routines in detail. Chris is one of the premier computer war games designers in the country. To see this, you might check a local computer store, or a local Atari User Group. Eastern Front was originally available via the "Atari Program Exchange" run by Atari, but since Atari has just been sold to Jack Tramiel, the Atari Program Exchange may no longer exist. Michael_D'Alessandro%Wayne.MTS%Umich.MTS.Mailnet@MIT-Multics.ARPA ------------------------------ Date: 04 Jul 84 0027 PDT From: Don Woods Subject: re: mongice [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI. This is the tail end of a discussion about the plural of mongoose (mongooses).] [...] I'm also reminded of Walt "Pogo" Kelly's observation that "the mongoose is a singular beast because nobody can pronounce two of them." ------------------------------ Date: 02 Jul 84 1532 PDT From: Frank Yellin Subject: From the New Yorker: Man, Bytes, Dog :-) [Forwarded from the Stanford bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] From the New Yorker July 2, 1984 MAN, BYTES, DOG Many people have asked me about the Cairn Terrier. How about memory, they want to know. Is it IBM-compatible? Why didn't I get the IBM itself, or a Kaypro, Compaq, or Macintosh? I think the best way to answer these questions is to look at th Macintosh and the Cairn head on. I almost did buy the Macintosh. It has terrific graphics, good word-processing capabilities, and the mouse. But in the end I decided on the Cairn, and I think I made the right decision. Let's start out with the basics: Macintosh: Weight (without printer): 20lbs. Memory (RAM): 128K Price (with printer): $3,090 Cairn Terrier: Weight (without printer): 14lbs. Memory (RAM): Some Price (without printer): $250 Just on the basis of price and weight, the choice is obvious. Another plus is that the Cairn Terrier comes in one unit. No printer is necessary, or useful. And--this was a big attraction to me--there is no user's manual. Here are some of the other qualities I found put the Cairn out ahead of the Macintosh: PORTABILITY: To give you a better idea of size, Toto in "The Wizard of Oz" was a Cairn Terrier. So you can see that if the young Judy Garland was able to carry Toto around in that little picnic basket, you will have no trouble at all moving your Cairn from place to place. For short trips it will move under its own power. The Macintosh will not. RELIABILITY: In five to ten years, I am sure, the Macintosh will be superseded by a new model, like the Delicious or the Granny Smith. The Cairn Terrier, on the other hand, has held its share of the market with only minor modifications for hundreds of years. In the short term, Cairns seldom require servicing, apart from shots and the odd worming, and most function without interruption during electric storms. COMPATIBILITY: Cairn Terriers get along with everyone. And for communications with any other dog, of any breed, within a radius of three miles, no additional software is necessary. All dogs share a common operating system. SOFTWARE: The Cairn will run three standard programs, SIT, COME, and NO, and whatever else you create. It is true that, being a microcanine, the Cairn is limited here, but it does load the programs simultaneously. No disk drives. No tapes. Admittedly, these are peripheral advantages. The real comparison has to be on the basis of capabilities. What can the Macintosh and the Cairn do? Let's start on the Macintosh's turf--income-tax preparation, recipe storage, graphics, and astrophysics problems: ------------------------------------------------------------- | Taxes Recipes Graphics Astrophysics | | Macintosh yes yes yes yes | | Cairn no no no no | ------------------------------------------------------------- At first glance it looks bad for the Cairn. But it's important to look beneath the surface with this kind of chart. If you yourself are leaning toward the Macintosh, ask yourself these questions: Do you want to do your own income taxes? Do you want to type all your recipes into a computer? In your graph, what would you put on the $x$ axis? The $y$ axis? Do you have any astrophysics problems you want solved? Then consider the Cairn's specialties: playing fetch and tug-of-war, licking your face, and chasing foxes out of rock cairns (eponymously). Note that no software is necessary. All these functions are part of the operating system. ---------------------------------------------------- | Fetch Tug-of-War Face Foxes | | Cairn yes yes yes yes | | Macintosh no no no no | ---------------------------------------------------- Another point to keep in mind is that computers, even the Macintosh, only do what you tell them to do. Cairns perform their functions all on their own. Here are some of the additional capabilities that I discovered once I got the Cairn home and house-broken: WORD PROCESSING: Remarkably, the Cairn seems to understand every word I say. He has a nice way of pricking up his ears at words like "out" and "ball." He also has highly tuned voice-recognition. EDUCATION: The Cairn provides children with hands-on experience at an early age, contribution to social interaction, crawling ability, and language skills. At age one, my daughter could say "Sit," "Come," and "No." CLEANING: This function was a pleasant surprise. But of course cleaning up around the cave is one of the reasons dogs were developed in the first place. Users with young (below age two) children will still find this function useful. The Cairn Terrier cleans the floor, spoons, bib, and baby, and has the unerring ability to distinguish strained peas from ears, nose, and fingers. PSYCHOTHERAPY: Hear the Cairn really shines. And remember, therapy is something that computers have tried. There is a program that makes the computer ask you questions when you tell it your problems. You say "I'm afraid of foxes." The computer says, "You're afraid of foxes?" The Cairn won't give you that kind of echo. Like Freudian analysts, Cairns are mercifully silent; unlike Freudians, they are infinitely sympathetic. I've found that the Cairn will share, in a nonjudgmental fashion, disappointments, joys, and frustrations. And you don't have to know BASIC. This last capability is related to the Cairn's strongest point, which was the final deciding factor in my decision against the Macintosh--user-friendliness. On this criterion, there is simply no comparison. The Cairn Terrier is the essence of user-friendliness. It has fur, it doesn't flicker when you look at it, and it wags its tail. -- James Gorman ------------------------------ Date: 2 Jul 84 20:04:53 EDT From: Smadar Subject: Ph.D. Oral - Analogy in Legal Reasoning [Forwarded from the Rutgers bboard by Laws@SRI-AI.] A Ph.D. Oral Examination - Proposal Defense Title: Analogy with Purpose in Legal Reasoning from Precedents Speaker: Smadar Kedar-Cabelli Date: Friday, July 6, 1984, 10:00 - 11:00 am Location: Hill Center, room 423 Open to DCS Faculty and Students One open problem in current artificial intelligence (AI) models of learning and reasoning by analogy is: which aspects of the analogous situations are relevant to the analogy, and which are irrelevant? It is currently recognized that analogy involves mapping some underlying causal network of relations between situations [Winston 82], [Gentner 83], [Burstein 83], [Carbonell 83]. However, most current models of analogy provide the system with exactly the relevant relations, tailor-made to each analogy to be performed. As AI systems become more complex, we will have to provide them with the capability of automatically focusing on the relevant aspects of situations when reasoning analogically. These will have to be sifted from the large amount of information used to represent complex, real-world situations. In order to study these general issues, we are examining a particular case study of learning and reasoning by analogy: forming legal concepts by legal reasoning from precedents. This is studied within the TAXMAN II project, which is investigating legal reasoning using AI techniques [McCarty 82], [Nagel 83]. In this talk, we will discuss the problem and a proposed solution. We examine legal reasoning from precedents within the context of current AI models of analogy. We then add a focusing capability. Current work on goal-directed learning [Mitchell 83a], [Mitchell 83b], and explanation-based learning [Dejong 83] applies here: the explanation of how the precedent satisfies the intent of the law (i.e. its goals, or purposes) helps to automatically focus the reasoning on what is relevant. Intuitively, suppose a lawyer wishes to argue that a particular case involving a bicycle violated the following statute: 'a vehicle is forbidden in a public park' [Hart 58]. He might argue by analogy to a clear precedent--a passenger car. He needs to establish that a bicycle is a vehicle for the purposes of this statute, that bicycles should be banned from the park for the same reasons that passenger cars are. The purpose, or intent of the law is to prohibit those things that would interfere with the serene, quiet setting of the park, or would destroy the natural habitat, and so on. Reasoning from this, the lawyer can determine that aspects of the cases such as the ability to trample over lawns, run over small animals, make noise, are relevant for this purpose. On the other hand, aspects of the cases involving the country where the vehicles were manufactured, or the materials the vehicles are made of, are irrelevant for this purpose. Given a different law and purpose, these might well be relevant. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ******************** 7-Jul-84 11:43:32-PDT,14974;000000000000 Mail-From: LAWS created at 7-Jul-84 11:41:59 Date: Sat 7 Jul 1984 11:33-PDT From: AIList Moderator Kenneth Laws Reply-to: AIList@SRI-AI US-Mail: SRI Int., 333 Ravenswood Ave., Menlo Park, CA 94025 Phone: (415) 859-6467 Subject: AIList Digest V2 #86 To: AIList@SRI-AI AIList Digest Saturday, 7 Jul 1984 Volume 2 : Issue 86 Today's Topics: Societies - New York SIGART, AI Tools - YAPS & LISPs, Mathematics - Curve Fitting, Brain Theory - Direct Stimulation & Hypnosis, Turing Test - Discussion, Games - Chess, Reviews - Robotics Industry Directory, Robotics - Poetry ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 5 Jul 84 12:28:38-PDT (Thu) From: ihnp4!whuxle!otto @ Ucb-Vax.arpa Subject: SIGART mailing list Article-I.D.: whuxle.511 This notice is intended to those interested in AI who live and work in the greater New York City area. My apologies to those who read this who are not included in the above group. The distribution mechanisms of netnews are not precise enough to allow me to target my message better. ************** ** NOTICE ** ************** The New York City chapter of SIGART (the ACM Special Interest Group in Artificial Intelligence) is interested in adding names to its mailing list. This chapter holds monthly meetings in Manhattan