about  "Inside Echelon" 

Echelon is the system of international communications surveillance.

biggest network of Echelon seems to belong to US and his alliance. it covers all the communication means (except physical ones like a messenger): telephone, email, fax, telegraph ,pages..

this does not mean that somebody reads every email or listens to all the phone calls, but it is rather selective: there are lists of interested people to keep under surveillance and a set of keywords/concepts to filter the huge amount of daily communications.

nowadays the task of choosing relevant intelligence from ocean of data exchanged every second is done automatically. computers with tremendous processing powers do the job of information retrieval. after several automated step, a human may look at the extracted data and decide if it is valuable or not.

In this years, main target of Echelon systems are  economic and commercial intelligence used for so called ""the economic well-being" of the country.

it seems to me that second major use of this intelligent nowadays is spying on their own citizens! having social and political movements and their leaders under control is one main reason for that.
what they gather is half important as what they use this information for. if gathering information on social or trades union leaders follows actions to limit or disable social movements, in long run it can be harmful for the society's development.

An Internet fraud

of my experience

I used to live in Munich just before I come to Estonia and it is extremely difficult to find a flat there, specially being foreigner and not knowing german.
Getting help from an agency is kind of difficult because you dont speak german and they are very busy! there are some websites that both individuals and agencies put their offers with photos and descriptions and so on, very much like city24 here.
I was desperately searching for a flat (for quit long actually ) when I encountered this scam. I believe that there were many more fishy offers in there, but I didnt write to the offers that were too good to be true ,in the first place.
 it was a normal flat, nothing was strange about it, price was normal, photos were ok and address existing..
I wrote to him in english because it is better that you show you dont know german from the beginning rather than pretending to know, in german people's eye! (I guess they consider writing in german as a written confirm that you know german, and if in practice you dont, it is a lie to them!)
And.. he wrote back in english! it was a very good sign that someone replied and better that he speaks english(better: is willing to speak english!) I was very excited about it and I wrote back ..
after a few emails(maybe 2-3) he said that he has this flat in munich abut he lives somewhere else(I dont remember exact location) and he wants to rent this flat which is fully furnished and bla bla, he wrote whole story of his life that why he is there and what is this flat and so on.
finally he said that he needs to send the keys to me because he cant come personally to sign the contract and he asked me to transfer the deposit amount to him.
I was so desperate that I could do what ever he said if the he would give his bank account, but he asked to use some weird money transfer method. the money he was asking was not a huge amount 700 euros or so.
compared to the scams I read in the scambaiting websites, this one was really believable and well designed. still the part that he wrote a whole life story was strange.

Review the scambaiting websites:

Scam-O-Rama

&

WhatsTheBloodyPoint

the first thing that I am itching to mention is that the websites are not user-friendly at all!

they are very difficult to read and follow.

they try to inform people on recent scams  and possibly contact scammers pretending to be clueless to keep them busy or scam them back!

I actually am not sure how much time, a playing victim reply can take from scammer..they are sending hundreds of copies of the same email to different people. and answering an email from a mugu shouldn't take them long.

 I think these websites can be helpful to inform users and show the scammers that the new scam is also known widely, if updated by newest scams of the day.

taking money from scammers, could be still ethical(or at least not as bad!), if there was a way to identify previous victims and pay their money back from it.

but when scamming back, we don't actually know if this particular scammer has ever succeeded to scam anyone yet. punishing him with scambaiting, will be punishing someone just because of attempting to do something and the method of punishment is still questionable.

I think I dont agree with scambaiting to stop scams, I would suggest a more organised attempts to find and stop them using legal methods.  

What is HCC to me!

What is HCC

Human centered computing concerns more about social and individual impacts of a technology use rather than its technical aspect.

The key feature of human-centered computing systems is that "knowledge of human users and the social context in which systems are expected to operate become integrated into the computer science agenda, even at the earliest stages of research and development."(1)

HCC facilitates the design of effective computer systems that take into account personal, social, and cultural aspects and addresses issues such as information design, human- information interaction, human-computer interaction, human-human interaction, and the relationships between computing technology and art, social, and cultural issues.(2)

Within borders of HCC, one may design tools and ways that technology can improve human's social/personal life. so it is not only a mere problem solving tool.

Why the social Human-Centered Computing perspective is relevant to HCI

Recent technologies not only in many cases directly used for socializing and communicating with others, but almost all of them indirectly shape and effect quality and quantity of our social life. HCC tries to bring social and cultural awareness to the new technologies and make the technologies act according to the social and cultural context in which they are deployed.

HCC's studies interaction between human and technology in its social context and tries to minimize harmful effects while maximizing benefits of it in order to have a healthy, creative and dynamic society. It is used to manage and plan to shape the future culture and society as well.

The value that HCC adds to HCI in this aspect is that, instead of heuristic evaluations and measurements of productivity and efficiency, HCC bring a diverse array of conceptual and research tools to traditional computing areas.(2)

references: 

* I looked at other suggested papers as well, but I have direct quote from these two sources:

1. wikipedia

2. A.Jaimes et al. “Human-Centered Computing: Toward a Human Revolution”

The blocking system,

we were asked to try and play with a blocking tool and report on it, but unfortunately I could not get them for my OS, then I decided to share my experience with filtering in a wider range.

I come from Iran and we have overall filtering on our internet. It has been there for long and it develops and changes depending on the current situation : political, social , …

basically we had two types of filtering:

- total filtering of a website, like youtube is filtered altogether and independent of the content of the video you would like to watch it is impossible to assess it. Facebook, many photo sharing and video, audio sharing and news fall also to the same category.

- content based(better to call it keyword-based) filtering: the general website is accessible but specific pages and content is not.

Although the whole concept of filtering is absurd (at least in the context of free society), the first method works better to fulfill its purpose. Many funny cases happens when filtering is done based on some words or concepts because of imperfect content monitoring technologies.

The interesting fact about this filtering is that it is been reviews and revised based on user's suggestion (well I am not sure how well this system works, but:) when you try to open a forbidden page, a webpage appears telling you that this is a forbidden content and suggests you other pages!(not based on the original page, but it suggest a list of possibilities like entertainment, news …) and there is also a possibility to report a mistake, so you can say that this page is filtered without any reason and the content is fine and you ask them to revise it.

my review on:

CHALLENGES OF THE GLOBAL

INFORMATION SOCIETY

(Pekka Himanen)

Himanen is this papers talks about the challenges facing new(?) information society. He first describes current tends and changes in the societies (specially in europe) and then mentions some of biggest challenges that these societies face currently as well as some predictions based on these trends for the future. His main point is to alert people and politicians to the importance of change in plans and politics to cope with new era and its properties.

He sees the information society growing and traditional societies change based on observation of these cultural/economic trends: task and labor balances change, new industries emerge, growing importance of culture in societies, population ages and pressures on the welfare state increases,...

then, in search for a sustainable development policy, he explores different development scenarios from around the world. And compares The main 3 competing ones and the social models behind them.

The three models are:

1.“Silicon Valley model”(for example in USA)

2.“Singapore model”(india and china)

3.“Finnish model”(European countries)

then he mentions problems concerning each model:

Silicon Valley model-->it leaves the weak behind (high social price)

Singapore model-->there is always others in this “race to the bottom” and if it is not paired with promoting innovation, it will fail in longer run.

Finnish model-->it is passive and can lead to a “society of envy”

since author is focused on european countries, he explores the changes necessary in “Finnish model”.

He proposes a combination of welfare state and the information society, to achieve this several values play important role:

1.caring or equal opportunities for everyone

2.confidence

3.communality or including others and willingness to do things together

4.encouragement or sense of open opportunities to do or have anything

5.freedom of choice and action unless it harms others

6.creativity

7.courage

8.visionariness

9.balance

10.meaning

and 4 key concept that important for a sustainable social development:

1.A creative economy

2. A creative welfare society

3. Humanly meaningful development

4. A global culture

to compete with cheap asian market a creative economy is necessary. This economy is empowered by culture, strong it sector and good welfare system. The areas related to innovation should receive more attention and investment in R&D activities should increase. During the process we should have in mind that innovation doesn't progress in linear fashion. Promotion of creativity can be done in several levels of government, society and companies with different methods such as importing it to the work culture and promoting cooperation.

Welfare becomes very important specially by aging population. He suggests the notion of “welfare society” rather than “welfare state”: using non-governmental providers in some (welfare related)sectors while keeping some(minimal) other to government only, can create an open competition and work toward the interest of citizens.

To maintain the welfare society we need new ways of promoting a socially, mentally, physically and culturally balanced development.

Social balance based on self fulfillment and belonging to an enriching community can be reached by means of a good work culture.

Preventing exhaustion and work-leisure balance are vital for a creativeness. Current “culture of emergency” is totally agains these goals and exhausts people.

Himanen's solution to make a balanced work-life plan consist of:

flexible working hours, project work, concept of “working time bank” and flexible off times based on personal needs.

He claims that having a successful information society is based on high-quality eduction system and open information infrastructure.

Mental and physical balance are other important concepts for the success of the information society. Continues stress and low physical activity, the outcomes of new work and life style, endanger people's health and need planning to encourage individuals to adopt healthy and active lifestyle.

He proposes migration as a mean to build a more creative society with importing new cultural elements and also to avoid aging population. Attracting foreign students, making a welcoming society and good integration plans are key points for success of this plan.

.

.

.

some thoughts on this paper:

-the paper gives a good overview on the current situation and challenges of information society and points many multi-dimensional workaround.

-the solutions he propose are totally based on europe's platform, he does not address the global sustainable system, but more an European system to survive the new wave and compete with others even with the price of ignoring human rights and other's well-being. it is not an international cooperation.

-solutions and points he makes are very vague in some parts. some parts has some detail of implementation in real context but some stays in very theoretical level.

-the outcome and drawbacks of many of these suggested actions are not pointed out and mentioned.

Game Idea:

“Deadly Kitchen”

by: Marieh Sayadchi

This is a game about cooking. But under a very special circumstances:

At first you find yourself in the garden of a big building and your city is under zombie attack and you are trying to scape zombies that are approaching you.

You jump into the building and try to close the door. You try to get into the elevator to go up and call the anti-zombie attack force but for that you need the help of the elevator man. he asks you to go to the kitchen and make him some food. If you succeed in preparing the dish right he helps you elevate to the next level of the building.

For the task of cooking/baking you go into the kitchen and the recipe is written on a paper on the door of the kitchen. You should take the recipe with you but each time that you tear it from the door a piece of it remains there and you have part of the complete recipe. That means that you need to memorize it as much as possible. Inside the kitchen you are given tools and materials to prepare the food, but they are generally more than what you need to for the cooking, the extra things or the ones you have already used, can work as a weapon to attack the incoming zombies by throwing things at zombies. But you should make sure that you don't throw the material that you need for cooking, otherwise you cant complete cooking task..

What is the goal of the game? -Goal of the game is to learn cooking in a fun way(at least gain some idea about ingredients and so on). And in the game the final goal is to reach the roof of the building and inform anti-zombie force!
What player can do (main activity)? -Memorize recipes and cook and fight zombies.
- Why this game is special (different from others)? -It is funny and simple and uses food preparation as a main activity

100 Paper Challenge! 

or

Quick and Dirty Reviewing

the questions we supposed to answer after doing the task:

• How did you get to the 20 most important concepts? Briefly describe the process and the underlying rationale.

- I marked the papers that were interesting to me while I was reviewing , those ones were less than 20 so I went back to the ones with best ratings(my own rating) and selected some from them. the criteria to choose them were: 1)the idea was very new and exiting to me. 2)the work seemed very useful and addressed some big problems that could improve individual's life. 3)it contained some knowledge that I lack and would like to learn more about. 4)the subject is something that I may consider as a topic of my future work or research.

• What was the overall experience of the QnD Review?

- It was kind of challenging, but the reference paper about QnD review helped me to gain some insight.

and the best outcome of it for me was that, after this I have much more idea on what kinds of work is going on in the HCI field and which ones can be related to my background and which ones may be my future interest.

• Which are the two most interesting papers you would like to read more deeply? (Provide the full citation with DOI number, so that we can find the paper later)

- maybe:

Sitwat Langrial, Harri Oinas-Kukkonen, Päivi Lappalainen, and Raimo Lappalainen. 2013. Rehearsing to control depressive symptoms through a behavior change support system. In CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 385-390. DOI=10.1145/2468356.2468425  http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2468356.2468425

 Elisa D. Mekler, Florian Brühlmann, Klaus Opwis, and Alexandre N. Tuch. 2013. Disassembling gamification: the effects of points and meaning on user motivation and performance. In CHI '13 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA '13). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1137-1142. DOI=10.1145/2468356.2468559 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2468356.2468559 

• How much time did you spend on this homework? 

I guess I am not the fastest one! as I read on the QnD review paper that it should take ~6 hours. for me it took at least 10 hours.

• What was the most difficult part of this homework?

after 60-70 papers I was totally bored(although I didn't do all the reviews at the same day) and was not interested to actually look at the papers and their content in a creative way. so before that, by reviewing each paper I would think how could I improve or use this work .. but in the second half I just wanted to finish it!

• How to make the quick and dirty review better?

I guess 50 papers also could do the same job and would be less tiring and boring.

maybe this suggestion is more to the paper authors rather than reviewers but the structure of the paper, clear titles, and descriptive abstracts can make it faster and less frustrating.