School - I026:- Book review - Be Fast or Be Gone: Racing the Clock with Critical Chain Project Management by Andreas Scherer.

It describes a man who goes to work in a new company and starts implementing Critical Chain project management methodology. Book is novel based, quite good reading.

Few words, I wouldn’t like to spoil the reading experience of the 234 pages.

It starts with a reason why one man changed his company where he had successfully used Critical Chain methodology and needed to implement it in a pharmaceutical company.

At the beginning there is a test project what will show what this method can do and throughout the process of implementing it to all company. It includes complex relationships with management, workers and includes a lot of interesting twists and turns. 

The book has got good examples how to communicate delays and how to make very clear, visible reports of the projects.

One interesting part on page 138 witch I would like to share, rest of the story you can get by reading this book.

“What you need is the relay race mentality we’ve encouraging in the <Project> team.  We were able to substantially beat the previous timelines, because we relentlessly worked on the tasks on the Critical Chain with high priority and focus. We constantly looked for ways to regain lost ground. This has to be the mindset on all of our projects. If it is, you’ll win. It’s that simple.”

Amazon shop link: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Fast-Gone-Management-ebook/dp/B004THZ9VK

School - I026: XIV - Pick one company's code of ethics and analyze it in the blog

The piece of writing related to I026. This session concentrated on the ethics and IT. It is actually quite fun to write on those different topics. Having some guideline, make some research, write your heart out. Hopefully will have more post coming in the future as well. Need to take on some challenge.

We had to pick one company and analyze the code of ethics about this company. Since I have covered Tesla in many of my past posts here, then let's go over their Code of Business Conduct and Ethics.

They have 14 sections and one for CEO and senior financial officers and of-course introduction. PDF contains total 4 pages, but also it is readable in their webpage, no need to download the file.

I made high level summary of all those chapters below. It is written in more detail in the document, but everything is very clear.

Introduction

It is very specific, if you break the code, your contract with the company will be terminated and if the code of ethics conflicts with the law, then always follow the law.

1. Compliance with Laws, Rules and Regulations

Laws of the countries are most important and if needed, always ask for help. It is straight forward and they come back and tell that laws is most important topic.

2. Conflicts of Interest

Easy and simple - do not work with competitors, do not use your position in the company to gain benefits, try to avoid loans and other guarantees between employees. If you cannot fulfill your obligations to the company, notify your superior.

3. Insider Trading

Do not use confidential information for trading.

4. Corporate Opportunities

Do not use company property for personal gains.

5. Competition and Fair Dealing

Outperform competition with fairness and honesty, not by sabotage.

6. Discrimination and Harassment

They will not tolerate any illegal discrimination or harassment of any kind.

7. Health and Safety

Be safe, keep others safe.

8. Record-Keeping

Mark down your actual work hours, keep records in detail. Keep in mind that every e-mail, note, memo is candidate for becoming public. Be honest.

9. Confidentiality

Keep confidential information confidential.

10. Protection and Proper Use of Company Assets

Company equipment should not be used for non-Company business, though incidental personal use may be permitted.

11. Payments to Government Personnel

Do not bribe.

12. Waivers of the Code of Business Conduct and Ethics

Any waivers  of the code can be done only by the Board of Directors.

13. Reporting any Illegal or Unethical Behavior

Talk with supervisors always when you see something which shouldn't be tolerated.

14. Compliance Procedures

Ask first, act later. Do not be scared of asking and do it without fear. Anonymity will be protected if needed.

CODE OF ETHICS FOR CEO AND SENIOR FINANCIAL OFFICERS

This chapter basically describes how and what are responsibilities of CEO and senior financial officers. All those chapters are understandable and it is basic ethics

Conclusion

I feel that Tesla's code of ethics can be easily adopted to any company and they are more than reasonable. Nothing unnecessary and it is basic ethics. Coming to think that is it ethical that I wrote this post using my company's laptop? In the end my company will benefit once I have finalized the school and even during when I am in school. Something to think about though. Since I have company's chat and e-mail client also open and will not reject any email or chat then I am not so conserned.

School - I026: XIII - Security, pick one security big security risks in IT and write an review of it - Internet of Things: Internet connected smart devices

This weeks session was focused on security in IT. We needed to take one biggest risks in IT and describe it based on the Mitnic's formula. This contains 3 different parts: technology, training,  policy.

Internet of Things (IOT)

IOT is part of our everyday's life and it will only grow, soon we have sensors and smart devices everywhere, they are not smartphones or tablets, but they can be simple light switch, teddy bear who receives and sends voice messages, cars who come around the corner to pick you up, mirror which tells your temperature, the list is unlimited and it is only increasing. What about Mitnic's formula, how it applies?

Technology

There have been developed special routers for IOT devices, which move them to segmented network to ensure that hacker cannot reach to the computer device network through IOT network easily. Each home should be equipped with firewall inside the router already to keep out the most of the attacks, which just scans ports and tries to get inside trough insecure port. All IOT device access needs to be monitored and alerts of suspicious activity needs to be noticed. Always, when you use IOT device, think it as the weakest point of your computer network (humans doesn't count). Usually those devices are small chips, standard bluetooth/wireless connection points, no additional security layer. Make sure that at least bluetooth / wireless passwords can be changed and no remote access is allowed. Basically it comes to you, and your training and policy.

Training

There are not much trainings of IOT devices, you can acquainted with biggest failures online. There are many good stories out there and summaries as well, like this one in Forbes about IOT bots or how your coffee machine can ruin your life or the Tech Radar article how the hack rate is growing. Just listen to security podcasts, read articles, and always think that this is most insecure part of your network.

Policy

As I have stated two times already. IOT device is the most insecure device in your network (now stated 3 times), then you can prevent a lot by:

• Move IOT devices to segmented network. It would be even good if you have dedicated networks for separate functions of IOT devices based on what they can do.
• Update your firewall, make sure that you log suspicious activity in firewall.
• Make sure that you can change IOT connection passwords and change them often.
• Read about the product before you buy it, use words in google: "how to hack device id/name"
• Always be on alert if it comes to IOT

School - I026: XII - Different way of IT - Write an description of the modern accessibility tool which you have encountered.

This weeks session specialized on accessibility software and hardware tools. We have to write an description of the modern accessibility tool which you have encountered.

I was thinking about different people groups and different accessibility settings and there are so many special tools and hardware made for it. Nothing for single fit which could be used in many operating systems, phones, tablets, laptops/PC's and so on.

  

There will be one silver bullet, really soon, which will resolve all those issues and tools into one, most likely it will eliminate most of the input modules as well. This is called roughly "brain implant".

I've just heard the most ambitious plans by Elon Musk, again he pops up in my blog. He calls it Neuralink. They want to enable this to brain damaged persons in the first step, but it can be enabled to everybody. The area is very wide, job offerings include material engineering, biomedical engineering, electrochemicist and so on. The product will be in the border of ethics and how it can be ensured that nobody doesn't hack your brain-chip?

I think that the most important job here is to ensure full and transparent security for this product, preferably open sourced so the people can in community to see the code and fix bugs whatever are there. The initiative although is perfect. Let's hook us up with the chips and control stuff with our mind.

We can be real live x-men's.

After brain-chip, next step will be enabling exoskeletons. They are divided into 2, active and passive. It depends on the person which one needs to be used also those exoskeletons can be built for different purposes, depending on the needs of the person.

There you have it, basically 2 technologies, which must be used back to back can resolve most of disabilities problems for persons. Brain chip also may help with brain computing power.

•  Eyesight, if we now have brain-chip, exoskeletons, plug in artificial eye and vision.
•  Hearing, microfon, no magic here.
•  Voice, speakers are present.
•  Missing limbs, get artificial one.

Starting from brain-chip we are basically fighting disabilities and actually "normal" people will remove their human disabilities like cannot fly or cannot see  through walls with brain-chip and counted technologies.

School - I026: XI - Bring one positive and one negative example of usability in web.

Bring one positive and one negative example of usability in web.

This lesson focused on people and computer communication, ergonomics and usability.

Jakob Nielsen mapped down definition of usability and it is defined by 5 components:
Learnability
Efficiency
Memorability
Errors
Satisfaction

I am anayzing the same component with two different newspaper webpages regarding to the Satisfaction component.

The BAD Example

Postimees Web - http://www.postimees.ee/

First if I open the webpage I get notifications about cookies. I guess it is standard nowadays. This is one time click on "I Understood" button. I instantly get 11 cookies in my browser, all are either to domain www.postimees.ee or .postimees.ee. First seven are not directly linked to host only, none of them are secure or they will not die when session is over. All cookies expire in a long time in the future, only one is set to expire today. Others are at least one year, until ten years. This makes me very sceptical and causios what they try to track from my browser activity and my movements. They should at least introduce session based cookies.

Webpage is sending constant ping requests to Amazon WebServices and chatbeat analyics service with different parameters which are somehow hashed. Ping is encrypted to 1x1 image. 43B. It is sent every 1.2 minutes. Seems like Chartbeat is using Amazon Elastic Search to store the metrics and then generates audience graphs over those parameters.

They also want to access https://secure.pmo.ee/api/me/ but it always keeps error if you are not logged in - 401(unauthorized).

If we move forward to the webpage itself it is full of ads. On the main page there are now 3 different ads:
 * On the background
 * On the footer
 * On the left side

Footer in the bottom is really annoying and constantly upgrading scroller div style.

I was assuming that when I login then those adds and trackers will be removed, but they still remain. I am expecting that when I pay some money to them then I will get ad free environment, but I only get some paid articles where I am not very sure about quality of the article.

Conclusion, only way how to use Postimees.ee satisfactory is to use adBlock and uBlock.

The Good (not perfect) Example

The Sun Web - https://www.thesun.co.uk/
Same story here, standard cookie policy check. 15 cookies in this webpage, where 5 are session only cookies, 4 are related to host only and rest are available for other sites as well. 3 cookies expire by session and rest of them are mostly with maximum age for 2 years.
Tracking parameters are being sent to www.parsely.com, in every 1 minute and 2 sekunds again 43KB as Postimees.ee. It is similar to Chartbeat, most likely same kind of functionality but different providers.

One resource is not found https://tpc.googlesyndication.com/simgad/6337765394029551775.

On the website layout, it is bit better, it only has one add on the top of the page, which is being tracked back to my location most likely by IP. This website has focused more on images than getting news name to catch the attention, but I already like it better than Postimees.ee due amount of "spam" it is displaying to me.

After I created an account and logged in, my user experience didn't change. Looked for a place to pay, but couldn't find one, so I guess that they are actually living from the ad's and it is not so abusing as Postimees.ee has, I even could live with that.



Do you know any online newspaper which is focused on news? I would be willing to subscribe if I get an ad free environment.

School - I026: X - Take one project and analyze it's software and business model

This topic is actually very abstract one and it had me thinking which company's/projects business and development model would I take.

I've always interested in Elon Musk  as well as Richard Branson but this time, instead of Virgin I decided to take Tesla.

They are focused in different areas of electricity, like electric cards, lithium-ion battery storage's, residential solar panels. Leonardo DiCaprio talked with Elon Musk in Tesla's Gigafactory and there was a phrase that you need 100 Gigafactories to power the entire world with sustainable energy. So Actually I was interested in their business and software development model.

If I go to their homepage and look for job ads, then we see 22 teams and if we google for some keywords in their careers sub-page like:

• Agile - 10 results
• Scrum - 2 results 
• Lean - 23 results 
• Waterfall - 0 results
• Critical path - 5 results
• Kanban - 2 results

Chaos, Spiral, V-model, Prince2 and I didn't go through all the list assuming that already those didn't give any match here and I got matches to some of them above.

They have today (21.04.2017) 2480 job adds and if we divide it to department wise we get following result:

Department	Count
Communications	4
Design	14
Energy Products	51
Engineering	322
Facilities	28
Finance	92
Gigafactory	73
HR	68
IT	76
Legal	13
Manufacturing	200
Marketing	45
Production	14
Quality	17
Retail Development	13
Sales	719
Service	638
Supply Chain	82
Workplace	11
Grand Total	2480

Now If we compare the Google results with the jobs which they have available, map them to department and remove the false positive results:

Position	Methology based on Google	Department
Staff Program Manager, Service Operations	agile	couldn't match Google result to available job
Senior Mechanical Design Engineer- Interior Systems	agile	couldn't match Google result to available job
.Net Developer	agile	IT
Mechanical Design Engineer - Closures Systems	agile	Engineering
Sr. Engineer- Lighting Systems	agile	Engineering
Software Application Engineer	agile	Engineering
Senior Mechanical Design Engineer - Seating Systems	agile	Engineering
Engineer- Interior Systems	agile	Engineering
Sr. Performance & Scalability Test Engineer	agile	IT
Staff Program Manager, Service Operations	scrum	couldn't match Google result to available job
.Net Developer	scrum	IT
Process Engineer, Gigafactory	lean	Gigafactory
Process Technician - Seat Manufacturing	lean	Manufacturing
Material Project Manager - Manufacturing Introduction Group	lean	Manufacturing
Material Project Manager - Manufacturing Introduction Group	lean	Manufacturing
Material Handler	lean	Service
Engineer- Interior Systems	lean	Engineering
Tool and Die Maker - Assembly/Tryout	lean	Manufacturing
Mechanical Design Engineer - Closures Systems	lean	Engineering
EHS Manager - Factory Departments	lean	Manufacturing
Production Planner	lean	Production
Engineering Applications Product Manager	critical path	IT
Installation Project Manager - Supercharger	critical path	couldn't match Google result to available job
Senior Mechanical Design Engineer - Battery Enclosure	critical path	Engineering
Tesla Supercharger Land Use and Permitting Specialist	critical path	Engineering
Material Project Manager - Manufacturing Introduction Group	kanban	couldn't match Google result to available job
Production Planner	kanban	Production

In summary it comes to that Tesla actually uses a agile at least in Engineering, Gigafatory, IT, Manufacturing, Production and Service departments.

Department	Number
couldn't match Google result to available job
agile	2
critical path	1
kanban	1
scrum	1
couldn't match Google result to available job Total	5
Engineering
agile	5
critical path	2
lean	2
Engineering Total	9
Gigafactory
lean	1
Gigafactory Total	1
IT
agile	2
critical path	1
scrum	1
IT Total	4
Manufacturing
lean	5
Manufacturing Total	5
Production
kanban	1
lean	1
Production Total	2
Service
lean	1
Service Total	1

Although those results are based on Google search it seems that they are using very agile methodology. 

It also is shown that they are using agile approach as their cars pretty much get monthly upgrades of new features, they don't wait when they have product fully ready, but they rather give and improve customers experience every month. Porsche is also making electric car to compete with Tesla, but Porsche first car will come around 2020 and by that time they are way too late to compete in the electric car market with agile development models. 

Tesla didn't make cheap car, they sat down, thought what they can do and how to do fast, they did super car which is able to get updates in your home WiFi and get additional features. You put stuff in, put activation can be over time, not everything must work in the first place. Recently they activated serf driving capabilities. Sensors where there, they just weren't activated.

This is excellent example of agile business model which has high level road-map planned and roll-out takes in place feature by feature. I would call it even high level is planned with traditional method, which is split to iterations and iterations are handled by agile model. Combination of many methodologies which actually makes this very rapid, fast and professional company which delivers.

School - I026: IX - Write a review to Eric S. Raymond "Hacker - HOWTO"

In this session we were asked to write an review to Eric S. Raymond "Hacker - HOWTO" .

"In computing, a hacker is any skilled computer expert that uses their technical knowledge to overcome a problem." by Wikipedia.

Quite often it is confused who is a hacker and who is cracker. This publication makes very clear the difference between those two roles and focuses quite often on the supremacy of the hacker. It reminded me a bit Nietzsche Übermensch which basically describes life after God, new values, transcendence and so on. I believe that who ever has read it has their own ideas and values of it.

Fortunate when I got forward into this publication then it pulled a bit back about hackers supremacy in the world and started to talk about how they are precious and you cannot waste them to solve the same puzzle twice. Who ever wants to solve the same thing twice?

Read the paragraph point of style. It has got 7 points what to do in order to get yourself to perfection so you could call yourself an hacker. Work, play, do science, art, read, make things, train in martial arts, meditate, have an ear for music, play an instrument, appreciate puns, be skilled in all areas of computer related skills, know 5 programming languages, program in them,  be fluent at least in one of them, write open source software, debug somebody else's, publish useful information, make FAQ lists, administrate mailing lists, moderate newsgroups, propagate the culture, learn and use open-source Unix, learn to use World Wide Web, write HTML, English is not native - learn it. SOLVE PROBLEMS.

It made me also think about once great movie which contains a lot of philosophical phrases. We are stretching to 8 billion  on this planet. There is one scene in movie classics which reminded me of this all story, or at least the first part of the dialog matches it. I maybe harsh, but I believe that I am not so far away with this link:

Being in that sense of a hacker, is there any difference than being a monk in a monastery?

School - I026: VII - Write a Small Description of the IT Professional In The Year 2017

This weeks topic was talking about IT professionals and who them may be . How to act like a professional and get the respect from the community.

Necessary Prerequisites

IT proffecional is a person who loves what she does. She has thought herself the area and preferably also finished some degree in IT. She must be willing to keep learning and get up to date about brand new technologies and aquire new skills all the time.

She must be a peoples person and get to understanding what is expected from her. People outside of IT most likely don't know what they are talking about. For example - server is a website.

Necessary Features

• Excellent in communications
• Willing to learn
• Being up to speed with latest technologies
• Also have to know items from the past
• See items from the positive side
• Not to write anything premature into emails or code commit comments
• You should get along with different types of people. For example, if you hate that people are chewing food with open mouth, you choose to ignore the fact that he is doing it and try to cope. Unless you need to work with that person in later faces as well, then you need to make a remark so he wouldn't feel bad.
• Understanding must be taken, that there are no stupid persons, only people in general are stupid

Necessary Skills

There is actually no specific necessary skills what professional person should have. It is combination of many skills, but mostly the politeness and willing to learn new things are the key factors. For example, try to start your e-mails:

Dear Sir/Madam,

<some body>

Yours Sincerely,

<your name> 

<title> 

<phone number>

Also subject, try to describe the topic in few words in subject. I, myself, personally am taking e-mails with subject Hey, how are you, later than topics with "Help needed - cannot reach destination IP of this server".

Conclusion

This assignment was one of the most complex ones, you really can say if person is professional or not after you have communicated with him. Totally subjective topic and you cannot really take objective approach here.

School - I026: VI - Give assessment of solutions in Chapter 2 of "The Case for Copywrite Reform" by Christian Engelström MEP & Rick Falkvinge

The Case Copywrite Reform was published by Swedish Pirate Party members. Our session at school covered a topic called in rough translation: Computers and paragraphs: law/legal in computer world.

We had to read a chapter 2 from that book, which I mentioned above and write an assessment of the proposed solutions which were written in that chapter.

There where total of 6 points:

• Moral Rights Unchanged
• Free Non-Commercial Sharing
• 20 Years Of Commercial Monopoly
• Registration After 5 Years
• Free Sampling
• A Ban on DRM (Digital Rights Management)

Moral Rights Unchanged

This is one of the strongest points in their case and they are totally correct. No matter what, author of any publication, idea or any sort of creative work. Give credit where credit is due. Today even this point is quite often compromised, ideas stolen and sold as their own. All what actually matters is who will be the first one shouting and talking about the idea itself. Of course with a strong court case it can be overruled. The closest example, which I can recall, was in a TV series called "Californication". Show where a stepdaughter stole a work written by a lead male actor, in which case it was David Duchovny, and she sold it to publicist.


Free Non-Commercial Sharing

It is illegal for coping a CD or a song, movie, e-book after you have bought it and then to share it with a friend. I am actually surprised that the media you have bough isn't  yet encrypted in a way that only you can see it, with some chip in the brain or artificial eyes. At least yet I haven't seen a case where you will get fined if you copy the music from one of your media devices and make a "mixtape" to your car, which composes songs from different artists. Artist may claim that whole album is one single piece and if you take one song from there you are destroying their art and stealing from them.

It is even illegal to download a song which you have on a media you have sitting in the shelf of your living room. 

If there would only be a way to see how much of the authors creation has been shared and used, then why not let the government to pay them. If I like it or not, but the world is moving forwards to socialism and this would be strong case in this kind of world.

20 Years Of Commercial Monopoly

Even 20 years of time is too long to have a benefit for society from protecting the copyrighted work, but still better than lifetime+70 years. At least it would give hope to somebody. 

Registration After 5 Years

Perfect point, this should be standard in modern world. You have to claim that you still are backing up your work after 5 years, not just some random idea which you shout out and leave it hanging so nobody else could use that. Most of the people even don't care after that.

Free Sampling

I believe that this one is a stretch. I want to take Mona Lisa and color her hair to blonde and call it Blond Mona Lisa. Nobody prevents to do that, as long as you refer to initial author and if needed give him some of the revenue you earn from this stunt. This is done in music industry today and it is done quite often. You cover somebody, they get a piece of pie as well.

A Ban on DRM (Digital Rights Management)

True, technology shouldn't prevent people to do stuff, peoples moral and ethical compass should be the one. Education is the key here.

Conclusion

Swedish Pirate Party is on the right track, I hope that some of their points will be pushed through. At least, we, in Europe are quite fortunate. We don't have many blocks to accessibility of the digital media, but imagine if you live in China. Even your phone cannot open applications which are not designed in China.

School - I026: V - Choose One of the 10 Commandments by Virginia Shea and Write an Example of Your Own Experience

This week's session is about specificities of social networking.

We were asked to pick one of the 10 commandments created by Virginia Shea and write an example of our own based on it. Those are as follows:

1. Remember the Human
2. Adhere to the same standards of behavior online that you follow in real life
3. Know where you are in cyberspace
4. Respect other people's time and bandwidth
5. Make yourself look good online
6. Share expert knowledge
7. Help keep flame wars under control
8. Respect other people's privacy
9. Don't abuse your power
10. Be forgiving of other people's mistakes

Those were written down 10 years ago and most of the people don't follow any of them and if they do then in a very limited manner. It is very difficult to choose from those just one, because most of them apply at the same time in the same place, therefor I am bit widening the topic and focus one of core powers in the society - the press, especially the online press.

#1 Remember the Human

I see that most of the modern media is either without context or the context is shifted in a very focused way. The very good example here is the media war which is going around Ukraine and Russia. Perfect example how the context can be shifted to your own side and actual truth is hidden in some other location. At some point of time I've stop believing the stories which were written and started just following feeds from LiveLeak, but drawing the line between reality and fiction got blurrier every day and it still is blurry. I want to believe, but what can I? 

Even Today one example of context. Texas lawmaker ridicules anti-abortion measures by filing anti-masturbation bill. Referred one can be found here and original one here. Just leave out a part where the women was sarcastically saying that in order to stress the problem about abortion and you have all another story.

#4 Respect other people's time and bandwidth

Taking the last example which I gave on the chapter above, it directly indicates that to find out the truth I needed to start looking the source of the news myself. I read one information from one source, second one from another source. Wasted my time, my bandwidth. I am lucky that I have AdBlock installed.

This is recurring pattern all through online media. See this, can you believe that he just did it. Click to learn more, and then, 2 lines of meaningless  story. I just got click-baited. Basically everybody are aiming for your clicks. More clicks, more adds can be displayed, more money can be cashed in. All falls on the amount of adds which somebody can present to you. Basically the title of the article is mostly not correspondent of the story and you have fallen to easiest con what is available in the web.

#6 Share expert knowledge

How, today, it is possible to trust any information which is available, I am not only talking about online information, also offline information. There is so much noise, so much false information present, who tells that the information is validated. Do you have to look it up yourself from different sources and then determine which source to use. Again we can take the first example here. Was the referred article expert knowledge? I would say no.

Data manipulation to get what you want is actually quite common. You just need to have enough followers and any knowledge can become expert knowledge. There are forums out here where people blindly believe that world is flat. 

Or this illustration:

#8 Respect other people's privacy

It all starts from some article, which gives you limited information, which I mentioned with #1. It goes on to point #4 where the article is covered with adds and every request has got special tracking ID attached to it. You are now marked, cookies are set, referrals in URLs are set. Where ever you go, that information can be reused to understand what you have watched, where you have been. There is no privacy if you take it out of box. You need to add additional measurements to gain back your privacy. Online media has got you stripped.

#9 Don't abuse your power

Taking all this into account, I believe that all who ever work with media and has followers will abuse the power. 

# Conclusion

There are some commandments of netiquette, but they don't stick today. I want to believe that people are having some moral compass, but I just cannot. To protect yourself, you need to be skeptical about everything you read, you see. Don't let your trust blind-sight you. Take preventive measures when you read something from the media. 

The truth is out there:

School - I026: IV - Write a review to a CHALLENGES OF THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY by Pekka Himanen

In this session we were asked to write an review to 2004 document which was ordered by Committee for the Future, PARLIAMENT OF FINLAND. Document was written by Pekka Himanen.

Review to CHALLENGES OF THE GLOBAL INFORMATION SOCIETY by Pekka Himanen

The document was targeting to see future problems of IT society and how to adopt and prevent the damage for the people of Finland and it was designed in a manner that the analysis can be adopted to rest of the World or at least to the Europe.

It is divided  into 4 major chapters:

• A creative economy
• A creative welfare society
• Humanly meaningful development
• A global culture

Also it includes background where the analysis comes from.

Information Society

Page 10 in PDF (-1- in the document header) "This review comes to the conclusion that the most critical aspect in the development of the information society is the development of the deep-set structures of society, to which we must now pay close attention"

The author gives overview that the society is becoming more creative and we need to have a plan how to mitigate the risks when the society becomes creative welfare society.

On the next page there are global trends which indicates and leads to the information society:

1. Increasing international tax competition
   Countries compete for investments and skilled labor by reducing tax rates.
2. The new global division of labor
   The most developed countries cannot rely on routine jobs in the future, so they must specialize in creative work that is based on higher expertise and work to improve productivity both through increased added value and the development of production processes.
3. Population ageing
4. Increasing pressures on the welfare society
5. The second phase of the information society
6. The rise of cultural industries
7. The rise of bio-industries
8. Regional concentration
9. A deepening global divide
10. The spread of a “culture of emergency”

All this indicates that people are getting lazier and and leaning more and more to the social welfare and are getting used that everything is handled on the plate. I believe that our society has taken wrong direction. People are keen to want country which has it's focus on socialism and think that this is correct way, but based on those points, socialism requires high taxes, but it contradicts to the first point of those ten. Actually the first point also doesn't get along with rest of the points. Seems that those trends will never exist fully in some society, but they will have compromises and overlaps.

Value-based Management

Page 14 in PDF (-6- in the document header)
The following list describes the values which could serve as the basis for the continued combination of the welfare state and the information  society. The listed values are updated versions of the values underlying the original European welfare state and innovative entrepreneurial. A successful reform requires from politicians value-based management.

1. Caring
2. Confidence
3. Communality
4. Encouragement
5. Freedom
6. Creativity
7. Courage
8. Visionariness
9. Balance
10. Meaningfulness

This makes me even more worrying. It has been described that creativity can come only when people are free and they get confidence that somebody cares from them and their life means something. It basically is capitalism and socialism together. 

Page 16 in PDF (-8- in the document header) 
In practice, if we are to meet global competition by implementing the above-mentioned development scenario and adopting the values described above for this scenario, we must take into account the following key concepts related to social development:

1. A creative economy
2. A creative welfare society
3. Humanly meaningful development
4. A global culture

We, as a species, haven't got this far by getting things on the plate. Humans are lazy, laziness is the power which has got us so far. If we have items on the plate, who wants to think how to do things better? What motivates them? Even now there is generation who has graduated high school, sitting home with parents, depending on social welfare, parents and they have one meaning. Maybe I come up with some project which sets me in infinite loop of income. When that happens, what they will do next? Nothing, spend life away. No real value to the overall World.

We need to get back to capitalism and start putting people in competition. This is what brings new ideas, innovation. Let's go back being animals as we have been designed to be.

Conclusion

Page 23 in PDF (-15- in the document header)
The success of the information society and the provision of equal opportunities in the welfare society are, eventually, based on an inclusive and high-quality education and training system.

This actually is not working, I believe that it was a vision in 2004, but in 2017 there i a trend not to work, not to get outside your box. Do as less as possible to get paycheck and nothing more. Pay taxes, get some nicer roads to commute on, get your kids to kindergarten. Assume that teachers are responsible of your child well-being. Socialism is not a way how we can create innovation. This is the way how we destroy our community and maybe even our species. Not now, not tomorrow, but what about in a century? 

School - I026: III - Analyze one "New Media" tool - how it has changed some area

The actual wording was that how it has changed this area, but it is a bit too wide.

I have seen it a lot how people trust Google to find matches to words what they really don't know, how to spell the words, how to write properly.

There is one YouTube video which quite accuracy describes this situation:

Google as replacement of the dictionary

You are doubtful how some word is spelled, you just write how you hear it and press "Go" in Google, See highest matches and trust it automatically. How do you know if this is write? It is widely used between people whom are in argument how to spell something. Google even has got functionality called Google Fight. You enter two keywords and see which one has higher match. Higher match wins.

This information is actually purely subjective, can you trust people who write articles to Google and which end up in top of search results? They might be wrong or maybe are they right?

This kind of new media has got strong effects on people culture and dictionaries may become extinct. Google also has got Google Translate which is today implementing machine learning and has ability to translate between different languages without much human algorithms involved.

Of course there is a question, can you buy your words to be on the top of search? can you add your product to the translation result example? Like: "Johnny went to store to buy Milla milk".

We are being productized and there is nothing what we can do, unless we go Open Source. Where do we end up? Do we get more ignorant by day regarding to words and spelling or is this the future which we have to take in account and live with it?

School - I026: II - 2 examples of IT history which started before 1990 - one still existing, one dead.

This time the school session focuses on the internet history, where it started and where it has ended up to by now. We need to gather two examples of the internet history before 1990 and describe which one lives also today and which one has gone extinct.

Internet in early days

In the 1970 there where at many of different internet networks available: ARPANet, PRNET, Ethernet, AlohaNET, and according to name, my favorite, SatNET. Most of them where started and controlled by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), agency which was created after Soviets launched Sputnik.

There was a successful TCP protocol test over those networks on 1977.

ARPANet

As you know then ARPANet is basically today's internet forefather. All what we are using now for World Wide Web has evolved from this. There is not much to talk about it or speculate around it. It is constantly improving and evolving. Besides of traditional visible internet we have a lot of invisible internet and black internet.

Visible is all what we see when we enter some URL on the address bar. Web browser renders us a page and there we have it, some media, some text, some links, all for information. Invisible is the rest of it, all what you cannot see and it contains most of it. That is also not interesting, this can be read upon Wikipedia and rest of places. The interesting part which came from ARPANet is actually DarkWeb (dark net, deep web). A place where the actual life begins. Trades with crypto currency and kind of illegal services has made a perfect combination for criminals and people with shady deals. 

Anonymous Web

I believe that this is what is real future for ARPANet, moving to deep web. Future where we can claim back  anonymity of our identities, trade goods with people you don't know, have currency which is not under any government control, be a single nation in this world, not just people in some country. I am counting on that future.

SkyNet SatNet

Coming back to SatNet, then actually I kind of hope that it was bases of the Terminator and SkyNet story. Sounds about similar. Communication network which uses satellites to translate data between computers. The Terminator, movie from the 1984, where there was a self conscious neural network which found out that humanity is the greatest threat for the existence and  started to produce terminators to wipe out whom ever was left over from the nuclear attack. Awesome movie franchise. 

But talking about SatNet, it really didn't get the attention it could have got, I believe that there were a lot of technical issues to provide it word wide, starting from the maintenance fees of the satellites ending from latency issues which it would take to broadcast a signal to the space and back to the server and round tripping the data back. Unfortunately there isn't a lot of data available about it, at least I didn't find it in the future ARPANet, but if you have something, please post some links into comments.

Summary

Ah, yes, regarding to topic, summary: ARPANet -> Internet; SatNet ->Didn't end up being SkyNet, so for me, it is dead (although it can be operational for very limited brand of people).