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IRINA SAVCHUK

(don’t) Occupy Hong Kong!

For this article, I interviewed one of the Vice-Presidents of the Ses-sion: Charlotta Lahnalahti. She studies Peace and Conflict Studies in Malmö University and therefore has a lot of knowledge about the topic of social movement and de-mocracy in Hong Kong.

The 2014 Hong Kong protests also known as the Umbrella Rev-olution began in September 2014. The unrest began after the Chinese Central Government an-

nounced the decision on electoral reform regarding future

Hong Kong Chief Executive and Legislative Council election. The Elections concerning Hong Kong Chief Executive will take in place in 2017. Before the reform, China has set up an Election Com-mittee that elects the Chief Exec-utive, but people of Hong Kong wanted to have direct elections

and vote the best leader among the people. Through the reform, China is trying push forward two or three Beijing–loyalists, who would run in the elections. Basically the lead-ers would be straight under the Communist Party and maybe not be in favour of the People of Hong Kong.

On July 1st 1997, Hong Kong was handed over from Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China and it became its first Special Adminis-trative Region. Because of the old British heritage, Hong Kong’s gov-ernment is more developed and richer. Compared to China, Hong Kong looks like a part of the West-ern World. China has ties deep into Hong Kong’s government and therefore it slows down the final democratisation of Hong Kong. At this particular moment, China is “jealous” of Hong Kong because of its economic and social superi-ority. Hong Kong is also somehow a threat for China, because they are not willing to go fully under Chinese Communist Govern-ment. The Umbrella Revolution indicates that people of Hong Kong wants to have more free-dom from China’s government. Interesting aspect in the Um-

brella Revolution is inclusion of elements from Euromaidan in Ukraine. The Umbrella Revolution started as a students’ democracy movement from Hong Kong’s Chi-nese University. The conflict has not escalated in Hong Kong like it has in Ukraine. The difference between these is the organised protests in Hong Kong and having

(don’t) Occupy Hong Kong!

have a change and are ready to use it. If you compare the Umbrella Revolution to international peace projects, the democracy is usually brought top down.

Lastly, I consider the word “conflict” being probably the word of the year 2014 in political sciences and the Umbrella Revolution is only one of the several happening. Events taking place in Hong Kong express the con-cern and desire for freedom.

a target. On the other hand, Euro-maidan was standing against the current government, but it lacked the future vision.

To have the protest be maintained in Hong Kong, the leader of the protest movement in Hong Kong wrote a manual for that, how to protest non-violently. According to several studies, the only way, how to overturn the dictatorship is to use non-violent social movements. Because trying to resist through violent means is pointless, because there always exists a more power-ful and superior army that could fight back. Negotiating is always ineffective, because majority holds bigger weight in talks.

The 2014 Hong Kong protests dif-fers from Euromaidan, because the protest are very well organised and strategized and China actually started to pay attention and make changes. A proper protest requires a good strategy, a start and end and a leader for the protest. We can say that the Hong Kong protest has been very successful in recruiting and mobilising protestors and the results have been very visible in western media.

One thing that came up in this talk with Charlotta – that democracy is not the only answer for everything, and implementing democracy ev-erywhere is not also so simple. An interesting point concerning particularly now in Hong Kong is that the request for democracy actually comes from the People. It points out that they are willing to

E-Banking

Internet banking is a modern tool that changed every-day routines of many people around the world. It seems to have its benefits as it is a faster and more convenient way of managing your money and transactions. But like every invention it has its minuses and there are still some people who resist the idea of using virtual money.

The ones who started using online banking experience instant relief. Firstly, there are no more boring queues and never-ending waiting at the bank just to be able to pay your bills. Secondly, you don’t have to plan your day around the working hours of the bank, trying to get out from work/school/university earlier or skipping your lunch hours. Thirdly, the online banking users get along better with their money in terms of understanding what they have and being able to save more. Fourthly, custom-ers feel more in control of their finances.

According to Eurostat data 42% of EU citizens used Internet for Internet banking in 2013. The highest per-centage of Internet banking clients can be found in Nor-way and Iceland (87%), the lowest in Bulgaria (5%) [1]. Throughout the EU, 58% of people have no intention or possibility to use this modern service. There are numer-ous reasons for this resistance, but they can mainly be divided into two groups: functional barriers and psycho-logical barriers.

When talking about functional barriers the first to come to mind is the elderly people for whom the internet banking technology is difficult to use. However custom-ers of different age groups may have a negative “hard-to-use” image of computers in general and the Internet in particular.[2]

For other non-users of internet banking the adoption of new a bank-ing system would require purchasing a computer and acquiring an In-ternet connection.[2] As of the beginning of 2011, just over seven out of every ten individuals in the EU-27, aged between 16 and 74 years, used a computer [3]. The numbers are high, but there are still some people who are left out.

However, there are people who would be glad to have the possibility to use online banking, like Anna and Daniel Rhodes - a couple living in a remote part of Kent in the United Kingdom . The security measures of the bank require entering the eight-digit safety code, which they can only get via SMS. But there the absence of phone reception in their area makes it impossible to get the code.[4]

The psychological barriers are sometimes even stronger than the func-tional ones. If the status quo is satisfactory, the potential change may seem irrelevant. In other words, why use something new if something old works fine. Why get out from the comfort zone to learn something new.[2]

In addition there is a big group of people who feel insecure and un-comfortable with any virtual monetary transactions. Others have doubts because they feel that they cannot get proper proof of payment for transactions done through Internet banking services. Moreover, some customers fear that they themselves may make mistakes when using the service.[2]

People not using Internet banking should not be in considered to be paranoiacs who consciously deprive themselves of opportunities. Fraud is common and on the increase. In 2012 €1 in every €2,635 spent on credit and debit cards issued within SEPA (the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Monaco, Norway and Switzerland) was lost to fraud. That represents 0.038% of a total of €3.5 trillion in transactions, up from 0.036% in 2011. The total value of fraud increased by 14.8% in 2012 compared with 2011, reaching €1.33 billion.[5]

Convenient for some, not used by others, Internet banking changed the world’s financial system and the way we understand money. With the constant technological evolution it seems to be gaining more and more importance and promises to attract more users in the nearest future.

1. Individuals using the Internet for Internet banking http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=-tin00099

2. Consumer resistance and intention to use internet banking services http://www.academia.edu/1639239/CONSUMER_RESISTANCE_AND_INTENTION_TO_USE_INTERNET_BANKING_SERVICES

3. Information society statistics http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/Information_society_statistics#Households_and_in-dividuals

4. Online banking nightmares: New security hurdles, disappearing money and how banks got to shift the blame http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mon-ey/saving/article-2134621/Online-banking-nightmares-New-internet-se-curity-hurdles-disappearing-money-banks-got-shift-blame.html

5. New report on card fraud shows online fraud increased in 2012 http://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/pr/date/2014/html/pr140225.en.html

Nowadays Google is a daily part of our lives, we cannot imagine mod-ern society functioning without the help of its main information source. When the brand is men-tioned, most people often think of the search engine, because that is the core of Google and a service we frequently use in our everyday life. What a major part of people do not realize is that this company is re-sponsible for so much more.

Google X is a top-secret facility near the Google office headquar-ters and it is dedicated to advanced technical projects. It is overseen by one the corporation’s founders - Sergey Brin. As said by scientist and the head of Google X Eric (As-tro) Teller they plan on developing “science fiction sounding solu-tions”. The laboratory is devoted to creating uncommon solutions to global problems. Most of these ad-vanced ideas are aimed extremely high and technologies are expected to perform actions similar to su-perhero movie scenes.

One of Google X’s developed proj-ect is an autonomous car which is not controlled by a driver. The software powering this system is called Google Chauffeur. There are many detector devices such as sensors, lasers, cameras and radars that manage the whole system. What makes this technology real-ly special are the possibilities this innovation creates for the society. Today there are many people who are incapable of proceeding with usual everyday errands, such as going grocery shopping or going to the bank. Driving is an action that can be easily restricted by health issues, that is why the community will benefit from this invention. For instance, disabled people can be encouraged to feel more free-dom and independence as they now have a possibility to travel in a car by themselves. Google has already tested their self-driving car, which received a considerable number of positive reviews. “I’m finding there’s a lot of buzz, a lot of people in the blind community

talking about driverless cars. In America, getting a driver’s license is a rite of passage. It represents being able, having the liberty to go where you want to go. Cars and car ownership are important parts of a sense of independence and personal power,” says Steve Mahan who has not been in the driver’s seat for about nine years after losing 95% of his sight. On the other hand driverless car us-age also has major downsides. One of the issues raised is about the safety of passengers as well as people travelling in other vehicles at the same time. Google repre-sentatives claim that a computer based car is safer because a great amount of accidents are caused by human errors. As of 2013, four USA states have permitted the legislation for autonomous cars (Nevada, Florida, Michigan, Cal-ifornia). This innovation is still in the process of development and some European cities are planning to implement transport systems for driverless cars.

AMBITIONS

AMBITIONS

Another one of Google’s most an-ticipated projects is called Project Loon. Project Loon is a project, currently being researched and de-veloped by Google X, which pro-vides internet through balloons placed in the stratosphere. Today we have bound ourselves to tech-nology so tightly that it is hard to function without being connected to the rest of the world. The main idea of this invention to cover rural areas with network connection and improve communication. What is really gripping is the idea of a uni-fied and connected world as well as equal possibilities for every cit-izen no matter the location (two thirds of people still lack access to internet). The technology behind it hides in signal transmitting. There are local internet providers which provide the signal, which is caught by the balloon and shared with the other balloons, which in turn transmit the signal to the receiver. The more balloons there are, the stronger the connection. Google’s Eric Teller said that Project Loon would generate profits if it worked out. “We haven’t taken a dime of revenue, but if we can figure out

a way to take the Internet to five billion people, that’s very valu-able,” he said. One of the questions raised deals with national airspace and will countries be willing to let Google use their territory as there is no common definition of when the country stops counting the air-space height. The research is still continuing and there is a possibili-ty that soon we can expect a world with equal internet access.

Google is getting larger and greater by the second and so are the ideas presented by this company. Many of their planned inventions perform movie-like tasks. There are peo-ple who doubt the usefulness and necessity of these innovations, but the majority is astonished at what ideas they have come up with and are exceedingly excited to see what will be the next big thing. However, let’s not forget that we can never be too sure about the motives of such an influential company. Google is known to be an excellent helper in our daily lives, but their true aims remain to be revealed.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21720318

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/sci-ence/11drive.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tim-worstall/2013/06/23/googles-project-loon-prob-lem-international-bureau-cracy/

Ways how people work have changed several times, from using paper and pen we moved to typewriters and then to company issued computers and phones. The new technology trends have brought several good develop-ments, work has become more productive and comfortable, but companies have started to worry about data safety. The tech evolution is still ongo-ing and the newest trend since 2013 is BYOD. Is this current development something great or is it a threat to business?

BYOD is not really connected with bring-your-oddest-drugs (to the party).

These four letters stand for bring-your-own-device,

which is a policy that takes away company is-sued Blackberries and replaces them by some-thing well known by the

user – personal device, either it is tablet, laptop or

mobile phone. [1] BYOD be-came a trend due to IT revolution,

which was started by, simple as that, Apple. People running after newest technology, sharpest

updates and coolest designs have created a new look for IT devices not only in shops, where thousands of people stand in queues for the opening of iPhone 6, but

in work-places, where old systems can and do become an obstacle for innovation.

CEOs have realised that their companies benefit from tech madness around the world, and 4 out of 5 people already

bring their personal devices to work.[2] Employees are more comfortable with their own devices and it is easy to understand

why. When one needs to change from Windows to Mac, it takes some time; however, using one’s own device helps the user to become an expert and therefore be more productive when working. Moreover, it gets easier to take your work with yourself and work after job or on holidays.

B. Y.

Productivity is not the only reason that encourages companies to imple-ment BYOD. Personal devices tend to be more cutting-edge and users up-grade them more frequently, because it is in their own interest and one does not need to wait centuries for the system administrator to finally upgrade from Windows XP which Microsoft retired this year in April.[3] Last, but not least – people save up their salary for all these new devices because they find it important to have one – either because it is a symbol of status, it is a trend or it is just easy to use them. An IBM survey shows that 82% of people think that their mobile device plays a “crit-ical role” in their business. Being able to use their own devices brings employees satisfac-tion. Increasing produc-tivity and comfort of the employees are the main reasons why companies adopt this policy. [4]

It might seem to be a great way of decreasing the costs of the IT department in a company by switching device costs to the user, leaving the company with only the costs for sup-port. However, this plan can backfire. 71% of CEOs and IT specialists agree that security is the main issue with BYOD. When company uses BYOD policy, it al-lows working with sensitive information on a personal device or even storing it there, which can create some dark scenarios. The most common ones are problems posed by lost phones. When you lose your personal phone, the worst case scenario is that some nude pictures might be leaked. (Though they might be leaked anyway, if you use cloud ser-vices.) When a company phone is lost, it can lead to bankruptcy if commercial secrets go public. Stolen or lost devices are not the only way how information can go public without any effort from the user’s side. Amit Sinha, CTO at Zscaler, has noted that when employees download and install mobile apps for their

O. D.

personal use, they allow unregulated third-party access to company information. These applications might be altered by a malicious hacker and the user can grant access to company services without even knowing it. Installing antivirus programs can help; however, such programs can impact the user’s experience and it also needs regular updates. Luckily, there is another solu-tion – making a blacklist with applications that can be dangerous, increasing protection against third-party access without limiting user experience in other areas.

Even imagining a world where phones are nev-er lost or stolen and hacking does not exist, danger is still out there. And this time it comes down to people’s honesty, or more the lack of it. By using BYOD we open ways how to sell highly sensitive information to rivals. One of the biggest questions raised about implement-ing BYOD is what to do when an employee decides to leave a company, especially if the departure is not on good terms. Most companies have suffered because of leaked information, but when BYOD is implemented we increase the risk due to lack of data management – as employees use their personal devices, it is almost im-possible to track the data flow without getting involved in user privacy. Several companies have faced legal is-sues due to SMS tracking because it involves storage of personal messages as well as work-related ones. Imple-menting a strong tracking policy can resolve problems with possible information leaks or at least help to pin-point them, however it brings more problems.

To make everything secure a serious BYOD plan is needed. According to a survey done by TEKsys-tems, nearly a half of IT managers say that costs haven’t decreased or have even increased by one third when BYOD policy was introduced in their company, espe-cially in the beginning of the process.[4] Monitoring personal devices and data flow in a company calls for complicated systems and raises legal issues as already

mentioned. When a strict policy is introduced, honest employees can feel offended and the trust gap between the employer and the employee widens. Despite that, IBM and several other leading companies have proven that a balance between security and trust is possible.

We must face it – BYOD has become a standard in business and because of higher productivity and comfort it will become increasingly popular over time. However, it is important to keep safety in mind and spend some extra money on it to get ready for possible information leaks which might happen because of lost devices, leaked information and third party involve-ment. Despite these obstacles BYOD is here and looks like it is staying. And it is good. Because BYOD is not necessarily a threat to security, it just calls for good IT management and legal policies, and when you are done with that – you are the winner.

1 – What is BYOD and why is it important? http://www.techradar.com/news/computing/what-is-byod-and-why-is-it-important--11750882 – BYOD at work – Pros and Cons http://voip.about.com/od/hardware/a/Byod-Pros-And-Cons.htm#3 - Still Using Windows XP? It’s Time to Upgrade Your Operating System http://quickbooks.intuit.com/r/tech-review/still-using-windows-xp-its-time-to-up-grade-your-operating-system/3 – Why and How You Should Adopt BYOD http://www.ibm.com/mobilefirst/us/en/bring-your-own-de-vice/byod.html

ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

In this new-fashioned world we are constantly around modernized media technologies, it would be a lie if we claimed that we have not thought about how our personalities are influenced by these innovations. At one point or another, the majority of us has wandered off in our thoughts and wondered about how these new technologies have changed our view on different subjects. Media psychology is a new and emerging field in which the rapid adoption of media technologies highlights the importance of knowing how, why, and when media can impact, persuade and facilitate behaviour. It seeks to understand what impact technolo-gies have on human mind.

What really angers me is how social media sites are actually contributing to the desocialization of our generation. Why, you may ask? Internet offers us a great deal of ways to socialize. It seems as if these websites help us to communicate with each other online – which, you cannot deny, is really convenient. Moreover, many webpages have been created in order to increase the possibilities of find-ing people similar to yourself with whom you have the opportunity to socialize. There is a fair amount of online dating sites and chat rooms where you are given the chance to meet other internet users. An obvious way is e-mail and instant messaging sites where we can have conversations. However, a major part of the society, especially youngsters, is near-addicted to social networking. For instance,

ANTI-SOCIAL MEDIA

Facebook, which is the world’s largest social network at the time of this publication, also includes elements of text-based, photo sharing, private message and in-stant messenger forms of communication. On one hand, it is a convenient way of conversing – it can be done online, does not ask for much resources or skills, but on the other hand, it is distracting and can create an illusion of a completely different life. As the result friends do not matter as much as before, they start dissocializing amongst each other. For in-stance, instead of meeting up with peers, young peo-ple choose to stay at home in the company of their computer screen. The number of their virtual friends increases whilst the quality of the relationships with their relatives and real life acquaintances decreases. The internet is filled with shocking stories about teen-agers who use online opportunities to escape reality. It is well known that internet is quite addictive, so it is no surprise to hear these tragic confessions. Another way

how users of technology get to run from their lives is playing video, computer and virtual games which entertain them to the point when they do not value their real lives. In 2010, South Korean police arrested a couple for starving their three-month-old daugh-ter to death while they devoted hours to playing a computer game that involved raising a virtual char-acter. The 41-year-old man and 25-year-old woman, who met through a chat website, reportedly left their infant unattended while they went to internet cafes. They only occasionally dropped by to feed her pow-dered milk. “I am sorry for what I did and hope that my daughter does not suffer any more in heaven,” the husband is quoted.

This is definitely not the first nor last time something like this has happened. Information tech-nology has the potential to do much good, but at the same time they have the ability to cause great harm and become very addictive for the user.

3D3D

Imagine a world where your home is not conquered by “made in China”, a world where custom made is the norm. 3D printing can give us exactly that. Darthmouth professor Richard A. D’Aveni predicts that 3D printing will change the Chinese mass pro-duction trend because the printers are getting more common among ordinary people. One day all lit-tle things could be constructed at home and China would have to change its production politics. The world would again lean to a differ-ent direction. [1]

Building a modest 2100 m² home in the USA can cost you 150 000 dollars.[2] However, a Chinese company named WinSun Decora-tion Design Engineering has de-veloped a 3D printable house that takes less than 24 hours to con-struct and the cost is only 5000 dollars. Furthermore, 3D printed houses are more environmental-ly friendly because it is possible to reuse construction waste. Us-ing 3D printed houses can reduce housing problems in poorer coun-tries where people cannot afford to build ordinary houses. [3]

Fashion designers can use 3D printers to solve the problem with badly fitting clothes (I think we all have had that issue). For exam-

ple New York designer Michael Schmidt and architect Francis Bi-tonti created a dress for burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese which fit her perfectly. 3D printing gives an op-portunity to combine fashion and architecture and allows designers to play with different structures.[4]Medicine has benefitted from the 3D printing world as well. For in-stance plaster casts have developed rapidly thanks to technology. A 3D printed cast lets your skin breathe and in addition it has ultrasound devices attached to it to speed up the healing progress (no more smelly casts and taking a shower with your hand wrapped in a plas-tic bag)[5]. 3D printers are also used for printing prosthetic arms and legs because they are much cheaper than traditional prosthet-ics. Patients suffering from loss of hearing can have brand new print-ed ears to improve their and even trauma patients can be helped with this technology – one women got a whole new 3D printed skull.[6]

3D printers have been here since the 80’s but they have become commercially available only after being crowd funded. They have given us a whole new perspective on production and due to that we are able to construct things that we have not even dreamed about.

1) 3D printing will change the world http://hbr.org/2013/03/3-d-printing-will-change-the-world/

2) House cost estimators http://cost-tobuild.net/calculator.php

3) Chinese company showcases ten 3D-printed houses http://www.arch-daily.com/543518/chinese-compa-ny-showcases-ten-3d-printed-hous-es/

4) 3D-printed dress for Dita Von Teese by Michael Schmidt and Francis Bi-tonti http://www.dezeen.com/2013/03/07/3d-printed-dress-dita-von-teese-michael-schmidt-francis-bitonti/

5) The plaster cast of the future? 3D-printed design uses ultrasound to speed up healing http://www.dai-lymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2609601/3D-print-ed-plaster-cast-uses-ultra-sound-speed-healing.html

6) 3D printed body parts go mainstream http://www.iflscience.com/technology/3d-print-ed-body-parts-go-mainstream

in Roaming

You use roaming, when you travel to a foreign country with your mo-bile phone. Usually it’s claimed that roaming is very expensive, but is it actually?

Seemingly, some of the roaming costs are already gone down. Per-sonally, I have a contract that is already taking a serious advantage about roaming pricing. I am from Finland and living in Tallinn, but I am visiting quite often home and over 90% of my classmates are Finns, so it was a cheaper to get this contract from Finland than instead of an Estonian contract. Telia-Sonera, international telecommu-nications company originally from Finland and Sweden, has branches in Nordic and all Baltic countries and has therefore made it possible to have this contract. This contract basically has a “fixed price” around 15€ for 5000 minutes of calls and 5000 SMSs and 50 GB for Data with speed-less limit. This is not a usual procedure in every EU Mem-ber State.

As aforementioned, market and the corporations being in power of the prices is a threat to this everyday tool to get so expensive that an av-erage person cannot afford to have

a contract for communicating oth-ers. In general, the prices has ob-viously come down from the early mobile communicating times, but there’s a risk to them rise again.

how did the telecommunication market look like before voip & smartphones. (1 paragraph) ruling their kingdom

Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) –methodology was intro-duced to consumer market in 2004 exploiting broadband access and it was primarily intended to be used via computers. VOIP’s main idea is to have free calling between two or more people. At this point, tele-communication corporations did not think VOIP was a threat for them, because VOIP was not easily accessible for all the time and ev-eryone. Mobile network operators never thought that VOIP would pass regular phone calling, by pop-ularity.

After the times of smartphones existence, VOIP has been easily accessible for everyone. Several applications of VOIP have been developed for smartphones. New ones coming all the time and the old popular ones having desktop

versions have published their own applications for mobile platforms. After VOIP conquering mobile platforms, telecommunication corporations started to realise the threat in it. Basically at this point, it was already too late to realise it. VOIP methodology was also one of the reasons, why the telecom-munication prices dropped.

All the applications that have been developed for the smartphones for Voice-Over Internet Protocol -methodology (VOIP) are being super popular now, and new appli-cations are coming all the time. As a very successful example, Skype has been developed in here Tal-linn, Estonia. Viber, FaceTime by Apple and Hangouts by Google are also innovations of VOIP applica-tions that exist. For these applica-tions, you need the data obvious-ly and usually people uses Wi-Fi networks to these. Broad using of Wi-Fi networks has replaced the importance of mobile data, but in rural areas the Wi-Fi networks are non-existent.

A concern to rise about the abol-ishing the roaming costs might be the possibly raising costs for all the telecommunication systems in

the whole EU. Telecommunication corporations might raise the prices to the contracts to get the lack of finances that they used to get from the roaming. Also, it might bring some movements to people chang-ing to different Member States for cheaper contracts, since the calls, SMSs and data usage all over the Europe will be the same. There is not any legislation concerning the pricing of mobile phone commu-nication in the EU in existence, but the market itself regulates the pric-es with competition.

Roaming costs have gone down since 2007, for instance SMS and data of over 80% since 2007 and data roaming costs are over 90% cheaper than in 2007. The latest re-duction to the prices done by the European Commission was done on 1st of July 2014. The action for abolishing the Roaming costs is part of the European Commissions Digital Agenda for Europe –pro-gramme, which is part of the Eu-rope 2020 –initiative. Total abol-ishing of the Roaming costs will happen in Christmas 2015.

As technologies develop, video games become more and more popular and expensive. Last month Activision re-leased new game called “Destiny”, which grabbed the attention of not only gamers. The reason why this topic got so popular was the huge budget of the game, 500 million dol-lars. That has a few reasons, but 500 million dollars for a game still sounds crazy. That sounds like a modern Hollywood movie budget. It’s hard to believe that creating a video game costs so much.

The main reason for the high budget is the fact that this is a long-term in-vestment and “Destiny” is planning to be the first game of a long-running franchise and the budget includes other games too. Creators are going to release some sequels of the game during the next 10 years. Besides, computer graphics are developing unceasingly and it is getting hard-er to develop a video game. 20 years ago games were made by 3 or 4 peo-ple, but in case of Destiny, there were more than 500 people working on it.

In modern games additional costs are needed to hire famous Hollywood actors to voice the characters or just buying copyrights on the things which are needed for the game. Fa-mous actors like Elijah wood, Gary Oldman, Christopher Walken, Ellen Page, Samuel L. Jackson, Liam Nee-son and many others have voiced famous video games and they were paid millions of dollars for that.

The idea of the game is quite simple, but still different by some aspects. The main character is the guardian of the last city on Earth. He can explore the whole solar system, defeat the en-emies of our planet and reclaim ev-erything that’s lost. Players can create many different characters, choose a race and a class for the character and the abilities and strengths, which will mostly depend on the race and class.

Expectations for the game are quite different. Some people think that it will be a successful project, while others think it’s going to be the big-gest fail. There are a few reasons why failing is expected. First of all the game has cliché gameplay and peo-ple think that there’s nothing innova-tive. Besides, people are very sceptic about the name and they think that Destiny is a dumb name. The other reasons why Destiny could fail is the approach of the creators. Destiny is created by the same people who made popular the video game Halo and that

you could use 500 million dollars to:

Buy 104’166’666 Big Macs Feed 1’000’000 families for a year Buy 500’000’000 Kinder Surprise

DEST

INY

VS

you could use 500 million dollars to:

DEST

INY

causes similarities between Halo and Destiny. Another reason is the unre-alisticness of the game, but that’s not a big problem for a modern game. Cre-ators expected ratings to be high, but it’s only 6.4/10.

Destiny isn’t the first game which has a budget larger than hundred million dollars. First game which had a bud-get over 100 million dollars was “Star Wars: The Old Republic”, which was released in 2011. “Grand Theft Auto V”(2013) had a budget of 265 million dollars, but in less than one year its sales exceeded 2 billion dollars, so this project can be considered as suc-cessful one, but as for “Destiny”, it’s profits are still less than costs.

Another game that was released this year and had a high budget due to de-velopment costs, was “Watch Dogs”, but still it was much less than in the case of “Destiny”, it was 68 million dollars and that was considered to be

too much in May, but then “Desti-ny” was released and made everyone astonished. There were three games released in 2013 with a 100 million dollar budget, but they weren’t criti-cized as “Destiny” was. Those games showed us that developing a game costs much, but not as much as half a billion dollars.

500 million dollars is an insane amount of money and there are many different ways to spend it. You can buy 5 Cristiono Ronaldos for 500 million dollars and you can even buy any football club. You can the whole country of Liechtenstein for 12500 nights and you can live there as a king for 34 years. Everyone would come up with a quite different way for spend-ing that much money. For a few other ways you can see the illustration.

In conclusion, creating a new game is becoming harder and more expen-sive. Every detail is important and there are millions of dollars are spent on every little detail, which are real-ly important for the game and which make it different from others. In case of Destiny it’s still early to say whether it’s a successful project or not, because it’s a long-term project that is going to last for ten years. We still have to wait and see what happens next. Destiny has only started, but it’s already clear that it became popular and the reason of this popularity isn’t the content of the game or the gameplay, the main reason of the popularity is the budget of the game.

Buy 250 baby pandas Build more than 1000 schools Buy 6 islands in the Bahamas

POPULARITYVS

#

September 9, 2014 – every Apple fan was waiting for that date, it was the day when iPhone 6 was re-leased. Apple presented every new function and the new iOS, but few people did really care about that, people wanted to buy the new iP-hone just because it was the new iPhone and it was produced by Ap-ple. Fans were queueing for days to buy Apple’s new product and when the stores opened, the first incident happened. An Australian guy appeared to be one of the first buyers of the iPhone 6 and soon he became first person to drop it. But the main thing began next day: it bent.

After using the new iPhone 6 for a day, consumers started complain-ing that their device was bending in their pockets. The topic soon

became popular, which forced Apple to make an announcement. The company said that they’ve only received nine complaints about bending, which isn’t a high number. Official announcement said they “perform rigorous tests throughout the entire development cycle including 3-point bending, pressure point cycling, sit, torsion, and user studies”. The company didn’t hide the fact that their new product is bendable, but they said that it’s impos-sible if you use it normally.

The an-n o u n c e -m e n t c o u l d n ’ t avoid chaos and a mas-sive wave of videos ap-peared on Yo u t u b e . U n b o x T h e r a p y was the first

channel who posted a bending vid-eo and it got more than 50 million views. The guy in the video bend-ed an iPhone 6 in front of cameras and proved that it’s easy to bend. …buuuuut some people think the video is fake. It may be hard to understand why should you buy an iPhone and then bend it, but judging by the amount of views, the channel made enough money to buy more than ten iPhones after breaking one for the video.

Videos weren’t enough and in a matter of days, a new trend was created: #BendGate. Everyone was joking about iPhone bending: or-d i n a r y people

bendgatestarted those jokes and then even famous companies like Nokia, Samsung, HTC, Kit-Kat, Pringles, Heineken and others posted funny responses about iPhone bending on their twitters with the already trendy hashtag.

When Apple thought that the wave was over, another wave of jokes began: some youtube channels up-loaded funny videos about how you can fix your bent iPhone 6. But not all of the youtubers were making fun of Apple’s latest product. Fa-mous Youtuber Jimmu Tatro post-ed a video on his channel, where he criticized all the people who are complaining about bend-ing.

The bending thing wasn’t over by bending the iPhone 6, people needed more and that’s why the Unbox Therapy posted another bending test video, but this time they tried to bend a new HTC one, a new Moto X and a Nokia Lumia. When they tried to bend those phones, they didn’t bend, but screens popped out a little bit from two of them. With the new bending

test the chan-nel tried to prove that only iPhone 6

Plus is b e n d -

able, but it’s not the

way you should u s e y o u r phone. T h e g u y w h o tested it

put quite a big pressure on phones and if you use it in a normal way, it won’t bend.

It bent, it’s not a good fact, but the interesting thing is that people are still buying iPhones, they still love Apple products and don’t care about those bending jokes. Peo-ple still trust the company and are buying their products because they are made by Apple and not because they have better software architec-ture of better functions than oth-er phones. Apple will still stay as a brand and people will still buy their products.

In March 2014 I moved from the Netherlands to Estonia, to live to-gether with my girlfriend and find work, as I had just finished my studies. After months of planning, getting my belongings transported to Estonia by lorry – imagine a 12 meter trailer combination navigat-ing through a tiny residential area – I finally moved. My first thing to do was register as an inhabitant of Estonia. As I don’t speak the language very well, I really feared the hassle that was going to be in-volved. Filling out forms, getting lost in legislation and lots of diffi-cult tiny rules. I was very surprised to find that the only thing I need-ed to do was register living on my address, and wait for my personal identification number, which was probably the most difficult part along the way. They wanted to know my purpose for moving to Estonia, and where I moved from. Two days later my code came in and I could register for my ID-card. In comparison, the same process in The Netherlands would have been relatively complicated. Even as a EU-citizen you have to show proof for your purpose for being there, show proof that you have the financial abilities to live in the country, fill out plenty of com-plicated forms (in English) and in most cases you also need to have a job. Then, it usually takes around 14 days on average for your reply to arrive. Seems overly complicat-ed for basically putting a name in a system right?

This caught my interest; in the Netherlands we don’t see ourselves as technologically less developed than other countries (some mis-placed national pride perhaps), however it seemed to me that Es-tonia developed a very nifty way of organizing your personal life with the government. Through one portal you arrange a wide array of options. Tax rebate? You arrange it with a single click through your ID-card. Starting up a company? Instead of two weeks of time and visits to a notary, it takes you less than an hour. Applying for bene-fits? It goes through this same por-tal. There is no reason to leave the comfort of your home: just a single ID-card with your personal codes for plenty of systems.

The system that makes this possi-ble is called X-Road, and has as key elements: • “There’s no single owner or con-troller.• Every government agency or business can choose the product that’s right for them.• Services can be added one at a time, as they’re ready.” [1]

Because there is no single owner, any company can use this system, and incorporate it into their web-site to improve functionality and safety. X-Road uses the Estonian ID-card to log in, joined with two personal codes that you can set. On logging in you use the main code, and for confirming making chang-es you use the second code. Oth-er than governments, some of the

Blue &

& main institutes that use X-Road are the bigger banks, and the Estonian health care system. In addition, you can also use the ID-card to put your signature, vote, pay for your parking ticket and order repeat medicine. The system is not limit-ed to Estonians; anyone can regis-ter as E-citizens, allowing them to digitally sign documents, eliminat-ing the need for them to visit Es-tonia to sign contracts. This is par-ticularly practical for international companies.

How different things are in the Netherlands. All banks have their own methods of securing their log-in systems. Some banks require their bank passes with a separate reader, others require a log-in with just name and passwords. Filling in your taxes online is done by install-ing a separate piece of software, but without digital signature. Voting still happens on location, on pa-per, as the voting machines were deemed to be sensitive to fraud. After 16 years of discussion, our health care system has only just started to change to a more digital system, but the implementation met with a lot of resistance, as the public deemed it an infraction of the law that protects personal data. Luckily the Dutch government has started the development of a sin-gle system called DigiD, in order to overcome and replace the wide array of systems that are used. In-stead of using ID-cards, it is based on username, password and text message authentication. Similar to the Estonian system, it tries to in-

corporate multiple functions, how-ever lacks functionality. The sys-tem is not fool proof however. On the 16th of October 2014 a Dutch couple managed to commit fraud using the log-in information of pensioners, stealing approximately 50.000 euros.

The amount of different systems in the Netherlands make it com-plicated to effectively use online systems to organize our daily lives, whereas in Estonia the X-road al-lows for easily arranging matters. The integration into different sys-tems is seamless, and the execution successful. It is not without reason that during his visit to Estonia, president Barack Obama claimed the following:

“With their digital IDs, Estonians can use their smartphones to get just about anything done online — from their children’s grades to their health records. (…) I should’ve called the Estonians when we were setting up our health-care web-site.”[2]

In addition to Obama’s praise, the sheer amount of uses of the X-Road system (287 320 732 queries in 2013 alone3) is proof enough alone that it works. And it’s not hard to see why. The ease with which I was able to register, get my ID-card set up and arrange and look up medi-cal information promises a bright future for the X-Road system. If only it would have moved my per-sonal belongs to Estonia too it’d have been perfect.

1) http://e-estonia.com/com-ponent/x-road/2) http://dailycaller.com/2014/09/03/obama-es-tonians-should-have-built-healthcare-gov-instead-of-us/3) https://www.x-road.eu/about.html4) http://nos.nl/artikel/710540-tweetal-steelt-aow-via-digid-fraude.html5) https://www.digid.nl/

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Since the theme of the session is IT, it is crucial to include techni-cal devices. For that I have carried out a survey to find out what kind of devices and apps participants of this session use.

The most used devices are smart-phones. You can also see it from the pictures. The results show us that mostly used apps are for com-municating or for music. That is not surprising at all.

But that is not the most interest-ing part of the survey. The weird-est apps show us the dirty minds of the EYPers. For example one of the responders had a Kamasutra game in his phone. And other had a whip app for extra enjoy. When some people are interested in sexy thing others find pleasure in goat

simulator or cookie clicker. Others like to talk dirty and therefore have Urban Dictionary in their phone.Also EYPers use exiting apps in everyday life. Apps like mathway, evernote, sleepytime and taxify make your life easier. Spicing up an ordinary people use apps like befunky, guitar 101 swarm or Pan-dora.

Also we gathered all the commit-tees and look into their bags and collected their devices to see which kind of eletronics they use and if they really fit into the session top-ic. I’m happy with the survey result and assure that that EYPers have come to the right place.

It’s the start of an average lesson, say English class. Students are walking in, getting their books out, until one of them asks: “Can we go to the computer room?” As a teacher, this is probably one of the most annoying questions you can get. There are 100 differ-ent answers ready in your head, but it mostly comes down to the fact that you just don’t have a computer lesson ready at hand, and doing the same lesson you planned, but then in a computer room won’t have any added value. In short, you say: “No, not today.” What you don’t realize is that this student is doing exactly what want: telling you the most ef-ficient approach for them to study. Most students belong to what we now call the ‘net generation’, or ‘digital natives’.1 To illustrate, in 2006 the average college graduate had spent over ten thousand hours on video games, another ten thousand on their mo-bile phones, but only five thousand hours on read-ing.2 It is obvious that written materials will be used less frequently the future, because books are ‘finite, linear and rote [i.e. used for memorizing]’.3 Digital natives are used to dynamic systems, such as the in-ternet. A particularly strong point of digital natives, is their ability for multi-tasking, a skill demanded by the present day and age in which we are required to stay connected to others, or be left out of the loop. It seems that, unlike non-digital natives (i.e. anyone who didn’t grow up using computers), there is no particular need for them to focus on just one task. Any time not spent on the main task can be used for minor things (Facebook, Whatsapp, selfies, reading email etc.), possibly leaving the way open towards a more efficient way of working when effectively us-ing this time. In addition, the internet provides them with a limitless amount of information, which can be searched through with a single click of a button, al-lowing for easy selection of useful materials, usually opened in multiple browser tabs.2

The main question is: why hasn’t modern ed-ucation changed yet to a system which is more suited towards these learners?

It is not just simply a matter of time or mon-ey. Up-to-date knowledge regarding specifically digital learning is lacking. What we do know is that games are one of the more effective ways to learn. Regardless of the medium, games have been used for a very long time to instruct people in a playful way. This starts at very young age, for example when ba-bies play with bricks, to learn about shapes. Later, we improve our vocabulary with games such as Alias, and games such as Triviant Persuit increase our gen-

eral knowledge. However, these games do not feel like (traditional) education. Why? Because we actu-ally enjoy playing them. Marshall McLuhan: “Anyone who makes a distinction between education and en-tertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either one.” It is only logical to use computer games for learning, because learners have grown up using com-puters and smartphones, on both of which comput-er games can be played. Using computers is a great boost to motivation for most (younger) learners. In short: if it’s new and digital, it’s interesting for them. Add the factor of the learning tool being a game and it is not hard to see we might well have a success for-mula. At the moment, games are already being used in different areas of studies. From games such as Civilization and Age of Empires we learn about history, and from Rollercoaster Tycoon and Cruise Ship Tycoon we learn about managing, economics and construction. These games were not designed for educative purposes, but they increase your skills anyway.2 The main reason why these games are not used more often, is because they were just not meant to be educative. Nonetheless, it’s (probably) not too far-fetched to compare playing a game such as Sky-rim, played by approximately 20 million people, with learning maths. First you learn how to use the basics; the game instructs you about some of the basic move-ments, and makes you use this in a relatively safe en-vironment. Then we learn about the rules; what can we do without consequences (or in what situation could you apply the math rule). This stage is very open, and leaves plenty of room for trial and error. The next steps are big ones. You learn more about the why’s (why does the rule work; why do we use fire spells against ice monsters), the where’s (where does the rule apply and where not – where should I run from a big fight and where can I safely go in), and finally the when’s and whether’s (when is this rule the best if there are other options, and should you use it – when do I progress my quest and will I go Stormc-loaks or Imperials). 2. So what education really needs is games that are meant to be educative, but still fun to keep up the motivation. Education could then be as much fun as playing a game! So why haven’t we actually developed Digital Game Based Learning (DGBL) any further yet? The answer is mostly because we are only just discovering in what way digital natives study, and how we can im-

plement this in our educational system. It is difficult because, other than gameplay and graphics, there is the educational factor to take into account. Where are you going to draw the line to make a game look really good, whilst still making it affordable and educative? Schools are already struggling with budgeting as it is, so a license for € 50,- per student will be out of the question. An even worse reality is that there are still students without computer access at home. Before we can even think about making the switch towards an educational system in which DGBL replaces the nor-mal curriculum, these issues should be addressed. Af-ter that, critics will obviously have their say, until con-crete prove can be given that DGBL actually works. Major developing companies will not start develop-ment on a larger scale, until it has proven to be cost efficient. 1 However, smaller game developers have al-ready taken up the specialisation of educational re-source developers’. Game Gurus is one of the major leaders in developing smaller games that are enter-taining and educative. We can only hope that in the future more developers will take it up upon them to invest in education too. I hope that in the future my students will not have to take no for an answer, but a heartily meant: “Yes, we are going to work in the com-puter room, where else would we go?”

1: Richard van Eck, 2006: Digital Game-Based Learn-ing: It’s Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Rest-less....2: Marc Prensky, 2006: Computer Games and Learn-ing: Digital Game-Based Learning3: Tamar Lewin, 2009: In a Digital Future, Textbooks Are History

Gaming at school: the future

of Education?

Your privacy is threatened every day. You just do not know it yet. As a result of IT revolution one can wake up in the morn-ing seeing their self-made naked photos on front page of every magazine without even knowing that personal information was stolen. Cloud computing has made it easier to access data from everywhere, but it has opened doors for unwanted guests as well. The definition of privacy has evolved, right now it refers not only to confidentiality but to “know what is known about them” [1]. However, it is still not completely accepted by society and governments. Privacy matters even for those who are trying to say that it holds no impor-tance anymore because of all the voluntari-ly posted information on social networks. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, in CNBC’s interview claimed “If you have something that you do not want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” On one hand, we might understand that if you are not planning to rob a bank or blow up parliament, you should not be afraid of government monitoring your ac-tivities. On the other hand, even people who agree with that still use locks for their bathrooms and curtains for their bed-rooms. Therefore we see that things which we want to hide from world do exist, and they do not even need to be illegal. More-over, it is not only the government who can watch you. Cloud computing brings out issues with privacy because of a simple reason. Service provider has access to all stored data, and could accidently leak them or use it for unauthorised purposes. Since cloud

DARK CLOUDS

services are more and more used not only by compa-nies but by anyone, term “privacy” has changed. Before cloud services were so popular amongst regular users, most privacy concerns referred to commercial secrets, but now it is changing. Invading ones privacy without person even knowing about it has become much easier. For exam-ple, one of the most popular cloud services, Dropbox, suffers from password leaks every once in a while. A se-ries of posts were made to Pastebin revealing hundreds of logins and password pairs. The cracker claimed that almost 7 million accounts were compromised. [2] Dropbox made an official statement that it has not been hacked, but the passwords were stolen from other ser-vices. That means even when the main cloud service is safe, your information is still out there and people can gain unauthorised access. However, focus is not on the security issues in service providers system, but how these issues and lack of security policies influence society overall. As seen after celebrity picture leaks from iCloud, the first issue addressed by majority was “well, if they did not want to have these pictures leaked, they should not have tak-en them”, basically saying “don’t be naked in your own bedroom”. Cloud services are supposed to be safe and in near future could replace standard data storing. For society these stolen pictures were a matter of entertain-ment, but how would one act if his own pictures would be stolen and exposed to public? Reactions would be outrageous. Most people did not address the security is-sues because they could not imagine that things that happening to celebrities can happen to them as well. So what are the threats every person can face? Cyber-stalking and information forwarding. One part of the issues is already regulated with legislations, like hack-ing in a victim’s computer and using someone’s search history and GPS to stalk them, but there are other threats out there. Google uses smartphones and lap-tops to track your everyday movement, and they save this information on their servers. Right now Google has made a policy change, which allows user to request all tracking history and delete it. Despite the possibility to delete this data, it is not widely known by users that someone is actually following them. Moreover, when you click “Sign up with Facebook” you just find it easy, not dangerous, and do not think that companies get granted access to all your Facebook data and they use it to adjust their proposal. [4] All the things mentioned above come down to three problems – service security issues, which IT companies are resolving right now, to keep customers satisfied,

second problem is the way how society does not address security issues in the first place, and third, people just do not have enough time to follow what development tracking services have faced. It raises a question – how important privacy is for general public and how well they know what they actually share in the Internet. Alessandro Acquis-ti has mentioned that it is unreasonable to expect consumers “to continuously update their knowl-edge about what new tracking method the indus-try has discovered and to be able to fend it of.”[3]To ensure security, a common policy must be in-troduced to protect customers. For instance, right now in the United States of America lack of com-mon policy about privacy has resulted in massive losing of any control over data published in the In-ternet, which sometimes collides with leaked in-formation posted online. New policy should state one crucial thing for modern world – let people know what and where information about them has been posted. New technologies have made it easier to work with data, but it has become harder to con-trol who owns your data and for what purposes it will be used. Because of this meaning of term “pri-vacy” has changed, but society hasn’t adapted this. To secure citizens’ safety a common policy must be accepted.

1 – “Privacy in Cloud Computing” http://w w w. i t u . i nt / d m s _ p u b / i t u - t / o t h / 2 3 / 0 1 /T23010000160001PDFE.pdf2 – 7 million Dropbox username/password pairs apparently leaked http://arstechnica.com/secu-rity/2014/10/7-million-dropbox-usernamepass-word-pairs-apparently-leaked/3 – Do you know what you’re revealing online? Much more than you think http://ideas.ted.com/2014/07/01/do-you-know-what-youre-re-vealing-online-much-more-than-you-think/4 – How a Company Takes Full Advantage of Ac-cess To Your Facebook Information http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/10/25/how-a-company-takes-full-advantage-of-your-facebook-information/

Ink warfare

Material used:[1] http://www.streetarticles.com/personal-tech/invention-of-the-ereader[2] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/reading-paper-screens/[3] http://www.vqronline.org/editors-desk/price-paperless-revolution[4] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887323874204578219834160573010

Ink warfare

The comparison between virtual and physical books has been a topic for discussion for several decades, however, the infatuation with reading an e-book on a separate digital device ap-peared in the last ten years. Since then, scientists in various related fields have conducted studies and done research on the many different aspects of both options but the matter is far from settled. It all started with a man named Michael Hart, who invented the first e-book in 1971. The thought of creating a piece of technology specifically for reading was put into practice twenty two years later, in 1998. The first ever e-reader Rocket Ebook was considered a miracle – after all, it had the capacity to hold up to 10 e-books! Only during the last five years did the real breakthrough happen, though. The Kindle, Barnes & Noble and Sony devices were developed for mass produc-tion and today, with the exception of Sony, dominate the market with advanced tools, access to bookstores and long battery life.[1] The most striking and interesting is the way one's brain processes information during reading. The first surveys showed that reading on screen lessens the ability to read intensively and therefore, those who read the same information on paper simply remembered more about the text when questioned. There has also been discussed that reading virtually requires more mental re-sources, resulting in difficulties of generalising or grasping the key points of a text. Despite that, it is still sort of a grey area because research published since the beginning of 1990s proves the reality is controversial. The studies lack major differences between reading comprehension when reading from a tablet or paper.[2] Despite the rising popularity of digital books, the majority of people still prefer paperbacks. There is just something about the smell and feel of books that beats the tedious, even superficial appearance of a thin technological object in one's hands. The experience is just not the same – one cannot take a cosy blanket and sit in a comfortable armchair with a tablet at Christmas. Or is it already considered an old person's foolish sentimentality? Taking the previous information into account, there is also substantial debate about the en-vironmental impact. The first thought that comes to mind is that preferring e-books decreases the carbon footprint, therefore buying an iPad makes one a caring person regarding ecology. Right? Not exactly. According to Ted Genoways' publication in National Journal of Literature and Dis-cussion, the New York Times calculated the environmental impact of a single e-reader. In a brief summary, buying an e-reader equals roughly to fifty books. The problem emerges with time – at present, an average reader replaces their device every two years, which means that e-readers cur-rently used would have to balance out the manufacturing costs by purchasing at least 250 million e-books just to become footprint neutral. Truthfully, that does not sound achievable.[3] All in all, physical and virtual books will most likely co-exist in the future the same way they do now. The e-reader enjoyed its success; however, it seems to be a passing trend. A large amount of people have moved on to reading from tablets and the ones who have already bought an e-reader do not feel the necessity to buy a newer version, but go for tablets instead.[4] Reading in digital form, on the contrary, is not going anywhere. Young generations demand comfort from the world they grew up in and the only way to meet these expectations and compete with other high-tech countries is to keep producing, producing, producing.

“Bullying” as said in the Oxford dic-tionary means using your strength or power-ful position to hurt the weaker ones. The ma-jority of people have experienced this kind of abuse at some point of their lives, especially in childhood or youth. The result of these abusive actions is quite terrifying, as many of people who have been affected by them later suffer serious psychological damage. As a side effect of developing information tech-nology, people have found a new and conve-nient way of causing misery to people. Everyone knows what bullying is, but what exactly is cyberbullying? The answer is quite simple. Cyberbullying is abuse on the internet. It has recently emerged as a new form of bullying and harassment. It can be in the form of commenting on posts, hacking into accounts and posting untruthful things, sending messages or posting rude and em-barrassing photos or texts about this person. Unfortunately, nowadays it is a big problem, especially because of youth’s obsession with social media, it seems more appealing to bul-lies to express their aggression on internet. One of the draw-ins is the computer screen – no one actually sees you abusing someone, therefore no one supervises your actions, whilst also telling you that it might be wrong and cause psychological suffering. It is no secret that victims of such peer aggression are more likely to experi-ence depression and suicidal thoughts. Some studies have shown the link between suicidal thoughts and victimization and offending. "How many more teenagers will kill them-selves because of online abuse before some-thing is done? These sick people are just able to go online and hide behind a mask of an-onymity while they abuse vulnerable teen-agers." says Dave Smith, the father of Han-nah Smith – a victim of cyberbullying who ended up killing herself. She was bullied on a site called ask.fm which is especially popu-

lar amongst young people; there you can ask random questions whilst remaining anon-ymous. Ask.fm co-founder Mark Terebin commented on the controversial topic of the website: “Mass media is knocking on wrong door. It is necessary to go deeper and to find a root of a problem. It is not about the site, the problem is about education, about moral val-ues that were devaluated lately. Do not blame a tool, but try to make changes… start with yourself… be more polite, more kind, more tolerant of others… cultivate these values in families, in schools. Suicide is not something to encourage via mass media. The more you promote suicide, the more it happen.” Teenagers who are being bullied or targeted often take comfort in substance use. Many of the victims start using alcohol or drugs in order to relieve stress and as we all know, in many cases it leads to addic-tion, overdosing and sometimes even death. Of course intoxication is not always caused by cyberbullying or bullying at all, but we cannot deny that these sufferings may be a reason to forget about reality and enter the world that seems a little bit lighter. Com-monly young people spend their free time on the internet and mostly on social media sites. They feel the need to be connected to the rest of the world and it often is distracting. Cyberbullying adds a lot to that plate. Peo-ple, particularly youngsters, are emotional regarding opinions that are directed towards them. It is difficult for them to ignore these rude comments, so they think about it and get distracted from their school work and other responsibilities. The result to this may be falling grades and distancing from their real life friends. We can all agree that effects of cyberbullying are serious and damaging.What is the appeal of hurting people on the internet, you may ask? One of the most ob-vious reasons, of course, is the anonymity. In real life situations people are too cowardly

VIRTUAL VIOLENCE

to say what they feel or to be bluntly honest. Internet, on the other hand, is a place where you can be whoever you want to. In cyber world you may not know who you are talking to or who is on the other side of the screen. With the increasing social site usage, the op-portunities of cyberbullying increase as well. You can post commentaries online to photos or statuses any user has posted, the possibil-ities are never ending. Another reason may be the fact that on the internet there is no one who can control your words like, for in-stance, at school. There are other students or teachers that may and will stop you and point out the consequences of your actions. On the web there is no control of this sort – you can basically do whatever, whenever you want to. Another question is – why do people get the urge to express their opinion in such harsh way? Major part of these so called bullies have got bullied themselves, so we can call it ego boost. They want to feel empowered and experience how it is to be – on the other side of the food chain. Some people feel pres-sured by their friends and the modern so-ciety. To be popular you have to have a special kind of atti-tude towards those who may seem less influential. They try to keep their so-cial status in which they sometimes end up hurting those who do not deserve it. , Our video editor Mairi says: “I be-lieve that bullies are the result of bad parent-ing which teaches that in order to get what you want – do what you want. People who bully others are often not comfortable with

themselves and seek attention.” She also mentions that the freedom of internet plays a big role in this topic. The majority of peo-ple I surveyed said that at one time or an-other they have been bullied, sometimes because they had defended others. Linda (ITRE) says: “When kids get on the inter-net, they see the freedom it provides. They realise what enormous power they have and are tempted to use it.” All of us are aware that cyberbullying is a problem in the mod-ern society. We can all agree that cyberbullying is serious form of aggression against peers. Words hurt as much as physical suffering. Internet is an amazing invention which has brought us a lot of possibilities and oppor-tunities, but as we all know there always will be people who abuse power and use it for their selfish pleasure.

As seen in publications after cyber-attacks on Estonia, the term “cyber terrorism” has been misused several times. An attack series began on April 27th in 2007 and targeted websites of Es-tonian organizations, including Estonian parlia-ment, banks, ministries, newspapers and broad-casters, amid the country's disagreement with Russia about the relocation of the Soviet-era grave marker, Bronze Soldier of Tallinn.[1] Immediate-ly it was called “cyber-terrorism” and “cyber-war”, however, experts saw situation as “clearly an in-stance of hacktivism”. Therefore one must clearly understand the difference between cyber-terrorism and other cyber threats. To define term we must look what method is used for the attack, who are the victims and what is the motivation behind this crime. Cy-ber terrorism targets innocent victims using com-puter based violence and destruction, and their aim is to make political or social change.[2] It is quite common that several attacks made by “pa-triotic hackers” are mistaken for cyber terrorism. A typical example of such an attack was Chinese hacktivists who attacked systems in the United States of America after the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia was accidentally bombed by the USA back in 1999.[3] These cyber-attacks were car-ried out by patriotic individuals and their method, similar to the one in the aforementioned Estonian case, was peculiar to hacktivism – web page de-facements and distributed denial of service. Sim-ilar attacks are carried out in other conflict areas, including regular cyber-attacks between patriotic hackers in the Israel-Palestine conflict.

While misunder-standings with the usage of the term in public area might not seem to be huge problem, other misconceptions exist about cyber terrorism. For in-stance, when a terrorist group, such as Al-Qae-da, uses hacking to steal credit card data, it is not an act of terrorism, but a cyber-crime, even if the money is later used to carry out attacks. Such confusion comes from theories that if the ending result is the same, we can use the same labels for it; however, these misapprehensions can lead to a wrong approach in analysing the incidents.Another misconception still out there concerns terrorist capabil-ities to carry out destructive cyber-terror acts. As the Ir-habi 007 case showed back in 2005, their possibilities and knowledge for real attacks is slightly small-er than believed. Irhabi 007 was a key-conduct for Al-Qaeda, believed to be most danger-ous cyber-jihadist out there. However, most of his time was spent edu-cating other terrorists in simple matters – how to steal credit card data using pre-made templates, how to steal passwords and even such simple things as uploading vid-eos online. After this arrest we gained

Understanding Cyber Terrorism

have gained certain knowledge in the IT field. Another worrying matter is growing financial stability for such organizations, which is main-ly supported by cyber-crime (such as stealing credit-card data), and by donations. Millions of dollars from drug smuggling and different types of donations reach terrorist organiza-tions’ accounts every year. Combining money and education, we get a completely different view of a future where massive terrorism acts might be carried out. Government systems will be the ones tar-geted, creating chaos for a simple reason. Most of the systems, including energy systems, traf-fic regulation, train movement and banking, are controlled by computers. One can only imagine the consequences of terrorists gaining access to a nuclear plant system. Seeing the evolution of cyber-terror-ism and understanding that there exist a lot of misconceptions about it, it is more than clear that a common policy must be accepted to en-sure security and continue the war against ter-rorism.

1 – Revisiting Estonian Cyber Attacks http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1105&context=jss2 – Cyber Terrorism: Menace or Myth? http://ctnsp.dodlive.mil/files/2014/03/Cyberpow-er-I-Chap-19.pdf 3 – Chinese embassy bombing: A wide net to blame http://www.nytimes.com/2000/04/17/world/chinese-embassy-bombing-a-wide-net-of-blame.html4 – Terrorist 077, Exposed. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti-cle/2006/03/25/AR2006032500020.html

more knowledge about terrorist possibili-ties, showing their lack of education – which

means that their abilities to start a cyber-war any time soon are overrated. It takes around 6-10 years for terrorist groups to gain the nec-essary abilities to carry out planned, massive acts of cyber-terrorism.[4] After knowing these facts, a question might arise – but maybe cyber-terrorism is just a myth? Statistics give us a clear answer – yes, it exists and it is a threat to our security. Cy-ber-terrorism act analysis helps to find certain patterns for how it happens. For instance, in

the time period from 1996 till 2003, around 200 cyber-terrorism acts were carried

out every year; however, in 2006 for instance, 2000 terrorism acts

were carried out, none of them could be categorised as cy-

ber-terrorism. These sta-tistics are strongly con-nected with the arrest of some famous cyber-ter-rorists, showing their little numbers.[2] Thinking that cyber-terrorism does not exist might be the biggest misconception

about this topic. There are several warning signs

which must be addressed. One of them is connected

to the education level of ter-rorists. As we can see from the

public appearance of ISIS (pro-paganda film “Flames of War”), they

Understanding Cyber Terrorism

Have you ever wondered who were among the ancestors of what we now know as the Internet? That includes all the search engines, gadgets, general programming and engineering – who were among the main developers? Well, let me introduce you to the world of hacking. Nowadays, the first thing that comes to mind is criminals who leak government information or launder money from banks and various institutions mostly in the public sector. However, it has not always been like that. “Hacker”, in the most innocent definition of the word, refers to people who were just curious about all the exciting possibilities the forthcoming digital age had to offer. These people are often called “white hats“, whereas their counterparts are labeled as the “black hat hackers” or crackers. To elaborate on it, hackers mostly build things while crackers break them. Being a hacker might also mean a person who is simply hired to find vulnerabilities in systems and to strengthen a company's security. Crackers act predominantly for their own individual profit.[1;2] So who were these infamous individuals and what did they manage to accomplish? Quite surprisingly, most of them had barely gone through puberty, when they successfully hacked federal systems such as NASA, U.S. Department of Justice or several telephone networks all on their own. The latter, specifically, falls upon the co-founders of Apple Inc. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. They “phreaked“ phone systems for quite a few years in high school and together with Edward Tufte (currently a professor at Yale University) they designed the blue box that was used for a long-distance call from Palo Alto, California to New York via Hawaii for no money whatsoever. Amusingly, they were never busted for their petty crimes.[3] Another exceptional person is Robert Morris who, in 1988 as a Cornell University graduate, created the disastrous virus outbreak called the Morris Worm. As a result, thousands of computers connected to the Internet crashed and the action made countless news headlines. Although he was discovered and became the first person to be convicted for violating the 1986 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, he was only driven by pure curiosity to find out how “big” the Internet was. Therefore, he did not spend any time in jail. Nevertheless, Robert Morris has proven to be an exemplary citizen, presently working as a professor in the MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department.[4] There are several crackers who turned their black hats into white ones, so to say. To point out a few more significant names, there was also the ex-convict Kevin Mitnick who made the most wanted list in Amer-ica during the 90s as a consequence of his several cracking sprees. Since then, he has found a way to use his talent in a legal way by starting his own security consulting firm. Notably, there was also Kevin Poulsen, who managed to defraud a radio station for the purpose of winning a Porsche and even further, wiretap the FBI. Poulsen was the first to become a notorious cracker and spent around four years behind bars. He is now a dig-ital security journalist.[5;6] Aside from all the happy(ish) endings, not all crackers were meant to walk the road with a joyous finale. Many were caught and had to pay for their theft and criminal activities with harsh sentences of ten to twenty years. The worst of those people committed credit card heists and identity fraud worth over millions of dollars, among them the infamous Albert Gonzalez. [7]Admittedly, we realise that the line between right and wrong can give rise to questionability. The utopia would be encouraging programming in IT without strict restrictions, since it would likely boost the general develop-ment of the digital age. After all, even the creators of the World Wide Web and Microsoft were caught hacking while they were still mere pupils. I find that this is a matter of addressing the weak links in currents laws and some wit and courage to tackle this issue.[8;9]

HACKERS ARE TO

HACKERS ARE TO

Used material:[1]http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-of-the-worlds-most-famous-hackers-what-happened-to-them[2] http://www.pctools.com/secu-rity-news/crackers-and-hackers/[3]http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/books/2013/02/steve_jobs_and_phone_hacking_ex-ploding_the_phone_by_phil_laps-ley_reviewed.html[4]http://www.intelfreepress.com/news/lessons-from-the-first-computer-virus-the-morris-worm/7223[ 5 ] h t t p : / / a r t i c l e s . l a t i m e s .com/1993-09-12/magazine/tm-34163_1_kevin-poulsen/3[ 6 ] h t t p : / / w w w . w i r e d .com/2014/09/kevin-mitnick-sell-ing-zero-day-exploits/[7]http://www.fbi.gov/miami/press-releases/2014/twenty-five-defendants-charged-in-separate-schemes-that-resulted-in-thou-sands-of-identities-stolen-and-millions-of-dollars-in-identity-theft-tax-filings[8]http://www.nndb.com/peo-ple/573/000023504/ [9]http://www.v3.co.uk/v3-uk/news/2044825/paul-allen-spills-beans-gates-criminal-past

BLAME

Progress is usually associated with a lot of hard work, not laziness. But what drives progress, what forces us to come up with new ideas? What made Konrad Zuse work tirelessly for years to create something that is the foundation of a big part of our everyday life; com-puters, smartphones, tablets and pretty much everything else that’s smarter than your electronic watch. Well, to be hon-est, he was tired of hard work.

Konrad Zuse was a typical hard-working German who got tired of calculating. In university he tried his hand at engineering and architecture, but ended up as a civil engineer. He graduated in 1935, after which he start-ed working as a design engineer at the Henschel aircraft factory. This required doing many routine calculations by hand, which he found mind-numbingly boring, leading him to dream of doing them by machine.

Zuse created the Z3 to do all the hard work for him, laying down the ba-sics that still hold true, making him the granddaddy of modern computers. The Z3 was a magnificent machine, it had 2000 electrically operated swithes, it used 4000 Watts of power, it weighed a ton and the memory was so small that it couldn’t even hold this very sentence in it. It took 0.8 seconds to add numbers and 3 seconds to multiply. It operated a couple of hundred thousand times slow-

er then my laptop, instead of a display were some lamps and the memory was basically some punched film. Yes, even your washing machine can do better, but the basic idea and concept is still the same, even 70 years later.

Zuse didn’t stop there. When he was forced out of Berlin, his work on the machines was halted. At that time there were no real programming languages. All programs were written in machine code, which to almost all people looks like gibberish. Konrad was getting tired of this and being unable to work with his computers gave him time to create the world’s first high level programming language, Plankalkül (Plan Calculus). This meant that programs could be writ-ten in a language that was more com-prehensible and made sense, instead of using a sequence of seemingly random characters. Nearly everything in your phone and computer is programmed with this type of languages.

As Bill Gates says: “I will always choose a lazy person to do a difficult job because he will find an easy way to do it” and Konrad Zuse is a great example of this. By building a computer to do his job he started the development of ma-chines that are now everywhere around and with us, without which our lives are unimaginable. So be lazy, create some-thing great.

Konrad

ZUSE

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and put-ting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.” George Orwell’s “1984” sounds as relevant as ever even though it was published more than a half a century ago. It is almost impossible to live in the modern age of media and keep your head clean from all the prejudice and various points of view de-liberately imposed by the parties concerned. Governments and businesses try to take control and influence the opinions. What we need is to understand the mechanisms of this constant war as sometimes it can be more deadly than a real one. One needs not search far for an example as we have one, very recent and bright, very close in Europe. The annexation of the Crimean peninsula by Russia, not recognized officially by EU, took place just several months ago in March 2014.[1] The Crimean operation has served as an occasion for Russia to demonstrate to the entire world the capabilities and the poten-tial of information warfare. All the state run television and radio channels, newspapers and a multitude of online resources have been employed in the recent disinformation campaign regard-ing the situation in Ukraine which is being waged on an unprec-edentedly large scale.[2] During this operation in Crimea in March 2014 the local TV channels underwent unexpected changes. From Ukrainian they became Russian. In this case it also meant that from close to reasonable and balanced they switched to propaganda.[3] This substitution had a decisive influence because the so-called status referendum that led to the joining to the Russian Feder-ation took place in March as well. Helping people of Crimea to make a “right decision” was the goal that was reached.As the saying goes all is fair in love and war. Social networks are intensely and extensively used by Russian activists and jour-nalists who may consider Photoshop as a fair tool for covering the photo stories. Russian-backed separatists’ rallies were taking places all over the eastern Ukraine. The truth is that they are not as crowded and popular as exposed on the edited photos. The titles with the photographs may be delusive as well as comments on the video. The Russian channel “Mir 24” has once shown a video of what was supposed to be a group of Ukrainian refugees on the Ukrainian-Russian border when in reality the refugees were from Kosovo. The old video taken from the archive served as the material for the “news”. However, Russia is not the only villain in the story. Al-most every county has problems with media honesty. Some ex-amples we know from the school history lessons: Italy had Mus-solini who changed the history of the country at his own will in order to have more support from the young generation. In the same time while Mussolini is treated like a scoundrel, Russian president has modern technologies and media to create a pos-itive image for himself and his decisions as a governor of the country. A recent survey released by the Levada Center revealed that a record-high 87 percent of Russians approve of Vladimir Putin’s performance as their president.[5] As every individual is exposed to the influence of media

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sources we have to recognise the tools used to divert our opin-ions and thoughts. The tactics of propaganda are numerous and intricate but they are mostly directed on changing information and playing with facts. In the middle of any media-war every one of us needs some defence techniques in order to be not a slave but a warrior. There are basically two simple techniques that every one of us can use in the everyday battles. Firstly, to shield yourself, you need to remember to use multiple sources of information. Never read only one newspa-per, or watch one TV channel or listen to only one radio. The single source doesn’t give a complete picture of the events as the stories may be selective (proposed to the audience like as a wide-covering and objective), facts may be partial or taken out of the context and experts opinions may be lop-sided.[4]However, when choosing your sources of the information you may pay more attention to BBC and AFP. BBC is known for its code of conducts for journalists with quite a wide set of require-ments. Agence France Presse (AFP), the oldest news agency, has a worldwide network of reporters, photographers and editors and has a massive photograph archive. Secondly, your brain has to be switched on 24/7, analysing any piece of information you absorb before believing it and treating it as an indisputable fact. Whenever reading, listening or watch-ing think intensely. Criticizing and questioning are welcome.As a prepared warrior now you will not treat this article as the only source on the question. Read more as I could have hidden some facts from you. Come find me and have a debate with me, as my opinion can be preconceived and biased. Do not believe the only source. Do not believe me.Media team member Iryna Savchuk can be reached at sav.iry-na@gmail.com and at twitter @irinsplace 1. The illegal annexation of Crimea has no legal effect and is not recognised by the Council of Europe http://assembly.coe.int/nw/xml/News/News-View-EN.asp?newsid=49752. The anatomy of Russian information warfare http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/the_anatomy_of_russian_information_warfare.pdf3. Russian TV swamps airwaves in Crimea propagan-da war http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/10695038/Russian-TV-swamps-airwaves-in-Crimea-propaganda-war.html4. War, Propaganda and the Media http://www.globalis-sues.org/article/157/war-propaganda-and-the-media 5. Why Russians still kinda like Vladimir Putin http://www.vice.com/read/why-russians-still-kinda-like-vladimir-putin-808

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