Posts

The Social Contract Theory

 The general idea of the theory is that the society should strive to develop a set of rules that make sense to everyone (making people follow them voluntarily). This directly ties to the field of IT, because the online society often deems what deserves its place in the Internet and what does not. However, in some cases it can be a double-edged sword.  The content that gets posted online can be categorized as acceptable, controversial and unacceptable. Just like the traffic example that was brought up in the weekly topic forum. In a country where it is said that cars must be driven in the right lane. It is seen as acceptable if a person follows the rules and drives in the right lane, it can be controversial if people use the left lane to overtake others and it is downright unacceptable for people to be only driving in the left lane. In most cases the rules of what is right and what is wrong are taught to us from the day that we are born. However, everyone has different moral principles

Review on "Development and usage of artificial intelligence in chess"

 I wanted to review this topic, because I have seen tons of videos on YouTube discussing it, but I have never really paid enough attention to the matter that I would do some kind of research on it. But now the opportunity has presented itself to me. It is time to enrichen my mind with knowledge and dig into the world of artificial intelligence in the game of chess. I like the way they start the story from the very beginning. It helps you understand, how the game and the AI has evolved over time. The overview of the timeline was very interesting. I imagine that due to the sheer amount of material and research that is available for this topic, it was hard to pinpoint the most significant events, but they did a very good job. I like the fact that for each of the events that they brought up in the timeline, they got straight to the point with it. It was a pleasure to read, as the information is nice and compact.  It is great that they also went into the background of chess engines themselv

Before your eyes

 I have seen a very cool concept in gaming which uses eye tracking technology. There is a game called "Before Your Eyes". To play the game you must have an eye tracker, which will look at your eye movements during the game and allow you to interact with objects. The entire premise of the game is that the story gets played out in front of the user, and the user has the ability to interact with certain elements and variables within the story by just merely looking at them. Also, there are times within the game where a timer starts running and the user must not blink during that time in order to keep progressing in the game, if the user blinks a small amount of the story gets cut out and the user gets warped forward in time.  I think it is really cool that this sort of technology is used to make games. I also think that eye tracking technology could be the next step in controlling robots, imagine not having to rotate the camera on top of a robot manually, and just by having eye

Modern world hackers

 Pekka Himanen quotes seven different values that are applicable to hackers of the modern age.  The first one is passion. If you do not have that certain passion in etched into you then you would probably burn out quickly. It is passion that drives the hackers to do what they do, they have the constant urge to try to explore, exploit and create.  The second one is freedom. A feeling of freedom is produced when you realize that you have the ability to create or break into anything you want. This kind of links into the first value, because freedom often drives our passion. The third one is work ethic. A modern day hacker definitely needs to have a good work ethic in order to succeed, because the work is not often easy and you need to work relentlessly if you want to overcome certain obstacles. The fourth one is money ethic. It is often important to realize that money is not everything. To quote Joker from the Batman franchise: "It's not about the money, it's about sending a

Online censorship & privacy

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 Online censorship and privacy is a delicate matter, because it is often hard to draw a line between right and wrong. For example, if someone is plotting a plan to shoot up the school with their friends in a Facebook messenger group chat, then obviously we would want the authorities to intervene and stop the potential threat. But for them to intervene they would need to have access to everyone's chat logs and they would need to be constantly scanning for suspicious activity. But that would make the platform less attractive to potential customers, because you most likely would not want the authorities to be sniffing around everything you message to your peers online.  Take for example an online forum board that is called 4chan. You can post nearly everything there without the fear of being censored. Almost all content you can imagine is posted on there, but of course it is not complete anarchy. There are strict rules in place and if there is any violation of those rules then the mod

IT professionalism in Estonia

Todays topic is going to be about IT professionals in Estonia. As of now I am not yet a qualified IT professional, but I hope to be one day. In the past I had no clue as to what the actual job of an IT professional is so I had to ask around and here is what I learned. I was told that if you want to work in IT you better get good at math, you better learn to be patient and you better be ready to work really hard for it. So that is exactly what I did and it seemed to work for me as I am now in the track of pursuing a career in the field of IT. I think that the journey does not have to be that hard or complicated any more. Because we are starting to give kids some basic IT training even from kindergarten. There are toys that are filled with electronics and that can help steer kids in the direction of IT should they have an interest in it.  I also feel like there are some people that do not care for the fast moving pace of technology. For example, there are still plenty of people out there

Be forgiving of other people's mistakes

 Just because you think that you have good manners and are a good person in general does not give you a free pass to correct everyone else around you. You should be mindful of what you say to other people, whether or it is online or in person. Constantly correcting everyone around you can make you come off as annoying and tiresome. If you see someone making a mistake it comes down to several factors, which can help you decide on how to react to the situation.  If the mistake is potentially dangerous then I feel like it is okay to let the other person know about the consequences their actions can lead to.  If the mistake is harmless then it is okay just to ignore it and move on with your life. Live and let live, right? I see a lot of this in online gaming, especially in games that are team oriented. What I found out was that people are very quick to lash out at other players if they see them making the tiniest of mistakes. I think that a part of this is caused due to the fact that every