Timeline BC

~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard Hieroglyphs in inscriptions of a royal tomb; supposedly this is not the first but the first documented example of written cryptography

1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia

parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "atbash", which is nothing else than a reverse alphabet and one of the first famous methods of enciphering

4th century Aeneas Tacticus invents a form of beacons, by introducing a sort of water-clock

487 the Spartans introduce the so called "skytale" for sending short secret messages to and from the battle field

170 Polybius develops a system to convert letters into numerical characters, an invention called the Polybius Chequerboard.

50-60 Julius Caesar develops an enciphering method, later called the Caesar Cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet an amount which is fixed before. Like atbash this is a monoalphabetic substitution.

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some essential definitions

some essential definitions in the field of cryptography are:
- cryptoanalysis
- cryptology
- ciphers

"Few false ideas have more firmly gripped the minds of so many intelligent men than the one that, if they just tried, they could invent a cipher that no one could break." (David Kahn)

codes
plaintext
ciphertext
to encipher/encode
to decipher/decode

The variants of encryption systems are endless.
For deciphering there exists always the same game of trial and error (first guessing the encryption method, then the code). A help to do so is pruning. Once, after a more or less long or short period a code/cipher breaks. Monoalphabetic ciphers can be broken easily and of course are no longer used today but for games.

for further information on codes and ciphers etc. see:
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/01004A.html
http://www.ridex.co.uk/cryptology/#_Toc439908851

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The Advertising Industry

The advertising industry is dominated by three huge advertising networks, which offer their services throughout the world. Gross income of the three leading agencies is twice as much, as the one of places four to ten.

Table: World's Top 10 Advertising Organizations 1999

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1999

 Advertising Organization

 Headquarters

 World-Wide Gross Income 1999
1

 Omnicom

New York, USA

 $ 5,743.4
2

 Interpublic Group of Cos.

 New York, USA

 $ 5,079.3
3

 WPP Group

 London, UK

 $ 4,819.3
4

 Havas Advertising

 Levallois-Perret, France

 $ 2,385.1
5

 Dentsu

 Tokyo, Japan

 $ 2,106.8
6

 B Com3 Group

 Chicago, USA

 $ 1,933.8
7

 Young & Rubicam Inc.

 New York, USA

 $ 1,870.1
8

 Grey Advertising

 New York, USA

 $ 1,577.9
9

 True North

 Chicago, USA

 $ 1,489.2
10

 Publicis SA

 Paris, France

 $ 1,434.6


Table: Top 10 Global Marketers 1998

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1998

 Advertiser

 Headquarters

 World-Wide Media Spending 1998
1

 Procter & Gamble Co.

 Cincinnati (US)

 $ 4,747.6
2

 Unilever

 Rotterdam (NL)/London (UK)

 $ 3,428.5
3

 General Motors Corp.

 Detroit (US)

 $ 3,193.5
4

 Ford Motor Co.

 Darborn (US)

 $ 2,229.5
5

 Philip Morris Cos.

 New York

 $ 1,980.3
6

 Daimler Chrysler

 Stuttgart (GER)/Auburn Hills (US

 $ 1,922.2
7

 Nestle

 Vevey (SUI)

 $ 1,833.0
8

 Toyota Motor Corp.

 Toyota City (JP)

 $ 1,692.4
9

 Sony Corp.

 Tokyo (JP)

 $ 1,337.7
10

 Coca-Cola Co.

 Atlanta (US)

 $ 1,327.3


On the other hand the three biggest advertisers only spend about US$ 2 millions less than places four to ten together. Whereas money spent on advertising in traditional media comes from very diverse categories, companies offering computer hard- and software, peripherals or Internet services mainly pay for on-line advertisements.

Table: Top 10 Internet Advertisers 1998

(figures in millions of U.S. dollars)

Rank 1998

 Advertiser

 Internet Spending 1998

 1998 - 1997 % Change
1

 Microsoft Corp.

 $ 34.9

 9.4
2

 IBM Corp.

 $ 28.5

 58.6
3

 Compaq Computer Corp.

 $ 16.2

 169.8
4

 General Motors Corp.

 $ 12.7

 84.8
5

 Excite

 $ 12.4

 1.5
6

 Infoseek Corp.

 $ 9.3

 22.3
7

 AT&T Corp.

 $ 9.3

 43.5
8

 Ford Motor Co.

 $ 8.6

 46.7
9

 Hewlett-Packard Co.

 $ 8.1

 102.9
10

 Barnes & Noble

 $ 7.6

 280.2


Source: Advertising Age

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Internet Software Consortium

The Internet Software Consortium (ISC) is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to the production of high-quality reference implementations of Internet standards that meet production standards. Its goal is to ensure that those reference implementations are properly supported and made freely available to the Internet community.

http://www.isc.org

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Amazon.Com

Amazon.Com was one of the first online bookstores. With thousands of books, CDs and videos ordered via the Internet every year, Amazon.Com probably is the most successful Internet bookstore.

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Barnes and Noble

Massive online retail bookstore housing more than a million titles. Includes a book recommendation "personalizer,", a comprehensive list of The New York Times bestsellers, a "live" community events calendar with a daily survey and several forums, "highlighted" books from 19 subject areas, browsable categories such as antiques, ethnic studies, and pop culture, Books in the News, and weekly features such as reviews, excerpts, recommendations, interviews, events, "roundups" of popular titles, and quizzes.

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