Forms of abuse of dominance in the area of the Internet platforms The thesis is dedicated to the topic of abuse of dominant position in the area of the Internet platforms. Its aim is, firstly, to outline the challenges arising from the specific nature of the area, which might, from the competition-authorities' point of view, complicate the enforcement of competition law in the case of abuse of dominance. Secondly, the thesis tries to find the answer on the question to what extent these problems have been reflected in the existing decision-making practice. The structure of the thesis is divided into four main parts. The first part is an introduction. The second part provides an essential introduction to the area in question. It defines the term "Internet platform", provides an overview of the most important types of the Internet platforms and describes the specifics of the area in question, whose description is essential for the following parts. The third part analyses the problems that competition law may face in the context of possible abuse of dominance within the meaning of Art. 102 TFEU in the area of the Internet platforms. This section is divided according to three basic steps of a competition analysis of abuse of dominance, i.e. definition of the relevant market, the determination of market...

Background: Companies have lately been engaging their business activities onto social mediaand its platforms. They are taking advantage of the opportunities provided by social media and they are starting to realize the importance of content marketing. Problem Discussion: Content marketing has been researched previously research. However, the research regarding B2B content marketing and the differences between B2B and B2C content is still rather limited. The question lingers whether the same principles apply to firms working with B2B as well. Moreover, a clear framework or guide regarding the way that content should be created does not yet exist – a guide including the aspects may be taken into account when creating content and implementing content marketing. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand and describe how companies deal with the content creation process, within content marketing through social media. Research Question: How do companies handle content creation for content marketing through social media? Methodology: This thesis has taken a qualitative and abductive approach on the study. It hasbeen based on a multiple-case study, where semi-structured interviews took place with sevenfirms working with content marketing and content creation - in a B2B context. Conclusion: All seven firms have a uniform understanding of content marketing, aligned withprevious research. The study concludes that there are similarities between the ways that companies handle content marketing. Furthermore, the study concludes that there are general traits that needs to always be taken into consideration when creating content s.a. long term planning, providing value to the customer, well thought out message and choosing the right channels for content distribution.

The 1994 democratic elections heralded a significant change in South Africa‟s political and social landscapes. This historic moment, and the subsequent democratic developmental processes that unfolded aimed at laying the foundations for a democratic state, were the culmination of a long history of struggle by the Black majority, in alliance with other social forces, against colonialism and apartheid. One of the significant social forces that emerged as part of this struggle against racial oppression was the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). It is argued that the two most important developments in South African politics during the 1940‟s were the emergence of the African National Congress Youth League and the consolidation of its influence on the ANC leadership. The African National Congress Youth League was formed against the background of very distinct circumstances, the first being the worsening economic conditions for the growing African working class and the declining African peasantry. The second was the inability of the African National Congress to respond to the material challenges confronted by the African majority, because of its leadership and organisational weaknesses. The political programme of the ANCYL was rallied under the ideological auspices of African Nationalism, and its organisational programme under the articulated need to build a mass based and campaigning organisation. With a very strong leadership, the ANCYL was able to, within five years, assert its leadership and authority in the ANC with key elements of its manifesto forming significant parts of the ANC Programme. This culminated into the rise of the generational theme of the ANC Youth League of “Freedom in our Lifetime”. Essentially freedom was conceived as the abolishment of formal apartheid, and the delivery of a democratic South Africa. Formal democracy became a reality in South Africa in 1994 and at the helm of the ANC and the new government was the ANC Youth League generation of the 1940‟s. This generation had over fifty years struggled for freedom and 1994 represented the formal victory over apartheid and the attainment of a generational mission. The ushering in of formal democracy in 1994 heightened the expectations of the black majority in terms of its elevation from a point of view of its existing socio-economic realities. Close to twenty years after the end of formal apartheid the reality has been less than satisfactory in terms of addressing these socio-economic realities. What has been observed on the contrary is an increase in key measures such inequality and unemployment. Subsequent to that has been a less than satisfactory performance in the area of economic transformation which has been seen as a critical limiting factor in addressing the legacies of apartheid, particularly among the black majority. These limits to transformation have resulted in discontentment among the majority, claiming that democracy has not yielded to any significant changes in their material lives. The discontentment has been particularly proliferated among the youth, who bear the brunt of social challenges such as unemployment. The ANC Youth League, has had to confront the reality of being of a youth league of a governing party and balancing that with the social discontentment that has developed among South African, particularly the youth, as a result of perceived lack of social transformation. In balancing these two realities, the ANC Youth League has found itself at the centre of South African politics similarly to the 1940s generation of ANC Youth League leaders of the Youth League who had been mobilised under the theme of “Freedom in our Lifetime”. The contradictions within the ANC, of which the ANC Youth League has found itself at the centre of, and the need to become a socially relevant political force have culminated into the birth of a generational theme led by the ANC Youth League of “Economic Freedom in our Lifetime”.

Knowledge of the resource usage of applications and the resource usage capacity of hardware platforms is essential when developing a system. The resource usage must not over exceed the capacity of a platform, as it could otherwise fail to meet its real-time constraints due to resource shortages. Furthermore, it is beneficial from a cost-effectiveness stand-point that a hardware platform is not under-utilised by systems software. This thesis examines two systems aspects: the hardware resource usage of applications and the resource capacity of hardware platforms, defined as the capacity of each resource included in a hardware platform. Both of these systems aspects are investigated and modelled using a black box perspective since the focus is on observing the online usage and capacity. Investigating and modelling these two approaches is a crucial step towards defining and constructing hardware and software models. We evaluate regressive and auto-regressive modelling approaches of modelling CPU, L2 cache and L3 cache usage of applications. The conclusion is that first-order autoregressive and Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines show promise of being able to model resource usage. The primary limitation of both modelling approaches is their inability to model resource usage when it is highly irregular. The capacity models of CPU, L2 and L3 cache derived by exerting heavy workloads onto a test platform shows to hold against a real-life application concerning L2 and L3 cache capacity. However, the CPU usage model underestimates the test platform's capacity since the real-life application over-exceeds the theoretical maximum usage defined by the model.

Previous research has been conducted to try to explain the relationship between stress and focus for the use of different platforms for work communication. On the other hand, during a pandemic there is a lot that separates everyday life from how it was before the pandemic began and working from home was not as obvious as it is today. Applications whose number of daily users has skyrocketed can also account for a perceived stress for a user - how does this affect individuals’ ability to focus on the application? A survey was created and published for two weeks using previous research that examined the links be- tween stress and focus on social media. The study was conducted by collecting data from various forums related to relevant applications, where it is discovered that stress has a weak but significant effect on distractions outside applications and on distractions within applications. The results show that a perceived distraction outside the application can for 22% be explained by stress and within the application can for 16.6% be explained by stress. Results and the similarities between social media and platforms for work commu- nication are compared and discussed based on the presented theory and related research. / Tidigare forskning har utförts för att försöka förklara sambandet mellan stress och fokus för användandet av olika plattformar för arbetskommunikation. Däremot är det under en pandemi mycket som skiljer vardagen åt från hur det var innan pandemin började och hemmaarbete inte var en sådan självklarhet som det är i dagens läge. Applikationer som vars antal dagliga användare skjutit i höjden kan också stå för en upplevd stress för en användare- hur påverkar detta en individs förmåga att fokusera på applikationen? En enkät utformas och publicerades under två veckor med hjälp av tidigare forskning som undersökt kopplingen mellan stress och fokus för sociala medier. Undersökningen bedrivs genom att data samlas in från varierande forum tillhörande olika relevanta applikationer, där det kommer fram att stress har en svag, men signifikant påverkan på distraktioner utanför applikationen och på distraktioner inom applikationen. Resultaten visar att en upplevd distraktion utanför applikationen kan 22% förklaras av stress och inom applikationen kan 16.6% förklaras av stress. Resultaten och likheterna mellan sociala medier och plattformar för arbetskommunikation jämförs och diskuteras utifrån den presenterade teorin och relaterad forskning.

Fashion and textile upcycling is currently considered a time-consuming and labour- intensive process. Since textile waste materials are not readily available as a secondary raw material, the process of sourcing pre- and post-consumer textile waste usually requires a lot of time and effort, and often results in a high inconsistency in input materials. In consequence, upcycling operations are generally difficult to scale up. In order to address this issue, this research study aims to explore the current sourcing process of secondary raw material as well as the opportunities and challenges this sourcing process implies for a B2B trading platform of secondary raw material. In order to serve the purpose of this research study, semi-structured interviews with experienced professionals from five small and medium-sized fashion and textile upcycling companies have been conducted. The empirical data collected through the semi-structured interviews was analysed using an inductive approach of qualitative content analysis. The overall findings suggest that concerning the sourcing process of post-consumer textiles for upcycling, the identified opportunities for a B2B trading platform outweigh the challenges. However, pre-consumer textile waste is often provided in the form of an already upcycled yarn from fabric or garment suppliers which gives the impression that a B2B trading platform is less relevant in this case. Nevertheless, the empirical results might have been impacted by the small sample size and the strong focus on post-consumer textiles. Therefore, more research is necessary in order to understand how SMEs working with pre-consumer textile waste source their input materials for upcycling and which opportunities and challenges this potentially different process implies for a B2B trading platform of secondary raw material.

Did you stand at a door with a bunch of keys and tried to find the right one to unlock the door? Did you hold a flower and wonder the name of it? A need of object recognition could rise anytime and any where in our daily lives. With the development of mobile devices object recognition applications become possible to provide immediate assistance. However, performing complex tasks in even the most advanced mobile platforms still faces great challenges due to the limited computing resources and computing power. In this thesis, we present an object recognition system that resides and executes within a mobile device, which can efficiently extract image features and perform learning and classification. To account for the computing constraint, a novel feature extraction method that minimizes the data size and maintains data consistency is proposed. This system leverages principal component analysis method and is able to update the trained classifier when new examples become available . Our system relieves users from creating a lot of examples and makes it user friendly. The experimental results demonstrate that a learning method trained with a very small number of examples can achieve recognition accuracy above 90% in various acquisition conditions. In addition, the system is able to perform learning efficiently.

As man moved out on the internet, so did the companies. One of the most successful business models in the digital era is the digital platform. A digital platform acts as an intermediary on multi-sided markets and enjoys, amongst others, lucrative network effects. One of the main factors behind the great success of digital platforms is the usage of big data combined with algorithms that are enhanced by machine learning. However, as big data is becoming more and more indispensable for any modern company, questions have been raised about whether digital platforms should be able to withhold the massive amount of big data exclusively, or whether they could be forced to share it. This paper investigates these questions through the lens of EU-competition law, especially under Article 102 TFEU and the doctrine of essential facilities.  To address the problem of digital platforms and big data, the business models of digital platforms, the economic forces behind them, and their usage of data are assessed to conclude whether an intervention by the Union could be motivated. It is concluded that the markets where digital platforms act are prone to tip and that the characteristics of big data in combination with sophisticated algorithms create a positive feedback loop, creating barriers to entry. Thus, there are severe risks of external market failures, making an intervention feasible. The paper secondly assesses the essential facility doctrine and evaluates the four elements that needs to be fulfilled for big data to be covered by the doctrine. Even though the business model of digital platforms challenges the traditional instruments of EU-competition law, the author argues that three out of four elements of the essential facilities doctrine are fulfilled. However, as data to its character is non-rivalrous and non-exclusive the data held by the incumbent cannot be considered indispensable, making the essential facilities doctrine inapplicable. Finally, alternative instruments under EU-competition law are assessed to find a solution to the problems attributable to a refusal to supply big data. The paper concludes that there are no optimal solutions, but the best of the potential instruments is to find a new form of abuse under article 102 TFEU or to add a modified version of the essential facilities doctrine to the newly proposed legislation DMA.

The goal of the diploma thesis is a design of the reconstruction of the Solnice railway station in aim to fulfil the requirements for the movement of persons with reduced mobility. It was necessary to design platforms with a height of the platform edge 550 mm above rail level in that context. Furthermore the increased length of tracks as well as a modification of the connection of sidings of Škoda company and of the timber plant was required. There was also included the design of reconstruction of drainage system of railway tracks.

The topic of this thesis is the study of reconstruction railway station Moravské Bránice and railway station Rakšice in order to insert new platforms, according to current legislation. In railway station Moravské Bránice it was necessary to design at least 3 platform edges, in railway station Rakšice it was necessary to design at least 2 platform edges.