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AIList Digest Volume 5 Issue 059
AIList Digest Sunday, 1 Mar 1987 Volume 5 : Issue 59
Today's Topics:
Policy - Hardware vs. AI,
Queries - AI in Network Protocols & Best LISPM/WorkStation &
Legal Reasoning and AI & Completeness and Consistency of Rule Bases,
Application - Network Complexity
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Date: Wed, 25 Feb 87 10:41:16 -0800
From: Amnon Meyers <meyers@CIP.UCI.EDU>
Subject: Hardware vs. AI
I would like to suggest that the AILIST be more open to hardware topics
that are related to WORKING in Artificial Intelligence, for several reasons:
This would be a valuable service to people working in AI who are having
hardware problems. They can draw upon the solutions of others who have
solved the same problems, and upon knowledge of AI facilities with hardware
experts.
Even though there are bulletin boards for specific hardware, it would be
useful to to organize the AI community's hardware and environment problems
as a single list. If this is too much for AILIST then perhaps an
AI-HARDWARE list is called for.
I disagree with the notion that hardware problems have 'nothing to do with
AI'. While discussions of LISP and PROLOG dialects are interesting, they
appear to me to have no more relevance to 'AI' than do hardware issues.
Likewise discussion of the operation and environment provided by LISP
machines and other workstations. Likewise philosophical discussions of
the mind. My point is that it is not useful to try to define AI too
narrowly. There is a theory and practice of AI, and AILIST seems to stress
the theory. It would be nice if the 'practice' were taken up somewhere
as well.
I can certainly understand that the AILIST is already overburdened, and
that the moderator already does too much work (and a fine job as well).
THOSE should be the reasons for excluding hardware issues, not arbitration
about what is and is not relevant to AI.
Amnon Meyers
meyers@ics.uci.edu
P.S. I often wonder where people are writing from, so...
Irvine Computational Intelligence Project
ICS Department
University of California
Irvine, California 92717
(714) 856-4840
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Date: 28 Feb 87 08:10:06 GMT
From: ramarao@umn-cs.UUCP
Subject: AI in Network Protocols.
topic : EXPERT SYSTEMS OR AI IN NETWORKS AND PROTOCOLS
I am trying to find out if there has been any attempt at
applying AI techniques, AI languages to the field of network protocols.
Can anyone give me some references. I would like to know why it is
not feasible to implement network protocols, etc. in a non-procedure
based approach.
I am trying to find out if it is feasible to design network protocols
in LISP or Prolog or any AI languages.
-Bindu Rama Rao (ramarao@umn-cs.arpa)
(612)-625-9637
**** Keep smilin (-:
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Date: Thu, 26 Feb 87 14:27:51 PST
From: TAYLOR%PLU@ames-io.ARPA
Subject: Best LISPM/WorkStation?
NOTE: This posting is being sent to the AILIST, SLUG, TI, XEROX, SUN
and WorkStation bulletin boards
Here at the AI Research & Applications Branch - NASA Ames Research Center,
we are planning to buy several Lisp or possibly non-Lisp workstations in
the near future and want to look at alternatives to Symbolics, of which
we have 7 + a 3600 file server at the present time.
Possible alternatives are (in no particular order):
Explorer
Xerox 1186
Sun
Vax station
LMI
Apollo
Several things that concern us are:
Are we maximizing productivity and minimizing cost in our
current environment ? How can we accomplish these goals
in the future ?
Is our current environment of Lisp Machine workstations going
to continue to offer us the best development environment ?
General purpose workstations offering Lisp, Prolog, Pascal,
FORTRAN, C, etc, are coming on strong.
We will be supporting outside users who have non-Symbolics
equipment; what is the most portable development/delivery
environment that we could have, consistent with our software
requirements ? (see below)
If we move to a non-Symbolics environment, what environment
will minimize the portability costs ?
Our software requirements are object oriented Lisp, Prolog, two-way
calling interface between Lisp & Prolog, rich window system/graphics
(monochrome and color) facilities and a productive development environment.
We would appreciate any comments, experiences and recommendations of people
who have used two or more of the above Lispms/work stations. We are
familiar with two Lispm comparisions which have appeared on bboards:
Dandelion vs Symbolics, 17 Sep 86, steve@siemens.UUCP
Explorer vs Symbolics, 23 Oct 86, miller@ur-acorn.ARPA
In order to liven up this discussion, we thought the repetition of
some previous bboard claims about Lispm/workstation capabilities would
elicit honest, deeply-held opinions ! Here goes:
1. The Symbolics window debugger is unmatched anywhere.
2. Symbolics' on-line documentation is much better than TI's
BUT
TI's suggestion system is much better than Symbolics'.
3. Symbolics' networking is much better than TI and better in general.
4. With Symbolics GC, must boot ea. 14 day.
With TI GC (no ephemeral exists) must boot ea 0.5 day
5. Symbolics and TI are so similar that it is easy to carry skills back
and forth.
6. Xerox's window system is easy to use but less powerful than Symbolics.
7. Xerox's GC is really a 'reference counter' and therefore CAN'T
reclaim circular lists. Other than that, however, Xerox's GC is much
better than Symbolics.
8. VAX's GC takes 6 sec (with 9 meg) while Symbolics' takes 1 hr.
9. VAX must have >5 Meg to be useful.
10. VAX's LISP Language Sensitive Editor is about as useful as EMACS.
11. A SUN without disks is useless.
Furthermore, here are a few issues to flame on -
- hardware - failure rates, ease of fault analysis
- window systems
- networking
- namespace
- garbage collection
- Initial ease of use / overall user interface.
- Power for highly trained user
- editors
- online documentation - completeness, clarity
- performance metering
- debuging tools
- maximum paging space
- speed
To try to keep this discussion in one central place and since I do not
subscribe to all the bboards to which this is being posted, I would
suggest (subject to Ken Laws veto) that all responses be posted to the
AIList (AIList@sri-stripe.ARPA). However e-mail to me if you have any
problems with that proposal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will Taylor - Sterling Software, MS 244-17,
NASA-Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035
arpanet: taylor@ames-pluto.ARPA
usenet: ..!ames!plu.decnet!taylor
phone : (415)694-6525
------------------------------
Date: 26 Feb 87 17:28:16 GMT
From: Jim Stewart
<jims%milo%cvedc%ogcvax%tektronix.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET>
Subject: Re: Legal Reasoning and AI
I came across an announcement regarding A.I. applications for legal
reasoning and a conference in May. This interests me as I am (one
of the few) who happens to be a law student and a software engineer/
technical writer. (Engineer/writer by day, student by night).
I have a strong interest in legal research and A.I.. Here at Lewis
& Clark's Northwestern School of Law (Portland, Oregon USA) a small
group of students is forming with support of administration to continue
research in the areas of computer applications for legal research and
reasoning. Unfortunately, notwithstanding our proximity to the "Silicon
Forest" here in Oregon, we are somewhat disconnected from the mainstream
activities in this area.
I am interested in learning who else is out there with net access, and
happens to be a law student as well as a technical professional. Is there
a sub news-group of A.I., or is this news-group appropriate for such an
exchange?
Thanks
Gregory Miller
Technical Staff
Computervision Electronics CAE Development Center (cvedc)
P.O. Box 959
Hillsboro, Oregon 97123
(503) 645-2410
Northwestern School of Law @ Lewis & Clark College
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 87 16:59 N
From: MFMISTAL%HMARL5.BITNET@wiscvm.wisc.edu
Subject: Completeness and consistency of rule bases
I'm interested in computer (assisted) completeness and consistency
checking of rule bases. Is there someone on the net who could provide
me with some references to the literature on these subjects.
Both references on theoretical and practical issues are welcomed.
Please, send them to me directly, I will compile a complete list for
posting on the net.
Jan L. Talmon
Department of Medical Informatics and Statistics
University of Limburg
PO Box616
6200 MD Maastricht
The Netherlands
EARN/BITNET: MFMISTAL@HMARL5
------------------------------
Date: 25 Feb 87 03:56:45 GMT
From: belmonte@svax.cs.cornell.edu (Matthew Belmonte)
Subject: Re: Network Complexity
In article <292@ihnp3.UUCP> mth@ihnp3.UUCP (Mark Horbal) writes:
> If we define the "complexity" of a computer network as a
> measure of difficulty in observing, understanding, and
> excercising a modicum of control over it, how is this
> "complexity" estimated?
>
> If we further choose a simple but intuitive way of representing
> a computer network by a graph, how do we quantify this "complexity"
> with respect to the graph's topology?
I believe there might be another area which is relevant to the problem you
mention in the second statement above, but not the first. A year ago I was
doing an internship at NRL implementing a transition-network parser for some
context-free grammars which mimicked *small* subsets of English. The
question occurred to me, "how does one quantify the complexity of the
transition networks we generate?" (By "complexity" here I mean topics such as:
Do we have a lot of long paths consisting of nonterminals which will result in
many failed parses? Do we have many null transitions that we can't squeeze out
by munging adjacent states together? etc.) The answer I got was, well, we
don't really know of any method of completely characterising such complexities.
Is this the same sort of problem as mentioned above, or am I completely
off-base?
Disclaimer: Yes, I know I'm extraordinarily weak on theory, but I'm a lowly,
simple-minded freshman, so I have an excuse.
--
"When you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."
-- a member of the Nixon administration
Matthew Belmonte
Internet: <belmonte@svax.cs.cornell.edu>
BITNET: <d25y@cornella> <d25y@crnlvax5>
UUCP: ..!decvax!duke!duknbsr!mkb
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End of AIList Digest
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