Most computer systems are far from being secure.
A lack of security - it is said - might hinder the developments of new information technologies. Everybody knows electronic transactions involve a more or less calculated risk. Rumors about insecurity let consumers doubt whether the commodity of e-commerce is bigger or its risks. First of all the market depends on the consumer's confidence. To provide that another application for public key cryptography gets essential: the digital signature, which is used to verify the authenticity of the sender of certain data.
It is done with a special private key, and the public key is verifying the signature. This is especially important if the involved parties do not know one another. The DSA (= Digital Signature Algorithm) is a public-key system which is only able to sign digitally, not to encrypt messages. In fact digital signature is the main-tool of cryptography in the private sector.
Digital signatures need to be given for safe electronic payment. It is a way to protect the confidentiality of the sent data, which of course could be provided by other ways of cryptography as well. Other security methods in this respect are still in development, like digital money (similar to credit cards or checks) or digital cash, a system that wants to be anonymous like cash, an idea not favored by governments as it provides many opportunities for money laundry and illegal transactions.
If intellectual property needs to be protected, a digital signature, together with a digital timestamp is regarded as an efficient tool.
In this context, the difference between identification and authentication is essential. In this context smartcards and firewalls are relevant, too.
A lot of digital transactions demand for passwords. More reliable for authentication are biometric identifiers, full of individual and unrepeatable codes, signatures that can hardly be forged.
For more terms of cryptography and more information see:
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Providers of digital information might be confronted with copyright related problems when using some of the special features of hypertext media like
Framing
Frames are often used to help define, and navigate within, a content provider's website. Still, when they are used to present (copyrighted) third party material from other sites issues of passing off and misleading or deceptive conduct, as well as copyright infringement, immediately arise.
Hyperlinking
It is generally held that the mere creation of a hyperlink does not, of itself, infringe copyright as usually the words indicating a link or the displayed URL are unlikely to be considered a "work". Nevertheless if a link is clicked on the users browser will download a full copy of the material at the linked address creating a copy in the RAM of his computer courtesy of the address supplied by the party that published the link. Although it is widely agreed that the permission to download material over the link must be part of an implied license granted by the person who has made the material available on the web in the first place, the scope of this implied license is still the subject of debate. Another option that has been discussed is to consider linking
Furthermore hyperlinks, and other "information location tools", like online directories or search engines could cause their operators trouble if they refer or link users to a site that contains infringing material. In this case it is yet unclear whether providers can be held liable for infringement.
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"A man is crazy who writes a secrete
in any other way than one which
will conceal it from the vulgar."
Roger Bacon (~1250 AD)
The essence of human communication is not only the social behavior to give or get messages (of whatever meaning) but also how to give and get them, and to include certain people by excluding others from the process of informing.
e.g. whispering is an effective way of talking to exclude the majority.
What about ways of writing?
Already some of the first written messages in human history obviously found special forms of hiding contents from the so-called others. When the knowledge of writing meant a privilege in a stronger sense as it is true today (in China for a long period writing was forbidden to people not working for the government), the alphabet itself was a kind of cryptography (that is why Catholic churches were painted with pictures explaining the stories of the Bible).
Certainly the methods of deciphering and enciphering improved a lot during the last 4.000 years. In the meantime cryptography has become a topic without end and with less technological limits every day. On the one hand there is the field of biometrics, which is highly related to cryptography but still in its beginnings, on the other hand there emerge so-called infowars, which intend to substitute or at least accompany war and are unthinkable without cryptography.
But there is much more to detect, like the different forms of de- and encoding. And very important, too, there is the history of cryptography that tells us about the basics to make it easier to understand today's issues.
In the actual age of (dis-)information storing and transporting electronic information safely increases its importance. Governments, institutions, economy and individuals rely on the hope that no-one can read or falsify their messages/data as it is much more difficult to detect and proof abuses in electronic media than in elder forms of written communication.
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Robot relates to any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner. The term is derived from the Czech word robota, meaning "forced labor." Modern use of the term stems from the play R.U.R., written in 1920 by the Czech author Karel Capek, which depicts society as having become dependent on mechanical workers called robots that are capable of doing any kind of mental or physical work. Modern robot devices descend through two distinct lines of development--the early
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,