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Gap Inc. Organizational Research

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By Jeff Stats

Gap Inc. is a leading international clothing retailer offering attire, accessories and personal care products for men, women, children and babies. They produce under brands such as Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy. Also Gap brand includes Gap, GapKids, babyGap, GapBody and Gap Outlet. They have their headquarters in the San Francisco Bay Area, the product development offices are located in New York City, while distribution operations and offices dealing with sourcing activities can be found around the globe.

Gap Inc. has created a “Code of business conduct” in which essential issues of conducting a business, employees’ behaviors and corporate culture are outlined. It contains the letter to employees which states the main principles that operate in Gap Inc. The company was originally founded and to this day is maintaining the principle of conducting business in a responsible, honest and ethical manner. Currently Gap Inc. remains committed to setting and meeting the highest standards of business conduct, because for them nothing less will do. They also make such commitments to their shareholders, neighbors, customers and one another not only because it is a legal duty, but because it’s the proper thing to do. The company claims that their reputation depends on the integrity and excellence in everything they do. Clearly such statements shape company’s overall vision of how they operate and what they expect from their employees. This code was designed to promote an ethical work environment, with all the necessary issues descried in it such as reporting the violations, responsibilities, laws that apply to different countries in which the company operates.

Gap Inc. was founded in 1969 by Donald and Doris Fisher in San Francisco, California. When they started there was only one store and a couple of employees. Today, they are one of the world’s largest specialty retailers, with fiscal 2004 revenues of $16.3 billion. They are producing and selling clothes to men, women, kids and babies all over the world. Such brands as Gap and Banana Republic are aimed at customers with higher incomes who are willing to buy high quality clothes, although it is not priced too high. Old Navy brand was created to fit the niche of customers such as families willing to have good looking and quality attire, but pay less for it. Many people shopping at Gap are customers in Old Navy as well, because the company’s signature in making clothes can be easily traced. In recent years the company has began production of colognes and other toiletries which are suitable for different seasonal collections and can be matched with certain clothes. Thus Gap stores, offer a full range of products from underwear and perfumes to sports apparel and winter clothes.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGWsiymG6G8[/youtube]

As already was mentioned the Gap Inc. customers are successful people who are looking for high quality and reasonable prices. With Old Navy brand it is more of a younger audience with less income to spend, Gap itself aims at middle class buyers wanting a stylish look and excellent customer service treatment. Banana Republic brand is the most expensive and the most chic one out of all presented by Gap Inc. People shopping at Banana Republic are looking for latest styles, comfort and still reasonable prices for the quality they receive. Generally company’s customers are young and middle aged people eager to try something new every season, enthusiastic about color and inspirational design.

Gap’s competitors for apparel, accessories, and personal care products are such famous American brands as Abercrombie & Fitch, American Eagle Outfitters, DKNY, Polo Ralph Lauren, and Tommy Hilfiger. Those companies are manufacturing similar products, although they are targeting a slightly different customer market. Gap however has to take a lot of effort to stay aloof among them with pricing policies, quality and design in order to retain their customers and try to gain new ones. The external threat from the new entries is a minor one because of number of reasons. The clothing/accessories market is quite difficult to enter, and it takes time to establish a brand name and gain customer loyalty and trust, so in this instance Gap is almost safe at least for some time.

Gap Inc. has stores around the globe and naturally employs people from many foreign countries. While manufacturing and distributing its products, Gap Inc.’s Sourcing and Logistics group, along with their buying agents, draw up production schedules and place orders with approved third-party factories. This process takes place in more than 50 countries where Gap products are made. Clearly Gap involves many intermediaries in making its product, designating much power and responsibilities to the factories and suppliers. It purchases from more than 1,000 vendors in 3,600 factories in more than 50 countries and approximately 13 percent of its products is sourced from China alone. The company also has a comprehensive and publicly available Code of Vendor Conduct and has instituted excellent internal monitoring programs with vendor compliance officers. Gap company was the first U.S. apparel manufacturer that developed an independent monitoring program by agreeing to let representatives of local nongovernmental groups monitor its supplier factories in El Salvador. Gap also supports human rights initiatives through its supplier education programs and a number of other projects and is a participant in the UN Global Compact. Social responsibility for Gap Inc. is a big concern and it engages in many practices to help solve environmental problems. It has number of helpful environmental projects, including a unique, environmentally efficient designed building at its headquarters. Their programs incorporate recycling initiatives for stores, use of wood from certified-sustainable forests for the flooring at its stores, as well as energy efficiency in lighting. Company’s considerations with environmental issues are also addressed in store design and construction; Gap Inc. also does not conduct or endorse animal testing on its products.

Company’s internal policies are accordingly well designed and suited to meet their employees’ expectations. It offers paid volunteer time for headquarters employees, and ensures full medical and dental benefits for domestic partners, as well as a various family-oriented benefits. Throughout the company women hold a considerable number of management positions, including the two women who are among the company’s top eight executives; there are also four women on the 15-member board of directors. Among programs supported by Gap are those focusing on helping unappreciated youth, with an emphasis on academic achievement. Health and human services, including HIV/AIDS prevention and education, community services and the arts are areas of company’s interest and sponsorship.

Bob Fisher became new Chairman of Gap Inc. in 2004 and Paul Pressler was named CEO in 2002 after Millard Drexler retired. The overall leadership style of the company may be characterized as participative leadership where all people are taking active part in building company’s future. Responsibilities are strictly outlined although can be delegated to other people in case of their approval to do so; ethical and lawful approach to conducting business and treating employees are major necessities outlines in the company policy.

About the Author: Jeff Stats is a writer at essay writing service Mindrelief.net. Order quality custom essays from our essay service.

Source: isnare.com

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Ten-year-old computer glitch prevents delivery of 1,380 Canadian health results

Sunday, May 24, 2009

The Saskatoon Health Region in Saskatchewan, Canada recently discovered a fax machine problem which had not relayed almost 1,500 X-rays, Computed tomography (CT) and Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans, ultrasounds, and other medical imaging test results to doctors.

The fax machine is part of the automated Radiology Information System. An audit revealed that medical diagnostic tests involving results dating back a decade have been affected by the broken fax machine.

On May 6, a doctor called the health region officials seeking follow up on a patient’s report. Staff who delved into it, found that the report was not sent from the system.

Now, two weeks later, this same patient has still not been contacted by the health region.

“It has taken some time to work with the patient’s physician. That was important — to get more information and more detail because we want that patient’s physician to be involved in the discussion with the patient,” Dr. David Poulin, vice-president of medical affairs for The Saskatoon Health Region, said. “This is a system error and that’s just what it was — an error. This doesn’t reflect in any way on the quality of work regional staff have done and continue to do.”

An internal review revealed that, of 2.2 million diagnostic tests performed, at least 1,380 had not been sent out by the malfunctioning fax machine.

The health region will embark on contacting each of the 1,380 patients and their physicians to make sure that the results have been received and if any health care was compromised.

Patients can also contact the health region via a newly set up hotline to make enquiries.

“We think it would actually be good practice if physician offices could have a system to check whether they have received important reports,” said Poulin, “The common practice appears to be in many doctors’ offices, particularly family physician offices, that they don’t respond to the report until it arrives. So, they basically are waiting for the report to arrive in their office by fax and it’s at that point that they look at it and decide what action to take.”

City Hospital, St. Paul’s Hospital and Royal University Hospital were the three city hospitals affected. Saskatoon has a population of roughly 233,923, and the hospitals also serve the surrounding rural areas.

Ironically the faulty fax machine was discovered the same week that provincial medical officials began to review approximately 70,000 radiology tests conducted in Yorkton. Officials there doubt the competence of the physician who first interpreted the radiology results.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Ten-year-old_computer_glitch_prevents_delivery_of_1,380_Canadian_health_results&oldid=826425”

North Korea offers amnesty to criminals, marking important holidays

Friday, January 21, 2022

As reported by the state-operated media outlet Voice of Korea on January 20, the North Korean government has issued a decree granting amnesty to those found guilty of “crimes against the country and the people”. The decree was instituted to mark former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il’s upcoming birth anniversaries.

According to Voice of Korea, the decree was issued by the Standing Committee of the Supreme People’s Assembly as decree No. 820. The decree will be effective as of January 30. The Supreme People’s Assembly is “the highest organ of State power” in the country, as stated in the North Korean constitution.

The birth anniversary of founding leader Kim Il-sung, titled the “Day of the Sun”, is held yearly on April 15, and the birth anniversary of second leader Kim Jong-il is held on February 16 under the name of “Day of the Shining Star”. Both dates serve as important holidays in the North, with grandiose celebrations having taken place in previous years.

According to an article published by The Korea Herald, this pardoning is a way “to promote social unity amid economic hardships” and “to boost loyalty for the leader [Kim Jong-un]”, linking COVID-19 border closures to the North’s dire economic situation.

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Let’s Get Busy Saving The Public Schools

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By Bruce Deitrick Price

Many pundits note that our public schools are sunk in mediocrity. Bill Gates concluded the schools are so bad they threaten the country’s economic future.

Less often noted is the obtuseness of so much that goes on in the schools. Professors of education seem to prefer flimsy theories and counter-productive methods. Then, to excuse the pervasive failure, the elite educators blame parents, kids, teachers, TV, popular culture, computers, and everything but their theories.

Rooting out all these bad ideas is the simplest, most inexpensive way to improve the schools:

The kingfish of dumb since 1935 is Whole Word, which demands that children memorize thousands of words as shapes. Can’t be done. Rudolf Flesch explained the craziness in 1955; but our Education Establishment went right on. Still today, little kids are forced to memorize sight-words and to guess, instead of simply learning to read.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARB1q4FhJMk[/youtube]

(Reading is that one essential skill that all students must acquire early in their education, or everything else will suffer. But guess what? Our Education Establishment came up with a reading pedagogy that guaranteed tens of millions of children would never become fluent readers. We should all be endlessly fascinated by bad reading theory. It tells us so much about the people who concocted it.)

The next bogus pedagogy was called New Math and, later, Reform Math. The common denominator in the different curricula (different in that they have different names on the textbooks) is that children must wade through a hodgepodge of simple arithmetic and advanced high school or college topics. Reform Math introduced the idea of ‘spiraling’ from topic to topic, even as mastery is more or less forbidden. Reform Math does not teach much math, so calculators are mandatory.

Another bad mutation is called Constructivism, a fad that now appears in all courses for all ages. In essence, teachers are not allowed to teach; they must be facilitators. Simply put, students are not allowed to be taught, precisely the activity that schools have engaged in for thousands of years. Instead, little kids who hardly know how to tie their shoes are supposed to discover the knowledge that an educated person should know. Puzzle over how children will ever learn that the United States has 50 states, Paris is the capital of France, or Mississippi is the name of a long river — unless a teacher tells them. In fact, children need as much basic information taught to them as quickly as can be managed; this natural development is blocked by Constructivism.

Still another clunker is Self-Esteem. And doesn’t this sound benign and helpful? In practice, kids are fussed over, making them complacent and lazy. Worse, Self-Esteem is used to justify curtailing the curriculum to the point where every student can earn an A. This dumbing-down is done in the name of enhancing Self-Esteem. But it’s a ruse. Genuine Self-Esteem comes by taking on difficult tasks and doing them successfully.

And so it goes throughout the school day. Cooperative Learning dictates that children work in groups; as a result, they don’t learn to think for themselves. Multiculturalism demands that children study far-off cultures, so there’s little time to learn about their own.

If any of these methods ever seems elusive and difficult to describe, give credit where it is due. Our top educators seem to spend careers devising ever more verbose scaffolding for less and less substantial concepts.

Toss out the clunkers, return to education as the transmission of knowledge, and we will have instant improvement.

About the Author: Bruce Deitrick Price is the founder of

Improve-Education.org

, an education and intellectual site. One focus is reading; see “42: Reading Resources.” Also see “56: Top 10 Worst Ideas in Education.” Price is an author, artist and poet. His fifth book is “THE EDUCATION ENIGMA–What Happened to American Education.”

Source:

isnare.com

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Wave kills two on Mediterranean cruise

Thursday, March 4, 2010

Two passengers on a Mediterranean cruise ship were killed by a rogue wave on Wednesday. The incident occurred off the north-east coast of Spain. The ship, named the Louis Majesty, had left from Barcelona, Spain and was headed for Genoa, Italy.

The giant wave broke the windows on deck five of the ship, resulting in two fatalities as well as another fourteen injuries. The two victims were German and Italian citizens. Following the incident, the ship returned to Barcelona. The ship, carrying over 1300 passengers, is expected to continue its journey after the injured are moved from the ship for treatment.

According to French officials, there had been no previous trouble with the ship. The waves were believed to have been 26 feet (8 meters) high. The ship is 660 feet (200 meters) long, and had 732 cabins onboard.

Retrieved from “https://en.wikinews.org/w/index.php?title=Wave_kills_two_on_Mediterranean_cruise&oldid=4498852”

To Regulate Or To Ban Online Gambling Games

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Gambling has always been a part of our gaming since times immemorial, needless to remind the Indian epic, the Mahabharatha. Since then it took so many forms and shapes to be an integral part of gaming. Recently, and especially post lockdown, there has been a huge shift in the Indian gaming industry. The improvement in infrastructure facilities, the increase in internet consumption by people and the exposure for a wide range of games opened the door for online gambling and betting. This has seen the evolution of several new games like online rummy, poker, cricket fantasy games, etc and given a chance to entrepreneurs across the world to expand their territory in the Indian market with the help of game outsourcing companies like RubixQ. But are all of them legal?

In July 2020, a 20-year-old parlour employee who makes tattoos had to hang himself for not being able to pay the 20,000 that he lost on a gaming app. This isn’t the first time such incidents happened. The addiction to gambling, be it offline or online, has the capability of ruining a person’s life and eventually after the debts mount upon them, it can lead to any drastic decisions like suicides. It is the reason why high courts across the states like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra, decided to ban online gambling games proactively before the number of such incidents rises. In September 2020, Andhra Pradesh government declared online gambling to be illegal. Instead of banning them, it made such activities an offence and people can be prosecuted when caught playing. These moves are made in a manner to scare people from gambling than preventing them altogether.

The Indian gaming laws categorize games broadly into two types – the game of skill and the game of chances wherein the latter comes into the gambling. This is the reason why Google had to pull out Paytm from the play store a while back, for violating the gambling policies and being the games of chances, whereas apps like Dream 11 are considered as games of skill. The Central government has no jurisdiction for gambling, the legislation of betting and gamblings lies in the hands of state governments and most of them have an exemption for games of skill. Recently Maharashtra government went to the Supreme Court to redefine what a game of skill is and what a game of chance is, and where the fantasy games fall under. The supreme court took up this and asked for a detailed report on it. If it passes the rule in the favour of fantasy games, that industry blooms like never before. Otherwise, they have to shut down.

Also, there’s another discussion floating around for having caps on gambling like 100 or 200 a day and there’ll be a cap for winning too accordingly. When the winnings are huge like in lakhs, the cap can increase up to 5,000 – 10,000. But then, the argument here is for the category of taxation for these games. If the winnings are in lakhs, though the companies are paying GSTs, the tax paid by winners is considerably less. So, they are looking at increasing this to a higher rate of tax for these activities.

According to research, the gaming industry in India is almost worth $150billions and in the worst-case scenario, corporates involved in it would only want regulations, not bans. For example, horse racing bettings are regulated, casinos in Goa and Sikkim are regulated. There’s another angle to this whole debate – psychological impact. There was a case where a college student of age 23, got addicted to gambling and eventually caught stealing, lying, losing control to end gambling sessions, getting unreasonably angry, etc. According to health experts, gambling is a behavioural addiction and it has its side effects of eating into the regular areas of functions. It can result in anxiety, impulse control issues, anger management issues, etc. So, with mental health being at stake, the ban is justified.

In economics point of view, legalization of these games with nuanced regulations and reasonable taxations can be effective, as governments can then have control over those activities. Otherwise, gamblings can happen in any form or manner and hoard a lot of black money that go unnoticed. There are some international examples like the UK Gambling Act of 2005 where they have a licensing regime for the 4-5 game categories. However, considering the facts that the industry is still in a nascent stage and the huge number of players, it is a strenuous task for governments to regulate the game of chances.

OpenSync Interview – syncing on the free desktop

Friday, May 19, 2006

This interview intends to provide some insight into OpenSync, an upcoming free unified data synchronization solution for free software desktops such as KDE, commonly used as part of the GNU/Linux operating system.

Hi Cornelius, Armin and Tobias. As you are now getting close to version 1.0 of OpenSync, which is expected to become the new synchronisation framework for KDE and other free desktops, we are quite interested in the merits it can provide for KDE users and for developers, as well as for the Open Source Community as a whole. So there’s one key-question before I move deeper into the details of OpenSync:

What does OpenSync accomplish, that no one did before?

Cornelius:

First of all it does its job of synchronizing data like addressbooks and calendars between desktop applications and mobile devices like PDAs and cell phones.

But the new thing about OpenSync is that it isn’t tied to a particular device or a specific platform. It provides an extensible and modular framework that is easy to adopt for application developers and people implementing support for syncing with mobile devices.

OpenSync is also independent of the desktop platform. It will be the common syncing backend for at least KDE and GNOME and other projects are likely to join. That means that the free desktop will have one common syncing solution. This is something really new.

How do the end-users profit from using synching solutions that interface with OpenSync as framework?

Cornelius:

First, the users will be able to actually synchronize all their data. By using one common framework there won’t be any “missing links”, where one application can sync one set of devices and another application a different one. With OpenSync all applications can sync all devices.

Second, the users will get a consistent and common user interface for syncing across all applications and devices. This will be much simpler to use than the current incoherent collection of syncing programs you need if you have more than the very basic needs.

How does OpenSync help developers with coding?

Cornelius:

It’s a very flexible and well-designed framework that makes it quite easy for developers to add support for new devices and new types of data. It’s also very easy to add support for OpenSync to applications.

The big achievement of OpenSync is that it hides all the gory details of syncing from the developers who work on applications and device support. That makes it possible for the developers to concentrate on their area of expertise without having to care what’s going on behind the scenes.

I have written quite a lot of synchronization code in the past. Trust me, it’s much better, if someone just takes care of it for you, and that’s what OpenSync does.

Tobias:

Another point to mention is the python wrapper for opensync, so you are not bound to C or C++, but can develop plugins in a high level scripting language.

Why should producers of portable devices get involved with your team?

Cornelius:

OpenSync will be the one common syncing solution for the free desktop. That means there is a single point of contact for device manufacturers who want to add support for their devices. That’s much more feasible than addressing all the different applications and solutions we had before. With OpenSync it hopefully will become interesting for manufacturers to officially support Linux for their devices.

Do you also plan to support applications of OpenSync in proprietary systems like OSX and Windows?

Cornelius:

OpenSync is designed to be cross-platform, so it is able to run on other systems like Windows. How well this works is always a question of people actually using and developing for this system. As far as I know there isn’t a real Windows community around OpenSync yet. But the technical foundation is there, so if there is somebody interested in working on a unified syncing solution on Windows, everybody is welcome to join the project.

What does your synchronisation framework do for KDE and for KitchenSync in particular?

Cornelius:

OpenSync replaces the KDE-specific synchronization frameworks we had before. Even in KDE we had several separate syncing implementations and with OpenSync we can get replace them with a common framework. We had a more generic syncing solution in KDE under development. This was quite similar from a design point of view to OpenSync, but it never got to the level of maturity we would have needed, because of lack of resources. As OpenSync fills this gap we are happy to be able to remove our old code and now concentrate on our core business.

What was your personal reason for getting involved with OpenSync?

Cornelius:

I wrote a lot of synchronization code in the past, which mainly came from the time where I was maintaining KOrganizer and working on KAddressBook. But this always was driven by necessity and not passion. I wanted to have all my calendar and contact data in one place, but my main objective was to work on the applications and user interfaces handling the data and not on the underlying code synchronizing the data.

So when the OpenSync project was created I was very interested. At GUADEC in Stuttgart I met with Armin, the maintainer of OpenSync, and we talked about integrating OpenSync with KDE. Everything seemed to fit together quite well, so at Linuxtag the same year we had another meeting with some more KDE people. In the end we agreed to go with OpenSync and a couple of weeks later we met again in Nuernberg for three days of hacking and created the KDE frontend for OpenSync. In retrospect it was a very pleasant and straightforward process to get where we are now.

Armin:

My reason to get involved (or better to start) OpenSync was my involvement with its predecessor Multisync. I am working as a system administrator for a small consulting company and so I saw some problems when trying to find a synchronization solution for Linux.

At that point I joined the Multisync project to implement some plugins that I thought would be nice to have. After some time I became the maintainer of the project. But I was unhappy with some technical aspects of the project, especially the tight coupling between the syncing logic and the GUI, its dependencies on GNOME libraries and its lack of flexibility.

Tobias:

Well, I have been a KDE PIM developer for several years now, so there was no way around getting in touch with synchronization and KitchenSync. Although I liked the idea of KitchenSync, I hated the code and the user interface […]. So when we discussed to switch to OpenSync and reimplementing the user interface, I volunteered immediately.

Can you tell us a bit about your further plans and ideas?

Cornelius:

The next thing will be the 1.0 release of OpenSync. We will release KitchenSync as frontend in parallel.

Armin:

There are of course a lot of things on my todo and my wishlist for opensync. For the near future the most important step is the 1.0 release, of course, where we still have some missing features in OpenSync as well as in the plugins.

One thing I would really like to see is a thunderbird plugin for OpenSync. I use thunderbird personally and would really like to keep my contacts up to date with my cellular, but I was not yet able to find the time to implement it.

Tobias:

One thing that would really rock in future versions of OpenSync is an automatic hardware detection mechanism, so when you plugin your Palm or switch on your bluetooth device, OpenSync will create a synchronization group automatically and ask the user to start syncing. To bring OpenSync to the level of _The Syncing Solution [tm]_ we must reduce the necessary configuration to a minimum.

What was the most dire problem you had to face when creating OpenSync and how did you face it?

Cornelius:

Fortunately the problems which I personally would consider to be dire are solved by the implementation of OpenSync which is well hidden from the outside world and [they are] an area I didn’t work on 😉

Armin:

I guess that I am the right person to answer this question then 🙂

The most complicated part of OpenSync is definitely the format conversion, which is responsible for converting the format of one device to the format that another device understands.

There are a lot of subsystems in this format conversion that make it so complex, like conversion path searching, comparing items, detection of mime types and last but not least the conversion itself. So this was a hard piece of work.

What was the greatest moment for you?

Cornelius:

I think the greatest moment was when, after three days of concentrated hacking, we had a first working version of the KDE frontend for OpenSync. This was at meeting at the SUSE offices in Nuernberg and we were able to successfully do a small presentation and demo to a group of interested SUSE people.

Armin:

I don’t remember a distinct “greatest moment”. But what is a really great feeling is to see that a project catches on, that other people get involved, use the code you have written and improve it in ways that you haven’t thought of initially.

Tobias:

Hmm, also hacking on OpenSync/KitcheSync is much fun in general, the greatest moment was when the new KitchenSync frontend synced two directories via OpenSync the first time. But it was also cool when we managed to get the IrMC plugin working again after porting it to OpenSync.

As we now know the worst problem you faced and your greatest moment, the only one missing is: What was your weirdest experience while working on OpenSync?

Cornelius:

Not directly related to OpenSync, but pretty weird was meeting a co-worker at the Amsterdam airport when returning from the last OpenSync meeting. I don’t know how high the chance is to meet somebody you know on a big random airport not related at all to the places where you or the other person live, but it was quite surprising.

Tobias:

Since my favorite language is C++, I was always confused how people can use plain C for such a project, half the time your are busy with writing code for allocating/freeing memory areas. Nevertheless Armin did a great job and he is always a help for solving strange C problems 🙂

Now I’d like to move on to some more specific questions about current and planned abilities of OpenSync. As first, I’ve got a personal one:

I have an old iPod sitting around here. Can I or will I be able to use a program utilizing OpenSync to synchronize my calendars, contacts and music to it?

Cornelius:

I’m not aware of any iPod support for OpenSync up to now, but if it doesn’t exist yet, why not write it? OpenSync makes this easy. This is a chance for everybody with the personal desire to sync one device or another to get involved.

Armin:

I dont think that there is iPod support yet for OpenSync. But it would definitely be possible to use OpenSync for this task. So if someone would like to implement an iPod plugin, I would be glad to help 🙂

Which other devices do you already support?

Cornelius:

At this time, OpenSync supports Palms, SyncML and IrMC capable devices.

Which programs already implement OpenSync and where can we check back to find new additions?

Cornelius:

On the application side there is support for Evolution [GNOME] and Kontact with KitchenSync [KDE] on the frontend side and the backend side and some more. I expect that further applications will adopt OpenSync once the 1.0 version is released.

Armin:

Besides kitchensync there already are a command line tool and a port of the multisync GUI. Aside from the GUIs, I would really like to see OpenSync being used in other applications as well. One possibility for example would to be integrate OpenSync into Evolution to give users the possibility to synchronize their devices directly from this application. News can generally be found on the OpenSync web site www.opensync.org.

It is time to give the developers something to devour, too. I’ll keep this as a short twice-fold technical dive before coming to the takeoff question, even though I’m sure there’s information for a double-volume book on technical subleties.

As first dive: How did you integrate OpenSync in KitchenSync, viewed from the coding side?

Cornelius:

OpenSync provides a C interface. We wrapped this with a small C++ library and put KitchenSync on top. Due to the object oriented nature of the OpenSync interfaces this was quite easy.

Recently I also started to write a D-Bus frontend for OpenSync. This also is a nice way to integrate OpenSync which provides a wide variety of options regarding programming languages and system configurations.

And for the second, deeper dive:

Can you give us a quick outline of those inner workings of OpenSync, from the developers view, which make OpenSync especially viable for application in several different desktop environments?

Cornelius:

That’s really a question for Armin. For those who are interested I would recommend to have a look at the OpenSync website. There is a nice white paper about the internal structure and functionality of OpenSync.

Armin:

OpenSync consists of several parts:

First there is the plugin API which defines what functions a plugin has to implement so that OpenSync can dlopen() it. There are 2 types of plugins:

A sync plugin which can synchronize a certain device or application and which provides functions for the initialization, handling the connection to a device and reading and writing items. Then there is a format plugin which defines a format and how to convert, compare and detect it.

The next part is a set of helper functions which are provided to ease to programming of synchronization plugins. These helper functions include things like handling plugin config files, HashTables which can be used to detect changes in sets of items, functions to detect when a resync of devices is necessary etc.

The syncing logic itself resides in the sync engine, which is a separate part. The sync engine is responsible for deciding when to call the connect function of a plugin, when to read or write from it. The engine also takes care of invoking the format conversion functions so that each plugin gets the items in its required format.

If you want more information and details about the inner workings of OpenSync, you should really visit the opensync.org website or ask its developers.

To add some more spice for those of our readers, whose interest you just managed to spawn (or to skyrocket), please tell us where they can get more information on the OpenSync Framework, how they can best meet and help you and how they can help improving sync-support for KDE by helping OpenSync.

Cornelius:

Again, the OpenSync web site is the right source for information. Regarding the KDE side, the kde-pim@kde.org mailing list is probably the right address. At the moment the most important help would be everything which gets the OpenSync 1.0 release done.

[And even though] I already said it, it can’t be repeated too often: OpenSync will be the one unified syncing solution for the free desktop. Cross-device, cross-platform, cross-desktop.

It’s the first time I feel well when thinking about syncing 😉.

Armin:

Regarding OpenSync, the best places to ask would be the opensync mailing lists at sourceforge or the #opensync irc channel on the freenode.net servers.

There are always a lot of things where we could need a helping hand and where we would be really glad to get some help. So everyone who is interested in OpenSync is welcome to join.

Many thanks for your time!

Cornelius:

Thanks for doing the interview. It’s always fun to talk about OpenSync, because it’s really the right thing.

Armin:

Thank you for taking your time and doing this interview. I really appreciate your help!

Tobias:

Thanks for your work. Publication and marketing is something that is really missing in the open source community. We have nice software but nobody knows 😉

Further Information on OpenSync can be found on the OpenSync Website: www.opensync.org

This Interview was done by Arne Babenhauserheide in April 2006 via e-mail and KOffice on behalf of himself, the OpenSource Community, SpreadKDE.org and the Dot (dot.kde.org).It was first published on the Dot and is licensed under the cc-attribution-sharealike-license.A pdf-version with pictures can be found at opensync-interview.pdf (OpenDocument version: opensync-interview.odt)

This article features first-hand journalism by Wikinews members. See the collaboration page for more details.

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Google buys DoubleClick for $3.1 billion

Friday, April 13, 2007

Google has announced its intention of taking over the Internet advertising agency DoubleClick in a deal worth $3.1 billion. DoubleClick has also confirmed the deal and hopes it will be completed before the end of 2007.

Rumours of a takeover offer for DoubleClick had been circulating, with Microsoft, Time Warner and Yahoo! all reportedly interested in making an offer for the company.

Six months ago, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion. The current takeover is the largest in Google’s history. In a press release, Google says the acquisition “will enable Google to extend our ad network and develop deeper relationships with our partners. This new partnership represents a tremendous opportunity for us at Google to broaden and deepen our inventory of available ads and to better serve both our publishers and users.”

DoubleClick provides software for Internet advertising and brings together advertisers, advertisement agencies and website developers. DoubleClick is currently owned by the majority share-holders Hellman & Friedman, a private equity firm, with JMI Management also having a large stake in the company.

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Pet Food Processing Market Growth Factors, Ongoing Trends And Key Players 2026

Find Out More About:
Frenchie Supplements

The pet food processing market size is projected to grow from USD 4.4 billion in 2019 to USD 6.2 billion by 2026, recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.0% during the forecast period. The increasing trend of pet food product premiumization and the rising acceptance of pets across regions are factors that are projected to drive the growth of the pet food processing market. Furthermore, acceptance of pets as family members among pet owners, increasing disposable income, and rising urbanization are factors that are also projected to drive the market growth.

Key Players in the Market:

Andritz Group (Austria)
Buhler Holding AG (Switzerland)
The Middleby Corporation (US)
GEA Group (Germany)
Baker Perkins Ltd. (UK)
Clextral SAS (France)
Precision Food Innovations (US)

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The dog food segment is estimated to account for the largest share in the market.

The dog food segment is estimated to dominate the pet food processing market, on the basis of application, in terms of value, in 2019. Dog food is witnessing increased demand due to the increasing dog population across regions. The increasing trend of pet humanization has also encouraged dog owners to accept them as companions due to their friendliness, which is projected to drive the demand for premium dog food products, thus contributing to the growth of the overall market.

The dry segment is projected to account for the largest share during the forecast period.

Dry pet food production is increasing, and its sales are projected to remain high in developing countries, such as China, Russia, and Poland. The demand for dry pet food products is increasing due to the cost-effectiveness of dry form, convenience in handling, and ease of purchasing in bulk. In addition, with the increase use of extrusion technologies, dry pet food production remains high. These factors are projected to drive the demand for pet food processing solutions.

The forming equipment segment in the market is projected to dominate the market.

The forming equipment segment is estimated to dominate the market in 2019. Pet food processors are shifting their focus toward extrusion-based manufacturing. The introduction of new extrusion technologies and its use in the pet food sector are factors that are projected to drive the demand for forming equipment in the market.

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The Asia Pacific region is projected to be the fastest-growing market for pet food processing during the forecast period.

The Asia Pacific region is projected to be the fastest-growing market for pet food processing during the forecast period. The region witnesses a high demand for pet food products due to the increasing acceptance of pets. The rising concerns among pet owners regarding the health of pets have led to an increase in demand for high-quality pet food products that require specialized machinery. These factors are projected to create growth opportunities for equipment manufacturers in countries such as India, China, Japan, and Thailand.

Wikinews interviews specialists on China, Iran, Russia support for al-Assad

Monday, September 23, 2013

Over the past week, diplomatic actions have averted — or, at least delayed — military strikes on Syria by the United States. Wikinews sought input from a range of international experts on the situation; and, the tensions caused by Russia’s support for the al-Assad regime despite its apparent use of chemical weapons.

File:Ghouta chemical attack map.svg

Tensions in the country increased dramatically, late August when it was reported between 100 and 1,300 people were killed in an alleged chemical attack. Many of those killed appeared to be children, with some of the pictures and video coming out of the country showing — according to witnesses — those who died from apparent suffocation; some foaming at the mouth, others having convulsions.

Amongst Syria’s few remaining allies, Iran, China, and Russia continue to oppose calls for military intervention. In an effort to provide a better-understanding of the reasoning behind their ongoing support, the following people were posed a range of questions.

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