Final Blog Post

Sadly RES701 is coming to an end. I enjoyed this class greatly. For me this class encouraged a lot of deep thinking about subjects that I had never really much thought to during my study at NMIT. Topics like Ontology and Epistemology; at first these words struck me as frighteningly complicated. After some light research into Ontology and Epistemology I was still lost on what these words met.

It wasn’t until I did some more in depth research did I uncover their true meanings (My Findings here) – both subjects equally interesting and giving me a new perspective on types of ideas and thinking.

One thing I really enjoyed about this paper was how we got the opportunity to explore and do research on areas of IT that interested us. This is this is why I created the two posts MOBAs and Smart Devices. I already had a pretty good understanding of these subjects but upon further research I discovered new information about them. For example I had no idea that Samsung was in development of a new mobile OS until I starting gathering information about Firefox OS.

That’s when I stumbled upon Tizen.

I learnt that source of your information is important in research. This helps with validating your information and giving it credibility. An article from Microsoft about which browser is the best may be biased toward Microsoft products (especially if Microsoft is paying the person to write the article).

Not everything you read on the internet is true, I think a lot of people forget this.

I know I have been guilty of believing something just because its written on someones blog or in a fancy looking article site.

 

There’s much more to research than just Googling for information. Google is usually a great starting point for most information gathering, but Google might not give you the best information for your purpose. During my study in RES701 my eyes have been opened to great research tools on the internet, most of these tools gather more academic articles and other students research. Some of these tool are

• Google scholar
• Scoop.it 
• Academia

The information from these sources seem to be more rich than that of just a simple Google search would uncover. Research into validating this information authenticity is still needed with these sites though, just because they are academic articles doesn’t make them true!

I always left Res701 with a lot of food for thought which would always develop into more deeper thoughts through out the week . I feel that I have a better understanding of what is research, how to research, what information is valid and is this research ethical.

I have also found that the topics we have covered have changed the way I asses information gathering and analysis.

 

All this I believe will prove to be a great skill for my future career in IT and my personal life as well.

That sums up my semester studying my RES701 Paper. It was enjoyable. That’s all for now

Good bye 🙂

 

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Ethics in Research

During class this week we talked about what ethics meant and looked at the four main principles of ethics.

The four principles of Ethics

Do no harm/minimise the risk of harm

This includes both mental and physical health. Some research and / or projects could possibly cause harm to human or animal, in any cases where humans or animals are involved risk needs to be minimised.

Avoidance of harm should be a top priority.

Participants should be aware of risks.

Some may say that if something is so groundbreaking and saves the lives of many, is might be worth the life of one.

Lots of thought and procedures should be put in place to minimise harm.

Preserve human dignity

Peoples information is sensitive and can lead to humiliation and embarrassment. Protect peoples dignity and in some cases protect their information’s dignity.

Experiments should take into consideration locations, people should have privacy and be treated as people and not scientific objects.

Ensure informed choice

Participation should be voluntary. Every person involved needs be given a choice in their participation. They should also be given all of the information regarding the project so that their choice is informed and based on transparency.

Ensure confidentiality

If a person involved in the project expects confidentiality – then this should be extremely important.

Even if their is a moral reason for breaking confidentiality this should not be done, it can lead to a breach of peoples dignity and their safety. It can also invalidate information.

It is hard to know what reactions your actions could bring. Thought and care should be applied. Don’t let your own moral get in the way, think ethically.

Reference Clare Atkins Ethical Behavior https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-z8O57rY525Tug3RGT6RU51G4Ap6GheAiUe9edsoG0k/edit?hl=en_US#

As a class we were given some scenarios which we had to judge on weather they were ethical or not. One Scenario I found interesting:

You are doing your PhD about drug abuse among students.  You interview 30 students about their drug use.  You discover that one of the students is actually a fairly big time dealer and you report him to the police.  

I found this question interesting because to contact the police would be an action of morals but could trick a lot of people into thinking it was ethical.

 

Morally, you would want to contact the police because he is a drug dealer and drugs can harm people and communities.

But the ethics side, of this is the students gave out their information as part of a survey  and therefore he should remain anonymous. If you pick the moral track, you are voiding your data and losing credibility making it less likely for people to want to give information.

I personally find the distinction between morals and ethics complex at times.

HTML5 Follow up

Relating back to my last post on HTML and the questions associated with it. I realized I could go a lot deeper with my questions with a more scientific direction. After a lot of thought I came up with some new questions.

HTML5 Questions

Question 1 

How do HTML 5 Web apps compare with native written apps?

To answer this question some testing on my behalf is needed:

• A comparison of the run time speed of HTML 5 Apps vs native apps.
• The compatibility of a native app vs an HTML 5 app.
• The development difficulty level and time of a HTML 5 app vs a native written app.

Question 2

Are HTML 5 apps constricted by their browser dependencies?

This will need some research into features of current browser rendering engines and what they currently support. HTML 5 is still being developed and released so not all features are functional this in its own is a restriction.

Question 3

Are HTML 5 Web Apps the future of computer applications? 

This will take possible interviewing or surveying of people to find out the trends in which types of app is most popular. This information would be best compared against app information dating back 1 – 5 years to see which way the application market is trending. Does the fact that HTML 5 technology being leading edge make it more popular via hype would be something I would need to consider.

Questions about HTML 5

This week I’m looking at identifying three questions related to HTML and how I might go about answering them from there I’m going to create a project title from the questions.

Question 1

What is the main purpose of HTML 5?

How would I answer this question?

I would read through multiple documentation from reputable sources, Mozilla and Google scholar are some examples. By reading through multiple sources I am more likely to come to a conclusion that would mostly be unbiased and factual.

 

Question 2

What technologies does HTML 5 set out to replace?

How would I Answer this question?

I would start by researching what the intended purpose of HTML5 was set out to do. I could use the the information collected in my previous question to help scope my research into this question. Then I would look into what HTML 5’s current features are. From there I can identify the technologies that HTML5 could replace.

Question 3

What are the new HTML 5 Tags?

How would I answer this question?

I would research amongst multiple sources such as W3C, Mozilla etc. combined with actual experience of coding HTML5 and testing this code. With these three sources of information I could come to a factual answer.

 

When creating a project title out of these question I have to think about what information I need in the title while taking into consideration of things like how it sounds, will people understand what his project is about from reading this title.

Title 1

What technologies does HTML 5 set out to replace?

HTML5 – Web Technologies of the Future

I think this is a fitting title because right off the bat you can tell it’s about HTML5 and the second half tells you its leading edge technologies.

 

Title 2

What are HTML 5’s new Tags?

Tags new to HTML5

Simple and straight to the point. Tells the reader exactly what information is going to be in the project while leaving no room for misconception. It’s not very exciting though and doesn’t leave room for branching out.

MOBA Follow up

I recently discovered this video and found it relevant to my last post on MOBAs.

The video below is a documentary on DOTA2 and its e-sport community. I realise the video is quiet long and not everyone has the time to watch it, but for anyone who’s interested it’s there .

Areas of IT that Interest me – MOBA

For my blog post this week I will be looking into another area of IT that interests me.
Videos games… Well MOBA’s to be exact.

What is an MOBA?

MOBA or MMOBA stands for (Massively) Multiplayer Online Battle Arena which is a cross between and RTS (Real Time Strategy) and a MMO RPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) all pretty technical terms if you’re not a video gamer.

MOBA Game Play

MOBA’s usury have a steep learning curve which means you’re going to fail for your first 10-30 attempts that the game (depending on which MOBA)
The game play consist of a 5v5 or a 3v3 setup which each player controlling one unit (normally referred to as a hero or champion) with the goal of destroying the other teams base. With a large number of Hero/Champion units and each one having a different play style these games can take many years to master.

History

The First MOBA style games were nothing more than just mods for already released games. The first real MOBA being ‘Aeon of Strife’ a mod for Star Craft. After gathering a following a mod was created for Warcraft 3. The mod was call Defence of the Ancients or DOTA for sort.
This is where MOBAs really took off. DOTA was a great success and it caused game development companies to take a lot of interest. 3 games were developed from this mod.

Aeon of Strife – Star Craft

DOTA 1

HON – Heroes of Newerth

Developed with help of one of DOTAs greatest developers, Ice frog and ported directly a lot of the heroes from DOTA.

Demi God

A nice graphical upgrade from the old war craft 3 engine but lacked a lot of the heroes.

LOL – League of Legends

Developed by one of the original DOTA Developers – Guinsoo

Demi God never really hit off with the fans, mostly due to its limited hero pool. On the other hand LOL and HON were great success, due to this more companies started taking notice including some bigger video game development companies valve and blizzards from this more MOBAs were born.

DOTA 2 – Defence of the ancients

Created by valve, this game is the closest to DOTA1 your going to get without playing dota 1.

Heroes of the Storm

This game is currently in beta stages. Being developed by the original Warcraft 3 company blizzard.

My Favourite MOBAs

HON – Heroes of Newerth

I enjoy this game because at core it is a DOTA carbon copy with better graphics faster mechanics and better controlling.

DOTA 2 – Defense of the Acients 2

I enjoy this game because the game feels more balance compared to HON and it has a really friendly community of players.

Areas of IT that Interest me – Smart Devices

Today I’m going to be blogging about an aspect of IT that interests me (Picking just one is difficult!)

Smart Device OS’s

Smart mobile devices is one area of it that interests me, I like that mobile devices are becoming increasingly more powerful, this power isn’t of any use without an operating system to run on it. So I’m going to blog about 3 up and coming mobile OS’s currently in development.

Fire Fox OS

Fire Fox OS is an open source OS based on Linux and is currently being developed by Mozilla. Fire Fox OS aims to be a lot more light weight than current mobile OS such as android and windows 8 for mobile. It plans on achieving this by using technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, Web APIs and Cloud software. Due to Fire Fox OS’s apps being web based there is less need for heavy duty hardware, this lowers the cost of the phones a lot, making Fire Fox Phones very adorable.

There are a total of 3 confirmed Fire Fox devices of current – Find them here

Fire Fox OS and the open web

I think the best over all thing about Fire Fox OS is the fact that not only is the OS it self open Source but it uses HTML 5 and open source technology. This means alot of the app for Fire Fox OS will be open source, meaning anyone can help develop apps further or help with app development. Its ideas like this that truely push the web forward without the limitaions like closed source code and profit margins.

A Con that i can see

about this is security. Because HTML 5’s sauce code is open anyone can see how it works which leaves the possiblity for these apps to be backed and used maliciously.

Ubuntu for Android

This is part android app and part OS. Still under development the app works as a method to run both android and Ubuntu (A flavour of Linux) on your phone.

How it works

Your android phone works as normal, but once its plugged into a docking station (monitor and keyboard) it turns into a Ubuntu desktop. This is great for company’s who have a BYOD (Bring your own device) policy because it saves the employees from lunging around a laptop all day. The great thing is , because your phone is the computer there is no need to sync, just plug and play.

How is this possible?

Because Android and Ubuntu are both Linux based, they share the same kernel. With the addition of multi-core chips in mobile devices the power of this setup is truly released.

Tizen

Tizen is a Linux based OS currently under development by Samsung and Intel. Unlike Fire Fox OS, Tizen is aiming for the high end hardware market with this OS.

As of current Tizen looks a lot like android with a few extra features. One nice change is extra stock security features, such as encryption and fire wall.

Tizen like most modern mobile OS’s is going to incorporate HTML 5 heavily into is app base. Still not much is known about Tizen, releases are still in beta and in my opinion they still have a long way to go to outshine what’s out there in the mobile OS world.

Difficult concepts

Ontology and Epistemology, neither are light concepts and both very philosophical. I have been given the task to find out what these concepts mean and how they relate to research.

Ontology originated in philosophy and then was later adapted to information science

Ontology

Wikipedia defines Ontology as :

Philosophical

Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality, as well as the basic categories of being and their relations. Traditionally listed as a part of the major branch of philosophy known as metaphysics, ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences. In the broadest sense, ontologists investigate what makes a human human, relying on institutional, social, and technical conventions representing a nexus of intellectual activities.

Ref Wikipedia

Infomation science

In computer science and information science, an ontology formally represents knowledge as a set of concepts within a domain, using a shared vocabulary to denote the types, properties and interrelationships of those concepts.^[1][2]

Ontologies are the structural frameworks for organizing information and are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, systems engineering, software engineering, biomedical informatics, library science, enterprise bookmarking, and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. The creation of domain ontologies is also fundamental to the definition and use of an enterprise architecture framework.

Ref Wikipedia

Philosophical

Ontology to me is how you perceive your reality, for example, you are planning to go have a picnic but it rains. The two different perspectives could be 1) “It could still be fun to go for a picnic, I’m sure we could find somewhere to have it”; or 2)” Damn – it’s raining, my whole day is ruined.”

Whichever your thought process, this can potentially affect your whole day. So, how you think can have a major effect on your reality.

There are two types of philosophical Ontology.

Ontological Materialism – Reality exists regardless of a human observer

Ontological Idealism – Reality is constructed in the mind of the observer

A good example of this would be the philosophical thought experiment – If a tree fell over in the forest and no one was around to hear it, Would it still make a noise?

Materialistic

Yes – Sound is objective and is not relative to anyone around it.

Idealistic

No – How can sound exist if there is no one there to hear it?

Information science

The word ontology is Greek and literally means entities. Ontology in information science is the act of modelling (real world / virtual) things into entities and the formation of relationships between these entities

How does this relate to research you may be thinking? This is a blog post for my research class so it should have some relevance.
Knowledge has a strong relationship with research and normally is the result you get out of researching. Ontology is a way of showing knowledge (using entities) within a domain and the relationships between these entities of knowledge.

How the information science and the philosophical means relate?

The older philosophical meaning is: the study of being / becoming / existing.

The information science meaning is about modelling knowledge into an entity or into something that exists here is where the link is mean between the two.

Epistemology

The Stanford encyclopaedia defines Epistemology as :

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge.

Ref Standford encyclopida

Epistemology in a nutshell is the study of knowledge.

What is knowledge?

The nature of knowledge.

What does it mean to know something?

How to distinguish whether someone ‘knows’ something or does not ‘know’ something – how much knowledge must you have before you know something?

What is the extent of human knowledge?

Is there a limit to what we know?

Is there such thing as unknowable?

Epistemology relates to research because to retain the information you are researching you much turn it into knowledge which is then stored in the human brain. Epistemology and Ontology go hand in hand when it comes to research.  It’s all about finding knowledge and then creating it into something useable or ‘real’ finding links and relations between knowledge.

RES701 Intro and Blog URL

Hello and Welcome to my RES701 Blog. This is a blog i will be keeping during my Research 701 paper at NMIT. This class is tutored by Dr Clare Atkins. Alot of this classes notes are posted to Clare’s Res 701 blog found here 

Thats all for now, Looking forward to this paper 🙂

Clare’s RES701 Blog : http://res300.wordpress.com/