Custom «Questions» Essay Paper Sample

Briefly Explain Following Questions

1. Briefly Explain the Idea of Nexus. Why it is an important concept in State and International Taxation? In what way it is similar to Jurisdiction?

Nexus means the degree of contact between a taxpayer and a state necessary to establish Jurisdiction. Engaging in an activity or a business transaction for financial gain qualifies as doing and results in nexus in many states. Property ownership, derivation of income from sources within the state, or presence of an office may also produce nexus. The US Constitution restricts states jurisdictional powers with the commerce clause that states to the effect that the Congress shall have power to regulate commerce among several states. This effectively limits taxation by a state authority to activities with a substantial nexus to that state (Foth, 2007).

The nexus rule indicates preference for a particular jurisdiction, thereby solving positive conflicts of jurisdiction. Moreover, the nexus rule can be employed to resolve a negative conflict of jurisdiction as well. Most often, the nexus rule relates to the right of states to exercise their jurisdiction (Inazumi, 2005).

2. Briefly explain the difference between subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction.

Subject-matter jurisdiction is the authority of a court to hear specific type of cases or cases that relate to a particular subject matter, on the other hand, personal jurisdiction is the authority of a court to deliver ruling against a particular defendant. For example, bankruptcy court only can only render judgment to bankruptcy cases. Personal jurisdiction will be established if the persons implicated in the litigation are legal residents of the state or are currently in the state in which the lawsuit has been filed, or in condition that the transaction in subject has a substantial link to the state.

3. Describe the difference between Desktop PC and a computer that is suitable as a Web Server.

Servers are oriented to carrying large workloads, which may consist of either single complex application or handling many small jobs. These applications are based on software from another source, but are often modified or customized for a particular function. Servers are built from the same technology as desktop computers, but provide for greater expandability of both computing and input/output capacity. In general, servers place great emphasis on dependability because a crush is usually more costly than it would be on a single user desktop computer.

Servers span the widest range in cost and capability. At the low end, a server may be a little more than a desktop computer. These low end servers are typically used for simple web serving. At the other extreme are supercomputers, which at the present consist of hundreds or thousands of micro processors and usually terabytes of memory and pet bytes of storage.

4. Describe and discuss the two important measures of a website's performance

Website's performance can be measured by the number of visitors. Traffic is one of the key measures of a website's success. The level of visitors your website gets is synonym to the efficiency of your web marketing efforts. The more visitors, the higher the popularity of the website as well as the greater the probability of building profitable customer relationships.

Website's performance can also be measured by the duration Spent on the website - The duration the visitors spend on key pages? Why they leave? The duration spent on the website can indicate whether the visitors are accessing the needed information.

5. Discuss at least four differences between basic electronic commerce software and midrange electronic commerce software.

The midrange packages permit merchants have total control over the choices of products, location plan, remote and local management options and, internal architecture. The midrange and basic commerce packages also have different database connectivity, prices, ability, software customization tools, software portability and, computer expertise that the merchant requires.

6. What is middleware?

Middleware is a software of any kind that enhances communication between two or more software systems. Middleware is a layer that acts as 'glue' and is found between the network operating systems and the application components. This layer allows applications to various operating systems. This mechanism or technology permits an entity (database or application) to communicate with a different entity, or entities (Sherlock et al. (2000).

7. What is steganography and its concept to the topic of online security?

Steganography is the science of hiding messages in a medium known as carrier in such a way that the existence of the message is unknown. The object under cover may be an audio file, video, or image file, while the message being hidden could be plain text, audio, video or an image. Stenography disguises the message to be hidden thus rendering it invisible.

Steganography therefore enables online users to make invisible communications by hiding secret information in innocuous cover objects.

8. Describe the security threats that company will face when it implements a wireless network.

Wireless networking has many security issues. There number of security risks linked with the present wireless protocols and encryption methods is very high, and in the ignorance and negligence that exists. Wireless networks, are relatively simple to be broken into by hackers, and they have gone to the extent of cracking wire networks using wireless technology. With wireless, methods used for cracking networks have become much more innovative and sophisticated. In addition, the accessibility of easy-to-use Windows or Linux-based tools on the web for free, cracking has become much easier and more accessible. In the wireless security setting, the heart of problems with security is that networks are at heart of independent processing units that are fused together and the architecture itself is resistant to controls. The ease in accessibility, flexibility of growth and development that makes the wireless world to become successful also makes it to be highly vulnerable from a security point of view.

9. Explain what the electronic wallets are and how they can be useful to consumers.

An electronic wallet holds the numbers of the credit card, electronic cash, holder identification, and the contact information of the holder. It gives this data at an electronic commerce site's check out counter. The electronic wallet provides consumers the advantage of entering their information only once, rather than entering their information each time they have to conduct a transaction or business, thus making shopping more efficient. When customers choose the goods they want to purchase, they just click their electronic wallet to quickly order the goods.

10. Outline the advantage and disadvantages of smart cards for online merchants.

Flexibility in adding applications giving extra value to consumers

Secure with use of passwords/pin numbers

Over the counter as well as Internet transactions are possible; can be used for online and offline transactions

Risk is limited to the value of the cash sent on the network

Immediate transfer of funds

Hardware specifications pose a problem

Does not allow micro-merchants

Uses proprietary currencies thus depend on issuing companies to honor their Internet cash

12. Explain why late outsourcing is seldom used in electronic commerce projects.

In most of the e-commerce projects, often companies would outsources the initial site design and development to quickly begin the project. The company's information system professionals are then trained by the outsourcing team on the new technology before handing-over to them. This gives the company the advantage of running its own information systems in which people work closely to develop and improve ideas in the early stages, within the tenure of the project