Social and ethical responsibilities of management in business environment

Social and ethical responsibilities of management in business environment Abstract Managers in the day-to-day running of affairs in business environment are normally faced with different challenges that vary in nature. It is of great importance that their action or decision be favorable to both the company and the society.Advertising We will write a custom term paper sample on Social and ethical responsibilities of management in business environment specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More In this manner, the company improves its prospects in capturing new market segments, and the society will have confidence in the company. In essence, social and ethical practices may not be profitable or beneficial to the company in the short run, but will have lasting effects in the long run (Averch Johnson, 1990). Discussion Managers pursue multiple objectives and multiple sets of priorities. They need to make choices from these goals after careful considerations. Therefore, the choices they make affect the ability of employee s, customers, suppliers, stockholders and anyone else with interests in the organization. So often managers have to decide who has the right to what and when. No matter what they do, the actions are either of benefit or of detriment to people. Ethics as applied to management refers to the concept of interactive responsibility; it deals with what is good or bad, or what is right or wrong (Drucker, 1990). It can also be described as the study of how our decisions affect other people or as the study of people’s rights and duties and the rules that people apply in making decisions. In business, we cannot avoid ethical issues just like in other areas of our lives. In business, most ethical issues will be categorized in these four levels: Social level, which deals with the basic institutions in society, like the role of the government in the market place. Stakeholders’ level, which deals with employees, suppliers, customers in the way company’s decision affects them. Internal policy level, essentially deals with the nature of company’s relationship with its employees and managers. Personal level, that involves the ground rules of individuals, companies and social behavior.Advertising Looking for term paper on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More The laws of the country prohibit any acts that are sufficiently hurtful to others and therefore laws offer guides to ethical behavior. Nevertheless, distinction must be made between what is illegal and what is unethical. Not everything that is unethical is illegal. For example, the law has limits regarding honesty. If one picks a lost item and keeps it, he probably has not done anything illegal but his act is unethical. If a clerk steals from his company in order to feed the poor, he has done an illegal thing but for ethical reasons. Decisions of ethics are quite difficult but all managers need to know is that ethic s goes beyond the minimum requirements by law and by market economy (Buckley Casson, 1976). There are very many unethical things that can be done in business and yet there is no law against them! Business ethics also called managerial ethics is the application of ethical principles to business relationships and activities. Managers who run business are human beings who despite the laws set cannot behave the same regardless of the circumstances. Managers face many ethical dilemmas (two or more situations) where both seem right but at the same time, conflicting. Talking to the manager one of the major pharmaceutical company about managerial ethics, he said that managerial ethics normally apply in the following areas: relationship of the firm to the employees in terms of how they are to be treated and how they are paid. Secondly is the relationship of the employee to the firm in terms of how employees should behave in the firm. Thirdly is the relationship of the firm to the environmen t, where ethical issues arise in how the firm relates to the various elements of the environment e.g. customers, competitors, stockholders dealers and the community. Many industries and organizations companies have formal, written codes of ethics that provide specific guideline for managers and other employees. However, the question is whether when individuals violate the code of conduct, the organization enforces it (Demsetz, 1979) Many companies in an attempt to manage ethics have developed specific codes of ethics. These establish guidelines for ethical decision making in business. Areas covered may be truthfulness in advertising, improper use of company assets political contributions, payments in connection with business transactions, conflict of interest, trade secrets etc.Advertising We will write a custom term paper sample on Social and ethical responsibilities of management in business environment specifically for you for only $16.05 $11/page Learn More There are advantages for organizations to form industry associations to develop and promote improved codes of ethics. It is difficult for a single firm to pioneer ethical practices if its competitors undercut them by taking advantage of unethical shortcuts. If ethics are to be improved, it is very important for top executives to support and emphasize ethical behavior by adhering to ethic themselves and train their staff in ethics. The tools of ethics include ethical language, which normally refers to values, rights, duties and rules. I questioned one of the workers of an investment company concerning this tool as a way of improving work relationship and he responded by saying that values are permanent desires that seem to be good. He also added that rights entitled a person to do something. On the other hand, since duty is an obligation that takes specific steps, in general, all the traits combined improve work relationships as well as productivity. Common morality as a tool is the body of rules covering ordinary ethical problems, which essentially are the rules that we live by most of the time. During this century, there has been much change in what society expects of its institutions and in what managers’ regard as the proper roles in organization. This change has gradually developed into a new concept of corporate social responsibility. Increasingly many managers are adopting the view that besides the obligations they have to their organizations, they have a personal responsibility to the society. Managers are increasingly being held accountable for the social effects of their actions. The questions however remain of where such social responsibility begins and where it ends (Trevino Nelson, 2007). The issue of corporate social responsibility has been debated for many years but it has never been clearly defined. However, from the various arguments raised, certain things can be said about social responsibility. One of them is that it deals with c orporate conduct in respect to the broader societal values. The other fact is that it questions the responsibilities of business to the entire society. Despite the lack of an accepted theory of corporate social responsibility, it is obvious that CSR draws on the fields of ethics and morals, which are basic to most cultures.Advertising Looking for term paper on business economics? Let's see if we can help you! Get your first paper with 15% OFF Learn More In other words corporate social responsibility may refer to the moral and ethical content of managerial and corporate decisions, that is to mean the values used in business decision making over and above the requirement of the law and market economy (Stephen, Dirk, Daniel, 2007). Closely related to social responsibility is the concept of social responsiveness, which simply means the ability of a corporation to relate its operations and policies to the social environment in ways that are mutually beneficial to the economy and the society. The difference between social responsibility and social responsiveness is that the latter implies actions and the ‘how’ of enterprise responses. Business organizations do not operate in a vacuum but have to interact constantly with society. A business organization is a part of society. It interacts at a primary level with groups such as employees, distributors, consumers, stockholders, banks, suppliers and competitors. At a secondary l evel, it interacts with such institutions as governments, local communities, media social pressure groups, business support groups and the public. With all these interactions, business cannot afford to go on with their businesses without responding to issues affecting these groups. Some people argue that there is no such thing as corporate social responsibility (Adams, 1965). Others argue that CSR must and will eventually result in long run profits, while others feel that modern organizations must undertake social responsibility regardless of the profit. Whatever the argument are, the question of accountability arises! Two areas of corporate accountability exist: Conventionally which shows that management is professionally responsible to the board of directors while the directors run the corporation for the shareholders who are the providers of capital to their corporation. It is logical that the shareholders expect a fair financial return for their investment. Although through sepa ration of ownership and control shareholders do not run the company, thus by implication therefore management has the responsibility to ensure that the shareholders receive an adequate return. Broadly and more modern view, corporations should be accountable to employees, customers, suppliers and the state. In short, corporations should respond to forces external to it but should be those that are of value to it. It is from these external forces that the corporation draws its existence. How then can it operate without of them? CSR involves decisions – the corporation world is decision oriented and corporations have an impact on society through these decisions. CSR therefore raises the question of rightfulness of decisions and further of which decisions are more right. So social responsibility goes beyond short run profitability, merely meeting minimum legal and market directives do not constitute social responsibility. CSR is very subjective in nature and is influenced by the economic and social system within which it operates (Arrow, 1951). From an interview with a branch manager in one of the banks, he said benefits from social responsibility do not directly accrue to the firm making the expenditure on social responsibility. CSR is hence a system holding that the corporation should respond to the moral and ethical values of society within which it is licensed and which it serves. A given corporation will draw from and shape the values of the society from which it draws its existence. CSR tries to fuse social values with profit maximization goals. Many organizations have thus been evaluating the benefits and problems that are associated with corporate social responsibility, some business organization argue for and others against. Those supporting say that since businesses create some problem they should solve them as well as the fact that organizations owe society for supply of resources. Those arguing against say that social responsibility gives corpor ations too much power, and that it will decrease profits thus contradicting the real reason for firms’ existence. According to the research, there are different areas of social responsibility that an organization can exercise. Such undertakings include non-business related activities such as giving donations, being involved in preservation of the environment (ecology) and ensuring environmental quality. These included things like noise control and aesthetic improvement, consumerism like control of harmful products, community needs like improvement of health care and education, government relations like restriction on lobbying and internal relations, labor relations like expansion of employee rights, and stockholder relations like full financial disclosures. Companies often are in a position to do most of this things but the challenge to most corporations is the absence of immediate benefit. Study has also shown that there is a certain pattern of response to social demands, he nce organizations can respond to social demands in three strategic approaches. The first one is adoptive strategy; this involves changing only when you are forced to do so by the society. This is, complying with the law. The law gives business a general guideline of what is expected by a society. Legal compliance is the minimum that is expected by a society. Organizations that use this strategy adopt or react to the environment only when there is strong outside pressure. For example, producers of body perfumes have to be ozone friendly. The second one is pro-active strategy; this involves an attempt at shaping the environment. The company using this strategy tries to manipulate the environment in ways that will be to their advantage. The steps they take may or may not be to the interest of the society in the long run, e.g. paying off politicians to avoid scrutiny. The final one is interactive strategy, when a company is able to anticipate environmental changes and blend its own goal s with those of the society, then it is said to have taken an interactive strategy. This involves reducing the gap between public expectations and business performance. This calls for knowhow and skills on how to manage the company’s social relations with external forces, which may affect the company. The firm tries to interact with the surrounding social environment in ways that will be mutually beneficial. Conclusion In conclusion, an ethical principle is a modern concept that provides businesses and organizations with corporate priorities. They are of significant influence to the way the organizations operate and especially its survival in the near future. Customers are increasingly showing interest in doing business with those organizations that demonstrate responsibility and ethical practices. Those organizations that fail to achieve this suffer the consequences in many different ways, either by lose of market share, which will reduce revenues and in the long run, may pu t organization out of business. One of the senior managers of the bank I interviewed suggested that the modern business world needed to incorporate the four Ps in their ethical management and leadership. They include purpose, people, planet and principles. These represent the four things required for success in any modern business venture. In practice, this model represents the personality of a good ethical organization, manager or leader. Therefore, ethics and ethical decisions are of utmost importance in running of any organization, business ethics is what separates the successful giants and losers in the modern corporate world and the decision a company takes in ethical matters can be binding for or against the company. References Adams, J. (1965). Inequality in Social Exchange. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2(1), 267. Arrow, K.J. (1951). Social Choice and Individual Values. New York, NY: John Wiley. Averch, H., Johnson, L.L. (1990). Behavior of the firm under regu latory constraint. American Economic Review, 52, 1052-1066. Buckley, P.J., Casson, M. (1976). The Future of Multinational Enterprise. London: Macmillan. Demsetz, H. (1979). Ethics and Efficiency in Property Rights Systems. Lexington: Lexington Books. Drucker, P.F. (1990). Ethics in Management. The Practice of Management, 124-125. Stephen, G., Dirk, D.S., Daniel, S. (2007). Managing social and ethical issues in organizations. New York, NY: IAP. Trevino, L., Nelson, K.W. (2007). Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. New York, NY: Hoboken.

3 paragraph assignment on Ancient Greece Research Paper

3 paragraph assignment on Ancient Greece - Research Paper Example Cleisthenes had these groups represented equally on their general assemblies were discussions were done for the welfare of their state. They safeguard each other against tyranny and monopoly of power. In Sparta, the reform of Lycargus was established. They also had reclassification and regrouping of people. Debts were cancelled and the land was divided equally among them. There was an established way of living where their children undergo specified developmental stages to make them warriors. They were considered as Spartan citizen at the age of 19 as soon as they have been awarded with shield, which is a great symbol for them. Women were also encouraged to work to make them able to bore strong children. The two forms of governments institutionalized greatly vary. Athens practiced democracy in all its sense, where they derive decisions for the state after discussions from every representative of the tribes. Spartans also had assemblies for their decision making but their way of living has been predetermined. They live and work for Sparta and nothing else. 2. Zeno who lived around 490 BC formulated certain paradoxes – an absurd or contradictory statement. His statements challenge scholars both from history until today, such as Plato, Aristotle and others. Various explanations surfaced to either prove or disprove the points of Zeno. Inclusions of explanations exploited mathematical reasons, physics, and other theories. One of his paradox included in the Paradox of Plurality titled The Argument from complete divisibility states that â€Å"†¦ whenever a body is by nature divisible through and through, whether by bisection, or generally by any method whatever, nothing impossible will have resulted if it has actually been divided†¦ though perhaps nobody in fact could so divide it†. This paradox touches the idea of a line or space that is composed of infinite number of points that can be divided into dimensionless parts. That if these

Weekly questions Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4500 words

Weekly questions - Assignment Example Wilson notes that individuals do what is required of them and are well-mannered and identify incidences where the requirement for confirmation is best for the community. One of the primary attributes of societies that Wilson identifies is society members share collective principles, and it appears as if regulations are a form of the collective principles for the advancement of the society (Wilson 37-40). According to Wilson (42), both law and morals purpose to dictate people’s behavior. While the law involves sanctions for disobedience, morality involves incentives, both positive and negative. Homer’s society has no rationality of wickedness or guilt, and personal internal control is absent. Instead, people in the society are controlled and guided by social rules. However, this may be confusing since an individual may not know what to think of it (Wilson 45). This is because if they are not guided by conscience, but social rules, how did people developed the need to appease other people and collaborate within the society. On the other hand, Plato sees the people as controlled by internal conscience that attempts to achieve harmony within every individual (Wilson 53-5). In Omelas, the child suffered in place of the whole community, and thereafter everyone went on with their business and activities in a paradise with no sin or guilt. All this was done in order to keep the boy in the basement away from the public. Everyone who had interacted with the boy only kicked his food, and he could not apprehend what was going on (Wilson 63-68). Notably, the city is in peace, and everyone is in pleasure simply because the boy is suffering and kept away. To make matters worse, the people know that the boy is there, and they are okay with it. In this case, everyone in the city chooses pleasure over morality. Though it has been decades since his death, Freud set a center stage for continued research. This is because even up to today, some of his theories are

Toxoplasma Gondi Infection in Mice Essay Example for Free

Toxoplasma Gondi Infection in Mice Essay GI (Gastro-Intestinal) inflammation from Toxoplasma gondii and wheat glutens contribute to schizophrenia, autism and bipolar disorder. It has been suggested that GI inflammation, allows natural microbiota and neuroactive exorphins to enter the blood steam, cross the blood brain barrier and attach to the opioid receptors. In this study exposure to Toxoplasma gondii increased anti-gluten IgG in all the mice who were inoculated. The mice were infected in three different ways, IP (injection into the peritoneal cavity), PO (fed food inoculated with the pathogen) and prenatally (injected). When the female mice were Infected IP, they were more likely to die than males. The mock group of females injected IP, had an increased gluten IgGs, while the males did not. The female immune system responded to stress. When both male and female mice received the pathogen PO, females displayed a larger anti-gluten response. When the females were injected prenatally, the offspring produced, were seropositive to T. gondii and displayed increased gluten IgG levels. Clq levels of the offspring were also elevated (Clq plays a role in synaptic pruning). I picked an article from PLOS (Public Library of Science),created by Dr.  Patrick Brown, a biochemist at Stanford University and Dr. Michael Eisen, a computational biologist at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They wanted to speed up progress in science and medicine by creating a nonprofit-open access, to scientific journals and literature under an open content license called the Creative Commons â€Å"attribution† license. This allowed any person to reproduce and distribute information from the website. This allows all people to learn/share knowledge, repeat tests and add more information to current studies. This site is peer reviewed and respected as a reliable source of information. My article has many authors and sources, but in order to keep my critique to two pages I picked the first three people on the works cited. Dr. Emily Severance, received her B. S. in Zoology in 1983. She received her Ph. D. from the University of South Florida and did a postdoctoral fellowship at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (It was ranked the 13th in the nation in 2013) where she studied neurological disorders such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Stanley Division of Developmental Neurovirology. Her research is well documented and her publications continue to grow. I feel that she has extensive education and experience in this field of study and see her as being well qualified. Geetha Kannan was the second person cited and there was not much information on her. She was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins at the time this article was published and she has been a research assistant in at least one other study, Gene-environment interactions influence psychiatric disorders, headed by Mikhail V. Pletnikov , M. D. , Ph. D. She was an assistant and therefore I did not consider her to be a qualified source. Thirdly, is Kristin L Gressitt. Attended Salisbury University and received a B. A. in microbiology, before going to Johns Hopkins, where she is currently working as a research specialist. As a research specialist, Kristin’s job is to work under the project manager, performing administrative and operational duties. This is often a junior level position for students, or recent graduates. I can only assume that Kristin is competent, due to the fact that she has been employed at Johns Hopkins for the last three years and has contributed to four published studies. The major purpose of this research was to prove that co-associations between T. gondii and antibodies to wheat gluten cause an inflammatory immune response that in return, result in neuropsychiatric diseases. During my research one bias that I encountered was, the website that published this research project, makes its income by charging publishing fees. This could cause a conflict of interests. Another bias was the lack of data concerning the high mortality of female mice from IP injections. There were no post mortem toxicology or cytology reports. I think that the target audience was set by the website. Since it is established as scholarly, this increases the likely hood that science and medical students will use this website for research. The scholarly reputation will also draw in practicing researchers, doctors and scientists who want to reference the peer reviewed articles and journals. Since this website is full access, you can get the latest findings more timely than most of the conventional research sites. The articles presentation was professional. Bold letters stated the topic and the Abstract really pulled me in, however I do feel that the numerical findings could have been omitted from this paragraph to avoid redundancy. All the materials and methods were well documented. The same testing materials and techniques were used throughout the duration of the study. Graphs were used and it was easy to discriminate which text went to each graph. The introduction, analyses, results and discussion were very easy to follow and understand. As far as I can discern, the scientific method was followed.

First Impressions about George and Lennies Relationship in Of Mice and Men :: essays research papers

Our first impressions of George are that he is fairly normal. He is quite small but still broad and strong. ‘He is small and quick with sharp strong features’. We also get the impression that he is smart as well because ‘quick’ suggests that he is quick thinking as well as fast. He is a lot more sensible than Lennie and has a lot more self discipline. It must be very frustrating for a man with such good physical and mental health to be dragged down by a friend like he is but he is so kind and therefore he would never let Lennie get into trouble and a couple of times he even risks his life to help him out. Steinbeck makes is obvious from the first moment that Lennie is mentally retarded. Many times he is referred to as animal like and having animal like features. He is like a big baby, he is huge and clearly very strong but he has the mind of a small child. Lennie's personality and life seem based on three things: soft things, devotion to George and his dream of one day owning a farm. It is quite sad and Steinbeck makes you feel really sorry for him be exaggerating his simplicity and his innocence. Lennie is absent-minded for a good portion of the novel. He is unaware of what he's doing sometimes until he has done it. For example, he enjoyed to pet soft objects. But we find out that while living in Weed, he decided to ’pet’ a woman’s dress but she thought that he was raping her so she screamed and he almost got himself killed. He is greatly forgetful and needs a lot of looking after otherwise he would never be able so survive and quite often this can come between his relationship with George. Lennie is completely incapable of living on his own because of his disability but because George is such a good man, he has almost given up his life and devoted it to helping Lennie. He mentions that he made a promise to Lennie’s auntie but it is also because he is such a good man and he would never let such an innocent man go just because of a disability. Their relationship is very similar to that of a parent and a child, the child (Lennie) needs the parent (George) to look after them otherwise they wouldn’t be able to survive.

Digital Fortress Chapter 4

The crypto door beeped once, waking Susan from her depressing reverie. The door had rotated past its fully open position and would be closed again in five seconds, having made a complete 360-degree rotation. Susan gathered her thoughts and stepped through the opening. A computer made note of her entry. Although she had practically lived in Crypto since its completion three years ago, the sight of it still amazed her. The main room was an enormous circular chamber that rose five stories. Its transparent, domed ceiling towered 120 feet at its central peak. The Plexiglas cupola was embedded with a polycarbonate mesh-a protective web capable of withstanding a two-megaton blast. The screen filtered the sunlight into delicate lacework across the walls. Tiny particles of dust drifted upward in wide unsuspecting spirals-captives of the dome's powerful deionizing system. The room's sloping sides arched broadly at the top and then became almost vertical as they approached eye level. Then they became subtly translucent and graduated to an opaque black as they reached the floor-a shimmering expanse of polished black tile that shone with an eerie luster, giving one the unsettling sensation that the floor was transparent. Black ice. Pushing through the center of the floor like the tip of a colossal torpedo was the machine for which the dome had been built. Its sleek black contour arched twenty-three feet in the air before plunging back into the floor below. Curved and smooth, it was as if an enormous killer whale had been frozen mid breach in a frigid sea. This was TRANSLTR, the single most expensive piece of computing equipment in the world-a machine the NSA swore did not exist. Like an iceberg, the machine hid 90 percent of its mass and power deep beneath the surface. Its secret was locked in a ceramic silo that went six stories straight down-a rocketlike hull surrounded by a winding maze of catwalks, cables, and hissing exhaust from the freon cooling system. The power generators at the bottom droned in a perpetual low-frequency hum that gave the acoustics in Crypto a dead, ghostlike quality. TRANSLTR, like all great technological advancements, had been a child of necessity. During the 1980s, the NSA witnessed a revolution in telecommunications that would change the world of intelligence reconnaissance forever-public access to the Internet. More specifically, the arrival of E-mail. Criminals, terrorists, and spies had grown tired of having their phones tapped and immediately embraced this new means of global communication. E-mail had the security of conventional mail and the speed of the telephone. Since the transfers traveled through underground fiber-optic lines and were never transmitted into the airwaves, they were entirely intercept-proof-at least that was the perception. In reality, intercepting E-mail as it zipped across the Internet was child's play for the NSA's techno-gurus. The Internet was not the new home computer revelation that most believed. It had been created by the Department of Defense three decades earlier-an enormous network of computers designed to provide secure government communication in the event of nuclear war. The eyes and ears of the NSA were old Internet pros. People conducting illegal business via E-mail quickly learned their secrets were not as private as they'd thought. The FBI, DEA, IRS, and other U.S. law enforcement agencies-aided by the NSA's staff of wily hackers-enjoyed a tidal wave of arrests and convictions. Of course, when the computer users of the world found out the U.S. government had open access to their E-mail communications, a cry of outrage went up. Even pen pals, using E-mail for nothing more than recreational correspondence, found the lack of privacy unsettling. Across the globe, entrepreneurial programmers began working on a way to keep E-mail more secure. They quickly found one and public-key encryption was born. Public-key encryption was a concept as simple as it was brilliant. It consisted of easy-to-use, home-computer software that scrambled personal E-mail messages in such a way that they were totally unreadable. A user could write a letter and run it through the encryption software, and the text would come out the other side looking like random nonsense-totally illegible-a code. Anyone intercepting the transmission found only an unreadable garble on the screen. The only way to unscramble the message was to enter the sender's â€Å"pass-key†-a secret series of characters that functioned much like a PIN number at an automatic teller. The pass-keys were generally quite long and complex; they carried all the information necessary to instruct the encryption algorithm exactly what mathematical operations to follow tore-create the original message. A user could now send E-mail in confidence. Even if the transmission was intercepted, only those who were given the key could ever decipher it. The NSA felt the crunch immediately. The codes they were facing were no longer simple substitution ciphers crackable with pencil and graph paper-they were computer-generated hash functions that employed chaos theory and multiple symbolic alphabets to scramble messages into seemingly hopeless randomness. At first, the pass-keys being used were short enough for the NSA's computers to â€Å"guess.† If a desired pass-key had ten digits, a computer was programmed to try every possibility between 0000000000 and 9999999999. Sooner or later the computer hit the correct sequence. This method of trial-and-error guessing was known as â€Å"brute force attack.† It was time-consuming but mathematically guaranteed to work. As the world got wise to the power of brute-force code-breaking, the pass-keys started getting longer and longer. The computer time needed to â€Å"guess† the correct key grew from weeks to months and finally to years. By the 1990s, pass-keys were over fifty characters long and employed the full 256-character ASCII alphabet of letters, numbers, and symbols. The number of different possibilities was in the neighborhood of 10120-ten with 120 zeros after it. Correctly guessing a pass-key was as mathematically unlikely as choosing the correct grain of sand from a three-mile beach. It was estimated that a successful brute-force attack on a standard sixty-four-bit key would take the NSA's fastest computer-the top-secret Cray/Josephson II-over nineteen years to break. By the time the computer guessed the key and broke the code, the contents of the message would be irrelevant. Caught in a virtual intelligence blackout, the NSA passed a top-secret directive that was endorsed by the President of the United States. Buoyed by federal funds and a carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to solve the problem, the NSA set out to build the impossible: the world's first universal code-breaking machine. Despite the opinion of many engineers that the newly proposed code-breaking computer was impossible to build, the NSA lived by its motto: Everything is possible. The impossible just takes longer. Five years, half a million man-hours, and $1.9 billion later, the NSA proved it once again. The last of the three million, stamp-size processors was hand-soldered in place, the final internal programming was finished, and the ceramic shell was welded shut. TRANSLTR had been born. Although the secret internal workings of TRANSLTR were the product of many minds and were not fully understood by any one individual, its basic principle was simple: Many hands make light work. Its three million processors would all work in parallel-counting upward at blinding speed, trying every new permutation as they went. The hope was that even codes with unthinkably colossal pass-keys would not be safe from TRANSLTR's tenacity. This multibillion-dollar masterpiece would use the power of parallel processing as well as some highly classified advances in clear text assessment to guess pass-keys and break codes. It would derive its power not only from its staggering number of processors but also from new advances in quantum computing-an emerging technology that allowed information to be stored as quantum-mechanical states rather than solely as binary data. The moment of truth came on a blustery Thursday morning in October. The first live test. Despite uncertainty about how fast the machine would be, there was one thing on which the engineers agreed-if the processors all functioned in parallel, TRANSLTR would be powerful. The question was how powerful. The answer came twelve minutes later. There was a stunned silence from the handful in attendance when the printout sprang to life and delivered the cleartext-the broken code. TRANSLTR had just located a sixty-four-character key in a little over ten minutes, almost a million times faster than the two decades it would have taken the NSA's second-fastest computer. Led by the deputy director of operations, Commander Trevor J. Strathmore, the NSA's Office of Production had triumphed. TRANSLTR was a success. In the interest of keeping their success a secret, Commander Strathmore immediately leaked information that the project had been a complete failure. All the activity in the Crypto wing was supposedly an attempt to salvage their $2 billion fiasco. Only the NSA elite knew the truth-TRANSLTR was cracking hundreds of codes every day. With word on the street that computer-encrypted codes were entirely unbreakable-even by the all-powerful NSA-the secrets poured in. Drug lords, terrorists, and embezzlers alike-weary of having their cellular phone transmissions intercepted-were turning to the exciting new medium of encrypted E-mail for instantaneous global communications. Never again would they have to face a grand jury and hear their own voice rolling off tape, proof of some long-forgotten cellular phone conversation plucked from the air by an NSA satellite. Intelligence gathering had never been easier. Codes intercepted by the NSA entered TRANSLTR as totally illegible ciphers and were spit out minutes later as perfectly readable cleartext. No more secrets. To make their charade of incompetence complete, the NSA lobbied fiercely against all new computer encryption software, insisting it crippled them and made it impossible for lawmakers to catch and prosecute the criminals. Civil rights groups rejoiced, insisting the NSA shouldn't be reading their mail anyway. Encryption software kept rolling off the presses. The NSA had lost the battle-exactly as it had planned. The entire electronic global community had been fooled†¦ or so it seemed.

The Canterbury Tales Wife of Bath - 870 Words

The Canterbury Tales: Wife of Bath In the Hollywood blockbuster Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone plays a devious, manipulative, sex-driven woman who gets whatever she wants through her ploys for control. Stones portrayal of this character is unforgettable and makes the movie. In book or film, the most memorable female characters are those who break out of the stereotypical good wife mold. When an author or actress uses this technique effectively, the woman often carries the story. In Geoffrey Chaucers Canterbury Tales, he portrays the Wife of Bath, Alison, as a woman who bucks the tradition of her times with her brashness and desire for control to present a womans point of view and to evoke some sympathy for her. In the authors†¦show more content†¦And after he gives her control, we hadde never debat (P828). She has won this battle of wits, but it seems as though Jankyn has none. One way or another, Alison has made her puppets dance, completely under her dominion. Her tale backs up her philosophy, as the main point is that Wommen desire to have sovereinetee/As wel over hir housbonde and hir love,/And for to been in maistrye him above(T1044). The Tale backs up the Prologue and pleads for the emancipation of women. Alison is her own ideal of what a woman should be. By gaining sovereignty, she has the power. Chaucer has presented us with a fresh view of women, uncharacteristic of his time. The Wife of Bath is unique, and her defining qualities allow what the author thinks of women to reveal itself clearly. She is an immoral woman who has done whatever she has needed to do to get what she wants, and the author makes noShow MoreRelatedThe Wife Of Bath Tales And Chaucers The Canterbury Tales791 Words   |  4 Pagesbody did not feel the spade and the sewer as [her] live body felt the fire† (92). Shakespeare depicts Joan, in Henry VI, as â€Å"a ‘troll,’ ‘witch,’ ‘strumpet,’ ‘foul fiend of France’ (qtd. in Sarawsat 90). Likewise, Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales represents the ‘wife of Bath Tale’ as bawdy. The protagonist Alison â€Å"still submits to the rule of patriarchal world†, she suffers because she is oppressed to the bone. She â€Å"struggles for respect in her own household†. That is why; s he needs an inner upheavalRead MoreChaucers Canterbury Tales: The Wife of Bath Essay837 Words   |  4 Pagesweaves together tales of twenty nine different people on their common journey to Canterbury. Through their time on the road, these characters explore the diverse lives of those traveling together, narrated by the host of the group. Each character in the ensemble is entitled to a prologue, explaining his or her life and the reasons for the tale, as well as the actual story, meant to have moral implications or simply to entertain. 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