Ergonomics Examples (week 9)

    To be able to talk about Ergonomics and its examples, the term Ergonomics needs to be defined. Ergonomics is understood as the optimization of physical hardware to benefit the user's health. Its aimed at reducing physical injuries and musculoskeletal disorders. There are some good and bad examples of Ergonomics. Let's take a quick look at them.

   One of the most known bad Ergonomics examples is "Poor Sitting Posture". It always makes feel more convenient, but indeed it's also too dangerous. As the above-inserted photo clearly demonstrates, the red points become the most vulnerable parts and they get weaker and develop in an undesired way. As time spent on the described position passes, the issues on the joints continue deepening. 

   

The photo above shows how the recommended posture should be. As seems, the spine has to be as straight as possible. This is the neutral spine. Moreover, the knees must be bent at 90 degrees for the most ideal posture. 

   Another example would be the lighting. Insufficient lighting, shadows, and improper colors are some features of poor lighting. They affect productivity, mood, and vision in a negative way. The environment should be arranged in a way that it gets natural light as much as possible. A combination of direct and indirect lights must also be set properly for shadow elimination. 

REFERENCE:

1. https://www.techopedia.com/definition/611/ergonomics

2. https://www.safeopedia.com/definition/50/ergonomics

3. https://ergonomictrends.com/ergonomic-examples-at-workplace/

Depiction of an IT Professional (week 8)

 There is a notable rise in the number of IT specialists throughout all the world and in my country - Azerbaijan as well. But of course, the skills they possess have a greater value than their number. So that it is important to explore how well-versed they are.  

   To begin with, IT education is mostly 4 years and plus a year of English course in best universities in Azerbaijan. As a matter of fact, only a university education cannot make one be ready to work in the IT sector. Hence, most people prefer to go to courses to learn IT. This is also common due to the length of the university education which is longer than in most countries, some people do not go to universities, they just study at IT courses. 

   Most people try to work at the HelpDesk to get real hands-on experience just after they graduate from the university or above mentioned IT courses. In most cases, networking-related fields are their majors. Another great portion of people tries to get an internship, especially in the fields of Software development (Android in most cases). The main source they use is Udemy, Coursera, Edx, and such other online platforms. Thirdly, I would like to mention Frontend Development. There is indeed a great interest in frontend development in Azerbaijan. Despite the fact that there was not that great interest in Cyber Security until recent years, hopefully, this field also became a major in the Azerbaijani sphere to specialize in. 

   Talking about its history, in the 90s and 2000s, most people tried to go abroad to study IT. However, some leading universities in Azerbaijan are now capable of teaching IT in the world standards. They mostly teach software development and networking faculties. Cyber Security has not been included in their curriculums yet. 

   In conclusion, there is a great number of people trying to specialize in IT in Azerbaijan. They use different sources, have various skills, and would like to specialize mostly in the mentioned fields of IT.  

Share expert knowledge - Netiquette (week 7)

   Let's get started with understanding the internet and people's expected behaviors there. Apart from the official term, the word internet can be elucidated with an explanation that the internet is a place where people come together online and spend time. Taking into account the fact that it may be considered as a social environment, it's important to highlight that respect towards others is quite a necessary manner to follow. 

   Respect towards the other users should be committed in different ways. In this blog, I would like to explain the internet respect from the perspective of valuable knowledge. This is a fact that there are lots of unreliable information on the internet, especially those having no references. Hence, it becomes harder to find validated content. Sharing data on particular topics by inexperienced users is the primary reason for this problem. Yes, it is understandable that everyone tries to help others by sharing their own knowledge, but unfortunately, it doesn't always work. 

   Time to share my personal experience. I have seen a lot in Stackoverflow, Quora, Medium, and other question-answer websites that some unqualified users share their knowledge which should have been a fact - I mean should be unarguably true, based on real statistics, situations, and so on, but is not, it is just their fantasy. This situation sometimes disturbs me as I waste my time reading these contents. So that I would conclude my opinions that it is a best practice that only experts share their verified knowledge. 

Copyleft impact on choosing Software License (week 6)

    To be able to discuss the effects of Copyleft on selecting Software License, firstly the terms Copyleft and Software License need to be elucidated. To put it simply, Software License is a document providing legal guidelines for using and distributing the software, and the method for making a program and its modifications free is called Copyleft. Now, let's take a look at the impact of Copyleft on Software Licensing. 

   Firstly, the copyleft exists in some forms, like strong, weak, and no copyleft. In strong copyleft, the post-modified works should maintain the original license. Moreover, the software with the mentioned kind of copyleft is not allowed to be converted to proprietary (closed) software, whose source code only belongs to the creator or in other words it is a property of the creator. So that a strong copyleft is not a good choice for the developers, but a suitable option for end-users.  

   There is another version of copyleft called weak copyleft. Despite the fact that the weak copyleft also demands the license to be preserved, for better software integration it also provides some exceptions. Weak Copyleft is mostly used for software libraries.

   The best course of a developer's action would be using the software with no copyleft. This is explained by no limitation. As the no copyleft software does not restrict the ability to be licensed for the modified versions of the software, this option is considered to be the best one for the developers. 

   Considering all the above, it can be said that the strong copyleft best suits end-users, while the weak to the software libraries, and the no copyleft to the developers.

REFERENCE:

1. Gnu.org. 2022. What is Copyleft? - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation. [online] Available at: <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/copyleft.en.html> [Accessed 6 March 2022].

2. BBC Bitesize. 2022. Proprietary, free and open source software - Software concepts - GCSE Computer Science Revision - BBC Bitesize. [online] Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z6r86sg/revision/4> [Accessed 6 March 2022].

3. SearchCIO. 2022. What is a Software License? Everything You Need to Know. [online] Available at: <https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/software-license> [Accessed 6 March 2022].

4. Copyleft: An alternative approach to licensed sharing. Canto. (2021, February 15). Retrieved March 6, 2022, from https://www.canto.com/blog/copyleft/ [source of image]