Kristo Vaher

WBS

Eesti keeles:

Järgnev on Locamotion projekti WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) ja ajagraafik. WBS on projekti kohta aktuaalsem, kuna tegelik ajagraafik saab olema tugevalt mõjutatud meeskonna ajast ning õppetööga seotud võimalustest.

Kodutöö autorid on Kairi Fimberg ja Kristo Vaher.

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Interactive!

Following is an opinion and short summary of this paper by Jens F. Jensen.

Jensen takes a rather scientific view on what interactivity is about in his 1998 paper about interactivity. During the years where interactivity was still in the very early stages, the paper has an interesting perspective on what interactivity is and/or could be. I was somewhat bothered about how outdated some of the examples, illustrations and text in general was, but thankfully it did not get in the way of what Jensen was aiming for. This paper considered high degree of interactivity in things like computer message boards and computer teleconferencing. This was years when terms such as Web 2.0, AJAX driven web applications, smartphones and even instant messaging were not really known. Internet had only 147 million users in 1998, compared to 2 billion we have today, which does not even take into account the amount of time people spend online today, as opposed to 1998. It was a different world. Has ‘interactivity’ gotten a new meaning since?

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Puppet

Social engineering is about manipulating people into performing actions or releasing confidential information that can then later on be exploited. This is similar to other types of fraud, where the victim usually does not even know that he or she is being exploited. When it comes to computers, social engineering is about gathering information which can be exploited when accessing or using computer systems. Since social engineering is quite often about misdirection or simply taking advantage of the ignorance of the victim, it is often difficult to detect and easy to mask by a skilled manipulator.

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Anonymous

Hacktivism is a form of online activism and often political action that is driven by technology and resources of hacking and ‘hacktivists’. Hactivism is rooted in similar gray moral ground as other forms of political activism. Hactivism can be essentially separated into two different types of hactivism, one that is preventive (to negate or disrupt political goals of another party) and another is promotive (to push forward political goals of favored party).

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Locamotion

Our Locative Tech group work was a simple prototype application that utilizes Google Maps. The game involves multiple users placing location specific questions on a map, questions which can be answered either if the user has visited the location or knows the location well enough. As a prototype, the functionality is a bare minimum, users can register, answer questions and add their own questions. The game can be tried out by going to Locamotion prototype website.

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One of the good guys, Linus Torvalds

Hacker ethic has somewhat changed in the recent years. Internet becoming the heart of computerized world has changed the perception people have of hackers and perception hackers have of themselves. As general public considers hackers anyone, who can do damage outside the boundaries of intended functionality, today the word is used now to describe hackers, crackers and simple programmers alike. Differently from the 90′s, hacking is a gray area. As a result, this has also had an effect on hacker ethic.

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Click and things happen!

The Jargon File is a comprehensive collection of hacker slang illuminating many aspects of hackish tradition, folklore, and humor. But since I have never consider myself a hacker, despite being called that at times by people, I only knew what the Jargon File is and had never delved deep into it before. However, the many aspects of what hacking is about are very close to my heart, since every web based system a developer builds needs to both impress the bored hacker and a cracker (in other words, an evil hacker) alike.

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Colors!

When selecting the five study plans of my peers, I made a concious decision to select the ones that are different from another, rather than similar. This is both presentation and content wise. I ended up with blog posts of Kairi, Mehrnoosh, Valeria, Rasa and Kersti.

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A world within a world

This post is inspired by a video shared with me by a friend and an ex-colleague which brings attention to the fact that as we get surrounded more and more by technology, we often miss the magic of life, things that are there, with us, at arms length, yet what we may never notice by being ‘connected’ to online world with our handheld devices or computers in general.

Will our children not know the smell of new books?

Will our children never develop a crush with someone whose online profile they have not glanced at before?

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The Thinker

In the recent weeks I’ve been puzzled about how much I tend to approach various matters related to my course materials using methods outside the box, often turning to philosophical explanations. Part of it is driven by how theoretical my courses have been so far, in comparison to what I was used to during my bachelors studies. Another part is because I have lived and breathed the world of technology and internet, especially in the recent handful years, more than I ever did before. It has become a small part of who I am and is closely tied to my aspirations in life.

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