My writings

To ensure their stable positions in business all companies try to protect their information, which is directly related to products they manufacture and sell. That kind of information is called trade secrets, which is business data of economic value about something, which has costs and an effort to develop and is unknown to the public. There is a large risk that trade secrets can be revealed to companies competitors. For example, this can happen due to employees changing their jobs, or industrial espionage, which is illegal. There are the following ways that organizations can try to protect that data: making their potential employees to sign non-disclosure agreements, or non-compete contracts, or both. In this paper I am going to discuss the former. Non-disclosure agreements are legal documents between an employer and an employee, between a company and third-party developers and between two companies where the latter agrees not to take copies of computer programs and not to reveal any details about software that was produced by an organization. There is an ethical issue with NDA because protecting trade secrets can involve looking at those relationships listed above. It can be shown through the following couple of examples that discuss relationships between companies and people (developers, employees, etc).

The first case talks about the lawsuit between Hewlett-Packard Company, or HP, and its former CEO Mark Hurd. It was brought to the court arena because Hurd moved to work for HP's competitor that is Oracle Corporation. The cause of Hurd's decision was the scandal that an employee, Jodie Fisher, lifted because of “sexual harassment” from the former CEO' side. After the company investigated that problem, it was found there was not any actual sexual harassment. HP's reaction to sue Hurd is understandable because the organization gave him millions of dollars for keeping important trade secrets as he signed the non-disclosure agreement. Such the event was indeed troublesome for Hewlett-Packard Company because their former CEO was going to take the position of Co-President in Oracle Corporation. According to HP, this could lead to the “inevitable disclosure of trade secrets”. As the New York Times implies Hurd did not have a non-compete contract with the company because California courts do not favor those types of legal documents. This is to ensure employees' mobility while looking for jobs and going to work in places, which they find most comfortable and beneficial. As the author of that article concludes this case showed that it is impossible for companies to prevent their employees from moving to their competitors. Lisa Chapman, from Royse Law Firm, PC, in her paper discusses this lawsuit and says that California courts' position against non-compete agreements remains pretty strong. She also says that companies, which accept workers from their competitors, should familiarize themselves with trade secrets laws and should not exploit workers' knowledge to gain competitors' confidential data. Otherwise, if they do, then they can be liable for their actions.

The second case relates to a relatively young sphere of IT, which is application development for mobile platforms. The Android is a software stack that includes operating system, middleware and applications. It is now maintained by Google, Inc. and was previously purchased from Android, Inc. in 2005. The system is based on the modified Linux kernel, and its source code was made public under the Apache license. However, in 2009 there was an interesting case that Google, Inc. decided to open the source code of the Android 2.0 only for a limited number of developers. To select those chosen ones the company organized the Android Developers Challenge, which is a competition to encourage developing the best applications. The winners were those whose applications gained the highest score. The reason for such the action was to complete the project as quickly as possible. It was so as the fewer people were working on it, the faster they would go. This argument was given by Eric Chu, who is Google's Mobile Platform Program Manager. Why is it related to NDA? There was also another small nuance that, after winners had been chosen, Google, Inc. required them to sign the non-disclosure agreement. This was so that Android developers would not be able to share any information regarding software in the Android 2.0. Such the news shocked many people because it directly contradicted the nature of open-source. According to the Apache License, under which the Android is distributed, its users should have the ability to freely use it, modify it and distribute it. That NDA certainly made those features unavailable for most developers, which made the Android 2.0 no different from, let us say, Windows by Microsoft Corporation, which is also closed for only a limited number of people, or any other proprietary software.

More recent news about the Android 3.0 are not really satisfactory for the open-source community either. This is so because Google's spokesman said that they were not going to release the latest software to the public until they did not finish their work on it. One year earlier Andrew Rubin, Senior Vice President of Mobile, stated his definition of openness responding to Steve Jobs's, Apple's, Inc. CEO, objection that the Android was not open. The definition meant that the software was opened if anyone could download its source code and compile it him / herself. According to that statement, the Android 3.0 is not open-source.

The third case relates to the nowadays Google's biggest competitor in the area of mobile computing, which is Apple, Inc. This company is specializing in manufacturing desktop and portable computers, cell phones, MP3 players and other gadgets. Since it is supporting its hardware products with its own proprietary software, it has become known as one of the most closed and secret companies. This is because of different stories where they tried to stop prototypes of their new products from leaking, but sometimes they failed. As for the iPhone OS, also known as the iOS later, Apple, Inc. required third-party application developers to sign the non-disclosure agreement for a long time. It was so as to add an additional security level, according to the company. However, in 2008 something pleasant happened for those programmers. Apple, Inc. dropped their NDA from the iPhone software. This was a strategic move to clean its bad reputation about a very strict closeness of the platform, and also not to lose its leading position in the mobile computing race against competitors. Now iOS developers are free to discuss current platform features and flaws, which they encounter, with each other and the outside world.

After looking carefully at those cases described above, it can be noticed that the NDA problem can be applied both to complex corporate issues and third-party developers, who choose to use tools, which are supplied by a certain company. Although the first case describes the problem, which exists only in the Silicon Valley, it can be shown what risks an organization can face if its top employee leaves with a handful of trade secrets in his head. Especially, it can seriously damage the former organization's business if that top employee's employer is its direct competitor. The Silicon Valley problem might be fixed with making employees to sign non-compete agreements. However, it impairs a worker's ability to search for new jobs. In some cases, it may also be impossible to find a job for a person, who was fired, or who left for other personal reasons. Difficulties may be either his / her specialty, or an exposure to extremely confidential data, which many competing organizations can find interesting to obtain. The rest two cases describe how non-disclosure agreements impact developers, who are not directly involved in corporate affairs, e.g. freelancers. The abuse of open-source licenses described above can impede the project development, or can hide something from the community's eyes. This is so because, for example, no one ever decided not to open source code for one of numerous Linux distributions. This is so as many enthusiasts across the world can work on the same project and catch bugs faster. Such the system simply works because those numerous Linux distributions are still alive and have many users, who are happy to use them. Putting non-disclosure agreements onto third-party developers can dramatically slow down the development of mobile applications and discourage many programmers to put their, perhaps innovative, ideas into reality.

In conclusion, the problem of non-disclosure agreements is very complex and has many issues to consider. In order to solve it, we need to take in account all agents that can be affected such as employers, employees, third-party developers. We should take care of each in such a way so that to minimize a potential damage, which can be taken by all involved entities.

References:
1. George W. Reynolds, “ Ethics in Information Technology, Third Edition ” (pages 207-209)
2. Gregory Gromov, ”NDA Experiment Set up by Mark Hurd.”, http://www.netvalley.com/silicon_valley/Hurd_NDA_HP.htm
3. Ashlee Vance, “H.P. Sues Its Ex-Chief in New Job”, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/08/technology/08hewlett.html
4. Lisa Chapman, “The Impact of the Mark Hurd Saga on California's Ban on Covenants Not to Compete, ”http://www.rroyselaw.com/newsletter_mark_hurd_saga.html
5. Wikipedia, “Android (operating system)”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29
6. Google Code, “Android Developer Challenge”, http://code.google.com/android/adc/
7. Rob Jackson, “Android 2.0 Developers Face Another NDA”, http://phandroid.com/2009/10/27/android-2-0-developers-face-another-nda/
8. Wikipedia, “Apache License”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_License
9. Cade Metz, “Steve Jobs vindicated: Google Android is not open”, http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/24/google_will_not_open_source_android_honeycomb_on_release_of_first_devices/
10. Jason Chen, “This is Apple's Next iPhone”, http://gizmodo.com/5520164/this-is-apples-next-iphone
11. Zach Epstein, “Apple kills NDA on iPhone app development”, http://www.bgr.com/2008/10/01/apple-kills-nda-on-iphone-app-development/

Throughout the history humanity always moved towards the future by creating and introducing new technologies, which were not known before. Those were inventions and in order to stimulate the technological progress, governments started to issue certain documents that confirmed a person's ownership of a new product, or a service. The documents were called patents. Patenting started from the very early times, for example, when ancient Greek government from the city of Sybaris encouraged everyone to discover any new refinement in luxury. There does not seem anything wrong for an owner of the invention to benefit from his / her work. However, since the late 20th century patenting became slightly, and sometimes even very, complicated with an emergence of software products sphere. The problem was whether computing algorithms should or should not be patented. To approach it I am going to discuss a couple of cases about software ownership, which became pretty much important lessons for IT industry to consider.

The first case dates back to more than twenty years from now, to the times when the World Wide Web was still pretty young. It is about the Graphic Interchange Format, or GIF, that is “a bitmap image format that was introduced by CompuServe in 1987”. The software ownership issue was not so much about the image format itself, but rather about the compression algorithm it is using. The algorithm is called LZW (Lempel-Ziv-Welch) , it was developed in 1978 by three inventors in the Sperry Research Center, and patented in 1984. Its idea was to encode sequences of 8-bit data as fixed-length 12-bit codes. It keeps a dictionary of all codes for a particular set of data during encoding and decoding. For images with small color tables there was a variable-width code introduced, which meant that “codes start one bit wider than the symbols being encoded, and as each code size is used up, the code width increases by 1 bit” up to maximum of 12 bits.

In 1986 the Sperry Corporation and the Burroughs Corporation merged into Unisys Corporation, which will be the owner of the patent number 4,538,302 that was granted by the U.S. Patent Office in 1985. That particular patent was exactly the one that covered the LZW compression algorithm. Meanwhile, the GIF was developed as a free and open specification. So, it was becoming widely popular amongst web developers. Neither CompuServe nor the Web community knew of the compression algorithm patent that is bounded to that product. Unisys was silent for nearly seven years about their patented software, which was widely used. In 1994 the corporation finally woke up and demanded fees for their algorithm usage. So, they signed licensing agreement with CompuServe that obliged developers to pay a license fee in order to continue using the GIF format. Also Unisys collected the minimum royalty of $0.10 from developers, who distributed the GIF software for free. The patent covered only the software for writing GIF files because it directly used the LZW algorithm. As the author of the paper suggests it also could cover GIF readers because Unisys describes decompression of a LZW-compressed data, too. Web developers became upset because the GIF was a lossless image format, while known at that time JPEG was a lossy one, so it could not be considered as an alternative. As a result people started working on the patent-free replacement for GIF that is Portable Network Graphics, or PNG, which is “an extensive file format for the lossless, portable, well compressed storage of raster images". It was first issued in 1996.

Battilana also explains in his paper that software is usually copyrighted, but since 1981 in the U.S. it became possible to patent algorithms. For some people, such as inventors, it can be a great benefit, while for others such as developers, who may choose to use those products, it may result in big troubles and even lawsuits against them. It is so because in order to design a project, a developer should very carefully examine all available tools that he needs. This is so because, for example, if one is designing a graphics file format, he or she may find dozens or hundreds of patents on compression software.

Another example of how patents can impede software industry is described by Dr. Ross N. Williams. He talks about developing a set of compression algorithms, which he called the LZRW series. They were based on Markov's algorithms and were improved modifications of LZ77 and LZW. However, as he says that software patents “drove a stake through the heart of the LZRW algorithms”, which means they basically killed those ideas. As a result Dr. Williams stopped his career in data compression.

The second case that I would like to discuss is more recent. It deals with the issue that appeared in May, 2011. Apple's iOS API gives developers the ability to add the feature of in-app purchases to their applications. Basically it is used to be able to upgrade to the premium version of a paid iOS program. Also it is used to buy something from within an application. Relatively recently, in May, 2011, some company, which name is Lodsys, LLC., sent letters to those developers, who implemented the in-app purchases feature saying that they are violating the patent number 7,222,078. That patent talks about gathering feedback from users and sending it to a central unit, meaning a vendor of a certain product. It was filed in 2003 by an inventor Daniel H. Abelow. The stages of ownership of that legal document can be the following. In 2004 Abelow sold it to Ferrara Ethereal, LLC, then in 2009 the former sold it to Webvention, LLC, and finally Webvention, LLC sold it to Lodsys, LLC. This case is very peculiar because the mentioned above company is targeting single developers, but not Apple, Inc. itself, that is a creator and an owner of the controversial API. It is not very clear where this firm appeared from. However, they created the web log on their website where they explain reasons for their accusation. For example, they state: “Lodsys has only one motivation:  we want to get paid for our rights. ”. This basically means they want iOS developers to buy license from them in order to continue using the in-app purchase feature. It is also not really clear whether that feature is related to the discussed patent number 7,222,078. This case is still currently unresolved and Apple, Inc. decided to enter the courtroom arena as the defendant in order to protect its developers.

In my opinion, looking at those cases discussed above, it can be noticed that patenting of algorithms can make the IT industry and software development sphere, in particular, less flexible. This is so because instead of focusing on ideas that developers want to implement and how they are going to do it, they also need to waste time carefully examining legal sides. This is considering the fact that most of programmers may not be proficient in the law field as it is not their required skill. If developers skip checking legal issues of their projects, there is a pretty high risk to get into similar troubles as the web community in the first case, or iOS programmers in the second one. This is true especially when a software engineer wants to use tools that were created after 1981 because it was the year when it became possible to patent algorithms.

In conclusion, software ownership issues are still open problems, which should be reconsidered very carefully. Of course, there should be patents in order to provide security for an owner's inventions, but in the same time there should not be barriers, which slow down the technological progress.

References:
1. Wikipedia, “Patent”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent

2. Wikipedia, “Graphic Interchange Format” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format

3. Wikipedia, “Lempel-Ziv-Welch”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel%E2%80%93Ziv%E2%80%93Welch

4. Stuart Kaie “Sad day...GIF patent dead at 20”, http://www.kyzer.me.uk/essays/giflzw/

5. Michael C. Battilana, “The GIF Controversy: A Software Developer's Perspective”, http://www.cloanto.com/users/mcb/19950127giflzw.html

6. W3C, “PNG (Portable Network Graphics)”, http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/

7. Dr. Ross N. Williams, “Dr. Ross's Compression Crypt”, http://www.ross.net/compression/

8. Engadget, “Lodsys warns iOS devs, alleges in-app purchases infringe its patent”, http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/13/lodsys-warns-ios-devs-alleges-in-app-purchases-infringe-its-pat/

9. Google Patents, “Methods and systems for gathering information from units of a commodity ... Daniel H. Abelow”, http://www.google.com/patents?id=nA2AAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

10. United States Patent and Trademark Office, “Patent Assignment Abstract of Title ”, http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&qt=pat&reel=&frame=&pat=7222078

11. Lodsys, LLC, “Why are you targeting Apple developers or Android developers? Why are you picking on small developers who cannot defend themselves? ”, Last paragraph, http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/why-are-you-targeting-apple-developers-or-android-developers-why-are-you-picking-on-small-developers-who-cannot-defend-themselves.html

12. CNet News, “Apple tries to intervene in Lodsys lawsuit”, http://news.cnet.com/8301-27076_3-20070465-248/apple-tries-to-intervene-in-lodsys-lawsuit/

The movie Amadeus, which was filmed in 1984 and directed by Milos Forman, is set between the late eighteenth and the middle of the nineteenth centuries. This can be seen why because the outer story is narrated by Salieri thirty two years after Mozart's death, which was in 1823. The inner story that actually depicts the great musician is supposed to take place between 1782 and 1791. This is so because the movie mentions that Mozart was twenty six and it was the time when he was married to his wife Constanze. The accuracy about these events portrayed in the film can be easily verified while referring to his biography. Mostly the movie depicts aristocracy and many subjects of the emperor's court. This is so because arts and music at that time were considered to have the highest values and only high class representatives could enjoy fruits of musicians' ingenious creations. However, there were episodes where maids and servants were also shown. For example, the episode when Salieri ordered his servant to report what Mozart was doing in his home office. The characters in the movie represent actual historical figures such as Emperor Joseph II, Mozart himself, his wife Constanze, his father Leopold Mozart, later his older son, Salieri, archbishop for whom Mozart was working in Salzburg. The film was created in 1984 and I did not find any impacts the late twentieth century period could have on the portrayal of the late eighteenth century history. The main message that the filmmaker is trying to convey is that musicians, who were influenced by the Enlightenment period and its ideas changed the music and the way how it was created forever. Additionally, it can be noticed from the movie that the opposition to old traditions often gives more masterpieces and a chance to experience something new that did not exist before. So, according to these characteristics, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart can be viewed as an Enlightenment hero, whose ideological standing against conventions of that period gave birth to something new in music and this was achieved because the current Austrian ruler, Emperor Joseph II, was an “Enlightened despot”. So, the movie gives a pretty clear picture what impacts the Enlightenment ideas had on artists and rulers.

Mozart was an Enlightenment hero because there was the episode in the beginning of the movie storyline where the archbishop told Mozart that he was not really happy about his musical piece and its performance, but the musician showed him that the audience actually liked it. We know that the audience liked that concerto because, according to the movie, everyone was applauding when Mozart opened the door to the hall. He also stood in opposition to conventions that were set in Austria during that period because he decided to set an opera about a Turkish harem which was sort of shocking to his supervisors. This was so because at that time Turks were ruled by Ottomans, who were very aggressive and were controlling the Balkans at that time. If we look at the map of the late eighteenth century, we can notice that the Balkans were located right under Austrian territories. So, officials tried to be careful in many aspects of their government polices in order not to trigger political problems. That is why the movie portrays Emperor Joseph II doubting about setting this opera, which also shows one of the main features of the Enlightenment ideas that is reasoning and rational thinking. However, Mozart assured his supervisors and the emperor that everything was going to be according to German virtues. That episode can also be an example that shows what impact Austro-German nationalism had on the court.

Emperor Joseph II was an “Enlightened Despot” because he was directly involved in the cultural development of his country and he even himself knew some basics about music. This can be proved by the episode from the film when he asked Salieri if he could play Salieri's piece while Mozart was coming in. He also approved what operas should and what should not be set, their language and the subject matter. This shows both him been enlightened with a cultural development of his nation and his censorship of what should or should not be performed in public. Of course, such the censorship cannot be called blind despotism because the ruler weighed what good and bad effects could happen as of his decision. This “Enlightened despotism” was clearly noticeable when Mozart found out that he could not set “The Marriage of Figaro” because this was a French opera and France was not stable at that period of time. Probably the ruling class feared that setting this play of such the theme on stage would trigger what was going to happen in France, that is the French Revolution. At least, they did not want people to start thinking about liberal ideas, which may be indirectly hidden in the piece of art.

The “Enlightened despotism” can also be shown by the fact the musicians careers were subjects to the whim of the absolute ruler. For example, there was the episode when the emperor appointed Mozart as a music tutor for his thirteen-year-old niece. Of course, Mozart was not really happy with such the decision because he wanted to create music and not to teach. Although later it is shown that the musician had to search for tutoring jobs in order to make enough money for his and his wife living.

“The Marriage of Figaro” was a comedy about a servant getting married, which depicted him rigorously preparing for such his event. For example, there was an episode showing him measuring a space for his wedding bed, and certainly it had a symbolic message concerning differences between high and other social classes rights. So, Mozart's choice of subject for this comedy tells us that changing notions of social class started to show that there were also other people, who should have same rights as high aristocracy. This main message of the comedy emphasizes the Enlightenment ideas of liberalism and that all citizens should be equal. That is why the composer chose a common individual to be portrayed rather than some representatives of the ruling class.

Many Enlightenment thinkers and French philosophes, such as Voltaire, challenged a religion of the eighteenth century. They said that a religion creates dogmatic views of the world and, of course, it is opposite to rational types of thinking. According to these Enlightenment ideas, dogmas made progress slower because old traditions were pretty stubborn to accept new things and results from various kinds of experimentation. This is also shown in the episode when Salieri's musical piece was played when Mozart came in. Mozart listened to it, commented that it was pretty repetitive, and he improved the score by adding few more notes, which made it to sound more ornamental and more fancy. The movie depicts that Salieri was definitely not happy when this great musician criticized and modified his work. According to the question of God's presence in the world, deism appeared, which said that God was not always involved in the Universe, but He was just a watchmaker winding it. So, the filmmaker tries to portray this aspect of the Enlightenment period, too. Salieri was depicted as a very religious man, who thought that there was a God will for everything. Throughout the movie this musician very often read prayers where he complained that he did not get that brilliance that Mozart got as a natural talent. When the emperor appointed Salieri as a court composer, he also thanked God for that in his prayer. So, such characteristics make him an example of an old Pre-Enlightenment man. According to Mozart view of a religion, the movie does not really show that explicitly. The film does not portray Mozart spending his private time praying, so perhaps it might be concluded that he was not religious. However, it is shown that this musician was really engaged in the object of his brilliant talent. This is so because there were episodes where he sat writing music scores in his room entire days. For example, in the ending part it was shown that he was busy creating music even having a fever during the last day and night of his life.

In the movie we can notice that Viennese court was an international cosmopolitan culture because we can see Italian, German and Austrian musicians being present while deciding what should or should not be set on stage. For example, it is depicted in the beginning episode when Mozart said he was going to set an opera about Turkish harem. To stress a viewer's attention on an international culture of Austria the filmmaker purposely introduces those members of the court and their national backgrounds. The movie indeed shows that Austro-German growing nationalism had a large impact on the international culture of Viennese court. This is very noticeable when Mozart chose German as the language for his introduced opera. Additionally, probably such the decision for its language was made because the theme that described Eastern cultures, i.e. Turkish in this case, was highly controversial at that time. So, Mozart set it in German to show some kind of devotion to the dominant nation of the empire and his homeland.

In conclusion, the Enlightenment period had a tremendous impact on different aspects of people's lives including politics, culture, music, arts and social lives. As of these ideas that emerged during the eighteenth century, many new features both in the area of technologies and in the sphere of arts appeared. For example, in music Mozart was the first to introduce improvisation, that is creating music on the spot. This is shown in the film, too. By looking at the example of an “Enlightened despot” we can say that monarchs started to become more culturally educated and more careful in politics. Also a completely new political ideology appeared, which was influenced by the Enlightenment ideas of citizens' rights, that is nationalism. Its examples are shown in the movie when Viennese court representatives are portrayed. Also through Salieri's image it is shown that old religious views did not always lead to successes, but rather blocked ways to progress, which was another Enlightenment idea.

References:
1. “Amadeus: Director's Cut” (1984). Directed by Milos Forman
2. “Music: Its Language, History, And Culture”, Second Edition by Ray Allen, Douglas Cohen, Nancy Hager, Jeffrey Taylor (pgs. 83-84)
3. “The West: Encounters And Transformations”, Volume 2, Third Edition by Brian Levack, Edward Muir, Meredith Veldman (pgs. 596-616)

My life was such that I with my parents traveled very often, going from a town to a town, from a city to a city. As a result of that I saw many interesting places, met a lot of people, I was enrolled in different schools. For instance, I was born in one town, I spent my childhood in another where I also started my secondary school career, and then I moved to a big city that is Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine. So, I had a great chance mentally to compare and contrast different people's lives and surroundings because obviously those features are very distinct in cities and towns. After such lifetime travelings I have got a lot of pleasant memories. Nevertheless, the most permanent and the warmest remembrances, which lie in my mind, are about my home town of Dubno.

This is the place where I was born and made my first steps. Dubno is a wonderful town, which has numerous and picturesque parks. I remember times when I was a child I really appreciated spending whole days in those grassy places with huge trees around. Those parks are also memorials because there are massive monuments dedicated to soldiers, who died in World War 2, to brilliant poets and poetesses, who made a great contribution to the world of classical literature. One of such parks is located right near the place where I spent my earliest childhood years. I remember that towners always gathered there during weekends making picnics with their families, or just strolling around. Basically, that park can be an analogy to Central Park in Manhattan, but much smaller. Additionally, there is a memorial that depicts a large airplane flying into the sky and is located at the entrance to the town. This architectural work of art revives my childhood memories every time I come back there. Sometimes this memorial makes me flashbacks about various times I went to Dubno earlier. So, whenever a car, or a bus, by which I travel to the town, pass by that memorial I always try to sit next to a window to see that sculpture.

Another place, which amuses me with a great enthusiasm is the Princes Ostrozky's Castle. It is an ancient fortress, which was built around twelfth century and is impossible not to notice it. This historical place always charmed me to explore its mysterious towers and dungeons. The highest tower even has its own name. It is called the Girlish Tower because of an allusion to a medieval story about a princess, who defended the castle using a canon against some warlike nomads. This tower is pretty famous because it is displayed on various posters and calendars where photographers depict the fortress. Primarily the castle interested me because of its enormous size. This fortress has a beautiful position on a hilly bank of the river Ikva that flows through the town. This Medieval architecture structure probably once was the center of Dubno because it is possible to see a beautiful landscape of some territories, which the town occupies. So, many tourists, who travel from far cities and towns, try to get to this castle to capture an amazing landscape of Dubno and also to imagine how Medieval life looked like. There are many allusions to this very place in different works of literature. For example, a Ukrainian writer, Nikolay Gogol (in Ukrainian, Mykola Gogol) portrayed this castle as central in his novel Taras Bulba. In that writing this fortress was under the siege by cossacks and was occupied by the Polish.

The Castle overlooks at a small island, which looks like a real forest in the town. It is so because that place contains numerous plants, wide bushes and tall trees. Towners usually call that island “the Island”, or “a Little Island” to imply that it is located just in the flow of the river and is surrounded by water. My grandfather went fishing there, so when I was a child I loved taking long walks toward that place and observing what the craft of fishing actually is.

I mentioned in the beginning that I with my family lived in different places. Once, about four years from now, I visited Dubno. It was very exciting for me to return to the place, which was my actual home, to see what changed and what was the same as I saw it last time. I noticed that the town was becoming more and more modern. There were new residence areas and streets, which were being built. I noticed new hotels, cafes, restaurants and supermarkets were opened and made the town much brighter. The Princes Ostrozky's Castle was being reconstructed, so it was getting a fresher look and was saved from being a lost relic. In short, Dubno was rejuvenating and becoming young once again, but some places stayed the same as they were in my childhood. For example, the park where I made my first steps looked absolutely the same as it was before and as it lives in my memory. Also I heard this town is famous for the Ukrainian annual rock festival, which is usually held in summer. This event is dedicated to a development of contemporary Ukrainian music and it gathers both professional and amateur musicians from all over the country. So, it is really enthusiastic that my home town also plays a significant role in shaping my native culture.

The castle, memorials and monuments, which I mentioned in this essay, are not the only places that Dubno is rich for. It contains a lot of other various historical buildings and structures. So, when I come there I feel like I get into some sort of a book with numerous chronological stories. Indeed, almost every place can tell its own story. One of such examples is Gogol's Taras Bulba. Also perhaps this town had a very diverse past that was lived by many ethnically rich communities. It can be noticed by the fact that there are both an ancient synagogue and a very old Catholic church in Dubno.

In conclusion, in future if I have a possibility to visit my homeland, Ukraine, I will definitely come to see all places in Dubno, which are a part of my memories. I with a great pleasure will take walks on my favorite streets because I will want to see what changed in that certain period of time while I was not there and how it changed.

The author of an article “Reform, on Ice” discusses recent events that are happening around the illegal immigration issue. He / she starts this editorial saying: “President Obama gave immigration reform only one vague sentence...”(lines 1-2). By this statement the journalist wants to imply that the solution to the problem with illegal immigrants is still unclear. The article states that as the country is waiting for the reform the administration continues using radical strategies against illegal immigration. The author also says that because of that strategical behavior many various immigrant communities become angry and tense. Those people argue for passing the reform bill because in their opinion it will help the nation's economy greatly. As for me I disagree with the author's argument that this reform is a great solution because there is really no a fact that it will stop further flows of illegal immigration.

The Comprehensive Immigration Reform is said to give about 12 million illegal immigrants a legal status to reside in the United States. There is no any guarantee it will stop people crossing the border illegally. In contrary, it may stimulate even greater flows of illegal immigrants. If those people achieve a legal status, they will try to persuade others, who are their friends, acquaintances, relatives, etc., come into the country and unlawfully to stay here. It will seem very easy for them to cross the border, to wait a little while and obtain a legal status, or even a citizenship. It may cause a chain reaction of vast waves of illegal immigrants. Moreover, the quality of a workforce may become lower and lower because many of those individuals are not qualified workers. They are coming to the United States because of false thoughts about easy ways to find a job and to get a good living.

There is also another group of people, who are on non-immigrant visas, who have a legal status for residing in the country and who have brought their high knowledges and great working experiences. Of course, they make up a much smaller portion of the population comparing to illegal ones. Those people are different professionals in various fields such as: doctors, pharmacists, chemists, IT specialists, researchers, etc. They have been waiting to get their permanent residency status for about ten or more years. So, the problem is that making such a very kind favor towards illegal immigrants seems kind of unfair towards the people, who are legally here, but still cannot become permanent residents.

One more problem is that most of illegal immigrants are not literate. The government and communities will need to give a lot of funds for their education and various learning courses. So, this will take some time until that portion of illegal immigrants is able to make that reform valuable and useful for the country in general.

In conclusion, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform is a good try to solve this current problem, but it has to be thought on more, so that all residents, including citizens, legal and illegal immigrants, would become satisfied.