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AIList Digest Volume 8 Issue 008
AIList Digest Monday, 18 Jul 1988 Volume 8 : Issue 8
Today's Topics:
Guidelines for posting (please read this)
Computer Games Olympiad
Spang Robinson AI Report, Vol. 4, No. 5
Summary of 'Canadian Artifical Intelligence' July 1988
Franz Inc. makes available Allegro CL/GNU Emacs Interface
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sun, 1 Jul 88 22:41 EDT
From: AILIST-REQUEST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Subject: Guidelines for posting (please read this)
When posting messages to AILIST, please try to include
descriptive Subject: lines. Things like 'Submission to AILIST', 'Please
Post This', and the like are not really very helpful. They cause me the
extra labor of replacing them with something (hopefully) more
appropriate.
I assume that anything sent to AILIST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU is intended
as a submission. If you want to communicate something that shouldn't be
posted (questions, comments, requests to be added/deleted), use
AILIST-REQUEST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU.
When posting a query about a subject, that alone should be your
Subject: line. For instance, if you want to know about the FOOBAR
software package, avoid 'Need to know about FOOBAR' or 'Need help with
FOOBAR' in favor of simply 'FOOBAR'. If you are responding to a query, use
the form 'Response to FOOBAR'.
When posting Calls for Papers or Announcements, the Subject:
line should simply be the name of the conference or whatever. Leave it
to me to figure out precisely what category it fits into. Announcements
should be short and to the point. Registration forms and unnecessary
verbiage will be edited out without notice.
For seminar announcements, a Subject: line more descriptive than
'Reminder -- AI Industries Revolving Seminar Tuesday' is nice. Perhaps
a paraphrase of the title of the talk, followed by the name of the
author would be more informative.
Please resist the urge to fiddle with the Subject: line when
replying to someone else's message. It's true that conversations tend
to drift off-subject. But not everyone in the world has good
conversation-following mail software (in particular, I don't) and
keeping semi-consistent subject lines will help immensely.
If anyone has any other suggestions or comments on this, please
send them to AILIST-REQUEST@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
Many thanks,
- nick
------------------------------
Date: 11 Jul 88 16:36:33 GMT
From: eagle!icdoc!qmc-cs!liam@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (William Roberts)
Subject: Computer Games Olympiad
There is to be a Computer Games Olympiad in London in 1989. The details
are as follows:
"The world's first Olympiad for computer programs will take place at the
Park Lane Hotel, London, from August 9th to 15th 1989. This unique event
will feature tournaments for chess, bridge, backgammon, draughts, poker,
Go, and many other classic "thinking" games. In every tournament all of
the competitors will be computer programs. The role of the human operators
will merely be to tell their own programs what moves have been made by
their opponents.
The Computer Olympiad is organised by International Chess Master David Levy,
who is President of the International Computer Chess Association.
Anyone wanting more information on the event should send a large stamped
addressed envelope to: Computer Olympiad, 11 Loudoun Road, London NW8 OLP,
England.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The 1st London Conference on Computer Games will take place as part of the
Computer Olympiad during the period August 9th to 15th 1989. Papers are
invited on any aspect of programming computers to play "thinking" games
such as chess, bridge, Go, backgammon, etc.
The conference Chair will be Professor Tony Marsland, from the Computing
Science Department at the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. The
editor of the conference proceedings will be Don Beal, from the Computer
Science Department at Queen Mary College, London University.
Papers should preferrably be 3000 to 4000 words in length, and if possible,
should be submitted with an IBM-PC format disk containing the text as a
file for a widely-used word-processor (e.g. Wordstar). The closing date
for submissions is May 9th 1989. Papers should be sent to: Computer
Olympiad, 11 Loudoun Road, London NW8 OLP, England.
--
William Roberts ARPA: liam@cs.qmc.ac.uk (gw: cs.ucl.edu)
Queen Mary College UUCP: liam@qmc-cs.UUCP
LONDON, UK Tel: 01-975 5250
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 88 19:06:31 CDT
From: smu!leff@uunet.UU.NET (Laurence Leff)
Subject: Spang Robinson AI Report, Vol. 4, No. 5
Spang Robinson Report on Artificial INtelligence, May 1988,
Vol. 4, No. 5
Lead article is on AI and telecommunications
Bell Atlantic of Morgantown,WV sells a C based expert system
development tool called LASER.
The earliest telecom expert systems were in diagnostic, maintenance of
switches, cables and trunks. New adventures are in planning, network
management, and help-desk systems. Ameritech is working with Bellcore
to develop an "Intelligent Network project." Illinois Bell has
developed SLEEK to configure subscriber lines and NetDesk to respond to
serviceneeds.
BBN uses DesigNet internally to prototype customer networks.
Network Equipment Technologies is developing a product to do
real time diagnostic andmonitoring of private long-distance networks.
The centerfold is a table of telecommunications applications, listing
nature of product, hardware, cost to develop, etc.
_________________________________________________________________________
The next article is about the marketing of pre-built expert systems.
Right Writer and Gramentek II (grammar and style checkers) use expert
system technology, sold 100,000 copies each and have not been sold as
expert systems.
___________________________________________________________________________
The next article is on Symbolic Math Systems
Symbolics is porting Macsyma to run under Gold Hill Common Lisp.
There have been several delays.
Wolfram, developer of SMP, is releasing Mathematica, a new symbolic
math system.
The manual is being sold by Addison-Wesley and runs on Mac +,
not on MS-DOS, perhaps on other systems.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Training: Neurocomputing System/ Expert Systems
They give the MIT product, Explorations in Parallel Distributed Processing:
A Handbook of Models, Programs and Exercises which consists of a lab
manual and two disks for $27.50. It is "unquestionably the best learning
tool wehave found so far in this area. We give this solid MIT product
two thumbs up." 3,300 copies were sold in thefirst seven
weeks. Fifteen thousnad copies of Explorations in the Microstructure
of Cognition have been sold.
Gold HIll Computers announced AXLE for $1995. It comes with
a stand-alone introductory tool plus an expert system development tools.
The latter requires GoldWorks. It also needs a PC/AT with five
to seven megabytes of extended memory and 7.5 to 11 meg of available
hard disk space. Gold Hill is eight million in revenue, 11,000 customers
and is 38th largest software firm.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Shorts:
Dialog Designer allows users to generate Macintosh Dialog systems
and generates LISP code. It works with Perl Lisp and is sold
by Coral Software.
(((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((
Technology Applications sells Keystone
which is a development and delivery tool with
a format compatable to Kee. Runningon 286 or 386, it costs $4,000.
Perceptics sells Knowledge Shapers which converts rules into decision
trees to improve efficiency. It then generates C or Ada code and costs
$5,000. It is aimed at developers requiring high speed, e. g. vision
and real time.
Symbolics now sells
Joshua $15,000 expert system development and delivery
Concordia $10,000 document developer
Statice $10,000 object oriented database
Symbolics expects in three years that 40%of their revenue will be
software.
Symbolics Third quarter revenue $17.4 million, net loss of 4.8 million.
Intellicorp - Third quarter Net loos of $269,000
Teknowledge Revenue 3.5 million Losses 1.1 million
MCC is now abandoning four years of LISP code for VLSI CAD due to
performance problems. Work will be redone in C on Sun Workstations
Transform Logic quarterly had 1.5 million revenue, .6 million net loss.
Itis a competitameter with Bachman. It does COBOL automatic programming.
Gold Hill will port GoldWorks to the Sun 386i.
Chestnut Software has released dBLISP a tool to interface dBASE III to
Golden Common Lisp (cost $295 without source, $495 with source)
NLI's Datatalker (natural language-database interface) is now on
the Sun386i.
Texas Instruments sells Procedure Consultant which uses fault trees
and a visual interface similar ot expert systems. Sells for $495.00.
Hecht Nielson Neurocomputers got $50,000 to identify battlefield
problems and to design a neurocomputer.
Intelligent Technology Group and Starwood Corp will sell INtelligent
Portfolio Manger.
Computer Sciences Corporation STAR*LAB has released an expert system to help
software development. It runs under Smalltalk/V286 and costs $15,000
first copy, $1000 each additional copy.
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 88 21:10:39 CDT
From: smu!leff@uunet.UU.NET (Laurence Leff)
Subject: Summary of 'Canadian Artifical Intelligence' July 1988
Summary of Canadian Atifical Intelligence July 1988
Short:
Xerox will stop manufacturing the 110 Series Lisp machine and its Descendants.
It will be porting its InterLisp environment to Sun Machines and should be
available by the end of the Summer.
Proposal for creating Special Interest Group on Educational Technology
______________________________
Discussion of AI applications toCanadian resource indistries.
Calgary D&S Knowledge Systems has a well-log analysis system which
runs on a PC>
A system uses vision to monitor thejoint angles on the boom and
stick of a Caterpillar excavator. The operator can now be a
a remote location and this prevents accidents.
CAIP has finished an expert system to evaluate the impact of forrestry
operations on fish habitats.
Acquired Intelligence has a project to anlayze oilseed commodities markets
and to provide veterinary expert system to Third World Country dairy farmers.
The British Columbia Departmentof Forestry will be uising an Analyst Avisor
to update forest inventory maps. Another system helps correlate maps
with photoimages.
SWIFTG provides epxert advise to severe weather forecasting.
ROKEY is an expert system to track pollution spills into groundwater. Another
one willhelp locate drilling waste sumps.
_____________________________________________________________________________
AI in Education:
Simon Fraser University - Expert System to help develop Lesson Plans
Alberta Research Council and - computer managed learning system
Computer-Based Training Systems
Softwords - production rules in CAI
Laval University - BIOMEC, videodiscs and production rules
Universityof Saskatchewans - SCENT intelligent tutor for LISP
Laval University - geography tutor, nutrition tutor
simulation based optics
- SCARABEE, help students write adventure stories
- natural language basedwriting package
University of MOntreal - HERON, intelligent advisor for word processing
- data modelling in data base design
________________________________________
AI research at Applied Systems, INc.
Scheduler for municipal transit operation
Expert System for highway transportation
Contract Evaluation Expert System
Expert Systems for use in ferries and similar ships including test runs
on the ocean-going ferrie, M. V.Carrie.
Expert System for telecommunications project
Sixth Generation Research
Project to build translating telephone between Japan, US and other coutnries.
Prototype Expert System Decision Aid for Truck Dispactchers
Spacecraft autonomy system for space satellites
Expert system for dealing with problems such as drivers becoming sick
________________________________________
AI research at MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates
PREFORMA is a system to assist in weather forecasting systems.
Their system does twelve hour prediction of precipitation for
a single site using rules of thumb used by forecasters. Unfortunately
it is not yet as good as human forecasters.
SWIFT is a predictor of severe weather in Canada's prairie provinces.
It uses the SC4 statistical index of potential weather activity
and observed weather. It parses the remarks sections of SA wether
reports. It has spatial and temporal reasoning.
FEX automatical determines rivers, lakes, roads, railways and bridges
from remote sensing imagery. It uses spectral data, whether lines
are parallel indicating road shapes, whether lines intersect
other potential roads and knowledge that roads are not lcoated
in water and buildings are frequently near roads.
STAR is a system for predicting faults in off-highway logging trucks
and planning preventive maintenance systems.
________________________________________
Acquired INtelligence Inc.
This system waincubated at the University of Victoria.
They have a Knowledge Acquisition methodology that will be developed
for PC/AT type machines. It will be interfaced with NEXPERTs.
Test systems include clinical neuropsychology
diagnosis of children's learning disabilities and brain dysfunctions
haematology
interpretation of geophysical instrument readings for mineral exploration
commodity market analysis
________________________________________
Report on the Social Confernece
Report on the 1988 Distributed Artificial Intelligence Workshop
Report on Fourth IEEE Conference on Artificial Applications
Book Reviews
Visual Reconstruction by Andrew Blanke andAndrewZisserman
Logics forArtificial Intelligence by Raymond Turner
Manufacturing INtelligence by Paul Kenneth WWright and David Allan Bourne
------------------------------
Date: 16 Jul 88 17:46:08 GMT
From: akbar.UUCP!layer@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Kevin Layer)
Subject: Franz Inc. makes available Allegro CL/GNU Emacs Interface
Introduction
------------
Franz Inc. is offering to the Lisp community version 1.2 of their
interface between Allegro Common Lisp (previously known as "Extended
Common Lisp") and GNU Emacs. This interface will also work between
GNU Emacs and Franz Lisp Opus 43 (the current release from Franz Inc.)
or Franz Lisp Opus 38 (the last public domain version).
The goal of this interface is to offer the Lisp programmer a tightly
integrated Lisp environment. The interface can be broken down into
three parts:
* Lisp editing modes for Common and Franz Lisp,
* Inferior modes for Common and Franz Lisp subprocesses, and
* TCP Common Lisp modes for socket communication with Common
Lisp.
The first two are available for both Common and Franz Lisp, but the
third feature, which enables the tight coupling of the environments,
is only available for Allegro CL. It uses multiprocessing in Allegro
CL and UNIX domain socket to communicate information between the GNU
Emacs and Allegro CL worlds.
The features of the interface are:
* enhanced subprocess modes, including
- file name completion
- an input ring to allow fetching of previously typed input
* macroexpansion of forms in a Lisp source file
* `find-tag' for Lisp functions (the Allegro CL world is
queried for the location of Lisp functions)
* who-calls: find all callers of a Lisp function
* Arglist, `describe' and function documentation are available
in Lisp source buffers (again, the information comes
dynamically from Allegro CL)
* automatic indentation of forms entered to an inferior Lisp
The interface is written entirely in GNU Emacs Lisp, with the
exception of a replacement for the standard `open-network-stream' in
src/process.c. Some of the advanced features use UNIX domain sockets
and also use features specific to the implementation of Allegro CL
(multiprocessing).
The interface is fully documented on-line.
Ownership
---------
The Lisp/GNU Emacs interface is the property of Franz Incorporated.
The Emacs Lisp source code is distributed and the following notice is
present in all source files for which it applies:
;;
;; copyright (C) 1987, 1988 Franz Inc, Berkeley, Ca.
;;
;; The software, data and information contained herein are the property
;; of Franz, Inc.
;;
;; This file (or any derivation of it) may be distributed without
;; further permission from Franz Inc. as long as:
;;
;; * it is not part of a product for sale,
;; * no charge is made for the distribution, other than a tape
;; fee, and
;; * all copyright notices and this notice are preserved.
;;
;; If you have any comments or questions on this interface, please feel
;; free to contact Franz Inc. at
;; Franz Inc.
;; Attn: Kevin Layer
;; 1995 University Ave
;; Suite 275
;; Berkeley, CA 94704
;; (415) 548-3600
;; or
;; emacs-info%franz.uucp@Berkeley.EDU
;; ucbvax!franz!emacs-info
Some files contain GNU Emacs derived code, and those files contain
the GNU Emacs standard copyright notice.
Obtaining the Software
----------------------
To obtain version 1.2 of this interface either:
1) copy it from ucbarpa.berkeley.edu or ucbvax.berkeley.edu via FTP
(login `ftp', password your login name) from the directory
pub/fi/gnudist-1.2-tar.Z, or
2) send a check (sorry, no PO's accepted) in the amount of $50 for a
US address and $75 for a foreign address to Franz Inc. to the
following address:
Franz Inc.
Attn: Emacs/LISP Interface Request
1995 University Ave
Suite 275
Berkeley, CA 94704
Please specify the media (`tar' format only) which is one of:
* 1/2", 1600 bpi, 9-track
* 1/4", cartridge tape--specify the machine type (ie, TEK, SUN)
Future Work
-----------
Improvements to this interface will be made in the future, so to
facilitate the exchange of information about this and user's
experiences, questions and suggestions a mailing list will be created
as a forum for discussion on topics relating to this interface. If
you would like to be on this mailing list (local redistribution is
encouraged), please drop me a note. If you have trouble with one of
the addresses below, try one of:
layer@Berkeley.EDU
-or-
ucbvax!layer
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
D. Kevin Layer Franz Inc.
layer%franz.uucp@Berkeley.EDU 1995 University Avenue, Suite 275
ucbvax!franz!layer Berkeley, CA 94704
(415) 548-3600, FAX: (415) 548-8253
------------------------------
End of AIList Digest
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