots of earlier doctors. Now, in the latest stages where were moving with this technology into very, very large companies and part of what were doing is convincing these large companies of, ‘Hey, your old way of doing things is not going to work for you going forward. You need to have this platform’, and in this case you have to go in and do whats called a proof concept and show them that this platform truly will deliver the scalability, the flexibility of working with any data and the agility of being able to build new projects very quickly. So that process can take anywhere from four weeks to even four months until we can convince them that this is a valuable system for them. And then thats when they do the first purchase. But our technology is not about the first purchase. Our technology is about how we get that first purchase but then grow it. Because once we get inside of a company and they have ten servers running or software and they see what these ten servers can do in terms of scalability and economics of storing the data effectively. Then, they start to grow it from there and thats where our potential is much bigger from that, from the expansion that we get from these customers once we land them.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: Amr, Lets talk about corporate strategy. So I mean you have some kind of technology part in your company and then you have this kind of distribution part. What other part would you think or consider in terms of com petitive advantage that is needed for your business model? And which one is the most important?Amr: We actually have four pillars that underlie our strategy of how we win in this market, both win for ourselves intrinsically but when against competition as well. And these four pillars are:the technology,the team that we have,the track records andthe ecosystem.So let me talk about these briefly. So technology simply, our technology needs to be more superior. And in open source its tricky, how do you make your technology superior when everything you do you put it back into open source? So what were doing at Cloudera is not everything were putting back into open source. Were putting roughly maybe 85% of what we do into open source but were keeping 15% proprietary to us. And that is very important to maintain uniqueness for our solution compared to other vendors out there. So theres other companies out there, small companies and even big companies like, IBM for example that can come in a nd just take everything that we do and say, Hey, we can do everything Cloudera can do, the software is all open source. But by keeping 15% of what we do proprietary, we maintain that uniqueness, not only unique, were different. If you go with IBM, or go with some other player, youre not going to get the full value that youll get if you come with Cloudera. So thats number one, where we differentiate ourselves.Number two, is the team that we have. So in open source, it is very important for customers that they see that you have in your company some of the open source project leaders that created this technology. So in our case for example, the Hadoop technology was created by Doug Cutting. And Doug Cutting he works at Cloudera. And there are nineteen other open source projects, and most of these other projects were either founded by Cloudera or the creators of these projects we eventually hire them to work at Cloudera. So that gives us a lot of value in our customers. they now believe that we can control that open source artifact, we can add the features they care about, we can fix it when it breaks, and so on. So thats number two.Number three is the track record, like I mentioned. So we use our own Hadoop technology, our own data technology, we collect data from all of our customers. When our customers are running a cluster, we are collecting data from them into our Hadoop cluster. And that data is not the data that their data. Thats how theyre operating, the telemetrics, the telematics of how the cluster is operating. We have that. We can see that from them and from all of our other customers that we had from the last six years. So now, whenever anybody of them experiences a failure, we can very quickly correlate that across all the other traces that we have and resolve that failure much quicker than any of our competition. Furthermore, we also do whats called predictive maintenance. Thats where we can even predict that the customers going to have failure. We call them up and say, youre going to have a failure if you dont change this, or change that, youre going to fail. So track record is our third advantage.And then fourth advantage is the ecosystem. When youre building a platform technology, like the one that we have, if you look at companies like Oracle or VMware or Windows or any company who is building a platform, their success comes from how big of an ecosystem do they have around them. So we have been very focused on building a very big ecosystem. We have more than one thousand partners that work with us right now. Some of these partners are building software applications that run on our platform and some of them are building hardware that underlies our platform. So for example Dell, is one of our largest partners and their also investor. Intel is our largest investor, actually. And some of these are SI, solution integrator vendors, like Capgemini or Accenture that go inside of large companies and implement these solutions. So we have the largest ecosystem right now among the other players in the space.Martin: What is your recommendation for software service start-up that tries to find some distribution channels? Like youve talked about Capgemini, which is I guess one of Hadoop distribution channels because they are consulting other companies. Would this be one of your recommendation for a SaaS company to partner with? Whether its Capgemini, or ErnstYoung, or whoever?Amr: Yes, absolutely. I mean, when you want to sign big deals with the large corporate organizations, many of these large enterprises, unlike typical enterprises, unlike for example Google or Facebook. If you look at a big bank, or a big retailer, or a big telecommunication companies, they have massive, massive engagements with these large SI’s and they use them to do the implementation. So its very important. One of the very important strategies for any company in the enterprise software space, which is the space that we are in to establish these types of channel partnership where they can come in and help you sell your software much more efficiently and effectively. I will not however that we right now are not software service.Again, despite our name being Cloudera, we are not software that you go and get as a service, we are software that you deploy inside of your organization. One of these deployment options is to deploy from the cloud, which kind of looks like a service but its not really the same, as for example a box of net or equivalent.MARKET DEVELOPMENT In Palo Alto (CA), we talked with entrepreneur Amr about the business model and history of the highly successful company Cloudera.In the second part of the interview, Amr shares 7 key advices to entrepreneurs.The transcription of the interview is included below.INTRODUCTIONMartin: So this time we are in Palo Alto in the Cloudera office. Amr, who are you and what do you do?Amr: So I am one of the founders of Cloudera and I serve as the chief technology officer for the company.Martin: Great. What is your background and what did you do before you started this company?Amr: So let me go back a little bit actually. So, Im from Egypt originally and I came to the US in 1995, so its about twenty years ago, to get my PhD degree from Stanford University. And my goal was to get my PhD and then go back to Egypt to teach. I really liked to teach, that was my dream when I was young is I’m going to be a professor and teach and thats what I wanted to do. But then I frequently would say when I learn ed in Stanford, the entrepreneurship bug infected me and I got corrupted and I cared more about building companies than teaching, per se.So a few years into Stanford I dropped out from my PhD program and I made my first start-up, which got acquired by Yahoo. So I end up at Yahoo and that was a small company, were about five people. And we were acquired for nine million dollars within one year, which was not bad. And then I spent eight years at Yahoo before I left Yahoo and joined a VC firm called the Accel Partners as was called an Entrepreneur in Resident, EIR. This is kind of a transition role where you go with the VC, and you spend some time researching what should be the thing you should do next. And then after three months with them they give us funding and Cloudera was started. So thats briefly my history before Cloudera.Martin: And two questions. What did you study at Stanford? What kind of topic? And then, the second thing is, in this entrepreneurial residence program, how d id you get in touch with Accel? Did you know these guys before or just by accident?Amr: Both are very good questions. So the first question, I was in the computer engineering department and I was studying essentially distributed large scale distributed systems. And I was doing my PhD with Professor Mendel Rosenblum and Mendel Rosenblum actually is one of the founders of the VMware. Hes a very nice guy, I can introduce you to him if you want to interview him as well.Martin: Sure, thank you.Amr: Hes an amazing guy. So I did my PhD. I actually did go back to Stanford and finished my PhD while I was working at Yahoo. So I had dropped out but I go back and finished. So virtual machines and distributed systems is the main topic.And then on the other question about EIR and how do you get to be an entrepreneur residence. So usually, you dont apply to be an entrepreneurial residence. Like VCs dont open like, ‘Hey, we are hiring EIR’. Usually, the EIR thing happens because of connections and because the VC knows you from before and they want you to become and work with them before you do your next company. So in my specific situation, one of my previous managers at Yahoo, he had left Yahoo and joined that Firm as a VC. So he was there, he knew me very well because he was my manager at Yahoo. So when I was leaving, he said, ‘You have to come here and be in EIR’. My co-founder, Jeff Hammerbacher, who is the my co-founder at Cloudera, he comes from Facebook, a very similar story. So he was one of the early employees at Facebook. Excel Partners was one of the very early investors at Facebook, so same thing, they knew of him and when they heard he was leaving, they said, hey, come to Excel and work as an EIR. And thats how I connected with Jeff, whos my co-founder.Martin: Ok, great. So you met over there at Accel?Amr: Yes.Martin: Ok, great. And how did you come up with this idea of Cloudera?Amr: So it came from my work experience. From my own work experience and Jeff s work experience. And we have two other co-founders, Mike Olsen, who is our chairman of the board and the chief strategy officer. And then a fourth co-founder from Google, his name is Christophe Bisciglia though he left Cloudera two years and hes now doing other company. Hes also kind of an interesting guy, I could connect you with him if you want to chat with him. So what was the question again?The idea. Where did the idea come from? Yes. So, the idea essentially In my work at Yahoo, I was responsible for doing BI and data analytics and the data science for Yahoo News, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo finance, Yahoo search, all the different products that Yahoo has. And I had to do a lot of analysis of whats working, whats not working, new features when they launch, how effective they are at retaining their users, etcetera, etcetera. And I had a bunch of challenges in my existing business intelligence data technologies I was using and at the same time, when I was at Yahoo, I was lucky as there was this other open source technology was being built, which is called a Hadoop, the name of technology. And being built inside of Yahoo for Yahoo search, how to build web index at scale.But when we talked to the team, it was very clear that the technology solves a lot of problems that we had. So I tried the technology in my team, and then very quickly within a year, it just changed everything I do. And for me that was a very clear signal that this is a very good aspirin for anybody that has the headache of how do I manage big amounts of data or big data as its known today. Same thing happened with my co-founder Jeff Hammerbacher at Facebook. He used the Hadoop on his own infrastructure and he saw how effective it was in solving problems for him.Martin: Ok, great.BUSINESS MODELMartin: Lets talk about the business model of Cloudera. How does it work right now?Amr: So first it’s important to note that business models evolve over time as the function of the company and its maturity. The more you understand your customers, the more you understand your business. So at the beginning, when we were first forming Cloudera, our business model was more structured around doing training and doing consulting or professional services for our customers. But then it was very clear that while you can make a lot of money when youre doing training and consulting, its not high margin money because its a people business, you have to go and hire more people to be able to do more consulting and more training, so the margins are limited, how big your margins can be.So we changed our business model to be a combination of still training and professional services but also having a software subscription business model as well. So right now we charge our customers as a function of how many servers our software is running on per year. So it’s a subscription per server per year. Thats how they contract with us today. And I should also note that we had a pivot-shifting Cloudera in our hi story and thats why our name is Cloudera, by the way. So our name is Cloudera, its because initially, we were going to build this cloud platform where we put our software on the cloud, our customers upload their data, do their number crunching and then download the results. But within six months of doing that, it was clear that all of the big banks we want to work with, the big retailers, they were not comfortable giving out their data.So we shifted company from being a cloud company to being a software company. So we give them software that they can then deploy within their organization or in the cloud if they want to, but most of them choose to deploy within, right now. So that was a big shift for us from being a cloud company to being a software company. But we kept the name Cloudera because it was a cool name.Martin: Okay. What problem that the software solve for your clients?Amr: It’s a very simple value proposition. So if you look at most of the legacy data technology, legac y systems like for example Teradata or Oracle or standard databases, standard databases are very good handling what we refer to as structured data. So its very well defined data where you have columns and the columns have types like that string for names and then date for date of birth, and then decimal for an amount, for a salary or something. Very well-defined, very well structured. And these systems were very good at doing that.But the reality of the world today is we have multiple types of data. We have structured data that comes from databases but we have a lot of semi-structured data that comes from web servers, that come from mobile devices, and then we have unstructured data like PDF documents or emails or even images and videos. So future data systems which is what our system represent have the capability to absorb any data, whether they be structured, semi-structured or unstructured and then allow you to process that data in many different ways. So in a nutshell, our value proposition is we allow our customers to extract value for their business from all the data that they have and then use that data to ask bigger questions than theyre able to ask today.Martin: And in terms of this unstructured data like form PDF files, do you need to teach your algorithm to extract this data and put them from an unstructured into a structured way or is it manually done by, for example, by the client who is teaching the algorithm? How does it work?Amr: All of the above. So in some cases there are some standard format where we have really have parsers that know how to parse out the content and read out the content from these documents. So in this case there is a library, you just pick the parser that applies to the type of document that youre trying to parse. But then you could have a more sophisticated document where youre trying to extract the sentiment, an email and from that email, youre now trying to extract, maybe that email somebody sent to the support team for a given company. And then, you want to extract was that customer upset? Was the customer happy? Was that customer neutral, when that email exchange took place? So that is more involved, for that you have to write codes that do whats called sentiment. And thats to extract that.And then, theres an ecosystem of partners that we work with now, other companies that are building tools around our platform that make it easier to do that. So for example theres a company called Trifacta, its a very young start-up. Theres another one called Timr, T-I-M-R. Theres a number of one now, trying to make it easier to do that.Martin: Ok. Assuming I have all the data and put it into a data warehouse, what else can the client do then with this data? Are there any kind of pre-defined reports I can generate or does the clients have to connect all the data so we can get some analysis insights on that?Amr: So we are the platform. We are not a front-end application, we are the platform and think of us just like a database, except unlike a database like Oracle, our platform is much more flexible. So it can take data at any time, it is much more scalable, it can really scale to massive amounts of data. And its much more agile in terms of, its not just sequel, you can do sequel with it but you can also do search, you can do machine learning and there is many other types of workloads that it can run.But still, its a platform, so now how do you connect that platform to applications? There is a lot of existing applications that just integrate with our platform. So companies like Click Track, Tableau, Microsage and Informatica, theres a lot of companies out there that built applications that do visualizations and do that analysis that then connect into our platform using the APIs that we provide.Martin: And are you also promoting in this type of ecosystem where you have different kinds of apps that once clients subscribe to Cloudera that they can choose from different types of apps, how they can analyze the data that you generated using Cloudera?Amr: Ultimately we will want to have an equivalent of like App Store of big data. Where you just have an App Store and you go and you click on the icon of the app you want. Were not there yet. Today, its still an enterprise software sale where well have to go and talk to that company and sign a contract with them and then get the software and deploy it. So its a bit more heavy. But hopefully in the future, yes it will be a simple app within the Cloudera management interface, you’re going to see a bunch of icons for different apps and you just tick the app that you want but were not there yet.Martin: How did you acquire the first customer and convince them to buy with you or try you?Amr: We are lucky in the sense that our business model is also open source in nature. So our core product that we release, which is called the Cloudera distribution for Hadoop is 100% open source as also free. So what that helps do is it helps see the market where developers they look at it, they see its very powerful, they download it, they start to build apps on it and then once they build an app which is viable for their business then they come and they talk with us say, ‘Hey, can we have a relationship with your company to maintain that software, for us going forward’. And so for us, because of the open source nature of Hadoop, the initial customers were coming to us. And there was no other vendor out there when we started Cloudera that was supporting the Hadoop platform, we were the only one. So we got a lot of our initial kind of growth in the company was organic, just coming from customers that deployed our software.Martin: Okay. What have been your thoughts on when you started out between bootstrapping the company and taking external money?Amr: Thats a very good question. So in our case we, if you follow Clouderas history, we took a lot of money. At Cloudera we actually raised to date more than one billion dollars in funding which is a lot of money for a software company. But that comes because of the fact that this is an exploding market. Like, very quickly, we saw that this market is going so quick that technology is important but having that sales force that can really sell this technology worldwide is even more important. And you have to realize that when you are hiring sales, when you are hiring sales people, you have to pay their salaries for the first six, even twelve months before they start making any deals or bringing any money in, you cannot bootstrap when youre doing that, you have to have money to be able to pay their salaries. So from day one, we have been raising money in Cloudera.Almost every year, like in 2008, we raised five million from our Accel partners, which I mentioned earlier. At 2009, we raised another six million. 2010, I think we raised like double that, and just like every year we are raising double what we raised the year before. And mainly doing it as a functio n of; we want to continue to grow very, very quickly to capture this opportunity because we see this as a massive opportunity. And the one who captures the full opportunity will get the most value in the long term.Martin: Amr, what is a typical customer lead time?Amr: So it depends. So in some cases there are customers who already have downloaded our software, as I said its open source and free. So they already downloaded, they already built an app, its already running inside the company and they come to us and they say, ‘Okay its great, we love it, where do we sign?’ And usually that would take like a week until we get them to sign and they pay us, and its great. So that is the case in the early days when this technology was still kind of in the beginning, and there were lots of earlier doctors. Now, in the latest stages where were moving with this technology into very, very large companies and part of what were doing is convincing these large companies of, ‘Hey, your old way of doing things is not going to work for you going forward. You need to have this platform’, and in this case you have to go in and do whats called a proof concept and show them that this platform truly will deliver the scalability, the flexibility of working with any data and the agility of being able to build new projects very quickly. So that process can take anywhere from four weeks to even four months until we can convince them that this is a valuable system for them. And then thats when they do the first purchase. But our technology is not about the first purchase. Our technology is about how we get that first purchase but then grow it. Because once we get inside of a company and they have ten servers running or software and they see what these ten servers can do in terms of scalability and economics of storing the data effectively. Then, they start to grow it from there and thats where our potential is much bigger from that, from the expansion that we get from these custom ers once we land them.CORPORATE STRATEGYMartin: Amr, Lets talk about corporate strategy. So I mean you have some kind of technology part in your company and then you have this kind of distribution part. What other part would you think or consider in terms of competitive advantage that is needed for your business model? And which one is the most important?Amr: We actually have four pillars that underlie our strategy of how we win in this market, both win for ourselves intrinsically but when against competition as well. And these four pillars are:the technology,the team that we have,the track records andthe ecosystem.So let me talk about these briefly. So technology simply, our technology needs to be more superior. And in open source its tricky, how do you make your technology superior when everything you do you put it back into open source? So what were doing at Cloudera is not everything were putting back into open source. Were putting roughly maybe 85% of what we do into open sourc e but were keeping 15% proprietary to us. And that is very important to maintain uniqueness for our solution compared to other vendors out there. So theres other companies out there, small companies and even big companies like, IBM for example that can come in and just take everything that we do and say, Hey, we can do everything Cloudera can do, the software is all open source. But by keeping 15% of what we do proprietary, we maintain that uniqueness, not only unique, were different. If you go with IBM, or go with some other player, youre not going to get the full value that youll get if you come with Cloudera. So thats number one, where we differentiate ourselves.Number two, is the team that we have. So in open source, it is very important for customers that they see that you have in your company some of the open source project leaders that created this technology. So in our case for example, the Hadoop technology was created by Doug Cutting. And Doug Cutting he works at Cloudera. And there are nineteen other open source projects, and most of these other projects were either founded by Cloudera or the creators of these projects we eventually hire them to work at Cloudera. So that gives us a lot of value in our customers. they now believe that we can control that open source artifact, we can add the features they care about, we can fix it when it breaks, and so on. So thats number two.Number three is the track record, like I mentioned. So we use our own Hadoop technology, our own data technology, we collect data from all of our customers. When our customers are running a cluster, we are collecting data from them into our Hadoop cluster. And that data is not the data that their data. Thats how theyre operating, the telemetrics, the telematics of how the cluster is operating. We have that. We can see that from them and from all of our other customers that we had from the last six years. So now, whenever anybody of them experiences a failure, we can very quickly correlate that across all the other traces that we have and resolve that failure much quicker than any of our competition. Furthermore, we also do whats called predictive maintenance. Thats where we can even predict that the customers going to have failure. We call them up and say, youre going to have a failure if you dont change this, or change that, youre going to fail. So track record is our third advantage.And then fourth advantage is the ecosystem. When youre building a platform technology, like the one that we have, if you look at companies like Oracle or VMware or Windows or any company who is building a platform, their success comes from how big of an ecosystem do they have around them. So we have been very focused on building a very big ecosystem. We have more than one thousand partners that work with us right now. Some of these partners are building software applications that run on our platform and some of them are building hardware that underlies our platform. So for ex ample Dell, is one of our largest partners and their also investor. Intel is our largest investor, actually. And some of these are SI, solution integrator vendors, like Capgemini or Accenture that go inside of large companies and implement these solutions. So we have the largest ecosystem right now among the other players in the space.Martin: What is your recommendation for software service start-up that tries to find some distribution channels? Like youve talked about Capgemini, which is I guess one of Hadoop distribution channels because they are consulting other companies. Would this be one of your recommendation for a SaaS company to partner with? Whether its Capgemini, or ErnstYoung, or whoever?Amr: Yes, absolutely. I mean, when you want to sign big deals with the large corporate organizations, many of these large enterprises, unlike typical enterprises, unlike for example Google or Facebook. If you look at a big bank, or a big retailer, or a big telecommunication companies, th ey have massive, massive engagements with these large SI’s and they use them to do the implementation. So its very important. One of the very important strategies for any company in the enterprise software space, which is the space that we are in to establish these types of channel partnership where they can come in and help you sell your software much more efficiently and effectively. I will not however that we right now are not software service.Again, despite our name being Cloudera, we are not software that you go and get as a service, we are software that you deploy inside of your organization. One of these deployment options is to deploy from the cloud, which kind of looks like a service but its not really the same, as for example a box of net or equivalent.MARKET DEVELOPMENTMartin: Amr, lets talk about the market development, especially related to the cloud industry. What is your impression on that? What are the major trends happening?Amr: Yes. So cloud is definitely happen ing. And cloud will happen and its not a question of if cloud will happen, its a question of when, when will cloud really take over completely. When we were starting Cloudera six years ago as I mentioned earlier, we initially wanted to be a cloud company. Like, we initially wanted to do everything in the cloud. But back then, six years ago, it was very clear that big companies viewed their data, their backup data as their blood. And nobody wants their blood to be outside their body. They want their blood inside their body.Now, that is very similar to us, I mean if you remember many years ago when ATM machines came out. Maybe you cant remember, your dad can remember. When ATM Machines came out, people were very hesitant to go and put their money in an ATM machine, right? Because theyre afraid but eventually, people were okay now to put their money in. Now, they dont even think about it. The same thing will happen with data and the cloud. So we think companies will get more comfortabl e with having their data move into the cloud but that will take more time. It would take more time than other types of applications.So for example, if youre building a web app, or youre building a website or a mobile app, youre much more likely to use the cloud today. But when youre building a backend data platform for an insurance company, a finance company, a health company, a government organization, theyre still very sensitive about having their data go on the cloud but that will change over time. So we are about big data, so for us the important part is when will companies be more comfortable having their data go into the cloud. And we see that starting to happen, the beginnings of it right now. But its still now across the board. Its still like a very small percent of enterprises are willing to have the core data systems move into the cloud.Martin: Good. Amr, thank you very much for the time.Amr: Sure, youre very welcome.

Online Education Essay - 1378 Words

Online Education Education is an important part of people’s lives; it will either make them or break them in the future depending on the careers they choose. Education is greatly diverse today in comparison to the 1950s because of advancements in teaching and other great inventions that provide easier techniques of teaching. One major issue that has been raised is distant learning courses and online education. Distant learning could be any format from VHS videos, DVDs, or internet courses online. Online education has been legal since 1993 and is a new way of teaching students of all ages. Online education has been gaining popularity through out the years because of the ease of the internet. The internet has made it easier for†¦show more content†¦Discussion on issues is done in chat rooms and forums where everybody writes their views on the issue. This is an advantage for foreigners who can not speak proper English correctly. Live video and sound can also be done with special equipmen t for a real time conversation with instructors and peers. Other features on the online courses are the learning aides that can be used while taking the course. Certain programs can be made such as flash cards and games which can increase the learning experience of the student. These learning aides can be done on the student’s time and does not require the teacher to be there. Time for a face to face class is very difficult if a person works 40 hours a week but an online course can put an ease on the time restriction because the person does the work at their own pace and time. It is also easier to sign up for an online class than a class at a college. Message boards are in use if the students need to leave a question or a comment about the subject their on. They also save time by not traveling to the college and trying to find a parking space. Rural areas where students have to travel a great distance to get to class can save time and money by doing online classes. For example, a child of a farmer can help the family out in the morning with the farming chores then go to an online class later on. Rural kids may also take additional educational classes online that their school does notShow MoreRelatedOnline Education And Online Schools946 Words   |  4 Pagestypes of schools starting with online and public. How would someone know which one to choose? While some believe the quality of online education isn’t as good as a regular school’s, online school is just as effective or more and should be continued as a teaching resource because online students are getting higher test scores and more options are offered by online schools. One of the reasons why online school is more effective than regular school is by cause of online students have shown higher testingRead MoreOnline Discussion Of Online Education1303 Words   |  6 Pagesdiscussion of online education in philosophy, there would sometimes come a rather curious moment in the conversation. I began to think of it as the â€Å"microwave question moment.† Many years ago, when microwave ovens first were advertised, there was a rather clever ad depicting a salesperson standing in front of a crowd of people, going on and on about all the wonderful advantages of microwave cooking, until a deep voice from the back spoke up with: â€Å"But does it brown the food?† Online course deliveryRead MoreOnline Education Essay712 Words   |  3 PagesOnline Education Online learning is definitely one of the newest and fastest moving industries; more and more students are opting to getting their degree this way instead of going to a land college, mostly due to the convenience of the schedule, where before a full time employee, could not fit schooling into their schedule, but they are finding out now that they can do this through the online environment, so they are utilizing this alternative way of achieving their higher education. Yet, the onlineRead MoreBenefits Of Online Education1136 Words   |  5 PagesOnline classes have become a more popular source for learning in the education system over the past couple of years. In the technology based world lived in today this is no surprise, it seems that everything is turning from human performed to technology based. The technology based world lived in has good and bad consequences, with technology based classes the need for teachers in the classroom teaching the material is declining. Along with j obs declining, many argue online learning may not be providingRead MoreTraditional Education And Online Education926 Words   |  4 PagesBatter, Online or Traditional Education Imagine that someone studies and has a neighbor in the same age. They study in together until high school. Someone continues to go to university but his neighbor decides to stay at home. They finally graduate and discover that his neighbor also graduate. 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The purpose of an online education is to allow student to receive a degree without having to be present or on campus. Online education helps working adults pursue higher education and gives them better career opportunities. It will also help people increase their lifetime earnings, Online education also helps to connect with people we would have never dreamed of interacting with it also gives students opportunitiesRead MoreOnline Education Vs Traditional Education1068 Words   |  5 PagesOn-Line Education versus Traditional Education Introduction/Thesis Online education has rapidly become a popular alternative to traditional education, due to the flexible nature of the courses and also the fact that the online learning environment may not require additional expenses. However, some people find traditional learning to be more advantageous than online learning. The traditional learning environment provides some people with more support throughout their scholastic career. When lookingRead MoreBenefits Of Online Education901 Words   |  4 Pagesgetting education and degrees online. A few years ago online education was never thinkable, and yet it has become to reality and it is widely expanding with popularity. Online education is a type of educational instruction that delivers learning to individuals to their own homes, and it is getting very popular among nontraditional student and others. Individuals prefer online education because they find it comfortable and better at their own house. To further more, some advantages of online ed ucationRead MoreOnline Education Essay626 Words   |  3 PagesOnline education has grown since it first came about, there are mixed views on whether it is truly beneficial. The reasons for the huge growth of online education is money even though online education targeted working adults that have little or no time to sit in a traditional classroom for millions of men and women serving in the armed forces online education has made earning a degree much more possible. In recent years there have been significant technological growth with this growth technology

Military For Civilian Life And Supporting Their Families

Military returning to Civilian Life and supporting their Families Millions of combat veterans are returning from various campaigns including Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and America’s latest campaigns in Afghanistan and will need support to transition from military combat life to family life and a civilian existence. A variety of support personnel and services are needed to help veterans transition successfully. Veterans suffer from physical and mental health problems which make it challenging to find new employment to support their family. In addition, over his or her years of service, the veteran has identified as a soldier with all of the status and hierarchical command structure that is part of the military. Physical rehabilitation, mental health intervention, and employment support are ways to address the needs of military veterans transitioning into civilian life. Physical injuries resulting from military service can pose a significant barrier to service members trying to resume their pre-deployment life roles. A variety of medical disciplines assist service members with recovery from traumatic injuries sustained during combat. The rehabilitation process begins at medical facilities located near the battle front. Early rehabilitation of injuries, considered within 7 days after injury, has well documented benefits. (Marin, 2006) As soon as possible, the injured soldier is transferred to a fixed facility within Europe or the UnitedShow MoreRelatedMilitary For Civilian Life And Supporting Their Families1046 Words   |  5 PagesMilitary returning to Civilian Life and supporting their Families Millions of combat veterans are returning from various campaigns including Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation Enduring Freedom, and America’s latest campaigns in Afghanistan and will need support to transition from military combat life to family life and a civilian existence. A variety of support personnel and services are needed to help veterans transition successfully. Veterans suffer from physical and mental health problems whichRead MoreMental Health Issues Of Vietnam Veterans1595 Words   |  7 Pagesreturning to civilian life. Vietnam veterans are infamously known for being homeless and having a host of mental health issues. 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Veterans suffer from physical and mental health problems which make it challenging to find new employment to support their family. In addition, over his or her years of service, the veteran has identified as a soldier with all of the status and hierarchical command structure that is part of the military. Physical rehabilitation, mental health intervention, and employment support are ways to address the needs of military veterans transitioning into civilian life. Physical injuries resulting from military service can pose a significant barrier to service members trying to resume their pre-deployment life roles. A variety of medical disciplines assist service members with recovery from traumatic injuries sustained during combat. The rehabilitation process begins at medical facilities located near the battle front. Early rehabilitation of injuries, considered within 7 days after injury, has well documented benefits. 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In an accessible method, Smith provides general knowledge about how the intervention on the behalf of the international community impacted the country and its people. This book also leaves me with reflections on the dynamic between insurgents andRead MoreThe Army Profession1228 Words   |  5 PagesWebster’s dictionary defines the word profession as a type of job that requires special education, training, or skill. Many Soldiers would not consider the Army as a profession but a way of life. Some think the word profession belongs to everyday jobs like a plumber, mechanic, or doctor. Dr. Don M. Snider stated â€Å"the Army is a profession because of the expert work it produces, because the people in the Army develop themselves to be professionals, and because the Army certifies them as such† (SniderRead MoreWorld War I During The World Of Russia1651 Words   |  7 Pagesethnic Russians had taken over their land and homes with m any Chechens having to buy their own homes back. Clashes and hatred between Chechens and Russians living within Chechen territories persisted to present times. A local, Ramazan Abdulatiov, supporting this attitude, said that, a shot was fired in the Caucasus, but the echo lasts for 100 years. After the soviet collapse of 1991, neighbouring Georgia s recent successful secession attempt inspired a Chechen separatist movement. General Dzhokhar

How Humans Have Contributed to Climate Change Free Essays

CLIMATE CHANGE: HOW THE HOMO SAPIENS HAVE CONTRIBUTED By Ernest Ebo Jackson TERM PAPER Climate change refers to change in average weather patterns and can be caused by both natural processes and human activities. In the past, the earth’s climate has been affected by natural factors such as changes in solar output and the discharge of volcanic ash. In fact, the planet has been through many periods of cooling and warming. We will write a custom essay sample on How Humans Have Contributed to Climate Change or any similar topic only for you Order Now The last period of major cooling ended about 10,000 years ago. The physical evidence that suggests that the earth’s climate is changing is truly overwhelming. The world’s glaciers are retreating and disappearing, extreme weather is occurring more often now than in the past, the sea’s level and temperature is on the rise and it’s becoming more acidic, increased evaporation is drying out the earth’s supply of fresh water found in lakes and rivers, heat waves kill thousands in Europe, uncontrollable forests fires are destroying forests reserves in places like Australia and Africa, and increasing atmospheric temperature is raising the budget of many families in tropical countries use in cooling their homes. Need I say more? The sun’s warmth heats the surface of the earth, which in turn radiates energy back to space. Some of this radiation, which is nearly all in the infrared spectrum, is trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. For instance, water vapor strongly absorbs radiation with wavelengths between 4 and 7 micrometers, and carbon dioxide (CO2) absorbs radiation with wavelengths between 13 and 19 micrometers. The trapped radiation warms the lower atmosphere, or troposphere. Some heat then finds its way back down to the Earth’s surface, making it hotter than it would otherwise be. This is the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over the last 400,000 years show a rise since the industrial revolution. Analysis of ice in a core drilled from an ice sheet such as the Antarctic ice sheet enables scientist to arrive at this conclusion. But since when did humans becoming aware of the potentially adverse effects of Carbon dioxide emissions on the climate? As early as 1827, French polymath Jean-Baptiste Fourier predicts an atmospheric effect eeping the earth warmer than it would otherwise be. He is the first to use a greenhouse analogy. Also in 1957, US oceanographer Roger Revelle warns that humanity is conducting a â€Å"large-scale geophysical experiment† on the planet by releasing greenhouse gases. Colleague David Keeling sets up first continuous monitoring of CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Keeling soon finds a regular year-o n-year rise. Over the years, there have been many conferences aimed at finding solutions to climate change or global warming. In 1985 for instance, there was a major international conference on the greenhouse effect at Villach, Austria, which warned that greenhouse gases will â€Å"in the first half of the next century, cause a rise of global mean temperature which is greater than any in man’s history. † This could cause sea levels to rise by up to one meter, researchers say. The conference also reports that gases other than carbon dioxide, such as methane, ozone, CFCs and nitrous oxide, also contribute to warming. The world’s nations however have not been united in their quest to curb global warming or climate change. Many nations have been selfish, especially developed ones, seeking first to achieve or maintain economic growth and thus world dominance rather than make the sacrifices needed to reverse the negative trend of climate change. . A revisit to some historical event will help buttress this point. 1995 proved to be the hottest year recorded to date. In March, the Berlin Mandate is agreed by signatories at the first full meeting of the Climate Change Convention in Berlin. Industrialized nations agree on the need to negotiate real cuts in their emissions, to be concluded by the end of 1997. In 1996, at the second meeting of the Climate Change Convention, the US agrees for the first time to legally binding emissions targets and sides with the IPCC against influential skeptical scientists. After a four-year pause, global emissions of CO2 resume their steep climb, and scientists warn that most industrialized countries will not meet Rio agreement to stabilize emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000. Furthermore, in 1997, Kyoto Protocol agrees legally binding emissions cuts for industrialized nations, averaging 5. 4%, to be met by 2010. The meeting also adopts a series of flexibility measures, allowing countries to meet their targets partly by trading emissions permits, establishing carbon sinks such as forests to soak up emissions, and by investing in other countries. The precise rules are left for further negotiations. Meanwhile, the US government says it will not ratify the agreement unless it sees evidence of â€Å"meaningful participation† in reducing emissions from developing countries. In 2001, the new US president, George W Bush, renounces the Kyoto Protocol because he believes it will damage the US economy. After some hesitation, other nations agree to go ahead without him. Talks in Bonn in July and Marrakech in November finally conclude the fine print of the protocol. Analysts say that loopholes have pegged agreed cuts in emissions from rich-nation signatories to less than a third of the original Kyoto promise. Signatory nations urged to ratify the protocol in their national legislatures in time for it to come into force before the end of 2002. Now let’s talk about a second human behavior that is negatively impacting the climate – deforestation. Deforestation is the permanent destruction of indigenous forests and woodlands by the processes of humans such as logging and/or burning of trees in a forested area. Deforestation occurs because of many reasons: trees or derived charcoal are used as or sold for fuel or a commodity to be used by humans, while cleared land is used by humans as pasture for livestock, plantations of commodities, and settlements. People’s removal of trees without sufficient reforestation has resulted in damage to habitat, biodiversity loss and aridity. It has adverse impacts on biosequestration (the capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by biological processes) of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Deforested regions typically incur significant adverse soil erosion and frequently degrade into wasteland. Forests (an area with a high density of trees. ) are the most natural biological formation. They serve many functions. Firstly, forests protect and form other natural resources. Thanks to the processes of photosynthesis, they renew the oxygen stock in the atmosphere by fixing atmospheric carbon dioxide and moderating the greenhouse effect. Forests also allow for the existence of many species of plants and animals, thus protecting diversity of nature and its gene stock. Forests clean the environment by muffling noises, lowering the wind strength as well as stopping dust and gases. They have a regulatory influence on surface water runoff; they moderate high and low temperatures and prevent soil erosion. By performing all of the above listed functions forests stabilize the climate and shape the landscape. Forests create conditions for relaxation, recreation and improvement of health. Only when actively growing can trees or forest remove carbon over an annual or longer timeframe. The decay and burning of wood releases much of this stored carbon back to the atmosphere. In order for forests to take up carbon, the wood must be harvested and turned into long-lived products and trees must be re-planted. Sadly consumer trends indicate the humans like to discard products such as furniture after only a few years of usage and buy new ones, increasing the need for wood and thus deforestation. Reducing emissions from the tropical deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries has emerged as new potential solution to complement ongoing climate policies. The idea consists in providing financial compensations for the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from deforestation and forest degradation†. The earlier these ideas are implemented, the better for us. The hydrological effects on climate as a result of deforestation are even more alarming. The water cycle is probably the most affected by deforestation. Trees extract groundwater through their roots and release it into the atmosphere. When part of a forest is removed, the trees no longer evaporate away this water, resulting in a much drier climate. Already, acute water shortages in countries like Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Palestine and Iraq has resulted in armed conflicts with factions fighting to control the scanty water resources available. Water prices increase too is an indication of global water shortage. In Britain, water and sewage bills increased 67 percent between 1989 and 1995. The rate at which people’s services were disconnected rose by 177 percent. Deforestation also contributes to decreased evapotranspiration (the sum of evaporation and plant transpiration from the Earth’s land surface to atmosphere), which lessens atmospheric moisture which in some cases affects precipitation levels downwind from the deforested area, as water is not recycled to downwind forests, but is lost in runoff and returns directly to the oceans. According to one preliminary study in deforested north and northwest China, the average annual precipitation decreased by one third between the 1950s and the 1980s. Trees, and plants in general, affect the water cycle significantly: their canopies intercept a proportion of precipitation, which is then evaporated back to the atmosphere (canopy interception); their litter, stems and trunks slow down surface runoff; their roots create macropores – large conduits – in the soil that increase infiltration of ater; they contribute to terrestrial evaporation and reduce soil moisture via transpiration; their litter and other organic residue change soil properties that affect the capacity of soil to store water. Their leaves control the humidity of the atmosphere by transpiration. 99% of the water pulled up by the roots move up to the leaves for transpiration. As a result, the presence or absence of trees can change the quantity of water on the surface, in the soil or groundwater , or in the atmosphere. This in turn changes erosion rates and the availability of water for either ecosystem functions or human services. Tropical rainforests produce about 30% of our planet’s fresh water. So what are we waiting for? When will human start acting to reverse these trends? I wish I knew. The third human activity that has contributed to global warming is the use of chlorofluorocarbon. A chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) is an organic compound that contains carbon, chlorine, and fluorine. Many CFCs have been widely used as refrigerants, propellants (in aerosol applications), and solvents. Applications exploit the low toxicity, low reactivity, and low flammability of the CFCs. During World War II, various chloroalkanes were in standard use in military aircraft. After the war they slowly became more common in civil aviation as well. In the 1960s, fluoroalkanes and bromofluoroalkanes became available and were quickly recognized as being highly effective fire-fighting materials. By the late 1960s they were standard in many applications where water and dry-powder extinguishers posed a threat of damage to the protected property, including computer rooms, telecommunications switches, laboratories, museums and art collections. Beginning with warships, in the 1970s, bromofluoroalkanes also progressively came to be associated with rapid knockdown of severe fires in confined spaces with minimal risk to personnel. By the early 1980s, bromofluoroalkanes were in common use on aircraft, ships, and large vehicles as well as in computer facilities and galleries. A planet’s climate is decided by its mass, its distance from the sun and the composition of its atmosphere. Earth’s atmosphere is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, and 1% other gases. Carbon dioxide makes up just 0. 03 – 0. 04% with water vapour varying in amount from 0 to 2%. Without the greenhouse gases, Earth’s average temperature would be roughly -20 °C. The use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in machinery and other purposes have resulted in the release of CFCs into the atmosphere which intensifies the heat-trapping properties of the atmosphere as a whole. There is no natural process that release CFCs. In addition, CFCs rise into the upper layer of the atmosphere, the stratosphere, where they destroy the protective layer of ozone, a gas that forms a shield against ultraviolet rays that can harm many forms of life. About l million tons (over 900,000 metric tons) per year of CFCs have been released worldwide since the mid l970s. Demand for refrigeration (which has cooling systems that use CFCs) in developing countries is projected to increase greatly, especially in China and India. Ozone losses in the upper atmosphere are occurring at all latitudes in both hemispheres. The most striking example of ozone loss occurs over the South Pole during September and October. As ozone is lost, the amount of biologically harmful UV-B radiation will increase. Skin cancer rates are expected to increase. Other health effects will likely include an increase in cataracts and suppression of the immune system. Increased UV-B radiation may also harm plants and animals. These CFCs have a global warming potential of up to 11,000 times as strong as carbon dioxide by weight. Unfortunately, millions of products such as refrigerators, air conditioners, fire extinguishers and aerosol cans that contain CFCs are still in use around the world and are nearing the end of their usable lives. The next 10-20 years present a unique one-time opportunity to prevent emissions from these products as they are retired and therefore mitigate ozone damage and global climate change. The damage caused by CFCs was discovered by Sherry Rowland and Mario Molina who, after hearing a lecture on the subject of James Lovelock’s work, embarked on research resulting in the first publication suggesting the connection in 1974. It turns out that one of CFCs’ most attractive features—their low reactivity— is the key to their most destructive effects. CFCs’ lack of reactivity gives them a lifespan that can exceed 100 years, giving them time to diffuse into the upper stratosphere. Once in the stratosphere, the sun’s ultraviolet radiation is strong enough to cause the homolytic cleavage of the C-Cl bond. Since the late 1970s, the use of CFCs has been heavily regulated. By 1987, in response to a dramatic seasonal depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica, diplomats in Montreal forged a treaty, the Montreal Protocol, which called for drastic reductions in the production of CFCs. On March 2, 1989, 12 European Community nations agreed to ban the production of all CFCs by the end of the century. In 1990, diplomats met in London and voted to significantly strengthen the Montreal Protocol by calling for a complete elimination of CFCs by the year 2000. On October 2 2009, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) held a briefing about the stockpile of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in old equipment and building infrastructure, and the enormous potential for these potent greenhouse gases to accelerate climate change. These CFC â€Å"banks† store the equivalent of 18 billion tons of carbon dioxide, approximately one-third of which will be emitted over the next decade under business as usual. EESI estimates that the destruction of CFCs could cost $62 -$180 billion globally. No wonder institutions are reluctant to destroy them though they are very much conscious of the effects CFCs are having on our climate. As the evidence shows, we have ourselves to blame for the unfavorable climate in recent history. Our practices are changing the climate and we are conscious of it but still keep on living life as if nothing is at stake. The billions of dollars that we gain from over-exploiting the earth are the same billion we spent on relief for victims of extreme weather. What then do we gain? The U. S. has sustained 96 weather-related disasters over the past 30 years in which overall damages/costs reached or exceeded $1 billion. The total normalized losses for the 96 events exceed $700 billion. Read an instance in the paragraph below. Southwest/Great Plains Drought persists for an entire year in 2009. Drought conditions occurred during much of the year across parts of the Southwest, Great Plains, and southern Texas causing agricultural losses in numerous states (TX, OK, KS, CA, NM, and AZ). The largest agriculture losses occurred in TX and CA. Estimate of over $5. 0 billion in damages/costs. I believe the arguments presented herein are very conclusive. Humans have contributed immensely to climate change and they are paying for it. How to cite How Humans Have Contributed to Climate Change, Essay examples

Symbolism in Orewlls Shooting an Elephant Essay Example

Symbolism in Orewlls Shooting an Elephant Essay Name Instructor English 15 October 2010 Death of an Elephant: Symbolism in Orwell As a former business major, whenever I read, whether fiction or non-fiction, I tend to focus too much on the surface meaning—the facts—and I often miss the subtle symbolism and deeper meaning of a piece of literature. As an English major, I am attempting to change, but I am often skeptical of symbolism, fearing that we may be reading too much into an author’s words. For me, an assignment to discuss the symbolism in a piece of writing presents a challenge. George Orwell, however, makes reading between the lines and uncovering symbolism in his essays fairly simple. He gives up importance evidence that his works do contain deeper meaning in â€Å"Why I Write† when he says, â€Å"Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic Socialism† (Orwell 67). He has been relatively successful because through his use of symbolism he avoids the didactic preaching that most intelligent people dismiss as manipulation or propaganda. The elephant, the most memorable and moving image in his essay â€Å"Shooting an Elephant,† must have political significance. The elephant, with its many human characteristics, symbolizes the Burmese people in that it is dominated and oppressed, it rebels against that dominance and oppression, and it dies a slow, agonizing death. An elephant makes an appropriate symbol for people in general because elephants are similar to humans in a number of ways. We will write a custom essay sample on Symbolism in Orewlls Shooting an Elephant specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now We will write a custom essay sample on Symbolism in Orewlls Shooting an Elephant specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer We will write a custom essay sample on Symbolism in Orewlls Shooting an Elephant specifically for you FOR ONLY $16.38 $13.9/page Hire Writer In his book When Elephants Weep, Jeffrey Masson tells of elephants having deep humanlike emotions: â€Å"from a Kenyan ‘elephant orange’ comes a report of baby African elephants who have seen their families killed by poachers and witnessed the tusks being cut off the bodies. These young animals wake up screaming in the night† (45). The young elephants, it seems, are having nightmares just as young human children would have in similar circumstances; they appear to be agonizing over the loss of their loved ones. Masson also states that â€Å"Charles Darwin [. . ] was not able to observe animals shedding emotional and called weeping one of the ‘special expressions of man’ Darwin noted one exception: the Indian elephant† (106). Elephants are unique in their similarity to humans; they are highly intelligent, hard working, social animals, with a capacity to feel sorrow and pain. Orwell is aware of the sensitivity and intelligence of the elephant and tells us of his reluctance to shoot it with its â€Å"grandmotherly air† (38), saying, in fact, that â€Å"it would be murder to shoot him†(38). The elephant has so many human characteristics, in fact, that when Orwell kills the elephant it is almost as though he is killing a human. The elephant’s sheer size makes it capable of representing more than just a single human; it represents a people: the Burmese people. The elephant in Orwell’s essay is specifically like the Burmese people in that it is subjected to oppression and violence at the hands of a person, or group of people, supposedly more intelligent and civilized. A large, intelligent animal like an elephant could only be controlled by a smaller animal, like a human being, through mental domination and fear. The act of taming and domesticating such a large, wild, sensitive animal must involve, at some point, physical punishment. Many would argue that the act of taming an elephant is, per se, cruel just as one society dominating and oppressing another is, in itself, cruel. The elephant was kept in chains, forced to work, and looked upon as a â€Å"huge and costly piece of machinery† (37), not as a living, breathing, feeling animal. The elephant performed his duties, not out of respect for the mahout, but to avoid punishment. The Burmese people are also held captive, but the British used guns where the mahout used chains. Orwell describes the treatment the Burmese received at the hands of the British in animal-like terms: â€Å"The wretched prisoners huddled in the stinking cages [. . . ]the gray cowed faces of the long term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboo†(35). They were cages, as animals are caged, and they were flogged with bamboo as an unruly animal would be flogged. They seem to be afforded little or no human dignity and were beaten into submission and controlled through fear, like animals. He even describes their faces as gray, not the color of a healthy human face, the color of an elephant’s face. Later he refers to the Burmese as â€Å"beasts† (35). Like the elephant, the Burmese obeyed their oppressors, not out of respect, but out of fear of punishment. For both the Burmese people and the elephant, however, anger proves stronger than fear, and a rebellion results. The Burmese people rebel, through words and taunts, against the British rule, and the elephant has an attack of â€Å"must,† breaks his chains, and rampages through the bazaar rebelling against its mahout. Just as there is some wild, freedom-loving, instinct in the elephant that cannot be subjugated, there is a sense of pride and love of freedom within the Burmese that refuses to die. The Buddhist priests were the embodiment of this pride; Orwell says regarding the priests, â€Å"There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer ant Europeans†(35). The priests were, in fact, voicing the opinions of most of the Burmese people. They had an obligation, as the religious representatives of the Burmese, to make the unhappiness of the people known to their oppressors. They missed no opportunity to voice their displeasure, and â€Å"in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter† (35). They were, in fact, able to create a general feeling of malevolence and resistance towards the British, making their oppressors almost as unhappy as they were. Their constant jeers and insults were effective, more effective, in arousing Orwell’s anger, than the elephant’s rampage. Orwell did not want to kill the elephant for his rampage; he realized that the elephant was basically a docile creature, and one temporary act of insanity should not bring about a death sentence. However, he is not so sympathetic regarding the Buddhist priests; he tells us, â€Å"I thought the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts†(36). Ironically, Orwell does not kill a Buddhist priest, but he does shoot, and kill the elephant. The elephant’s death symbolizes the death of the Burmese peoples’ freedom, and sense of national pride. Both depart with difficulty and pain at the hands of the British. The elephant, once shot, dies â€Å"very slowly and in great agony† (40). Orwell tells us, â€Å"I waited a long time for him to die†(40). He describes the elephant’s slow, agonizing death in great detail; it becomes the focal point of the essay. At one point Orwell says of the dying elephant, â€Å"One could have imagined him thousands of years old†(40). We can easily imagine that the Burmese society was thousands of years old, with ancient customs and traditions cherished by the people and unappreciated by outsiders, like the British. The British waited a long time for the customs and pride of the Burmese people to die once British dominion was in place. Their undying pride is seen in their refusal to submit quietly to British rule. Orwell, as a police officer, and representative of the British empire often felt their resistance; this is evident when he says, â€Å"insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance† (35). Word Count 1277 The entire essay Death of an Elephant is available through the public domainn at http://georgeorwellnovels. com/essays/shooting-an-elephant/ as