170 likes | 277 Views
ITR 3 Introduction. Thomas Krichel 2002-09-03. About me. Born 1965, in V ölklingen (Germany) Studied economics and social sciences at the Universities of Toulouse, Paris, Exeter and Leiceister. PhD in theoretical macroeconomics Lecturer in Economics at the University of Surrey 1993 and 2001
E N D
ITR 3 Introduction Thomas Krichel 2002-09-03
About me • Born 1965, in Völklingen (Germany) • Studied economics and social sciences at the Universities of Toulouse, Paris, Exeter and Leiceister. • PhD in theoretical macroeconomics • Lecturer in Economics at the University of Surrey 1993 and 2001 • Since 2001 assistant professor at the Palmer School
Why • During research assistantship period, (1990 to 1993) I was constantly frustrated with difficult access to scientific literature. • At the same time, I discovered easy access to freely downloadable software over the Internet. • I decided to work towards downloadable scientific documents. This lead to my library career (eventually).
Steps taken I • 1993 founded the NetEc project at http://netec.mcc.ac.uk, later available at http://netec.ier.hit-u.ac.jp as well as at http://netec.wustl.edu. • These are networking projects targetted to the economics community. The bulk is • Information about working papers • Downloadable working papers • Journal articles were added later
Steps taken II • Set up RePEc, a digital library for economics research. Catalogs • Research documents • Collections of research documents • Researchers themselves • Organizations that are important to the research process • Decentralized collection, model for the open archives initiative
Steps taken III • Co-founder of Open Archives Initiative • Work on the Academic Metadata Format • Current interests • Collaborative gathering of academic databases • Incentive mechanisms to provide free bibliographic data • Social issues surrounding free online scholarship
ITR3 • Homepage to be built at http://wotan.liu.edu/home/krichel/itr3p01a • work plan to be decided upon today. I will first set out what has traditionally been covered. • And of course I have some innovative ideas.
Why study IT? • Make better use of the tools • Self-help when there a problems • Reduce dependency on computer professionals • Conceptual challenge • Point and click is not sufficient • Stepping stone to more advanced stages of information processing, e.g. programming
Introduction Logic and numbering system Software Architecture (3) Video, Peripherals Dismantle PC Communication LAN, WAN, Internet Multimedia & graphics Site visit, survey glossary Project presentations Final exam Maurer (undated)
Introduction to class Overview of computers Bits and bytes Components Architecture (2) Data storage Storage media Memory Input devices Displays Printers Input/output Operating systems Multimedia Simulation and VR Laptops Communications Networks Internet (2) Issues: ethics, privacy Hunter (1999)
Thomas thinks • Hardware vs software • Emerging technologies such as XML • Isolated PC vs networked PC • Using PC as an individual tool vs provision of public services • Learning from books vs learning by doing and/or from Internet sources. • Closed source vs open source software
Software teaching • Teaching of proprietary software is bad. • Teaching of free user-level software is bad. • But that leaves the whole are of system administration in non-proprietary software environments. • Installing free software is not trivial. • Example: how to run a web server
The networked PC • Teaching networks in this course is bad. • But the computer really becomes interesting as an information rather than a data processing tool once it is networked. • It is interesting to look at PCs in the way they handle networks. Unfortunately this is operating system dependent.
Debian to the rescue • Debian is a free operating system. • It contains over 9000 packages. Each package is a software tool. Impossible to learn completely. • Information about it is mainly on the Internet. • It can use the linux kernel. • It is difficult to install. • It is easy to update.
Debian installation to supplement traditional course • Students will learn more about system administration. This is more important than hardware. On a free operating system, we can justify covering it. • Learning by doing gets across some important concepts used in the software. • Linux and X11 can have a bad time working with hardware. Hardware knowledge can be applied there.
Practical problems • Computers are available. • Network cards on these computers may be problematic. • Debian initial installation is best done in a big chunk of time. Once the computers are up, they can be used over the network. • If they are at school, we have a firewall and address problem. • If they are at home, we have a address problem and need to know about home networking. • Assignment could cover exploring the capabilities of particular software pieces.