Globalization

So here we are. It's 2001. The cold war has ended. There are technological advances every day. The world is connected by the Internet. Previously sheltered countries are now able to see what is going on in the rest of the world. And the rest of the world can see what is going on in those countries. Ideas are bounced around as if in a pin ball machine. People in India, Pakistan, Israel, Germany, etc.… know what movie stars and fashions are popular in America, Great Britain, France, and Japan. However, they get more than just movies and fashions. They hear about issue debates, political struggles, agricultural problems, national budget deficits, and changes of power in government. Almost every aspect of life in almost every country is an open book. People in South Africa and other places where government is challenged have heard of or seen the way democracy works in other countries. Third world countries get aid from super power nations. But they also end up getting a large dose of someone else's nationalism. This trend has been termed globalization and is generally considered a good thing. People can imagine a future without poverty and violence where almost everyone is happy and those who are not can do something about it without starting a war. The world is still far away from this utopian goal, but we are getting there slowly. I believe that one of the manifestations of globalization is the sense of a global society. The idea that the Internet presents a free marketplace of ideas is prevalent and makes a good example for what I wish to explain. Someone (person A) lives in Canada. Person A has a great idea for a business. He emails a friend of his in the United States, person B. Person B likes person A's idea and they become partners. Through the Internet, they are contacted by potential investors in Denmark, Japan, Thailand, and South America. Person A and person B use the Internet to send a business proposal to the potential investors. The potential inverters like the proposal and agree to meet persons A and B in person to draw up a contract for shareholding rights and operations costs. Thus the free market place of ideas represented by the Internet has once again allowed people from around the world to connect and create a partnership. This happens every day on a larger scale in our globalized world. Small countries form alliances with larger ones that are thousands of miles away. For example, after WWII, Japan agreed to let the U.S. take over its naval operations. So now Japan is a technological country and America's navy protects it. Also in this exchange, Americans are exposed to Japanese culture and the Japanese are exposed to American culture. This exposure happens all over the world every day. Some people are concerned that this exposure to a different culture will greatly affect or even alter the culture of another country. Others see globalization as a simple melding of the local and the global aspects of life in every country. In the world today, global society and local society seem to have overlapping boundaries, making the lines between them blurry. Is the blurring of these boundaries a problem? This is the question we must answer in order to grow in our new global society.

Love Is Like A Rose

LOVE IS LIKE A ROSE Some compare love to all kinds of things. I say, love is like a rose. Foremost, a rose symbolizes loveliness, which stems from love. The rose is the most beautiful of all flowers and love is the most precious emotion. A rose commences from a tiny rosebud into an unexplainable beauty, an undiminished rose. Likewise love starts like an ink dot and eventually spreads out into an enchanting and exalted relationship. Sometimes when looking at a rose, it seems so peaceful and perfume scented but in order to pick a rose you have to go through innumerable prickles. In like manner, Whoever forgot to add the thorns to the bed of roses that love is said to be? Love is so immaculate, yet to get to that purity of love various obstacles are encountered. Roses come in many colors; the colors of love are countless. The colors of a rose are usually light colored, just as love, love wouldn't be a dark color, or it wouldn't be love, it would be something dark, opposite to love. It is necessary for a rose to acquire nourishment, fertilization and purification for continuos blooming; it is the same with love. For love to progress, attention and care is essential. Just as a neglected rose will finally whither and dye, so will love if there isn't enough interest and compatibility, between two people. If given enough time, concern and belief when growing a rose, its tree will continue blooming forever. Similarly, if you have patience, take time and have faith into developing the true love, it can last 'till eternity. See a rose, think of love. Feel love, remember a rose. 

Great Depression

Explain the underlying and immediate causes of the Great Depression. The causes of the Great Depression are all important and mostly interrelated. The distribution of wealth was far outbalanced as much more money was acquired by the rich. Oversupply and the inability of consumers to buy products caused several more problems. The declining demand was receding long before 1929. The coal, railroad, and textile industries were all losing money. Major industries’: such as automobiles, construction, and mechanized agriculture, consumption levels stayed the same. However, when the demand began to level, the supply surpassed demand. Many unsold products were stored and many workers were laid off. Wages soon decreased and so did the purchasing power of the employed. People borrowed money from many sources. When the stock market crashed, the loans were expected to be paid back. Many withdrew their savings to payback the loans. This caused several banks to collapse. Upper classes grew richer and middle and lower class’s income did not increase. International economic problems also influenced or were influenced by the depression. American imports and exports declined. Foreigners’ money flow to buy American products decreased because they did not receive money from selling their goods to us and they profited less by selling their goods here because of tariffs. Europeans withdrew their investments in the United States to cope with their economic problems. The Great Depression will always be reminder to the public and the government of what can happen to the economy. It was a great time of change and development for our country. It influenced how our society works, saves, and spends to this very day. 

Hamlet - Mad?

Fake and Real: The Difference In the Portrayal of Madness A very controversial topic exists in regarding to Shakespeare's Hamlet. Many of those that read Hamlet argue that Prince Hamlet was mad, his actions guided by his ill feelings and weak emotions. Had William Shakespeare been around to answer the question Was Hamlet mad, he would most likely answer that Hamlet, the product of his imagination and creativity, was portrayed in such light as to create this controversy on purpose. However, Hamlet is perfectly sane, guided indeed by his emotions and feelings, which are, in fact, very healthy. Hamlet was not crazy, and this can be shown by the real madness of the one that he loved, or, at least, seemed to--Ophelia, whose craziness, especially in her final hours is unmistakably obvious. The actual reason as to why the audience is easily convinced that Hamlet was sane while Ophelia was mad, is simple: it is the brilliantly skillful way that Shakespeare portrays them that makes it clear, though not obvious, as to who is really the insane one. Hamlet, the young, strong, full of revenge prince is constantly talked about as insane. Most of the characters in the play Hamlet, except for Hamlet's good friend Horatio and a few others believe that Hamlet has lost his marbles. Yet, there is no real evidence which convinces the audience of this--there's no facts, nothing other than the characters' opinion of him. Hamlet commits certain acts which seem irrational and unexplainable to the antagonists in the play, however, to the audience, all of these acts are perfectly explainable and rational. This is because the audience knows the situation that Hamlet is in, having had his father murdered and his mother marrying the murderer of his father. The voiced opinions of the characters are what really clouds the audience's judgement. There are many instances of that. Polonius, for example, attributes Hamlet's insanity to the disappointed love for Ophelia. His hypothesis, which he believes deeply and tries to convince the king and the queen of, is that Hamlet is insane without Ophelia. In fact, Polonius is the one who ordered his daughter to break off any relationship that she might have with Hamlet, believing that would drive Hamlet to frustration, anger, and eventually cause him to loose his wit. Polonius's idea coincided well with the common at the time idea that frustrated love causes melancholy, which is, in itself, fairly close to madness. Shakespeare expresses this idea in many of his works, an example being the frustrated Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Another instance where this occurs is when the king has a good reason to convince others of Hamlet's insanity: he suspects that Hamlet knows something about the murder of his father, and if Hamlet were to spread this around, people would believe him. However, if everyone was convinced of Hamlet's madness, no one would believe him.

Starvation in Nepal

Food crisis is acute in the mid- and far-western regions. In fact, last July, the UN World Food Program (WFP) reported that starvation in these regions is as severe as in Congo and Ethiopia. In rural Nepal, over 600,000 people are facing starvation every day and around two million will potentially experience the same fate in the coming days. The WFP is running out of resources to feed the hungry people. Landless agricultural wage earners are particularly hit hard. Production of major agricultural crops such as paddy, wheat, and pulses has nosedived. The country might face food deficit of over 400,000 metric tons this fiscal year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture & Cooperatives. The most isolated regions are facing high intensity of starvation and food deficit. This problem has to be dealt with swiftly and with a decisive food security policy to address not only the immediate causes but also to prevent occurrence of such cases in the long run.

It is encouraging to see donors and development agencies taking promising steps to address the short-term challenges. However, the same cannot be said about the government’s plan of action. It allowed export of lentil and pulses at a time when the domestic demand is far greater than domestic supply, leading to severe food shortage in the rural areas. It is also importing 50,000 metric tons of wheat from India. The government should have purchased food from the domestic private sector at the prevailing international price and supplied it to the regions facing food shortage. Note that prices of both pulses and lentil are already skyrocketing in the domestic market. In fact, due to supply constraints, prices of most food items are already going up.

Severe food crisis is not a new phenomenon: There were food crises in 1979-80 and 1982-83. There was a particularly serious one in 2007.Nepal’s economy has never been self-sufficient in food production. Agricultural output has not kept pace with increasing demand and population growth rate. Worse, productivity growth has stalled at a very low level for a long time. These issues were never fully explored by previous governments for various reasons. First, the WFP and other UN agencies have been regularly providing direct food assistance to the starving people in rural areas. Second, the media hardly ever prominently featured issues associated with deficit food production, food crisis, and starvation in rural areas as it does with political, entertainment and economic issues. Third, the government kept allocating budget for fertilizer and seed subsidies regardless of efficiency, outcome, and sustainability of such programs. Fourth, lack of local elections and prevalence of civil war for almost a decade deprived farmers of their right to effectively raise their voices. Fifth, poor infrastructure and burgeoning corrupt bureaucracy impeded effective distribution of food.

Loadshiding problem in nepal

Nepal is in the grip of electricity crisis. The electricity crisis of this millennium began in 2006. Nepal saw the last electricity crisis of the last millennium in 1999 and with the commissioning of Khimti project in 2000, there was no load shedding through till 2005. Earlier NEA used to ascribe load shedding to “no water in rivers.” However, since last wet season Nepal had to suffer from load shedding even while she had to struggle with “flood” problem. With no electricity for 16 hours a day, the last dry season was the worst so far. Nepal’s macro economy is suffering heavily due to the phenomenon. However, it is anomalous that even at the time of load shedding NEA has been spilling energy due to mismatch of system as well as transmission congestion. NEA has promised respite from the problem in next 5 yeas but the facts and figures do not corroborate the claim. GoN’s defective vision and short sighted policy is at the root of the problem which can be mitigated by setting the vision right and making the policy more forward looking and based on the principle of self-reliance.

Key words: electricity crisis, load shedding, NEA, IPPs, adverse impact, anomaly, respite, GoN Policy, tariff, Nepal.

The “load shedding” schedule, that Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) publishes regularly, has become a must have document in every household these days, such that it has gained, though cynical, popularity amongst the consumers in Nepal. It must be admitted that, NEA is both fair and equitable in making electricity available (or conversely unavailable) as the number of hours consumers didn’t receive electricity (or received electricity) was same for all consumers within a region. Further, the hours that the consumers didn’t (or did) receive electricity was rotated such that no consumer received (or didn’t not receive) electricity everyday during the same window of time. NEA deserves to be complimented for its competence in preparing a fair and equitable load shedding schedule and implementing it with “punctuality”!

Electricity Crisis

Nepal is being ravaged by the electricity crisis. The electricity crisis of this millennium began in 2006. Nepal saw the last electricity crisis of the last millennium in 1999 and, with the commissioning of Khimti project in 2000, there was no load shedding through till 2005. Nepal was grappling with the problem of flood in the first week of August 2008, with resultant loss of life and limb as well as property in the hilly areas and Terai of the west Nepal. Besides, the breach of Koshi embankment, erroneously billed as a flood, during the same window of time played havoc in east Nepal where people were getting drowned (and killed, unfortunately, too) and displaced, homes being washed away, and farmers’ investment of time, money and energy in the cultivation washed out. Moreover, communication network and infrastructure including road network was thrown in disarray. But, although NEA used to trot out the excuse of no water in rivers whenever it came up with a load shedding schedule, even in such abundance (or flood!) NEA was imposing a load shedding of 2 hours each day, two days a week. With effect from 27th August, 2008 the load shedding hours was increased to 16.5 hours/week. The increase of load shedding by more than 4 times was ascribed to (a) inability to import power from India, due to collapse of a particular transmission tower in east Nepal caused by the breach of Koshi embankment, and consequent flooding of the area and (b) low water level in Kulekhani reservoir.

The Internet and Foreign Language Education: Benefits and Challenges

Over the past few years, the Internet has emerged as a prominent new technology. The influence of such a powerful technological tool has pervaded all aspects of the educational, business, and economic sectors of our world. Regardless of one's familiarity with the Internet, it is repeatedly made reference to. News broadcasters and commercials, for example, will now provide web addresses, and even the recent movie, "The Net" was sparked by the impact of this new technology (Mike, 1996). Regardless of whether one uses the Internet or not, one must be clear about the fact that the we have entered a new information age and the Internet is here to stay.Technology and foreign language education are no stranger to one another. In the sixties and seventies, language laboratories were being installed in numerous educational settings. The traditional language laboratory was comprised of a series of booths, each providing a cassette deck, and accompanying microphone and headphone. Teachers monitored their students' interactions by using a central control panel. The basic premise behind this technology was that if verbal behavior was modeled, and then reinforced, students would quickly learn the language in question. The language lab activities were therefore grounded in a stimulus-response behavior pattern. The more drill practice the students encountered, the faster they would learn the second language. While the language laboratory was a positive step in linking technology and language education, it was soon recognized that such activities were both tedious and boring for learners. Furthermore, the amount of student-teacher interaction was minimal, and individualized instruction was irrelevant. Besides the pedagogical deficiencies, the audio equipment was cumbersome and prone to breakdown, and had only one function-to disseminate auditory input. These factors put together led to a shift to the communicative approach to second language education, namely, computer assisted language learning.

Three phase motors

Three-phase electric power is a common method of alternating-current electric power generation, transmission, and distribution.^[1] It is a type of polyphase system and is the most common method used by grids worldwide to transfer power. It is also used to power large motors and other large loads. A three-phase system is generally more economical than others because it uses less conductor material to transmit electric power than equivalent single-phase or two-phase systems at the same voltage.^[2] The three-phase system was introduced and patented by Nikola Tesla in the years from 1887 to 1888.

In a three-phase system, three circuit conductors carry three alternating currents (of the same frequency) which reach their instantaneous peak values at different times. Taking one conductor as the reference, the other two currents are delayed in time by one-third and two-thirds of one cycle of the electric current. This delay between phases has the effect of giving constant power transfer over each cycle of the current and also makes it possible to produce a rotating magnetic field in an electric motor.

Three-phase systems may have a neutral wire. A neutral wire allows the three-phase system to use a higher voltage while still supporting lower-voltage single-phase appliances. In high-voltage distribution situations, it is common not to have a neutral wire as the loads can simply be connected between phases (phase-phase connection).

Francis turbine

The Francis turbine is a type of water turbine that was developed by James B. Francis in Lowell, MA. It is an inward-flow reaction turbine that combines radial and axial flow concepts.
Francis turbines are the most common water turbine in use today. They operate in a head range of ten meters to several hundred meters and are primarily used for electrical power production.The Francis turbine is a reaction turbine, which means that the working fluid changes pressure as it moves through the turbine, giving up its energy. A casement is needed to contain the water flow. The turbine is located between the high-pressure water source and the low-pressure water exit, usually at the base of a dam.
The inlet is spiral shaped. Guide vanes direct the water tangentially to the turbine wheel, known as a runner. This radial flow acts on the runner's vanes, causing the runner to spin. The guide vanes (or wicket gate) may be adjustable to allow efficient turbine operation for a range of water flow conditions.
As the water moves through the runner, its spinning radius decreases, further acting on the runner. For an analogy, imagine swinging a ball on a string around in a circle; if the string is pulled short, the ball spins faster due to the conservation of angular momentum. This property, in addition to the water's pressure, helps Francis and other inward-flow turbines harness water energy efficiently.Francis turbines may be designed for a wide range of heads and flows. This, along with their high efficiency, has made them the most widely used turbine in the world. Francis type units cover a head range from 20 meters to 700 meters, and their output power varies from just a few kilowatts up to one gigawatt. Large Francis turbines are individually designed for each site to operate at the highest possible efficiency, typically over 90%.
In addition to electrical production, they may also be used for pumped storage, where a reservoir is filled by the turbine (acting as a pump) during low power demand, and then reversed and used to generate power during peak demand.

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E-Commerce With the astonishing growth of the Internet, many companies are finding new and exciting ways to expand upon their business opportunities. There are very few successful companies that do not use computers in their everyday business activities, which also means there are few companies that do not use e-commerce. To emphasize the point that the effect of the Internet is so widespread in today’s business communities, one online article stated that more than 100000 companies have Internet addresses, and 20000 companies have home pages on the Internet as of February 1999 (DataQuest, 1999). These numbers have more than tripled since 1995, and the trend shows no signs of slowing. But what exactly is e-commerce? To most casual Internet surfers, e-commerce means online shopping and workaholics pointing their web browser to Amazon.com to order an emergency present because they forgot someone’s birthday again (Weiss, 1999). As we will soon find out, this is far from the case. Simply put, e-commerce is the exchange of business information between two or more organizations. An example of this would be buying and selling products or services over the Internet. E-commerce became very popular, soon after it proved to be an efficient means to conduct long distance transactions. The purpose of this report is to discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages e-commerce, as well as examining its potential for the future of business. Electronic commerce, or e-commerce has developed very rapidly in the last few years and has left some people wondering what it is all about. Most people think e-commerce is just about buying and selling things over the Internet, said Wareham (Wareham, 2000). E-commerce is a broad term describing the electronic exchange of business data between two or more organizations computers. Some examples might be the electronic filing of your income tax return, on-line services like Prodigy, and on-line billing for services or products received. E-commerce also includes buying and selling any item over the Internet, electronic fund transfer, smart cards, and all other methods of conducting business over digital networks. The primary technological goal of e-commerce is to integrate businesses, government agencies, and contractors into a single community with the ability to communicate with one another across any computer platform (Edwards, 1998). Electronic commerce was built on a foundation that was started more than 125 years ago with Western Union's money transfer as an example of telegraph technology. In the early 1900’s the advent of credit cards as a payment system revolutionised the process of automated commerce functions. In the mid 1980’s the introduction of the ATM card was the latest improvement to electronic commerce. The Internet was conceived in 1969 when the Department of Defence began funding the research of computer networking. The Internet, as a means for commerce, did not become reality until the 1990’s. Before this time, it was mainly a tool for the army, and a research device for some American universities. Its popularity grew when it proved to become a fast and efficient means to conduct long distance transactions, as well as an effective way to distribute information. Economic impact clearly, E-commerce will change the face of business forever. Companies that are thousands of miles away can complete business transactions in a matter of seconds as well as exchange information. As one online article explained: Dell Computers sells more than $14 million worth of computer equipment a day from its web site. By taking their customer service department to the web Federal Express began saving $10,000 a day. The Internet provides businesses with the opportunity to sell their products to millions of people, in 24 hours a day (Baxton, 1999). Figure #1 shows the amount of revenues generated by the on the Internet dating back to 1996 as well as estimating possible revenues through the year 2002. With 1998, revenue equaling almost 74 billion dollars and experts predicting that it will climb to as much as 1,234 billion dollars by the year 2002, anyone can see that e-commerce is the wave of the future. Figure #1- Internet generated revenues in US dollars. Source: NUA Internet Surveys Without a doubt, the Internet is ushering in an era of sweeping change that will leave no business or industry untouched. In just three years, the Net has gone from a playground for nerds into a vast communications and trading centre where some 90 million people swap information or do deals around the world. Imagine: It took radio more than 30 years to reach 60 million people, and television 15 years. Never has a technology caught fire so fast. (Edwards, 1998) The number one advantage that e-commerce possesses is speed. The Internet and World Wide Web give businesses opportunities to exchange messages or complete transactions almost instantaneously. Even with the slowest connections, doing business electronically is much faster than traditional modes. With increased speeds of communication, the delivery time is expedited and that makes the whole transaction from start to finish more efficient. Additionally, you can find practically any product available for sale on the Internet, as one author put it from books and compact disks (from www.amazon.com) to French bread (available from www.sourdoughbread.com), (Buskin, 1998). Even more significant is the fact that information appearing on the Internet can be changed extremely rapidly. This gives business owners the ability to inform customers of any changes to the service that you are offering. This also allows for you to update marketing and promotional materials as often and as frequently as you would like. The second advantage of the electronic commerce is the opportunity it offers to save on costs. By using the Internet, marketing, distribution, personnel, phone, postage and printing costs, among many others, can be reduced. You can start doing business in cyberspace for as little as $100. Most businesses will spend more than this but compared to the cost of opening a physical store, the savings are tremendous. These funds can then be diverted to marketing and advertising of your product or service. Cyberspace knows no national boundaries. That means you can do business all over the world as easily as you can in your own neighbourhood. Since the Internet connects everyone in cyberspace, information is transmitted at the speed of sound or the speed of light, depending on your connection. Either way, distance becomes meaningless, which makes you able to link to anyone on the globe and anyone on the globe can link to you. The ability to provide links makes doing business on the Internet attractive to customers in any part of the world. Using the web to provide customer support is an excellent vehicle to help build the reliability and effectiveness of your product or service. The ability to provide on-line answers to problems through email or an provide an archive section of frequently asked questions 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, builds customer confidence and retention. In fact, a whole series of IBM E-commerce commercials were based on this one single point. The Internet tends to be a more personal environment. People expect to get a real person when they send mail. This can work to your advantage as a small start-up company, or when you are a large corporation. No matter what business you are involved in, an online-help feature is an extraordinary advantage to have. A potential source of trouble is customer concerns with privacy and security. Anything sent over the Internet is sent through several different computers before it reaches its destination. The concern regarding Internet security and privacy is that unscrupulous hackers can capture credit card or checking account data as it is transferred or break into computers that hold the same information. Security on the Internet is much like security for your home. There is a point when the effort outweighs the advantages. As with your home you usually stop adding security features when you feel safe. Making a customer feel safe is what is important in doing business on the Internet. Even though no one can guarantee 100% security of transferring financial information over the Internet, e-commerce is still safer than using credit cards at an actual store or restaurant, or paying for something with the use of a 1-800 number (unknown author, 1999). In addition, every time you throw away a credit card receipt you could make yourself powerless to fraud. But how do we, as consumers, know this for sure? What precautions do e-commerce websites take to avoid such problems? The answer is simple: encryption. Ever since the 2.0 versions of Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer, transactions can be encrypted using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), an Internet protocol that creates a secure connection to the server, protecting the information as it travels over the Internet. SSL uses public key encryption, one of the strongest encryption methods around. A way to tell that a Web site is secured by SSL is when the URL begins with https instead of http. Browser makers and credit card companies are also promoting an additional security standard called Secure Electronic Transactions (SET). SET encodes the credit card numbers that sit on vendors’ servers so that only banks and credit card companies can read the numbers. Obviously no e-commerce system can guarantee 100-percent protection for your credit card, but you are less likely to get your pocket picked online than in a real store (Weiss, 1999). E-commerce is based on the assumption that the participants will pay for what they buy. There has been a noted reluctance among Internet users to actually pay, particularly for the digital goods and services. As a result, much of the current business on the Internet is funded using business models other than user-pays, primarily advertising and sponsorship. If a company is selling something, then they need to find a way to accept payment that is not only convenient for them, but most importantly, convenient for the customers. Setting up a simple web site can be very inexpensive, but if you are unsure of how to go about creating one, a simple web site thus may not be so simple. Moreover if you do not know what you are doing, your site will definitely not be effective. A functional web site with online ordering requires expertise in four different areas. If a business owner does not have HTML, CGI scripting, ODBC, and special programs for online clearing options experience, they may want to consider outsourcing. Outsourcing is the use of a third party service company to provide the missing pieces to complete the total functionality of the business. This is a cost-effective way to allow a site to get up and running much faster and concentrate on the product or service rather than getting overwhelmed with the technical challenges (DeCourey, 1999). Finally, a possible disadvantage to e-commerce is not having a strong organizational commitment. A functional web site that is going to be successful will soon need additional resources in technology and skills. E-commerce is evolving at a very rapid rate and the business owner must be willing to evolve with it. Newer and more advanced technology will cost more, but should be supplemented by additional revenues. Furthermore, the company must be willing to change the entire business or start a new one when they can see the need for change. Yahoo started as a commercial operation in 1995, with a simple, if enormous, list of Web sites to help people navigate the Web. But like the Web itself, Yahoo is changing fast. The once amazing ability to search the entire World Wide Web became outdated in a Net instant, so Yahoo, at the tender age of two years, began reinventing itself as a place to trade stocks, make travel reservations, and conduct commerce (Hof, 1998). Rest assured the future of e-commerce is intact and ever changing. Like electricity, antibiotics, or the car, the Internet is a revolutionary technology (France, 1999). It is quite evident that e-commerce is only gaining speed. As one article stated, the growth of e-commerce would not diminish, it will become such a pervasive influence on how a company works that all functions within an organization will have a stake in their e-commerce strategy (Wareham, 2000). With Internet traffic doubling every 100 days the digital economy is alive and growing. The huge growths of virtual communities are causing shifts in economic power from large corporations to smaller businesses. Virtual communities erode the marketing and sales advantages of large companies. A small company with a better product and better customer service can use these communities to challenge larger competitors—something it probably could not do in the real world (CommerceNet, 1999). With many of the technological advances in the banking, on-line trading and retail industries, e-commerce will soon become the foundation of our life just as radio, telephone and television have in the past. Technology has a place in everyone's day-to-day activities and soon e-commerce will be a major factor in the decisions we have to make. Remember, e-commerce is more complex than just buying that special someone’s birthday present. E-commerce, along with the Internet, is an outlet for business. It is a way for the new man to compete with the proven giants in the industry. An example of this would be the launch of Wal-Marts new web site intended to compete with industry monster Amazon.com. Their new business venture allows Wal-Mart to go outside its usual corporate sphere for Web-savvy talent geared for dot.com commerce, such as engineers, programmers and marketers. It also provides them with the necessary Web-wampum “V” such as options, warrants and shares that are essential to attracting top talent (Veverka, 2000). Simply put, the Internet and the use of e-commerce provides many opportunities for even the smallest of businesses to compete with large corporations, in essence leveling the playing field. With the steady growth of the Internet, and the fact that every year more and more families are plugging in and surfing the web, can a company survive without the use of the Internet and e-commerce? Probably, but not for long. The Internet and e-commerce are here to stay, so businesses can either change with the times, or get left behind. The choice is theirs to make.

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