The 19th Century: Machine-Assisted Manufacturing

Eli Whitney's proposal for a simplification and standardization of component parts marked a further milestone in the advance of the automation of work processes. In 1797 he suggested the manufacture of muskets with completely interchangeable parts. As opposed to the older method under which each gun was the individual product of a highly skilled gunsmith and each part hand-fitted, his method permitted large production runs of parts that were readily fitted to other parts without adjustment and could relatively easy be performed by machines.

By the middle of the 19th century the general concepts of division of labor, assembly of standardized parts and machine-assisted manufacture were well established. On both sides of the Atlantic large factories were in operation, which used specialized machines to improve costs, quality and quantity of their products.

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Like that car? The tricks of the data body industry

2. Like that car? The tricks of the data body industry

In the New Economy, data have become a primary resource. Businesses unable to respond to the pressure of informatisation are quickly left behind. "Information is everything" has become the war-cry of the New Economy. More than ever, business companies now collect data related to their customers, their competitors, economic indicators, etc., and compile them in data warehouses. Large amounts of data acquired can be turned into a systematic collection called a data warehouse through data mining techniques. These data can be used for marketing, stock exchange transactions, risk assessment, and many other purposes.

However, there are also many companies that specialise in data body economics as the main line of business. They collect huge amount of data process and enhance them (thereby increasing the value of the data) and offer them on to other companies. Direct marketing companies belong to this category. Direct marketing companies carry out targeted marketing, also called strategic marketing, aimed at individual customers or groups of customers. This process is based on a consumer profile, a collection of data containing personal information such as age, sex, marital status, employment, address, and information about consumer and payment behaviour. Based upon this profile, conclusions regarding possible future consumption are drawn and offers are made.

For example, somebody who has been attracted by a car on display in an airport terminal and completes a card with name and address to participate in a draw reveals a lot of economically valuable information about him / herself. Apart from name and address, and other data that is completed on the card, this person also can be assumed to be a potential car buyer (evidently he / she wants a car) and to be relatively affluent (the poor do not normally travel by plane). The time when you complete the card also provides information: in July and August, you are more likely to be a holiday maker than in November. Possibly in small print somewhere on the ticket you complete you agree to receive more information about this and other products, and you agree also that your data are "electronically processed". The data acquired this way can normally be expected to be much more valuable than the car the is offered in the draw. Most people who completed the cards will not win in the draw, but instead end up on directs marketing data warehouses and one day receive offers of products and services which they never knew they wanted.

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Basics: Rights Recognized

Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of a work are lawful only if they are done with the authorization of the owner of the copyright. The most typical are the following:

- copying or reproducing a work
- performing a work in public
- making a sound recording of a work
- making a motion picture of a work
- broadcasting a work
- translating a work
- adapting a work

Under certain national laws, some of these rights, which are referred to, as "economic rights'" are not exclusive rights of authorization but in specific cases, merely rights to remuneration. Some strictly determined uses (for example quotations or the use of works by way of illustration for teaching) are completely free, that is, they require neither authorization of, nor remuneration for, the owner of the copyright. This practice is described as fair use.

In addition to economic rights, authors enjoy "moral rights" on the basis of which they have the right to claim their authorship and require that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with other uses thereof. They also have the right to oppose the mutilation or deformation of their creations.

The owner of a copyright may usually transfer his right or may license certain uses of his work. Moral rights are generally inalienable and remain with the creator even after he has transferred his economic rights, although the author may waive their exercise.

Furthermore there exist rights related to copyright that are referred to as "neighboring rights". In general there are three kinds of neighboring rights: 1) the rights of performing artists in their performances, 2) the rights of producers of phonograms in their phonograms, and 3) the rights of broadcasting organizations in their radio and television programs. Neighboring rights attempt to protect those who assist intellectual creators to communicate their message and to disseminate their works to the public at large.

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Pine Gap Station



Pine Gap, run by the CIA, is near Alice Springs in central Australia and mostly an underground facility. Pine Gap was mainly established to serve as the groundstation and downlink for reconnaissance satellites like the RHYOLITE and ORION system. The facility consists of more than 7 large antennas in randomes. In Pine Gap's Signals Processing Office transmitted signals are received and transformed for further analysis.There is a no fly zone 4km around PG, and local land holders have agreed not to allow "visitors" access to there properties. It is said that Pine Gap employs nearly 1000 people, mainly from the CIA and the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).

Source:

Jeffrey T. Richelson, The U.S. Intelligence Community, (Westview Press, 4th ed., 1999)p190

Nicky Hager, Secret Power, New Zealand's role in the internatinal spy network, (Craig Potton, 1996)p34ff

Pictures of Pine Gap

http://www.networx.com.au/home/slider/Pine-Gap.htm

http://www.networx.com.au/home/slider/Pine-Ga...
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RSA

The best known of the two-key cryptosystems developed in the mid-1980s is the Rivest-Shamir-Adleman (RSA) cryptoalgorithm, which was first published in April, 1977. Since that time, the algorithm has been employed in the most widely-used Internet electronic communications encryption program, Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). It is also employed in both the Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer web browsing programs in their implementations of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), and by Mastercard and VISA in the Secure Electronic Transactions (SET) protocol for credit card transactions.

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