SPEAIT Andre

  Implementing the correct design requires an investment in time and effort, but getting it wrong might be exponentially more costly. When testing software, something that can be heard is „human error“. But it’s actually the designers responsibility to anticipate errors and make sure they won’t happen. Good design and usability are important everywhere and especially in high-leverage situations. For example, on January 13, 2018, residents of Hawaii were in the shock of their lives. Saturday morning, Hawaii Emergency Management Agency issued an alert to residents phones saying „BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT INBOUND TO HAWAII. SEEK IMMEDIATE SHELTER. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.“ The political climate and tensions with North Korea made people panic. They rushed to shelters, highways were flooded with cars and everyone was trying to get in touch with their family. One person said „We fully felt like we were about to die. I drove to get my kids even though I knew I probably wouldn’t make it, and wa...

I remember in school I was told that you need to study hard to get good grades. Then those good grades help you get into universities where you can get a degree and all the companies are looking for a person with a degree. Something about degrees is that different universities have different credibility. For example studying Law in Tartu University or Tallinn University. I learned that law firms strongly prefer people from Tartu more than Tallinn. But it appears that those degrees might not be all that powerful, especially in IT. More and more people are self learning different programming languages and overall knowledge needed in the field. This is all thanks to the internet. Before the wide spread of the internet I believe it was not that easy to research a field that interests you and also gain enough knowledge that you could become a professional. Yes, there are always books, but I think it’s not very comparable with the internet. Nowadays tech companies are hiring people who might...

There are different etiquettes on how to behave in certain situations or places, having dinner at a fancy restaurant or attending a wedding. As online communication has reached new highs in popularity there should be some practices that people follow. Before anyone knew about Facebook and Twitter, Virginia Shea published her 'Ten Commandments' that are published in the book of Netiquette . Some simple guidelines have been followed for most of the time on the Internet dating back to early mailing lists. 'Ten Commandments' by Virginia Shea: Remember the human Adhere to the same standards of behaviour online that you follow in real life Know where you are in cyberspace Respect other people's time and bandwidth Make yourself look good online Share expert knowledge Help keep flame wars under control Respect other people's privacy Don't abuse your power Be forgiving of other people's mistakes One interesting phenomenon that seems to gain popularity (but I’m su...

  When new programs or software is being released to public, developers put a copyright license on their work. Depending on their goals and intentions, the type of license may vary. The software may be for commercial use or non-commercial use and whether they plan to make money on it or just a contribution to the world. Copyleft license means that all downstream projects cant add other restrictions on the software. According to the Free Software Definition free software must fulfil 4 freedoms: 1.        The freedom to run the program, for any purpose. 2.        The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. 3.        The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour. 4.        The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so tha...

The amount of music, art and all creative works overall on the internet is massive. And since so many people are using it, there tends to be people who are misusing or falsely claiming authorship of someone else's work. That's where copyright rules come into play. The idea is to prevent misuse of content, but it also blocks creativity. Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström share their opinions in their book "The case of copyright reform". Setting up an efficient copyright system seems like a really hard task. How can you design it, so that original authors get what they want/deserve and that people would know exactly how to use someone else's work. One example could be music. If someone wants to make a   remix of a song or upload their own cover of it to Youtube, should they ask the author for permission? In that case, the author would probably get bombarded with emails and making it very difficult to respond. Now, what I think is, if   you take a song and add y...