Pearl River Piano Company Essay Example for Free

Pearl River Piano Company Essay Pearl River Piano Group (PRPG) was established in 1956 by bringing together six small piano shops in Guangzhou. The group of 100 employees produced only 13 pianos that year. After many attempts, Guangzhou technicians were finally satisfied with the tone color and quality of its first manufactured piano, and in a short time it was sold in Hong Kong. It would be twenty years before the factory was able to prove its potential. As a State -owned enterprise PRPG is accountable to the Guangzhou municipal government. Investments from both Yamaha and Steinway Sons have played a key role in the expansion of their production. In addition, PRPG has bought the German piano brand Ritmuller and will be expanding in the European market. Guangzhou, located at the north of the Pearl River delta, is an important trading center as well as a busy port and the capital city of the province of Guandong . The city has an area of over 16,000 square kilometers and a population of 6.7 million. Guangzhou is also one of the most important centers of foreign commerce in South China. There are a lot of interesting legends concerning its past. One of the beautiful stories which gives the city its name Goat Town says that five gods riding on five goats brought the first grain to the city. In 1959 PRPG consisted of a shed on the side of the street to repair pianos. Later a shelter was built to process the wood. At that time the pianos were carried in a cart with men walking barefoot to the port. During the tumultuous of Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, few Chinese dared to buy a piano, which symbolized the Wests decadent and bourgeois society. Learning the piano was frowned upon at that time. The factory didnt stop making pianos. However, they were lucky if they sold more than one hundred pianos a year. In the meantime Chinas one-child policy has created a culture where parents invest heavily in their childrens education. Parents like to spend money to improve their childrens education and culture and this has paid off for PRPG. Nearly 80%of their pianos are sold in China. Pianos have caught on in China. PRPGs domestic shipments climbed even throughout Asias financial crisis. During the1960s companies such as Yamaha took advantage of low labor costs to enter the global and domestic market. They were quietly followed my South Korea. For years the musical instrument business was dominated by U.S. and European companies. But this has been changing now for decades. In 1992 Tong Zhi Cheng took control of the company. He had worked for only one company during his adult life, the state-owned PRPG. When Tong took over pianos were fairly common in households in Europe and the U.S. for nearly two centuries, but in China they have been a luxury. In 1995 PRPG and Yamaha Pianos of Japan forged a $10 million joint venture. They set up a company called Yamaha-Pearl River. This company was set up to make certain Eterna models that are exported to Europe and the USA. Unlike Chinas typically backward state-owned companies, PRPG is savvy about brands and looks for new products to sell. Tong bought a mature German brand Ritmà ¼ller in 1999. In addition he has struck a deal with Steinway Sons to produce their Essex line of pianos. Today, PRPG consists of a factory spanning 2 million square feetthe worlds biggest piano plantcranks out 250 pianos every day. White-smocked workers steer computer-driven kilns that bake oak planks en masse. Individual piano keys are hand-checked for precision and balance. Five pairs of ears listen to each pianos tuning, speeding another instrument out the doorand into Americas living rooms. Just two years after Pearl River set up a U.S. sales arm, its high- quality, low-priced pianos have snared 10% of the market, and the company vows to capture a 25% share by 2005. It already has won the hearts and minds of some U.S. consumers.

In Favor of the Network Cap :: Internet Technology Essays

In Favor of the Network Cap Iowa State’s internet administrators had a problem: several computers around campus had been being used as Internet servers for illegitimate data distribution, and these select computers were using a severe amount of bandwidth on the ISU student network. The undeniable fact is that these are students illegally serving copyrighted software and media to people outside the ISU network, and they are taking up an extreme proportion of the network’s available bandwidth. Although this abuse had not yet caused consistent detrimental network problems for many users, the problem was getting worse, and AIT’s network cap decision has halted it. AIT’s 500 megabyte network cap is justified. Warez servers on the ISU campus send out a huge amount of data and slow the network down. We should be greedy about our network speed because our tuition is paying for ISU’s internet connection. It is true that an alternative method, such as filters based on complex data rate monitoring algorithms, might do a better job preventing the warez servers network abuse, and keep many intensive users from protest. But such measures are likely unfeasible, due to limitations of AIT’s network software, and time limitations of AIT network analysts. If the 500 meg cap does indeed cause real problems for a number of legitimate users, investigation of these other methods can be pursued. The 500 megabyte cap was a good and timely solution. Those who disagree with the cap argue that it would affect their legitimate network usage, such as Quake 3 game servers, or people with websites that they serve from their own computers. Instances where these users will actually peak 500 megs in a day are rare, however. Even a moderately trafficked user web site might never send 100 megabytes a day; the simple reality is that 500 megs per day is, 99% of the time, only surpassed when a user is illegally serving a large amount of data such as music, movies, retail software, or pornography to a large audience. This is precisely the user that clogs the bandwidth for those of us who need it to get work done, and this is precisely the type of network abuse that the network cap targets.

Media Studies – make a music video

For our coursework we decided to make a music video, based on our original idea of a â€Å"Jackass† style programme. Jackass is a programme of various dangerous and stupid stunts, which are all a bit different. We decided against this idea as it restricted our power to change it into an original concept. We decided to make a music video using a punk song, as these have a very broad band of what can be included. We started by making a song in the style of a well known band, Blink 182, but we changed it to incorporate our life at college. We are loosely basing it on a theme of our college life but at the different extremes. We are using what Levi Strauss called Binary Opposites, these are extreme opposites, for example a bad guy being ugly and a good guy being extremely attractive. We are using the Binary opposites of maturity and immaturity, which is a basic college idea, the mature students that do their work and the immature students that joke about and don't take things seriously. We thought of things that would be included in a punk music video, we had the idea of the band rehearsing in a music room and being very professional about it and then came up with the opposite which is practicing in the refectory and playing random objects rather than proper instruments. Another idea we had is spending time leisurely we had the idea of a group of people sitting around playing cards with the comparison of them all running around like mad brandishing water-guns and having a play fight. The next one is also a leisurely activity, playing foosball at the table in the refectory comparing it to doing reckless skating and crashing into each other. We then thought back to the programme Jackass and one of their famous sketches is the presenters being pushed around in a shopping trolley. We thought of using this but needed a binary opposite to go in it so we thought of having someone pushing the trolley quite normally with shopping in it. Also just walking around college, the band walking down a corridor and turning around a corner with them running down the corridor in the underpants and running into the girls toilet. These give off a lot of ideas of the maturity and immaturity of college. We thought of using the phrase that we had heard a lot from the show South Park, whenever there is drugs or alcohol involved, one of the characters, Chef always says â€Å"There is a time and a place for everything, and it's called college!† and thought that we could relate this to the video. Another idea we had was using the Kuleshov Effect, where we would take shots of random things such as people talking chilling out and people running around like mad and pulling faces. The themes we are using are Jackass, The Teenage years and a parody effect of Blink 182 videos. We are also going to have parts of temporal disorder in the video, using the video effects on my camcorder, this will give the impression the person watching is on drugs because the song is related to this, although we will show no shots of drugs or anybody taking drugs as this would be to suggestive, we are only giving hints of teenage life but not actually showing all angles. There is no actual storyline to have a linear narrative to the video, its more random as this is what college is like despite being a regulated day, anything can happen! The idea of using teenage life although is very common is so broad that we can change it to our own tastes and use our own characters in it. The whole video is supposed to be a joke filled, fun and non-serious which is the whole idea of punk rock, a lot of songs are just parodies. We are also going to have lots of shots of the band so people can see them and know who is playing. Bands do this so they can see who is performing and identify with them and decide who is their favourite. Sometimes they can pretend to play roles which can lead on to a narrative in the video, taking for example, Sum 41 in their â€Å"In Too Deep† video they have the lay about band, with the jocks fighting against each other in a diving contest, we want the band to win which is made in a binary opposite the baddies are made to be Speedo wearing narcissists and the band wearing any old shorts and not particularly full of themselves. This is the kind of effect we want to achieve with binary opposites.

Evolution Lab Essay - 594 Words

Associate Level Material Appendix O EvolutionLab Report |Ful | | |Date | | Use this document to report your findings from the EvolutionLab Exploration Experiment. The lab report consists of three sections: Data, Exploration, and Lab Summary. Data: copy any data, graphs, charts, or notes that you have saved in your EvolutionLab online notebook into this section. Exploration: Answer the questions. The questions in the Exploration section are the same questions in your EvolutionLab instructions. Lab Summary: Write a 100- to 200-word summary. Data To copy your data from your online†¦show more content†¦If there was no participation on a small island the Finch would become extinct. Which of the parameters is most important in determining whether a population goes extinct? Variance is most important What are at least two different sets of conditions that may lead to extinction? Small Island, no precipitation Small Island, No variance Summarize the steps you took to complete the experiment you designed. I set the parameters on precipitation to 0, and the island size to .3km. I then ran the experiment for 300 years. Summarize the result of the experiment you designed. The Finch was extinct by 2033. The beak size stayed the same until extinction. Lab Summary Address the following points in a 100-to 200-word summary: Summarize the general principles and purpose of the lab. This lab is designed to help understand how precipitation, variance, and area have a role in the evolution of a species, in this case, Finches. It also explains the different types of selection. Explain how this lab helped you better understand the topics and concepts addressed this week. This lab really helped explain the concept of evolution. Not only did it cover population grown/ decrease but it also covered the changes that animals go through to adapt to their ever changing environments. 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