In parallel to the deregulation of markets, there has been a trend towards large-scale mergers which ridicules dreams of increased competition.
Recent mega-mergers and acquisitions include
SBC Communications - Ameritech, $ 72,3 bn
Bell Atlantic - GTE, $ 71,3
AT&T - Media One, $ 63,1
AOL - Time Warner, $ 165 bn
MCI Worldcom - Spring, $ 129 bn
The total value of all major mergers since the beginnings of the 1990s has been 20 trillion Dollars, 2,5 times the size of the USA's GIP.
The AOL- Time Warner reflects a trend which can be observed everywhere: the convergence of the ICT and the content industries. This represents the ultimate advance in complete market domination, and a alarming threat to independent content.
"Is TIME going to write something negative about AOL? Will AOL be able to offer anything other than CNN sources? Is the Net becoming as silly and unbearable as television?"
(Detlev Borchers, journalist)
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With television still being very popular, commercial entertainment has transferred the concept of soap operas onto the Web. The first of this new species of "Cybersoaps" was
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On the other hand are the data bunkers of the private sector, whose position is different. Although these are fast-growing engines of data collection with a much greater degree of dynamism, they may not have the same privileged position - although one has to differentiate among the general historical and social conditions into which a data bunker is embedded. For example, it can safely be assumed that the databases of a large credit card company or bank are more protected than the bureaucracies of small developing countries.
Private data bunkers include
- Banks
- Building societies
Credit bureaus
Credit card companies
Direct marketing companies
Insurance companies
Telecom service providers
Mail order stores
Online stores
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Personal data are collected, appropriated, processed and used for commercial purposes on a global scale. In order for such a global system to operate smoothly, there a server nodes at which the data streams converge. Among the foremost of these are the data bases of credit card companies, whose operation has long depended on global networking.
On top of credit card companies such as Visa, American Express, Master Card, and others. It would be erroneous to believe that the primary purpose of business of these companies is the provision of credit, and the facilitation of credit information for sale transactions. In fact, Information means much more than just credit information. In an advertisement of 1982, American Express described itself in these terms: ""Our product is information ...Information that charges airline tickets, hotel rooms, dining out, the newest fashions ...information that grows money funds buys and sells equities ...information that pays life insurance annuities ...information that schedules entertainment on cable television and electronically guards houses ...information that changes kroners into guilders and figures tax rates in Bermuda ..."
Information has become something like the gospel of the New Economy, a doctrine of salvation - the life blood of society, as Bill Gates expresses it. But behind information there are always data that need to be generated and collected. Because of the critical importance of data to the economy, their possession amounts to power and their loss can cause tremendous damage. The data industry therefore locates its data warehouses behind fortifications that bar physical or electronic access. Such structures are somewhat like a digital reconstruction of the medieval fortress
Large amounts of data are concentrated in fortress-like structures, in data bunkers. As the
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Each definition of the Internet is a simplified statement and runs the risk of being outdated within a short time. What is usually referred to as the Internet is a network of thousands of computer networks (so called autonomous systems) run by governmental authorities, companies, and universities, etc. Generally speaking, every time a user connects to a computer networks, a new Internet is created. Technically speaking, the Internet is a
What constitutes the Internet is constantly changing. Certainly the state of the future Net will be different to the present one. Some years ago the Internet could still be described as a network of computer networks using a common communication protocol, the so-called
Also, the Internet is not solely constituted by computers connected to other computers, because there are also point-of-sale terminals, cameras, robots, telescopes, cellular phones, TV sets and and an assortment of other hardware components that are connected to the Internet.
At the core of the Internet are so-called
Since these networks are often privately owned, any description of the Internet as a public network is not an accurate. It is easier to say what the Internet is not than to say what it is. On 24 October, 1995 the U.S.
What is generally and in a simplyfiying manner called the Internet, may be better referred to as the Matrix, a term introduced by science fiction writer
Strictly speaking, the Matrix is not a medium; it is a platform for resources: for media and services. The Matrix is mainly a very powerful means for making information easily accessible worldwide, for sending and receiving messages, videos, texts and audio files, for transferring funds and trading securities, for sharing resources, for collecting weather condition data, for
For a comprehensive view of uses of the Matrix, especially the World Wide Web, see "
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Even with the best techniques it is impossible to invent a cryptographic system that is absolutely safe/unbreakable. To decipher a text means to go through many, sometimes nearly - but never really - endless attempts. For the computers of today it might take hundreds of years or even more to go through all possibilities of codes, but still, finally the code stays breakable. The much faster quantum computers will proof that one day.
Therefore the decision to elect a certain method of enciphering finally is a matter of trust.
For the average user of computers it is rather difficult to understand or even realize the dangers and/or the technological background of electronic transmission of data. For the majority thinking about one's own necessities for encryption first of all means to trust others, the specialists, to rely on the information they provide.
The websites explaining the problems behind (and also the articles and books concerning the topic) are written by experts of course as well, very often in their typical scientific language, merely understandable for laymen. The introductions and other superficial elements of those articles can be understood, whereas the real background appears as untouchable spheres of knowledge.
The fact that dangers are hard to see through and the need for security measures appears as something most people know from media reports, leads directly to the problem of an underdeveloped democracy in the field of cryptography. Obviously the connection between cryptography and democracy is rather invisible for many people. Those mentioned media reports often specialize in talking about the work computer hackers do (sometimes being presented as criminals, sometimes as heroes) and the danger to lose control over the money drawn away from one's bank account, if someone steals the credit card number or other important financial data. The term "security", surely connected to those issues, is a completely different one from the one that is connected to privacy.
It is especially the latter that touches the main elements of democracy.
for the question of security see:
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In biometric technology, the subject is reduced to its physical and therefore inseparable properties. The subject is a subject in so far as it is objectified; that is, in so far as is identified with its own res extensa, Descartes' "extended thing". The subject exists in so far as it can be objectified, if it resists the objectification that comes with measurement, it is rejected or punished. Biometrics therefore provides the ultimate tool for control; in it, the dream of hermetic identity control seems to become a reality, a modern technological reconstruction of traditional identification techniques such as the handshake or the look into somebody's eyes.
The use of identification by states and other institutions of authority is evidently not simply a modern phenomenon. The ancient Babylonians and Chinese already made use of finger printing on clay to identify authors of documents, while the Romans already systematically compared handwritings.
Body measurement has long been used by the military. One of the first measures after entering the military is the identification and appropriation of the body measurements of a soldier. These measurements are filed and combined with other data and make up what today we would call the soldier's data body. With his data body being in possession of the authority, a soldier is no longer able freely socialise and is instead dependent on the disciplinary structure of the military institution. The soldier's social being in the world is defined by the military institution.
However, the military and civilian spheres of modern societies are no longer distinct entities. The very ambivalence of advanced technology (dual use technologies) has meant that "good" and "bad" uses of technology can no longer be clearly distinguished. The measurement of physical properties and the creation of data bodies in therefore no longer a military prerogative, it has become diffused into all areas of modern societies.
If the emancipatory potential of weak identities is to be of use, it is therefore necessary to know how biometric technologies work and what uses they are put to.
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Mormon Church v. Sandra and Jerald Tanner
In a ruling of December 1999, a federal judge in Utah temporarily barred two critics of the Mormon Church from posting on their website the Internet addresses of other sites featuring pirated copies of a Mormon text. The Judge said that it was likely that Sandra and Jerald Tanner had engaged in contributory copyright infringement when they posted the addresses of three Web sites that they knew, or should have known, contained the copies.
Kaplan, Carl S.:
Universal Studios v. Movie-List
The website Movie-List, which features links to online, externally hosted movie trailers has been asked to completely refrain from linking to any of Universal Studio's servers containing the trailers as this would infringe copyright.
Cisneros, Oscar S.: Universal: Don't Link to Us. In:
More cases concerned with the issue of linking,
Ross, Alexandra: Copyright Law and the Internet:
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During the last 20 years the old
"Digital divide" describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who
do and people who do not have access to (or the education to handle with) modern information technologies, e.g. cellular telephone, television, Internet. This digital divide is concerning people all over the world, but as usually most of all people in the formerly so called third world countries and in rural areas suffer; the poor and less-educated suffer from that divide.
More than 80% of all computers with access to the Internet are situated in larger cities.
"The cost of the information today consists not so much of the creation of content, which should be the real value, but of the storage and efficient delivery of information, that is in essence the cost of paper, printing, transporting, warehousing and other physical distribution means, plus the cost of the personnel manpower needed to run these `extra' services ....Realizing an autonomous distributed networked society, which is the real essence of the Internet, will be the most critical issue for the success of the information and communication revolution of the coming century of millennium."
(Izumi Aizi)
for more information see:
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With the dissemination of their content commercial media are among other things also able to transport values and ideologies. Usually their programming reflects society's dominant social, political, ethical, cultural and economical values. A critical view of the prevalent ideologies often is sacrificed so as not to offend the existing political elites and corporate powers, but rather satisfy shareholders and advertisers.
With most of the worlds content produced by a few commercial media conglomerates, with the overwhelming majority of companies (in terms of revenue generation) concentrated in Europe, the U.S., Japan and Australia there is also a strong flow of content from the 'North-West' to the 'South-East'. Popular culture developed in the world's dominant commercial centers and Western values and ideologies are so disseminated into the most distant corners of the earth with far less coming back.
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With the rise of networks and the corresponding decline of mainframe services computers have become communication devices instead of being solely computational or typewriter-like devices. Corporate networks become increasingly important and often use the Internet as a public service network to interconnect. Sometimes they are
Software companies, consulting agencies, and journalists serving their interests make some further differences by splitting up the easily understandable term
Cable TV networks and online services as
Especially for financial transactions, secure proprietary networks become increasingly important. When you transfer funds from your banking account to an account in another country, it is done through the SWIFT network, the network of the
Electronic Communications Networks as
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Newspapers and magazines frequently report growth rates of Internet usage, number of users, hosts, and domains that seem to be beyond all expectations. Growth rates are expected to accelerate exponentially. However, Internet measurement data are anything thant reliable and often quite fantastic constructs, that are nevertheless jumped upon by many media and decision makers because the technical difficulties in measuring Internet growth or usage are make reliable measurement techniques impossible.
Equally, predictions that the Internet is about to collapse lack any foundation whatsoever. The researchers at the
Size and Growth
In fact, "today's Internet industry lacks any ability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP (Internet service provider, M. S.), or prepare systematically for the growing expectations of its users. Historic or current data about traffic on the Internet infrastructure, maps depicting ... there is plenty of measurement occurring, albeit of questionable quality", says K. C. Claffy in his paper Internet measurement and data analysis: topology, workload, performance and routing statistics (http://www.caida.org/Papers/Nae/, Dec 6, 1999). Claffy is not an average researcher; he founded the well-known
So his statement is a slap in the face of all market researchers stating otherwise.
In a certain sense this is ridiculous, because since the inception of the
So what are the reasons for this inability to evaluate trends, identity performance problems beyond the boundary of a single ISP? First, in early 1995, almost simultaneously with the worldwide introduction of the
"There are many estimates of the size and growth rate of the Internet that are either implausible, or inconsistent, or even clearly wrong", K. G. Coffman and Andrew, both members of different departments of
What is measured and what methods are used? Many studies are devoted to the number of users; others look at the number of computers connected to the Internet or count
You get the clue of their focus when you bear in mind that the Internet is just one of many networks of networks; it is only a part of the universe of computer networks. Additionally, the Internet has public (unrestricted) and private (restricted) areas. Most studies consider only the public Internet, Coffman and Odlyzko consider the long-distance private line networks too: the corporate networks, the
Hosts
The
Despite the small sample, this method has at least one flaw:
Internet Weather
Like daily weather, traffic on the Internet, the conditions for data flows, are monitored too, hence called Internet weather. One of the most famous Internet
Hits, Page Views, Visits, and Users
Let us take a look at how these hot lists of most visited Web sites may be compiled. I say, may be, because the methods used for data retrieval are mostly not fully disclosed.
For some years it was seemingly common sense to report requested files from a Web site, so called "hits". A method not very useful, because a document can consist of several files: graphics, text, etc. Just compile a document from some text and some twenty flashy graphical files, put it on the Web and you get twenty-one hits per visit; the more graphics you add, the more hits and traffic (not automatically to your Web site) you generate.
In the meantime page views, also called page impressions are preferred, which are said to avoid these flaws. But even page views are not reliable. Users might share computers and corresponding
Especially the editors of some electronic journals (e-journals) rely on page views as a kind of ratings or circulation measure, Rick Marin reports in the
More advanced, but just slightly better at best, is counting visits, the access of several pages of a Web site during one session. The problems already mentioned apply here too. To avoid them, newspapers, e.g., establish registration services, which require password authentication and therefore prove to be a kind of access obstacle.
But there is a different reason for these services. For content providers users are virtual users, not unique persons, because, as already mentioned, computers and
For
If you like to play around with Internet statistics instead, you can use Robert Orenstein's
Measuring the Density of
Measuring the Density of
Dodge and Shiode used data on the ownership of IP addresses from
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Steganography
Applied to electronic files, steganography refers to the process of hiding information in files that can not be easily detected by users. Steganography can be used by intellectual property owners in a variety of ways. One is to insert into the file a "digital watermark" which can be used to prove that an infringing file was the creation of the copyright holder and not the pirate. Other possibilities are to encode a unique serial number into each authorized copy or file, enabling the owner to trace infringing copies to a particular source, or to store
Agents
Agents are programs that can implement specified commands automatically. Copyright owners can use agents to search the public spaces of the Internet to find infringing copies. Although the technology is not yet very well developed full-text search engines allow similar uses.
Copyright Litigation
While not every infringement will be the subject of litigation, the threat of litigation helps keep large pirate operations in check. It helps copyright owners obtain relief for specific acts of infringement and publicly warns others of the dangers of infringement.
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17th century Cardinal Richelieu invents an encryption-tool called grille, a card with holes for writing messages on paper into the holes of those cards. Afterwards he removes the cards and fills in the blanks, so the message looks like an ordinary letter. The recipient needs to own the same card
- Bishop John Wilkins invents a cryptologic system looking like music notes. In a book he describes several forms of steganographic systems like secrets inks, but also the string cipher. He mentions the so-called Pig Latin, a spoken way of encryption that was already used by the ancient Indians
- the English scientist, magician and astrologer
1605/1623 Sir Francis Bacon (= Francis Tudor = William Shakespeare?) writes several works containing ideas about cryptography. One of his most important advises is to use ciphers in such a way that no-one gets suspicious that the text could be enciphered. For this the steganogram was the best method, very often used in poems. The attempt to decipher Shakespeare's sonnets (in the 20th century) lead to the idea that his works had been written by Francis Bacon originally.
1671 Leibniz invents a calculating machine that uses the binary scale which we still use today, more advanced of course, called the ASCII code
18th century this is the time of the Black Chambers of espionage in Europe, Vienna having one of the most effective ones, called the "Geheime Kabinettskanzlei", headed by Baron Ignaz von Koch. Its task is to read through international diplomatic mail, copy letters and return them to the post-office the same morning. Supposedly about 100 letters are dealt with each day.
1790's Thomas Jefferson and Robert Patterson invent a wheel cipher
1799 the Rosetta Stone is found and makes it possible to decipher the Egyptian Hieroglyphs
1832 or 1838 Sam Morse develops the Morse Code, which actually is no code but an enciphered alphabet of short and long sounds. The first Morse code-message is sent by telegraph in 1844.
1834 the
1844 the invention of the telegraph changes cryptography very much, as codes are absolutely necessary by then
1854 the Playfair cipher is invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone
1859 for the first time a tomographic cipher gets described
1861 Friedrich W. Kasiski does a cryptoanalysis of the Vigenère ciphers, which had been supposed to be uncrackable for ages
1891 Major Etienne Bazeries creates a new version of the wheel cipher, which is rejected by the French Army
1895 the invention of the radio changes cryptography-tasks again and makes them even more important
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Hardly a firm today can afford not to engage in electronic commerce if it does not want to be swept out of business by competitors. "Information is everything" has become something like the Lord's prayer of the New Economy. But how do you get information about your customer online? Who are the people who visit a website, where do they come from, what are they looking for? How much money do they have, what might they want to buy? These are key questions for a company doing electronic business. Obviously not all of this information can be obtained by monitoring the online behaviour of web users, but there are always little gimmicks that, when combined with common tracking technologies, can help to get more detailed information about a potential customer. These are usually online registration forms, either required for entry to a site, or competitions, sometimes a combination of the two. Obviously, if you want to win that weekend trip to New York, you want to provide your contact details.
The most common way of obtaining information about a user online is a
But cookies record enough information to fine-tune advertising strategies according to a user's preferences and interests, e.g. by displaying certain commercial banners rather than others. For example, if a user is found to respond to a banner of a particular kind, he / she may find two of them at the next visit. Customizing the offers on a website to the particular user is part of one-to-one marketing, a type of
One-to-one marketing can create very different realities that undermine traditional concepts of demand and supply. The ideal is a "frictionless market", where the differential between demand and supply is progressively eliminated. If a market is considered a structure within which demand / supply differentials are negotiated, this amounts to the abolition of the established notion of the nature of a market. Demand and supply converge, desire and it fulfilment coincide. In the end, there is profit without labour. However, such a structure is a hermetic structure of unfreedom.
It can only function when payment is substituted by credit, and the exploitation of work power by the exploitation of data. In fact, in modern economies there is great pressure to increase spending on credit. Using credit cards and taking up loans generates a lot of data around a person's economic behaviour, while at the same restricting the scope of social activity and increasing dependence. On the global level, the consequences of credit spirals can be observed in many of the developing countries that have had to abandon most of their political autonomy. As the data body economy advances, this is also the fate of people in western societies when they are structurally driven into credit spending. It shows that data bodies are not politically neutral.
The interrelation between data, profit and unfreedom is frequently overlooked by citizens and customers. Any company in a modern economy will apply data collecting strategies for profit, with dependence and unfreedom as a "secondary effect". The hunger for data has made IT companies eager to profit from e-business rather resourceful. "Getting to know the customer" - this is a catchphrase that is heard frequently, and which suggests that there are no limits to what a company may want to about a customer. In large online shops, such as
But there are more advanced and effective ways of identification. The German company
Bu there are much less friendly ways of extracting data from a user and feeding the data body. Less friendly means: these methods monitor users in situations where the latter are likely not to want to be monitored. Monitoring therefore takes place in a concealed manner. One of these monitoring methods are so-called
Bugs monitoring users have also been packaged in seemingly harmless toys made available on the Internet. For example,
The cursor image technology relies on what is called a GUID (global unique identifier). This is an identification number which is assigned to a customer at the time of registration, or when downloading a product. Many among the online community were alarmed when in 1999 it was discovered that
However, in the meantime, another possible infringement on user anonymity by Microsoft was discovered, when it as found out that MS Office documents, such as Word, Excel or Powerpoint, contain a bug that is capable of tracking the documents as they are sent through the net. The bug sends information about the user who opens the document back to the originating server. A document that contains the bug can be tracked across the globe, through thousands of stopovers. In detailed description of the bug and how it works can be found at the
Of course there are many other ways of collecting users' data and creating appropriating data bodies which can then be used for economic purposes. Indeed, as Bill Gates commented, "information is the lifeblood of business". The electronic information networks are becoming the new frontier of capitalism.
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900 B.C.
A postal service is used for governmental purposes in China.
500 B.C.
In ancient Greece trumpets, drums, shouting, beacon, fires, smoke signals, and mirrors are used for message transmission.
4th century B.C.
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 a message transmission 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 a torch signal that the appropriate water level had been reached. The methods disadvantage was that the possible messages were restricted to a given code, but as the system was mainly used for military purposes, this was offset by the advantage that it was almost impossible for outsiders to understand the 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,
3rd century B.C.
Wax tablets are used as writing material in Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, and Etruria.
2nd century B.C.
In China paper is invented.
1st century B.C.
The use of codices instead of scrolls - basically the hardcover book as we know it today - is an essential event in European history. To quote accurately by page number, to browse through pages and to skip chapters - things that were impossible when reading scrolls - becomes possible.
In the computer age we are witnesses to a kind of revival of the scrolls as we scroll up and down a document. The introduction of hypertext possibly marks the beginning of a similar change as has taken place with the substitution of scrolls with codices.
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With the increased ease of the reproduction and transmission of unauthorized copies of digital works over electronic networks concerns among the copyright holder community have arisen. They fear a further growth of copyright piracy and demand adequate protection of their works. A development, which started in the mid 1990s and considers the copyright owner's apprehensions, is the creation of
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Industrial
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Generally copyright vests in the author of the work. Certain national laws provide for exceptions and, for example, regard the employer as the original owner of a copyright if the author was, when the work was created, an employee and employed for the purpose of creating that work. In the case of some types of creations, particularly audiovisual works, several national laws provide for different solutions to the question that should be the first holder of copyright in such works.
Many countries allow copyright to be assigned, which means that the owner of the copyright transfers it to another person or entity, which then becomes its holder. When the national law does not permit assignment it usually provides the possibility to license the work to someone else. Then the owner of the copyright remains the holder, but authorizes another person or entity to exercise all or some of his rights subject to possible limitations. Yet in any case the "
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Atrocity stories are nothing else than lies; the two words "atrocity stories" simply pretend to be more diplomatic.
The purpose is to destroy an image of the enemy, to create a new one, mostly a bad one. The story creating the image is not necessarily made up completely. It can also be a changed into a certain variable direction.
The most important thing about atrocity stories is to follow the line of possibility. Even if the whole story is made up it must be probable or at least possible, following rumors. Most successful might it be if a rumor is spread on purpose, some time before the atrocity story is launched, because as soon as something seems to be familiar, it is easier to believe it.
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Other biometric technologies not specified here include ear recognition, signature dynamics, key stroke dynamics, vein pattern recognition, retinal scan, body odour recognition, and DNA recognition. These are technologies which are either in early stages of development or used in highly specialised and limited contexts.
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The main concern of copyright owners as the (in terms of
Reproduction and Distribution
Unlike copies of works made using analog copiers (photocopy machines, video recorders etc.) digital information can be reproduced extremely fast, at low cost and without any loss in quality. Since each copy is a perfect copy, no quality-related limits inhibit pirates from making as many copies as they please, and recipients of these copies have no incentive to return to authorized sources to get another qualitatively equal product. Additionally the costs of making one extra copy of intellectual property online are insignificant, as are the distribution costs if the copy is moved to the end user over the Internet.
Control and Manipulation
In cross-border, global data networks it is almost impossible to control the exploitation of protected works. Particularly the use of anonymous remailers and other existing technologies complicates the persecution of pirates. Also digital files are especially vulnerable to manipulation, of the work itself, and of the (in some cases) therein-embedded
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In palm recognition a 3-dimensional image of the hand is collected and compared to the stored sample. Palm recognition devices are cumbersome artefacts (unlike fingerprint and iris recognition devices) but can absorb perform a great amount of identification acts in a short time. They are therefore preferably installed in situations where a large number of people is identified, as in airports.
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Following the dynamics of informatised economies, the consumption habits and lifestyles if customers are of great interest. New technologies make it possible to store and combine collected data of an enormous amount of people.
User profiling helps companies understand what potential customers might want. Often enough, such data collecting takes place without the customer's knowledge and amounts to spying.
"Much of the information collection that occurs on the Internet is invisible to the consumer, which raises serious questions of fairness and informed consent."
(David Sobel, Electronic Privacy Information Center)
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b. April 14, 1907, Port-au-Prince, Haiti
d. April 21, 1971, Port-au-Prince
By name PAPA DOC, president of Haiti whose 14-year regime was of unprecedented duration in that country. A supporter of President Dumarsais Estimé, Duvalier was appointed director general of the National Public Health Service in 1946. He was appointed underminister of labour in 1948 and the following year became minister of public health and labour, a post that he retained until May 10, 1950, when President Estimé was overthrown by a military junta under Paul E. Magloire, who was subsequently elected president. By 1954 he had become the central opposition figure and went underground. Duvalier was elected president in September 1957. Setting about to consolidate his power, he reduced the size of the army and organized the Tontons Macoutes ("Bogeymen"), a private force responsible for terrorizing and assassinating alleged foes of the regime. Late in 1963 Duvalier moved further toward an absolutist regime, promoting a cult of his person as the semi divine embodiment of the Haitian nation. In April 1964 he was declared president for life. Although diplomatically almost completely isolated, excommunicated by the Vatican until 1966 for harassing the clergy, and threatened by conspiracies against him, Duvalier was able to stay in power longer than any of his predecessors.
Galileo Galilee (1564-1642), the Italian Mathematician and Physicist is called the father of Enlightenment. He proofed the laws of the free fall, improved the technique for the telescope and so on. Galilee is still famous for his fights against the Catholic Church. He published his writings in Italian instead of writing in Latin. Like this, everybody could understand him, which made him popular. As he did not stop talking about the world as a ball (the Heliocentric World System) instead of a disk, the Inquisition put him on trial twice and forbid him to go on working on his experiments.
A gateway is a computer supplying point-to-multipoint connections between computer networks.
Oscar Flingal O'Flahertie Wills (1854-1900) is one of the best and most famous poets and novelists of England of his time. His satirical and amusing texts exposed the false moral of the Bourgeoisie publicly. Besides, his life as a dandy made him the leader of aesthetics in England, until he was sent to prison because of homosexuality. Afterwards he lived in Paris where he died lonely and nearly forgotten in a hotel in 1900. His poems, fairy tales, novels and dramas survived.
On behalf of the
This book gives a fascinating glimpse of the many documented attempts throughout history to develop effective means for long distance communications. Large-scale communication networks are not a twentieth-century phenomenon. The oldest attempts date back to millennia before Christ and include ingenious uses of homing pigeons, mirrors, flags, torches, and beacons. The first true nationwide data networks, however, were being built almost two hundred years ago. At the turn of the 18th century, well before the electromagnetic telegraph was invented, many countries in Europe already had fully operational data communications systems with altogether close to one thousand network stations. The book shows how the so-called information revolution started in 1794, with the design and construction of the first true telegraph network in France, Chappe's fixed optical network.
http://www.it.kth.se/docs/early_net/
To perform manufacturing firm's functions related to design and production the CAD/CAM technology, for computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing, was developed. Today it is widely recognized that the scope of computer applications must extend beyond design and production to include the business functions of the firm. The name given to this more comprehensive use of computers is computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM).
During the Tian-an men massacre reports and photos transmitted by fax machines gave notice of what was happening only with a short delay. The Chinese government has learned his lesson well and "regulated" Internet access from the beginning. All Internet traffic to and out of China passes through a few
Users are expected not to "harm" China's national interests and therefore have to apply for permission of Internet access; Web pages have to be approved before being published on the Net. For the development of measures to monitor and control Chinese content providers, China's state police has joined forces with the MIT.
For further information on Internet censorship, see Human Rights Watch,
Joseph Stalin (1879-1953):
After Lenin's death he took over and became a dictator without any limits of power. Everyone who dared to talk or act against him or was in suspicion of doing so, got killed. Millions were murdered. His empire was one made out of propaganda and fear. As long as he was in power his picture had to be in every flat and bureau. Soon after his death the cult was stopped and in 1956 the De-Stalination was started, though he was partly rehabilitated in 1970.
Founded in 1851 in London, Reuters is the world's largest news and television agency with 1,946 journalists, photographers and camera operators in 183 bureaus serving newspapers, other news agencies, and radio and television broadcasters in 157 countries.
In addition to its traditional news-agency business, over its network Reuters provides financial information and a wide array of electronic trading and brokering services to banks, brokering houses, companies, governments, and individuals worldwide.
http://www.reuters.com
American corporation that became the best-known purveyor of child and adult entertainment in the 20th century. Its headquarters are in Burbank, Calif. The company was founded in 1929 and produced animated motion-picture cartoons.
In 1955 the company opened the Disneyland amusement park, one of the world's most famous. Under a new management, in the 1980s, Disney's motion-picture and animated-film production units became among the most successful in the United States. In 1996 the Disney corporation acquired Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which owned the ABC television network. The Disney Company also operates the Disney Channel, a pay television programming service.
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD) was adopted by
Josef Goebbels (1897-1945) was Hitler's Minister for Propaganda and Public Enlightenment. He had unlimited influence on the press, the radio, movies and all kind of literary work in the whole Reich. In 1944 he received all power over the Total War. At the same time he was one of the most faithful followers of Hitler - and he followed him into death in 1945.
Blowfish is a symmetric key block cipher that can vary its length.
The idea behind is a simple design to make the system faster than others.
One of the largest and foremost communications and media conglomerates in the
world. Founded in 1971, the present form of the corporation dates from 1994 when Viacom Inc., which owned radio and television stations and cable television programming services and systems, acquired the entertainment and publishing giant Paramount Communications Inc. and then merged with the video and music retailer Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. Headquarters are in New York City.
The Enigma Encryption Machine was famous for its insecurities as for the security that it gave to German ciphers. It was broken, first by the Poles in the 1930s, then by the British in World War II.
Established in 1950, the National Science Foundation is an independent agency of the U.S. government dedicated to the funding in basic research and education in a wide range of sciences and in mathematics and engineering. Today, the NSF supplies about one quarter of total federal support of basic scientific research at academic institutions.
For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/0/0,5716,2450+1+2440,00.html
The Ku Klux Klan has a long history of violence. It emerged out of the resentment and hatred many white Southerners. Black Americans are not considered human beings. While the menace of the KKK has peaked and waned over the years, it has never vanished.
FTP enables the transfer of files (text, image, video, sound) to and from other remote computers connected to the Internet.
CNN is a U.S.-TV-enterprise, probably the world's most famous one. Its name has become the symbol for the mass-media, but also the symbol of a power that can decide which news are important for the world and which are not worth talking about. Every message that is published on CNN goes around the world. The Gulf War has been the best example for this until now, when a CNN-reporter was the one person to do the countdown to a war. The moments when he stood on the roof of a hotel in Baghdad and green flashes surrounded him, went around the world.
The World Intellectual Property Organization is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations (UN), which was designed to promote the worldwide protection of both industrial property (inventions, trademarks, and designs) and copyrighted materials (literary, musical, photographic, and other artistic works). It was established by a convention signed in Stockholm in 1967 and came into force in 1970. The aims of WIPO are threefold. Through international cooperation, WIPO promotes the protection of intellectual property. Secondly, the organization supervises administrative cooperation between the Paris, Berne, and other intellectual unions regarding agreements on trademarks, patents, and the protection of artistic and literary work and thirdly through its registration activities the WIPO provides direct services to applicants for, or owners of, industrial property rights.
Born 1891 in Vienna, Bernays was one of the founders of modern public relations. An enigmatic character, he was a master of mise en scène with far-reaching contacts in the world of business and politics. The nephew of Sigmund Freund and related with Heinrich Heine, he was also among the first to pursue PR for governments and to produce pseudo-events. Bernays considered the manipulation of public opinion as an important element of mass democracies and was of the opinion that only through PR a society's order can be kept.
The RIPE Network Coordination Centre (RIPE NCC) is one of three Regional Internet
Registries (RIR), which exist in the world today, providing allocation and registration services which support the operation of the Internet globally, mainly the allocation of
http://www.ripe.net
The firm began in Germany in 1835, when Carl Bertelsmann founded a religious print shop and publishing establishment in the Westphalian town of Gütersloh. The house remained family-owned and grew steadily for the next century, gradually adding literature, popular fiction, and theology to its title list. Bertelsmann was shut down by the Nazis in 1943, and its physical plant was virtually destroyed by Allied bombing in 1945. The quick growth of the Bertelsmann empire after World War II was fueled by the establishment of global networks of book clubs (from 1950) and music circles (1958). By 1998 Bertelsmann AG comprised more than 300 companies concentrated on various aspects of media. During fiscal year 1997-98, Bertelsmann earned more than US$15 billion in revenue and employed 58.000 people, of whom 24.000 worked in Germany.
Being an organization established in the name of the US government, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) acts as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals and to bridge the gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature version of these technologies from the commercial sector.
Its members are representatives of agencies as the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy, the
http://www.fnc.gov
William J. Clinton (* 1946) studied law at Yale University, then taught at the University of Arkansas. He was elected Arkansas attorney general in 1976 and served as a governor until 1992. That year he became U.S.-President, the first democratic President after a row of Republicans. His sexual affairs not only cost him nearly his career but he also had to distract from his private affairs: he thought of fighting another war against
For more information see:
Leonard M. Adleman was one of three persons in a team to invent the
Also called microcircuit, the integrated circuit is an assembly of electronic components, fabricated as a single unit, in which active semiconductor devices (
Ross Perot, founder of
Official website:
Unofficial website:
NLANR, initially a collaboration among supercomputer sites supported by the
Today NLANR offers support and services to institutions that are qualified to use high performance network service providers - such as Internet 2 and
http://www.nlanr.net