Well, here is the final answer. Just created it from the texts in the OpenSource Jahrbuch 2004 to 2008. Took me some hours and some code-snippets from my diploma theses. Just a quick Porter-stemming (which doesn’t work to well with german, I know) and a manually created stopwordlist. There’s definitly room for improvement (better stemming, differential corpus analysis, say agains the gutenberg corpus) but I just need it for putting people in the right mindset.

Finally, after some time, Thaddäus finished cutting and converting the first recording of the Javakurs 2009. He started with LE3 - which is me and Dennis teaching our students about methods and call-by-reference vs. call-by-value in Java. I’m pretty happy with my performance and so I’m happy that I can now show the world ;)

Here it is: Javakurs 2009 LE3, with slides

Although this will be yet another literature suggestion and I’m usually doing these in german, this one will (hopefully) come along (nicely) in english. I just started a book that appears to be one masterpiece. I can’t really put into words what makes a book a masterpiece in my view but it seems to be something that is between the lines. Occasionally, there are books that make you feel bad and take your energy away - and by that I don’t mean that they are boring. And there are masterpieces that do the exact opposite: They set your mind on fire in a positive way. They give you a starting point for a thought on its own with every of their sentences.

On of those seems to be “The Wealth of Networks” by Yochai Benkler. Benkler is a professor at the famous Berkman Center For Internet And Society at Harvard. Fame aside, he also seems to be someone with a very beautiful writing and thinking style. I merely read the first few chapters yet and already if not learned then understood deeper allot of things that move the creation and distribution of information goods. He is an advocate of free and open software and a general information commons and gives allot of reasons for everyone, even hardcore economists, to also embrace the emergence of a new world of culture creation. I have yet to see what is coming but it seems be a strong statement against strong copyright policy because of simple economic reasons and not some 69’s dream of equality (not that I wouldn’t like these dreams). So for everyone who already loves commons and who would like to bring light into his understandings of motivations for information production and who wants to get insp(f)ired, I can really suggest the read. :)

Wer nicht im 5. Semester Informatik ist, kann diesen Artikel ignorieren ;)

Allen anderen sei mitgeteilt, dass sich das Buch “Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy” (Shapiro, Varian) sehr gut als S-Bahn-Lektüre eignet. Ich hätte es selbst schon lange mal lesen sollen, tue es aber erst jetzt im Zuge der Vorbereitung auf Information Rules 1 im nächsten Semester (Pflicht im 6. Semester für Informatiker). Warum jetzt schon lesen, wenn es erst im nächsten Semester dran kommt?

1. Weil’s echt einfach und entspannt zu lesen ist (nix Mathematik).
2. Weil’s jetzt noch in der TU Bibliothek zu bekommen ist.
3. Weil man über die Feiertage hoffentlich ein bischen Zeit zum lesen hat.
4. Weil man diese Zeit im nächsten Semester vermutlich nicht hat und es dann eh schon zu spät ist (dauert eben doch ein bischen eh man durch ist).

Ich vermute zwar, dass Quasi niemand den es betrifft das hier liest, aber naja … die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt.

Looks like I’ve got another lecture to read. In our (we = Computers and Society Departement) course “Information Rules 1″ which will take place next semester, I allready have the “Lex Informatica” lecture. In this lesson we teach our students the basics of the theory of regulation (Lessig, Reidenberg). I allready have this lesson pretty stable, it just needs a roundup to make some points more clear. But now I additionally have the “Open Source” lesson. This means alot of reading for me. I think I’ll start with some articles from our Open Source Yearbook and then dive into the papers from all the famous and not so famous scientists. This is both challenging and exciting for me but also means some work, obviously. Well, no more boredom in cold winter days. ;)