Protecting speech on the global data networks attracts an increasing attention. The efforts and the corresponding abilities of governmental authorities, corporations and copyright enforcement agencies are countered by similar efforts and abilities of researchers and engineers to provide means for anonymous and uncensored communication, as Freenet, Free Haven and Publius. All three of them show a similar design. Content is split up and spread on several servers. When a file is requested, the pieces are reassembled. This design makes it difficult to censor content. All of these systems are not commercial products.
The most advanced system seems to be Publius. Because of being designed by researchers and engineers at the prestigious
For more information on Publius, see John Schwartz, Online and Unidentifiable? in: The Washington Post, June 30, 2000,
Freenet web site:
Free Haven web site:
Publius web site:
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ZNet provides forum facilities for online discussion and chatting on various topics ranging from culture and ecology to international relations and economics. ZNet also publishes daily commentaries and maintains a Web-zine, which addresses current news and events as well as many other topics, trying to be provocative, informative and inspiring to its readers.
Strategies and Policies
Daily Commentaries: Znet's commentaries address current news and events, cultural happenings, and organizing efforts, providing context, critique, vision, and analysis, but also references to or reviews of broader ideas, new books, activism, the Internet, and other topics that strike the diverse participating authors as worthy of attention.
Forum System: Znet provides a private (and soon also a public) forum system. The fora are among others concerned with topics such as: activism, cultural, community/race/religion/ethnicity, ecology, economics/class, gender/kinship/sexuality, government/polity, international relations, ParEcon, vision/strategy and popular culture. Each forum has a set of threaded discussions, also the fora hosted by commentary writers like Chomsky, Ehrenreich, Cagan, Peters and Wise.
ZNet Daily WebZine: ZNet Daily WebZine offers commentaries in web format.
Z Education Online (planned): The Z Education Online site will provide instructionals and courses of diverse types as well as other university-like, education-aimed features.
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Art has always contributed a lot to disinformation.
Many modern tools for disinformation are used in art/photography.
Trillions of photographs have been taken in the 20th century. Too many to look at, too many to control them and their use. A paradise for manipulation.
We have to keep in mind: There is the world, and there exist pictures of the world, which does not mean that both are the same thing. Photographs are not objective, because the photographer selects the part of the world which is becoming a picture. The rest is left out.
Some tools for manipulation of photography are:
morphing (71)
wet operation (73)
neutralizing (74)
masks (75)
damnatio memoriae (78)
Some of those are digital ways of manipulation, which helps to change pictures in many ways without showing the manipulation.
Pictures taken from the internet could be anything and come from anywhere. To proof the source is nearly impossible. Therefore scientists created on watermarks for pictures, which make it impossible to "steal" or manipulate a picture out of the net.
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Global networks require global technical standards ensuring the compatibility of systems. Being able to define such standards makes a corporation extremely powerful. And it requires the suspension of competitive practices. Competition is relegated to the symbolic realm. Diversity and pluralism become the victims of the globalisation of baroque sameness.
The ICT market is dominated by incomplete competition aimed at short-term market domination. In a very short time, new ideas can turn into best-selling technologies. Innovation cycles are extremely short. But today's state-of-the-art products are embryonic trash.
- According to the Computer and Communications Industry Association,
- The world's 13 biggest internet providers are all American.
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One of the most important advances in the development of computer hardware in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the invention of the
Another type of computer developed at the time was the minicomputer. It profited from the progresses in microelectronics and was considerably smaller than the standard mainframe, but, for instance, powerful enough to control the instruments of an entire scientific laboratory. Furthermore
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The dream of a conflict-free capitalism appeals to a diverse audience. No politician can win elections without eulogising the benefits of the information society and promising universal wealth through informatisation. "Europe must not lose track and should be able to make the step into the new knowledge and information society in the 21st century", said Tony Blair.
The US government has declared the construction of a fast information infrastructure network the centerpiece of its economic policies
In Lisbon the EU heads of state agreed to accelerate the informatisation of the European economies
The German Chancellor Schröder has requested the industry to create 20,000 new informatics jobs.
The World Bank understands information as the principal tool for third world development
Electronic classrooms and on-line learning schemes are seen as the ultimate advance in education by politicians and industry leaders alike.
But in the informatised economies, traditional exploitative practices are obscured by the glamour of new technologies. And the nearly universal acceptance of the ICT message has prepared the ground for a revival of 19th century "adapt-or-perish" ideology.
"There is nothing more relentlessly ideological than the apparently anti-ideological rhetoric of information technology"
(Arthur and Marilouise Kroker, media theorists)
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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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~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard
1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia
parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "
4th century
487 the Spartans introduce the so called "
170
50-60
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A research and development program funded by the US government. Goal is the development of advanced networking technologies and applications requiring advanced networking with capabilities that are 100 to 1,000 times faster end-to-end than today's Internet.
http://www.ngi.gov
Copyright laws generally provide for 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.
A cookie is an information package assigned to a client program (mostly a Web browser) by a server. The cookie is saved on your hard disk and is sent back each time this server is accessed. The cookie can contain various information: preferences for site access, identifying authorized users, or tracking visits.
In online advertising, cookies serve the purpose of changing advertising banners between visits, or identifying a particular
Advertising banners can be permanently eliminated from the screen by filtering software as offered by
Cookies are usually stored in a separate file of the browser, and can be erased or permanently deactivated, although many web sites require cookies to be active.
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).
In November 1997, after the assassination of (above all Swiss) tourists in Egypt, the Swiss newspaper Blick showed a picture of the place where the attack had happened, with a tremendous pool of blood, to emphasize the cruelty of the Muslim terrorists. In other newspapers the same picture could be seen - with a pool of water, like in the original. Of course the manipulated coloured version of the Blick fit better into the mind of the shocked Swiss population. The question about death penalty arose quickly ....
The skytale (pronunciation: ski-ta-le) was a Spartan tool for encryption. It consisted of a piece of wood and a leather-strip. Any communicating party needed exactly the same size wooden stick. The secret message was written on the leather-strip that was wound around the wood, unwound again and sent to the recipient by a messenger. The recipient would rewound the leather and by doing this enciphering the message.
b. July 13, 1527, London, England
d. December 1608, Mortlake, Surrey
English alchemist, astrologer, and mathematician who contributed greatly to the revival of interest in mathematics in England. After lecturing and studying on the European continent between 1547 and 1550, Dee returned to England in 1551 and was granted a pension by the government. He became astrologer to the queen, Mary Tudor, and shortly thereafter was imprisoned for being a magician but was released in 1555. Dee later toured Poland and Bohemia (1583-89), giving exhibitions of magic at the courts of various princes. He became warden of Manchester College in 1595.
The MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is a privately controlled coeducational institution of higher learning famous for its scientific and technological training and research. It was chartered by the state of Massachusetts in 1861 and became a land-grant college in 1863. During the 1930s and 1940s the institute evolved from a well-regarded technical school into an internationally known center for scientific and technical research. In the days of the Great Depression, its faculty established prominent research centers in a number of fields, most notably analog computing (led by