Marion Martin SPEAIT blog

With technology developing rapidly, we find all sorts of new ways to improve our lives and how we interact with technology. With technological innovation, we might witness the creation of something life-changing and spectacular or something that just no one even asked for. I'll try to bring examples of both worlds. Firstly I'd like to bring a good example of HCI - eye-tracking. I recently watched either a video on YouTube or a documentary on Netflix (can't really member which) that showed how eye-tracking technologies have changed the lives of people suffering from illnesses like locked-in syndrome. Locked-in syndrome is a condition where people have full cognitive ability but they are unable to move or speak due to paralysis of voluntary muscles. So usually they can only move their eyes, and that's about it, although some can't even do that. They are literally locked in their bodies unable to move and communicate with others. But thanks to eye-tracking, people that...

This week's topic is IT professionals in Estonia. As the word "professional" can be defined in many different ways and the definition varies from person to person, for simplicity, in this blog I'll focus on IT professionals who have some sort of an IT degree, although there are a lot of professionals that don't have any sort of a degree. In the last 20 years, the demand for IT professionals hasn't decreased, already at the start of the millennium we were lacking in specialists in the field and we still are now, as the demand increases with the rapid growth of IT. The following graph is from a presentation that one of our lectors - Ago Luberg - gave at both the 2020 and 2019 IT-ametite päev or IT-career day. It's a summary based on a research done in 2019, with the purpose of finding out what the future of IT in Estonia is. Prognosis of the demand for people in IT for the next 10 years. The blue bubbles represent the number of people who on average graduate...

Internet etiquette or netiquette is  code of polite behavior  on the Internet. Altho there isn't an official rulebook for netiquette, back in 1995,  Virginia Shea published a book with 10 commandments: Remember the human Adhere to the same standards of behavior 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 Not all places online are the same. Depending on where you are in cyberspace , different netiquette rules may apply and it's your role as the user to adapt to the environment you're in. Following the rules in an online community is necessary to avoid being muted or even banned. When joining or posting in different Facebook groups, subreddits, or boards on 4chan, there are specific rules that we comply with when j...

Continuing on the topic of copyright issues, this week's post will be about Copyleft and what impact it has on choosing a software license for one's project.  So first of all, what even is Copyleft? Some of you might have heard of this term before in association with open-source software. Well, it's a license for free content/software that determines whether or not the derived works are influenced by the license or not. In contrast to copyright, copyleft ensures that the code/content is freely available for use and modification, whereas copyright more restricts uses.  There are three different grades of copyleft: Strong copyleft - one of the most famous examples is definitely GNU GPL, which was also the first copyleft license. This basically means that the license applies to all derived works and you are obligated to publish the source code if you distribute code that was derived from theirs. Weak copyleft - an example of this would be GNU Lesser General Public License....

In today's blog post I will be sharing my opinion on the book The Case for Copyright Reform by Christian Engströmand Rick Falkvinge and on copyright issues in general. The book starts off with a claim that today’s copyright legislation is out of tune with the times and I must agree with that. There is a dire need for a referendum when it comes to copyright laws, as they are threatening our privacy. And to me, a person who isn't really familiar with all of these copyright laws, it seems that these new laws aren't being passed partly because of big corporations who are afraid to lose part of their income. In the second chapter they bring out some key changes that they propose: Moral Rights Unchanged - when it comes to moral rights, I think these don't really need a change. As said, no one should be able to claim that they are the author of someone else's creations. ”Give credit where credit is due” Free Non-Commercial Sharing - I agree with this point a lot, the curr...