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AIList Digest Volume 2 Issue 140
AIList Digest Thursday, 18 Oct 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 140
Today's Topics:
Applications - Agriculture & Biofeedback,
AI Tools - InterLisp-D DBMS & OPS5 & OPS5E & Verac & Benchmarks,
Law - Liability of Software Vendors,
Metadiscussion - List Citations
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Date: Tue, 16 Oct 84 11:45:49 cdt
From: "Walter G. Rudd" <rudd%lsu.csnet@csnet-relay.arpa>
Subject: AI applications in agriculture
I would like to know of any work in applying AI techniques to improve
agricultural production. Tou at Florida and Michalski at Illinois had
some things going; what is the status of these projects? Is there
anything else going on?
Thanks in advance for any help you can give me.
Walt Rudd
Department of Computer Science
298 Coates Hall
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
rudd@lsu
------------------------------
Date: 3-Oct-84 23:53 PDT
From: William Daul / Augmentation Systems Div. / McDnD <WBD.TYM@OFFICE-1.ARPA>
Subject: PC <--> Biofeedback Instrument Link (info wanted)
A friend has asked me to see if I can uncover some information for him.
So...here goes...
He wants to connect an EEG biofeedback instrument to a personal computer
(IBM or APPLE). He hasn't decided on which.
1. What are the necessary componets of such a system (hard disk, disk
controller, etc)?
2. He wants to get a spectrum analysis (FFT) of the recordings, both real
time and compressed. Does anyone know of existing software he could use?
Emre Konuk
MRI
555 Middlefield Rd.
Palo Alto, CA. 94301
Tel: 415-321 3055 -- wk
415-856 0872 -- hm
I suspect he would like to know if anyone knows of existing groups doing similar
work. If you have information, you can send it to me "electronically" and I
will pass it on to him. Thanks, --Bi// (WBD.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA)
------------------------------
Date: 15 Oct 84 16:55:43 PDT (Monday)
From: Cornish.PA@XEROX.ARPA
Subject: InterLisp-D based Database Management Systems
I would like information on any Database Management Systems that are
implemented in InterLisp-D. More generally, I'd like literature
pointers to the issues of Database Management in AI.
Thank you,
Jan Cornish
------------------------------
Date: 14 Oct 1984 21:00-EST
From: George.Wood@CMU-CS-G.ARPA
Subject: Another OPS5 Version
There is also a Common Lisp version of OPS5, running on VAX/VMS Common lisp,
PERQ (Spice) Lisp, Data General's Common lisp for the MV 4000/8000/10000
series, and Symbolics 3600 in common lisp mode. This version was derived
from Forgy's Franz Lisp Implementation by George Wood (GDW@CMU-CS-PS1)
with help from Dario Giuse (Dario.Giuse@CMU-CS-SPICE) on the PERQ
version and standardization.
Sorry this missed the original call for information.
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 84 14:35 PDT
From: Tom Perrine <tom@LOGICON.ARPA>
Subject: OPS5E and Verac
Verac has moved. The new address is:
Verac
9605 Scranton Rd. Suite 500
San Diego, CA 92121
Attn: Pete Paine
(619)457-5550
I believe that you must already have OPS5 before you can get OPS5E,
which is OPS5E(xtended). It runs on all of the Symbolics machines, and
(now) also the TI Explorer.
------------------------------
Date: 15 October 1984 18:32-EDT
From: George J. Carrette <GJC @ MIT-MC>
Subject: LMI, TI, and Lisp Benchmarks.
Note: Comments following are due to George Carrette and Ken Sinclair,
hackers at LMI, mostly covering specific facts which have been
disclosed in previous announcements in "the trades."
* As far as benchmarks are concerned we would suggest that people
at least wait until RPG publishes his results, which we consider to
be the most serious effort to honestly represent the speed capabilities
of the various machines.
* TI and LMI OEM arrangements.
(1) LMI buys NuMachines on an OEM basis from TI. To these LMI adds
the LAMBDA processor, software to support multiple LAMBDA and
68000 Unix processors to run together on the NuBus, sharing
disks, ethernet, and other devices.
(2) LMI has a license to build NuMachines.
(3) It was a technology transfer agreement (license) between LMI and TI that
led to the transfer of technology to TI which was the basis of
the Explorer.
(4) LMI has an OEM agreement to purchase Explorers from TI.
To these we will add our own microcode, optimizing compiler,
and other products to be announced.
[Thank you very much for the reliable information. I'm afraid most of
us don't keep up with the trade press, and messages like yours are a
great help.
A reader providing benchmarks a year ago (some of RPG's old benchmarks,
in fact) was chastised for not waiting for RPG's report. At the time,
I had never heard of RPG; I assume many other people still have not.
If he hurries he may be able to benchmark the machines before the
good citizens of Palo Alto start using them for doorstops. Meanwhile,
I see no harm in someone publishing timing statistics as long as he
offers to provide the code involved.
One further note: the benchmarks recently published in AIList were
originally circulated privately. It was at my request that they
were made available to the list. I thank Dr. Pentland for letting
me pass them along, and I regret any inconvenience he may have had
as a result. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 84 13:26:18 EDT
From: Stephen Miklos <Miklos@YALE.ARPA>
Subject: Liability of software vendors
> "Maybe I am being naive or something, but I don't see why
> AI software should
> be different from any other when it comes to the liability of the vendor.
> My attorney has written me a boilerplate contract that contains a clause
> something to the effect that "vendor is not liable for third-party or
> consequential damages that result from the use of the product."
> Doesn't that take care of the problem? If not, maybe I had better find
> an expert attorney system."
Afraid not. Product liability can jump over the middleman (here the
doctor) and is not a contractually-based liability, thus contract terms
between the software vendor and the doctor or hospital cannot prevent
the liability from attaching. If the aggrieved party sued the doctor,
the doctor could not turn around and sue the software vendor (due to
the limitation of liability clause given above) but the aggrieved party
could sue the software vendor directly and avoid the contract
limitation (since he never signed any contract with the vendor).
So much for standing to sue. As far as actual liability is concerned,
it becomes dicy. Products Liability relies on a product being used
in the normal way it is intended to be used causing some kind of
injury. It seems to me that the cause of the injury is the doctor's
reliance on the software, and therefore the doctor is the "proximate
cause." If, however, the particular software product becomes widely
used by doctors, the causation seems to shift. A reason for this might
be that a single doctor trying out a new piece of technology is
responsible for taking greater care to make sure it works than is a
doctor who is doing what is accepted in the medical community. For
instance, a medical malpractice charge can be avoided by proving that
all the doctor's actions were such as would be recommended by the
medical community in touch with the state of the art.
So, an experimental medical program ought to be safe--the doctor is
the guilty party for fooling around with experimental stuff while
treating a patient (at least without getting a waiver). But an
established program that has a deeply hidden bug in it is the stuff
plaintiffs' fortunes are made on.
By the way, you are not naive in assuming that an ai program will not
be treated differently by the courts than a regular program. But what
the AI program is trying to do--make judgments, diagnose illnesses, god
knows what all else--will introduce the risk of injury. No one is
going to be killed by a defective copy of Visi-calc.
****Disclaimer****--> I got my law degree back in '79, but I am not
now, and never have been, a practising attorney in any jurisdiction.
(I did pass the Connecticut Bar Exam.) These remarks are not to be
construed as legal advice, and should not be relied on as such by
anyone. These remarks are also not necessarily the opinions of my
employer, or of Mario Cuomo, whom I have never met.
Stephen J. Miklos
Cognitive Systems
New Haven, CT
------------------------------
Date: Mon 15 Oct 84 08:48:26-PDT
From: C.S./Math Library <LIBRARY@SU-SCORE.ARPA>
Subject: AI List--Crediting Ideas From AI List
My first reaction to the question about how to cite something from AI List
is that it is an organized form of communication. That is, there are dates,
volumes, numbers, an electronic place etc. To me, this is what distinguishes
it from "just a communication channel" like the telephone or the xerox
copier. I view AI List much closer to the journals but in electronic format.
Therefore if I were to cite something from AI LIst, I would use the format
for journal articles: author, possibly topic for title of comment, AI List
for title; the number, volume, and date of the list; and one additional
item, the electronic address. If these lists are going to be kept and
can be looked up and referred to, I would recommend as complete a citation
as possible.
If AI List is viewed as more closely related to informal communications between
researchers, then the format would be that which one uses when referrring
to a conversation or personal letter. However to me that would indicate
that another person would not have access to the primary discussion.
Harry Llull, Mathematical and Computer Sciences Library, Stanford University.
------------------------------
Date: 15-Oct-84 14:10 PDT
From: Kirk Kelley <KIRK.TYM@OFFICE-2.ARPA>
Subject: Re: AILIST as a source of info....
From: Allen <Lutins@RU-BLUE.ARPA>
Many recent AILIST discussions have fascinated me, and I'm sure that at some
point in the near future I'll be using information presented here for a paper
or two. Just exactly how do I credit an electronic bboard in a research
paper? And who (i.e. moderator, author of info, etc.) do I give credit to?
This reminds me of Ithiel de Sola Pool's lament in note 8 to a paragraph in his
chapter on electronic publishing in Technologies of Freedom (Belknap Harvard
1983):
"... The character of electronic publishing is illustrated by the problem of
citing the information in this paragraph, which came from these interest
group exchanges themselves. Shall I cite the Arpanet list as from Zellich
at Office-3?"
I am NOT an expert on obscure citations, so I can freely throw out the
following suggestion using Allen Lutins' original query for an
example. "12345" would be the message ID if any had been provided:
Lutins, Allen, "AILIST as a source of info...." message 12345 of 14 Oct
1984 19:56 EDT, Lutins@RU-BLUE.ARPA or AIList Digest, V2 #138, 15 Oct 1984,
AIList@SRI-AI.ARPA.
-- kirk
[Alas, the title of a message is not a good identifier. Many of the
messages in the AIList mailbox have meaningless titles (e.g., Re:
AIList Vol. 2, No. 136) or titles appropriate to some other bboard.
Some even have no titles. I commonly supply another title as a service
to readers and as aid to my own sorting of the messages. The title
sent out to Arpanet readers may thus differ from the title Usenet
readers see before I get the messages. -- KIL]
------------------------------
Date: 15 October 1984 2252-PDT (Monday)
From: bannon@nprdc (Liam Bannon (UCSD Institute for Cognitive Science))
Reply-to: bannon <sdcsla!bannon@nprdc>
Subject: citing information on electronic newsboards
Allen Lutins query about how to cite information obtained from AIList
interests me, as I have confronted this issue recently. I sent out a
query on netnews on "computer-mediated social interaction" (it even
got on this List) and received a no. of interesting replies. I just
sent out a note on the "results" to net.followup, including quotations
from several msgs sent to me. I don't identify authors explicitly,
partly because of requests for anonymity. (I have however privately
acknowledged the contributions, and certainly do not try to pass them
off as being my own work.) I think this is ok for a net reply, but as
I am writing a large paper on the topic, I have decided to explicitly
ask all the people that I quote a) for permission to quote them, and
b)for permission to include their names with the quotes.
As to citing AIList, or net.general, or whatever, some of the msgs
sent to me were also broadcast to a newsgroup, others
were sent privately over the net to me, so I am unsure how to
cite them. It is an interesting issue though, as if credit is
not given properly for ideas that first appeared on the net, then
there is a danger that people will be reluctant to share ideas on
the net until after "official" publication, thus destroying the
vitality of the net. I'll go ask some librarians to see if they
have any thoughts. I would be interested in other people's opinions
on the issue.
-liam bannon (bannon@nprdc)
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 16 Oct 1984 14:08 EDT
From: MONTALVO%MIT-OZ@MIT-MC.ARPA
Subject: AILIST as a source of info....
[Certainly the author must be credited. ... ]
I'm not a librarian but have had some experience in citing obscure
reference. I think it can be cited just like a newsletter is cited,
after all, it is a newsletter: citing author, title, newletter name,
Vol., and No.; maybe method of publication (ARPANET). It is a form of
publication, though informal, just like a newsletter. As for
copyright, I don't see that there is any problem since none of the
authors I've seen have ever copyrighted their material. I'm assuming
it's fair game for copying, but that scientific (or literary) protocol
would oblige us to credit authors.
Fanya
[The welcome message I send out to each new subscriber states:
List items should be considered unrefereed working papers, and
opinions to be those of the author and not of any organization.
Copies of list items should credit the original author, not
necessarily the AIList. The list does not assume copyright, nor does
it accept any liability arising from remailing of submitted material.
The phrase "working papers" (which is also used by the SIGART newsletter)
is intended to mean that the author is not ready to officially publish
the material and thus is not surrendering copyright. This might not
hold up in court, but it does establish the context in which people have
been submitting their material.
I have not been as strict as some list moderators in protecting authors
against unauthorized copying. (The Phil-Sci list is/was particularly
strict about this.) I have treated AIList as just another bboard that
happens to have a distributed readership. I have forwarded items to
AIList from university bboards (as well as physical bboards), and I have
no objection to similar copying in return. I would draw the line at
some major journal or copyrighted book quoting directly from the list
without at least asking the readership whether anyone objected to the
copying. As I do not hold copyright, however, it really makes no
difference where I draw the line. If someone copies material and the
author sues, the resolution will be up to a judge. All that I can do
is to clarify the intention that should be ascribed to submitters in
the absence of other declarations. -- KIL]
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End of AIList Digest
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