16 weeks of SPEAIT

"During the recent centuries, technology has developed in a frantic pace" - that is, in fact, very much true. Technology is developing now with the speed not seen ever before. New products are invented and produced every day, some of which have a good design and some of which do not. This is Week 9 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to bring up few examples of good and bad product designs. 1. The Centennial Light This is the famous centennial light, a 120 years old lightbulb that has not been turned off. The story goes that in the late 19th century inventors were presented with a task to make an everlasting light bulb. Fast forward a couple of years and Adolphe Chaillet presented a beautiful lightbulb. It was an improvement on a design by Thomas Edisson and was mass-produced by Shelby Electric Company. This particular lightbulb was purchased in 1901 and was working ever since, resting for only 7 days over the course of more than a 100 years. However, the company did not g...

As there is no strict definition, it may be quite difficult to discuss and describe professionals in any field including IT. Still, today I will try to come up with my own answer to this question and share it with you. This is Week 8 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to would like to become IT professional. For me, one defining aspect of being a professional is knowledge. Even though we live in time when the Internet is present, which can be the source of unlimited knowledge, and everyone can learn programming and related things from home on their own, I think that companies still generally prefer people with university degree. That is understandable, since in order to get your university dergee, you have to prove that you possess required knowledge. That being said, I don't imply that the piece of paper from university defines whether you are a profeesional or not - you can be a professional without it, you can be not a professional with it. Secondly, I think that your attitu...

Throughout the history of Internet, people have tried to set up some rules which help prevent online conflicts. This is Week 7 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to express my opinion about one of the Virginia Shea's "Ten Commandments". I would like to start off with saying that all ten commandments are extremely important and valid to this day, despite being published in 1995. Although the Internet surely grants us some level of anonymity, sticking to these commandments will help one to stay polite and make his Internet experience a pleasant one. Furthermore, I think that it is only fair to suggest that these rules are dictated by common sense. That being said, I will focus my attention on the sixth rule, "Share expert knowledge". I think that the thing that makes the Internet so great is that it can be a source of infinite knowledge. In today's world it is possible to learn everything from the Internet, starting from knitting or cooking and ending with...

"Copyright: all rights reserved" and "Copyleft: all rights reversed". While it stared out as a little bit of fun, things escalated quickly. What once was a pun on copyright, has developed into a legitimate legal term. This is Week 6 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to talk copyleft today. Copyleft is an important factor in free licenses that determines whether the license will influence the derived works or not. It can be divided into three grades: strong, weak and no copyleft. 1. Strong Copyleft Strong copyleft demands that all derived works retain the license of the original, meaning that software under this license cannot be made proprietary. One of the most popular strong copyleft licenses, GNU GPL defines several freedoms for user, including freedom to run the program for any purpose, to study how the program works and to redistribute copies of both original and your modified versions to others. Other example of such license would be AGPL, sometimes calle...

This week our task was to read and give our opinion about the second chapter of The Case For Copyright Reform by Engström and Falkvinge. This is Week 5 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to reform the copyright legislation. In 2012,  Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström from  Swedish Pirate Party published a book called The Case For Copyright Reform. In this book, authors propose reform to a modern copyright system and in Chapter 2 particularly they outline 6 main points of their proposal. First point states that moral rights should stay unchanged. Even though this work proposes quite a shift of paradigm, some things should be kept same. That includes author's moral right to be recognized as the author. Second point proposes free non-commercial sharing meaning that sharing copies of copyrighted files for non-commercial purpose should be legalized. Third point aims to reduce copyright protection time from lifetime of author + 70 years to 20 years. Although 20 years may see...