Germany's Globalization Critics Remain on the Attac

Globalization 04.06.2008

As weve read not everyone is jumping on the globalization train, including a group called Attac. Their many protests and public displays of opinion in Northern Germany, have been heard loud and clear.

The group in Northern Germany is lead by activist Werner Raetz. Attac Germany has taken on issues such as German labor market reforms, the US-led war in Iraq, health care reform, rail privatization and many others. The group’s biggest accomplishment to date has been forcing German politicians to at least give lip service to the need for socially responsible trade, said Raetz, who has a bushy white beard and matching hair.

Can this protest group really have a long term influence on the anti-globalization movement? A poll done by a university in Florence shows that this organization is making a difference, in the area of global issues.

Attac has activists in more than 40 countries, the majority of Attac's 90,000 members are European. Attac believes that globalization will advocate transferring economic control of the global economy to the private sector.

They have managed to turn a relatively abstract debate on taxes, trade and market inequalities into something tangible, bringing together environmental groups, trade unions and religious organizations. Their elaborate tax breakdowns are definitely getting all the liberal activists on board.

A Colombia University professor who is an economics fellow for the Council on Foreign Relations, said that he feels Attac places far too much emphasis on trying to get the Tobin tax implemented. Attac's tax plans would raise major questions about who would make spending decisions. The proferror has been an advisor on globalization issues to the United Nations and World Trade Organization, and has a greatly respected opinion.

He believes in the benefits from freer trade and multinational, and believes that Attac and other activists "muddy up these different dimensions of globalization,” which detracts from "informed public discourse."

Is globalization for everyone, maybe not... Do these liberals have a point that countries should keep product and profit close to home, does this really help or hurt their economy? Food for thought!!!!!

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,3388986,00.html?maca=en-rss-en-all-1573-rdf

Chapter 15 Case Study - Nestle Tries for an All-for-One Global Strategy

2. What type of global business and systems strategy did Nestle adopt? Was this strategy appropriate for Nestle's business model?

Nestle has adopted a global standardization with all of its business and operational processes. Nestles original approach lead to decentralization which caused issues between it’s branch’s. This decentralization caused Nestle to adopt the global standardization that is now in process. AT first this process was not favored because it didn’t align with the company’s already existing business model. After much consideration and discussion this plan proved it would work well with the budget and data streaming that occurs. This new way has greatly improved Nestlé’s efficiency in its operations area.

3. What management, organization, and technology challenges did Nestle have to deal with to standardize its business processes and systems?


There have been many challenges with the new standardization process. At first they installed SAP's R/3 in an attempt to coordinate IS and the business processes. This caused issues because the 14 countries that ran the software were not in unison, it was being ran differently at many of the locations causing an increase in maintenance coasts. Upon discovering this issue they rolled out the GLOBE initiative. They were hoping that this would help all of the units run in sync. Unfortunately this didn’t help as much as they would have liked it too. Personal challenges were becoming apparent many managers viewed this system as a nuisance and a work creator. Johnson realized that he had some major challenges ahead, but he put his excellent leadership skills to the test an ended up coming out ahead in the end. Once managers saw that the system was helping in operations they started to come around and embrace the system, which has lead to increased efficiency in the operations department.

Facebook Expands Into MySpace’s Territory!

SAN FRANCISCO, May 24 — With an ambitious strategy for expansion, Facebook is getting in MySpace’s face.

Facebook, has become the Internet’s second-largest social network. It was originally popular on college campuses, but over the last year it has opened its dorm-room doors to all, and its membership rolls have exploded at triple-digit growth rates.
Based in Palo Alto, Calif., it is inviting thousands of technology companies and programmers to contribute features to its service. They are even allowing them to make a profit from the site’s users by doing so, and, at least for now, Facebook will not take a cut.


Some of the new features will allow members to recommend and listen to music, insert Amazon book reviews onto their pages, play games and join charity drives, all without leaving the site.

The result of these new options are expected to be a proliferation of new tools and activities instead of the same old online connections, sharing photos and planning events of it’s current 24 million customers!

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder, says he wants his site to be a “social operating system” for the Internet.


This move could foster some of the chaotic creativity that is more closely associated with MySpace! Facebook’s largest competitor is Myspace! Unfortunately it could also open the door to hazards like spam, and make Facebook’s identity less clear.

MySpace remains nearly three times the size of Facebook, with 67 million active members! Facebook is hoping that this new system will allow its members the flexibility that Myspace allows and this will encourage more consumers to join.

I belong to both Facebook and Myspace and i have to say that i prefer myspace, it is much more user friendly and more pleasant to operate. I look forward to the new upgrades being applied to Facebook.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/technology/25social.html?ex=133...=f2f174b3138314fe&ei=5088

Ch 13: Can the U.S. Army Reserve Pay Soliders Correctly?

1.) There were flaws that existed in the payroll system that caused some of the soldiers to get paid and some to not. The non-injured soldiers were receiving inaccurate paychecks with too little or too much money. The operations area of the Army was in need of help it was prone to many personnel system problems. There two systems DFAS and DJMS did not work conjunctively, leading to lots of errors such as the above mentioned. The errors were on going due to the fact that manual updates were occurring on a frequent basis. Due to the age of the system changes were out of the question, a new system was what was needed. A GAO study determined that 90% of the soliders that were in moblized units suffered from some sort of payroll issue, clearly something needed to be done!

There is no doubt that changes would be difficult but they were also necessary. The issues were in the organization, management and technical areas contributing to these systems. The areas of impact from these systems were at all levels. The human error was enormous due to the data entry happening at all levels and times. it was noted by the deputy secretary that leadership turnover caused a disconnect in awareness and program goals, this was the basis of many of the issues.

The army was also lacking the ever important organizational skills in their dept of payroll. They didn’t deny that this was an issue when confronted. The many technical and personnel issues aided in the destruction of the Army’s payroll system, these two entities did not work well together. This was due to the fact that the payroll systems were outdated and very hard to manage. The software that was being used was very rigid and sis not allow for easy changes to occur. Their new system, DIMHRS was funded but was three years behind its scheduling. It’s a wonder anyone got paid in the midst of all this mess.

FCP was a new system that was implemented as a interim solution. It used a web based browser to review and update files in the personnel database. There was a fail safe to keep information from being entered in duplicate, this helped with the data enrty errors. Microsoft SQL and Web browser software were needed to review the database documents. This temporary solution achieved a 97% success rate in the payroll dept.

Online medical database helps physicians answer clinical questions.

Web Tool May Help Doctors Make Better Decisions

Press Release 05-206

DynaMed is a Information system that has a huge database that is able to help physicians in diagnoses as well as prescription dosing. According to a study done primary care physicians were able to answer more clinical questions when they used this online resource. With the use of Dynamic Medical Information System, or DynaMed, they were able to be more efficient and accurate with their decisions.

DynaMed was developed with the support of a National Science Foundation Small Business Innovation Research award. DynaMed is a collection of more than 1,800 medical topics and their clinical summaries. Doctors can log in to DynaMed to compare patients' ailments with a peer-reviewed data base.

In a recent study they found that many doctors changed their diagnosis after the data base search. This is a prime example of a good system, it is user friendly and the Dr's are giving positive feedback.

The IS DynaMed is supported by NSF's SBIR program. This program emphasizes high-risk, high-payback innovations that are tied to NSF's mission of advancements in science, engineering and education.

http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=105636&org=NSF

Can Information Systems Make Your Doctor Better?

#1)
What problems are hospitals and physicians encountering in diagnosing diseases and prescription medications? What management, organization, and technology factors are responsible for these problems?

Physicians are often misdiagnosing diseases and then prescribing the wrong medication to treat the misdiagnosis. This occurs in hospital, Dr's Offices and nursing homes. These mis diagnoses can cause irrefutable damage such as death. Each year more than 1.5 million Americans are injured by drug errors and estimation of more than 7,000 Americans die because of inappropriate prescriptions. Outrageous charges are incurred to patients for faulty medication charges amounting to about $3.5 billion annually.Unfortunately human error is the key item responsible for these issues; handwriting, memory lapses, fatigue and distractions. The proliferation of medications also raises confusions and complexity for doctors in proper prescriptions. Unfortunately some of the information systems used to prevent these errors actually create new errors sue to the mass amounts of work the do.This calamity of chaos between the doctors and patients is leading to doctors second guessing themselves which is never a good thing. someone needs to design and implement a good Information System that could aid in this disaster.

#3)
What obstacles prevent computer systems from improving the medical industry? How can these obstacles be removed?

It has been shown that when hospitals convert to CPOE and DDS comp systems that they are more efficient and organized leading to less errors. These systems have been proven to save time as well as lives. There are however obstacles that need to be overcome if the systems are to be ran properly.
1) Resistance from doctors to change the traditional way of treatment, they complain and say the system is to difficult.
2) Simple glitches in the system increase the likelihood of ordering wrong medications by scattering patient data and drug ordering forms. The program needs to be well designed.
3) They need to be greater geared toward the nursing staff because they are the one’s doing the majority of the medicating.
4) Rigidity of such a system over the traditional paperwork, is an issue and can obstruct it from improving the medical industry.The obstacles can be overcome if: effective communication among the medical staff is achieved. They also need to learn more about the system and trust it. Finally, the system must be designed to have thorough pertinent information regarding each patient.

In order to overcome these obstacles the medical staff would need to have open communication. The company also need to set up multiple training sessions for the Dr’s and staff, so a knowledge and trust can be instated. Lastly the system would need to be designed with each individual patient in mind, so that errors could be caught before a fatal dose is given.

Jumping the E-Gun!

Jumping the E-Gun - eBay's system problems are a lesson for other electronic commerce providers - Company Operations - ColumnENT, Sept 8, 1999 by Bill Laberis

In June of last year ebay's system went down for 22 hours, creating the cyber equivalent of a huge "closed" sign on eBay's front door. As a result eBays stock dropped the next day, significantly a $4billion dollar market value drop. In addition to their market loss they lost an estimated $5 million in revenue. Suddenly the convenience was taken away from the seller/customer. Shipments were delayed and auctions were placed on hold, nothing more than a minor bump, or so one would think.The bottom line came down to the fact that eBay was not ready nor did they anticipate a total systems failure. This seems odd since they are a company that’s livelihood depends a functioning computer system and network.

Instead of taking blame for their faulty system they blamed their vendor Sun Microsystems for the outage. Sun released a statement saying it was related to a human error, but all in all it was apparent that eBay was not prepared. This young company that grew fast had lost sight of what needed to be protected their system. This was a major wake up call for many other e-commerce sites.

Stress tests should be ran on systems like the one implemented by eBay. When companies grow rapidly stress tests are often forgot about. The overload of visitors and transactions on these sites needs to get estimated and the sites must be prepared for the demand that they are going to incur. Online transactions put a major stain on a system, therefore a backup is needed. Companies should also pretest instead of using the shotgun approach.

Since e-commerce is fairly new there aren’t very many models to follow, so a lot of it is learn by doing or watching others mistakes and learning from them. Basically the managers of these companies need to be more aware of their risks and plan accordingly.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0FOX/is_15_4/ai_55675990

Can eBay continue growing?

2. What are the problems that eBay is currently facing?

a. eBay is facing many problems in this growing market of e-commerce.
According to this case study its growth rates are slowing in the US and Germany its growth rates have slowed in the United States and Germany by increased seller fees, but they have been made up for in the French and Italian markets. EBay has been working hard to gain the Chinese market but it is slower to take off due to the other types of auctions already offered there.
b. eBay has also encountered trouble with the some specific target area markets such as real estate, travel, new-car sales, and expensive collectibles. They have recently launched a new VoIP technology that is aimed to increase the communication barrier between the buyers and sellers. The one problem is that many sellers are not interested in adding this option to their pages.
c. Compliance is also a major issue because of the various laws and regulations when it comes to e-commerce. Ultimately eBay may be liable for its members, when they sell false goods or leave negative feedback to other consumers and customers.
d. By far honesty is eBay’s main challenge. Are sellers being truthful about there items? In my opinion they don’t do a very good job in this area. I have a friend that purchased a high end item from eBay and she paid a pretty cost only to discover upon arrival that it was a replica and that the seller had not been honest. When she contacted eBay they took the sellers side. Also identity fraud and theft have been a major issue.
e. eBay’s main issue is keeping its customers and sellers happy. I don’t believe they have thoroughly tackled this effort.

5. Will eBay be successful in the long run? Why or why not?

Maybe, I think eBay will stay successful as long as another e-commerce site doesn’t start up that offers better security and seller/buyer service.
eBay needs to focus more on monitoring their security and also their sellers merchandise. They need to offer better customer service or eventually the negative word of mouth might catch up to them. I know many people that will NOT shop on ebay, due to horror stories from other friends.
They do have a good advantage due to their recent partnerships with Wiki and MyCollectibles. They will be able to move in on the niche markets associated with the wiki’s and also with people that have a passion for collectibles. As long as people are too lazy to go out and shop for what they need eBay will continue to flourish.

MIT researcher and artist finds inner beauty in computer viruses

Dragulescu is a Romanian-born MIT researcher that also has another talent. He is also an artist and when he was asked to put an image to some common viruses by a computer security company, he came up with beautiful works of art. As he began doing research he found unusual reoccurring patterns which he was able to turn into art. Dragulescu has peeled back the code behind the world's worst tech bugs and rendered stunning images from it.

He used the data to coax pointy green tentacles from the dreaded e-mail worm "Mydoom" and grew pretty peach petals from the epicenter of the spam file "Degreediploma5."


"These types of threats are very smart. Very intelligent in design. Digital organisms, really, that adapt themselves and replicate. We wanted to capture some of that complexity and uniqueness."

He built an algorithm based computer system where he entered his repeat findings in code. These codes were then converted into different types of tentacles and many beautiful colors.

I found this atricle very interesting how he was able to put beauty to such herendous computer viruses. It's also interesting to see the similarities between computer virus "stucture" and human virus stucture, they are very similar. Amazing how such a beautiful and tiny system can infect and destroy so much life!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/358868_wormart14.html

2.) What are Google’s sources of competitive advantage? How does it provide value to it’s users?

Google's IT infrastructure is one of its main competitive advantages it has an estimated 450,000 servers in over 25 locations world wide. They also have a very flexible infrastructure that allows for the speed to stay high. Google also evaluates a page link system and a web crawler. They also implement MapReduce which is a programming model to simplify processing and creating large data sets. They also have WorkQueue, this groups queries and schedules them for distributes processing. These technologies provide value for the customer by creating a fast and efficient search engine.

5.)How successful do you think Google will be in the future?

I think that Google will stay strong for along time as long as they keep up there diligence with respect to their programming processes and they keep their IT infrastructure secret secure. There is a good possibility that a new SE will come along but it will take years to get up to speed with Google so the competitor will most likely always be behind. Google also has brand association and an emotional attachment by it's users, which will be hard for any competition to gain leverage on. I am an avid Google user and have been using it for years, Ive tried new SE's over the years but i have always gone back to Google because it is clearly the best.

Case study chapter 5

3.) Evaluate Merill Lynch's approach to Web services development. What are the advantages and disadvantages? Is it a good solution? Explain your answer.

Mr Crew seemed to have a clear undersatnding of what type of system the organization needed, he realized that there was not going to be a quick or cheap way to meet his goal. After looking into buying a premade system that would do the job he realized that it would not be worth it due to the amount of money it would cost to retrain all of there associates, it was estimated that it would have taken more than 1 year and over $80 million dollars, which was not feasable. So he decided that tehy would build a system from the ground up. This solution came with a list of issues as well when you copy data and move it from place to place many errors can occur and data can be lost. They ended up creating a new set of in-house proprietory tools that enabled there system to communicate with eachother cross functionally. I think that this was the right choice for Merill Lynch, when you have such a large organization to switch over a whole new system is usally very difficult. Since they had the man power and the knowledge to build there own system, I think it was a smart choice.


4.) Do you think that Merrill Lynch's decision to sell of its successful technology initiatives was a good idea? Why or Why not?

I think that it was a wise decision. They placed alot of money and manhours into building this new system, marketing it and making a profit seems like a a no brainer. They not only have the proof that the system is capable of providing support to a large order of buisness, but they also have it brand marked by their name. They have already used the system to gain thier competeive edge, and since they are the pioneers of the system they would be able to tweak it to there own advantage. Consumers may be able to purchase the program but Merill Lynch ultimately owns the programmer which is much more valuable.

The Mask of the Future?

Michael Kanellos Intel readies massive multicore processors;Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: June 14, 2007 4:00 AM PDT

In chapter 5 there is a topic called Multicore processors, which is any system that contains two or more processors. This new way of increasing speed became very popular because the old way often generated an over abundance of heat on the system causing internal damage to the unit.

In 2007 Intel launched it's new prototype containg an 80 core processor that has a so called exoskeletal component. These new chips would have a better functionality and would be easier to integrate into new systems. Although this technology is extremely tempting, there has been alot of skepticism around this new prototype. Some of the more common questions were will this system run existing software and also is the amount of heat produced tolerable, Intels answer was "yes". This new terascale technology can aid in so called "hotspots", these are cores on the system that work nonstop and become overheated. This new system does kind of a hop scotch around the different cores so no one is working harder than the other. Intel is still working out the kinks of this new system before it can be offered mainstream.

Individual assignment for week#3 04/13/08

This article discusses how an analyst did a test simulation of an information system in a powder coating company production line. Through this test they hoped to gain knowledge of the major and minor org and prod issues. Through the use of this system the company would be able to better serve there customers and improve there lead time. This will give them a competitive advantage over their rivals.
We learned in chapter 2 that IS can help company's gain competitive advantage, and this is exactly the situation in the above case. They were able to ID issues in there production line and help increase the supply of the products. They found bottlenecks in there production line which were able to be corrected for, but without the IS the company would have had a very hard time determining these issues because they were in multiples. Many times we as humans can diagnose one or more concurrent problems but when you get into a area that is a grey it is sometimes very hard to grasp what is really going wrong in an organization. Information systems are a great way to diagnose, implement and improve business processes.




A. Azadeh, M. Haghnevis, Y. Khodadadegan Design of the integrated information system, business, and production process by simulation;volume 59, Issue 2 , Pages 216 - 234
Published Online: 6 Nov 2007
Copyright © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., A Wiley Company

Case Chapter 4

1.) I believe that these issues do pose an ethical issue. We deserve to know what we should and shouldn't say on the telephone. I think that tapping just any one's telephone is an invasion of privacy.

4.) The phone company's responsiblity is to provide information in there privacy policy letting it's users know that there privacy may be breeched, if they fit the profiling lisited by the NSA. Ethical, social and political issues can apply to the profiling of it's customers based on name, race, gender, and calling radius. I think the question of how much are the phone companies being paid by the gov to realease the information would also bring up issues of ethicacy. What is the price that has been put on our privacy, i think we deserve to know.

5.) I suppose that this is an OK compromise, at least there are a set of limitations and a few hoops that need to be jumped through. I suppose that if they have reasonable suspicion that it should be allowed.

Blockbuster Vs Netflix

1.)Blockbusters business model was to provide video rentals to people within a few blocks or towns of their stores. Until Netflix, Blockbuster held a 40% share on the market of video rental.
3.) Yes Blockbuster launched an online store soon after Netflix popped up. They offer the same services at a lower price. They also offer video games for rent online.
5.) It's hard to say, i think as long as Blockbuster continues to match or beat Netflix's current options that they will be around for a long time. Blockbuster has the advantage of having walk in stores as well as online services. Netflix is limited to the Internet savvy consumer, even though it is convenient it is intended for a special consumer.