Media Giants Online The following selection does not claim to present an exhaustive listing, but rather picks some of the company's most important assets. Due to the rapid developments in the world of media giants the list is also subject to changes. Broadcasting ABC TV Network with 223 affiliated TV stations covering the entire U.S. ABC Radio Network, with 2,900 affiliated stations throughout the U.S. Owner of 9 VHF TV stations Owner of 11 AM and 10 FM stations Cable TV Systems and Channels/Networks Disney Channel 80 % of ESPN cable TV channel and ESPN International 50 % of Lifetime cable TV channel Internet/Interactive Disney Interactive - entertainment and educational computer software and video games, plus development of content for on-line services. Partnership with 3 phone companies to provide video programming and interactive services. ABC Online TV Production, Movies, Video, Music Disney Television Production studios and Walt Disney Pictures movie studio Buena Vista Television production company Buena Vista Home Video Miramax and Touchstone movie production companies Buena Vista Pictures Distribution and Buena Vista International, distributors for Disney and Touchstone movies Walt Disney Records, and Hollywood Records Publishing 6 daily newspapers About 40 weekly magazines, including: Discover, Women's Wear Daily, Los Angeles and Institutional Investor. Chilton Publications Guilford Publishing Co. Hitchcock Publishing Co. Theme Parks, Resorts, and Travel Disneyland Disney World and Disney World Resort Part owner of Disneyland-Paris and Tokyo Disneyland 12 resort hotels Disney Vacation Club Cruise Lines International TV, Film, and Broadcasting 50 % owner of Tele-München Fernseh GmbH & Co. 50 % owner of RTL Disney Fernseh GmbH & Co. 23 % owner of RTL 2 Fernseh GmbH & Co. 37,5 % owner of TM3 Fernseh GmbH & Co. 20-33 % stake in Eurosport network, Spanish Tesauro SA TV company, and Scandinavian Broadcasting System SA 20 % owner of TVA Other Over 500 Disney Stores, and licensing of Disney products The Mighty Ducks professional hockey team 25 % ownership of California Angels major league baseball team Business Connections with Other Media Companies Joint ventures, equity interests, or major arrangements with Bertelsmann, TCI, Hearst Corp., Kirch, and various other media and telephone companies.

TEXTBLOCK 1/3 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611795/100438659155

Movies as a Propaganda- and Disinformation-Tool in World War I and II Movies produced in Hollywood in 1918/19 were mainly anti-German. They had some influence but the bigger effect was reached in World War II-movies. The first propaganda movie of World War II was British. At that time all films had to pass censoring. Most beloved were entertaining movies with propaganda messages. The enemy was shown as a beast, an animal-like creature, a brutal person without soul and as an idiot. Whereas the own people were the heroes. That was the new form of atrocity. Leni Riefenstahl was a genius in this respect. Her movies still have an incredible power, while the majority of the other movies of that time look ridiculous today. The combination of light and shadow, the dramatic music and the mass-scenes that resembled ballet, had its effect and political consequences. Some of the German movies of that period still are on the index. U.S.-President Theodore Roosevelt considered movies the best propaganda-instrument, as they are more subtle than other tools. In the late twenties, movies got more and more important, in the USSR, too, like Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated with his movies. Historic events were changed into symbolism, exactly the way propaganda should function. It was disinformation - but in its most artistic form, especially in comparison to most U.S.- and European movies of that time.

TEXTBLOCK 2/3 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658547

Gait recognition The fact that an individual's identity is expressed not only by the way he/she looks or sounds, but also by the manner of walking is a relatively new discovery of in biometrics. Unlike the more fully developed biometric technologies whose scrutiny is directed at stationary parts of the body, gait recognition has the added difficulty of having to sample and identify movement. Scientists at the University of Southampton, UK (http://www.isis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/research/gait/) have developed a model which likens the movement of legs to those of a pendulum and uses hip inclination as a variable. Another model considers the shape and length of legs as well as the velocity of joint movements. The objective is to combine both models into one, which would make gait recognition a fully applicable biometric technology. Given that gait recognition is applied to "moving preambulatory subjects" it is a particularly interesting technology for surveillance. People can no longer hide their identity by covering themselves or moving. Female shop lifters who pretend pregnancy will be detected because they walk differently than those who are really pregnant. Potential wrongdoers might resort walking techniques as developed in Monty Pythons legendary "Ministry of Silly Walks" (http://www.stone-dead.asn.au/sketches/sillwalk.htm)

TEXTBLOCK 3/3 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611729/100438658388

Netiquette Although referred to as a single body of rules, there is not just one Netiquette, but there are several, though overlapping largely. Proposing general guidelines for posting messages to newsgroups and mailing lists and using the World Wide Web and FTP, Netiquettes address civility topics (i.e., avoiding hate speech) and comprise technical advises (i.e., using simple and platform-independent file formats). Well-known Netiquettes are the Request for Comment #1855 and The Net: User Guidelines and Netiquette by Arlene H. Rinaldi. ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1855.txt http://www.fau.edu/netiquette/net/index.html

INDEXCARD, 1/3

Seneca Lucius Annaeus Seneca (~4 BC - 65 AD), originally coming from Spain, was a Roman philosopher, statesman, orator and playwright with a lot of influence on the Roman cultural life of his days. Involved into politics, his pupil Nero forced him to commit suicide. The French Renaissance brought his dramas back to stage.

INDEXCARD, 2/3

Sony Corporation Japanese SONY KK, major Japanese manufacturer of consumer electronics products. Headquarters are in Tokyo. The company was incorporated in 1946 and spearheaded Japan's drive to become the world's dominant consumer electronics manufacturer in the late 20th century. The company was one of the first to recognize the potential of the consumer videotape market. In 1972 it formed an affiliate to market its Betamax colour videocassette system. In 1987-88 Sony purchased the CBS Records Group from CBS Inc., thus acquiring the world's largest record company. It followed that purchase with the purchase in 1989 of Columbia Pictures Entertainment Inc.

INDEXCARD, 3/3