To be or not to be. Using Linux instead of Windows Essay

To be or not to be. Using Linux instead of Windows - Essay Example Is Linux really the best choice for desktops, just like the way it is considered for servers? Can it replace or become an alternative to existing operating systems, especially Microsoft Windows for desktops? No doubt, Linux is still struggling to catch up with Microsoft on desktop computers, but at the same time, it has made significant progress in many areas which are still not readily apparent to many consumers. This paper aims to highlight those areas of Linux, namely benefits of being open source, low purchase cost, robust security, software availability and customizable features. The conclusion of this paper supports the fact that Linux has redeeming qualities to become a choice for desktops and predicts its domination in the desktop world. Linux is an operating system – a program that allows users to interact with all the software and hardware resources of the computer, either through command-line interface, where the users type text commands and the computer responds according to those commands, or through graphical user interface (GUI) in which the users can interact with the computer through a graphical interface with pictures and buttons by using the mouse and keyboard. Besides Linux, there are many other operating systems available in the market; few examples are Windows, IBM OS/2, MS-DOS, UNIX, Mac OS X and OpenSolaris. Almost every operating system can be classified as either Desktop or Server edition. Desktop version consists of those operating systems, such as Windows 2000 or Windows 98, which are only capable of running on normal desktop computers, while latter are designed specifically for servers – large computers with highly sophisticated hardware, such as Novell’s NetWare, Window NT and UNIX. So why Linux? Linux is â€Å"open source† – means that all the underlying code of operating system can be modified, used and distributed by anyone

Responses to Modernism Essay Example for Free

Responses to Modernism Essay a) How does Levin characterize the art of the Modern era? List the various terms and phrases she uses to describe the Modern period. Levin characterizes the art of the Modern era with terms such as: style, form, scientific, experimental, method, logic, technological, purity, clarity, order, idealistic, optimistic, ideological, reductive, austere, puritanical, elitist, dogmatic, brutal, competitive, individualistic, materialistic, formal, abstract, repetitive, flattening, ordering, and literal. Levin characterizes the art of the Modern era with phrases such as: â€Å"style-the invention of sets of forms-was a preoccupation of Modernism, as was originality. The Tradition of the New, Harold Rosenberg called it† â€Å"Modern art was scientific. It was based on faith in the technological future, on belief in progress and objective truth. It was experimental: the creation of new forms was its task† â€Å"It longed for perfection and demanded purity, clarity, order. And it denied everything else, especially the past: idealistic, ideological and optimistic, Modernism was predicated on the glorious future, the new and improved. Like technology, it was based all along on the inventions of man-made forms, or, as Meyer Schapiro has said, â€Å"a thing made rather than a scene represented. † â€Å"Conceptualism came out of the closet; and art became documentation. In a sense, it was the ultimate godlike act of Modernism: creating a work out of nothing. In another sense, it was obvious that something was over,† â€Å"Modernism, toward the end of its reign, came to be seen as reductive and austere. Its purity came to seen puritanical. It was in the terminology in a word, Formalism which implied not only the logical structures of Modernist invention but also the structures of rigid adherence of established forms. â€Å"There is no other democracy than the respect for forms†, one of the new French philosophers, Bernard-Henry Levy, has remarked. Like democracy, Modernist art is now being reinterpreted in terms of its insistence on forms and laws rather than in terms of liberty and freedom. The Modernist vision may have had democratic aims a progressive emancipation of the individual from authority in an age of unlimited possibilities, as Schapiro has notedbut in practice it was elitist: the public never understood abstract art. It was as specialized as modern science. And emphasis on structure rather than substance is what we came to see in it. Like science, Modernist art has begun to seem dogmatic and brutal. † â€Å"competitive and individualistic, it saw everything in terms of risk. Like capitalism, it was materialistic. From its collage scraps and fur-lined teacup to its laden brushstrokes, I-beams, and Campbell’s soupcans, modernist art insisted increasingly on being an object in a world of objects. What started as radical physicality turned into commodity; the desire for newness led to a voracious appetite for novelty. † â€Å"the artist as godlike Creator was the leitmotif of Modernism† b) How does Levin characterize the art of Postmodernism? List the various terms and phrases she uses to describe the Postmodern period. Levin characterizes the art of Postmodernism with terms such as: hybrid impurity, illusionistic theatricality, narrative insinuations, counterrevolutionary contradictions, disillusionment, distrust, survival, natural substances, ongoing processes, photographic images, language, real-time systems, nature, demolition, natural, temporality, psychological, narrational, personal, lifelike contexts, subjective facts, subversive, protesting, impure, quotes, scavenges, ransacks, recycles, synthesis, confession, fiction, irony, whimsy, disbelief, intimate, metamorphosis. Levin characterizes the art of Postmoderism with phrases like: â€Å"Style has become a voluntary option, to be scavenged and recycled, to be quoted, paraphrased, parodied to be used as a language† â€Å"It could be argued that the precise moment of its demise was signaled a few months earlier by the revelation of Duchamp’s Etant Donnes with all its hybrid impurity, illusionistic theatricality, narrative insinuations, and counterrevolutionary contradictions opening a peephole into the magical natural world as if predicting the concerns of postmodern art. † â€Å"Returning materials to their natural stage, subjecting them to natural forces, sending art back to the land or internalizing it within the body, they were evidence that time and/or place were becoming crucial, clearing the way for the psychological and the narrational, for personal content, lifelike contexts, and subjective facts. The feeling against style and objectivity proved more subversive than the antipathy toward objects and form: post-modernism arose out of Conceptualist premises that art is information -while protesting its Modernist aridity. † â€Å"Post-modernism is impure. It knows about shortages. It knows about inflation and devaluation. It is aware of the increased cost of objects. And so it quotes, scavenges, ransacks, recycles the past. Its method is synthesis rather than analysis. It is style-free and free-style. Playful and full of doubt, it denies nothing. Tolerant of ambiguity, contradiction, complexity, incoherence, it is eccentrically inclusive. It mimics life, accepts awkwardness and crudity, takes an amateur stance. Structured by time rather than form, concerned with context instead of style, it uses memory, research, confession, fiction with irony, whimsy, and disbelief. Subjective and intimate, it blurs the boundaries between the world and the self. It is about identity and behavior† â€Å"perhaps we should look to the self-awareness movements that became popular during the ‘70s for a terminology appropriate to the new art: based not on scientific reason and logic and the pretense of objectivity but on presence, subjective experience, behavior, on a weird kind of therapeutic revelation in which it is not necessary to believe or understand it is enough if it works. † c) What are the main points of contrast Levin describes between the art of the two periods? The main points of contrast between modernism and postmodernism that Levin describes are: style as preoccupation vs. style as option, purity vs. hybrid impurity, man-made vs. the natural, adherence to forms vs. the tolerance of ambiguity, godlike vs. lifelike, objective vs. subjective, idealistic vs. realistic, and progressive understanding vs. the cyclical understanding. d) What symbols does Levin suggest would serve as iconic images for the two periods? For modernism, the grid is the suggested iconic image. For post-modernism, the map is the suggested iconic image. e) Now, identify two of the art movements discussed by Levin. Find a representative artist who participated in each movement and has at least one artwork illustrated in your textbook. Write a compare-contrast between the two artworks. One of the art movements and representative artists should be identified by Levin as Modern, the other as Postmodern. Dadism: Rauschenberg-Bed(1955) Pop Art: Andy Warhol-Marilyn Monroe f) Start by identifying the two artists and their artworks as fully as possible. Rauschenberg was an American artist who became famous during the transition from abstract-expressionism to pop-art. He is famous for his white, black and red paintings. With his white paintings, he sought to reduce painting to its essential nature so that the possibility of pure experience could be created and appreciated. With his black paintings, Rauschenberg mixed paper with newspaper to create the effect of appearance and disappearance. With his red paintings, Rauschenberg created what would be fore-runners of his combine series. They used complex materials so that the surface was disturbed from the impression of being flat or two-dimensional. Certainly a transitional painter, he worked within the gap between modernism and post-modernism. Through mistakes he developed his imaginative creativity into meaningful formations that explored new ways and mediums of creating art, by processes like photography, silk-screen, and multimedia juxtaposition. g) Describe both works in detail Rauschenberg’s artwork, Bed(1955) was created with Rauschenberg covered a shallow wooden frame with a worn quilt, that is alternately splashed and splattered with paint. While it uses everyday materials and can be said to celebrate them by transforming them from something disposable to something that is to be preserved, it is also a Dada-esque assertion of anti-art. f) Andrew Warhol was a prominent figure in the pop-art movement who was known for his diverse friends and came up with the concept of â€Å"fifteen-minutes of fame. † A celebrity in his own right, he is characteristically known for his paintings of luminaries like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor. When he switched to silk-screen, Andrew Warhol minimized his own hand so much as he tried to follow his intention to be â€Å"a machine. † His silk-screen was made serially and mass-produced the mass-produced, including the iconic Campbell’s Soup Can. Shot in 1968, by a fringe member of his Factory Scene ‘clique,’ Warhol barely survived and spent much of his later life as a more subdued â€Å"business-artist. † A man who loved plastic, Warhol also aspired to be plastic, at once superficial and commercial but also in possession of an odd aura of glamour. g) Andy Warhol’s artwork, â€Å"Marilyn,† was created so that it could personify mass-production and the glamorous aura of ‘celebrity. ’ Warhol accomplished this with his stenciling technique where ink and paint was applied to silk-screen images. An effect that was also realized was that of two disparities. In â€Å"Marilyn† the public image and the private image are attached but wrestle against each other so that both have a characteristic of ambiguity and not quite holding very well. h) How are they Similar? They incorporate different mediums, and deal with disparities. They both wrestle with the private and the public. â€Å"Bed† turns a private item into a public presentation and â€Å"Marilyn† deals with the clash between the private person and the public personification. i) How are they Different? â€Å"Bed† deals more with the ordinary and the relatively mundane. â€Å"Marilyn† deals with the exceptional and the aura of celebrity. â€Å"Bed† appears to have been created quite carelessly, â€Å"Marilyn† appears to have been created deliberately. â€Å"Bed† somehow congeals and appears finished although in a more careless kind of way. â€Å"Marilyn† seems somehow undone and there is the feeling that a missing element should be there. It feels unfinished and never quite complete. j) Finally, do they seem to illustrate Levin’s points about Modernism and Postmodernism—or not? Yes, they do seem to. â€Å"Bed† deals with the man-made, the quilt is a man-made object that is also a machine-made object. â€Å"Marilyn† has a strange kind of living existence as it deals with the natural, the organic, as well as, the complex human form in all its frailty. There is a quality of decomposition to it that makes it very odd but makes it portray the organic in a strong way. â€Å"Bed† is godlike because it does create something out of nothing. It turns what is â€Å"nothing,† an old quilt, into something quite extraordinary, so extraordinary that it will be displayed in museums as a monument of sorts. â€Å"Marilyn† is deeply personal and subjective, it is an intimate rendering of someone who lived who cannot really be known except through subjective interpretations. â€Å"Bed† is much more elitist and it takes a lot of erudite clarifications before a lot of people can ‘get it. ’ â€Å"Marilyn† is not incorporative of any great interplay of the theoretical and can be appreciated much more easily because it deals with such popular content matter.

Comparing Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights Essay -- Comparison

Similarities between Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights    Although Joseph Conrad's novel, Heart of Darkness, and Emily Bronte's, Wuthering Heights, were written in different era, they do in fact share a few similarities.    First of all, Heart of Darkness and Wuthering Heights compare in the manner that both novels draw on their respective author's personal experiences. Emily Bronte, who wrote in the latter Romantic Period but also had characteristics of Victorian writers, was left motherless at the age of two and spent most of her life with her father and siblings in Haworth, England. It was in this location that Emily first experienced the moors that play a critical role of her novel linking Wuthering Heights with Thushcross Grange. The moors was the area Heathcliff and Catherine would escape to when things were difficult. Haworth was a town that was isolated and surrounded by moors much like the setting of Wuthering Heights is described. Also, Emily Bronte parallels her own life in the manner in which she creates motherless characters. For example, Catherine and Hindley lose their mother at a young age as well as Catherine eventually dies leaving her young daughter, Catherine motherless. Joseph Conra d draws on his own person    al experiences in his novel, Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad had always been enthralled with the open oceans, maps, and uncharted territories of the African continent. He was hired by a British Company to operate a small steamship on the African Congo. He went on this trip and while there began keeping journals that would later become the basis for this novel.    Secondly, the authors of Wuthering Heights and Heart of Darkness both write their novels in the narrative fr... ...bright and upbeat feeling. It is true of both novels, for every good there is an evil. In Wuthering Heights, the characters are paired. For instance, two opposite households and the contrast of characters in Heathcliff vs. Linton. We see the coalition of good verses bad in Heart of Darkness, in the distinguishable manner in which Conrad writes o    f the black and the white. The underlying tone of Heart of Darkness is the oppression of the British over the African natives in the Congo.    In conclusion, many years separate Wuthering Heights and Heart of Darkness. The issues at hand facing these two authors were different, however they do possess similar ways of expressing to their readers the message they hope to convey.    Works Cited Bronte, Emily. Wuthering Heights Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness Gersh, Marianna. "Heart of Darkness"

Shared Service Costing

Helps In Identifying correct adoption of costing method which facilitates a transparent cost chargeable to Business Units (recipient of shared services) with granular Insight of the cost constituents. Introduction: In today's highly cost conscious environment, enterprise wide cost savings can be achieved by consolidating common work and infrastructure by using Shared Services units.But Business units often complain that Shared Services end up costing more than they targeted to save and also have the below questions:- â€Å"What are my Shared services costs made up off? † â€Å"Shared services costs are too high and affecting my product profitability' Shared services are unable to answer these questions due to lack of cost transparency in their cost models.Typical reasons for lack of cost transparency in shared services cost models are:- using complex costing methodology which makes measurement, chargeable and report to Business units difficult Lack of standardization of alloc ation logic Inability to completely automate the cross charging process Shared Service oodles † Our Shared services models enable cost transparency for multi-functional and reciprocal services rendered by Shared Services units.Cost transparency in context of Shared Services is to show the Business Services it consumes Cost of delivering these services Breaking the cost down to activities and resources involved in producing these services Allocation logic for cross charging On demand â€Å"what – with respect to demonstrate how costs change due to change In demand for services ,resource drivers and allocation logic Various automated cross charging models which reflect reciprocal services among Shared Services and eventually charge out to the Business are as follows:- Reciprocal costing model This costing model makes one time assignment of cost between Shared Services and eventually charges out Business for the Shared Services cost. This method Is easy to understand, fai rly accurate and facilitates In tracing cost to the origin. It also differentiates the rate at which Shared service unit Is charged with that charged to Business. Recursive costing model Services and Business. This method is accurate and reflects simultaneous charging at the same rate to Shared service and Business.Business benefits of the models: – (Positive Business Outcomes) Substantial reduction in lead time of calculating cross charging rates by eliminating manual and Increase in frequency of variance reporting which leads to repetitive interventions improved control of costs Detailed breakdown of cost of each service by the activities ensured and resources utilized Facilitates root cause analysis by tracing costs to origin for each service provided by Shared Services Availability of accurate and timely actionable cost data to analyze performance of Shared Services units and impact of its cost on Business Business benefits delivered.

Three Shots and Indian Camp

Devin Westfall Professor Peter Faziani English 151 October 15, 2012 Hemingway’s Nick Adams â€Å"Three Shots† and â€Å"Indian Camp† In Hemingway’s Nick Adams â€Å"Three Shots† and â€Å"Indian Camp† Nick goes through some changes in his life. He goes from being scared that someday he must die to feeling quite sure that he will never die. In the short story â€Å"Three Shots† Nick, his father, and his uncle are camping and Nick remembers with shame how he had gotten scared thinking about how he would die one day when he was alone. His father and uncle go fishing after supper leaving Nick all alone at the camp site.He tried to lay still and go to sleep but he couldn’t all he could think about is that someday he must die it started to make him feel quite sick. â€Å"Before they shoved the boat out his father told him that if any emergency came up while they were gone he was to fire three shots with the rifle and they would come right back. † Nick ended up calling his father and uncle by firing three shots up in the air with the rifle his father had left him, this had made his uncle frustrated by thinking that Nick was a coward; his father on the other hand more understands then his uncle.When his father and uncle return his father ask him â€Å"what was it Nickie? † He lies and tells his father that he had heard an animal outside the tent he was too ashamed to tell his father the truth. In the short story â€Å"Indian Camp† Nick accompanies his father, who is a Doctor, and his uncle to an Indian camp, to help a young Indian women she had been trying to give birth to her child for two days due to complications. Nicks father ends up having to perform a caesarian to recover the women’s child. Oh, daddy, can’t you give her something to make her stop screaming? Asked nick† Nick becomes frightened by the women’s screams and does not want to watch his father perform the surgery on the Indian women. Nicks father had been told that the baby’s father had hurt himself in an ax accident a few days before and he goes to take a look at him and finds that the baby’s father had actually killed himself by slitting his throat from one end to another.Nicks father tries to keep him from seeing what had happened to the man but it was too late he had already seen what had happened. Nicks father feels awful for bringing him along and putting him through everything he had seen that day. As they are leaving the camp Nick and his father discuss suicide and death. â€Å"Why did he kill himself, daddy? † Nicks father didn’t know the answer to his question he told him he didn’t know and that maybe it was because he couldn’t stand things, Nick then asks â€Å"is dying, hard daddy? His father tells him no its not and that he thinks it’s pretty easy, Nick then felt quite sure that he would never die. In conclusion Hemin gway’s Nick Adams â€Å"Three Shots† and â€Å"Indian Camp† both change Nick throughout each story in different ways. He goes from being scared of dying someday to feeling quite sure that he would never die. In â€Å"Three Shots† it shows a conflict between nicks immaturity and his realization that all life eventually come to an end. In â€Å"Indian Camp† it shows life and death, Nick is no longer afraid of death.