Dara Ali
April 26, 2011
"The Three Flatteners"

Thomas Friedman names ten flatteners in his book, Thw World is Flat. Here, precisely, I will be discussing three of them.

First of all, let’s have a gist about the word “flattener”. It means the reason that levels the surface of something to a leveled degree. Metaphorically, the author uses the word to disrobe the events, reasons, and incidents happened in the world that helped to have a better scale of connection and shaped transformation in the field of technology.

First, down of the Berlin Wall. In 1989, the Berlin Wall collapsed and the Cold War came to its end. After that time, immediately, people could easily reach behind the wall. More, many companies, CEOs, and prime ministers reached behind the wall and went to Russia and all the parts of Germany. It, of course, greatly helped increase of a better connection and assistance in the field of technology.

Second, the creation of the World Wide Web. There were many companies working in the field of the Internet. Netscape was one of them. That company was working in the internet field and, for the first time, created a worldwide feature that helped the internet used to connect. HTML, however, was created as an internet language that increased the number of internet users greatly.

Third, Word Flow Software is created. Computers, for the first time in their history, could communicate through a binary language which consisted of a combination of 0 and 1. It greatly helped computer machines to communicate with each another without human interference.


I do absolutely agree with Friedman to name these three elements as reasons flattening the world. For the first one is explicit of how the down of the Berlin Wall changed the world. It did not only end the Cold War, but also introduced U.S.A. as the major world power which was based on technology-heavy technology. And it helped to a better communications within the world countries globally. For the second one I can say without the World Wide Web the internet is useless. It was an internet language that amazingly changed connections in the world. For the third reason, however, creating an intertwined connection within the computers, of course, as a language between them, was astonishing because computers could communicate to each another ever since.

Dara Ali
Professor Roger G.
April 17, 2011
The World Is Flat
While I was Sleeping

Thomas Friedman, the American genius writer, in the first chapter, While I was Sleeping, in his book, the World is Flat, points out some facts and identifies some terms regarding globalization and outsourcing. Before we get to the depth of the topic of this chapter, it is better if we identify the term-outsourcing. According to the internet, “Outsourcing: [is] acquiring services or products from an outside supplier or manufacturer in order to cut costs.”
Dividing human history into three different eras, the author tells how each stage of humanity has an effect on life and how it arranged to be changed as time passed. More, the third era according to Friedman, which begins from 2000 to the present, when the world started flattening as peoples started managing globalization to a great extend, has greatly accelerated business and greatly impacted industry.
To a better knowing and explaining his terms, Thomas Friedman goes around the world in a journey. Visiting some different places around the world such as Japan, China and back to America, we can see explicit examples of the business outsourcing phenomenon worldwide. Seeing American trademarks like HP and Pizza Hut in India, simply shows how the world tend to be flat, literally. Friedman takes us to different eras of humanity-from the time when Columbus found America to the present-to show globalization through a historical narrative way.
Thus, both globalization and business outsourcing are the key terms that Friedman explains in the first chapter of his book, The World Is Flat.

Dara Ali_Homework #4

Dara Ali
CSC 101
Homework #4
Open Source

Open-source software
Open-source software is a ”computer software that is available in source code form for which the source code and certain other rights normally reserved for copyright holders.” Also, “some open source licenses meet the requirements of the Open Source Definition… [it] permits users to study, change, improve and at times also to distribute the software.” It can be said that “Some open source software is available within the public domain.” It is free, licensed, and publicly distributed on the internet for lovely users worldwide.
“The free software movement was launched in 1983.” “In 1998, a group of individuals advocated that the term free software should be replaced by open source software (OSS) … which is less ambiguous and more comfortable for the corporate world.” In addition, the open source “label came out of a strategy session held on April 7, 1998 in Palo Alto.”

Jing
Jing is a cool software application and can be downloaded for free on the internet. Based on giving ability to capture images on the computer screen and providing the service of making videos so easily, Jig is a program that everyone needs to use. As an application within the Open Source, Jing provides excellent service-for free.


iTunes
Apple software that provides and immeasurable service on the internet in the field of music and movies, is called iTunes. Can be used online and downloaded for free, iTunes is a very useful program proving services that might coast a lot amount of money on other sources.



• Open Source Software is much better than 'proprietary software' because, as far as I know, open source software provides applications on the internet for free, a very useful feature. In addition, open source software is properly licensed and does not have registration problems like other proprietary software.




Source:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_software