Faculty of Computing and Informatics
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Item Ipv6– network security in polytechnic of Namibia network(Namibia University of Science and Technology, 2007) Bere, MercyIncreasing demand for IP addresses on the IPv4 address space made the introduction of a new addressing scheme with more addresses inevitable. IPv6 was designed to address the issue of small address space in IPv4. In addition to increasing the address space IPv6 is presumably supposed to increase the security of networks. However, does IPv6 really improve network security? Based on the IPv6 design, it can be argued that IPv6 does improve network security to some extent. IPv6 was designed in such a way that every IPv6 node should support Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), an Internet security standard for protecting communications over IP. The implementation of IPv6 networks is still in its infancy and thus many of its security aspects still need to be thoroughly reviewed and possibly contrasted with highly pertinent IPv4 security issues. Despite its firm security based design structure, research has established that IPv6 may also be susceptible to some of the common IPv4 networks attacks, such port scan attacks, man-in-the-middle attacks and denial of service attacks, as well as to other attacks that are IPv6 specific such as misuse of ICMPv6 and fragmentation attacks. Therefore it can be argued that IPv6 networks are also susceptible to network attacks. However to what extend is IPv6 susceptible? In order to research this, a live IPv4 network was tested for network security and compared to a emulated IPv6 network. As will be discussed in this research, it was found out that both IPv4 and IPv6 networks are susceptible to many types of network attacks.Item VoIP system using open source software component in tertiary institutions: The case of the University of Namibia.(NUST of Namibia, Department of Communication., 2007) Mwansa, GardnerGovernments and their agencies are often challenged by high cost and flexible telephonic, Web based data services. Emerging technologies, such as those of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) that allow convergent systems where voice and Web technologies can utilise the same network to provide both services, can be used to improve such services. The contribution of this paper is the outcome of a study from examining how, Asterisk, an open source VoIP software can be deployed to serve the needs of an educational institution. The educational institution in this case is the University of Namibia which is currently using a conventional PABX system for voice and fax communication services, as well as the local area network connected to Internet for Web and data services. Interesting findings include that the University of Namibia has a potential to implement the project. Since the software recommended for installation is open source, the project could be used as a source of valuable information by students who specialize in real-time multi-media systems in Southern African tertiary institutions at large.Item The importance of soft skills: Education beyond academic knowledge.(NUST of Namibia, Department of Communication., 2008) Schulz, BerndThis paper makes a survey of the importance of soft skills in students’ lives both at college and after college. It discusses how soft skills complement hard skills, which are the technical requirements of a job the student is trained to do. The paper exhorts educators to take special responsibility regarding soft skills, because during students’ university time, educators have major influence on the development of their students’ soft skills. Embedding the training of soft skills into hard skills courses is a very effective and efficient method of achieving both an attractive way of teaching a particular content and an enhancement of soft skills. Soft skills fulfil an important role in shaping an individual’s personality. It is of high importance for every student to acquire adequate skills beyond academic or technical knowledge.Item Using information and communication technology at the University of Zimbabwe: Challenges, successes and recommendations.(NUST of Namibia, Department of Communication., 2008) Kachepa, AdmireInformation and Communication Technology (ICT) is now an essential service for the effective administration of businesses including colleges and universities. The same technology finds use in the teaching and learning activities. This study looks at how this technology is being used at the University of Zimbabwe as an administrative tool and as a teaching and learning tool. Three faculties from which, ten departments, fourteen lecturers and ten students were used as participants in the research as source of studied information. Further to that students were observed as they used the service at the Library, Economics computer laboratory and Commerce computer laboratory. Technical people responsible for day-today operations of the ICT infrastructure were also interviewed. The study shows that while use of the technology is now widespread, there is no policy framework at department and faculty level to ensure its effective use. Teaching staff proved to be competent in the use of the Internet and e-mail, however students did not comprehend some of the ICT terminology. It also emerged that the ICT services were not fully exploited. The study recommends the setting up of faculty and department ICT co-ordinators or committees with specific roles that champion the effective use of ICT services. Further to that ICT should be part and parcel of a general curriculum for all university students. ICT is a dynamic area needing research and updating all the time. Further research is needed in all the faculties to see how staff and students are coping.Item Digital storytelling: A unique account of Namibian culture: Paper presented at a conference, Kingston, Jamaica.(n.p., 2008) Brown, Emily; Black, EllaStorytelling has always been an oral tradition in Namibia. The Oshiwambo, Otji-Herero, Nama/Damara and San cultures have used storytelling as a means to preserve their culture and to ensure continuity. This Paper discusses the implications of the digital preservation of culture, which has been, until recently, captured orally. The implications of such a tradition are evident and, therefore, need to be researched. It will further examine the nuances and ethos that become altered in the process of digitalization, which are important issues to consider in our technocratic society. Thus, as mass communication educators, we seek to provide some of the answers to the convergence of technology and storytelling. For instance, what is necessary for the culture to continue? What could be lost? What could be gained? These questions would help to facilitate discussions with Namibians in order to understand the impact of technology on storytelling.Item Science journalism education: A curriculum project for South Africa, Namibia and Uganda.(2009) Brown, EmilyThis report provides details of a Study and information-gathering tour - through the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs - of esteemed American universities and media institutions by three journalism educators from Africa. The purpose of the tour was to consult and network with media experts, academics and journalists in order to gain insight into and collect material which would serve to inform an African-oriented curriculum in Science Journalism. The three academics who undertook the tour are Dr. Pedro Diederichs, Head of the Journalism Department at Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa, Ms Emily Brown, Head of the Media Technology Deapartment at the Polythechnic of Namibia in Windhoek, Namibia, and Dr. George Lugulambi, Head of the Journalism Department at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda. Ms Janet Donaghy, Program Officer in the Voluntary Visitors’ Division in the U.S. Ms Sheila Malan, Cultural Affairs Specialist at the U.S. Embassy in South Africa, coordinated the Program. Mr. Ray Castillo, DiVice Chancellor of the American Cultural Centre in Windhoek provided logistical support, as well as the Head of the American Cultural Centre in Kampala, Uganda. Ms Joyce Meadows, English Language Officer from Washington D.C., served as the group’s Escort during the two-week Study Tour in the United States of America. The Program allowed for visits to universities and media institutions in New York, Denver/Boulder and Tampa/St Petersburg. Approximately three days were spent in each of the three States visited.Item Missing the beat: Mainstream media mirror relevance of community media in election coverage in Namibia.(Conference of African Journalism Educators (CAJE), Forum for African Media Educators (FAME), 2009) Brown, EmilyIn the Department Media Technology experiential learning has always been of the utmost importance. Even though Experiential Learning is a credit-bearing component in the undergraduate Journalism and Communication Technology Programme, it was felt that a Campus media outlet would ensure that such practice-oriented training would be available throughout the Programme. The Campus Media outlet in essence became the in-house training facility for trainee journalists prior to entering the journalism profession. In September 2004 – just prior to the National and Presidential Elections in Namibia - the Echoes News Agency was piloted.Item Media and celebrity: Towards a postmodern understanding of the role of reality television in the development of new forms of South African/African celebrity.(2009) De Sibandze, Elva Gómez; Garside, DamianIn our paper we deal with the issue of media celebrity in a South African context, focusing on the role reality television has played in regard to emergent forms of new South African celebrity, and determining the social and cultural meaning of these emergent forms in an African socio-political and cultural context. The paper discusses the way in which such celebrities and local audiences’ fascination with them are constructed. We further analyze indigenous and “imported” reality television forms and formats in our investigation in order to explore the phenomenon from the perspective of such antithetical binaries as stardom and celebrity, private identity and public personality, dramatic art/and dramatized reality, and entertainment/ exploitation. We raise issues that are central to understanding the way in which the media functions in postmodern South Africa, assessing the way in which reality TV and reality TV celebrities reflect either an “empowering” freeing up of cultural spaces, or, alternatively, a closing down of such cultural spaces as an expression of late capitalist/postmodern “comodification” and of increasingly invasive forms of technological surveillance – famously expressed by Michel Foucault with his notion of the “panopticon.” This critique, expressed in its strongest form, views reality television as destroying essential ontological distinctions between reality and media image in constructing a virtual realm of the celebrity “real” (here Baudrillard’s notions of the “spectacle” and the “simulacrum” are most apposite). In regard to what is, for post-apartheid South Africa, the crucial issue of identity, we consider the degree to which reality television exploits postmodern anxieties such as the fear of loss of value, status and identity as part of wider transnational and globalizing processes of social, cultural and psychological dislocation.Item Determining requirements within an indigenous knowledge system of African rural communities.(SAICSIT, 2010) Chivuno-Kuria, Shilumbe; Kapuire, Gereon Koch; Bidwell, Nicola J.; Winschiers-Theophilus, HeikeEliciting and analyzing requirements within knowledge systems, which fundamentally differ so far from technology supported systems represent particular challenges. African rural communities’ life is deeply rooted in an African Indigenous knowledge system manifested in their practices such as Traditional Medicine. We describe our endeavors to elicit requirements to design a system to support the accumulation and sharing of traditional local knowledge within two rural Herero communities in Namibia. We show how our method addressed various challenges in eliciting and depicting intangible principles arising because African communities do not dichotomize theoretical and practical know-how or privilege a science of abstraction and generalization. Ethnography provided insights into etiology, or causal interrelationships between social values, spiritual elements and everyday life. Participatory methods, involving youth and elders, revealed nuances in social relations and pedagogy pertinent to the transfer of knowledge from generation to generation. Researcher and participant-recorded audio-visual media revealed that interactions prioritize speech, gesture and bodily interaction, above visual context. Analysis of the performed and narrated structures reveal some of the ways that people tacitly transfer bodily and felt-experiences and temporal patterns in storytelling. Experiments using digital and paperbased media, in situ rurally showed the ways that people in rural settings encounter and learn within their everyday experiences of the land. These analyses also demonstrate that own ontological and representational biases can constrain eliciting local meanings and analyzing transformations in meaning as we introduce media. Reflections on our method are of value to others who need to elicit requirements in communities whose literacy, social and spiritual logic and values profoundly differ from those in the knowledge systems that typify ICT design.Item Why tertiary students largely fail beginning computer programming courses at the NUST: Different perceptions, common recommendations.(NUST, Department of Communication, 2010) Kiekebusch, Bernd; Nghipangelwa, Aina TulimekondjoResults for beginning computer-programming courses at the NUST show high failure rates. This study explores perceived reasons by lecturers and students, in particular with regard to the impact of the chosen first programming language. Based on pilot studies under similar circumstances documented elsewhere, the authors recommend that the computer language be adapted to fit the students' capacities rather than the industry-desired final outcome. Based on the background of beginner students at the NUST it is suggested to use LOGO in the first semester and continue afterwards with industrial-strength languages.Item Can IK be communicated through foreign languages without losing its authenticity?(IKTC2011, 2011) Muyingi, Hippolyte N.In this paper, we present an open issue for panel discussion on the relation between the language of knowledge transfer and the contextual and peculiar nature of indigenous, traditional or local Knowledge itself. We highlight intriguing opinions from language education experts, linguistics researchers and other stakeholders, that raise a number of concerns to be considered at this early stage of research development in indigenous knowledge technology. If language is entwined with the knowledge system itself can IK then ever be transferred across languages? In other words does IK lose its authenticity and values through translations and foreign language media?Item Welcome to the first Indigenous Knowledge Technology Conference(IKTC, 2011) Winschiers-Theophilus, HeikeI have great pleasure in welcoming you to the first Indigenous Knowledge Technology Conference (IKTC2011) in Windhoek, Namibia. It is so exciting to see the realization of, what was, just a vague idea borne from the desire to bring together a critical mass of people engaged in studying indigenous knowledge systems and designing new and different technologies to support the representation and dissemination of indigenous knowledge.Item IPR for IK and the survival of IK in the emerging global village.(IKTC, 2011) Muyingi, Hippolyte N.This panel discusses the intellectual property rights of indigenous and traditional knowledge (IK) as currently billed by relevant international bodies and organisations. We focus on their relevance to communities in Sub-Saharan Africa as may be seen by researchers in IK as well as the communities under investigation. We highlight a few approaches from experts and indigenous people that should be considered in the bourgeoning of global research and public exposure of IK valueItem Developing a visualized cultural knowledge transfer prototype: An in situ evaluation in Rural Namibia(IKTC, 2011) Rodil, Kasper; Eskildsen, Søren; Rehm, MatthiasYouth in Sub-Saharan Africa suffers from a loss of valuable cultural knowledge, which has been a foundation for the coming generations’ survival and cultural self-awareness. By transferring cultural knowledge contexts into 3D visualizations, we prototyped and evaluated a system to bridge the gap between elders and urban youth in Namibia. The findings from the field experiment indicate that designers together with rural elders and children can reach a shared design platform by communicating visually.Item Demonstration of a cultural indigenous knowledge transfer prototype(IKTC, 2011) Rodil, Kasper; Eskildsen, Søren; Rehm, MatthiasWe present our prototype 3D visualization that enables people to place video recordings of their traditional knowledge. We demonstrate the process of developing and evaluating the prototype. We show how our prototype might combat a cultural gap between youths and elders and also hope to ignite ideas about how such a system can be used rurally and how further testing can be optimized to avoid a cultural gap in the test methods.Item A markup language for narrative knowledge annotation, mining and management.(IKTC, 2011) Fendler, JensNarrative knowledge as the name implies, is not naturally bound to any media other than speech. In order to preserve such knowledge and to make it accessible through computer systems: a formal and standardized basis needs to be identified, and to be integrated with other informal sources.Item An attempt to merge local and technological paradigms in the digital representation of indigenous knowledge.(IKTC, 2011) Kapuire, Gereon Koch; Blake, EdwinCurrent technology trends and developments have hardly been informed by African indigenous and rural knowledge systems. Thus either substantial modifications are necessary in adapting technology to the requirements of indigenous knowledge systems or those systems are inadequately represented through technologies. This paper explores different options of organising video recorded indigenous knowledge in the pursuit of maintaining local communication patterns and practices. The evolutionary design of our indigenous knowledge management system is informed by a series of interactions and prototype evaluations with a pilot community in Eastern Namibia.Item Towards appropriate user interface design preserving rural African communication practices.(IKTC, 2011) Chivuno-Kuria, ShilumbePoster presentation: The aim of this research project is to determine current communication structures and discourse practices of listeners in a selected rural community.Item Are the financial transactions conducted inside virtual environments truly anonymous? An experimental research from an Australian perspective.(Emerald, 2012) Irwin, Angela S. M.; Slay, Jill; Choo, Raymond K.-K.; Liu, LinThis paper examines the identity and payment method verification procedures implemented by a number of popular massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs) and online financial service providers (OFSPs) to determine if the systems they currently have in place are sufficient to uncover the identities of those who may wish to use such environments to conduct money laundering or terrorism financing activity. The paper also investigates whether the payment instruments or methods used by account holders to place funds into their account(s) hinder or assist investigators to expose the real-world identity of the account holder. The paper then discusses whether it is feasible and/or desirable to introduce know your customer (KYC) and customer due diligence (CDD) legislation into virtual environments and illustrates an effective KYC approach which may assist MMOGs and OFSPs to correctly identify their account holders, should legislation be put in place.