The Untouchables free essay sample

The Untouchables Essay In this essay I am going to compare the shootout scene of the movie The Untouchables and the clip of the Odessa Steps sequence from Potemkin. The first thing the viewer sees in the clip of The Untouchables is Elliot Ness at the top of the staircase helping a mother with her baby carriage. A close up shot of the face of one of the villains is shown right before the gun fire breaks out. During the confusion, the baby starts rolling down the stairs. The music turns to a type of nursery rhyme melody, which is an eerie effect on the viewer and adds to the suspense. This scene shows the thoughts Ness, as he has to make a very fast decision during the shootout: to save the baby or shoot the villains? Next, a slow motion sequence begins. This is necessary because the viewer would not be able to experience everything in real time. We will write a custom essay sample on The Untouchables or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page The shots switch back and forth between the baby and gunfight. All the while, the carriage keeps making its way down the stairs with a ‘Clunk, Clunk, Clunk’ sound. The sound effect adds to the feeling of danger the baby is in. Ness is trying to stop the carriage and save the baby while in the shootout. A close up of the mother shows her mouth the words, â€Å"My baby! † The viewer is quite anxious for Ness and the baby. The camera shot switches to a medium shot of Ness’ accomplice, who throws him a gun. The accomplice slides across the floor at the base of the stairs and stops the baby’s carriage. Ness takes one last shot and kills the book keeper. On the Odessa Steps, a mother with an infant in the baby carriage is shot. The screen is expanded drawing out the agony of the young mother’s slow death. Her body falls in slow motion. The camera cuts back and forth between the mother dying and soldiers at the bottom of the stairs slaughtering people, continuing their march on the steps. The camera shows the wheels of the baby carriage four separate times perched precariously at the top of the stairs. In the clips, the good guys and bad guys are depicted fairly well. The good guys in The Untouchables are compassionate while the bad guys have no conscience about shooting innocent victims such as sailors and babies. In the Odessa steps clip, the scene clearly depicts the evil military slaughtering the innocent victims. The close up of Ness’ face showing extreme concern as the carriage is falling down the stairs depicts his emotions of being torn on what to do. The values of the good guys are pretty clear in the clip as they value the baby’s life over catching the bad guys. In both clips, light and sound, are used to build up tension on the screen. The Untouchables scene shows more human emotion of the characters to the viewer, while the Odessa Steps scene is much more military and grim. Both clips use lighting, sound and different camera shots to create the feeling of drama and suspense, as well as to enhance the action sequences. Works Cited Nichols, Bill Engaging Cinema. New York: 2010. Print. Opening sequence of Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) Web. Odessa Steps sequence from Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) Web.

The Virgins Passion essays

The Virgin's Passion essays The Gothic Diptych at the Minneapolis Museum of Art, which is attributed to the Master of the Passion Diptych, seems at first glance to be a fine example of the mixed mannerism and classicism typical of a time in transition between Gothic and Renaissance styles. The small ivory panels, which are dated at approximately 1375, have a deeply traditional subject matter. They portray a series of scenes from the life of Christ, beginning with the Annunciation and proceeding through his birth, adoration by the Magi, betrayal, death, ascension, and the final gift of his spirit to the people at Pentecost. These subjects are executed skillfully in the tiny medium (the entire work in less than 9 inches tall), with careful attention paid to the expression and placement of the figures. Stylistically, this piece seems both common to its time and yet also enlightening as to its historical moment. There is a certain classical stylization to the flow of the drapery and clothing about the figures which has evolved from the more formless shapes of the earlier middle ages, and hints at an evolving classicism and awareness of form that heralds the oncoming Renaissance. The characters are in constant contorting motion, and the drapery about them is used to accentuate the angles at which they are caught, and an articulated body is visible below. "In the Gothic figure no such differentiation exists" (Iskold), until the Gothic begins to blend Sucha blend is not entirely uncommon in the later Gothic era, of course, and one sees other characteristics of the Gothic more obviously present. The extreme mannerism of certain artists at this time is more gently portrayed here, but still visible in the bodies that contort off to one side, and the sometimes exaggerated facial expressions. The male background figures especially tend towards a slightly regressive mannerism, with grins that border on gri...

Ed Sullivan, Variety Show Host Influenced American Culture

Ed Sullivan, Variety Show Host Influenced American Culture Ed Sullivan was a newspaperman who became an unlikely cultural force during the early decades of television. His Sunday night variety show was considered a weekly event in homes around the country. The Ed Sullivan Show is widely remembered for giving The Beatles their first exposure in America, an event in early 1964 which seemed to change the culture overnight. A decade earlier, Elvis Presley had also made a huge impression on Sullivans stage, generating a national controversy while turning many young Americans into instant fans of rock n roll. Fast Facts: Ed Sullivan Born: September 28, 1902 in New York CityDied: October 13, 1974 in New York CityKnown For: As host of a weekly variety show broadcast on Sunday nights, Sullivan had enormous influence on American show business.Parents: Peter Arthur Sullivan and Elizabeth F. SmithSpouse: Sylvia WeinsteinChildren: Betty Sullivan Besides showcasing musicians, Sullivans weekly show was marked by its eclectic, and often simply odd, array of performers. Broadway stars might perform a scene from a hit musical, nightclub comedians would tell jokes about their wives and mothers in law, magicians would perform elaborate tricks, and circus performers would tumble, juggle, or spin plates. What happened on Sullivans show became part of the national conversation. By the time his show ended in 1971, it was estimated that more than 10,000 performers had appeared. During the 1950s and 1960s a mark of success in show business meant appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. Early Life and Career Edward Vincent Sullivan was born on September 28, 1902, in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. His father, a customs inspector, was the son of an Irish immigrant, and his mother was an amateur painter who loved the arts. Sullivan had a twin brother who died in infancy, and as a child his family moved out of New York City to Port Chester, New York. Growing up, Sullivan was influenced by his parents love of music. He attended Catholic schools, and at St. Mary’s High School he wrote for the school newspaper and played several sports. After high school an uncle offered to pay his college tuition, but Sullivan chose to go directly into the newspaper business. In 1918 he got a job at the local Port Chester newspaper. He briefly worked for a newspaper in Hartford, Connecticut, but then moved on to New York City. In the early 1930s he became a columnist for the New York Daily News. He covered Broadway and show business in general, and began appearing on radio broadcasts. To augment his income, Sullivan would moonlight as the emcee at Times Square theaters that featured live vaudeville acts and movies. After appearing on an early television broadcast, an advertising executive thought Sullivan should host a regular TV show. On June 20, 1948, he first appeared as the host of a CBS variety show, â€Å"The Toast of the Town.† Ed Sullivan. Getty Images   Television Pioneer Sullivans show was not immediately successful, but after obtaining a new steady sponsor, Lincoln-Mercury automobiles, and a new name, The Ed Sullivan Show, it caught on. His 1974 obituary in the New York Times noted that Sullivans appeal was often baffling to anyone seeking to explain it. Even his onstage awkwardness became part of his charm. His weekly promise to the audience was that he was presenting a really big show. For decades, impressionists, playing on Sullivans peculiar diction, mimicked his catchphrase as a rilly big shew. The core of Sullivans lasting appeal was his credibility as a judge of talent. The American public came to believe that if Ed Sullivan put someone on his show they were worthy of attention. The Elvis Controversy 10/28/1956-New York, NY: Elvis Presley, rock and roll sensation, as he rehearses with his band for The Ed Sullivan Show. Bettmann Archive / Getty Images In the summer of 1956, Elvis Presley appeared on television on â€Å"The Steve Allen Show.† But it wasn’t until his appearance on Ed Sullivan’s program on September 9, 1956, that mainstream America was shocked by what they saw. (Sullivan, recuperating from a serious auto accident, didn’t host that night; actor Charles Laughton was the guest host.) Some viewers, appalled by Presley’s â€Å"suggestive† dancing, criticized Sullivan harshly. The television critic of the New York Times, Jack Gould, published a denunciation of Presley the following Sunday. Gould wrote that Presley was a â€Å"gyrating figure† generally found on the fringes of show business, and that his â€Å"bumps and grinds† could â€Å"overstimulate† teenagers. The following month, Elvis returned for a performance on the night of October 28, 1956. Sullivan was back hosting, and again criticism followed. Sullivan hosted Elvis again on January 6, 1957, but CBS executives insisted that the singer only be shown from the waist up, keeping his swiveling hips safely out of sight. Cultural Milestones on Sunday Nights Ed Sullivan with The Beatles. Getty Images Eight years later, Sullivan made more cultural history by hosting The Beatles on their first visit to America. Their initial appearance, on February 9, 1964, set ratings records. It was estimated that 60 percent of American televisions were tuned into their performance. Coming less than three months after the assassination of President Kennedy, Sullivan showcasing The Beatles seemed like a very welcome bit of fun. In the following years, Sullivan would host a number of musicians who were changing the culture, including The Rolling Stones, The Supremes, James Brown, Janis Joplin, The Doors, The Jefferson Airplane, Johnny Cash, and Ray Charles. When network affiliates and advertisers suggested he should avoid booking black performers so as not to offend viewers in the South, he refused. Sullivan’s show endured for 23 years, ending in 1971. He produced some TV specials after giving up the weekly show before becoming ill with cancer. He died in New York on October 13, 1974. Sources Ed Sullivan. Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed., vol. 19, Gale, 2004, pp. 374-376. Gale Virtual Reference Library.Coletta, Charles. Sullivan, Ed (1902–1974). St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, edited by Thomas Riggs, 2nd ed., vol. 5, St. James Press, 2013, pp. 6-8. Gale Virtual Reference Library.Goldfarb, Sheldon. The Ed Sullivan Show. Bowling, Beatniks, and Bell-Bottoms: Pop Culture of 20th-Century America, edited by Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, vol. 3: 1940s-1950s, UXL, 2002, pp. 739-741. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Development of Urban Civilization and Form Essay

Development of Urban Civilization and Form - Essay Example As a type of community, the city may be regarded as a relatively stable awareness of population, together with its "varied environments, social arrangements, and supporting activities, occupying a more or less discrete site, and having a cultural importance that differentiates it from other types of human settlement and association. In its elementary functions and rudimentary characteristics, however, a city is not clearly distinguishable from a town or even a large village." (Britannica, 2006) It was no accident that the earliest of man's fixed settlements originated in the rich "subtropical valleys of the Nile, the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Indus, and the Yellow Rivers or in such well-watered islands as Crete." Such regions gave encouraging ecological issues making town living comparatively simple. Pre-urban growths that covered the means for urban life also comprised such features as "traditionalism, a power structure, and a form of economic as well as social organization." Traditionalism put in the reception and broadcast of what had worked in the existence of the crowd and was consequently "right" and to be kept. New value directions and beliefs may also have influenced the route of urbanization, although their significance is still extremely speculative. Before 1800, improvements in agricultural and manufacturing methods had allowed a remarkable attentiveness of creative activity close to the sources of mechanical power-water and coal. A subsequent association of population was hastened by the excellence of the steam engine and the dominance of the factory over pre-industrial business association. Under provisions of "belt-and-pulley" authority broadcast, urban application was a means of: (1) Reducing the costs of conquering resistances in transportation and communications and (2) Maximizing interior monetary systems of extent and outside economies. A strange convergence of profitable, geographic, and technical issues in Britain guided to far-reaching transforms in such planned movements as textiles, transport, and iron, even though the educational and social requirements for industrialization were not exclusively present in any one nation,. Britain became "the workshop of the world" and London its "head office." (Britannica, 2006) Urban Planning Urban planning and redevelopment is planned at satisfying communal and financial purposes that go further than the corporal shape and arrangement of buildings, streets, parks, utilities, and other parts of the urban environment. Urban planning takes effect principally during the procedures of administration and needs the relevance of specialized methods of "survey, analysis, forecasting, and design." It may hence be expressed as a public society, as a legislative utility, or as a scientific career. Each feature has its own thoughts, narration, and theories. Together they blend into the attempt of contemporary civilization to figure and progress the surroundings within which growing amounts of civilization squander their lives: the city. For several centuries throughout the middle ages, there was small structure of cities in Europe. There is contradictory estimation on the superiority of the towns that grew up as "centres of church or feudal authority, of marketing or

Outsourcing to Developing Countries Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Outsourcing to Developing Countries - Term Paper Example The question of outsourcing has a brought about a lot out a myriad of protests, many of them by them based on the escalating the rates of unemployment. Notably, while there are some Americans that take it as a positive thing many more are scared by what it portends especially those who have lost their jobs to foreigners. According to Howard, in the article â€Å"Globalization is an anomaly and its time is running out,† China hosts very many of American china stores and myriad firms all are taking advantage of the cheap labor and raw materials. However, should China involve itself in search for oil from its Arabian neighbors there is potential for conflict? In such a case, America and China may be embroiled in an international row and this might force the investments in America to be closed down (Howard). Furthermore, due to political instability in many developing companies, outsourcing might mean risking losing the investment in the time of riots or civil wars and the economy back home would suffer directly as a result of a conflict in which America is neutral. Outsourcing is a two-sided sword, effectively cutting both parties in the arrangement, in America; there are several financial gains especially for the firms involved. They get to form international networks thanks to globalization, obtain cheap labor, wide market and finally they are paying very little tax since some of the countries in which they outsource give foreign investors tax breaks to encourage them and other multinationals to invest therein. In this paper, the issue of outsourcing will be examined closely in order to support, through argument, the position that outsourcing is doing more harm than good to the American economy. Outsourcing carries a myriad of negative financial implication for America; one of these is that it greatly contributes to unemployment in the USA. It is predicted that 949 million will be lost because of outsourcing annually. These losses are not purely business by a huge fraction of it represents lost wages, to Americans, whose former employers have decamped so they can hire cheaper labor.  

Properties Of Distributed Systems Information Technology Essay

Properties Of Distributed Systems Information Technology Essay A distributed system consists of multiple autonomous computers that communicate through a computer network. The computers interact with each other in order to achieve a common goal. A computer program that runs in a distributed system is called a distributed program, and distributed programming is the process of writing such programs. Distributed computing also refers to the use of distributed systems to solve computational problems. In distributed computing, a problem is divided into many tasks, each of which is solved by one computer The word distributed in terms such as distributed system, distributed programming, and distributed algorithm originally referred to computer networks where individual computers were physically distributed within some geographical area. The terms are nowadays used in a much wider sense, even referring to autonomous processes that run on the same physical computer and interact with each other by message passing. While there is no single definition of a distributed system, the following defining properties are commonly used: There are several autonomous computational entities, each of which has its own local memory. The entities communicate with each other by message passing. A distributed system may have a common goal, such as solving a large computational problem. Alternatively, each computer may have its own user with individual needs, and the purpose of the distributed system is to coordinate the use of shared resources or provide communication services to the users. Other typical properties of distributed systems include: The system has to tolerate failures in individual computers. The structure of the system (network topology, network latency, number of computers) is not known in advance, the system may consist of different kinds of computers and network links, and the system may change during the execution of a distributed program. Each computer has only a limited, incomplete view of the system. Each computer may know only one part of the input. PROPERTIES OF DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS So far the focus has been on designing a distributed system that solves a given problem. A complementary research problem is studying the properties of a given distributed system. The halting problem is an analogous example from the field of centralised computation: we are given a computer program and the task is to decide whether it halts or runs forever. The halting problem is undecidable in the general case, and naturally understanding the behaviour of a computer network is at least as hard as understanding the behaviour of one computer. However, there are many interesting special cases that are decidable. In particular, it is possible to reason about the behaviour of a network of finite-state machines. One example is telling whether a given network of interacting (asynchronous and non-deterministic) finite-state machines can reach a deadlock. This problem is PSPACE-complete,[39] i.e., it is decidable, but it is not likely that there is an efficient (centralised, parallel or distributed) algorithm that solves the problem in the case of large networks. SECURITY ISSUES IN ADAPTIVE DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS In the contemporary society, distributed systems have a significant impact on how communication between social, industrial and governmental institutions is achieved. Dealing with the complexity, heterogeneity and dynamics of distributed systems is absolutely among the main concerns of the software industry. In the Internet era, the distribution of information and services on different sites is a common and dominant scenario. Hence, accessing information and services on remote sites requires high-level of system quality: acceptable response time (at least à ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒâ€¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"near real-timeà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ã‚ ); and security mechanisms. These aspects require inherent adaptation of the system to changes in the environment. In the case of ADSs, the challenge to maintain system quality is even greater. In general, security issues in distributed information systems, whether adaptive or not, is already a serious concern. There are many types of threats, among them those occurring during communication and those in the form of unauthorized attempts to access stored information. Solutions proposed to address these problems in distributed systems may contribute to the implementation of security mechanisms in ADSs. On the other hand, if a token ring is used to achieve mutual exclusion in data communication, then a loss of token might be a result of unauthorized monitoring of the token, which is a direct consequence of the distributed system being adaptive and having monitoring component. Moreover, data resubmission might be requested by authorized parties that couldnà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢t receive the data. Such a request might also come from malicious intruders that are requesting resubmission of data to get a copy. The kind of environmental changes that can be monitored in ADSs include, but are not limited to, processor and link failures, changes in communication patterns and frequency, changes in failure rates, and changed application requirements. Security metrics indicate the degree to which security goals such as data confidentiality are being met, they propose actions that should be taken to improve the overall security program, and identify the level of risks in not taking a given action and hence provide guidance in prioritizing the actions. They also indicate the effectiveness of various components of a security program. Developing effective security metrics programs has proven to be very challenging. A number of factors have contributed to this collecting the necessary data is difficult and there are no well-established and standardized guidelines. Swanson et al. (2003) identified elements that must be considered in defining effective security metrics, metrics must yield quantifiable information, supporting data must be readily obtainable, only repeatable processes should be considered for measurement, and metrics must enable tracking of performance. Voas et al. (1996) propose a security assessment methodology, called a daptive vulnerability analysis (AVA), which provides a relative measure of software security. The methodology is based on measurement of security weaknesses in terms of predetermined set of threats that are frequently encountered. The resulting metrics may vary with different set of threats and hence the methodology is called adaptive. Its major advantages include, among others, its ability to be customized to application-specific classes of intrusions and the fact that it measures dynamic run-time information. The fact that it is based on a predetermined set of threats is among the major limitations of AVA. Payne (2001) proposes a guideline that should be closely followed in the development a security metrics program. The guideline consists of several steps: clear definition of security goals and objective, decision about what metrics to generate and strategies for generating them; create action plan, and establish a formal program review cycle. Following this guidance enables us to clarify the why, what and how of developing security metrics. In the sequel, we focus on the metrics that should be generated to quantify the level of security threats that could be caused due to monitoring of a target system to achieve the level of adaptation necessary to maintain quality of services. ADAPTIVE DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS Distributed systems that can evolve their behaviors based on changes in their environments are known as Adaptive Distributed Systems (ADSs). Adaptation usually takes place on different sites in a distributed system and needs to be coordinated. Adaptive systems monitor and evaluate their environments and can adapt their own behaviors when there is a change in the environment. On the other hand, adaptive behavior is the field of science where the underlying mechanisms of adaptive behavior of animals, software agents, robots and other adaptive systems are investigated into. The results from adaptive behavior research are exploited for building artificially intelligent adaptive systems. In this case, we envision distributed systems within the context of artificially intelligent adaptive systems and we therefore believe that the research progress in adaptive behavior will affect the research in ADSs. That is, monitoring, change detection and behavior adaptation components of an adaptive distributed system will become more intelligent in time. An ADS better knows what is happening in its environment by detecting and evaluating the changes in the environments and adjusting their actions to the changes more intelligently. However, the more intelligent and adaptive a distributed system becomes through its monitoring and other components, the more risky it becomes that the intruders act more severely in a distributed environment if the monitoring component is overtaken by them. In the following paragraphs, we are giving a brief survey on ADSs. Leonhardt et al. (1998) indicate that security is an issue that appears where activity is being tracked, namely by the monitoring system they have proposed. For that reason, in this work, we look into the levels of knowledge a monitoring system might eventually have about its environment while becoming more adaptive, and whether the level of knowledge and the properties of the knowledge being monitored would cause any security issues compared to the distributed systems which are not adaptive. Russello et al. (2005) described how adaptation is done for dynamical replication for managing availability in a shared data space. The idea is that if replication is require d, the middleware should offer mechanisms that would allow the application developer to select from different replication policies that can be subsequently enforced at runtime. There is an adaptation subsystem where the environment conditions are monitored. It is detected when to switch to another replication policy automatically. The execution environment conditions which are monitored are cost of communication latency and bandwidth, especially when external monitoring subsystem is used. Silva et al. (2002) developed a generic framework for the construction of ADSs. The model is composed of three main packages. In the monitoring package, system specific parameters, such as processor utilization, in the various hosts of the distributed system are monitored. This package informs the event detection and notification package whenever values of such parameters change significantly. In addition to this, interceptors as used in the CORBA distributed system standards are inserted into the object invocation path. Each time a client invokes a method of an object, the message corresponding to this invocation is intercepted and later re-dispatched to the target object . Using interceptors, the system can extract useful information from each method invocation storing it in a log file for analysis by the event detection and notification package. On the other hand, dynamic configuration package, depending on the type of the event, executes the appropriate algorithm that defines actions that should be taken in order to adapt the application to the new environment condition. As stated in (Al-Shaer 1998), monitoring system can be used to detect and report security violations such as illegal logins or attempts of unauthorized access to files. On the contrary, we argue that if the monitoring subsystem is overtaken by an intruder, the monitoring system can also be used for causing security violations once an intruder has knowledge about login information and file authorizations to be able to report illegal logins and attempts of unauthorized access to resources.

Procedure for Protecting Clients Patients and Colleagues from Harm Essay

The Mayor’s role as the executive of the strategic authority for London is to promote economic development and wealth creation, social development, and the improvement of the environment. The Mayor also has a number of other duties in relation to culture and tourism, including responsibility for Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square. The Mayor has a range of specific powers and duties, and a general power to do anything that will promote economic and social development, and environmental improvement, in London. Before using many of his powers the Mayor must consult with Londoners, and in all cases, the Mayor must promote equality of opportunity. The Greater London Authority Act 2007 supplemented and updated the GLA Act 1999 and granted some additional powers to the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The Mayor sets out plans and policies for London covering transport, planning and development, housing, economic development and regeneration, culture, health inequalities, and a range of environmental issues including climate change, biodiversity, ambient noise, waste disposal and air quality. These individual plans fit together to help deliver the Mayor’s policies. Between them, these plans must also contribute to sustainable development and thehealth of Londoners. The mayor of London has been accused of failing to deliver on a range of climate change policies during his four-year term in office, as new figures reveal he has spent just half of an  £84m green budget. London’s Green Party assembly member Darren Johnson today revealed that Boris Johnson will have underspent on environmental policies every year since being elected mayor in May 2008, meaning he has used  £40m of a total  £84m budget. But Jones said the mayor ditched the 2012 target because he had â€Å"blown the budget† by investing in eight new hop-on-hop-off Routemaster buses, at a cost of  £11.37m. â€Å"I think his new vanity bus has blown the budget for ensuring all buses are hybrids,† she said. â€Å"Instead of eight prototype buses, we could have had another 96 low-polluting hybrids on our roads. Pound for pound this is a bad deal for London’s environment.† The GLA Act 1999 gives the Mayor responsibility to produce a Municipal Waste Management Strategy for London. London’s Wasted Resource, the first draft strategy for consultation with the London Assembly and functional bodies, was launched on 18 January 2010. A second draft will be published for public consultation in summer 2010, and the final strategy will be published in late 2010/early 2011.