Extract of Disney’s Content Production and Distribution Holdings

Although the traditional media companies first steps into the digital sphere were fairly clumsy, they have quickly learned from their mistakes and continued to enlarge their Internet presence. Time Warner now for instance operates about 130 Web-Sites (http://www.timewarner.com/corp/about/pubarchive/websites.html). Anyhow the stronger online-engagement of the big media conglomerates by 1998 has led to the establishment of a new pattern: "More than three-quarters of the 31 most visited news and entertainment websites were affiliated with large media firms, and most of the rest were connected to outfits like AOL and Microsoft." (Broadcasting and Cable, 6/22/98).

During the last years many of the smaller players in the field of digital media have been driven out of competition by the huge media conglomerates. This mainly is a result of the advantages that the commercial media giants have over their less powerful counterparts:

    As engagement in online activities mostly does not lead to quick profits, investors must be able to take losses, which only powerful companies are able to.



    Traditional media outlets usually have huge stocks of digital programming, which they can easily plug into the Internet at little extra cost.



    To generate audience, the big media conglomerates constantly promote their Websites and other digital media products on their traditional media holdings.



    As possessors of the hottest "brands" commercial media companies often get premier locations from browser software makers, Internet service providers, search engines and portals.



    Having the financial resources at their disposition the big media firms are aggressive investors in start-up Internet media companies.



Commercial media companies have close and long ties to advertisers, which enables them to seize most of these revenues.

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biotechnology summary

The fusion of flesh and machine is trend which, although inscribed in the history of modern technology from its beginnings, has reached a unprecedented momentum in recent years as a result of crucial advances in information technology, biology, and the development of global networks. Consequently, doubts are emerging concerning the viability of a distinct and definable human nature. Historical and social theories and concepts are being unhinged by the spread hybrids and by new forms of artificial life which are likely to trigger social changes escaping the grip of calculation. Attempts to defend an essential human nature against technical hybridisation, rather than strengthening the human subject, may have further blurred the question of historical subjectivity. Large amounts of money are invested into research and development of artifical biology, making some of the predictions of AI and robotics experts about radical and far reaching changes a matter of time.

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Geraldton Station

Latitude: -28.7786, Longitude: 114.6008

The Geraldton station is officially called the Australian Defence Satellite Communications Station, ADSCS. The station targets mainly the second Pacific Intelsat, 703 and the two main Indian Ocean Intelsats, at 60 and 63 degrees east. Another target is likely to be the new Intelsat positioned, in 1992, at 91.5 degrees east, between South East Asia and India. So Geraldton interception concentrates entirely on Indian Ocean and Asian satellites.

Source: Nicky Hager, Secret Power, New Zealand's role in the internatinal spy network, (Craig Potton, 1996) p.183-185

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Jürgen Habermas

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) is the leading scholar of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, a group of philosophers, cultural critics and social scientists associated with the Institute for Social Research, founded in Frankfurt in 1929. The Frankfurt School is best known for its program of developing a "critical theory of society". Habermas was a student of Adorno, becoming his assistant in 1956. He first taught philosophy at Heidelberg before becoming a professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt. In 1972, he moved to the Max-Planck Institute in Starnberg, but in the mid-1980s, he returned to his post at Frankfurt.

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