UK Financial Services - Case Study on Borrowing Coursework

UK Financial Services - Case Study on Borrowing - Coursework Example Santander UK is an independent division that manages its own operations with a local management team. The bank has its headquarters in London and was opened in 2011. Santander’s 123 product range was ranked as the third best banking service in UK in 2013. During the same year, customers ranked the bank as the best financial service provider in UK in terms of customer satisfaction. The Nationwide BS is also an alternative and is a British financial organization ranked as the largest building society in the world. Although the institution specializes in mortgage loans and savings, it also provides services such as credit cards, bank accounts as well as insurance services. In February 2014, the company’s credit rating stood at A2 according to Moody and A with Fitch Ratings (Wachter, Cho & Tcha 2014, p.46). Santander UK offers The 123 Credit Card that allows customers to use the credit card along other loyalty cards. Additionally, the card allows users to cashback faster with up to three family members who reside near the client’s address. Similarly, the card is contactless and its users can make purchases wherever they come across the contactless symbol. When a customer pays his or her balance in full and on time at the end of each month, the service provides them with up to 56 days during which they can make interest free purchases (Rezaee 2011, p.124). The Capital One Aspire Elite credit card accommodates users who earn more than  £50,000 per annum. The card gives a 5% cashback on all purchases done within the first 99 days of opening the account. However, this cashback is limited to a maximum of  £200. After the above period, users earn 1% cashback for all successive purchases up to a total of  £15,000 that increases to 2% for purchases ranging from  £15,000 to  £50,000. Additionally, a 1.35% cashback is given to users who spend more than  £50,000 per annum. However, these rates are

Change using frame theory of Kurt Lewin Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Change using frame theory of Kurt Lewin - Essay Example These stages are unfreezing, movement, and refreezing stages. Unfreezing is the stage when the person needing the changes realizes and accepts that the change is needed. In the stage of movement, the suitable approaches and measures are decided that would actually bring about the changes in the needed, ensuring that the driving forces can positively influence the person towards the change (Marquis and Huston, 2009, pp.167-169). The last stage is the refreezing stage where the change stabilizes the system and hence the change gets integrated into the life of the person. Without this stage, the change would remain ineffective (Marquis and Huston, 2009, pp.167-169). The study of Lewin was focused on a deep understanding of the mind of the humans and their personalities. This is particularly suitable in regard to the fact that the factors that influence individuals vary from person to person and hence understanding of such driving forces need to be identified (Friedman, 2008, p.238). This particular theory would enable to bring about change in the person, say ABC, talked about in this study where the following steps would be considered. Step 1: Unfreezing: In this step, ABC will be tried to be communicated and understood how overweight and hypertension are harmful for the health, and that control on these factors is essential. The negative effects of ice-cream, cheese cake and heavy meals will also be explained to him. Step 2: Movement: In this step the step 1 will be performed with the help of the driving forces of ABC. The major driving forces of ABC are his family and his girlfriend. Thus his family members and his girlfriend will have to take the initiative to constantly talk to him about how he can positively influence his life avoiding the heavy meals and ice-creams. This can be achieved through offering him with other healthy foods and habits such as exercises, tours, visits to different places that he would enjoy and not indulge in bad

Equivalents In Little Man Computer

Equivalents In Little Man Computer -There are two different registers .MAR keeps address and MDR takes the content and read from the memory which was indicated by the MAR. These each memory location has an address. These address are identifiers them and the data which is stored there, only as each mailbox in the LMC has both an address. Slip of paper including the data stuffed into the slot. 9.19) Describe the steps that occur when a system receives multiple interrupts? -If we encounter with multiple interrupts, first interrupt makes a suspension of the program executing at the time, memory of programs critical parameters and transfer of control to the program which are handles the determined interrupt. After first interrupt, the second interrupt occurs. Second interrupts priority is compared to that of the original interrupt. When its priority is bigger, it gets precedence and the original interrupt program is itself suspended. In the contrary, processing of the real (original) interrupt keeps going and the new interrupt is caught on till the original interrupt program is complete. If the higher priority interrupt process is completed, the lower interrupt is processed. When any interrupts do not occur and when any interrupts result do not occur in the suspension of all CPU processing, control eventually turn back to original program which then resumes processing. Generally, multiple interrupts cause in a queue of interrupt handler programs. These p rograms are executed by priorities associated with each interrupt. 11.19)Carefully explain the differences between a client-server network and a peer-to-peer network. Compare the Networks in terms of capability and performance. -There are many big diffarence between a client-server and a peer-to-peer network. Firstly a peer-to-peer network do not has a central server. Each workstation on the network shares its files equally with the others. There is no central storage or authentication of users. On the other hand, there are allocate dedicated servers and clients in a client/server network. Via the client workstations, users can find lots of files that generally stored on the server. The server will determine that users can reach the files on the network. Peer-to-peer network is very usable because it can be installed in your homes or in a very small businesses. Employees can interact regularly there. On the other hand they are very expensive to set up and they gives almost no security. However, client-servers networks can become big to you need them. Millions of user support it and offer elaborate security measures but it is very expensive. When we compare two networks we can see that Peer-to-peer networks has: any PC is an equal participant on the network, PCs are not reliant on one PC for resources like printer, access to the network is not centrally controlled, operate on a basic PC OS, generally simpler and cheaper. Client-servers: A PC acts as the network controller, A PC controls access to network resources, network reach and security are centrally controlled, Need a special OS, generally more complicated but give the user more control. 11.21)Clearly and carefully discuss each of the advantages of clustering. -Clustering is two computers are in interconnecting and can create a solution when a problem occurred. One of the most important advantage of clustering is that if one of the computer has a fail, another computer can see the problem and automaticly recovery this problem. The users see no interrupt of access. Clustering computers for scalability include increased application performance and it has support of a greater number of users. It can cause ability to perform maintenance and upgrades with limited downtime and easily scale up your cluster to a maximum of seven active Exchange Virtual Server. 8.8)Carefully discuss what happens when a cache miss occurs.Does this result in a major slowdown in execution of the instruction? If so, Why? Cache miss means that cache controller can not do true fill the cache via the data processor acculy needs next .Cache misses slow down programs because the program can not going on its executing till the requested page is fetched from the main memory. In other words, The first cache miss will recompute the data, another request will get a cache miss and also recompute. As a result, this situation added calculation might slow down the whole system leading you to a loop. 7.14)As computer words get larger and larger,there is a law of diminishing returns:the speed of execution of real application programs does not increase and may,infact,decrease.Why do you suppose that this is so? Firstly we have to know marginal utility for understand to deminishing returns. The law of diminishing marginal utility helps people to understand the law of demand and the negative sloping demand curve. If you have something less, the more satisfaction you gain from each additional unit you consume. For instance; when you eat a chocolate bar, it taste is sweet and you were satisfied. However, when you continue to eat chocolate ,its taste started to disgusting for you and your pleasure will go decreasing. Another example can be classical System processors (CPUs). They are generally priced in an exponential manner: the fastest CPU available at any given time is so expensive, and then prices decrease quickly as you go down in speed yet, the increase in performance by getting a CPU thats a little bit faster is very slight. 7.16)Create the fetch-execute cycle for an instruction that moves a value from general purpose register1 to general purpose register2.Compare this cycle to the cycle for a LOAD instruction. What is the major advantage of the move over the LOAD? For moves: REG1 -> MAR MDR -> IR IR -> MAR MDR -> REG2 PC + 1 -> PC For load: PC -> MAR MDR -> IR IR -> MAR MDR -> A PC +1 -> PC The move fetch-execute cycle is beter because it is faster than LOAD because it occures between two registers. Registers are always faster than main memory. 8.11) a) Suppose we are trying to determine the speed op a computer that executes the Little Man instruction set. The load and store instructions each make up about 25% of the instructions in a typical program. Add, subtruct, in, and out take 10% each. The various branches each take about 5%. the halt instruction is almost never used (a maximum of once each program, of course!). Determine the average number of instructions executed each second if the clock ticks at 100 MHz. The  load  and  Store  Ã‚  take  five steps .The Add  and Subtrack also require five steps, IN and out  require four , SKIPs require four, and JUMPs require three. Then atypical  program  mix requires S = 0.25 (5  +  5) + 0.10 (5  +  5  + 4 + 4) + 0.05 (4 + 3) = 4.65 steps per  instruction  on average. If the clock ticks at  10  MHz., the number of  instructions  executed in a second, N = 10,000,000 / 4.65 = approximately 2.17  instructions  per second. b)Now suppose that the CPU is pipelined, so that each instruction is fetched while another instruction is executing. What is the avarage number of instructions that can be executed each second with the same clock in this case? With pipelining,  each  instruction  is reduced by the two steps required for the fetch. Then, N = 10,000,000 / ( 0.25 (2 + 2) + 0.10 (2 + 2 + 1 +1) + 0.05 (2 + 1) ) = approx. 5.7 million IPS 8.18) Some systems use a branch prediction method known as static branch prediction, so called because the prediction is made on the basis of the instructer, without regard to history. One possible scenario would have the system predict that all conditional backward branches are taken and all forward conditional branches are not taken. Recall your experience with this programing in the little man computer language. Would this algorithm be affective? Why or why not? What aspects of normal programming, in any programming language, support your conclusion. Little man algorithm can be affective for branch prediction method, because it is suitable for pipeling. Witout branch prediction,users have to wait till the conditional jump instruction has passed the execute stage before the next instruction can enter the fetch stage in the pipeline.You can avoid this waste of time via the branch predictor attempts. 7.6) Most of the registers in the machine have two-way copy capability; that is, you can copy to them from another register, and you can copy from them to another register. The MAR, on other hand, is always used as a destination register; you only copy to the MAR. Explain clearly why this is so. -Addresses are always moved to the MAR; there would never be a reason for an address transfer from the MAR to another register within the CPU, since the CPU controls memory transfers and is obviously aware of the memory address being used.

Beloved :: essays research papers

Toni Morrison's Beloved is set in rural Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873. The novel is centered on a woman named Sethe, who is the mother of four children, and an escapee from slavery in a Kentucky plantation 18 years ago. She lives with her daughter, Denver in a shabby house at 124 Bluestone, that they share with the ghost of a dead baby, which haunts Sethe by reminding her of past tragedies. Paul D, Sethe's new lover and a former Kentucky slave man whom Sethe takes in, helps shed light in Sethe's sad life. Also arriving at the doorstep is a mysterious, ill young woman who calls herself Beloved. Gradually, Beloved penetrates the lives of all who live in the haunted house, forcing Sethe to confront her nightmarish memories. Morrison's compelling scene in chapter 27 of when the thirty community women congregate in front of 124 Bluestone to battle the ghost haunting the house, is carefully constructed to contribute to the theme of healing and structure of the work. As Denver is awaiting transportation for her first day on the job as Bodwin's evening nurse, thirty neighborhood women pray and sing at the edge of the yard after hearing speculations from that the ghost of Sethe's dead daughter is causing the family to deteriorate. Sethe and Beloved intrigued by the music move to the porch. "Sethe was breaking a lump of ice into chunks.When the music entered the window she was wringing a cool cloth to put on Beloved's forehead.Sethe and she exchanged glances and started toward the window" (Morrison 261). As the Bodwin approaches in a cart with his horses to pick up Denver, Sethe is triggered by a flashback of when the schoolteacher and the slave catcher came to get her children 18 years ago. Racing towards the cart, Sethe releases the hand of Beloved and runs toward to crowd using the ice pick as an attachment of her hand to protect her Beloved. "He is coming into her yard and he is coming for her best thing..And if she thinks anythin g, it is no" (Morrison 262). The thirty community women whom Sethe was running toward stop her and Beloved neglected on the porch by herself disappears. "Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Beloved :: essays research papers Toni Morrison's Beloved is set in rural Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1873. The novel is centered on a woman named Sethe, who is the mother of four children, and an escapee from slavery in a Kentucky plantation 18 years ago. She lives with her daughter, Denver in a shabby house at 124 Bluestone, that they share with the ghost of a dead baby, which haunts Sethe by reminding her of past tragedies. Paul D, Sethe's new lover and a former Kentucky slave man whom Sethe takes in, helps shed light in Sethe's sad life. Also arriving at the doorstep is a mysterious, ill young woman who calls herself Beloved. Gradually, Beloved penetrates the lives of all who live in the haunted house, forcing Sethe to confront her nightmarish memories. Morrison's compelling scene in chapter 27 of when the thirty community women congregate in front of 124 Bluestone to battle the ghost haunting the house, is carefully constructed to contribute to the theme of healing and structure of the work. As Denver is awaiting transportation for her first day on the job as Bodwin's evening nurse, thirty neighborhood women pray and sing at the edge of the yard after hearing speculations from that the ghost of Sethe's dead daughter is causing the family to deteriorate. Sethe and Beloved intrigued by the music move to the porch. "Sethe was breaking a lump of ice into chunks.When the music entered the window she was wringing a cool cloth to put on Beloved's forehead.Sethe and she exchanged glances and started toward the window" (Morrison 261). As the Bodwin approaches in a cart with his horses to pick up Denver, Sethe is triggered by a flashback of when the schoolteacher and the slave catcher came to get her children 18 years ago. Racing towards the cart, Sethe releases the hand of Beloved and runs toward to crowd using the ice pick as an attachment of her hand to protect her Beloved. "He is coming into her yard and he is coming for her best thing..And if she thinks anythin g, it is no" (Morrison 262). The thirty community women whom Sethe was running toward stop her and Beloved neglected on the porch by herself disappears. "Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind.

Disposable Society: Capitalism and Consumerism Combined?

It was an interesting day of picking up otherwise â€Å"unimportant things,† noting my own urges to just dispose of varied materials, and observing my precious â€Å"living environment. † At the end of the day, it was time for sorting out other people’s â€Å"thrash† and noting my own habits plus reflecting on these various disposable items that I am supposed to learn from. These are what I have seen and what I have realized. Food items and their packaging materials come at the top of the list. Second in line, I found office and school materials – paper clips, ballpen caps, paper, etc.Then there were the miscellaneous home and personal items, various odds and ends including Styrofoam pieces from certain packaging materials, plastic containers bolts and nuts and various unidentified metal pieces, pieces of colored cloth, cigarette butts, an old plastic toy top, a CD, and a torn magazine. There are other small items not include in the list here but ba sically these are my categorizations of the disposable or â€Å"disposed† items collected in a day of walking and observing around.From one angle, it is a most convenient, socially constructed environment that we have—the so-called modern society with all its technology and other trappings. Part of the convenience lies in the disposability of many, if not all the items, that we see around us and which we utilize for meaningful survival on the planet. For example, how would we be able to store and therefore distribute food across great distances without the modern techniques of food packaging?The sanitary handling of food through these technologies however have an implication after the packaged food has been consumed: where goes the inedible packaging? There is a need for food manufacturers to factor in this question in their development of packing and packaging technology. Everyday, everyone eats, and the more we consume, the more we throw away. In 2004, a University o f Arizona study indicates that forty to fifty percent of all edible food never gets eaten. Every year $43 billion worth of edible food is estimated to be thrown away.(â€Å"US wastes half its food,† 2007) What can be done about this? To eat less? Joking aside, we have to be more responsible consumers. There’s a hungry world out there. Moreover, developing biodegradable packaging and eating utensils could be the simple long-term solution perhaps so that environmental pollution is lessened. Or how about edible utensils for a species that is constantly on the go? Perhaps someday. Ours is a society that does not sleep. 24-7 we say. Society moves every second, every day and the more we move, the more be create garbage, the more we develop disposables.Ours has become a disposable society. Even many relationships today seem disposable — fleeting and cold. In the coldness of many offices and supposed institutions of learning, many items are disposable. Containers, small items that make work less tedious like those yellow sticker-like notepads, pens, and computer printer ink cartridges, among others. In the relative warmth of some homes, still we see the signs of disposability: the Christmas tree, the decorations from the last party, the old TV guides.How would life be if we had disposable parents? Frightening thought? Indeed, but perhaps not for some who may have had the unfortunate experience of having dysfunctional parents or adults in their life. Work and family, 24-7, in modern societies, live off disposables. They make life easy and they spur more productivity and innovation. On the large downside, we are using off precious scarce resources, which can be depleted in the long run, and dirtying up the whole planet against the interest of future generations.At the heart of all this is a peculiar system that is consumerist in orientation. Consumerism is a lifestyle fanned by the current economic system, an orientation that appears negatively util itarian, unduly pleasure-oriented, and has no regard for long-term negative consequences of degrading the planet’s natural environment. As things are consumed and disposed, more production and profit is created to replace the old disposed material. What would the world be if things were not as disposable? Production could grind to a halt, as there could be less needs to fulfill.If cars, for instance, were not too disposable and new models are not made to be so appealing (as if they were needed and not simply desired), where would the car industry be now? We see this even in the use of computer technologies. As Smith (2008) notes: Creating products that aren't meant to last is a very viable business strategy as this means that consumers will need to buy replacement products†¦ In a more modern context, consider videogames. Old games, like Pong, could be played over and over again. Today's games, like the popular Grand Theft Auto series, have a beginning and an end.Once you â€Å"beat the game† you need to buy the next installment in the series. The same concept applies to computer software. If you call Microsoft and try to get support for Windows 98, a once expensive product that still works just fine on many computers, you'll be told that it is no longer supported. It's not that the product doesn't work, it's that the company wants you to buy the latest and greatest version of whatever they're selling. Is not consumerism and capitalism complementary with the reality of a disposable society? The profit seekers are only too glad we throw their products away—the sooner, the better. References http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/08/30/60minutes/rooney/main308969.shtml â€Å"US wastes half its food.† http://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/news/ng.asp?id=56376-us-wastes-half. Retrieved on 2007-10-01. Smith, L. (2008). The Disposable Society: An Expensive Place To Live. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/07/disposablesociety.asp. Retrieved on 2008-05-02.

Competencies Job Analysis

Background to the study Organizations continuously change their processes and structures due to the dynamic forces In the environment (Beer, 1980). Such forces Include; divestiture, changes in technology, working practices, employment legislation, and culture (Appear & Gondola, 1998). This transition often means change in employees' roles and relationships thus the need for systematic Job analysis procedures such as competence analysis to remove ambiguity and Improve role clarity In order to ensure consistency with the new environment.Competence analysis is that part of job analysis that is concerned with functional and behavioral analysis to determine work-based competencies and establish behavioral dimensions that affect Job performance (Armstrong and Baron, 1995). It Is a human resource tool that generates competence profiles that provide human resource baseline data which is utilized to design human resource instruments such as competence based Job descriptions that enhance role clarity in organizations.The success of competence analysis depends on the role incumbents' capacity to uncover acid knowledge and role complexities and the analyst's experience to gulled role incumbents in the process. This removes ambiguity, improves role clarity and enhances reflective learning leading to improved individual and organizational performance (Immune, boss & Buoy, 2003). Many organizations in Uganda and most Sub-Sahara Africa lack this vital human resource tool to produce generic role definitions.This has resulted Into role ambiguity consequently leading took related stress, Job dissatisfaction that reduces organizational commitment and productivity abstinently undermining the overall individual and organizational performance (Immune et a/. , 2003). 1 The importance of Involving role Incumbents In profiling competencies was neglected In the Job analysis exercise carried out In 2003 by Uganda Telecoms Limited (TTL), this culminated into role ambiguity that has persist ed to date.