A short paper on the whats and the hows of learning technology standardization
The purpose of the research we undertook for this Conference Paper was to investigate whether marketing campaigns for specific types of drinks could be directed towards age cohorts rather than towards intercultural differences between countries. We developed consumer profiles based on drinking motives and drinking behavior by age cohorts. We hypothesized that differences between countries in the youngest age groups are smaller than in the older age groups, where country specific tradition and culture still plays a more prominent role. We, therefore tested, from the data obtained by the COnsumer BEhaviouR Erasmus Network (COBEREN), the hypothesis that the extent to which the age specific profiles differ between countries increases with age. The results confirm our hypothesis that the extent to which drinking motives differ between countries increases with age. Our results suggest that marketing campaigns which are directed towards drinking motives, could best be tailored by age cohort, in particular when it concerns age group 18-37 and more particular for beer, spirits and especially premix drinks. Marketing campaigns for non-alcoholic beverages should be made specific for the British countries and the Western countries, but even more effectively be made specific for the age cohort 18-37.
Copyright enforcement by private third parties – does it work uniformly across the EU? Since the inception of Napster, home copying of digital files has taken a flight. The first providers of software or infrastructure for the illegal exchange of files were held contributory or vicariously liable for copyright infringement. In response, they quickly diluted the chain of liability to such an extent that neither the software producers, nor the service providers could be held liable. Moving further down the communication chain, the rights holders are now requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that provide access to end customers to help them with the enforcement of their rights. This article discusses case-law regarding the enforcement of copyright by Internet Access Providers throughout Europe. At first glance, copyright enforcement has been harmonised by means of a number of directives, and article 8(3) of the Copyright Directive (2001/29/EC) regulates that EU Member States must ensure the position of rights holders with regard to injunctions against ISPs. Problem solved? Case law from Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, Norway, England, The Netherlands, Austria and the Court of Justice of the EU was studied. In addition, the legal practice in Germany was examined. The period of time covered by case law is from 2003 to 2013, the case law gives insight into the differences that still exist after the implementation of the directive.
Huzzy is een vrouwelijk georiënteerd condoommerk dat staat voor gelijkheid en diversiteit. Om de ideale omstandigheden te creëren voor een zo aangenaam mogelijke seksuele ervaring, streeft Huzzy naar het verbeteren van het welzijn van de vrouw door het verspreiden van een positieve boodschap waarbij assertiviteit en controle een centraal concept vormen, zowel voor, tijdens en na het hebben van seks.
Over the past decade, the trend in both the public sector and industry has been to outsource ICT to the cloud. While cost savings are often used as a rationale for outsourcing, another argument that is frequently used is that the cloud improves security. The reasoning behind this is twofold. First, cloud service providers are typically thought to have skilled staff trained in good security practices. Second, cloud providers often have a vastly distributed, highly connected network infrastructure, making them more resilient in the face of outages and denial-of-service attacks. Yet many examples of cloud outages, often due to attacks, call into question whether outsourcing to the cloud does improve security. In this project our goal therefore is to answer two questions: 1) did the cloud make use more secure?and 2) can we provide specific security guidance to support cloud outsourcing strategies? We will approach these questions in a multi-disciplinary fashion from a technical angle and from a business and management perspective. On the technical side, the project will focus on providing comprehensive insight into the attack surface at the network level of cloud providers and their users. We will use a measurement-based approach, leveraging large scale datasets about the Internet, both our own data (e.g. OpenINTEL, a large- scale dataset of active DNS measurements) and datasets from our long-term collaborators, such as CAIDA in the US (BGPStream, Network Telescope) and Saarland University in Germany (AmpPot). We will use this data to study the network infrastructure outside and within cloud environments to structurally map vulnerabilities to attacks as well as to identify security anti-patterns, where the way cloud services are managed or used introduce a weak point that attackers can target. From a business point of view, we will investigate outsourcing strategies for both the cloud providers and their customers. For guaranteeing 100% availability, cloud service providers have to maintain additional capacity at all times. They also need to forecast capacity requirements continuously for financially profitable decisions. If the forecast is lower than the capacity needed, then the cloud is not able to deliver 100% availability in case of an attack. Conversely, if the forecast is substantially higher, the cloud service provider might not be able to make desired profits. We therefore propose to assess the risk profiles of cloud providers (how likely it is a cloud provider is under attack at a given time given the nature of its customers) using available attack data to improve the provider resilience to future attacks. From the costumer perspective, we will investigate how we can support cloud outsourcing by taking into consideration business and technical constraints. Decision to choose a cloud service provider is typically based on multiple criteria depending upon the company’s needs (security and operational). We will develop decision support systems that will help in mapping companies’ needs to cloud service providers’ offers.
