Master Essays - English-language Films, Afrikaner People

Master Harold And The Boys Athol Fugard's "'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys" is about Hally, a white young man, and the damage done by apartheid and alcoholism. The play takes place on the southeast cost of South Africa, 1950, in Hally's parents' restaurant. This is where two black servants, Sam and Willie, work for the white family. Sam and Willie have been a part of Hally's upbringing and are close friends. Hally has educated Sam with the knowledge acquired from school textbooks, but Sam has been trying to teach Hally vital lessons necessary for a healthy lifestyle. With a racist environment and a boorish alcoholic as a father, Sam has been a positive role model for Hally. The question would be, could Sam's influence outweigh the negative environment, shaping the confused boy? There are symbols in the play that illustrate the stimuli contributing to the answer. In "'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys", one can examine the kite, dance, bench, and disease; these are the symbols of the conflicting forces competing for Hally's future. The kite is an object symbolic of transcendence. Even as a child, Hally had an ingrain sense of defeat, disappointment, and failure; that is why Sam made him the kite. He wanted the little boy to be proud of something, proud of himself. Sam gave to him the phenomena of flying, the ideology of climbing high above his shame. The kite triggered neurotic thoughts but exhilarated the despairing boy. "This is it," I thought. "Like everything else in my life, here comes another fiasco." Then you shouted "Go, Hally!" and I started to run. I don't know how to describe it, Sam. Ja! The miracle happened! I was running, waiting for it to crash to the ground, but instead suddenly there was something alive behind me at the end of the string, tugging at it as if it wanted to be free. I looked back . . . I still can't believe my eyes. It was flying. . . I was so proud of us. . . I would have been suicidal if anything had happened to it"(Fugard, pp.1691-92). The kite conjured up ideas and feelings of believing in miracles, of being alive, and free. Sam left Hally up on the hill, with the a sense of pride, beside the bench. Hally wondered why Sam had left him alone that day. The two of them were up there for a long time; the only bench on the hill read "whites only". The bench is the symbol of apartheid, division, hatred, and racism. It is apartheid that Hally hides behind as he uses Sam and Willie as his scapegoat. Hally is filled with so much rage over his father, he is torn between love and hate. When the conflict supernovas, Hally lashes out on his two black friends. He tries to pretend they are not friends by acting strictly like a boss. Carrying on with this little man routine, Hally asks Sam to call him Master Harold. Sam would only do this if they were no longer friends; Hally would be no different from his father. This is the case for, when he spits in Sam's face, Hally becomes Master Harold. Apartheid is victorious in the corruption of another white male as Hally takes his place on the bench of segregation. "If you're not careful . . . Master Harold . .. you're going to be sitting up there by yourself for a long time to come, and there won't be a kite in the sky"(Fugard, p.1709). Along with the kite and the bench, the dance is another symbol in "'Master Harold' . . . and the Boys". After one of the phone calls that trigger his explosions, Hally, once again, is calmed by the idealistic voice of Sam. They begin talking about the art of dancing and how it can be seen as a metaphor of life. The dance is a symbol of inner harmony, social peace, and a world without violence or aggression. This is an ideal world. Sam points out that none of us know the steps; there is no music playing, but it does not stop the whole world from continuing. Even though there are bumps that leave bruises, life keeps on existing. We should just learn to dance life like champions. Hally, who only has words and books without value, falls in love with this analogy. At least until the next bad bump -- when he has a phone conversation with his father.

Dlamming the door Essay Example

Dlamming the door Essay Example Dlamming the door Essay Dlamming the door Essay There was more to that poem but I would rather not finish it now. After writing that poem I crept out of the house. I knew then, that I had to go to that lake. I left the house, slamming the door as I went. I went through the park, not the childrens one but the big one, which connects to the old meadow and hill. No one had been there for a very long time. I ran through the park and through the meadow, twisting my ankle on long tufts of dead grass. Nobody looked after that meadow so it looked like a necropolis but smelt distinctively of manure. I ran to the peak of the big hill, feeling the cold breeze sweeping along my face. My adrenaline was pumping. As I was standing at the top of that hill, I dont remember how, but I suddenly slipped. I tumbled down and lost control. Although it was only two minutes it seemed to last forever. I was encrusted in leaves and dried mud. I got up brushing out my hair with my fingers like a clumsy comb. I looked straight ahead of me, and there right before my eyes was that lake. The one I saw in my dream or close enough anyway. I inhaled the stench of wet moss, the silence around me was deafening. I took a second glance at the lake. I kneeled down and touched the water. Beautiful cold water, ripples glistening. I took a deep breath One, two, three. I plunged forward. I lay there for a few minutes, and then I felt myself being lifted out of the water. I opened my eyes and struggled to sit up but a man was saying, No, lie down; you are going to be fine. I remember seeing flashing lights and hearing a policemans car siren. After that traumatic experience and a few counselling sessions, my mother decided it was best for us to move. We went to Birmingham. I tried to move on, but all those memories from killing those innocent creatures for revenge came back to haunt me. Years went by, I got married and had two children. I promised myself that my history would not repeat itself. I did not want to raise my children to be spineless, cold murderers. Sometimes I try to forget about my past, but deep down I know that the past will always lie beneath me. 4:00pm. The kids should be home any minute now. I heard keys rustling through the door. I put the kettle on. Everything should be fine now. Psychoanalysis is now complete. I moved on right?

The Holocaust Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

The Holocaust - Essay Example The horrific actions of the Third Reich are well documented. The end result of the Nazi’s evil ideologies included the occupation of most European nations and the ‘final solution,’ the annihilation of over six million Jews (Dawidowicz, 1986: 3). Throughout history, many nations have conquered others for various reasons while oppressing its people but why were a particular race of people systematically killed? How could such a fervent hatred of Jews infect an entire national conscience causing such unconscionable acts to be perpetrated? In spite of popular opinion, it didn’t happen because the people of Germany fell into a hypnotic trance and all of a sudden felt compelled to murder innocents simply from hearing Hitler’s speeches.Many citizens of Germany were unaware of the Concentration Camps, including the residents of the towns where the camps were located. The executions were carried out by the German army with SS troops in charge of the operation s. The unknowing German people and the most fervent of Nazi’s did have a nationalistic idealism in common, however, which was the underlying reason for the extermination of the Jewish race. This common idealism was developed from the culmination of centuries of German cultural bonding through the ideas of Volkism, with roots that had begun the century before.

Haitian Culture Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Haitian Culture - Assignment Example Additionally, another small portion include the Hindus as well as Muslims who commonly presently inhabit Port-au-Prince (Largey, 2012, p.14-15). Generally, most Haitians exhibit a significant link to the event of the 1804 expulsion of the French, an occurrence that led to Haiti being the first sovereign Black state as well as being second in the Western Hemisphere to attain self-rule from imperial Europe. Haitian’s culture depicts the meaning of touch in various forms. This is quite evident among the male gender whereby they exhibit a tendency of holding hands in public. For outsiders, this action may be a depiction of homosexuality. For Haitians, however, holding hands in pubic portrays friendship but it is extremely rare for them to show affection publicly towards their females for this to them ought to be in privacy. Affection towards, family members may be shown overtly and holding hands of family members may not be regarded inappropriate (Migraine-George, & Jackson, 2014, p.7-8). Further, in the case of professionals, for instance, health-care providers, physical contact only comes as a result of shaking hands whereby actions like kissing regard them as inappropriate. However, touch by health-care providers during service provision normally receives appreciation. With regards to personal spatial and distancing strategies, most Haitians do not mind so much about personal space. Therefore, in most instances, interaction tends to be close, be it with a friend or a family member. Generally, compared to Americans require less personal spatial thus in most cases they position themselves closer to one another when communicating. Further, during a conversation, for most Haitians, direct eye contact is considered appropriate especially when used with friends or persons of same age group as well as family members.

Terrorism and the Media Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Terrorism and the Media - Assignment Example However, research continues to show that as much as the enlightening of people on the happenings with regard to matters terrorism continues to influence people psychologically. Debates on whether such news ought not to transmitted have been held with controversy looming on the possibility of rights of citizens with regards to freedom of speech, as well as, freedom of information as exercised by broadcasting houses arising (Hoffman, 2006). A thorough analysis on the issue of broadcasting terrorist activities and successes and the psychological impacts they hold on various groups of people will be discussed borrowing from credible scholarly journals and articles. Also, the issue of whether it is reasonable to limit broadcasting the same will be visited with the effect the same will have on the freedoms of information and of speech as provided for in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The war on terror that started in the year 2001 has since an increase in terrorism attack. By and large, there is a correlation between transmitting news about terrorism and the happening of terrorism. As such, it should be noted that the continual broadcasting of terrorism and the successes that follow have instigated a feeling of the terrorism group to continue with their unfortunate activities considering that many people are excited by the happenings of the same. There have been arguments that the broadcasting of terrorism news has had a positive impact on various groups of people which are contrary to the belief that the broadcasting of the same will lead to psychological torture (Pape, 2008). Truth be told, there are many atrocities that are placed on media that are damaging terrorism being one of them. Considering that thousands of people across the world are affected directly or indirectly is a major cause of concern. Psychologists have noted that Americans and other people from areas affected

How Big Data is Used in Retail Industry: Etsy

How Big Data is Used in Retail Industry: Etsy Big Data can be defined as the inability of traditional data architectures to efficiently handle the new datasets. Characteristics of Big Data that force new architectures are: 1. Volume: Size of dataset 2. Variety: Data from multiple sources 3. Velocity: Rate of flow 4. Variability: Change in other characteristics We all are aware of the 4 vs and they are considered as the core characteristics of Big Data. NIST perfectly explains these characteristics and further puts emphasis on needing a higher system architecture for higher performance. The system scaling is done using techniques called vertical and horizontal scaling. While researching definition of big data I realized most of the websites talk about the Vs of big data but none talk about how this is a full field but NIST explains us in detail about scaling and what it does. One thing to note is that this article was written in September of 2015 and since then a lot of things have changed and like any technology, big data is evolving and its definition and characteristics are evolving too. The four vs has evolved and are now there are seven vs which include [5] 5. Veracity: Refers to the completeness and accuracy of the data 6. Value: How much value does the data has 7. Visualization: The most important part where the processed data is presented so that readers can understand it. Big data has become a common name and it is being used in e-commerce for numerous ways. Big data is being used in e-commerce to give personalized buying experience to the customers. Using a customers browsing and buying habits to provide them with personalized recommendations can result in increased sales. We all aware of Amazon who provides their customers with Customers who bought this item also bought section which resulted in 30 percent increase in sales. Big data along with click-stream data can be used to monitor prices of products in real time and adjust the prices accordingly. Amazon uses different tools to monitor and adjust pricing of their own products accordingly. By this, they are making sure the customer gets the best price and no other competitor beats them with a lower price. Big data can also be used to send personalized offers which can be in form of emails or even pop-ups while they are trying to abandoned the cart. Etsy is an online e-commerce website which is a platform for selling handmade and vintage items. Most of the items they sell are handmade and made by individuals like you and me. Etsy was created back in 2005 in Brooklyn apartment by Rob Kalin, Chris Maguire and Haim Schoppik in their Brooklyn apartment [Citation]. Within two years Etsy had nearly 450,000 registered users and generated $26 million in annual sales. After that Etsy went through many changes in their structure and two of the creators left the company and then the hired Chad Dickerson, senior director of product at Yahoo to lead the company. Dickerson was hired as the chief technology officer and he took the company in an upward direction and was given the position of CEO later on. In 2013 Dickerson proposed tweaking its Terms of Service and allowed selling of manufactured goods which were not taken positively by other sellers but in the end, it helped the company and boosted their sales and revenue. According to Venture Beat in 2013 Etsy sales grew from $895 million to $1.34 billion. And in 2014 the numbers went up 43 percent to a total of $1.93 billion. In 2015 Etsy had more than 1.5 million active sellers and debuted it IPO. Chart is taken from Marketingcharts.com In 2014 Etsy was number eight on top ten shopping websites and this shows us how big and how much market they share and had about 22 million buyers [citation]. According to Chris Bohn a Senior Data Engineer at Etsy and according to him they want to use big data to understand more about their customers which include both sellers and buyers. They would like to provide a rich and smooth experience and their end goal is buyers find their products easier and sellers be able to reach the right buyers. According to Bohn, they want to use Big Data, To know how people are different in their shopping habits across the geography of the world. Lets first start with what type of data architecture Etsy used to use and what changes they made for been able to change with the time and to accommodate big data analysis. Initially, Etsy used to use monolithic Postgres database which consisted of listings, users, sellers, buyers, conversations and forums. As the company grew and their user database grew so they had to shard horizontally. The front end was driven by PHP. Ross Snyder, a senior software engineer said: The sites uptime was not that great and regular maintenance windows and site deploys often dissolved into outages. This all lead to Etsy creating a middleware which would help with scaling the website performance and at the same time the middleware would decrease the number of SQL calls. Etsy named this middleware Sprouter which they planned on making open-source and using it for a long time but after using it for while they decided to abandon it as it required DBAs to write stored procedures for nearly every piece of si te functionality and created a bureaucracy developers had to go through to get functionality made. It was never open-sourced and was rest to death. Then they moved from Postgres to sharded MySQL databases. According to Synder the reason they used MySQL at that time was Flickr is using it on an enormous scale. It scales horizontally, basically, to near infinity, and theres no single point of failure-its all master to master replication. During this process, Etsy decided to do some analytics and copied the data from SQL back to a Postgres server which they called a BI server but what they did not realize is that they went back to the original thing they wanted to go away from and it was all back to zero. They also realized that Postgres is not the best option for performing analytic queries and it was really hard to get a huge amount of data into the database. Here Etsy unknowingly faced the Volume characteristic of the big data. They again started their hunt for finding an appropriate replacement and came across HP Enterprise Vertica. One of the first reason they selected HPE Vertica is because it derives from Postgres and it has a Berkeley license which can enable Etsy to take it private and make changes to the code accordingly and do not have to republish it to the community. Using hp Vertica boosted the efficiency of their queries by running them 50x-1000x faster. With Vertica, there is unlimited scalability and this is a great feature for Etsy as they were a growing company. Vertica also stores 10x to 30x more data per server and also has compression. Etsy at start faced a problem with outages mentioned before and Vertica can guarantee maximum uptime and eliminate failures. It is also an open architecture with support for Hadoop, R and other range of BI tools. Etsy used a data replication tool to copy the data over to Vertica used Verticas open architecture feature to build their internal tools for doing analytics on the data. The big data problem here was to prepare their database to be able to do some analytic work and use the data they have been collecting. With Vertica, Etsy was able to quickly and efficiently analyze 30 terabytes of data. Bohn says that the greatest benefits are accessibility and speed and that use of the tool has spread to all departments. The fact that queries that previously took many days to run, now run in minutes, provides a dramatic example of the level of incr eased productivity gained company-wide. Apart from all the amazon functionality, Vertica was able to save Etsy $80,000 a month by switching from amazon cloud. By using Vertica Etsy did not have to hire any new people as Vertica uses a lot of similarity with Postgres and their developers already had experience with it. Velocity It is the measure of how fast the data coming in and for Etsy, it been top ten websites for shopping it was generating a massive number of clicks which needed to be stored. Etsy wanted to use this data to figure out where their customers are clicking and at what point they are leaving the website. Etsy took it to next step and used this clickstream data and joined it with their data to find details about the customer and what their buying history was in the past. This is how Etsy can get some value out of the clickstream data as it is the just path of click what a consumer goes through. The second type of data that Etsy has is the transactional data which includes order values, the category of sales, purchase frequency, the amount paid and shipping preferences. Variety Etsy had clickstream data, data about sellers, buyers, forums, messages and lot of different types and before they used to use Postgres which is not ideal for handling the variety of data. But with Vertica, they now can store any variety of data. Volume When we talk about volume we are talking about an insanely large amount of data and in our case, Etsy already had 30 TB of data which needed to be transferred and stored. By entering the world of big data, the employees were able to do much more than before with very little time. The first result of this whole change was all employees started using it as getting results was much better and way faster than a traditional database. It was not that they were getting different results but the time from entering the query and getting the output was shortened. By adding Vertica Etsy was then able to get information in real time right away. This feature was used by them when they introduced postage on their website where sellers can use postage service provided by Etsy to ship their products. The engineers wanted to keep an eye on this feature and know how it is performing in real time which was made possible using Vertica. All the departments were able to use this functionality and the people from finance department said, Wow, I can run these financial reports that used to take days in literally seconds.. Within very short time Etsy had 200 Vertica accounts and had a total of 750 employees which shows us how much popular this new change was. One of the surprises which Etsy faced according to Chris Bohn is that when they installed Vertica they thought only their analysts would use but it was so easy and so popular that they had to buy more licenses for their users. Vertica was being used for many other ways such as for their internal dashboards, running financial reports and for testing too. The result of this project resulted in total revenue of $119 million for the first half of 2015, up 44% on the same period in 2014. The number of active buyers grew to 21.7 million and the number of active users grew to 1.5 million. Etsy is the go-to place for unique products and gifts. None of this would have been possible without their keen embracing of Big Data and analytics. This project was successful as not only it led to increase in revenue but it also led to change in companys culture. Generally, the change in culture leads to change in technology but at Etsy, the technology changed the way people did their job. According to Bohn This is technology that has driven the culture. Its really changed the way people do their job at Etsy. It really has been impactful. After this project, Etsy realized that they were spending too much on AWS and they can save that money by buying their own servers. Bohn said Wait a minute. This is crazy. We could actually buy our own servers. This is commodity hardware that this can run on, and we can run this in our own data center. We will get the data in faster because there are bigger pipes. Thats what Etsy did by creating Estydoop which has 200 plus nodes and they ended up saving a lot of money and it would not have been possible if they did not do the big data project. Another thing which Etsy realized is that the market was changing and now smartphones were becoming common and been used for e-commerce. Etsy was able to use big data to figure out what each customer on their smartphone doing on their website and used that data to find crossover points and to change things accordingly. By this way, Etsy was moving along with the developing technology and not been left behind. Citation [1] 5 Benefits of Big Data for E-Commerce Companies and Shoppers. SmartData Collective. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www.smartdatacollective.com/seanmallonbizdaquk/410001/5-benefits-big-data-e-commerce-companies-and-shoppers. [2] A brief history of Etsy, from 2005 Brooklyn launch to 2015 IPO. VentureBeat. March 05, 2015. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/05/a-brief-history-of-etsy-from-2005-brooklyn-launch-to-2015-ipo/. [3] Akter, Shahriar, and Samuel Fosso Wamba. Big data analytics in E-commerce: a systematic review and agenda for future research. SpringerLink. March 16, 2016. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12525-016-0219-0. [4] April 8, 2014 by MarketingCharts staff. Top 10 Shopping and Classifieds Websites #8211; March 2014. MarketingCharts. April 08, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www.marketingcharts.com/updates/top-10-shopping-and-classifieds-websites-march-2014-41856/. [5] Big Datas Role in Etsys Product Development. InfoQ. Accessed March 25, 2017. https://www.infoq.com/interviews/big-data-etsy-product-development. [6] How Etsy Uses Big Data for eCommerce to Put Buyers and Sellers in the Best Light. BriefingsDirect Transcripts. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www.briefingsdirecttranscriptsblogs.com/2016/04/how-etsy-uses-big-data-for-ecommerce-to.html. [7] Sean Gallagher Oct 3, 2011 1:59 pm UTC. When clever goes wrong: how Etsy overcame poor architectural choices. Ars Technica. October 03, 2011. [8] Accessed March 25, 2017. https://arstechnica.com/business/2011/10/when-clever-goes-wrong-how-etsy-overcame-poor-architectural-choices/. [9] The biggest surprise Etsy encountered when applying HP Vertica to search | #HPBigData2014. SiliconANGLE. August 13, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2017. [10] http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/08/13/the-biggest-surprise-etsy-encountered-when-applying-hp-vertica-to-search-hpbigdata2014/. [11]The biggest surprise Etsy encountered when applying HP Vertica to search | #HPBigData2014. SiliconANGLE. August 13, 2014. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://siliconangle.com/blog/2014/08/13/the-biggest-surprise-etsy-encountered-when-applying-hp-vertica-to-search-hpbigdata2014/. [12] Vertica Advanced Analytics Offerings. Vertica Big Data SQL Analytics Platform Free Software Trials | Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://www8.hp.com/us/en/software-solutions/advanced-sql-big-data-analytics/try-now.html. [13] What does Etsys architecture look like today? High Scalability -. High Scalability. Accessed March 25, 2017. http://highscalability.com/blog/2016/3/23/what-does-etsys-architecture-look-like-today.html.

Microsoft: Bar the Windows, a Storm is Coming :: Argumentative Computers Papers

Microsoft: Bar the Windows, a Storm is Coming For the past 28 years, one company has been on the forefront of PC software. Microsoft has controlled the computer industry and its consumers with their aggressive business policies, marketing skills, and popular software. As a result of Microsoft’s disregard for the preceding rulings of the Sherman Antitrust Act against monopolies, it would be a beneficial decision for our candidate to support the states in mitigating the monopoly established by Microsoft. Microsoft was effectively established with the creation of the first personal computer, Altair 8800, by the Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems, in January 1975 (MITS). Within one month, Paul Allen and Bill Gates had written BASIC, the first language written for a PC. Microsoft earned more than one million dollars in 1978, and with the help of their â€Å"Windows† program as well as numerous other programs, they earned more than one billion dollars in their fifteenth year as a company. They spent much of their money investing in other companies, gaining more and more power and economic prowess(http://wwwshs1.bham.wednet.edu/curric/socst/wa/tdhist.htm). In recent years, it seems that Microsoft may have gone too far with their aggressiveness. They were accused of building a monopoly. The Dictionary.com definition of monopoly is as follows: â€Å"The exclusive power or privilege of selling a commodity; the exclusive power, right, or privilege of dealing in some article, or of trading in some market; sole command of the traffic in anything, however obtained†(Dictionary.com). By this definition, Microsoft violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890. However, this act was written very vaguely, and certain important terms, such as â€Å"restraint of trade,† â€Å"combination,† and â€Å"monopolize†, were not defined. This makes it very difficult for courts to enforce and easy for powerful companies, Microsoft included, to abuse while defending themselves in court (Poole). But, because Microsoft is the defendant in this particular case, many of Microsoft’s empirical statements are merely refutations of accusations made against them. First of all, the government accused Microsoft of using its â€Å"market clout† to stop Intel from making technology that Microsoft was opposed to, essentially making it a monopoly by conspiring to restrict trade in the computer software industry(Chandrasekaran).