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The Secret Behind The secret behind all this is the conception that nothing bad could ever be referred to the own nation. All the bad words belong to the enemy, whereas the "we" is the good one, the one who never is the aggressor but always defender, the savior - not only for ones own sake but also for the others, even if they never asked for it, like the German population during World War I and II. The spiritualization of such thinking leads to the point that it gets nearly impossible to believe that this could be un-true, a fake. To imagine injustice committed by the own nation gets more and more difficult, the longer the tactic of this kind of propaganda goes on. U.S.-Americans voluntarily believe in its politics, believing also the USA works as the police of the world, defending the morally good against those who just do not have reached the same level of civilization until today. To keep up this image, the enemy must be portrayed ugly and bad, like in fairy-tales, black-and-white-pictures. Any connection between oneself and the enemy must be erased and made impossible. In the case of All of this is no invention of several politicians. Huge think tanks and different governmental organizations are standing behind that. Part of their work is to hide their own work, or to deny it. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Timeline 1970-2000 AD 1971 IBM's work on the Lucifer cipher and the work of the NSA lead to the U.S. Data Encryption Standard (= 1976 1977/78 the 1984 Congress passes Comprehensive Crime Control Act - The Hacker Quarterly is founded 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is passed in the USA - Electronic Communications Privacy Act 1987 Chicago prosecutors found Computer Fraud and Abuse Task Force 1988 U.S. Secret Service covertly videotapes a hacker convention 1989 NuPrometheus League distributes Apple Computer software 1990 - - Charles H. Bennett and Gilles Brassard publish their work on Quantum Cryptography - Martin Luther King Day Crash strikes AT&T long-distance network nationwide 1991 - one of the first conferences for Computers, Freedom and Privacy takes place in San Francisco - AT&T phone crash; New York City and various airports get affected 1993 the U.S. government announces to introduce the 1994 - the 1990s work on quantum computer and quantum cryptography - work on biometrics for authentication (finger prints, the iris, smells, etc.) 1996 France liberates its cryptography law: one now can use cryptography if registered - OECD issues Cryptography Policy Guidelines; a paper calling for encryption exports-standards and unrestricted access to encryption products 1997 April European Commission issues Electronic Commerce Initiative, in favor of strong encryption 1997 June PGP 5.0 Freeware widely available for non-commercial use 1997 June 56-bit DES code cracked by a network of 14,000 computers 1997 August U.S. judge assesses encryption export regulations as violation of the First Amendment 1998 February foundation of Americans for Computer Privacy, a broad coalition in opposition to the U.S. cryptography policy 1998 March 1998 April NSA issues a report about the risks of key recovery systems 1998 July 1998 October Finnish government agrees to unrestricted export of strong encryption 1999 January RSA Data Security, establishes worldwide distribution of encryption product outside the USA - National Institute of Standards and Technologies announces that 56-bit - 56-bit DES code is cracked in 22 hours and 15 minutes 1999 May 27 United Kingdom speaks out against key recovery 1999 Sept: the USA announce to stop the restriction of cryptography-exports 2000 as the German government wants to elaborate a cryptography-law, different organizations start a campaign against that law - computer hackers do no longer only visit websites and change little details there but cause breakdowns of entire systems, producing big economic losses for further information about the history of cryptography see: for information about hacker's history see: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Big Five of Commercial Media After a number of mergers and acquisitions five powerful media conglomerates lead the world's content production and distribution. They operate on an international basis with subsidiaries all around the globe and engage in every imaginable kind of media industry. Table: The World's Leading Media Companies
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The Tools of Disinformation and Propaganda "In wartime they attack a part of the body that other weapons cannot reach in an attempt to affect the way which participants perform on the field of battle." ( Therefore the demonstrated tools refer to political propaganda in the two World Wars. Propaganda has the ability to change a war, a natural evil, into a so-called "just" war. Violence then is supposedly defense, no more aggression. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Biometric technologies In what follows there is a brief description of the principal biometric technologies, whose respective proponents - producers, research laboratories, think tanks - mostly tend to claim superiority over the others. A frequently used definition of "biometric" is that of a "unique, measurable characteristic or trait of a human being for automatically recognizing or verifying identity" ( All biometric technologies are made up of the same basic processes: 1. A sample of a biometric is first collected, then transformed into digital information and stored as the "biometric template" of the person in question. 2. At every new identification, a second sample is collected and its identity with the first one is examined. 3. If the two samples are identical, the persons identity is confirmed, i.e. the system knows who the person is. This means that access to the facility or resource can be granted or denied. It also means that information about the persons behaviour and movements has been collected. The system now knows who passed a certain identification point at which time, at what distance from the previous time, and it can combine these data with others, thereby appropriating an individual's data body. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Changes Still, disinformation and propaganda are nothing magic. They can change things, but supposedly only if those things/meanings/opinions are not fixed completely. It is never just a single idea that changes. Society is following the changes. Thinking about disinformation brings us to the word truth, of course, and to the doubt that there is no definite truth. And truth can easily be manipulated to another truth. Just present some facts that seem to be logic and there you've got a new truth. And if the facts can supposedly be proved by empirical studies then the quality of the truth definitely rises. That's what ideologies do all the time. And the media like to do the same thing - as a game with power or mere presentation of power? But of course there also exist bits of disinformation which are more amusing than evil or dangerous: - the theory of the celestro-centric world/"Hohlwelttheorie" - the story of the German philosopher who invented an Italian philosopher, wrote books about him, even reprinted "his" texts, which had gone lost pretendedly 100 years ago - and finally lost his job and all his career when other scientists found out that everything had been made up. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The history of propaganda Thinking of propaganda some politicians' names are at once remembered, like The history of propaganda has to tell then merely mentioning those names: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Privatization of Censorship According to a still widely held conviction, the global data networks constitute the long desired arena for uncensorable expression. This much is true: Because of the Net it has become increasingly difficult to sustain cultural and legal standards. Geographical proximity and territorial boundaries prove to be less relevant, when it does not affect a document's availability if it is stored on your desktop or on a host some thousand kilometers away. There is no international agreement on non-prohibited contents, so human rights organizations and nazi groups alike can bypass restrictions. No single authority or organization can impose its rules and standards on all others. This is why the Net is public space, a political arena where free expression is possible. This freedom is conditioned by the design of the Net. But the Net's design is not a given, as When the World Wide Web was introduced, soon small independent media and human rights organizations began to use this platform for drawing worldwide attention to their publications and causes. It seemed to be the dawning of a new era with authoritarian regimes and multinational media corporations on the looser side. But now the Net's design is changing according to their needs. "In every context that it can, the entertaining industry is trying to force the Internet into its own business model: the perfect control of content. From music (fighting MP3) and film (fighting the portability of DVD) to television, the industry is resisting the Net's original design. It was about the free flow of content; Hollywood wants perfect control instead" (Lawrence Lessig, In the United States, Hollywood and For small independent media it will become very hard to be heard, especially for those offering streaming video and music. Increasingly faster data transmissions just apply to download capacities; upload capacities are much - on the average about eight times - lower than download capacities. As an AT&T executive said in response to criticism: "We haven't built a 56 billion dollar cable network to have the blood sucked from our veins" ( Consumers, not producers are preferred. For corporations what remains to be done to control the Net is mainly to cope with the fact that because of the Net it has become increasingly difficult to sustain cultural and legal standards. On Nov 11, 1995 the German prosecuting attorney's office searched Compuserve Germany, the branch of an international Internet service provider, because the company was suspected of having offered access to child pornography. Consequently Compuserve blocked access to more than 200 Also in 1995, as an attack on US Vice-President Al Gore's intention to supply all public schools with Internet access, Republican Senator Charles Grassley warned of the lurking dangers for children on the Net. By referring to a Time magazine cover story by Philip Elmer-Dewitt from July 3 on pornography on the Net, he pointed out that 83,5% of all images online are pornographic. But Elmer-Dewitt was wrong. Obviously unaware of the difference between Almost inevitably anxieties accompany the introduction of new technologies. In the 19th century it was said that traveling by train is bad for health. The debate produced by Time magazine's cover story and Senator Grassley's attack caused the impression that the Net has multiplied possible dangers for children. The global communication networks seem to be a inexhaustible source of mushrooming child pornography. Later would-be bomb recipes found on the Net added to already prevailing anxieties. As even in industrialized countries most people still have little or no first-hand experience with the Net, anxieties about child pornography or terrorist attacks can be stirred up and employed easily. A similar and related debate is going on about the glorification of violence and erotic depictions in media. Pointing to a "toxic popular culture" shaped by media that "distort children's view of reality and even undermine their character growth", US right-wing social welfare organizations and think tanks call for strong media censorship. (See An Appeal to Hollywood, The intentions for stimulating a debate on child pornography on the Net were manifold: Inter alia, it served the Republican Party to attack Democrat Al Gore's initiative to supply all public schools with Internet access; additionally, the big media corporations realized that because of the Net they might have to face new competitors and rushed to press for content regulation. Taking all these intentions together, we can say that this still ongoing debate constitutes the first and most well known attempt to impose content regulation on the Net. Consequently, at least in Western countries, governments and media corporations refer to child pornography for justifying legal requirement and the implementation of technologies for the surveillance and monitoring of individuals, the filtering, rating and blocking of content, and the prohibition of anonymous publishing on the Net. In the name of "cleaning" the Net of child pornography, our basic rights are restricted. It is the insistence on unrestricted basic rights that needs to be justified, as it may seem. Underlying the campaign to control the Net are several assumptions. Inter alia: The Net lacks control and needs to be made safe and secure; we may be exposed inadvertently to pornographic content; this content is harmful to children. Remarkably, racism seems to be not an issue. The Net, especially the World Wide Web, is not like television (although it is to be feared this is what it might become like within the next years). Say, little Mary types "Barbie" in a search engine. Click In reaction to these anxieties, but in absence of data how children use the Internet, the US government released the Communications Decency Act (CDA) in 1996. In consequence the So, after the failing of the CDA the US government has shifted its responsibility to the industry by inviting corporations to taking on governmental tasks. Bearing in the mind the CompuServe case and its possible consequences, the industry welcomed this decision and was quick to call this newly assumed responsibility "self-regulation". Strictly speaking, "self-regulation" as meant by the industry does not amount to the regulation of the behaviour of corporations by themselves. On the opposite, "self-regulation" is to be understood as the regulation of users' behaviour by the rating, filtering and blocking of Internet content considered being inappropriate. The Internet industry tries to show that technical solutions are more favourable than legislation und wants to be sure, not being held responsible and liable for illegal, offensive or harmful content. A new CompuServe case and a new Communications Decency Act shall be averted. In the Memorandum In fact, the "self-regulation" of the Internet industry is privatized censorship performed by corporations and right-wing NGOs. Censorship has become a business. "Crucially, the lifting of restrictions on market competition hasn't advanced the cause of freedom of expression at all. On the contrary, the privatisation of cyberspace seems to be taking place alongside the introduction of heavy censorship." ( While trying to convince us that its technical solutions are appropriate alternatives to government regulation, the Internet industry cannot dispense of governmental backing to enforce the proposed measures. This adds to and enforces the censorship measures already undertaken by governments. We are encouraged to use today's information and communication technologies, while the flow of information is restricted. According to a report by Reporters Sans Frontières, quoted by Leonard R. Sussman in his essay | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cartoons Cartoons' technique is simplicity. Images are easier to remember than texts. Frequently they show jokes about politicians, friendly or against the person shown. In the first decades of this century, cartoons were also used for propaganda against artists; remember the famous cartoons of As a tool in politics it had fatal consequences by determining stereotypes, which never again could be erased even if detected as pure disinformation. Most famous got the cartoons about Jews, which were not only distributed by Germans and Austrians but all over Europe; and already in the tens and twenties of our century. Most horrifying is the fact that many of those old, fascist and racist cartoons are coming back now, in slightly different design only. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Economic structure; digital euphoria 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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The Egyptians ... Besides ordinary religious manipulation-tools the Egyptians were masters of using architecture for propaganda. In Egypt, most of all, architecture was used as a media to demonstrated power, whereas the Greek and Romans used other types of art, like statues, for political propaganda. The pyramids, palaces, tombs became tools for power demonstrations. Paintings and carvings (like on obelisks) proved the might of the rulers. All those signs of power were done to make people compare their ruling dynasty to gods and keep them politically silent, because religion was used for justifying mortal power. Marble, gold, jewelry and artists were the tools for those maneuvers. Whereas questions for the truth were not even asked or listened to. Finally it was the masses who were used for propaganda, when they were not only forced to work as slaves on those signs of power but also were abused for those power demonstrations, when they had to accompany the dead king into his tomb - dying of hunger, thirst, lack of oxygen and in darkness. The more religious disinformation the more luxury. The more luxury the better. The more luxury the more power. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Virtual cartels, oligopolistic structures 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.
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Public Relations and Propaganda Public relations usually is associated with the influencing of public opinion. Therefore it has subsequently been linked with propaganda. Using one of the many definitions of propaganda "... the manipulation of symbols as a means of influencing attitudes on controversial matters" (Harold D. Lasswell), the terms propaganda and PR seem to be easily interchangeable. Still many authors explicitly distinguish between public relations, advertising and propaganda. Unlike PR, which is often described as objective and extensive information of the public, advertising and propaganda are associated with manipulative activities. Nevertheless to treat public relations and propaganda as equivalents stands in the tradition of PR. Also institutions like the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Basics: Rights Recognized Copyright protection generally means that certain uses of a work are lawful only if they are done with the authorization of the owner of the copyright. The most typical are the following: - copying or reproducing a work - performing a work in public - making a sound recording of a work - making a motion picture of a work - broadcasting a work - translating a work - adapting a work Under certain national laws, some of these rights, which are referred to, as "economic rights'" are not exclusive rights of authorization but in specific cases, merely rights to remuneration. Some strictly determined uses (for example quotations or the use of works by way of illustration for teaching) are completely free, that is, they require neither authorization of, nor remuneration for, the owner of the copyright. This practice is described as In addition to economic rights, authors enjoy "moral rights" on the basis of which they have the right to claim their authorship and require that their names be indicated on the copies of the work and in connection with other uses thereof. They also have the right to oppose the mutilation or deformation of their creations. The owner of a copyright may usually transfer his right or may license certain uses of his work. Moral rights are generally inalienable and remain with the creator even after he has transferred his economic rights, although the author may waive their exercise. Furthermore there exist rights related to copyright that are referred to as "neighboring rights". In general there are 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. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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1940s - 1950s: The Development of Early Robotics Technology During the 1940s and 1950s two major developments enabled the design of modern Numerical control was invented during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is a method of controlling machine tool axes by means of numbers that have been coded on media. The first numerical control machine was presented in 1952 at the First teleoperators were developed in the early 1940s. Teleoperators are mechanical manipulators which are controlled by a human from a remote location. In its typical application a human moves a mechanical arm and hand with its moves being duplicated at another location. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor Supposedly the most famous British atrocity story concerning the Germans during World War I was the "Corpse-Conversion Factory"-rumor; it was said the Germans produced soap out of corpses. A story, which got so well believed that it was repeated for years - without a clear evidence of reality at that time. ( | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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New Forms of Propaganda (in the 19th Century) As soon as governments found out that newspapers were a fantastic and very often unsuspicious medium for supporting propaganda they tried to pull them to their side. Two ways existed: a) to have one's own newspaper, which implies that mostly friends of the government read it. Nothing is regarded as something neutral. b) to keep a good relationship to the most powerful/most frequently read newspapers and then try to make one's opinion theirs. Today mostly elected is b), trying to set up alliances. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Advertising Advertising as referred to in most economic books is part of the marketing mix. Therefore advertising usually is closely associated with the aim of selling products and services. Still, developments like "branding" show a tendency towards the marketing of not only products and services, but of ideas and values. While advertising activities are also pursued by political parties, politicians and governmental as well as non-governmental organizations, most of the money flowing into the advertising industry comes from corporations. Although these clients come from such diverse fields, their intentions hardly differ. Attempting to influence the public, their main goal is to sell: Products, services, ideas, values and (political) ideology. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Catholic Church In the beginnings of Christianity most people were illiterate. Therefore the Bible had to be transformed into pictures and symbols; and not only the stories but also the moral duties of everybody. Images and legends of the Saints turned out as useful models for human behavior - easy to tell and easy to understand. Later, when the crusades began, the Christian Church used propaganda against Muslims, creating pictures of evil, pagan and bloodcurdling people. While the knights and others were fighting abroad, people in Europe were told to pray for them. Daily life was connected to the crusades, also through money-collections - more for the cause of propaganda than for the need of money. During the period of the Counter-Reformation Catholic propaganda no longer was against foreigners but turned against people at home - the Protestants; and against their publications/books, which got prohibited by starting the so-called index. By then both sides were using disinformation for | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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More and more, faster and faster, but... Since the invention of appropriate means and technologies, communication no longer requires face-to-face meetings. From writing and reading to using computers, expanding and exhausting one's possibilities to communicate relies more and more on the application of skills we have to learn. With the increasing importance of communication technologies, learning to apply them properly becomes a kind of rite of passage. A Small World From the very beginning - the first Sumerian pictographs on clay tablets - to today's state of the art technologies - broadband communication via Since the invention of the electrical telegraph, but especially with today's growing digital communication networks, every location on earth seems to be close, however distant it may be, and also time no longer remains a significant dimension. Threatened Cultural Memory More and more information is transmitted and produced faster and faster, but the shelf life of information becomes more and more fragile. For more than 4500 years Sumerian pictographs written on clay tablets remained intact, but newspapers and books, printed some decades ago, crumble into pieces; film reels, video tapes and cassettes corrode. Digitalization of information is not a cure; on the contrary it even intensifies the danger of destroying cultural heritage. Data increasingly requires specific software and hardware, but to regularly convert all available digitized information is an unexecutable task. Compared to the longevity of pictographs on clay tablets, digitized information is produced for instant one-time use. The increasing production and processing of information causes a problem hitherto unknown: the loss of our cultural memory. For further information see For another history of communication systems see | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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What is the Internet? Each definition of the Internet is a simplified statement and runs the risk of being outdated within a short time. What is usually referred to as the Internet is a network of thousands of computer networks (so called autonomous systems) run by governmental authorities, companies, and universities, etc. Generally speaking, every time a user connects to a computer networks, a new Internet is created. Technically speaking, the Internet is a What constitutes the Internet is constantly changing. Certainly the state of the future Net will be different to the present one. Some years ago the Internet could still be described as a network of computer networks using a common communication protocol, the so-called Also, the Internet is not solely constituted by computers connected to other computers, because there are also point-of-sale terminals, cameras, robots, telescopes, cellular phones, TV sets and and an assortment of other hardware components that are connected to the Internet. At the core of the Internet are so-called Since these networks are often privately owned, any description of the Internet as a public network is not an accurate. It is easier to say what the Internet is not than to say what it is. On 24 October, 1995 the U.S. What is generally and in a simplyfiying manner called the Internet, may be better referred to as the Matrix, a term introduced by science fiction writer Strictly speaking, the Matrix is not a medium; it is a platform for resources: for media and services. The Matrix is mainly a very powerful means for making information easily accessible worldwide, for sending and receiving messages, videos, texts and audio files, for transferring funds and trading securities, for sharing resources, for collecting weather condition data, for For a comprehensive view of uses of the Matrix, especially the World Wide Web, see " | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Federal Networking Council Being an organization established in the name of the US government, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) acts as a forum for networking collaborations among Federal agencies to meet their research, education, and operational mission goals and to bridge the gap between the advanced networking technologies being developed by research FNC agencies and the ultimate acquisition of mature version of these technologies from the commercial sector. Its members are representatives of agencies as the National Security Agency, the Department of Energy, the http://www.fnc.gov | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Fuzzy logic A superset of Boolean logic ( | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) DSL connections are high-speed data connections over copper wire telephone lines. As with cable connections, with DSL you can look up information on the Internet and make a phone call at the same time but you do not need to have a new or additional cable or line installed. One of the most prominent DSL services is ISDN (integrated services digital network, for more information click here ( | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Polybius Polybius was one of the greatest historians of the ancient Greek. he lived from 200-118 BC. see: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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IIPA The International | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Assembly line An assembly line is an industrial arrangement of machines, equipment, and workers for continuous flow of workpieces in | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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McCarthy Born in Grand Chute, Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy graduated from Marquette in 1935. In 1939, he won election as a circuit court judge. During World War II, he enlisted in the Marines and served in the Pacific. In 1944, he campaigned for senator but lost in the Republican primary. In 1946, he ran for Wisconsin's other senate seat. In a 1950 speech, McCarthy entered the public spotlight by claiming that communists had "infested" the State Department, dramatically waving a sheet of paper which purportedly contained the traitors' names. A special Senate committee investigated the charges and found them groundless. Unfazed, McCarthy used his position to wage a relentless anti-communist crusade, denouncing numerous public figures and holding a series of highly confrontational hearings, ruining the careers of many people. He died at the age of 49 of complications related to alcoholism. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Extranet An Extranet is an Intranet with limited and controlled access by authenticated outside users, a business-to-business Intranet, e.g. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Friedrich Kittler, The History of Communication Media In this essay, Friedrich Kittler, one of the world's leading media theorists and media historicist, offers a concise and fascinating history of communication technologies in general terms from its beginnings up to now, provoking new insights by showing interesting interdependencies. http://www.ctheory.com/ga1.14.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Edward L. Bernays Born 1891 in Vienna, Bernays was one of the founders of modern public relations. An enigmatic character, he was a master of mise en scène with far-reaching contacts in the world of business and politics. The nephew of Sigmund Freund and related with Heinrich Heine, he was also among the first to pursue PR for governments and to produce pseudo-events. Bernays considered the manipulation of public opinion as an important element of mass democracies and was of the opinion that only through PR a society's order can be kept. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Codices, 1th century B.C. The transformation of writings from scrolls to codices, in basic the hardcover book as we know it today, is an essential event in European history. Quoting accurately by page number, browsing through pages and skipping chapters, all impossible while reading scrolls, become possible. In the computer age we are witnesses to a kind of revival of the scrolls as we scroll upwards and downwards a document we just see a portion of. Maybe the introduction of hypertext is the beginning of a similar change as the replacement of scrolls by codices. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Polybius Checkerboard
It is a system, where letters get converted into numeric characters. The numbers were not written down and sent but signaled with torches. for example: A=1-1 B=1-2 C=1-3 W=5-2 for more information see: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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America Online Founded in 1985, America Online is the world's biggest Internet service provider serving almost every second user. Additionally, America Online operates CompuServe, the Netscape Netcenter and several AOL.com portals. As the owner of Netscape, Inc. America Online plays also an important role in the Web browser market. In January 2000 America Online merged with Time Warner, the worlds leading media conglomerate, in a US$ 243,3 billion deal, making America Online the senior partner with 55 percent in the new company. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Framing Framing is the practice of creating a frame or window within a web page where the content of a different web page can be display. Usually when a link is clicked on, the new web page is presented with the reminders of the originating page. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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T. Matthew Ciolek, Global Networking: A Timeline This document, intended as a reliable electronic reference tool, provides a timeline for three types of developments and milestones: (1) advances in long distance person-to-person communication; (2) advances in storage, replication, cataloguing, finding, and retrieval of data; and (3) standardization of concepts and tools for long distance interaction. The advancements may have a technical (hardware), conceptual (software), or an organizational aspect, or represent an important milestone in the history of a given invention, and are annotated as such in the timeline. The period covered ranges from 30000 BC up to now. http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/milestones.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Neural network A bottom-up | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Enigma Device used by the German military command to encode strategic messages before and during World War II. The Enigma code was broken by a British intelligence system known as Ultra. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Hill & Knowlton John W. Hill opened the doors of his first public relations office in 1927 in Cleveland, Ohio. His early clients were banks, steel manufacturers, and other industrial companies in the Midwest. Hill managed the firm until 1962, and remained active in it until shortly before his death in New York City in 1977. In 1952, Hill and Knowlton became the first American public relations consultancy to recognize the business communication implications engendered by formation of the European Economic Community. Hill and Knowlton established a network of affiliates across Europe and by the middle of the decade had become the first American public relations firm to have wholly-owned offices in Europe. Hill and Knowlton, a member of the WPP Group integrated communications services family, has extensive resources and geographic coverage with its 59 offices in 34 countries. Hill and Knowlton is known for its hard-hitting tactics and said to have connections with intelligence services. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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FEED | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Alexander Graham Bell b., March 3, 1847, Edinburgh d. Aug. 2, 1922, Beinn Bhreagh, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada American audiologist and inventor wrongly remembered for having invented the telephone in 1876. Although Bell introduced the first commercial application of the telephone, in fact a German teacher called Reiss invented it. For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,15411+1+15220,00.html | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Mass production The term mass production refers to the application of the principles of specialization, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Censorship of Online Content in China During the Tian-an men massacre reports and photos transmitted by fax machines gave notice of what was happening only with a short delay. The Chinese government has learned his lesson well and "regulated" Internet access from the beginning. All Internet traffic to and out of China passes through a few Users are expected not to "harm" China's national interests and therefore have to apply for permission of Internet access; Web pages have to be approved before being published on the Net. For the development of measures to monitor and control Chinese content providers, China's state police has joined forces with the MIT. For further information on Internet censorship, see Human Rights Watch, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD) was adopted by | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Memex Animation by Ian Adelman and Paul Kahn | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Wide Application Protocol (WAP) The WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is a specification for a set of communication protocols to standardize the way that wireless devices, such as cellular telephones and radio transceivers, can be used for Internet access, including While Internet access has been possible in the past, different manufacturers have used different technologies. In the future, devices and service systems that use WAP will be able to interoperate. Source: Whatis.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Themistocles Themistocles, a Greek politician and general, conquered the Persians in the battle of Salamis, in 480 BC. The Persians, under their King For further details see: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Internet Protocol Number (IP Number) Every computer using IP numbers are divided into three classes. Class A is restricted for big-sized organizations, Class B to medium-sized ones as universities, and Class C is dedicated to small networks. Because of the increasing number of networks worldwide, networks belonging together, as | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Microsoft Network Microsoft Network is the online service from http://www.msn.com | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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WTO An international organization designed to supervise and liberalize world trade. The WTO (World Trade Organization) is the successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which was created in 1947 and liberalized the world's trade over the next five decades. The WTO came into being on Jan. 1, 1995, with 104 countries as its founding members. The WTO is charged with policing member countries' adherence to all prior GATT agreements, including those of the last major GATT trade conference, the Uruguay Round (1986-94), at whose conclusion GATT had formally gone out of existence. The WTO is also responsible for negotiating and implementing new trade agreements. The WTO is governed by a Ministerial Conference, which meets every two years; a General Council, which implements the conference's policy decisions and is responsible for day-to-day administration; and a director-general, who is appointed by the Ministerial Conference. The WTO's headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Cooperative Association of Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) Based at the University of California's San Diego Supercomputer Center, CAIDA supports cooperative efforts among the commercial, government and research communities aimed at promoting a scalable, robust Internet infrastructure. It is sponsored by the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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World Wide Web (WWW) Probably the most significant Internet service, the World Wide Web is not the essence of the Internet, but a subset of it. It is constituted by documents that are linked together in a way you can switch from one document to another by simply clicking on the link connecting these documents. This is made possible by the Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), the authoring language used in creating World Wide Web-based documents. These so-called hypertexts can combine text documents, graphics, videos, sounds, and Especially on the World Wide Web, documents are often retrieved by entering keywords into so-called search engines, sets of programs that fetch documents from as many Among other things that is the reason why the World Wide Web is not simply a very huge database, as is sometimes said, because it lacks consistency. There is virtually almost infinite storage capacity on the Internet, that is true, a capacity, which might become an almost everlasting too, a prospect, which is sometimes According to the Internet domain survey of the | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Black Propaganda Black propaganda does not tell its source. The recipient cannot find out the correct source. Rather would it be possible to get a wrong idea about the sender. It is very helpful for separating two allies. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Instinet Instinet, a wholly owned subsidiary of | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) Founded in 1973 by 239 banks from 15 countries, SWIFT is responsible for maintaining the world's most important network dedicated to financial transaction processing. Although facing competition from smart cards, e.g., SWIFT can rely on an increasing clientèle. In September 1999 SWIFT served 6,710 live users in 189 countries. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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François Duvalier b. April 14, 1907, Port-au-Prince, Haiti d. April 21, 1971, Port-au-Prince By name PAPA DOC, president of Haiti whose 14-year regime was of unprecedented duration in that country. A supporter of President Dumarsais Estimé, Duvalier was appointed director general of the National Public Health Service in 1946. He was appointed underminister of labour in 1948 and the following year became minister of public health and labour, a post that he retained until May 10, 1950, when President Estimé was overthrown by a military junta under Paul E. Magloire, who was subsequently elected president. By 1954 he had become the central opposition figure and went underground. Duvalier was elected president in September 1957. Setting about to consolidate his power, he reduced the size of the army and organized the Tontons Macoutes ("Bogeymen"), a private force responsible for terrorizing and assassinating alleged foes of the regime. Late in 1963 Duvalier moved further toward an absolutist regime, promoting a cult of his person as the semi divine embodiment of the Haitian nation. In April 1964 he was declared president for life. Although diplomatically almost completely isolated, excommunicated by the Vatican until 1966 for harassing the clergy, and threatened by conspiracies against him, Duvalier was able to stay in power longer than any of his predecessors. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Nero Nero's full name was Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (37-68 AD). Nero was Roman Emperor from 54-68 AD; during the first years in power he stood under the influence of his teacher | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Kessler Marketing Intelligence (KMI) KMI is the leading source for information on fiber-optics markets. It offers market research, strategic analysis and product planning services to the opto-electronics and communications industries. KMI tracks the worldwide fiber-optic cable system and sells the findings to the industry. KMI says that every fiber-optics corporation with a need for strategic market planning is a subscriber to their services. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Ross Perot Ross Perot, founder of Official website: Unofficial website: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Viacom One of the largest and foremost communications and media conglomerates in the world. Founded in 1971, the present form of the corporation dates from 1994 when Viacom Inc., which owned radio and television stations and cable television programming services and systems, acquired the entertainment and publishing giant Paramount Communications Inc. and then merged with the video and music retailer Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. Headquarters are in New York City. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Microsoft Corporation Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and headquartered in Redmond, USA, Microsoft Corporation is today's world-leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. As MS-DOS, the first operating system released by Microsoft, before, Windows, its successor, has become the de-facto standard operating system for personal computer. According to critics and following a recent court ruling this is due to unfair competition. For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Punch card, 1801 Invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard, an engineer and architect in Lyon, France, the punch cards laid the ground for automatic information processing. For the first time information was stored in binary format on perforated cardboard cards. In 1890 Hermann Hollerith used Joseph-Marie Jacquard's punch card technology for processing statistical data retrieved from the US census in 1890, thus speeding up data analysis from eight to three years. His application of Jacquard's invention was also used for programming computers and data processing until electronic data processing was introduced in the 1960's. - As with Paper tapes are a medium similar to Jacquard's punch cards. In 1857 Sir Charles Wheatstone applied them as a medium for the preparation, storage, and transmission of data for the first time. By their means, telegraph messages could be prepared off-line, sent ten times quicker (up to 400 words per minute), and stored. Later similar paper tapes were used for programming computers. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Writing Writing and calculating came into being at about the same time. The first pictographs carved into clay tablets are used for administrative purposes. As an instrument for the administrative bodies of early empires, who began to rely on the collection, storage, processing and transmission of data, the skill of writing was restricted to a few. Being more or less separated tasks, writing and calculating converge in today's computers. Letters are invented so that we might be able to converse even with the absent, says Saint Augustine. The invention of writing made it possible to transmit and store information. No longer the ear predominates; face-to-face communication becomes more and more obsolete for administration and bureaucracy. Standardization and centralization become the constituents of high culture and vast empires as Sumer and China. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Scientology Official name Church Of Scientology, religio-scientific movement developed in the United States in the 1950s by the author L. Ron Hubbard (1911-86). The Church of Scientology was formally established in the United States in 1954 and was later incorporated in Great Britain and other countries. The scientific basis claimed by the church for its diagnostic and therapeutic practice is disputed, and the church has been criticized for the financial demands that it makes on its followers. From the 1960s the church and various of its officials or former officials faced government prosecutions as well as private lawsuits on charges of fraud, tax evasion, financial mismanagement, and conspiring to steal government documents, while the church on the other hand claimed it was being persecuted by government agencies and by established medical organizations. Some former Scientology officials have charged that Hubbard used the tax-exempt status of the church to build a profitable business empire. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC) The ICPC aims at reducing the number of incidents of damages to submarine telecommunications cables by hazards. The Committee also serves as a forum for the exchange of technical and legal information pertaining to submarine cable protection methods and programs and funds projects and programs, which are beneficial for the protection of submarine cables. Membership is restricted to authorities (governmental administrations or commercial companies) owning or operating submarine telecommunications cables. As of May 1999, 67 members representing 38 nations were members. http://www.iscpc.org | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Computer programming language A computer programming language is any of various languages for expressing a set of detailed instructions for a digital computer. Such a language consists of characters and rules for combining them into symbols and words. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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