Theories and Research in Global Politics, International Politics Essay

Theories and Research in Global Politics, International Politics - Essay Example In addition to the direct economic costs associated with terrorism and the threat of further terrorism, 9/11 also had important political ramifications. Importantly, political scientists have been wracking their brains trying to make sense the horrific violence undertaken the morning of 9/11 and further violence inspired by global jihadists bent on taking over the world. Psychologists sought to explore the psychological factors leading people to kill in the name of Allah, domestic-level theorists explored the domestic antecedents to terror including extreme poverty, a lack of education and political repression. System-level theorists however were at a loss to explain the attacks of September 11th and the ensuing War on Terror (Bram and Rapaport 55). The War on Terror represents a total American foreign policy shift which advocates the concept of unilateralism and unilateral military action in the face of a global terrorist threat. This is American hegemony par excellence. Seeking to address this dramatic change in US foreign policy, this essay asks the following questions: How has the international order changed in the face of US hegemony and what are the global ramifications of this new foreign policy of unilateralism? Can international relations theory explain the War on Terror and global American hegemony? If so, which explanatory theory best explains American unilateralism and the New World Order? This essay will argue that realism, as an explanatory theory of international relations, is the theory most applicable to the present international order in which a hegemonic United States remains at the helm of the international system. Accordingly, realism provides perhaps the most concise and strongest definition of what consti tutes state interest, behavior and the establishment of the international order with the United States as a hegemonic actor. Realists argue that

Choice of operating system Case Study Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Choice of operating system - Case Study Example Starting with Windows NT Build 1 and Windows 3.1, it has now progressed to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition and Windows NT Build 6. The decision to use and adhere to Microsoft operating systems, whether on the corporate network or individual, non-networked computers, was largely predicated on the fact that the popularity of the product implied that the majority of software manufacturers designed their own products for compatibility with Microsoft. In other words, the decision was not one which was consciously made by the ICT department on the basis of the quality superiority, or cost effectiveness, of the operating systems in question but was imposed upon it by Microsoft's domination of the market. The advent of the Internet and the company's subsequent adoption of e-business and e-commerce tools, not to mention increased office automation and computerization, necessitated the purchase and operation of a mainframe server. Again, choice of mainframe operating systems was determined by the range of third-party products available. Microsoft proved its dominance once again, leading to the adoption of Windows Server 2000. At present, the mainframe OS is Windows Server 2003 R2. At the present time, the company has 56 laptops and PC's running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition, 104 netwo... 3 Evaluation of Windows OS Windows operating systems are hardly the optimal choice for any organization. Tanenbaum (2001) and Tanenbaum and Woodhull (2006) explain that no operating systems have as much security vulnerabilities as do Windows OS's. Security vulnerabilities, a significant problem in themselves, are only complicated by the fact that Microsoft releases far fewer patches than required. Compounded by the widespread popular use of Windows OS's, security is a significant problem as hackers are, seemingly, singularly evoted to compromising systems which run a Windows OS (Tanenbaum, 2001; Tanenbaum and Woodhull, 2006). Not only are Windows operating systems replete with security vulnerabilities but, they are also costly. The implementation of a Windows operating system together with the related security software, costs organizations several thousand dollars, often running into high four or, possibly, five figure sums (Silberschatz et al., 2004). It is, in comparison to Linux OS, extremely costly. Furthermore, consequent to its domination of the market, largely evidenced in the fact that the majority of third-party software is designed for operation in a Windows environment, Microsoft is engaged in the continued increasing of OS prices, rather than their decrease, as per market demand (Silberschatz et al., 2004). The ICT Director confirmed the academic literature findings cited in the preceding, conceding that Windows operating systems were often a security "nightmare" and, in comparison to other OS's, quite costly. Mac OS X and Linux were, in his opinion, much better than Windows. Their security vulnerabilities were