Exam 17: Managing Information in a Global World

Some of the 30 employees of Del Rey Nut Co.were filling out phony time cards and cashing paycheques for hours they hadn't worked."We were paying for people who weren't there," says the owner of the Los Angeles food and promotional products company.Its owner didn't know what to do about it until he tried a system that requires employees to scan their thumbprints when punching in.Which term describes this newly added technology?

Tim is the IT security officer for an engineering firm.Tim must ensure customer records and pricing formulas are not accessible by anyone outside the company.However,the firm wants the public to be able to easily surf its website to learn what services they provide.What layer of security will Tim place between the firm and the public to prevent outside access to customer records and pricing formulas?

Narrative 17-2 For more than a century, the city of London, England, has had the worst traffic in Europe. Half the time is spent at a standstill, and the average speed is 9 mph, down from 12 mph in 1903 when traffic consisted of horses and carriages. To improve traffic, London's mayor has imposed a "Congestion Zone" fee of £5 per day for any vehicle that enters the eight square miles of central London between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays. Drivers who enter the zone but don't pay are fined from £50 to £125. First, 688 cameras were used in 203 locations to take accurate pictures of vehicles entering the zone. In general, the cameras are only 90 percent accurate in reading the licence plate numbers on the cars. But with 688 cameras in total, multiple pictures are taken of each car, and partial pictures of licence plates are matched with complete pictures, with the former discarded and the latter retained. Next, the pictures from the cameras are sent via a dedicated fibre-optic cable to an "image management store." An "image management store" is basically a huge farm of networked, redundant servers. If one server goes down, multiple backup servers run live with the same data. Doing this was needed because the city anticipated processing one million pictures a day. Once the pictures are snapped, transported via fibre-optic cable, and placed in the "image management store," the next step is "reading" the licence plate in the picture, converting it to readable text, and matching licence plate records stored in government databases. Transport of London uses software that scans digitized documents into ASCII text and then matches and compares multiple pictures of the same licence plate. For example, imagine that a licence plate is 12345678 and that the congestion cameras get three partial pictures-12345, 34567, and 5678-and one complete picture, 12345678. The software has to interpret that all four pictures were of the same vehicle; then, it has to select the last picture, 12345678, not the partial pictures, when converting the picture to text. Finally, once the licence plate is converted to text, its number is then matched with an existing licence plate in a government database. At that point, "Congestion Zone" charges are linked with whoever owns the vehicle. -Refer to the Narrative 17-2.The City of London located 688 cameras in 203 locations to take accurate pictures of vehicles entering its "Congestion Zone." Multiple pictures are taken of each car,and partial pictures of licence plates are matched with complete pictures,with the former thrown out,and the latter retained.What would the cumulative store of all the photographs be classified as?

Extranets are used to handle organizational transactions with suppliers and distributors.

What is the term for a private company network that allows employees to easily access,share,and publish information using Internet software?

Narrative 17-2 For more than a century, the city of London, England, has had the worst traffic in Europe. Half the time is spent at a standstill, and the average speed is 9 mph, down from 12 mph in 1903 when traffic consisted of horses and carriages. To improve traffic, London's mayor has imposed a "Congestion Zone" fee of £5 per day for any vehicle that enters the eight square miles of central London between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. on weekdays. Drivers who enter the zone but don't pay are fined from £50 to £125. First, 688 cameras were used in 203 locations to take accurate pictures of vehicles entering the zone. In general, the cameras are only 90 percent accurate in reading the licence plate numbers on the cars. But with 688 cameras in total, multiple pictures are taken of each car, and partial pictures of licence plates are matched with complete pictures, with the former discarded and the latter retained. Next, the pictures from the cameras are sent via a dedicated fibre-optic cable to an "image management store." An "image management store" is basically a huge farm of networked, redundant servers. If one server goes down, multiple backup servers run live with the same data. Doing this was needed because the city anticipated processing one million pictures a day. Once the pictures are snapped, transported via fibre-optic cable, and placed in the "image management store," the next step is "reading" the licence plate in the picture, converting it to readable text, and matching licence plate records stored in government databases. Transport of London uses software that scans digitized documents into ASCII text and then matches and compares multiple pictures of the same licence plate. For example, imagine that a licence plate is 12345678 and that the congestion cameras get three partial pictures-12345, 34567, and 5678-and one complete picture, 12345678. The software has to interpret that all four pictures were of the same vehicle; then, it has to select the last picture, 12345678, not the partial pictures, when converting the picture to text. Finally, once the licence plate is converted to text, its number is then matched with an existing licence plate in a government database. At that point, "Congestion Zone" charges are linked with whoever owns the vehicle. -Refer to the Narrative 17-2..Which kind of technology is used to turn the licence plate number captured by a photograph into readable text that matches licence plate records already stored in government databases?

In 1921,realtor Billy Ingram closed his real-estate company and opened White Castle restaurants to sell hamburgers.In 1921,hamburgers were thought to be made from rotten beef and not fit for human consumption.Ingram ground fresh beef in front of customers to prove it was safe and was the first to successfully sell hamburgers to the middle class.Today,Ingram is credited as the founder of the fast-food industry.He could not,however,convert new information about social and cultural changes into his strategic plans.White Castle has 330 locations,and McDonald's has 25,000 stores.What technology difficulty did White Castle have vs other fast food chains that hindered its growth rate?

What have companies that use electronic data interchange,extranets,and the Internet to gain a competitive advantage experienced?

Electronic data interchange (EDI),extranets,and the Internet have proven to provide such a competitive advantage that managers are scrambling to find ways to use them in their own companies.

According to the textbook,where is information derived from?

Chris was the first amongst the sales group to purchase a smartphone when they were introduced to the market.This gave Chris an upper hand on other sales staff as he could stay in closer touch with current and potential customers and respond to their needs more quickly.What upper hand did the smartphone give Chris?

What are the two basic methods of capturing information? Comment on the advantages and disadvantages of each.

Why do companies use firewalls?

What is the definition of data mining?

Data and information are the same as knowledge.

In which type of data mining does the user simply tell the data mining software to uncover whatever patterns and relationships it can find in a data set?

Sarah sells advertising space for a fashion magazine.To schedule a client's advertisement,Sarah is able to access the company's media department when she is with the client.She can place the ad right into a magazine page so the client can see exactly what it will look like and where on the page it will be positioned.What technology does Sarah use to accomplish this?

When you purchase a book or CD on Amazon.com,as soon as you put your selection in the shopping cart,you are offered a series of other items that people who made the same purchase as you did also bought.Which pattern of data mining is Amazon.com making use of?

Ken owns a large financial planning and insurance company.He has records of over 1,000 clients and all of the purchase decisions.Ken wants to determine if a relationship exists between financial planning decisions and insurance purchases made by his customers.What technology will help Ken accomplish this?

Define data mining.Briefly describe the two general approaches to data mining.