Date: Sun 17 Jul 1988 23:55-EDT From: AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis Reply-To: AIList@mc.lcs.mit.edu Us-Mail: MIT Mail Stop 38-390, Cambridge MA 02139 Phone: (617) 253-2737 Subject: AIList Digest V8 #8 To: AIList@mc.lcs.mit.edu Status: R 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 ********************