Leslie Da Bass - Kassatshekk

Spämmijast otseturustajaks » Luiga Mody Hääl Borenius

Spämmijast otseturustajaks » Luiga Mody Hääl Borenius

The validity of Cory Doctorow's business model

Cory Doctorow is a writer and blogger who writes stories in different magazines and also edits famous weblog Boing Boing. He is known as an activist in liberizing the copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization. He is also known by publishing his books in Internet under Creative Commons licenses. His first book published in 2003 under CC was "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom". Many of he's books are published under NonCommercial + ShareAlike combo license, which means all noncommercial derivatives with author attribution can be distributed under license identical to the work. All of he's novels after 2003 are published with CC license, but all of the licenses are noncommercial.

So where the money comes?

I guess, that Cory Doctorow is using CC noncommercial licensing method to get wide distribution of his books. Along with the mass distribution also comes good notoriety. The idea to allow readers to share the book by themselves is giving him an advantage not to pay for distribution at all. He has gained lot of fame with this method and many people know he's books and review them online, which also affects the sales of hard copy books in bookstores. He is using the most widely spread online strategy in his publishing business, give digitally free and sell hard copies. Most of the money comes from donations and sales of the hard copies all over the Internet.

My Role in Wesnoth participation team

I was arranged to write a WML code in Red team. There were lot of problems in the start. As I am not a programmer and don't know much of it, my plan was to learn the logic of the existing projects and try to understand it. So I took some projects and changed their maps, scenarios units etc. and ended up with game crash several times. From there we were stuck with our team and I had an idea to start from scratch and try to build it step by step. We were succeeding more and more with this approach and ended up with working campain consist 4 scenarios. I was helped by Maarja, Jakob and Elise and we were constantly programming it many many evenings. Finally we undestood the logic of the code and the structure. We found that asking questions from Westnoth chatroom is the quickest way to get solution to the coding problems.

Blue team - Wesnoth campaign review

For the first, I had troubles with starting the game. I got all the game date from SVN and tried to run it. As we understood in developing wesnoth campaign, that campaign data has to be copied under My Games folder, but with this version it didn't work, so I was forced to try copy it under game source files. After doing so I still got weird map loading error:


So I could not start the game at all...
Then I noticed that the blue team campaign was written for beeta version (shame).
So I downloaded beeta and installed it to another location and tried to run the game again.
And I succeeded this time, and got it working.

The team has put lot of effort in creating the Campaign texts and story. The story is nicely described and creates interest to play it.

In first scenario I really liked that you had to find the path through the woods. I also liked the autorecruit, and I wonder how it is coded. I was asked to find the path in this scenario. I really found it is frustrating just putting your characters to move forward. So i didn't much first scenario. Finally I made it to the end in somekind of a little town. The map was nicely designed though!

In second scenario I need to found elven allie to win enemy. I explored map with the scrappy and finally found the elven allie. Though I couldn't move the elf and my chars scrappy and icky were killed, and I need to start over.

Next time I already knew how to play first scenario, so it was quick and easy.
So I reached the second level again, but never finished the game, I couldn't move the elf again...

For the comment I have to say, that game design, map design and story were really good, but I didn't like the understandment with the characters so I couldn't finish the game.

History of new media

http://lizard.artun.ee/~raivo/imke2010

http://lizard.artun.ee/~raivo/imke2010/presentations/priidu_tammeorg.pdf

Open source as business strategy

Many companies are using open source as their business strategy. This is not just giving software away free, but knowing where your outcome is. The best example is dual licensing which is very often done for supporting free software business models. With dual licensing company can sell porprietary software license which allows creating proprietary applications and in the same time can provide also free license with copyleft free or open source license with the requirement the derived work has to be released under the same license. Good example is MySQL Community Edition is available under the GNU license, but there is also MySQL Enterprise which is commercial version and with more possibilities and extra services.

One idea of open source strategy is to go to market with new piece of software by giving this away for free and win customers more easily and grow more easily. By giving this away for free they create unique dependance among their users and with the time users don't even notice that they need this software. Good example is PHP framework Symphony which has fastly growing network of developers creating new plugins and functions for this framework. They also offer Doctrine as ORM for their framework, which is also very fastly growing free ORM. They earn money selling the how to books and trainings, they also have donate, which most of the free software communities use.

My Favourite is Magento open source eCommerce platform, which is using dual licensing way. Magentos community edition is using OSL 3.0 license and Magento enterprise edition is commercially licensed. The latter is more comprehensive and has more possibilities than free edition. There are also widely offered extensions, some of them are free and some commercial.

Copyleft licensing and its usage

Copyleft is ment for supporting the copyright laws by removing the copyright restrictions from the work for distributing and modifing the work with the requirement to retain the same rights for the works are created from the original work.

It is meant for modifying copyrights for works as music, art, documents and computer software.
Basically autor of the work can prohibit other people by reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of his work, but author can give permission to distribute the copies of the work to reproduce the work with the same copyleft licensing scheme. With computer software, example is open source copyleft license which requires to show information about creator of the software and include the the source code.

Using copyleft person can codify his work with the license. Licensing can be either none, weak or strong. Many free software licenses are none copyleft licenses and are not requireing licensee to distribute the software under the same license, and makeing it widely possible to use in proprietary software. For example if you choose a none copyleft license for your software project, your code will possibly spread very quickly if its good enough. Many companies will be interested in it, if they can integrate this to their software. What you get is recognition and maybe become a new standard but, companies who are using you code are getting the profit. Good examples are Apache webserver license and X11.

Weak copyleft like LGPL is mostly used for creating software libraries, because it allowes other software to link to the library and redistribute it without legal issues. For example if you software project is using a weak copyleft license, then possibly your software is adopted by other software companies, because the license allows them to use your software together with theirs. It also means that they can make revenue from the code they develop on the codebase you are giving away free. Good example from weak copyleft licensing is C standard library.

Strong copyleft license such as GNU GPL means that all source code modifications, additions, or derivatives must use the same GPL license. For example if your software uses a strong copyleft license, then companies who are wanting to earn profit from your sourecode don't want to use your code as their connected to your original code, because there could be many conflicts with GPL license. This is the main reason why many companies are not allowing to use GPL in their projects.

Wesnoth - game review

I am very big fan of strategy games. My first experience with Civilization 1. There from I am very found of strategy games and tried to play lot of them. Wesnoth package is small and quick to download and install. It has Estonian language support and is being developed under GNU GPL licence which means that Wesnoth is free software. Wesnoth is turn based game, like Civilization and played on the map. There are different units in the game with their strenghts and weaknesses. Unit strenght is also dependant on the terrain type it is standing on. It shows the % of terrain defence if you want to move your unit there. Units are gaining more strenght if they survive the battle - gain more experience and become stronger. I really like the game core idea and the race segmentation to bad and good. I tried to play good part and was going through various campains. The graphics are not very good, but is not the big issue, though the campaigns are interesting and free to download from the internet. The game is really easy to learn has lots of campaigns to play.
One thing I would like developers to add is to move all objects by selecting them with mouse. That will reduce time of play a lot.

Free and open source software comparsion

So what differs open source software from free software. Open source software is basically same than free software. The difference comes from restrictions in licencing. Free software is totaly free for distribution, copy, modify etc. Open source has it's restrictions in modify and redistributions and accepts more restrictive licences than free software and doesn't accept some free software licences. But more or less the differences are small and almoust all open source is free software and nearly all free software is open source.

Ambiguity of the word free software has raised many questions. Many people have tried to find proper definition to free and open source software and there comes the different understanding of these two schools of thought. Free software developers think that open source software is more meant for corporations. Companies fear the word free, for them it usually means it's buggy and not working and not effiecent and profitable. They tend to go for open source which is more built for business. They think that with open source they can get better quality, because its vendor locked-in type of software. Free software developers think that many software developing companies are using "open source" termin with their PR tricks to sell their software more easily. Some people think that free software thinking is like communist thinking, they tend to see collectivic thinking and problems with no ownership is allowed, but more people think it is liberal movement and is very good for economy.

METHODODLOGICAL PLAN of my research project

Privacy and security problems related to networks of trust by example of Facebook connect.
Supervisor: Kaido Kikkas

The purpose of the taken subject is to research privacy and security problems in websites which are using Facebook connect. The practical values of the work are case studies how to integrate Facebook connect with media service website.

The research method I choose for the work is design research. I find it the best because I can develop a practical value of a work. In the analysis part I will give an overview of the social networks in the Internet. Then I give an overview of Facebook interoperability and data portability and Facebook platform showing the real life examples and comparing their functionalities. Then I will analyze Facebook connect and its different functionalities, I will also provide some examples of existing websites using Facebook connect and give an overview of identity 2.0 and Facebook connect alternatives. The most important part of the analysis will concentrate on the security and privacy problems with Facebook connect and Facebook API, wherefrom I propose a new integration design concept.

After analysing the current situation and finding the problems and concerns I start with planning the design concept. This involves creating the project work plan and choosing right methods for the work. I will also blog entire work process to track the changes.

The second part is the process of design and development and describing the result in the process. I will draw sketches of the process and describe the outcome documentation. I will also design alternative ways of design integration.

In the evaluation part I put my concept up to the Internet for testing. I choose a test group of IT specialist and software developers who will review the concept and give suggestions of making it better. Finally I define a design a concept for integrating website with Facebook connect.

Priidu Tammeorg
IMKE 2008

A Review of a Master Thesis „FUNCTIONS OF ONLINE COMMUNITIES“ by Ivo Kiviorg

The author is using empirical research for his paper. He starts with defining the problem and choosing the objective of the work and asking the questions in the end of introductory part. It is interesting that with the questions author is dividing work in two: finding the concept functions and fitting these for existing community.

The paper is clearly quantitative research. Author clearly describes the purpose in the abstract part and it’s understood that author is trying to create a concept of functions of groups in online community. Author goes through the different theories of communities and group functions and explains the broader meaning.

The literature review and analysis in the first part of the work has big influence on the research questions and concepts. The author proposed 13 concepts of functions and tested these with the survey. The strategy of the research was quantitative as using a survey questions formed from initial concepts to existing online community rada7.ee. The survey design is small sample 387 registered users out of 5000 users of the community. He uses questionnaire containing 43 questions all the questions in 5-point scale. In the conclusions part author analyses the outcome of the survey and measures the results with the factor analysis, principal component analysis method and Varimax rotation. In the end the author is proposing the concept for trying out with other online communities.

The used methodology was not the best choice for the research and would have been design research for creating the concept and testing it with different online communities. Using only one community for the concept is not enough and takes away possibility to compare and measure the outcome more precisely.

Priidu Tammeorg
IMKE 2008

Review of "Comments and ethics"

I chose to review wiki "Comments and ethics" since it also has only two participants as our team.

Wiki was composed in Google code, which is basically ok to choose but maybe not the best choise for wikipage. Users were posting their info with separate links and divided their tasks.

Andris Reiman described the short history of anonymous comments in Estonia. He pointed out that comments can be very often vulgar and said with the bad voice and are affecting people's morality and feelings. He has well described how there was a precedent with the website Delfi.ee was sued and won becouse of anonymous vulgar comment and beeing responsible for this comment. On the second section of his wiki he describes the fighting mesures agains lame comments by different portals. Andris has put lot of facts in hes wiki and in continious order it is very easy to read and understand the current situation in anonymous comments area. References were provided with footnotes and were cited correctly. I am satisfied with the work of Andris.

Raul reiska wrote about Internet phenomenon and was using lot of wikipedia information. The flow of the Wiki wasn't very easy to read and somehow I lost myself several times and had to think about the subject again. Some points of he's wiki were trivial and not logically used. In the end I mostly understood the subject of the Wiki, and think that it should have been more informative. There were only two rows of information about ethics in the end explaining the unethical postings in one Estonian blog. Also I am not very satisfied with the references which are only taken from Wikipedia online except 1 youtube link and blogaddress for refering one Estonian blog. I am not very satisfied with the work of Raul.

I think that Andris and Raul should have picked better software for their Wiki and would have participated more in their teamwork. Its clear that they did not collaborate much as their referencing style and logical structure are different.

In Search of Middle Ground: Hybrid Approaches

• Try to position yourself on the "Free vs Proprietary" scale. What would you expect from a hybrid licensing scheme?
• What is your impression about the MS Shared Source?

I would position myself more on the free side of the scheme. That means I would share my work under CC-BY-ND Attribution No Derivatives licence.

Hybrid licensing is good for businesses, as they can support from commercial incomes their free projects develops. I think that is one way to keep alive some projects that have really good perspective for the future.

As not a big fan of MS I am rather pessimistic with their approach. This seems like they are trying to get some community of developer under their wing with this method.

Creative Commons and Free Content Models

• How are CC licenses implemented in your country?
• Do you consider the FDL 1.3 a good solution for the incompatibility problem?

There is not approved version of CC licence in Estonia therefore in Estonia people have to use unported versions which are based on international conventions.

There is a "Autorõiguse seadus" in estonia, which claims that in educational use and for the educational audience materials of the author can be used by showing the autor name and other author works.

Some examples of CC licensing in Estonian webs

• Tehnokratt.net – CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0
  
• kultuur.info – CC-BY-NC-SA 1.0 –
• Regio Kontuurkaardid – CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

http://dotmrt.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/creative-commons-litsentsid/

FDL 1.3 is a good solution for compability, first it is released under licensing terms of CC-BY-SA 3.0 and has also some borrowings from GPL v3. FDL 1.3 has provided means for the violators to autmatically restore they rights.

The Uneasy Alliance: Free Software vs Open Source

Analyse both free software and open source approach in your blog. If you prefer one, provide your arguments.

I think i am mostly on free software guys side. In the way open source is giving people possibility to have source to develop the software and make it better, but still its not sayd it's totally free.

For example Oracle is willing to buy Sun, and MySql as open source software will be bought by Oracle too. And nothing can keep Oracle away to chance the licensing of the MySQL. If MySql would have been free, then there would'nt be such a problem. You can also help to save MySql -> http://monty-says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-saving-mysql.html

The Digital Enforcement

Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.

I the sense of intellectual property copy restriction as a mesure indeed. I think still that software companies can earn more money if they leave their software open for copying. For example software which is open is much easily learnable for people who don't even know hoow it works and what is good about it. So they have a chance to try it and later to consider to have a licensed copy of it. I have to admit, that I always try software before I buy it, so is this a crime? Am I a thief now? The company will anyway get their bucks. For a decade software companies are launcing shareware versions of their software which is keeping me away doing illegal copies, but still 14 days for trying is not maybe enough to understand the best needs for you.

I think copying exeptions should be allowed to universities and other learning institutions, to give a "taste of knowing" to young people and educate them to use and get profit from the software. As with the buss ticket, students and school pupils have possibility to drive free in software world it should be the same. Ofcourse there is a problem with identifying the person as beeing a student or pupil, but this can be regulated with the software use only in computer classes inside the educational institution.

One Microsoft Way: the World of Proprietary Software

What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015? Write a short (blogged) predictive analysis.

I think that software licensing landscape will turn a lot more on open way, as many comapanies such as google are launcing many different online programs. Microsoft already announced that they also are releasing google docs like office online version, but it differs from google on the matter that you need to have purchased office hardcopy. I think that as webtechnologies develop more and more many online versions of different type of software will be launced. I think as google has most powerful position in this case other competitors will also be forced to leave the licencing open.

The Proprietary World: The WIPO Intellectual Property model

Study the Anglo-American and Continental European school of IP. Write a short comparative analysis to your blog (if you have clear preference for one over another, explain that, too).

Anglo- American (AA) and Continental European school (CES) of IP systems differ mostly in two ways as CES protects authors work without formalities and gives protection to it's different stages, but with AA the work has to be first copyright protected to avoid it's copying, because AA gives a right to make copies for the large audience in front its copyright status.

I prefer the European school, because it has wider aproach to protect a small intellectual producer work.

The Author vs the Information Society

Read Chapter 3 "Against Intellectual Property" of the Brian Martin's book.
Write a blog review (especially, comment on his strategies for change

When I was reading the material I was widely surprised about the patent systems, that allow patents are given to organic forms found in Third World and they have to actually pay for the use.
I was amazed about the examples of patenting information such as patenting epigrams, basketball moves, choreography steps, www links which have made me thought that intellectual property has gone far from it's original aim to promote creation and ideas. Brian Martin describes interestingly describes the ineguality of the intellectual property that is helping more richer and powerful people.

Author is offering an alternative to intellectual property as straightforward means that ideas are available for anyone who wants to. Good example is language that everybody are using and scientific ideas.

There is quite nothing to do agains plagiarism in Internet times, as everyone can get access to different materials and present it as their own. Plagiarism is only protected by copyright and it's quite hard to prove.

Author interestingly offers a solution to reorganize economic system for writers who are living on royalities. He thinks that they should also recieve govermental salary as scientist do. That would reduce income of famous artist, but also would increase economic resources relased and more money for creators. I think author is right, but this system is rather too strong too change in mean time. This change has to become slowly starting from example writers and music. All this means equality in incomes and also equality in outcomes and gets away the possibility to gain power by exploiting others.

Strategies for change

People must understand that the greater value for example gene information is for the greater good and this change of thinking must come. The cost of holding intellectual property is very high and there needs to be understandment how much it all costs to reduce these costs and create more equal system. I like the idea that to fight for reducing the patentrally there should be a kind of organization who is rallying all different patents to make the system collapse for greater good. I really like the idea to have a shareright possibility to software, that if you want to use a piece of software you have to share this first. The idea that intellectual work is not just one persons effort, but also society is playing a great role for the outcome. There is not available totally original idea, that is not influenced by some earlier information. Sharing information for greater human good is one good way to have more power into creation and productivity.

Test review of the blocking software

Pick a blocking software package from the list above. Install it to a PC and test it by browsing the web. Try some of the supposed 'forbidden' sites as well as some controversial issues (feminism, disabilities, minorities, various political movements and organisations). Blog your experiences.

I chose to test Netnanny, since I've heard of it before, and I have a little child to grow, so I need experience how to keep my child away from "bad" websites. There is shareware version of the Netnanny 6 available to download on https://www.netnanny.com/. Price for the full download is 39 $ which is quite affordable. For the first I was a bit confused by the size of the package 30 mb. It seems like Netnanny is written in C++, because installer started to reconfigure my Windows settings for it. After installing it, I was offered to add a user, for the user profile I picked young child and was offered settings as:

Filter settings: Allowed to visit trusted websites only
Time controls: Blocked between 21.00 - 06.00
Monitoring: Enabled all activity
Games: Allowed to play Early Childhood (EC) and Everyone (E)

Then I was typically for the Windows asked to restart my computer -- press save blogpost now;)
After restarting I loged in with my child username and tried to browse internet and got this message:











So, I had to create another user with lower restrictions. When picked add new user I was offered a lot more advanced user adding interface, where I had possibility to connect the username with windows login. I chose another username and picked profile for adult, which was blocked for pornographic websites. Ok time to test to browse the porn...:)

First I just tried to type porn.com for getting access and got this message:












There were possibilities to override the and request for exeption from admin. I chose override and the website opened with all the XXX material in it:)

Then I had a thought to try some WAREZ sites to test with the default settings. I typed warez into google search and got respnse that GOOGLE safe surf is on, and the results are removed.

Also I couldnt remove the google safe search settings and got angry trying this.

I think this type of software is really useful for the parents to keep their kids away from bad websites, but for internet experts etc. this program only makes life annoying;)

Science business

It's definitely sure that this business is creating digital divide. Articles and journals which are expensive are not accessible for poor countries and digital divide enlarges. I really like Soros activity in Open Access Initative and also I sort of understand the opposites. Ofcourse if professors spend lot of time by writing those articles they need to get payed etc. This cannot be totally free, but can be supported. I would see it as opening doors for universities and other learning institutes for gaining read access with lower bugets.

Short review of the GNU General Public License.

The idea of GNU GPL is very good and offer lot of freedom to all software developers. Many commercial giants like Microsoft etc. are against this and are fighting with all their legal power to stop the spread of GNU GPL. Its very clearly understandable that Microsoft is trying to prevent the understanding that software can be free to use and share. The main issue is with the drivers for devices which Microsoft doesn't tolerate. On the otherhand you can always modify driverfiles in GNU GPL systems like BSD.

Blog about a good case of social engineering

Social engineering in real life is actually very easy to do if someone knows the background and plays on the human naive thinking about the current emergency or situation. I would put it as everything is possible and people don't tend to be not too paranoid on these kinds of cases. For example it's quite easy to scam bus control officers with just playing fool foreign person and start talking with them some language they definitely don't know.

How to avoid social engineering attempts? In real life there has to be knowhow for the people who are working in these kind of areas, where it could happen that someone can do tricks with them.

Find and blog about an illustrative case of hacktivism.

In Estonia there is a company Rove Digital which could be established in reasons hacktivism. Arvutimaailms journalist Holger Roonemaa has even doubts that Rove Digital boss Vladimir Tšaštšin is possibly a spy or an agent of Russian government and threat to Estonian internal security. Rove Digital is suspected to lead a huge group of zombi computers and to attack different websites as Trendmicro and Fsecure have annonced.

Choose a minority group and describe how they can make use of Internet to reduce alienation and prejudice.

I remember very good article from postimees online where lesbian mother didn't recieve support bonus from local government. All different online media sources were writing about it and finally she got a positive feedback from local government.

Write a short blogged analysis about the hacker ethic found in today's world (is it there of not, how much of it etc).

The most powerful hackers ethic fond in todays world is definitely sharing habbit. People are very much sharing things in the web. Sharing has turned into fashion what everybody want to do (youtube, social web etc.). Also in the net new visionary projects are always free to use, even for commercial use (wordpress, mambo etc.). This is very widely used and promoted.

Browse the Jargon File. Write a small blog entry about a term/definition which was the most intriguing for you.

Things Hackers Detest and Avoid

This is very easy to understand and remained still very common sense. This is very clear that hackers doesn't love microsoft and other commercial software providers. Everything, what is more or less commercialy licensed must be avoided. As well as mainstreem things - easy listening music, films and mainstream culture. What was really funny that hackers tend to avoid cobol and basic..:)

Writing for the Web

Check out this SlideShare Presentation:

Writing for the Web

View more documents from Hans Põldoja.

How important do you deem the social cohesiveness in reaching ubicomp?

People's social development is highly related with things are developing around us. More openness will create more creativity. Everything is realted with these values what Himanen describes in his values list.