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Commercial vs. Independent Content: Human and Financial Resources Concerning their human and financial resources commercial media and independent content provider are an extremely unequal pair. While the 1998 revenues of the world's leading media conglomerates (AOL Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom and the News Corporation) amounted to US$ 91,144,000,000 provider of independent content usually act on a non-profit basis and to a considerable extent depend on donations and contributions. Also the human resources they have at their disposal quite differ. Viacom for example employs 112,000 people. Alternative media conversely are mostly run by a small group of activists, most of them volunteers. Moreover the majority of the commercial media giants has a multitude of subsidiaries (Bertelsmann for instance has operations in 53 countries), while independent content provider in some cases do not even have proper office spaces. Asked about their offices number of square meters Frank Guerrero from RTMark comments "We have no square meters at all, because we are only on the web. I guess if you add up all of our servers and computers we would take up about one or two square meters." |
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Governmental Regulations The new U.S. regulations are based on the Wassenaar Arrangement Revision of 1998, where exports without license of 56 bit For more information see: Seven states stay excluded from the new freedom. These are states like Libya, Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Cuba, altogether states seen as terrorist supporting. No encryption tools may be exported into those countries. This is, what happened in the USA, whereas in Germany the issue of a cryptography-law is still on the agenda. Until now, in Germany, everyone can decide by her-/himself, whether she/he wants to encrypt electronic messages or not. Some organizations fear that this could get changed soon. Therefore an urgent action was organized in February 2000 to demonstrate the government that people want the freedom to decide on their own. One governmental argument is that only very few people actually use cryptography. Therefore the urgent action is organized as a campaign for using it more frequently. For more information on this see: Other European countries have more liberate laws on cryptography, like France. Austria doesn't have any restrictions at all, probably because of a governmental lack of interest more than accepting freedom. The (former) restrictions in the bigger countries influenced and hindered developments for safer key-systems, e.g. the key-length was held down extraordinarily. "Due to the suspicious nature of crypto users I have a feeling DES will be with us forever, we will just keep adding keys and cycles (...). There is a parallel between designing electronic commerce infrastructure today that uses weak cryptography (i.e. 40 or 56 bit keys) and, say, designing air traffic control systems in the '60s using two digit year fields. (...) Just because you can retire before it all blows up doesn't make it any less irresponsible." (Arnold G. Reinhold) The Chinese State Encryption Management Commission (SEMC) announced in March 2000 that only strong encryption tools will have to be registered in the future. Which sounds so nice on first sight, does not mean a lot in reality: any kind of useful encryption technique, like the The restrictions and prohibitions for cryptography are part of the states' wish to acquire more control - in the name of the battle against criminality, probably? Due to the emerging organized criminality the governments want to obtain more freedom of control over citizens. Organizations like the NSA appear as the leaders of such demands. What about civil rights or Human Rights? |
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Doubls Bind Messages Double bind messages are extremely effective. For example in Nicaragua the By the end of the 1980s the USA even paid Nicaraguans for voting other parties than the Sandinistas. El Salvador was a similar case. Again the guerrilla got demonized. The difference was the involvement of the Catholic Church, which was highly fought against by the ruling parties of El Salvador - and those again were financially and organizationally supported by the USA. The elections in the 1980s were more or less paid by the USA. U.S.-politicians were afraid El Salvador could end up being a second Cuba or Nicaragua. Every means was correct to fight this tendency, no matter what it cost. On the 21st of September 1996, the |
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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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Henry Ford b. July 30, 1863, Wayne County, Michigan, U.S. d. April 7, 1947, Dearborn, Michigan, U.S. American industrialist who revolutionized factory production with his |
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Machine vision A branch of |
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First Amendment Handbook The First Amendment to the US Constitution, though short, lists a number of rights. Only a handful of words refer to freedoms of speech and the press, but those words are of incalculable significance. To understand the current subtleties and controversies surrounding this right, check out this First Amendment site. This detailed handbook of legal information, mostly intended for journalists, should be of interest to anyone who reads or writes. For example, the chapter Invasion of Privacy shows the limits of First Amendment rights, and the balance between the rights of the individual and the rights of the public - or, more crudely, the balance of Tabloid vs. Celebrity. Each section is carefully emended with relevant legal decisions. http://www.rcfp.org/handbook/viewpage.cgi |
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Frederick Taylor b. March 20, 1856, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S. d. March 21, 1915, Philadelphia American inventor and engineer who is known as the father of scientific management. His system of industrial management has influenced the development of virtually every country. In 1881, he introduced time study at the Midvale plant. The profession of time study was founded on the success of this project, which also formed the basis of Taylor's subsequent theories of management science. Essentially, Taylor suggested that production efficiency in a shop or factory could be greatly enhanced by close observation of the individual worker and elimination of waste time and motion in his operation. Though the Taylor system provoked resentment and opposition from labor when carried to extremes, its value in rationalizing production was indisputable and its impact on the development of |
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