Although the traditional media companies first steps into the digital sphere were fairly clumsy, they have quickly learned from their mistakes and continued to enlarge their Internet presence.
During the last years many of the smaller players in the field of digital media have been driven out of competition by the huge media conglomerates. This mainly is a result of the advantages that the commercial media giants have over their less powerful counterparts:
- As engagement in online activities mostly does not lead to quick profits, investors must be able to take losses, which only powerful companies are able to.
- Traditional media outlets usually have huge stocks of digital programming, which they can easily plug into the Internet at little extra cost.
- To generate audience, the big media conglomerates constantly promote their Websites and other digital media products on their traditional media holdings.
- As possessors of the hottest "brands" commercial media companies often get premier locations from browser software makers, Internet service providers, search engines and portals.
- Having the financial resources at their disposition the big media firms are aggressive investors in start-up Internet media companies.
Commercial media companies have close and long ties to advertisers, which enables them to seize most of these revenues.
TEXTBLOCK 1/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611795/100438659167
Supposedly the most famous British atrocity story concerning the Germans during World War I was the "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor; it was said the Germans produced soap out of corpses. A story, which got so well believed that it was repeated for years - without a clear evidence of reality at that time. (
TEXTBLOCK 2/2 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658427
An assembly line is an industrial arrangement of machines, equipment, and workers for continuous flow of workpieces in
Aeneas Tacitus, a Greek military scientist and cryptographer, invented an optical communication system that combines water and beacon telegraphy. Torches indicated the beginnings and the ends of message transmissions while water jars were used to transmit the messages. These jars had a plugged standard-size hole drilled on the bottom side and were filled with water. As those who sent and those who received the message unplugged the jars simultaneously, the water drained out. Because the transmitted messages corresponded to water levels, the sender indicated by torch signal that the appropriate water level has been reached. It is a disadvantage that the possible messages are restricted to a given code, but as this system was mainly used for military purposes, this was offset by the advantage that it was almost impossible for outsiders to understand these messages unless they possessed the codebook.
With communication separated from transportation, the distant became near.
Tacitus' telegraph system was very fast and not excelled until
For further information see Joanne Chang & Anna Soellner, Decoding Device,