Kot blog

Today, we're going to review a wiki-page, which is about OSINT. We also will look through its strong and weak points, and by the end we evaluate how well this page is made and give some comments about it.         OSINT wiki-page Image source     The topic The topic chosen for this paper is OSINT, it is an abbreviation of Open-source intelligence. It is a process of gathering intelligence from open sources, where intelligence is a military term of valuable information. The chosen topic is closely related to the cybersecurity field and in fact one of the SIGINT's subcategories. Also because of started conflict between Russia and Ukraine this topic is more valuable than ever.     Content The wiki-page clearly shows popular way of gaining the intelligence through different open sources. For example, social media, exposed databases, etc. That wiki-page also shows the smart technique of linking data to specific person or organization and creating data t...

Today we are going to talk about subjective relativism and how it projected onto IT industry. Also, there will be some examples that shows it in its full form and in the end why it is tricky to deal with.         About Subjective Relativism Image source It is an ethical theory, that main implication is that everyone have their own point of view, and when for someone something is seen right, for other person it could be wrong. The Subjective Relativism justifies the position where both those arguments are right and wrong at the same time.     IT example As for the example of it happening in IT sphere there could be when the manager is wanting their programmers to work faster because the feature they are working with "aren't that big". However, for programmers the size of a feature isn't measured by how much code they wrote to it, but how much work has done to it working correctly. The code could simply be 200 lines wide, however because of the amount of logi...

Today we are going to analyze the overall security situation in IT industry in Estonia. Image source We will be using the Kevin Mitnick's formula where the security is divided into three groups: Technology Training Policy     Technology The first group is the technology. That group is about overall security measures with antiviruses, firewall configuration and network security. It is the most basic things cybersecurity specialists deal with and it is the first thing what comes to mind when you trying to secure your network. So, to many slap an antivirus will do the trick. However, when it comes to companies, it is needed to be more secure. So, they probably will hire IT specialist to maintain it. As for the situation in Estonia, there is plenty of common practices the companies and home users do, to secure it. However, because of the pandemic the number of attacks has been increased since 2020 (data is from 2021). Because of that, the companies became more cautious and steadil...

Today, I will show you two technologies. Where one design solution turned out as complete disaster and another where it made the technology more comfortable and usable.     GIMP GIMP logo ( Image source ) GIMP is a free open-source image manipulation program, which allows you to work with raster-graphics images and modify them. The overall design of this program makes harder to find the right tool for you. To get used to it you must first look for some guides on the Internet and spend around a week to understand where everything you needed is located. Also, some of the design choices made there looks outdated compared to modern programs. Another big problem with design is that some of the sub windows inside it could be easily closed by a miss-click. However, then you try to reopen them, you find yourself on the spot where you don't have even any clue on how to do it. Because of those problems, many users are abandoning this program in favor of the enterprise ones (Like Adobe P...

Today we're going to look at IT specialists. How, this profession looked like 20 years before and it's place nowadays         Who is the IT Specialist Image source First, we must define who is IT specialist. This is a person, who works within IT industry. They could write code, create architecture, test IT solutions, or maintain the servers. Now when we know who is the IT specialist, we can compare the today IT specialist with the old one.     IT specialist in 2000's The IT specialists back there wasn't as needed as today they are. They role was more about educating other workers in their company on how to use a computer.  Also, because the hardware back then wasn't as powerful as today it is, the programmers had to optimize their code rather than focusing on the goals and achieving them. Then there is the cybersecurity aspect, it wasn't as developed as it is today. Back there the HTTPS protocol was only introduced in RFC 2818 document, so almost...

Today we're going to talk about the netiquette and one of the ten commandments published by Virginia Shea.         About Netiquette Image source The Netiquette is a net etiquette. In other words, it the rules for polite online communication. That rules is needed for keeping toxicity away when people communicate over the Internet. Another reason for that is to hear your partner. In case you listening for your partner, the partner themselves begin to listen.     Ten commandments Virginia Shea published a book named the Netiquette in 1995 where she proposed ten commandments on how everyone on the Internet should talk. Those commandments were: 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 f...

 Today we're going to learn what is the copyleft. What types does it have and how different they are.         The Copyleft Copyleft logo ( Image source ) Copyleft is a practice of distributing projects or software, by granting the right to freely distribute and modify the source code of the project. The copyleft is used in case the author wanted to distribute its work freely between individuals. There are three main types of copyleft licenses. The strong copyleft, the weak copyleft and non-copyleft. Each have some major differences that we will talk about now.     Strong copyleft GPL logo ( Image source ) First type of copyleft licenses is strong copyleft. It grants the abilities of copying and modifying the source code. However, if the one who is using the software with strong copyleft cannot use it in closed source projects. Meaning, if somebody wants to use this software, all files in their project both their own and the software's will use the same...

Today we are going to review the book named "The case of copyright reform" and I will show my opinion on it.         Background Christian Engström  ( Image source )     Rick Falkvinge  ( Image source ) This book was written by Rick Falkvinge and Christian Engström back in 2012. They were two Swedish Pirate Party activists. Their intention on writing this book was that the current copyright system is broken and creates some difficulties for new artists and ordinary people. So, they proposed several reforms that could fix that problem.     Introduction In the book they clearly mentioned that they didn't want to abolish the copyright system. Instead, they propose a reform to it. In the first chapter authors mentioned how broken the copyright system currently are when it comes to intellectual property (IP) owned by some organizations. They also mentioned that those reforms are aimed to "end criminalization of the young generation and pr...

Today, we are going to review the report about the challenges that Information Society faces back in 2004. We also will look into, how the author proposed to solve those challenges and which of those challenges is relevant to this day.         Background Pekka Himanen ( Image source ) That report was done by a Finnish philosopher Pekka Himanen, who was born in 1973. This report was aimed to show how the Information Society impacts the world. How previously created standards changed because of the globalization. In the report the author also covers good and bad effects dealt by this society. For example, how changed the work environment, their ethical aspects from globalization and internationality.     Global trends In the report he mentioned several global trends and how each of them affects the world. One of these trends were the "population ageing". By that the author means the growth of the average person age in Europe and the arising possible problem w...

The Internet Relay Chat (IRC) protocol The interface of an IRC application ( Image source ) Back in the 80's there wasn't many ways to communicate with others, except through different mail services. The Internet there was staler and more static.  However, even then, there was attempts to create fast and easy real-time chat applications. One of those attempts were the Internet Relay Chat protocol or shortly IRC. This protocol revolutionizes and change the way to communicate through a computer. It let people connect to the IRC servers to send and receive some messages, like we do today through the messengers. However, it wasn't as fast and as good as it is today. The rise of popularity When the first version of IRC protocol was created it had very low functionality. But that was enough, to create attention around that new, to this time, technology. The users, praise this protocol and soon enough the first third party IRC servers begin to emerge. As anything popular and stabl...

When the Internet first started developing, back in those days there was plenty of new technologies that really helped people then. Most of these technologies became a standard, because of their usefulness. Sadly, not all standards have lived to this day. Some of them were replaced by other standards that became even popular. However, some are still relevant to this day. Today we are going to talk about two of those. One of which is still relevant, while other is disappeared in the dust.         Computer keyboard Image source One of the technologies that is still relevant to this day is a computer keyboard. Even though the computer keyboard were invented in early 1940s it is still most popular way of inputting an information into a computer. Also, it still mostly uses the QWERTY layout, which was created even earlier, in 1880s and have proven to be effective and comfortable.  Although it is merely a century old device, we still actively using it to type a mail, ...

          Email Image source When the Internet first started. It wasn't as functional as today it is. The messages between the computers were just some raw binary data, that then must be assembled into some readable text. The messages there didn't have the recipient's name or sender's name. Instead, it just was source and destination IP addresses. However, in 1971 the first implementation of modern email protocol was created. It allowed to send a message using the "@" sign to indicate the user the message is designated to. Back in those days it was a revolutionary idea that soon became very popular. This protocol has been developed over years. And in 1973 it become a solid standard of sending and receiving a message. Later in 1978 the first Email program was created to more easily send an email from one computer to another. Then this standard became accessible for average consumers too. The email protocol is still relevant to this day. But now it mostly now...