Corporate Money and Politics The fact that corporate money is seeking to influence public policy is nothing unusual. From the different ways of how private money helps to shape politics the first, and most familiar is direct campaign contributions to political candidates and parties, which is especially widespread in the United States. While the second great river of money goes to underwrite lobbying apparatus in diverse state capitals, the third form of attempts to influence public policy making is less well-known, but nearly as wide and deep as the two others - it is money which underwrites a vast network of public policy think tanks and advocacy groups. Although tried to be labeled in another way, unmistakably, these donations are naked attempts by corporations and other donors, to influence the political process.

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Funding Sources and Revenues While most progressive think tanks acquire their funding through many different sources, for conservative think tanks financing by corporations prevails. Among the think tanks receiving a considerable amount of corporate money are the Cato Institute (U.S. conservative/libertarian), the Brookings Institution (U.S. centrist), the Heritage Foundation (U.S. conservative), the American Enterprise Institute (U.S. conservative) and the Competitive Enterprise Institute (U.S. conservative). Also, whereas the combined revenue base of such conservative multi-issue policy institutions as the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, Free Congress Research and Education Foundation, the Cato Institute, and Citizens for a Sound Economy exceeded US$ 77 million in 1995, the roughly equivalent U.S. progressive Institute for Policy Studies, the Economic Policy Institute, Citizens for Tax Justice, and the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities had only US$ 9 million at their collective disposal in 1995.

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Automation Automation is concerned with the application of machines to tasks once performed by humans or, increasingly, to tasks that would otherwise be impossible. Although the term mechanization is often used to refer to the simple replacement of human labor by machines, automation generally implies the integration of machines into a self-governing system. Automation has revolutionized those areas in which it has been introduced, and there is scarcely an aspect of modern life that has been unaffected by it. Nearly all industrial installations of automation, and in particular robotics, involve a replacement of human labor by an automated system. Therefore, one of the direct effects of automation in factory operations is the dislocation of human labor from the workplace. The long-term effects of automation on employment and unemployment rates are debatable. Most studies in this area have been controversial and inconclusive. As of the early 1990s, there were fewer than 100,000 robots installed in American factories, compared with a total work force of more than 100 million persons, about 20 million of whom work in factories.

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Multiple User Dungeons MUDs are virtual spaces, usually a kind of adventurous ones, you can log into, enabling you to chat with others, to explore and sometimes to create rooms. Each user takes on the identity of an avatar, a computerized character.

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IBM IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) manufactures and develops cumputer hardware equipment, application and sysem software, and related equipment. IBM produced the first PC (Personal Computer), and its decision to make Microsoft DOS the standard operating system initiated Microsoft's rise to global dominance in PC software. Business indicators: 1999 Sales: $ 86,548 (+ 7,2 % from 1998) Market capitalization: $ 181 bn Employees: approx. 291,000 Corporate website: www.ibm.com http://www.ibm.com/

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