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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 1
 IS                                            January 3, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Service changes.
 2>	Projects and deadlines.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Directory resources.
 5>	Games and nostalgia.
_________________________________________________________________

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change
and to preserve change amid order.  -- Alfred North Whitehead.  
[Peter Shell <pshell@nl.cs.cmu.edu>, 4/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Service changes:

    I'm going to split the Communique into two issues per week,
of about 12KB each.  That should be more readable, less 
intimidating (e.g., as a sample issue), and closer to real-time.  
Full Moon subscribers still get only 12 issues per year,
but Computists will get at least 88.  I'm also changing
my informal numbering scheme from TCC V6 N1 to TCC 6.01.
Our Computists' Career Jobs (CCJ) digest will usually
be sent with the Tuesday edition of the Communique.
All Computists get TCC; those who request it get CCJ.

    Our APJ digest for graduate-level, non-AI faculty, and
applied jobs will now be called the Computists' Applied Jobs
(CAJ) digest, and will be sent with the weekly CCJ to those
who want it.  Our RSW digest will likewise become the
Computists' Research Software (CRS) digest, to be abstracted
and mailed with each Thursday edition of the Communique.
(I'm claiming "Computists International" and "Computists'"
as service marks, although I haven't registered them.)
CAJ and CRS are still available to anyone who requests them,
and may be forwarded to non-Computist bboards or distribution 
lists.  They will typically be about 45KB/week each, unless
I find some reason to change that.

    We also have an optional humor/quotation/philosophy 
distribution, for occasional postings that I just have to share 
with interested Computists.  And we have an announcement list
for Bay Area seminar announcements, for Computists who want
to hear about AI-related seminars near Palo Alto.  (Bill Park
has been forwarding most of these.  Thanks, Bill!)  I'll be
happy to help if someone else wants to manage other topical
or geographic lists, or to supply occasional or regular columns
to interested Computists.

    We don't have a website yet, as I'm still checking out
service providers.  (I've decided against running a site from
my garage.)  Recommendations are solicited.  Resource leads
for webmasters will be a topic of continuing interest this year, 
along with tips for computer scientists, programmers, and 
entrepreneurs.  Look for a listing of Web spiders and search 
engines in tomorrow's issue, TCC 6.02.


 2> Projects and deadlines:

    The Java Cup International competition is looking for
a "killer app" for HotJava, and will distribute more than $1M
in prize goods.  <http://javacontest.sun.com>.  [T.H.E. Journal, 
12/95, p. 26.  EDUPAGE.]

    Comments on the ABA's proposed digital signature guidelines 
are due 1/15/96.  See <http://www.intermarket.com/ecl/> for
the draft.  [Network News, 12/16/95.]

    The UReading/CS (UK) Active Robotics Group are seeking 
participants for their Netrolab robotic remote control 
experiments.  Initial experiments require only an Internet link 
and a WWW browser.  Later participants will program the Nero 
mobile robot, and will get camera images and tactile/sensory 
feedback.  <http://netrolab.cs.rdg.ac.uk/>, or join
the discussion with a "subscribe netrolab-interest" message
to <majordomo@arg.cs.rdg.ac.uk>.  [<D.C.Baldaro@reading.ac.uk>, 
c.i.www.announce, 12/1/95.  net-hap.]

    Russell Almond would like to update his page on belief 
networks, <http://bayes.stat.washington.edu/almond/almond.html>, 
including software for fitting belief networks and graphical 
models, <http://bayes.stat.washington.edu/almond/belief.html>.  
Send info to <almond@acm.org>.  Almond also has a new
graphical-belief project demo at <http://bayes.stat.washington.edu
/almond/gb/graphical-belief.html>.  [AI-Stats, 12/20/95.]

    Ray Dougherty would like to hear of Prolog or LISP 
interpreters that can be made available through his NYU website, 
<http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/ling.html>.  The site
also discusses problems in encoding Chomsky's generative grammar 
into Prolog and LISP.  [<doughert@acf4.nyu.edu>, comp.lang.prolog, 
12/28/95.]

    Tim McGuire is researching a 1996 book on auditing
neural networks, and would like to hear of risks and pitfalls
in NN implementation.  <101475.2632@compuserve.com>.  
[<Tim.McGuire@js.btx400.co.uk>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 12/27/95.]

    "You want to know how one gets work done?  It's easy.
House arrest, Steiner, house arrest!"  -- Hungarian radical
Georg Lukacs, to George Steiner.  [Keith Bostic 
<bostic@cs.berkeley.edu>, QOTD, 10/18/95.]


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UVirginia/CS (Charlottesville): chairperson.

Santa Fe Institute: postdoctoral fellow in ML, AI, or statistics.

HNC Software Inc. (San Diego): BS software engineer
for SAS/Splus data checking and NN modeling.

Communication Intelligence Corp (CIC; Redwood Shores, CA):
MS/PhD researcher in OCR, handwriting recognition,
pattern recognition, and statistical linguistics.

Caere Corp./Core Technologies group (Los Gatos, CA): MS/PhD
R&D software engineers for document recognition and management, 
image processing, speech, NN, and NLP; also BA software engineers.

Southwestern Bell Technology Resources (Austin):
MS/PhD MTS/group leader in voice interfaces, including DSP,
pattern matching (HMM, NN) for speech recognition, applied 
linguistics, AI (Prolog, LP), etc.

OGI Center for Human-Computer Communication (OR): experienced
MS programmer for work in NLP, speech, or handwriting interfaces.

Carnegie Group (Pittsburgh): BS/MS engineer or senior engineer
for planning/scheduling/constraint algorithm development
in DoD mass casualty evacuations.

Machina Sapiens (Montreal): MS/PhD computational linguists
in Spanish and English.  French helpful.


 4> Directory resources:

     Central Source, Inc. (Omaha) claims to have launched
the first Yellow Pages directory on the Internet, listing
over 10M US companies.  "Every business phone in America."  
<http://www.telephonebook.com/index.html/>.  [Karen Millar 
<karen@xmission.com>, net-hap, 10/10/95.]  Search by category, 
company name, phone number, or other index information.
No charge for new one-line entries by informal businesses.
[Sam Sternberg <aa002@torfree.net>, inet-news, 10/15/95.
net-hap.]

    To track down phone numbers outside the US,
start with <http://www.yahoo.com/Reference/Phone_Numbers/>.
You can also find business listings -- or add your own --
on <http://www.telephonebook.com/yp-name.html>.
[Alan Gatlin <gatlina@primenet.com>, Network News, 11/4/95.]

    Company Site Locator helps find corporate websites
when you don't know the exact URL.  
<http://www.netpart.com/company/search.html>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/15/95.]

    The TIG Internet Domain-Name Database is a searchable 
alternative to the Whois domain server.  Over 159K domains
-- 124K in the US -- can be searched by domain name, company, 
city, state, or ZIP code.  You can also get statistics
by city or state, and a plot of US domain locations.  
<http://www.tig.com/cgi-bin/genobject/tig-domain-db/>.
[Sheldon Smoker <sheldon@tig.com>, c.i.www.announce, 12/21/95.  
net-hap.]

    Internet Directory Assistance (IDA) will provide multiple
net addresses for online services that register.  Details on 
<http://www.ccee.com>.  [WEBster, 11/28/95.]

    The World Email Directory (WED) searches for email addresses, 
URLs, and personal or business profiles, to help you find people 
or businesses with common interests.  <http://worldemail.com>.  
[<wed@worldemail.com>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]  Or send a "get info" 
message to <wedinfo@valleynet.net>.  [<nickh@iaehv.nl>, 
comp.os.msdos.mail-news, 10/19/95.]

    Email Search Program culls email addresses from
Usenet newsgroup postings.  Over 112K have been extracted,
with more added hourly.  <http://www.mailbox.co.uk/esp>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]
(An alternative is to post a "send usenet-addresses/<name list>" 
message to <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>, which takes about a day
to respond.)

    If you think the Internet needs a white-pages directory,
stop by the Internet Registry and list your own stats.  Free.  
<http://registry.webnet.com.au>.  [Peter Marelas 
<maral@webnet.com.au>, c.i.www.announce, 7/17/95.]

    Internet Address Finder is another free white pages service.  
Register at <http://www.iaf.net/>.  Comments to <info@iaf.net>.  
[Dwight <dmerriman@iaf.net>, c.i.www.announce, 11/9/95.  net-hap.]

    The World Alumni Page is an email registry and
bulletin board for colleges and high schools worldwide.  
<http://www.infophil.com/World/Alumni>.
[<tomacruz@infophil.com>, net-hap, 12/27/95.]


 5> Games and nostalgia:

    The Int. Association of Calculator Collectors has
a quarterly journal, the International Calculator Collector,
with articles on history, unique models, sources, and price 
trends.  Free classifieds.  $12/year, or $16 outside the US; 
sample issue $3.  Back issues are $2-$3 each.  
<mrcalc001@aol.com>, PO Box 345, Tustin, CA 92681-0345.  
[comp.sys.handhelds, 7/11/95.]

    Old video games are making a comeback.  There are three 
strategies:  1) Rewrite the software for a new platform,
as in Microsoft Arcade's Asteroids, Centipede, and Space Invaders.  
Another example is Leon McNeill's shareware port of Ultima III
to the Mac, <ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/game/adv
/ultima3-12.hqx>, licensed from the original author and publisher.  
This is a lot of work to produce a dated program, but the 
nostalgia value may be worth it.  2) Write a software emulator 
that runs the original games (and Easter eggs!) on
a new platform, as Digital Eclipse is doing with the Williams 
arcade classics Defender, Joust, and Robotron.  Activision is 
mining some of the great Atari 2600 games, but the emulator
may be a little unstable.  If you still have an Apple II
and a Mac, you can try Kevin Lund and Jim Nitchals' Stop The 
Madness emulator at <ftp://cassandra.ucr.edu/pub/apple2/>.
(Maybe these emulators will be ported to BeBox?)  Unfortunately, 
no Mac-readable Apple II game copies are being issued due to 
copyright restrictions.  Or  3), write an homage to the classic 
game.  This lets you include new features or controllers,
modern graphics, CD-quality sound, and maybe 3D, and you don't 
have to license the original.  Three shareware examples are 
Maelstrom (Asteroids), Apeiron (Centipede), and Glypha (Joust), 
downloadable from <ftp://mirrors.aol.com/pub/info-mac/game/arc>.  
[Jason Snell <jsnell@macuser.com>, TidBITS, 12/18/95.]

    UnGame is a product that deletes 3,100 different games
from hard drives and network servers, regardless of file names.  
DVD Software estimates that 40M US workers spend 30min/week 
playing games on company time, at a cost of $50B/year.
[IBD, 12/4/95, A6.  EDUPAGE.]  (But are people really
more productive if hard-line bosses deny them recreation
and shared culture?  Is Apple more productive since they
took out the ping pong tables?)

    Geek fame is when people build websites about you.
Doug Adam's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has 13 such sites, 
listed at <http://www.well.com/user/dljones/DNARelated.html>.  
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 12/95.]

					-- Ken


Size matters not... judge me by my size do you?  -- Yoda.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 2
 IS                                            January 4, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Information retrieval.
 2>	Internet reference services.
 3>	Web indexes and spiders.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Electronic journals.
_________________________________________________________________

We are "web weavers and dancers at the dawn
of the Meso-Electronic Period."  -- Paul Evan Peters.
[Karen Campbell <kcampbel@seq.hamline.edu>, 12/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Information retrieval:

    CMU's Ken Lang has built a "Newsweeder" that
filters Usenet newsgroups for messages of interest.
See <http://anther.learning.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/home>,
or <http://www.empirical.com/> for the commercial version.
Lang had a paper in Proc. 12th Int. Conf. on Machine Learning,
pp. 331-339.  [Tom Dietterich <tgd@engr.orst.edu>,
comp.ai, 12/26/95.]

    NetSumm is an experimental WWW page summarizer produced
by the Language Group at BT Laboratories.  It highlights
the "most important" sentences of a web page, or extracts
these sentences to abridge the article.  
<http://www.labs.bt.com/innovate/informat/netsumm/index.htm>; 
comments to <netsumm@bt-sys.bt.co.uk>.  [Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, 12/23/95.]  (Probably doesn't work
with non-graphic browsers such as Lynx.)

    For indexing your personal Mac files, try EndNote Plus 2.0
by Niles & Assoc.  [Toby Moore <meowi@aol.com>, Mac*Chat, 
10/20/95.]  (That's primarily a bibliographic system.
Other programs such as Locate or ON Location can search
random files for keywords.)


 2> Internet reference services:

    Internet Findex offers a comprehensive list of dictionaries, 
gopher pointers, Internet indexes, and Web search engines,
updated weekly.  <http://www.csn.net/~johnhart/findex.html>.  
[John Hart <jhart@teal.csn.net>, net-hap, 10/13/95.]

    Internet guides, service lists, reference pages,
FAQs, and search services are listed on the Galaxy site, 
<http://galaxy.einet.net/search-other.html>.  [Susan Klopfer 
<sklopfer@vanatech.com>, net-hap, 12/1/95.]

    A comparison of several Web search engines,
plus articles about searching, has been posted to 
<http://www.hamline.edu/library/links/comparisons.html>.
[Karen Campbell <kcampbel@seq.hamline.edu>, web4lib, 10/31/95.]

    An Internet guide, tutorial, and over a dozen
search engines can be found on Robert Kabacoff's Inter-Links,
at <http://www.nova.edu/Inter-Links/resources.html>.
The guide lists several thousand hand-picked WWW, gopher,
telnet, FTP, IRC, MUD, and BBS resources.  [Scout Report, 
12/15/95.]  (Formerly <http://alpha.acast.nova.edu/start.html>.)

    The Internet Sleuth is a listing of over 750
searchable Internet databases.  <http://www.intbc.com/sleuth/>.  
[<ibc@intbc.com>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    Sources is an e-journal for the intelligence community --
as in "private eye," information broker, or spook -- examining 
methods of intelligence gathering and information interpretation.  
<http://www.dso.com/sources>.  [Glenn Davis <gdavis@slip.net>, 
newjour, 11/28/95.]

    InfoSeek at <http://www.infoseek.com/> has recently added
the CorpTech Directory of 40K technology companies and the CSA 
Worldwide Market Research Database of company profiles and market 
research reports in defense, finance, and basic industries.
Also Microcomputer Abstracts (with reviews from 90 publications 
since 1989); SoftBase: Reviews, Companies & Products
(200 periodicals); and databases covering work-group computing
and AT&T.  One-month free trial, plus $10 in trial credits
if you enter *biz in the "referred by" box when you register
for the business databases, or *comp for the computer databases.  
[Julian Stewart <julian@infoseek.com>, net-hap, 11/20/95.]


 3> Web indexes and spiders:

    The WAIS search engine at <http://sunsite.unc.edu/cgi-bin
/fwais.pl> simultaneously searches all public WAIS databases.  
[Sam Sternberg <aa002@torfree.net>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    The European Directory searches European website descriptions.  
Access <http://www.ukshops.co.uk:8000/thedoor.html> to search
or to register new services.  [Jim Kissel <jkissel@ukshops.co.uk>, 
net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    NET Navigator is a new URL search engine, similar to Yahoo!, 
Lycos, Web Crawler, and Infoseek.  <http://www.navigate.net>.  
[<maloof@mja.net>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]  (URL search lets you
find who is linking to your own site.)

    Webcatcher notifies you of new sites matching your specified 
topics.  <http://plum.tuc.noao.edu/webcatcher/webcatcher.html>.  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/15/95.]

    The Excite search service at <http://www.excite.com>
is very powerful, but results can vary from day to day.  
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 11/95.]

    SavvySearch is CSU's experimental server,
able to search email addresses, Usenet, FTP sites,
gopher space, and web space.  19 search engines are used.  
<http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/>.  [Daniel Dreilinger.  
Sam Sternberg <aa002@torfree.net>, net-hap, 12/5/95.]

    The Open Text Index and search engine indexes
every word of almost 1M web pages.  You can use Boolean,
phrase, proximity, weighted, and KWIC searching, with
relevance feedback.  Also, searching of just parts of pages.  
<http://www.opentext.com:8080/>.  [Network News, 12/9/95.]

    UCB's Inktomi searches 1.3M documents on the web --
five times more than Infoseek -- and it's faster than Lycos 
because it harnesses four Sun workstations and 32 networked 
computers in UCB's CS building, Soda Hall.  There's no Boolean 
logic, but you do get to see the actual keyword hits within
each document.  <http://inktomi.berkeley.edu/>.  Eric Brewer 
<brewer@cs.berkeley.edu> and his student Paul Gauthier 
<gauthier@cs.berkeley.edu> developed the site.  Inktomi
("ink to me") is named after a mythological trickster spider
of the Plains Indians.  [UC NewsWire.  <samsam@vm1.yourku.ca>, 
net-hap, 10/18/95.]

    Digital's new Alta Vista high-speed search engine scans
13K Usenet discussion groups in addition to Web sites,
indexing every word.  The prototype sends out "a brood of spiders" 
(or "threads").  <http://www.altavista.digital.com>.  [NYT, 
12/18/95, C2.  EDUPAGE.]  Alta Vista is said to be 100 times
as fast as competitors, and indexed 16.5M pages in 8 days.
A Digital engineer estimates that the web includes 40M-50M pages
-- not counting graphics, audio, and video -- on 130K servers,
and that Digital has the horsepower to maintain a current index
of the whole thing.  [Eric D. Bauer <ebauer@world.std.com>, 
online-news, 12/18/95.  net-hap.]  (Bauer ran a search on 
"Middlesex News": InfoSeek found 72 matches; Alta Vista
found 1,000.)


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

FUZZLE20: fuzzy logic software.

TDL for NN and GA programming.

WebBase: WWW CGI forms input and FoxPro/DBF database for WebSTAR.

Mitek OCR for hand-printed character recognition.

RECORE 4.0 OCR/ICR Toolkit: OCR for Windows 95.
  
Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming at Stanford 1995: 
Stanford student papers, edited by John Koza.

Pioneer Programmable Computer Conveyance: SRI robotic platform
for $1995.

WeboDex Organizer: browser bookmark organizer for MS Windows.

SURFACE: scattered-data surface generator/viewer for Windows 3.1.

MacroLife: an alife program with 4B cells and built-in lifeforms.

Ofront Evaluation Shop (OES): Oberon-2 to C translator.

LitProg Archive: resources for literate programming.

QUOTS 1.2: motivational quotation screen saver.

XRAYDIF: X-ray powder diffraction pattern simulator.

Wily: Unix/X text editor and user interface.


 5> Electronic journals:

    Forbes magazine suggests that the first major journal
to fall victim to online publishing may be Elsevier's $10,775/year 
Nuclear Physics B.  The physics preprint exchange set up
four years ago by Paul Ginsparg now handles 70K transactions/day.  
Formal review will be added soon.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
12/22/95.]

    The J. of Functional and Logic Programming (JFLP)
from MIT Press is now available at <http://www.cs.tu-berlin.dc
/-chak/jflp/>.  "New, peer-reviewed, electronic, reader-powered."  
JFLP articles are in LaTeX and Postscript, augmented by refereed, 
forward references to improvements and subsequent, related work.  
MIT Press plans to develop a cost-based -- instead of
market-priced -- model for nonprofit, electronic,
paid-subscription journals.  JFLP is $30 for 1966, or $125
for institutions.  ISSN: 1080-5230; <http://www-mitpress.mit.edu>, 
<journals-orders@mit.edu>, 617-253-2889, 617-577-1545 Fax.  
[newjour, 12/9/95.]  (The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation contributed 
$150K to this effort and The Chicago J. of Theoretical Computer 
Science.)

    The Nordic J. of Philosophical Logic (NJPL) from UOslo
is online at <http://www.hf.uio.no/filosofi/njpl>, in addition
to its hardcopy publishing.  Mailing lists, newsgroups,
and live discussion groups are planned.  [Johan W. Kl&uuml;wer 
<johanw@filosofi.uio.no>, newjour, 11/14/95.]

    The Very Large Data Base (VLDB) Journal will add
an online version starting 1/96, at <http://science.springer.de
/vldb/vldb.htm>.  Subscribers also get the hardcopy version,
which will lag by several months.  Back issues for 1992-95
are being offered for $50 (normally over $500) while they last.  
New subscriptions are $48/year, from <subscriptions@springer.de>, 
+49-30-82070, +49-30-8207448 Fax.  [Arie Shoshani 
<arie@csr.lbl.gov>, dbworld, 12/26/95.]  (Full online papers
are free during most of 1/96.)

    The Int. J. of Intelligent Systems in Accounting,
Finance and Management offers abstracts at 
<http://www.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/isafm/isafhome.htm>.  
[newjour, 11/28/95.]

    ACM's J. of Experimental Algorithmics, 
<http://www.jea.acm.org>, covers the design, analysis, 
implementation, testing, evaluation, and reuse of algorithms
and data structures.  JEA will also distribute research code
and testbeds.  [Michael Allen Clore <clore@acm.org>,
newjour, 11/20/95.]

    If you're really into math, the Electronic J. of Linear 
Algebra (ELA) is at <http://gauss.technion.ac.il/iic/ela>
and mirrors.  Free to ILAS members.  [Daniel B. Szyld 
<szyld@euclid.math.temple.edu>, newjour, 11/15/95.]

    Another new peer-reviewed e-journal is the Int. J.
of Neural Regulation, at <http://www.primenet.com/~ssnr
/index.html#ijnr>.  Electronic bits only.  [newjour, 11/15/95.]

    The Journal of Higher Education is experimenting with an 
electronic version, on <gopher://gopher.acs.ohio-state.edu:70
/11/Journals & Newsletters/OSU Libraries' Electronic Serials 
/Journal of Higher Education>.  It will lead the print version
by 4-6 weeks.  [<starbuck.2@osu.edu>, newjour, 11/1/95.]

    Configurations is a journal of literature, science,
and technology, from Johns Hopkins University Press.
Theories and practices of science, technology, and medicine,
and their relations to literature and the arts.  
<http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/configurations/index.html>.  
[<wendy@chaos.press.jhu.edu>, newjour, 11/3/95.]

    Name that publication:  "X and Y Journal is the first 
publication to feature X and Y; and it especially focuses on
the integration of these two paradigms as well as on their
common foundations.  The journal's articles range from
theoretical study of X and Y to "real world," applied 
investigations of X and Y.  An international distinguished
board will edit the journal."  Act now to take advantage
of this special offer. :-)

					-- Ken


I am generally not interested in using Internet to see work
that wouldn't interest me in person or in a book. That fact
that something is on Internet usually doesn't improve it.
-- Ken Friedman <ken.friedman@bi.no>, "Language and Culture
in the Information Age," Art and Design, 11/95.  [Joe Raben 
<jqrqc@cunyvm.cuny.edu>.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 3
 IS                                            January 9, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Updates.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Electronic news magazines.
 5>	Professional writing.
 6>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

This is usenet, virtual land of hot air and pampered
speech-bunnies.  Words are cheap and vitriol flows like water
down the crumbling, mossy mountainsides of prose.  Megabytes
of gibberish grind forth like glaciers from the keyboards
of the thirty million guinea pigs participating in the largest 
clinical trial ever: the testing of a new reality completely 
devoid of common sense.  -- <charless@sco.com>.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    By popular demand, I'm switching the new numbering system
to TCC 6.01 rather than 6.1 so that message headers or
filenames will sort correctly.  (Naive sorting will still fail
if we reach Issue 100 or Volume 10.  We need mail readers
and operating systems that understand version numbers.)
Our Ministry of Truth has corrected the back issues for this year.


 1> Industry news:

    The new DVD "digital video disk" will sell for $20-$40 
starting this fall.  A one-layer disk will hold 4.7GB,
double-layer 8.5GB, and double-sided double-layer up to 17.6GB.  
Players my soon drop to $500.  [IEEE Multimedia, Winter 1995,
p. 5.  Flash Information, 12/18/95.]
(It's "Digital Versatile Disk," but who can remember?)

    CyberPhone Internet telephone software for Windows
is free during beta testing, from CyberScience Inc.  
<http://magenta.com/cyberphone>.  [<willia04@wharton.upenn.edu>, 
net-hap, 12/16/95.]

    IIX is the symbol for a new American Stock Exchange/Ziff-Davis 
options index comprising 37 Internet-related companies (plus
a few in video conferencing, interactive television, etc.).  
Updated daily on <http://www.zdnet.com/~intweek
/daily/mp951018.html>.  [Network News, 10/21/95.]

    Commercial online services are having difficulty
getting started in Europe, despite a flood of press releases.  
Although there is strong demand for non-English services,
the market is fragmented -- and not just along national 
boundaries.  CompuServe has been there for some time, and AOL 
opened in Germany on 11/28/95.  Apple has canceled a planned 
French version of eWorld.  Luxembourg-based Europe Online,
a new contender, was scheduled to open in 12/95, but its website 
<http://www.europeonline.com/> is incomplete.  [Richard Erickson 
<erickso@world-net.sct.fr>, TidBITS, 12/18/95.]


 2> Updates:

    Adele Howe would like to clarify that CSU's SavvySearch
is not a search engine, but a meta-search engine that submits 
queries in parallel to other popular search engines.  
<http://guaraldi.cs.colostate.edu:2000/>.  
[<howe@cs.colostate.edu>, 1/4/96.]

    Gordon Joly reports that "Newsweeder" is available
only in its commercial version, <http://www.empirical.com/>,  
Also, the Findex list of dictionaries, gopher pointers,
yellow pages, Internet indexes, and Web search engines is
no longer at <http://www.csn.net/~johnhart/findex.html>.  
[<gordo@bbcnc.org.uk>, 1/8/96.]

    A different product, Parsec fINDEX 1.0, is demo'd
at <http://www.parsecweb.com/findex.html>.  It's a version
of the UArizona Glimpse engine that you can buy to add 
document/archive searching to your Unix webserver.  [1/8/96.]  
(FINDEX is a popular name for indexing services.)

    Robert E. Maas' guides to net services -- the MaasInfo
files -- are easier to access now that they're on the web.  
<http://WWW.Edu.Tw/ftp/documents/Internet/MaasInfo
/MaasInfo.HowWide.html> or 
<http://Pip.SHSU.Edu/ftp/MaasInfo/MaasInfo.HowWide.html>.  
[<rem@btr.btr.com>, 12/30/95.]


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UMIACS and UMD/Linguistics: tenure-track computational linguist.

Brown University (Providence, RI): postdoctoral RA in Air Force 
planning and scheduling, decision support under uncertainty,
and learning domain models from data.

Cornell University (Ithaca, NY): researchers and assistant 
professors in algorithms, logic, AI, computing theory,
distributed computing, DB, IR, multimedia, scientific computing, 
programming languages, robotics and computer vision, etc.

New Mexico Highlands University: postdoctoral fellow
for NASA work in imaging, pattern recognition, and NN.

NRL/Integrated Management Services, Inc. (IMSI; DC):
CL/CLIM developer for AI planning and scheduling.

Neural Applications Corp. (Coralville, IA): BSEE/BSCE
applications engineer.

Kurzweil Applied Intelligence, Inc. (Waltham, MA): knowledge 
engineer to develop knowledge bases for medical dictation.

UMass-Amherst/Center for Intelligent Information Retrieval (CIIR): 
BS/MS software engineers for text filtering and retrieval.

Philips Laboratories/Adaptive Systems Group (Briarcliff Manor NY): 
MS/PhD control/software engineer for mobile-robotics vision 
research.

Reliable Software Technologies Corp. (RST; Sterling, VA):
full-time and summer programmers for AI-based software
engineering tools.

SRI International (Menlo Park, CA): US PhD project leader
and MS/PhD research engineer for planning and scheduling, 
reasoning with uncertain information, education/training,
and network management.


 4> Electronic news magazines:

    Computer Economics Daily is a 1-page summary of daily events.  
Hardcopy is $495/year, but the online version is free for a 
"subscribe" subject line sent to <cid@computereconomics.com>.  
[Bartley D. Grubb <bart@connectnet.com>, biz.comp.accounting, 
11/28/95.  Bill Park.]

    For updated market and business news, check the Wall Street 
Journal (WSJ) web site, <http://update.wsj.com>.  [Peter Raeth 
<emory!dayton.wright.edu!ac095>, SEML, 10/22/95.]

    Business Week now offers a few of its articles online,
at <http://www.mcgraw-hill.com/business-economics/bw.htm>.  
Comments or questions can be sent to <bwreader@mgh.com>
or <readersbw@aol.com>.  BW has 200 reporters and editors
serving 7M readers worldwide.  [newjour, 12/1/95.]

    FORTUNE Magazine, for corporate executives, has set up
a website at <http://pathfinder.com/@@RQmiEAEvAgAAQGNf
/fortune/fortune.html>.  [<fortune-webmaster@pathfinder.com>, 
newjour, 12/1/95.]  (A bit hard to pronounce. :-)

    U.S. News & World Report is at <http://www.usnews.com>,
as U.S. News Online.  If you want to, you can watch Clinton
morph into Newt Gingrich.  [Kim Smith <kjsmith@usnews.com>,
net-hap, 11/8/95.]

    Harvard Business Review has put its articles from 5/94
to (but not including) the present issue on 
<http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/Web/hbsshow/hbr/backissue
/oldhbr.html>.  See <http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/Web
/hbsshow/hbr/current/tocnd95.htm> for the current table of 
contents.  [<custserv@cchbspub.harvard.edu>, newjour, 12/1/95.]

    Off the Record magazine, for information systems/technology 
professionals, adds "cutting room floor" material, hot links,
and RealAudio interviews to its online version, 
<http://www.mediapool.com/offtherecord/>.  An index of articles
is on <http://www.mediapool.com/offtherecord/clips.html>.  
[<bmcw@redbud.mv.com>, newjour, 12/1/95.]

    WebMaster Magazine, for IT managers and corporate
webmasters, offers full-page abstracts of its print articles.  
WebMaster Online, <http://www.cio.com/WebMaster/wmhome.html>.  
Past issues are on <http://www.cio.com/WebMaster/wmarchive.html>.  
[<thorgan@cio.com>, newjour, 12/1/95.]

    Current and back-issue magazines can also be browsed
or ordered at <http://www.magamall.com>.  [<stephen@inforamp.net>, 
net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    Or visit Ecola's Newsstand, <http://www.ecola.com/news/>.
The English-language publications include over 200 newspapers 
worldwide and 400 other periodicals with WWW presence.  Searchable 
by title.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/14/95.]


 5> Professional writing:
 
    "In the real world, the right thing never happens
in the right place and the right time.  It is the job of 
journalists and historians to make it appear that it has."
-- Mark Twain.  [EFF Quotes Collection 9.0, comp.org.eff.talk, 
9/19/95.]

    If you'd like to be a technology reporter,
check out <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages
/Computer_Press_Association>.  [<72621.2222@compuserve.com>,
net-hap, 12/18/95.]

    UniScience News Net publishes science and research news
from American universities and freelance writers.  Headlines
and summaries are free; the full articles are for sale.  
<http://www.cyberstreet.com/unisci/>.  [Don Radler 
<unisci@supernet.net>, new-jour, 11/21/95.]

    Technical writers should get Janet Van Wicklen's
"The Tech Writing Game" (Facts on File Books, 1992, $22.95 
hardcover).  For a style guide, Strunk and White's 92-page 
treatise "can change your life."  Also useful: "The Elements
of Style" (Macmillan) and  William Zinsser's "On Writing Well" 
(Harper and Row, 1988).  For reference, get "The Chicago Manual
of Style," 14th edition (UChicago Press, $40).  (It's 200 pages 
longer than the previous edition.)  [M. Barnard <barnard@io.org>, 
misc.writing, 6/22/95.]

    Be wary of magazines such as The Writer and Writer's Digest 
for wanna-be's rather than professional writers.  You can
judge the intended audience by the advertising.  [Ibid.]

    For online reference works, try 
<www.cs.cmu.edu/web/references.html>: English and other
language dictionaries, acronym guides, thesauri, quotations, 
encyclopedias, maps, fact books, phone books, biographies,
and Internet resources.  [WEBster, 10/31/95.]

    Need the help of a professional writer?
Check out <http://www.bocklabs.wisc.edu/ims/writers.html>.  
[Sandra Bernstein, freelance, 8/14/95.]

    The Write Byte is a monthly computer newsletter for fiction 
and non-fiction writers.  "Written by professionals who are 
writers first and computists second so there's no technobabble."  
Free sample issues.  <http://www.milfac.co.uk/TWB>.  [T. Bruce 
Tober <octobersdad@crecon.demon.co.uk>, alt.journalism, 10/20/95.]

    (Tober was exposed to my .signature on the freelance 
discussion list; I guess he liked "computists."
It's been used by a defunct "Hardcore Computists" magazine
-- for software pirates, I think -- and in a few other mentions 
that Lycos can find.  Is it technobabble?)


 6> Computists' news:

    Mary Holstege says that the dawn of web publishing resembles 
the history of printing as presented in Daniel J. Boorstin's
"The Discoverers."  "From the attempts of the scribe's guild
to ban the printing press, through the production of books 
intentionally smudged to look like hand-made, through the 
standardization of language, the invention of modern authorship, 
the invention of indices and tables of contents -- no concept
of standard pagination before printing, so no index or TOC --
and the effect *that* had on scholarship, the democratization
of knowledge (and everything that led to, which is a lot)..."  
"Definitely recommended reading (or re-reading)."  
[<holstege@kset.com>, 1/4/96.]

    Dr. Charles L. Morefield, one of our volunteer reporters,
is getting a new net address.  (His wife, Linda, gave him
a home ethernet connection so that he can use his Golden Triangle 
Technology, Inc. domain name.)  Anyway, he's <clm@gtti.com> now.  
Chuck founded and later sold an aerospace company, and is now 
consulting in AI, NN, GA, and VR; doing government research 
contracts; and serving on a couple of boards.  He's also 
interested in technology investment.  Write to him if you'd
like his recent short story, "Microwar."  Coming soon: "Biowar," 
in Adobe Acrobat format.  [1/2/96.]

    Mark Kantrowitz, 28, is being awarded the Jefferson Medal
from the American Institute for Public Service, in recognition
of his Financial Aid Information Page for students.  This follows 
recognition as one of six 1995 Pittsburgh Outstanding Citizens.  
The comprehensive FinAid Page, <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user
/mkant/Public/FinAid/finaid.html>, was visited by over 100K people 
last year.  It includes the FastWEB searchable database of 180K 
scholarships, fellowships, grants, and loans; also EFC Estimator 
for your expected family contribution.  [<mkant@cs.cmu.edu>, 
1/4/96.]  (Mark also wrote the Prentice Hall Guide to Scholarships 
and Fellowships for Math and Science Students, maintains the AI 
FAQ, and circulates ai-jobs, lisp-jobs, prolog-jobs, and related 
lists.  I don't know how he has time to work on his PhD.)

					-- Ken


Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is
very important that you do it.  -- Mahatma Gandhi.
[Gek Meng Lim <gmlim@singnet.com.sg>, 12/94.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 4
 IS                                           January 11, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Economic policy.
 3>	Censorship and liability.
 4>	Electronic commerce.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Projects and conferences.
_________________________________________________________________

There is far more opportunity than there is ability.
-- Thomas A. Edison.
[Marvin P. Kraska <kraska@jobone.srl.ford.com>, 9/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    NSF-funded supercomputing centers at Cornell, UCSD,
UIUC, and UPittsburgh/CMU will soon be cultivating consortial 
arrangements among companies, state governments, universities
and federal agencies.  See <http://www.cise.nsf.gov/cise
/asc/ProgSol.html> for the program solicitation.
[Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/5/96, A23.  EDUPAGE.]

    The Burroughs Wellcome Fund supports scientific
exchange visits between the US and Britain or Ireland.
See <http://fairway.ecn.purdue.edu/bme/grants/bw3.html>
for travel grants; <.../bw1.html> for BW Postdoctoral
Research Fellowships for US scientists to train in the UK;
and <.../bw2.html> for a new initiative combining biological 
sciences and the physical/chemical/computational sciences.
[Frank Blanchard <fb@whitaker.org>,  ieee.general, 12/22/95.]

    Wolfram Research offers Visiting Scholar grants of up to
eight weeks at its corporate headquarters -- plus a free copy
of Mathematica -- to government/corporate researchers and 
university educators creating Mathematica-based courseware
or application packages.  2/15/96; Wolfram Research 
<grants@wri.com>, 100 Trade Center Drive, Champaign,
IL 61820-7237; 217-398-0700, 217-398-0747 Fax.
[Educom UPDATE, 1/2/96.]

    The Directory of Research Grants 1996 lists available grants 
in all subject areas, plus a new geographic index and an 
introduction to proposal writing.  $135.00 in North America.
ISBN 0-89774-877-8; Oryx Press, 4041 North Central Ave.,
Ste. 700, Phoenix, AZ 85012-3397; 1-800-279-6799, 1-800-279-4663 
Fax.  [Educom UPDATE, 1/2/96.]  (Check with your university
grants office.)


 2> Economic policy:

    India has gone from 7 to 130 software export companies
in the past five years (as of 3/31/95), with half of its revenue 
growth in the most recent year.  The $500M+ industry supports
over $100K programmers producing "rigorous, methodical, and
re-engineerable" code.  [Forbes ASAP, 12/4/95, p. 74.  EDUPAGE.]

    If you divide Gross Expenditures on R&D by Gross Domestic 
Product (GERD/GDP), you find Sweden with 3.12; Japan, 2.93;
US, 2.72; Germany, 2.48; France, 2.41; UK, 2.18, Canada, 1.58;
and Italy, 1.30.  [Re$earch Money, 12/20/95, p. 3.
Flash Information, 1/2/96.]  (The US could lead if only
it put more research money into finding better indices. :-)

    I'm not sure what "computer industry employment" entails,
but the NYT says total payrolls are $17.7B for CA, $4B for TX, 
$3.3B for MA, and $3B for NY.  [1/1/96, p. 34.  EDUPAGE.]

    Over 200 award-winning management articles from 100 academic 
journals can be searched at <http://www.mcb.co.uk/search.htm> 
("illustrative articles").  Abstracts of another 8K articles
are also searchable.  [Mathew Wills <mwills@mcb.co.uk>, newjour, 
1/2/96.]

    Infoseek (Santa Clara) has replaced its Net Search
with Infoseek Guide, which integrates Internet searching
and browsing of 1M web pages, 10K newsgroups, and FTP
and Gopher sites.  Searches can be performed within
a topical context (e.g., sports), and can be followed with
a "find similar" command.  Try it at <http://www.infoseek.com>
or <http://netscape.com/escapes/internet_search.html>.
[WEBster, 1/9/96.]

    US workers are commuting longer now, according to
the 1990 census.  Most leave home between 7:00 and 7:30
or in the following half hour, and more than half take
at least 20 minutes to get to work.  (Day-care shuttling
is a factor.)  Increasingly many people -- 51%, in one survey
-- are now more concerned about time off than getting more pay.  
[St. Petersburg Times, 12/18/95, p. 13.  NewtNews, 1/2/96.]

    With the recent blizzard, northern telecommunications services 
reported a 15% drop in high-speed corporate use of the Internet 
and an increase in conference calls (15%), long-distance calls 
(35%), residential calls (60%-100%), and home dial-up of AOL
and Internet services (60%).  [WSJ, 1/9/95, B1.  EDUPAGE.]

    The IIX Internet-related stock index has moved to 
<http://www.zdnet.com/~intweek/demohome/dfsindex.html>
and <.../~intweek/filters/main.html>, with companies
listed at <.../~intweek/demohome/coindex.html>.
Options (with a trend graph) are shown at 
<http://www.amex.com/options/iix.htm>, and latest values
at <http://www.hydra.com/interactive_week.html>.  (The amex
and hydra connections may be faster or more reliable than zdnet.)  
[Peter Ludemann <ludemann@expernet26.expernet.com>, 1/9/96.]

    Bill Gates says that the future of desktop computing
is the "personalized connected office" with advanced and
Internet-enabled applications (via ISDN), intelligent software 
assistants, project-centric workspaces, and speech recognition.  
IBM's Lou Gerstner sees network-centric computing
(via ATM connections to the Internet), easy-to-use products,
tiny storage devices, and wearable computers.  [PC Magazine, 
1/23/96, p. 31.  Flash Information, 1/2/96.]

    "Nanotechnology and Global Security" is a talk
by Admiral David E. Jeremiah, USN (Ret), former
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  It's at 
<http://nano.xerox.com/nanotech/nano4/jeremiahPaper.html>.
[Ralph Merkle <merkle@parc.xerox.com>, sci.nanotech, 12/22/95.  
Bill Park.]


 3> Censorship and liability:

    CompuServe is seeking a way to block sex newsgroups only
for German subscribers -- since German pornography laws may be 
violated -- but there are concerns from others that "every
country will now say we don't want any anti-government 
propaganda."  [WSJ, 1/5/95, B2.  EDUPAGE.]

    The US Supreme Court has rejected, without comment,
a constitutional challenge to a government ban on indecent
radio and TV programming during certain hours.  Challengers 
argued, inter alia, that the law would permit American audiences 
only programming fit for children.  [NYT, 1/9/96, A5.  EDUPAGE.]  
(Or programming only fit for children, which isn't quite
the same thing.  Barney, for instance.)

    The monthly Internet Law Journal covers current and
proposed laws regulating copyright and commerce on the net.
Just $12/year until 2/1/96 -- then $70 -- from 
<journal@net2.discnt.com> or 310-558-4233 Fax.
If you subscribe from <http://net.discnt.com/law>, check 
"newsgroup" as your referral source.  [c.i.www.misc, 1/2/96.]


 4> Electronic commerce:

    NetBiz Informer is a free weekly e-pub about making profits
on the Internet.  Marketing info and business services
are listed on <http://www.successpub.com/spc/netbiz/>.  
[<jreese@digital.net>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    Websites winning the 1995 Tenegra Awards for Internet 
Marketing Excellence are listed at <http://arganet.tenagra.com/>.  
[Scout Report, 12/15/95.]

    The CyberCash Secure Internet Payment Service (SIPS)
encrypts credit transactions with a 768-bit RSA encryption key
and a 56-bit DES key.  Mike Manfredi <mjm@img-inc.com>, Internet 
Marketing Group, Inc. (Vienna, VA), <http://www.img-inc.com>, 
703.242.3700,  703.242.3720 Fax.  [12/15/95.]

    Nathaniel Borenstein has written a "definitive statement"
of the lessons learned at First Virtual during its first full
year of operation.  Get <ftp://ftp.fv.com/pub/nsb/fv-austin.txt>
or <.../fv-austin.ps>.  (The latter is 14 pages plus a 30-page 
appendix.)  [<nsb+limbo@nsb.fv.com>, fv-users, 10/24/95.]

    E-cash from Mark Twain Bank (St. Louis) may be held in
US dollars or 25 other currencies.  E-cash may be deposited
or withdrawn over the net.  <http://www.marktwain.com>
or <ecash-info@marktwan.com>.  [Internet World, 1/96, p. 15.  
Flash Information, 12/18/95.]

    A Hudson Institute economist says that electronic money,
free from government regulations and currency control,
could force low tax rates if nations must rely on voluntary
tax compliance.  [IBD, 1/9/96, B1.  EDUPAGE.]  (An alternative
is that all e-cash transaction be required to pass through
an official bank or registry, subject to governmental approval
or review.)


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

NNelmos1: free NN simulation/visualization tool.

Expert systems for modeling and fault diagnosis.

1000-entry AI bibliography from Harlequin Inc.

MCL 3.0 kernel patch 2 beta for dynamic-recompilation emulators.

NeuroLab v1.2 for Windows and Mac: graphical NN library
for Extend simulation package.

Tableau Methods for Modal and Temporal Logics: draft chapter.

TD-Gammon: free championship backgammon for OS/2.

Richard's C++Robots Server: C++Robots and other play-by-email 
games.

Adaptive Analogue VLSI Neural Systems: book by Jabri,
Coggins, and Flower.

Consequence-Driven Systems: paperback book by Stevo Bozinovski.

FRED16/FREDSERV: conversational learning system and dialog server.

CELEX CD-ROM 2.5: German, English, and Dutch lexical database.

Japanese Text Processing CDROM: 662 PD and freeware programs
for DOS, Windows, and Unix, plus 800 Kahaner reports on
computing research and technology in Japan.

LyX 0.8.2: word processor for LaTeX2e.


 6> Projects and conferences:

    Nicolaas Mars is gathering materials associated with
the 1956 Summer Research Project in Artificial Intelligence, 
organized by John McCarthy and held at Dartmouth College.
Contact Mars if you have reports by participants,
or other documents.  <mars@cs.utwente.nl>.  [comp.ai,
12/20/96.  David Joslin.]

    The Free Software Foundation is sponsoring a Conference on 
Freely Redistributable Software, to be the first event bringing 
together developers of Gnu/Hurd, Linux, NetBSD, 386/BSD,
FreeBSD, Bison, Flex, Expect, Emacs, PERL, GCC, etc.
2/2/96-2/5/96, Cambridge, MA, <confinfo@gnu.ai.mit.edu>,
+1 617 542-5942, +1 617 542-2652 Fax.  [Peter H. Salus 
<peter@va.pubnix.com>, gnu-announce, 1/2/96.]

    The Cybernetics Society of Cambridge, MA, is hosting
a discussion of improbable research in cybernetics and artificial 
intelligence, by the editor of Annals of Improbable Research.
"A bare-knuckles free-for-all will follow."  1/10/96, 4pm; 
Cybersmith Cafe, Church Street, Harvard Square.  [mini-AIR, 1/96.]  
(Although improbable, the issue is dated January 1995.)

    The Pacific Northwest Software Quality Conference
is soliciting nominations for its annual $1000 Award
for Software Excellence by software practitioners from
British Columbia, ID, OR, or WA.  Winners must present
a paper sharing their software engineering methods.  2/29/96; 
Howard Mercier <howard_mercier@intersolv.com>, 503/690-4208.  
[Rick Clements <rickcl@bronze.wv.tek.com>, or.general, 1/8/96.  
David Joslin.]  (If you live somewhere else, you might look for
-- or organize -- some other group willing to sponsor an award.)

    LEGO and the MIT Media Lab are sponsoring a Visual Programming 
Challenge at the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages,
Boulder, CO, 9/3 to 9/6/96.  You must present a paper on your
use of a visual language for a "Programmable Brick" (containing
a processor on one of Fred Martin's Handy Boards) controlling
a LEGO vehicle.  Tasks have not been determined, but see the 
preliminary rules at <http://soglio.colorado.edu/Web/vl96.html>
or contact Allen Ambler <ambler@eecs.ukans.edu>.  [Judith G. Hayes 
<hays@gold.cs.orst.edu>, comp.constraints, 1/5/96.  David Joslin.]

    Computer Pages needs a computer book/software reviewer,
for 200-350 words per review.  You get to keep the product.  
Douglas Fuchs <douglasf@efn.org>.  [eug.games, 1/2/96.
David Joslin.]  (If that job is taken, contact your favorite 
newspapers, magazines, and e-zines.  Especially the ones that 
don't already have review columns.)

					-- Ken


I cannot imagine mastering the skills involved here without
a clearer understanding of who is going to be impressed.
-- Calvin (failing to master a yo-yo.)
[Dave Weber <weber@young.ece.cmu.edu>, 11/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 5
 IS                                           January 16, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Career jobs
 3>	Job services
 4>	Career advice
 5>	Entrepreneurship
_________________________________________________________________

Good ideas are not adopted automatically.
They must be driven into practice with courageous patience.
-- Admiral Hyman Rickover.  [AWAD, 1/8/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Electronic publishing:

    CD-ROM software sales reached $292M in 2nd Qtr 1995 --
more than twice the same period in 1994 -- and 71% of the
CD ROMs were Windows-compatible products.  Business products
were the revenue leaders -- due to high margins -- even though 
entertainment titles had higher sales.  Home-education sales
were up 136% in the first half (over the previous year).
[Heller Report, 1/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    CyberMom Dot Com is an e-zine laid out as a house:
family room for travel ideas; kitchen for recipes
(and household hints in the broom closet); playroom for kids;
back porch for chat; bedroom for novels and journals;
powder room and medicine chest for health and beauty tips;
address book for links to other sites; and attic for "old stuff."  
Also Dad, who may pop up anywhere.  <http://www.thecybermom.com/>.  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/14/95.]

    Vivian Neou's list of Internet mailing lists -- originally 
Rich Zellich's list -- is now available for online search
at <http://catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html>,
or for full FTP at <ftp://sri.com/netinfo/interest-groups.txt>
or via mail-server@sri.com.  She has also written
the "Internet Mailing Lists Navigator" book and CD-ROM
(Prentice Hall, 1995, ISBN 0-13-193988-2).  [NEW-LIST, 12/12/95.]

    Many online newsletters and e-zines are listed
on <http://www.merak.com/~tkuipers/elists/elists.htm>.
[EDUPAGE, 12/20/95.]

    The searchable Catalog of Electronic Journals has
over 1,800 entries, most with descriptions, prices, and URLs
for more info.  <http://www.edoc.com/ejournal/>.
[Scout Report, 12/15/95.]

    Internet Daily News claims 25K daily readers,
shortly after its pre-Christmas debut.  You can list
your business or classified ad in its Etc. section.  
<http://tvp.com/idn/>.  [William Stanek <william@aloha.com>, 
1/2/96.]

    Finesse Marketplace Journal is an advertising-supported
e-journal for the business community and computer-literate 
consumers.  <http://www.fingraphics.com>.  [Leon Fainbuch 
<webmaster@fingraphics.com>, newjour, 11/22/95.]

    Online User is an e-magazine for computer-based
information workers and decision-makers.  
<http://www.onlineinc.com/online/index.html>.
[newjour, 12/4/95.]

    I've found Alan Gatlin's weekly Network News newsletter
a surprisingly useful source of resource leads.
Contact <network-news@lists.primenet.com> or see 
<http://www.primenet.com/~gatlina>.  An HTML version
is on <http://www.primenet.com/~florin/nws_curr.htm>.  
[<gatlina@primenet.com>, 1/6/96.]


 2> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Harvard (Cambridge, MA): junior faculty member in CS.

UMaryland Inst. for Adv. Computer Studies (UMIACS):
postdocs for video indexing, NLP, and neural modeling.

UMaryland/Linguistics and UMIACS (College Park):
computational linguistics faculty member.

Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA): tenure-track professors
in CS and computer engineering.

Defense contractor (Denver): BS Sr. software development
engineers in AI, C3I, robotics, image processing, etc.

University of Durham (UK): 1 lecturer and 6 RAs in speech
and language processing.

UAngers (France): postes en informatique.

EPFL/Database Laboratory (Lausanne, Switzerland):
1-year postdoc in visual interfaces to GIS.

UTuebingen (Germany): computational linguist in
lexical semantics and lexicography.


 3> Job services:

    Internet Business Network (10/95) evaluated over 500 
employment-related sites.  One of the best was JobCenter, 
<http://www.jobcenter.com>, <info@jobcenter.com>,
1-800-JOBCENTER, 315-673-0122.  You can post your resume
at <http://www.jobcenter.com/jol/post/resume.htm>,
for email notification of daily job matches.  [12/27/95.]

    CareerSite is a comprehensive job and blind resume service 
from Virtual Resources (Ann Arbor).  <http://www.careersite.com>.  
[Bill Cavnar <wcavnar@sojourn.com>, 1/9/96.]  (Bill helped
develop their concept-based search software.)

    Three of the best jobs services are: Online Career Center, 
<http://www.occ.com/occ/>; CareerMosaic J.O.B.S. (North America), 
<http://www.careermosaic.com:80/cgi-bin/rotate-jobs.pl>;
and Science Global Career Network (from Science magazine), 
<http://www.edoc.com/sgcn/>.  [Frank Blanchard <fb@whitaker.org>,  
ieee.general, 12/22/95.]

    Help Wanted-USA posts 11K job ads each week.  
<http://amsquare.com/america/starknsa.html>.  
[<starknsa@intellinet.com>, net-hap, 10/27/95.]

    JobBank USA has listings for over 300 employment sites,
plus a resume database.  <http://www.jobbankusa.com>.  
[<webmaster@jobbankusa.com>, 11/24/95.]

    JobWeb links to over 400 of the richest job- and career-
related resources on the Internet, including company profiles.  
<http://www.jobweb.org>.  [<michael@jobweb.org>, net-hap, 
12/28/95.]

    The J. Edgar & Associates Careers Page,
<http://www.the-wire.com/careers>, offers information-technology 
and engineering opportunities in Canada and Northeastern US.  
[<careers@the-wire.com>, net-hap, 10/18/95.]

    The Senior Staff is a job bank for US workers over 50.
Many part-time jobs.  <http://srstaff.com/>, 408/371-9064, 
408/371-3255 Fax.  [Marian Gallagher <moose@ccnet.com>, 
c.i.www.announce, 12/11/95.  net-hap.]  (Expanding, but
currently limited to the San Franciso Bay Area.)

    The Virtual Global College offers educational support 
materials and career guidance.  <http://wn.apc.org
/~pwest/vgc-wel.htm>.  [Paul West <pwest@wn.apc.org>,
DEOS-L, 12/22/95.  net-hap.]

    Federal Jobs Central has been matching people with
federal jobs for over twenty years.  <http://www.fedjobs.com>.  
[<tjc@interramp.com>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    Telecommuting jobs (and resumes) are listed free
at <http://www.cisc.com/tele.html>.  "We will shoot anybody
who places get-rich-quick junk on our site."  [Andrew Smith 
<smitha@qucis.queensu.ca>, c.i.www.announce, 12/4/95.  net-hap.]

    For 1000 firms currently hiring home workers and
telecommuters worldwide, see <http://rio.atlantic.net/~mode/jobs>.  
[James P. Morgan <database@freenet.tlh.fl.us>, comp.infosystems, 
12/16/95.  net-hap.]

    Commonwealth Jobsearch covers immigration, job finding,
and resettlement services for Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.  
<http://www.corpinfohub.com/cjs.htm>.  [net-hap, 10/31/95.]

    If you need help finding a headhunter, check with IPA:
an online association of over 1,200 employment recruiters
and agencies.  <http://www.ipa.com/ipa/>.  [Bill Vick 
<billvick@ipa.com>, net-hap, 10/27/95.]

    The Directory of Masters 1995 lists individual experts 
prepared to take on long-term apprentices.  
<http://www.worldserver.pipex.com/nc/ISI/master.html>.
Published by the Apprentice Master Alliance.
[<rhino@bbcnc.org>, net-hap, 11/13/95.]
(I've always had a fondness for apprenticeship jobs.
There's such a feeling of community and continuity.)

    The Information Technology Vendors' Executives Mailing List 
and Database lists over 15K senior executives at 12K firms.
Other lists of telemarketing prospects are available.  
<http://users.aol.com/mentorms>.  [<mentorms@gnn.com>,
net-hap, 10/30/95.]

    (A rule of thumb is that if you mail to 1K executives --
and demonstrate good communication ability and attitude  --
you can hope for 20 interviews and maybe four or five job offers.  
Try again two weeks later and you'll get an entirely different
20 prospects.  If you're handicapped in some way, contact
2K or 3K executives.  Postage is expensive, but a reasonable 
investment.  Your percentages increase if you call first
to verify addresses and job titles, and call afterward
to "ask if your letter was received" and seek referrals.)


 4> Career advice:

    As the economy heats up, information systems managers
are finding it much easier to job-hop.  [IW, 11/20/95, p. 208.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Mail-order computer programming schools generate complaints 
about advertising, accreditation, refund policies, or delivery
of damaged PCs.  Only 2% of surveyed companies in one study
had hired a correspondence school graduate -- although 58% said
they would consider it -- and 60% required a 4-year college 
degree.  [Computerworld, 12/11/95, p. 109.  EDUPAGE.]

    WOMEN20S covers issues for women in their 20s.
Send a "subscribe women20s your name" message to 
<listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>.  [Florence Wong 
<wongf@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>, NEW-LIST, 12/11/95.]

    The FEM-BIBLIO discussion of books relating to women
and/or spirituality has moved.  Send a "subscribe fem-biblio" 
message to <majordomo@jpunix.com>, or ask Kimberly Long 
<klong@phoenix.net> about the book currently under discussion.  
[NEW-LIST, 10/30/95.]

    WISDOM AT WORK is a discussion list for people seeking
to integrate spirituality into our work and organizations.  
Postings will include Let Davidson's consciousness-raising
columns and his Perennial Philosophy "core unitive wisdom
of the world's great spiritual traditions."  Send a
"subscribe wisdom_at_work" message to <majordomo@rbai.com>.  
[Philip A. Kratzer <phil@bizcenter.com>, net-hap, 12/14/95.]

    DISGRUNTLED is a new magazine about the darker side of
the world of work.  Horror stories and amusing memos are 
solicited.  (So are stories about how you coped or got even.)  
<http://www.disgruntled.com>, or contact <subscribe
@disgruntled.com> for an e-newsletter.  [Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, 1/11/96.]

    Losers Magazine is an e-pub for people who would
like to be winners, but don't know how, or what to do.  
<http://www.lawmall.com/losersmag>.  [Carl Person 
<carlpers@ix.netcom.com>, net-hap, 10/26/95.]
(I don't think Person is selling a particular scheme.
He's a NYC "theft of idea" attorney who also runs
a law-oriented mall, <website http://www.lawmall.com/lawmall>.)


 5> Entrepreneurship:

    Entrepreneur's Law Center covers capital formation,
securities laws, and franchise and corporate law.  
<http://www.axxs.com/lawctr.htm>.  [Network News, 12/16/95.]

    Entrepreneurial Magazine is an e-zine about successful 
entrepreneurs, growth strategies, marketing, management, 
communication, and global trends in business.  
<http://www.edgeonline.com/edge/edgemag.htm>.  
[<edgeonline@webcommerce.com>, newjour, 10/26/95.]

    A classified listing of Internet businesses can be found
on <http:///www-edin.easynet.co.uk/internetwork>.
Home publishing, mail-order magazines, import/export,
MLM and network marketing, etc.  [<colinusher@easynet.co.uk>,
net-hap, 10/30/95.]    

    BizOpList, for business opportunities, has moved.
Currently less than 6 announcements/day.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE" 
message to <bizbot@web-star.com>.  [Howard Barton <syscon
@web-star.com>, NEW-LIST, 12/7/95.]

    Another entrepreneurial mutual support group and resource 
center is being started by Lyle Richardson <ler110@psu.edu>.
No multilevel marketing (MLM).  [misc.entrepreneurs, 12/14/95.]

    The International Small Business Consortium (ISBC)
runs a registry for matching businesses with distributors,
agents, and representatives.  <http://www.isbc.com/>.  
[<nbaker@ionet.net>, net-hap, 12/13/95.]

    The Network Journal gives business and management tips
for African American professionals and small, emerging business 
owners.  <http://www.tnj.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
net-hap, 1/3/96.]

    "The Black Entrepreneur" is a newsletter where black
business owners can share their experiences.  Lamar D. Whatley I 
<ywmb42b@prodigy.com>.  [soc.culture.african.american, 12/13/95.]

    Hispanics in technical disciplines may want MAES National 
Magazine, from the Society of Mexican American Engineers
and Scientists.  <http://www.tamu.edu/maes/magazine/>.  [Keith
A. Marrocco <keith@loony-toons.tamu.edu>, new-jour, 11/6/95.]

    "EUROPAGES: The European Business Directory" lists 150K 
suppliers plus economic and business analyses.  Multilingual
CD ROM demo, with Acrobat formatting.  <http://www.europages.com>.  
[<chloe@europages.com>, net-hap, 11/19/95.]

    China Business Corner lists business contacts
and opportunities.  <http://206.31.83.175/cbc/welcome.htm>.  
[<gzgqshng@pub.gz.gdpta.net.cn>, net-hap, 12/26/95.]

    Trade and business information for Hong Kong
and Mainland China can be found on <http://www.tdc.org.hk>.  
[<itsd@tdc.org.hk>, net-hap, 12/28/95.]

    Resources in Russia and Eastern Europe are listed
at <http://www.indiana.edu/~reeiweb/>, including employment
and study abroad.  [<kgregson@indiana.edu>, net-hap, 12/28/95.]

    Scambusters is a list about the scam artists who infest the 
Internet.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE" message to <scambusters@ajl.com>.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com, 1/7/96.]

					-- Ken


Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance
to work hard at work worth doing.  -- Theodore Roosevelt.
[Paul Beard <beardp@tridom.com>, QOTD, 1/14/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Date: Thu 18 Jan 96 01:04:27-PST
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.06
To: ;@Charter_Computists
Message-ID: <821955867.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 6
 IS                                           January 18, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Industry news.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Home/office dream systems.
_________________________________________________________________

Politics consists in the art of taking votes from the poor
and money from the rich under the pretext of protecting
each from the other.  -- anonymous.  [EFF Quotes 9.0, 9/19/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    NSF is again open for business, as of 1/11/96, but no doubt 
swamped with incoming proposals.  Review panels have had to be 
canceled, and can't be rescheduled beyond the current continuing 
resolution.  Mail review could be used, but requires more work 
than panel review.  Expect delays in award announcements
this year, and perhaps even cuts in the number of new awards.
The NSF system has been fairly finely tuned to keep workers 
maximally busy during most of the year, and will have great 
difficulty accommodating these delays.  (Being a government 
agency, they can't just hire more help to handle the workload
-- even if training weren't a problem.)

    Robert L. Park reports a new "cherry picking" element to
the Congressional budget war this year.  NIH -- championed
by powerful John Porter (R-IL) -- has received a continuing 
resolution for $11.9B, 5.7% over last year.  NSF has no enemies, 
but no powerful champions.  [WHAT'S NEW, 1/12/96.]  (Science
would be different if it weren't funded by NSF, but would it
be worse?)

    GRANTWRITER-L is a new list about funding development,
grants, and scholarships.  Send a "subscribe grantwriter-l
your name" message to <majordomo@fallingrock.com>.
[Stephen Williamson <gwaol@atlanta.com>, comp.edu, 1/2/96.]


 2> Industry news:

    Taligent will become a wholly owned object technology 
development center for IBM, and its frameworks will likely
be merged with OpenDoc.  [NewtNews, 1/2/96.]

    Oracle plans to ship a $500 "Internet PC" in 3/96.
The computer will hook up to a TV or PC monitor.  Manufacturing 
costs are $100 for 4MB RAM, $30 for a microprocessor, and under 
$70 for keyboard, mouse, case, and other components.
[WSJ, 1/11/96, B2.  EDUPAGE.]

    A source that Guy Kawasaki must keep anonymous says his 
company found 7%, 17%, and 27.5% of PCs purchased from certain 
large mail-order companies had to be repaired or returned on 
arrival.  IBM and Compaq machines had less than 3% dead on 
arrival, and only 0.8% of Apple computers had such problems.  
(Each statistic represents more than 100 machines.)
[MacWay, 1/4/96.]  (And company surveys continue to find
that employees prefer Macs.)

    Apple's $68M loss in the last quarter may result in 25%
of its work force being laid off.  [IBD, 1/12/96, A5.  EDUPAGE.]  
(The loss was mostly from cutting prices and then being unable
to satisfy demand.  Apple will refocus on high-end design, leaving 
low-end competition to clone makers such as Power Computing Corp.)

    My wife tells me that Apple laid off 1/8 of its work force 
today.  However, I also hear from Apple that three times as many 
people/companies applied in 1st Qtr to be Apple developers
as in the previous same quarter, and that reactivations of 
developer status doubled.  [Guy Kawasaki <kawasaki@eworld.com>, 
MacWay, 1/17/96.]  (Maybe Apple will finally get smart
and support small developers instead of trying to do it all
in-house or via Claris, Microsoft, and the other usual suspects.  
There might even be a role for university R&D.  As Bill Joy said, 
"Most of the bright people don't work for you, no matter who you 
are.  You need a strategy that allows for innovation occurring 
elsewhere.")


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

CPSim 1.0s: high-performance discrete event simulation tool.

Engineering Assist: integrated engineering math/graphics 
environment.

Neural Networks for Speech and Sequence Recognition:
book by Yoshua Bengio.

MINIBOT: robot kit for $139.95 from the Rockies Robotics Group.

EZ-DSP: low-cost DSP and microcontroller boards.

3D Printer from BPM Technology: desktop prototyping system.

Roaster: Java development environment for Mac.

SlipKnot 1.13: browser for shell accounts, available by email.

WinPack Deluxe .95: file unpacker and compression utility.

Vivid Business Plan 1.1: business plan construction aid.

Shareware Installer 1.5: installation program for DOS/Windows 
software.

Shareware Management & Marketing System 2.0: programmer's 
database, etc.

Skeleton Storefront Kit and Mall Kit: shopping-cart website 
development.

Web Server Developer CD-ROM: Unix, Mac, Windows, NT,
and OS/2 files.

MacBird: Java-compatible script-based graphic UI designer
for the Mac.


 4> Home/office dream systems:

    I've been pricing new computers, and I'm very impressed
with Power Computing's Mac clones.  They were designed with
the help of Apple engineers, and reviewers say they're 100%
Mac-compatible.  You can order from Power Computing
at 1-800-370-7693, or from Computer City stores, MacMall,
or (soon?) MacZone.  MacMall is probably dropping the 601-based 
Power 100, but offers a good selection of Power 120s starting at 
$1399 for 8MB RAM, 256KB level-2 cache, 3 NuBus slots, Ethernet, 
keyboard, and mouse.  You can add about $150 for a 540MB drive, 
$250 for 850MB, $650 for 1GB, or $850 for 2GB; $300 for each 
additional 8MB SIMM; $330 for an internal 4X CD ROM drive;
$180 for an internal Zip drive; and $250 for a 2MB video card 
(millions of colors on a 17" monitor) or $350 for 4MB
(for 21" monitor).  You can choose a "Baby AT" desktop case,
or a tower model (sometimes $100 extra) that has more room
but awkward internal arrangement.  All systems come with 
impressive software bundles (about $900 list) including
Now Utilities, Now Contact, Now Up-to-Date, Quicken,
Claris Works, Nisus Writer, etc.  Shipping is typically $20,
and all but MacZone charge CA tax.  30-day money-back guarantee
in addition to a one-year limited warranty and toll-free
lifetime technical support.

    The newer PowerWave 604/120 16MB/1GB starts at $3195
including 4X CD-ROM drive.  Since a 66MHz RISC-based Mac
is equivalent to about a 100MHz Pentium, the $4995 604/150
(at 150MHz) must really fly.  (For video work, though,
you'd probably want an Apple Macintosh or a high-end clone.
One brand even has four CPUs working in parallel.)
The PowerWave has a 10MHz internal SCSI bus and 33MHz PCI 
channels.  You can add NuBus slots if you need to use
your existing cards, but your old SIMMs won't be of use.
(The new models use 64-bit dual in-line memory modules.  
Additional DIMMs are 10%-15% faster when installed in pairs,
but it's not mandatory.)  You can effectively double your RAM
with RAM Doubler, gain even better dynamic memory management
with RAM Charger, and double the processor's effective speed
on many tasks with Speed Doubler -- all for about $120
from MacZone.  The software bundle includes FWB CD-ROM Toolkit, 
which can cache directory information to speed up your CD ROM 
drive.

    Power Computing's 601/PCI-based PowerCurve 120 8MB/850MB 
announced this week is still awaiting FCC approval, but will
sell in a few weeks for about $1850 in a low-profile 140-watt 
version or $1950 in the 200-watt desktop case.  (The latter
has more space for internal drives and more expansion slots.)  
This is the machine I'd like! -- although the 120 would also
be great (and Apple is dropping the price on its Power Mac 7200
by adding discounts for Apple monitors and printers).  Reports 
differ on whether the PowerCurve's slots are all PCI or half
PCI and half NuBus; it may be optional.  MacMall is also 
advertising 1MB VRAM -- expandable to 4MB -- whereas Power 
Computing is advertising 2MB VRAM.  Level-2 cache costs $250 
extra, for a 10%-15% speed increase.  (Cache can be increased
to 512KB or 1MB, but with little likely benefit.)  Like the
Power PC Macs, these machines will be many times faster
than Quadras -- and inexpensive PCI cards could boost them 
further.  Power Computing even put the CPU on a daughter board
to simplify upgrades.

    If all of this is confusing, drop by the Power Computing 
website at <http://www.powercc.com>.  They have FAQ files
and a "Build Your Own Box" configurator that lets you explore
the cost of different options.  (There isn't much info on
the PowerCurve yet, and I'm not sure all of it is accurate.)  
Their phone support is also excellent.  Or you can retrieve
files and reach an online evangelist via <info@info.powercc.com>.

    MacMall charges $290 for a 14" monitor or $370 for 15",
plus about $20 shipping.  Power Computing offers a $20-cheaper
Zip drive, various Sony speakers, and a wider choice of monitors 
and other options.  I prefer a Sony monitor, since they 
consistently get top scores for image quality and brightness.  
(Individual monitors can vary, though, particularly in uniformity 
of color balance on a white screen.  It's best to try before
you buy.)  NEC monitors are also very good.  ViewSonic
and Apple offer good multisync monitors with built-in speakers.
A 15" monitor is sufficient for most home/office work,
especially since good multisync versions can display the same 
desktop area as a typical 17" monitor -- somewhat more cramped,
of course.  Sony's new 15sx (successor to the 15sf) is about $450; 
the 15sf II with digital controls is about $520.  Both are
Plug-and-Play, for use with Windows 95.  Power Computing CPUs
have both Mac and SVGA ports, so you can run any monitor
without a Mac converter.  (Otherwise you need a $15 Apple 
universal adapter or a $35 Liberty adapter.  The Apple version 
uses a DIP switch instead of a convenient rotary dial
to change monitor resolution, but is said to work better
with PowerBooks.  It's often bundled with monitors sold by
Mac stores, so beware of buying the adapter if you don't need it.  
I believe NEC offers a free adapter, but you have to send for it.)

    Adding speakers may be a cheap way to get a stereo system
into your bedroom.  (You can patch in a radio or other source.  
You'll need to have your computer on to play music CDs on its
CD ROM drive -- if that's even supported.)  I recommend Jenson, 
Advent, or Yamaha speakers instead of the Sony speakers available 
from Power Computing -- or maybe a Koss Soundworks system with 
subwoofer.  The better-sounding speakers tend to be rather large.  
(AppleDesign speakers are small and cute and have a headphone jack 
on the front, but have no tone controls and mediocre sound.)  
Yamaha offers a popular YST SS1010 package with 10-watt
stereo speakers and a 25-watt subwoofer for under $220.
(It has separate controls on the main speakers and the subwoofer.
The speakers are smart enough to shut off when there's no input 
signal.  The Koss speakers have no knobs, so there's no choice
but to adjust volume at the sound source.)

    A 28.8bps modem is best for web browsing, unless you
can afford ISDN.  External modems are preferred so that you
can see the panel lights while debugging and cursing.
US Robotics Couriers are great, but too expensive.
The Motorola Power is probably second-best in terms of
connection reliability, although I've heard Penril mentioned
for highest throughput over noisy lines.  Most buyers would
choose the Motorola Lifestyle, which is about $60 cheaper than
the Power 28.8.  (The Lifestyle lacks "distinctive ring" 
recognition for taking voice, data, and fax calls on one line,
and isn't field-upgradeable via flash ROM.)  Motorola's fax 
software is weak, but other fax software is available with 
communications programs such as MicroPhone II.  The SupraFAXmodem 
is another good, feature-laden v.34 modem that's very popular.
It costs less and has a nice display showing connection speed,
but often makes slower connections.  The US Robotics 
Sportster/Mac&Fax is also very popular, and is sometimes 
recommended as a best buy.  Any type of modem may have trouble 
with certain conditions or brands, so it's best to try before
you buy (or at least ask your Internet service provider).

    What else should a dream system have?  A color scanner
and printer would be nice.  I have a DeskWriter 550C printer 
that's good for spot color or small projects.  (As with any 
printer, use slick paper if you want really bright color.)
Ink cartridges are expensive, but you can get cheap refill kits.  
I haven't tried flatbed scanners, but it would be hard to
go wrong with an Epson 1000, La Cie SilverScanner DTP,
HP ScanJet 4c, or Relisys Reli4830-T.  They come with mid-level 
photo and OCR software that can be upgraded at reasonable cost.  
Look for built-in transparency scanning if that's important to 
you; adapters may cost over $600.  Hand-held scanners have gone 
out of fashion, but could be useful with a PowerBook.
There's a new $265 DataPen that scans in one line of text
at a time, but it doesn't do illustrations.  Sheet-feeding 
scanners are also available, but I wouldn't want one as my
only input source (except when traveling).

    Many people are into pressure-sensitive drawing tablets, 
digital cameras, video capture and VCR output, sound editing,
or MIDI controllers.  I'll pass, although the computers above
are powerful enough for nearly all such tasks.  They'll even run 
Windows software, and come with a time-limited version of the 
SoftWindows emulator.  One can now buy a hell of a home/office 
computing system for under $4K.  (That's always been true,
but the standards have advanced.)  Now I just wish software
prices would come down!

    Incidentally, sales reps at stores and catalog houses
are authorized to negotiate prices.  That's especially true
if they give their business cards or want you to ask for them
by name -- then you know they're on commission.  They may drop
the price of an expensive item to match what you can get locally, 
or even to what you're willing to pay.  Returns are easier at
a local store, but most Mac users have gotten used to buying
from catalogs to get the best selection and prices
(with overnight or 2-day shipping).  MacMall, MacZone,
Computer Discount Warehouse (CDW), and DirectWare are generally 
cheapest; I find MacWarehouse, PC/Mac Connection, TigerDirect,
and the smaller operations less attractive.  (PC/Mac Connection 
advertises cross-platform products that are rare in other
Mac catalogs, but CDW carries the same products.  TigerDirect
is targeted at executives, often with prices to match.
Specialty catalogs exist for data communications, graphic arts, 
and education, but the products aren't any cheaper.)  Discount 
prices advertised in the back of MacUser and Macworld are often 
cash prices, and somewhat dangerous.

    I just bought a modem from CDW, which claims to carry
20K products.  They not only gave me the best price (even with 
$9.61 shipping), but they sent a new-customer coupon
that waives shipping charges on my next purchase.  That could
be $40 if I bought a monitor and speakers.  They don't quite
get it, though: they also sent me a free copy of their book
"Field Guide to Microsoft Windows 95." :-)

					-- Ken


Yet being right, as we've seen so often before, isn't enough
when you're facing ruthless competition.  Sadly, your average 
David gets pummeled by your average Goliath.  -- Dan Gillmore, 
SJM, 1/7/96, 1F.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 7
 IS                                           January 23, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Science policy.
 2>	Privacy and security.
 3>	Industry news.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Hardware updates.
 6>	Internet culture.
_________________________________________________________________

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do.  -- Voltaire.  
[AWAD, 5/8/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    The SIFT filters haven't been running for weeks, as was
also true last January.  I checked into the Newsweeder service, 
but it's not quite ready for public use.  I'm getting as much
news as I can handle, but I feel guilty about all that
I'm missing! :-)


 1> Science policy:

    R&D spending by US companies is expected to increase by 6%
in 1996 -- 10% in high-tech industries -- the first increase
since 1990.  [Inside R&D, 1/3/96, p. 2; and Research Technology 
Management, 39 (1), pp. 15-17.  Flash Information, 1/17/96.]

    American Physical Society officers are urging members to
push for NSF funding.  The current resolution runs out again
on 1/26/96.  House freshmen want more "cherry picking," but
the Senate is not enthusiastic and the President won't sign
such bills.  Congress is without a strategy, and the public
is getting bored.  NSF Director Neal Lane has said that there
has been a "stony silence" from universities and industry
about NSF -- and that Washington has noticed.  Meanwhile,
Japan has announced a 7% increase in R&D spending next year.  
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 1/19/96.]

    Not to worry: we can find research funds by dowsing.  
Smithsonian Magazine has just published a credulous 7-page
article on the subject, with mild skepticism only in 1.5 inches
of text.  Dowsing applications include choosing medications
and deciding which ads to answer.  "One editor has defended
the article, saying readers would not take it seriously."
James "The Amazing" Randi takes it seriously, though.  Dowsers
are still passing around a favorable 12/79 New Scientist article, 
without the discrediting evidence that was delayed for two years 
and then published in summary on a back page.  Randi is offering 
his $500K prize to any dowser who can perform under
controlled conditions.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 1/19/96;
and randi-hotline, 1/18/96.]  (You might want to express
your opinion to The Editor, Smithsonian, 900 Jefferson Drive, 
Washington, DC 20560.)


 2> Privacy and security:

    The US government has closed its 28-month
grand jury investigation of Philip Zimmermann.  His PGP
("pretty good privacy") encryption software was posted
to the net (by someone else) just as Congress was considering 
stronger export controls.  "This decision... doesn't mean the 
Internet is now free for export."  [WSJ, 1/12/96, B2.  EDUPAGE.]

    The US has also agreed to let Lotus include stronger 
encryption in the international version of its Notes program.
The government can break the encryption "in extreme 
circumstances."  [SJM, 1/18/96, 1C.]

    Philip Zimmermann's PGPfone scrambles calls made through
a modem.  Intelligible, but not high-quality speech.  
<http://web.mit.edu/network/pgpfone/>.  [Popular Science,
1/96, p. 43.  EDUPAGE.]

    <http://www.psycom.net/iwar.1.html> is devoted to
military and civilian information warfare (I-war, Cyberwar),
both aggressive and defensive.  [<psydoc@psycom.net>, net-hap, 
1/6/95.]

    I just saw a tech report on CBS news.  Police in Redwood City 
are testing a network of street-mounted sensors that can locate 
gunfire in near real-time to within a few feet.  This will help 
police respond quickly to reports of firearm use.  The system
was developed by a computer scientist.  [1/17/96.]


 3> Industry news:

    One outplacement firm says Apple's 1,300 layoffs are only
the 10th largest in the computer industry since 1993.  Apple
laid off 2,500 in 7/93, and IBM released 63K that same month.  
[NewsBytes.  Bill Park, 1/18/96.]

    A local recruiter says that HP has 1,000 open positions
for quality people, and Applied Materials has 1,600.  Many
of those are temp positions, I suppose, but laid-off Apple 
employees are not expecting to be unemployed for long.  [1/18/96.]

    Santa Clara County may reach pre-recession job level
this year, with many of the new jobs in software or serving
the semiconductor industry.  (Defense/aerospace is still losing 
workers, as are computer/communications companies and bioscience.)  
Companies that sell overseas are doing particularly well,
with exports tripled since 1987.  Lawyers, consultants, 
engineering firms, contract manufacturers, and over 9K more
1-person businesses than in 1988 have helped replace most of
the 40K jobs lost by Lockheed and FMC.  Silicon Valley wages
are the highest in the nation -- about $38K average,
vs. $30K for CA and $27K for the US.  Oakland, San Francisco,
and four other CA cities rank in the top 15.  Housing
is expensive, though.  [Scott Thurm, SJM, 1/15/96, 1E.
Also 1/18/96, 1C.]  (Lockheed Martin's Sunnyvale plant
now has about 400 openings, and I've seen a very long list
of openings at Sun Microsystems.)

    The layoffs at Apple were just 1,300 -- only half in the US
-- from a work force of 16,000.  The number of contractors
appears unchanged, and the Newton Systems Group is actually 
growing.  [Anon., 1/18/96.]  (Apple blamed a price war in Japan, 
in part.  It has announced that there will be even bigger losses 
to come, but the stock price barely fell.  Investors are hoping 
for a buyout, but Apple is currently asking more than suitors
are willing to pay.)

    About your average David getting pummeled by your average 
Goliath, Doug Fraser notes that smart Davids will form alliances 
with their Goliaths, offering cross-licensed products or services 
to new niches.  "A nimble, above-average David gets Goliath
to roll a few boulders around."  [<dwf@apian.att.com>, 1/18/96.]
    
    (Every manufacturer knows that his or her products will
soon be obsolete.  If you have patents on a next-generation 
replacement, the manufacturer will be eager to talk business.  
Incremental advances to existing products are a quick way
to licensing income.)


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

FX Palo Alto Laboratory: MS/PhD hackers and scientists in IR,
NLP, KR, reasoning, ML, HCI, networking, multimedia, mobile 
computing, workflow, etc., for agent-based office systems R&D.  
"Revolutionize the very notion of a document."

    (FXPAL is a new US research organization from
    Fuji Xerox, and will work closely with Xerox PARC.)

UDelaware: tenure-track positions in AI (planning, multi-agent 
systems, ML, KR,  and automated reasoning) and in Systems.

Oregon State University: tenure-track CS professors,
4/96 or 9/96.

Florida Institute of Technology: CS faculty position
in DB, OS, or SE.

United Technologies Research Center (UTRC; East Hartford, CT):
PhD for data mining R&D (model-based reasoning, KBS) in
embedded diagnostics and remote monitoring.

Blackboard Technology Group (Amherst, MA): BS/MS CL/CLOS
staff programmer.

IT Institute, USalford (UK): MS/PhD RA in semi-automatic 
generation of chemical plant operating procedures.

ContreNet (Dublin): PhD senior R&D engineers
in speech recognition or linguistics.

Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research/Center for 
Adaptive Behavior and Cognition (Munich): 1-year pre- and 
postdoctoral fellowships in modeling satisficing decision-making 
algorithms in biological domains.

UTuebingen/Computational Linguistics (Germany): constraint-based 
grammar and mathematical foundations of logic programming.

Asian Technology Information Program (Tokyo): MS/PhD
technology analysts to report on Japanese technology trends.

ATR (Kyoto): experienced software manager in NL parsing
and statistical ML for speech-to-speech translation.


 5> Hardware updates:

    The address of the Power Computing site is 
<http://www.powercc.com>.  (I left out the slashes.)

    The same day that I recommend home-computer speakers
and scanners, Macworld comes out with reviews of same.
They prefer Bose Acoustimass or MediaMate ($700/$300 list), 
Cambridge Soundworks ($220), or the less-expensive Altec Lansing 
ACS 52 ($128) or Audio-Technica MMS 557 ($150).  A separate
Yamaha "subwoofer" ($140 street) adds richness to any desktop 
speaker pair.  For a midrange flatbed scanner, Macworld
strongly recommends the Epson ES-1200C ($1,000 street).  
[Macworld, 3/96, p. 157.]

    (Interactor Cushion is a set of three speakers that pump
a soundtrack through your spine.  $199 from Aura Systems Inc., 
soon at audio stores.  [St. Petersburg Times, 12/28/95, E1.  
NewtNews, 1/9/96.])

    I also recommended the Motorola Power modem.  Having
just bought one, I'm afraid to check the c|net "30-modem roundup" 
on <http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Modems/>,
or the review of nine Mac modems on 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Modems/ss1.html>.  
But I might look at the modem performance tips on 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Modems/ss6.html>.  
[Digital Dispatch, 1/18/96.  Bill Park.]
    
    (This c|net newsletter claims over 289K subscribers.
c|net's site offers many weekly reviews, including a shareware 
"title of the day" at <http://www.shareware.com/> and a collection 
of Mac FAQs at <http://www.cnet.com/Resources/Tech/Mac.faqs/>.  
One of the most successful publishing ventures on the net,
if the activity level is any indication of profit.)

    Another source of comparative info is Curt's High Speed
Modem Page, <http://www.teleport.com/~curt/modems.html>.

    One other thing: "Sacrificing chickens no longer works
with Power Macs.  You gotta use goats."  -- Lanny Chambers,
Info-Mac Digest V14 #3.  [Bill Park, 1/4/96.]


 6> Internet culture:

    For Macworld Expo, the BMUG user group offered a rent-a-nerd 
service.  Nerds accompanied users out on the show floor, to help 
deal with the hype and confusion.  Nerds mainly earned gratitude, 
but pizza was also considered appropriate payment.  [TidBITS, 
1/8/96.  Bill Park.]  (I hear, though, that Jolt cola is out.  
Mountain Dew doesn't change color when you drink it: WYSIWYP.)

    A phone survey by Find/SVP estimates that the US has 9.5M 
Internet users and 7.5M web users.  Another study found that
the average session is 68 minutes, for a total of 6.6 hours/week.  
Women are much more likely than men to use the Internet solely
for business.  [WSJ, 1/12/96, B2; and Tampa Tribune, 1/12/96, 
B&F1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Online-L is Robert D. Seidman's newsletter covering
the online industry: Internet frequency stats, stock market 
reports, etc.  Send a "subscribe online-l your name" message
to <listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com>, or see 
<http://www.clark.net/pub/robert>.
[Susan Klopfer <sklopfer@vanatech.com>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    Internet Research is an e-journal about the role of
Internet and wide-area telecommunications networks in society.  
<http://www.mcb.co.uk/liblink/intr/jourhome.htm>.
[Mathew Wills <mwills@mcb.co.uk>, newjour, 11/2/95.]

    I mentioned that commercial online services are having 
difficulty getting started in Europe.  Elizabeth Hinkelman
notes that France's Minitel is entrenched competition.
Germany scores high on home PC count -- though half that
in the US -- and on infrastructure, technical education,
and general wealth.  Networking growth should be rapid.  
[<hinkelma@dfki.uni-sb.de>, 1/17/96.]

    "futures" is about the world as it might be and how we 
influence it, and Futures methods in probing such issues.
Send a "join futures your name" message to 
<mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<futures-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, 
new-lists, 12/18/95.]

    There is also a netfuture newsletter focusing on
"personal responsibility in relation to the technological 
juggernaut."  Send a "subscribe netfuture your name" message
to <listproc@online.ora.com>, or see 
<http://www.ora.com/staff/stevet/netfuture/>.
[Steve Talbott <stevet@ora.com>, net-hap, 1/4/96.]

    Garrison Keillor, on his 1/20/96 Prairie Home Companion
radio show, did a nice bit about Larry, the psychotic brother
who has lived his adult life in the basement, in the dark.
Larry is online now, communing with other basement people.
He seems much happier, and less menacing.  (Maybe we could
get street gangs to rejoin society via networked Newtons.
It's worth a try.)

					-- Ken


Smart people spend time alone.  They don't fill their days
with appointments from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., as many politicians
and executives do.  Great science does not emerge from hard logic 
and grinding hours.  It comes from the mysterious resources
of the human brain and soul.  Inspiration is nurtured
by activities like chopping wood and raking leaves, preparing 
dinner and reading to the kids.  These activities soften
the rigid pace of the day's pursuits and allow all our
God-given intuition to work its unlogical magic.  Only then
can we reach our fullest potential.  Only then can we leap
from thinking to understanding.  -- Philip K. Howard.
[Susan J. Frazier <sfrazir@emory.edu>, QOTD, 1/15/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 8
 IS                                           January 25, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	US tax information.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Book and journal calls.
 5>	Internet audio services.
 6>	Audio-visual entertainment.
_________________________________________________________________

Government is like a baby: an alimentary canal with
a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility
at the other.  -- Ronald Reagan.  [<gentlman@sisna.com>, 9/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    NSF says that its four weeks of shutdown have produced
a backlog of 2,500 proposals, 1,500 requests for forms,
40K pieces of mail, 17 to perhaps 43 review panels, and
200-400 continuing increments.  Forms should be downloaded
from <http://www.nsf.gov:80/bfa/cpo/forms/start.htm>
or from NSF's STIS system.  Starting dates for grants may be 
delayed, grant amounts may be reduced, grants may be given
as a series of partial awards, continuing grants may have 
interruptions, and new special competitions will be postponed.  
For the most current information on NSF status, visit 
<http://www.nsf.gov>.  [Neal Lane, Important Notice No. 119, 
1/19/96.]  (NSF is scheduled for another shutdown after 1/26/96, 
and may have to survive all year on reduced funding from 
continuing resolutions.  Its administrative budget is fairly 
constant -- about 5% of total funding, under normal circumstances 
-- and grants can only be made from whatever is left.
If you want to be an NSF program director, apply early
and often; I expect that some of the current PDs will be
leaving in frustration or exhaustion.  This might be
a good time to spin up as a co-PD if you live near DC.)

    UNew Mexico (Albuquerque) will host an NSF Regional Grants 
Conference on 2/26-27.  Proposal preparation, merit review,
grant administration, etc.  (505) 277-3942, (505) 277-8604 Fax.  
[Jean I. Feldman <jfeldman@nsf.gov>, grants, 1/17/96.]
(Unless NSF is shut down again.)

    Last May, an NSF-sponsored workshop pondered the future
of research in database management systems.  A report is
now available, edited by Avi Silberschatz, Mike Stonebraker,
and Jeff Ullman.  <http://db.stanford.edu/pub/ullman/lagii.ps>. 
[<ullman@db.stanford.edu>, dbworld, 1/18/96.]

    NSF's programs for disabled persons are described
at <http://www.rit.edu/~easi> (EASI Street to Science,
Engineering, and Math).  [Norm Coombs <nrcgsh@ritvax.isc.rit.edu>, 
EDTECH, 11/27/95.  net-hap.]

    NASA's Federal Acquisition Jumpstation provides over 75 links 
to federal contracting activities and procurement information.  
<http://procure.MSFC.nasa.gov/fedproc/home.html>.  Michael Lalla 
<michael.lalla@msfc.nasa.gov>, 205-544-3948.  [CBD, 1/22/96.
Al Underbrink.]


 2> US tax information:

    The IRS offers downloadable tax forms and instructions,
tax news, tips, statistics, etc., at <http://www.irs.ustreas.gov>.  
A text-only entry point is <http://www.irs.ustreas.gov
/plain/cover.html>, or you can FTP forms from 
<ftp://ftp.fedworld.gov/pub>.  [Scout Report, 1/19/96.]

    You can get an Adobe Acrobat Reader from 
<http://www.ustreas.gov/treasury/bureaus/irs/acroread.html>,
for US tax forms on <.../irs/taxforms.html>.  The 1040EZ
can be found at <http://www.coe.uncc.edu/cgi-bin/tax/tax.pl>,
and state forms are on <http://inept.scubed.com:8001/tax
/state/state_index.html>.  Another good tax site is 
<http://www.scubed.com/tax/tax.html>.  Recent tax developments
are outlined on <http://www.halcyon.com/lesourd/recent.html>.
If you have questions, try the discussion groups at 
<http://205.177.50.2/groups.htm>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 1/5/96.]

    Richard Sovitsky offers a free online 1040 tax
calculation program with each line hyperlinked to IRS
information on that item.  You can also download IRS forms,
from <http://www.uwm.edu/~rickiii/nettax96.html>.
[Internet-on-a-disk, 1/17/96.] 

    The NetTaxes site, <http://www.ypn.com/taxes/>,
offers hundreds of annotated links to tax sites, tips, software, 
etc. -- including sources on AOL, Compuserve, Prodigy, BBS 
networks, Internet mailing lists, and FTP or telnet sites.  
NetTaxes even offers online chat with tax experts.  [Jonathan 
Bellack <webmaster@ypn.com>, c.i.www.announce, 1/4/96.  net-hap.]

    Another website linking many tax resource pages is TaxSite, 
<http://www.best.com/%7Eftmexpat/html/taxsites.html> from Frank 
McNeil.  [Michael Brown <michaelb@nethost.multnomah.lib.or.us>, 
net-hap, 1/2/96.]

    If you are self-employed, 30% of your health insurance 
premiums can reduce your gross income for income tax purposes.  
Any remainder can be counted as an itemized deduction, subject
to a 7.5% AGI threshold.  Add in medical and dental co-payments, 
travel to medical appointments ($.31/mile), prescription medicine, 
eyeglasses, etc., less any insurance reimbursements.  [Hope 
Feinglass <hfeinglass@moneyminds.com>, Network News, 1/13/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

mu' HaqwI': Klingon language analyzer and dictionary.

MacWeek reviews of Frontier (vs. AppleScript) and Clay Basket.

Ara: interpreted mobile agents for information mining,
active documents, DAI.

"University Courses on Genetic Algorithms 1995," edited by
John Koza.

Internet Conference: PC-to-PC whiteboard conference system for 
Windows.

NFGA: NeuroForecaster/GENETICA forecasting via genetic search.

NNMODEL: shareware neural-network statistical data modeling
for Windows.

WEBSOM: visualization tool for free-text mining.

SOM_PAK and LVQPAK: self-organizing map package.  (New address.)

LAPACK and BLAS: linear algebra and matrix libraries for Linux.

"Scholarly Publishing: The Electronic Frontier," edited by
Peek and Newby.

Marionet: Internet-based Macintosh scripting kit.

BBEdit 3.5.2: Mac editor upgrade for HTML tools
and spell checking.

3DMF: cross-platform Internet 3D file standard from Apple.

XferPro: email/file transfer utility for Windows.

KEYview: Internet email and conversion for Windows.

FreeMail: secure email/document exchange software.

Marconi: HyperCard-based off-line newsgroup reader for Mac.


 4> Book and journal calls:

    Information Retrieval is a new book series from Kluwer 
Academic Publishers.  Prospective authors should contact 
consulting editor Bruce Croft <croft@cs.umass.edu>,
(413) 545-0463, (413) 545-1249 Fax, or publisher Scott Delman 
<sdelman@wkap.com>, (617) 871-6600, (617) 871-6528 Fax.
[dbworld, 1/5/96.]

    Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery is a new journal
from Kluwer Academic Publishers, to include KDD and statistics, 
AI, pattern recognition, ML and machine discovery, uncertainty 
modeling, data visualization, databases, high performance 
computing, MIS, and KBS.  <http://www.research.microsoft.com
/research/datamine/>.  Usama Fayyad <fayyad@aig.jpl.nasa.gov>, 
(818) 306-6197, (818) 306-6912 Fax; also Heikki Mannila
and Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro.  [<datamine@aig.jpl.nasa.gov>, 
connectionists, 1/15/96.]  (A free sample is available.)

    The J. of Information, Law and Technology (JILT)
is soliciting papers for doubly anonymous peer review
(with feedback) and online publication.  
<http://ltc.law.warwick.ac.uk/ejournals/jilt/>
starting 1/31/96.  2/15/96 deadline for the
4/30/96 second issue; <editor@themis.law.warwick.ac.uk>.
[Nicola Clare <nicolac@law.strath.ac.uk>, newjour, 12/30/95.]

    Workstation clusters and network-based computing;
J. of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC).  3/1/96; 
Dhabaleswar Panda <panda@cis.ohio-state.edu>, (614) 292-5199, 
(614) 292-2911 Fax.  [comp.parallel, 12/28/95.]

    Database mining; IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data
Engineering (TKDE), 12/96.  2/1/96; Ming-Syan Chen 
<mschen@watson.ibm.com>, (914) 784-7517.  [dbworld, 1/15/96.]

    Workflow management systems; Distributed Systems Engineering 
Journal, 9/96.  1/29/96; Panos K. Chrysanthis <panos@cs.pitt.edu>, 
+1-412-624-8924, +1-412-624-8854 Fax.  [dbworld, 1/15/96.]

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS) is seeking reviewers
for "Trading Spaces: Computation, Representation and the limits
of Uninformed Learning" by Andy Clark and Chris Thronton.
The thesis is that many real-world problems are only tractable
if encoded in terms of previously solved problems.  
<bbs@soton.ac.uk>, <http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html>.  
[Stevan Harnad <harnad@cogsci.soton.ac.uk>, connectionists, 
1/21/96.]


 5> Internet audio services:

    RealAudio lets you hear Internet audio files as you download 
them.  A new Windows 95/NT server is available free in beta,
at <http://www.realaudio.com>.  [Network News, 12/16/95.]

    Internet News Radio (iNR) uses RealAudio software to play 
audio files on demand, through a standard modem connection.  
Stories about technology and the Internet are usually
broadcast in French and English.  Movie and software reviews
are also available, with pointers to Web sites.  RealAudio
now supports 28.8bps in the 2.0 beta version at 
<http://www.iNewsRadio.com/inr/>.  [Scout Report, 1/12/96.]

    RealAudio Mac server software -- beta version -- can be 
downloaded from <http://www.realaudio.com>.  Servers can
originate up to 10 concurrent audio streams for $995, or 100 
streams for $9,995.  [<frankv@prognet.com>, net-hap, 12/29/96.]

    INTERNET - RADIO.COM is a beta 100-stream RealAudio server 
offering "Rockin Roll - Music Clips - World News - Voice of 
America" at 28.8bps.  <http://www.medium.com/IRT/ir1.html>.
[Jim Peel<peel@gte.net>, net-hap, 1/2/96.]

    You can play entire music CDs, in real time,
at <http://www.audionet.com>.  Hundreds of selections.  
[<mcuban@audionet.com>, net-hap, 1/8/96.]

   At World Wide Music, you can hear up to five 30-second
samples each from over 40K albums, then order the albums
you like.  <http://www.worldwidemusic.com/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/27/95.]

    For MIDI hardware and software, or other music resources,
see <http://www.webcom.com/~mission>.  [Mission Recording
and Audio <mission@mindspring.com>, comp.music, 9/13/95.]

    Cyberville Radio broadcasts from the UK via the net,
for the net, about the net.  <http://www.compulink.co.uk
/~cyberville/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 
1/10/96.]

    Dave Graveline's "Into Tomorrow" call-in/email-in radio 
program covers technology for diverse products and services.
10AM in Miami.  <http://www.graveline.com>.  
[<steve@graveline.com>, net-hap, 1/8/96.]


 6> Audio-visual entertainment:

    See the Netscape 2.0 Enhanced cyber art show
at <http://www.covesoft.com/visual_nation/Gallery/>,
including videos and animations, VR movies, vector-based images, 
pixel manipulation, and 3-D images.  [<kamon@inx.net>, net-hap, 
10/25/95.]    

    The Bones is a color slide show of cartoon after-life 
characters in real-life situations, linked with a RealAudio
sound track.  Requires Netscape.  <http://www.TheBones.com>.  
[<wendellb@thebones.com>, net-hap, 12/19/95.]

    For business, travel, or cultural information about Asia, 
follow Jim Turley's tour from XAI Staff Presentations, 
<http://www.xai.com>.  Contact <jturley@xai.com> for info
on Japanese, Chinese, and Korean language kits from Apple,
and get the RealAudio player from <http://www.realaudio.com>.
If you don't have them, you can still appreciate many of
the graphics.  Ming's Restaurant (Palo Alto), for instance,
has its menu in English and Chinese at 
<http://sinanet.com/bay/dining/mings/index.html>.
[Charlie Pfefferkorn.]  (My daughter Kelsey and I helped
proofread the English side of Ming's menu last year.
I hope we did a good job.)
    
    Hong Kong world news in Cantonese (via RealAudio)
is <http://www.cuhk.hk/cgi-custom/rthk/newsindex.pl>,
from Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK).  (You can also
get Chinese pop music.)  The "Yahoo of Asia" is 
<http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/welcome.html>,
from UOregon's Council of East Asian Libraries (CEAL).
It lists 30 categories for mainland China, including "Internet."  
If you really want to get into Asian sites, though, see
the Asian character sets, text processing, and software tools
on Ken Lunde's home page, <http://jasper.ora.com/lunde/>.  
[Charlie Pfefferkorn <charliep@crystal-media.com>,
Software Forum, 10/95.  Bill Park.]  (Software Forum is
a professional organization of about 1,000 Silicon Valley
software entrepreneurs.  Charlie Pfefferkorn is chairman of
its International Software SIG.)

    For small, crude video with sound, check out VDOLive
at <http://www.vdolive.com/>.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 12/95.]

    ABC's World News Now is the first regularly scheduled
newscast on the Internet, 2AM to 4AM ET starting 11/23/95.
It uses Cornell's CU-SeeMe with commercial enhancements
by White Pine Software, <www.wpine.com>, (800) 800-7759.
20 frames/sec at best; 10 with a 28.8kbps modem; and at 14.4kbps
you can't get sound and video simultaneously.  Source sites
are gsh.org in the US and 158.36.33.3 in Europe.
[Victor Dorff <victor@eworld.com>, Internet-on-a-Disk, 1/17/96.]  
(Dorff may have started color broadcast this month.)

    Nettoob is a live video feed from NetWeb Interface TV.  
Download software from the Aquila Virtual WWW BBS, 
<http://www.aquila.com/bbs/dir11.htm>.  [WEBster, 1/23/96.]

    VideoVu is color Internet videoconferencing software
for PCs, including voice transmission.  Free demo software
at <http://www.totw.com/videovu.htm>.  [<future@i-2000.com>,
net-hap, 1/18/96.]

    "Other Realms: Meridian 59" is a 3D graphical MUD.
"Talk with other players, explore the countryside, slay monsters, 
find treasure, learn skills, solve puzzles, and take part in 
political intrigue..." via animated 3D avatars communicating via 
text, gestures, facial expressions, and swords.  The alpha client 
program can be downloaded from <http://www.otherrealms.com> or 
<http://www.boulevards.com/otherrealms>.  [Michael Sellers 
<sellers@teleport.com>, comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.announce, 1/5/96.]

    Bandwidth is still a problem, but you can tour
the beginnings of Cybertown, a virtual-reality city at
3-D Web world.  You can even add your own apartment.
Download the viewer from <http://www.direct.net.com/cybertown>.  
[PC Magazine, 1/9/96, p. 31.  Flash Information, 11/12/95.]

    TV Guide critic Jeff Jarvis suggests that the new
aliens-encounter-humanoid-form sitcom, 3rd Rock From the Sun, 
would work best as 30-second shows interspersed among commercials.  
(Sort of like Sesame Street, or newspaper/magazine articles,
or the old amateur hour shows with Arthur Godfrey, Ted Mack,
and Ed Sullivan.  Or the late-night programs selling music 
videos.)  I think he's onto something -- and it could destroy
life as we know it.  Since the TV industry won't change,
Internet video broadcasts may be the venue for this new narcotic.  
[1/20/96, p. 12.]

    "Just a little less pathetic than the other guys."
-- AOL's president (joking).  [Broadcasting & Cable, 12/4/95,
p. 83.  EDUPAGE.]

					-- Ken


... It's one of the greatest failures of our age.
That and television.  -- Garrison Keillor.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 9
 IS                                           January 30, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Internet services.
 2>	Browsers and web tools.
 3>	Java.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Internet guides.
 6>	Software patents.
_________________________________________________________________

We're a social species.  Story-tellers.  Stories need
great heroes. ...  The writers often miss that the real battle
is fought in terms of executable code and developer tools,
not in personal mudwrestling matches between the titans of
the software biz. ...  Delivered software can't be displaced
by clever metaphors or developer white papers.
-- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 12/22/95.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I'm finally getting hooked into the web via best.com,
and my head is exploding with all the new software I have
to learn: MacTCP, FreePPP, Fetch, Navigator, Eudora, NewsWatcher, 
Anarchie, TurboGopher, NCSA Telnet, etc.  Each one by itself
has been pretty easy, but I've explored only a fraction of
their options.


 1> Internet services:

    Hundreds of Internet providers are described in
the Providers of Commercial Internet Access (POCIA) Directory
at <http://www.celestin.com/pocia/>.  An abbreviated listing
can be obtained by email with a "SEND POCIA.TXT" subject line
sent to <info@celestin.com>.  [<celestin@celestin.com>, 
alt.internet.services, 11/24/95.]

    UltraList claims to be a list of all Internet service
provider (ISP) lists.  <http://ultralist.upx.net/>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 12/26/95.  net-hap.]


 2> Browsers and web tools:

    Microsoft has just released its net browser for Macintosh.  
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/download.htm>.
[MacWay, 1/22/96.]

    Microsoft Internet Explorer for the Macintosh can be down-
loaded from <http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/mac/macdl.htm>.  
No Java yet, but "very nice."  [Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, 
DaveNet, 1/20/96.]

    The new Netscape Navigator 2.0 beta can convert downloaded 
HTML files to plain text, or can save them for later browsing or 
presentation when not connected to the net.  It also does email.  
<http://www.netscape.com>.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 11/95.]
(For the Mac, get Netscape 2.0b5 from 
<ftp://ftp.netscape.com/2.0Beta5/mac/netscape-2.0b5.sit.hqx>
or <http://home.netscape.com/eng/mozilla/2.0/relnotes/mac-
2.0b5.html>.)

    If you have a shell account without PPP or SLIP,
SlipKnot for Windows or OS/2 will let you sample WWW graphics.  
Version 1.13 is compatible with BBSs and Freenets.  
<http://plaza.interport.net/slipknot/slipknot.html>.  
[<felixk@panix.com>, net-hap, 10/16/95.]

    Video On Line offers a free browser in any of 18 languages.  
<http://www.vol.it/VOLB/browser.html>.  [WEBster, 10/31/95.]

    The Alis multilingual browser provides interfaces in English, 
German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Russian.  It's based on
the Spyglass version of Mosaic, and uses Unicode to handle
text in over 75 languages.  An evaluation copy is at 
<http://www.alis.com>.  514-738-9171.  [Newsbytes.
net-hap, 11/5/96.]

    Webwhacker lets you cache Web pages on your own PC for later 
viewing or incorporation in presentations.  Free 30-day trial.  
<http://www.ffg.com/>.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 11/95.]

    Users of the Eudora mailer have a Eudora discussion list.  
Send a "subscribe eudora your.net.address" message to 
<majordomo@seas.smu.edu>.  [Jason T. Slack 
<jslack@cortland.cnyric.org>, NEW-LIST, 11/14/95.]
    
    Former Eudora fan Elizabeth Crowe recommends Pegasus
for 16-bit or 32-bit Mac or Windows systems connected via Netware 
LANs or Winsock TCP/IP.  It's free, and offers spell checking, 
address books, binary attachments, and automated mail sorting
into folders.  Folders with new mail change color.  
<http://www.cuslm.ca/pegasus/>.  [Computer Currents,
12/28/95, p. 85.]

    A list of Internet tools, browsers, and viewers
is maintained at <http://metro.turnpike.net/Rene/tools.htm>.  
[<Rene.Guerrero@msunews.cl.msu.edu>, c.i.www.announce, 10/12/96.  
net-hap.]


 3> Java:

    The first Java Developer's Conference is a full-day seminar
on 2/20/96, at the San Jose Convention Center.  $95 from DCI 
<exporeg@dciexpo.com>, 508-470-3880, customer code NAAQM02.  
<http://www.DCIexpo.com/>.  [<dciconf1@aol.com>, net-hap, 
1/25/96.]  (This is associated with a free Internet Expo,
11:30-6:00 on 2/20 and 10:30-4:30 on 2/21.  Over 500 exhibitors
of web technologies.)

    There's a lot of info about Java in the 1/96 Flashback
issue 1418, from <http://www.flashback.com>.  See also SunWorld 
Online, <http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline>, which has 370
useful links.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 1/18/96.]
(The availability of existing publication, discussion,
and marketing channels gives Java an advantage over competing 
languages.)

    Sun is offering Java training in many cities.  See 
<http://www.Sun.COM/sunservice/suned/catalog
/ll_programmer_descs.html#sl230>.  [Maxwell Miller <mhm@dcez.com>, 
NETTRAIN, 1/24/96.  net-hap.]

    Roaster is a Mac-platform Java authoring environment
from Natural Intelligence (Cambridge, MA).  Developer Release 1
is now shipping, for $399.  <http://www.natural.com/>.
[WEBster, 1/9/96.]

    Roaster currently ships on a CD and only runs on
a PowerPC, although a version for older Macs is planned.
Symantec C++ for Power Macintosh will soon come bundled
with Symantec Cafe for Java (formerly called Espresso).  
<http://www.symantec.com/lit/dev/javaindex.html>.  Metrowerks' 
CodeWarrior 9, due 5/96, will also support Java and JavaScript.  
<http://www.metrowerks.com/products/announce/java.html>.
[Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 1/15/96.]

    Gamelan is a repository or clearing house for Java applets.  
Try over 250 resources -- including a 3-D Tetris --
with the NetScape 2.0b browser.  <http://www.gamelan.com/>.  
[Network News, 10/21/95.]

    PointCast "may be years ahead of the technology path
that Netscape and Sun are on."  It's been demo'd, and should
soon be available free (supported by advertising) for Windows
and then Mac.  The application is "part client, part content,
part server," displaying a CNN-style news interface on
your desktop.  Weather forecasts scroll through one window,
a stock ticker through another, both beautifully rendered
and with customizable content.  Sports, finance, news,
and other topics are available from a menu bar.  "Immediate
like email, but impersonal like the web."  PointCast uses 
Metrowerks C++, OLE, and OpenDoc, building on what's available
now rather than waiting for new languages and standards.
See <http://www.pointcast.com/> for info about the Cupertino 
company, which has people from Adobe, Ziff-Davis, and DEC.
You might even sign up as a beta tester.  [Dave Winer 
<dwiner@well.com>, 1/14/96.]

    "PointCast has competition!  Check out 
<http://www.scripting.com/freeloaderpressrelease.html>."
[Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 1/20/96.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UMaryland Baltimore County, Dept. of Information Systems: chair.

Northwestern University/CS: faculty in HCI, VR, authoring 
environments, distributed systems, and hypermedia databases.

UPennsylvania: tenure-track AI, algorithms, DB, graphics, 
programming languages, robotics, SE, etc.

UColorado-Boulder: tenure-track in AI (human and ML, NN) or 
software and systems (HCI, DB, distributed systems, programming 
languages, SE).

Brown University: tenure-track in theoretical and analytical CS.

Brown University: lead programmer/analyst for applied R&D
in information technology for academic research, publishing,
and instruction.

Arizona State University: tenure-track SE, OS, or intelligent 
information systems.

Wright State University (Dayton, OH): 15 doctoral scholarships
in CS and engineering.

USC/ISI Soar Project (Marina del Rey): BS/MS research programmer 
in intelligent agents for classified virtual environments.

LNK Corp. (Riverdale, MD): US research scientist in image 
classification via NN, fuzzy logic, and parallel processing.

MITRE (McLean, VA): US researchers in DB, statistical/ML NLP,
IR, or digital libraries and in AI, adaptive systems, cognitive 
modeling, intelligent agents, uncertainty reasoning, planning, or 
information fusion.  Summer positions also available for students.

University of Wales/CS (Aberystwyth):  PhD RA in model-based 
vehicle diagnosis.

Monash University (Melbourne): postdoc in plan recognition.

Japanese technology company (UK): PhD software developers
in agent technology, plan generation, learning, etc.

National University of Singapore/DISCS: postdoc in digital 
libraries, multimedia databases, content-based image retrieval, 
etc.


 5> Internet guides:

    Scott A. Yanoff's list of Internet services is now in
its fourth year.  finger yanoff@alpha2.csd.uwm.edu for
the latest edition.  [net-hap, 12/13/95.]

    Link of the Day, Quote of the Day, newspapers, comics,
and other "Daily Buzz" can be found via 
<http://www.innosoft.com/www_root/doc/eric/home.htm>.  
[<eric@innosoft.com>, net-hap, 12/14/95.]

    Hot Spot of the Week is similar to Cool Site of the Day,
but more exclusive.  <http://198.30.29.55/hspot/>.  
[<skiman766@aol.com>, net-hap, 1/26/96.]

    The Best Websites of 1995 lists sites that are
less well-known than they deserve.  
<http://www.primenet.com/~donnlee/best95.html>.  
[<donnlee@primenet.com>, net-hap, 12/28/95.]

    See <http://www.ypn.com/> for 30K Net site reviews
from Your Personal Network (YPN).  [Jonathan Bellack 
<webmaster@ypn.com>, c.i.www.announce, 1/4/96.  net-hap.]


 6> Software patents:

    Three patent citation services are
the US Patent Citation Database (1.7M patents since 1975), 
<http://cos.gdb.org/repos/pat/pat.html>; Patent
Search Experiment, <http://town.hall.org/patent/patent.html>;
and Retrieve Patent Abstracts, 
<http://sunsite.unc.edu/patents/intropat.html>.
[Frank Blanchard <fb@whitaker.org>,  ieee.general, 12/22/95.]

    Patents, copyrights, and trademarks are the subject
of <http://www.neca.com/~breffni/>.  [<breffni@neca.com>,
net-hap, 12/19/95.]

    Greg Aharonian reports that there were 6,142 software patents 
in 1995 -- up from 4,569 in 1994 -- for a total of about 25K
(plus 12K pending).  Another 7,000 are likely this year.
He's incensed about it, claiming that few of these ideas
are novel and unobvious.  Instead, the number of patents
seems related only to the size of the software industry.
Apple scored 53, Microsoft 39, Sun 23, Borland 10, Wang 7,
and another 15 went to Oracle, Novell, Lotus, Symantec, Stac, 
Intuit, and Pixar.  Aharonian claims that these are the real 
software industry, and that they don't do much patenting.
Only the first three made it into the top 50.  "It is probably
too late for most of the software industry to claim much
of anything."

    The article tabulated 9,981 software patents "issued in 1995, 
Jan-Jun" -- which doesn't match the preceding total.  Do patents 
fall in multiple categories?  (And, later, Apple is credited with 
57 patents.  For what period?)  1,209 software patents
were issued in networking and communications, followed by
817 in image processing and 698 in operating systems.
Signal processing took 346, engineering 272, CASE 200,
pattern recognition 133, compression 109, robotics 104,
speech recognition and synthesis 104, neural networks 103,
AI 101, OOP 96, games 87, algorithms 80, character recognition 80, 
numerical analysis 73, NLP 72, fuzzy logic 51, education 47, 
simulation 44, VR 31, and computer vision 28.  (Think in terms
of patents per week that we should be keeping up with.
Why is no one writing books, magazines, newsletters,
or websites that survey the patented and public-domain
technology in each field?  Mechanical engineers have such 
publications, many of them supported by advertising.)

    IBM was assigned 503 software patents, most with
no prior art cited.  (That makes them less likely to hold up
in court.)  Hitachi was awarded 185, ATT 185, Motorola 157,
Xerox and Fuji Xerox 121, Mitsubishi 118, Fujitsu 112, Canon 105, 
and Toshiba 103.  Other big players -- in case you're looking
for a job -- were NEC, HP, Matsushita, DEC, GE, Honda, Ricoh, 
Ford, Kodak, Yamaha, Sony, Siemens, Intel, Toyota, Hughes 
Aircraft, Sharp, TI, Honeywell, Schlumberger, US Navy, DoD, 
Taligent, Nippondenso, Komatsu Seisakusho, Caterpiller, Fanuc, 
Mazda, US Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, Brother Kohyo, Bellcore, 
Unisys, Compaq, Pitney Bowes, GM, Ericsson, Eaton, Robert Bosch, 
Bull, Casio, Thomson-CSF, Storage Technology, Nissan, Minolta,
and Fuji (with 13).  UCalifornia and MIT each earned 11 patents.  
[Internet Patent News Service <srctran@world.std.com>.
MacWay, 1/19/96.]

    Most of these patents are available for licensing,
of course, so that even individual entrepreneurs may benefit.  
(It's much harder to profit from an unpatented idea, no matter
how good.)  And some may have been developed at universities
with funding from the corporations.  The low number of university 
patents, though, does make one wonder what role NSF is playing
in US technology.  NSF does not claim patent rights, but neither 
does it particularly encourage investigators to secure them.  
(That may be less true in the engineering sciences.
Open publication is definitely encouraged, though.)
Is this academic culture counter-productive?  Or outstandingly 
productive, by feeding fundamental advances to the companies
and engineers who patent applications?

					-- Ken


The future's already arrived - it's just not
evenly distributed yet.  -- William Gibson.
[Richard Kauffman <panoptic@netaxs.com>, 1/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 10
 IS                                           February 1, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	NSF funding news.
 2>	Apple news.
 3>	Online computer publications.
 4>	Other industry news.
 5>	Business philosophy.
 6>	Research software.
 7>	Valentine's Day sites.
_________________________________________________________________

In proportion as the structure of a government gives force
to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should
be enlightened.  -- George Washington, "Farewell Address."  
[Hamish MacEwan <macewanh@armpit.dia.govt.nz>, 10/95.]

Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> NSF funding news:

    Clinton's State of the Union speech made no mention
of science, for the second year in a row.  Robert L. Park
says that basic science isn't under attack, it's just
not controversial.  Science funding is being vetoed only
because it's embedded in controversial appropriations bills.  
[WHAT'S NEW, 1/26/96.]  (NSF is under another continuing 
resolution, until 3/15/96.)

    Capitol Hill received more than 2,000 contacts from
physicists in four days, after a call to action from the APS.  
Several other societies also prodded their memberships to act.  
"Surprised Appropriations Committee staff said that no one from 
NSF or OSTP had made them aware of the severity of the problem."  
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 1/26/96.]

    NSF is holding fast to deadlines that fell during recent 
shutdowns, but later deadlines may be extended.  NATO
Postdoctoral Fellowships in Science and Engineering including 
Special Fellowship Opportunities for Visiting Scientists
from Cooperation Partner Countries (NSF 96-9) has been extended 
from 1/22/96 to 2/22/96.  For other extension announcements,
see <http://www.nsf.gov> (NSF Post-Shutdown Information) or the 
February/March NSF Bulletin.  Or contact your program officer.  
[Jean I. Feldman <jfeldman@nsf.gov>, grants, 1/29/96.]

    NSF has revised its announcements for Grant Opportunities
for Academic Liaison with Industry (NSF 95-112); International 
Opportunities for Scientists and Engineers (NSF 96-14); 
Partnerships for Advanced Computational Infrastructure
(NSF 96-31); and Management of Technological Innovation
(NSF 96-27).  [grants, 1/29/96.]  (You can FTP them
from stis.nsf.gov.)

    NSF's New Technologies Program (ASC), Microelectronics
Systems Architecture Program (MIPS), and Computer Systems
Program (CCR), in collaboration with ARPA and NASA, are
soliciting proposals for "point design" studies of high-
performance computing environments.   Point design refers to
a proposed architecture plus programming environment.
Six to eight grants of up to $100K each will be awarded
for studies of 100 TeraOps systems feasible in a decade or so.  
Proposals are due 4/1/96.  Grantees are expected to attend
the PetaFlops architecture workshop (Oxnard, CA, 4/96),
and the PetaFlops software summer study  (Bodega Bay, CA, 6/96), 
and to submit a final written point design by 11/1/96.
Foreign scientists visiting US academic institutions may apply, 
and proposals involving academic/industry collaborations are 
especially welcome.  John Van Rosendale, <jvanrose@nsf.gov>,
(703) 306-1962, (703) 306-0632 Fax.  [ciselist, 1/26/96.]


 2> Apple news:

    Apple has hired Heidi Roizen, 37, as VP of Developer 
Relations. She's a developer herself, co-founder (with her 
brother) of T/Maker -- the Mountain View company that
made it big in Mac/PC clip art, fonts, desktop publishing 
software, and children's CD ROMs. She has a Stanford MBA
and was president of the Software Publishers Association
for several years.  "After running T/Maker for 13 years,
I was ready to do something new."  Roizen is <heidir@aol.com>.  
[DaveNet, 1/25/96.  Also SJM, 1/26/96, 1C.]  (T/Maker has been 
sold to a check-printing company, and will continue under
marketer John Tompane.  The corporation has about 100 employees.)

    Dave Winer has put up source code for MacBird Runtime
and a new manual for the Frontier scripting language
on his website, <http://www.hotwired.com/userland/>.
Code contributions from Mac hackers are welcome.  
[<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 1/28/96.]  (He and Guy Kawasaki
are excited about having someone at Apple who understands and 
cares about independent developers.  A renaissance is possible.)

    Rumors have been flying about Apple possibly being sold to
Sun for $4B.  Cooperative ventures would make more sense for Sun, 
though.  It's likely that Sun offered $23/share and Apple is 
insisting on at least the current market value of $33/share -- 
after having turned down IBM's offer of $40/share two years ago.  
Sony might bid higher than Sun, but there's really no reason
for the company to be up for sale.  Apple has twice the revenues 
of Sun, and great prospects.  10% market share isn't bad
for a premium product, demand is ahead of supply, disappointment 
with Windows 95 is spreading, and Apple's bad quarter (or year,
or two) is hardly unusual for high-tech companies.  Mercedes had
a much worse year, and it's not for sale.

    A 4,000-person survey by Government Computer News (1/8/96) 
rated MacOS 7.5 above MS DOS and Windows alternatives in 
compatibility, power/speed, ease of use, memory use, installation, 
documentation, interface, CD ROM customization, and enhancements.  
Windows 95 was rated superior only in multitasking and price.  
[Chris Habig <chabig@aol.com>, MacWay, 1/16/96.]
(Macs can transfer files in a background window while you
get work done in another, but not all web browsers have 
implemented the capability.  The chief advantage of preemptive 
multitasking is keeping a CPU running when one of its processes 
wedges.  Anyway, Macs should have it in another year.)


 3> Online computer publications:

    MacUser is archiving a reduced version of EvangeList,
at <http://www.zdnet.com/~macuser/macway/>.  The MacUser site
also offers a Utility of the Month, Editor's Choice Awards 
(<http://www.zdnet.com/~macuser/eddy95/>), and articles from
the magazine.  <http://www.zdnet.com/~macuser/>.  For notification 
of new content, send a "subscribe" subject line or message to 
<macuserweb@macuser.com>.  [Jason Snell <jsnell@macuser.com>, 
MacWay, 12/14/95.]

    Macworld magazine has eliminated sign-in requirements for
many of its website services, including current and back issues
of Macworld.  (The message boards and vendor areas still gather 
demographic data for advertisers.)  <http://www.macworld.com/>.  
[GD, TidBITS, 10/30/95.]

    Macworld UK Online is updated biweekly.  
<http://uk.macworld.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
newjour, 12/23/95.]

    MacSense can be found at <http://www.macsense.com/>.
A PCSense should also be available now.  [Roy Chartier 
<ubik@sonetis.com>, net-hap, 10/18/95.]

    The Windows 95 QAID (Question - Answer - Information - 
Database) is a large collection of Windows 95 information.  
<http://www.whidbey.net/~mdixon/win40001.htm>.  
[<mdixon@whidbey.net>, net-hap, 12/19/95.]

    PC Today includes reviews and thousands of products for 
comparison shopping.  <http://www.peed.com/pctoday.html>.  
[<lantior@peed.com>, newjour, 12/27/95.]

    Newsbytes now has online archives and subscription service
at <http://www.nbnn.com>, plus free daily top stories from 
Newsbytes, MacWeek, PC Week, and other Ziff publications.
$24.95 for 3 months (individual).  A Japanese version
is at the Newsbytes Pacifica Web site, 
<http://www.islandtel.com/newsbytes/>.  [Network News, 10/29/95.]

    Internet Business Journal is offering its 2/96 issue
free at <http://www.phoenix.ca/sie/>.  This includes guides to 
demographic surveys, advertising costs, and the Pegasus mailer.  
[Aneurin Bosley <abosley@strangelove.com>, net-hap, 1/16/96.]

    The Online Column is Steve Kelley's weekly newspaper column 
covering books, shareware, and online services issues.
See <http://www.cybertours.com/yccs/online.htm>, or write
to <skelley@cybertours.com> for email subscriptions.  [newjour, 
11/5/95.]  (His Halloween column was very good.  I'll bet
he does another for Valentine's Day.)

    To find other computer/software magazine websites, visit the 
Top 100 list at <http://www.internetvalley.com/top100mag.html>.  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/13/95.]


 4> Other industry news:

    Windows NT has passed OS/2 in 1995 server sales,
with Netware losing customers.  [IDC.  SNS, 1/28/96.]

    Microsoft has found Windows 95 sales somewhat slow,
with companies waiting until hardware upgrades are needed
for other reasons.  Many will then upgrade to NT instead of 95, 
since users are reporting problems configuring Windows 95.  
[MacWay, 1/31/96.]

    Computer memory chip prices are finally dropping.
That will help bring down computer prices as well.
Investors in chip plants are worried, though.
[Dean Takahashi, SJM, 1/22/96, 1E.]

    C|Net offers a review of more than 40 Pentium-class PCs
on <http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Pc100/>.
Use search criteria to select the reviews you need, from 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Pc100/Search
/1,25,,00.html?aa=O>.  [Network News, 12/30/95.]

    Intel is giving about $700K in "computer gear"
to Cal Tech for its EE department, Center for Neuromorphic
Systems Engineering, and an NSF engineering research center.
[IBD, 1/15/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]

    IBM is abandoning its 3-year effort to port OS/2 to the 
PowerPC chip.  "Demand hasn't developed."  IBM will still develop 
OS/2 products for Intel chips.  [WSJ, 1/26/96, B3.  EDUPAGE.]  
(That leaves the PowerPC to Mac OS, for now.  If Mac OS
is ported to Sun's RISC chips, Motorola could lose market share.)

   Novell has sold its WordPerfect unit to Corel, the Canadian 
paint software company.  [SNS, 1/28/96.]  (The WordPerfect editor 
for Macintosh has been getting good reviews.)

    "There's a club, here in Silicon Valley, of people
with great stage presence, people with interesting names,
or interesting  backgrounds, who make sense to investors
and CEOs of big companies.  They run software ventures.
Usually they run them right into the ground!  They're all white.  
They're all boys. They make huge money.  They get in the way.  
They contribute nothing.  They know how to manage large things. 
(Not!)  They speak at industry conferences.  They get quoted
a lot.  Press releases are written about them.
They form alliances.  They buy things they don't understand.
They move into something that's hot, and make it cold. ... 
And they make shitloads of money doing this."  -- Dave Winer, 
DaveNet, 12/22/95.


 5> Business philosophy:

    "Companies are not people, and companies are not
happy places.  They emit what they have.  Fear.  Uncertainty.  
Doubt! ... To the users -- wake up!  You can't depend on
the business press and trade weeklies to keep you informed
on technological developments on the Internet.  They're caught up 
in a huge trance, they believe this FUD crap really means 
something."  -- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 12/8/95.

    Dave Winer notes that the culture surrounding Java is 
changing, to require managers and personnel departments and 
meetings.  Developers Kim Polese, Arthur van Hoff, Sami Shaio,
and Jonathan Payne are pulling out to form "one of the hottest 
startups that Silicon Valley has ever seen," still unnamed.  
Polese, <polese@scndprsn.eng.sun.com>, will be the CEO of
the Java-related company.  The story was reported on 
<http://www.suck.com/>, an interesting and irreverent "insider" 
publication.  [<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 1/26/96.]

    Virtual companies -- fluid alliances of smaller organizations 
-- can be flexible, responsive, and cheap to pull together,
but they don't work well for "systemic" innovations that must
be integrated to form a new product line.  IBM's PC business
shows that you also need to control design (e.g., patents)
or manufacturing so that other virtual companies can't compete.  
[Henry W. Chesbrough and David J. Teece, Harvard Business Review, 
1/96, p. 65.  NewtNews, 1/23/96.]  (Intel is strong today
partly because it didn't hollow out when other US chip makers did.  
Intel needed in-house chip production to guarantee quality
and delivery schedules.  For start-ups, though, alliances
and contract work can make a lot of sense.)

    Eric Schmidt, CTO at Sun Microsystems, believes that
companies should be formed from large numbers of small teams.  
"Unix was developed by two people.  Java was done by a team
of less than five, Mosaic was done by two to four people,
and the Mac system was done by about 12 people.  Even DOS
was actually developed by only two people."  [IBD, 1/17/96,
A1.  EDUPAGE.]


 6> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

ECLiPSe: expert system using constraint handling rules.

Sugal 2.1: genetic algorithms package.

"Intelligent Agents II": book ed. by Wooldridge, Mueller,
and Tambe.

"Intelligent Systems for Finance and Business":
book ed. by Goonatilake and Treleaven.

AgentNews: agent technology newsletter from Tim Finin, UMBC.

Eliza: simulated psychologist, with Mac speech I/O.

FS-ATC 3.1: AI-based air traffic control for Microsoft
Flight Simulator Macintosh 4.0, with speech I/O.

KeepTalking: WWW chat service for individuals or groups.

NTK 1.6: Newton Toolkit for the Mac.

SquareNote 3.5: note organization and retrieval, for PCs.

CyberSearch 2.0: CD ROM of the Lycos website database.

HTML Reference Library 2.1: documentation of HTML syntax.


 7> Valentine's Day sites:

    "It's hard to love an engineer/scientist.  Sometimes
it feels like trying to love your vacuum cleaner.  It does
the job.  It is steady.  It is reliable.  It doesn't dazzle, 
polish, pet, or make you feel squishy."  -- Jean Hollands,
"The Silicon Syndrome: How to Survive a High-Tech Relationship."

    Need Valentine's Day items?  <http://www.ky.net/valentine>
is ready for you.  [<webmaster@ky.net>, net-hap, 1/17/96.]

    Online cards for Valentine's Day and other holidays
are free on The Pad, from George A. Dillon.
Also sound files and audio-visual effects, and links
to other sites.  <http://www.shore.net/~dillon/thepad.htm>.
[<dillon@shore.net>, c.i.www.announce, 12/19/95.  net-hap.]  
(Looks best with Netscape.)

    Create a free valentine with a cartoon cat or dog.  
<http://www.marlo.com/val.htm/>.  [<marlo@marlo.com>,
net-hap, 1/19/96.]

    Webcards sends customized greeting cards over
the Internet.  <http://www.adgrafix.com/webcards/index.html>.  
[<webcards@adgrafix.com>, net-hap, 1/27/96.]

    You can leave Valentine messages, propose marriage,
or download music from the VALENTINES FOREVER site, 
<http://www.invision.net/cupid>.  [Eric Manno 
<mannoe@ix.netcom.com>, net-hap, 1/25/96.]

    Or browse expressions of love in poetry, images, and sounds
at <http://www.highridge.com/village/holiday/valentine.htm>.  
[<david@highridge.com>, net-hap, 1/26/96.]

					-- Ken


February is a horrible month, which should be avoided whenever 
possible.  [Aaron Watters <aaron.watters@worldnet.att.net>, 1/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 11
 IS                                           February 6, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Communications and copyright law.
 2>	Apple news.
 3>	Other industry news.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Education.
 6>	Consulting careers.
 7>	Projects.
_________________________________________________________________

Deliver me, O Lord, from the errors of wise men, yea,
and of good men.  -- Archbishop Robert Leighton (1611-1684).  
[QOTD, 12/14/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

'Sorry for the emphasis on Apple news lately, but it's
a hot topic in the Valley.


 1> Communications and copyright law:

    Congress has passed a major telecommunications bill,
and Clinton is expected to sign it today.  Long-distance
and local phone carriers, cable TV, and electric utilities
will be relatively free to compete.  [NYT, 2/2/96, p. 1.  
EDUPAGE.]

    "There were in this country two very large monopolies.
The larger of the two had the following record: the Vietnam War, 
Watergate, double-digit inflation, fuel and energy shortages, 
bankrupt airlines, and the 8-cent postcard.  The second was 
responsible for such things as the transistor, the solar cell, 
lasers, synthetic crystals, high fidelity stereo recording,
sound motion pictures, radio astronomy, negative feedback, 
magnetic tape, magnetic 'bubbles,' electronic switching systems, 
microwave radio and TV relay systems, information theory, the 
first electrical digital computer, and the first communications 
satellite.  Guess which one got to tell the other how to run
the telephone business?"  [UNIX "fortune cookie."  David Coombs 
<david.coombs@nist.gov>, 1/25/96.]

    Ouch.  Part of the bill frees up new digital wireless 
spectrum.  The FCC reports that one Puerto Rican company bid
$180M for a Norfolk, VA, license, most likely intending to bid 
just the $18M required minimum.  [Multichannel News, 1/29/96.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Many netters are upset about the banning of "indecent" 
material available to minors, including abortion literature.  
"Sites might start disappearing early next week."
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked that
web sysops protest by placing a blue ribbon on their home pages.  
<http://www.hotwired.com/userland/theblueribbon_489.html>
or <http://www.eff.org>.  [Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>,
DaveNet, 2/3/96.]  (One large BBS has already dropped its
adult graphics section, which constituted 5% of its traffic.)

    Wired magazine has an article about the new bill,
on <http://www.hotwired.com/special/indecent/>.  [Network News, 
2/3/96.]  (The abortion clause was added at the last minute.
"The sense of Congress," as recorded in floor statements,
may weaken its provisions somewhat.  Or the law might be judged 
unconstitutional, once an unlucky test case is prosecuted.)

    The CyberSpace Law Center covers freedom of expression, 
privacy, intellectual property, commerce, and cybercrimes.  
<http://www.cybersquirrel.com/clc/clcindex.html>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/27/95.]

    The Copyright Clearance Center also maintains info
on copyright law, at <http://www.openmarket.com/copyright/>.
[Susan Klopfer <sklopfer@vanatech.com>, net-hap, 12/8/95.]

    The US Supreme Court has sustained a ruling that Borland
did not violate a Lotus copyright when it included an optional 
Lotus 1-2-3 menu layout.  The court's 4-4 vote without comment 
does not clarify the issues.  [Dan Gillmore, SJM, 1/21/96, 1F.]

    Joseph Bonuso has "re-tried" the O.J. Simpson case
with his Solomon Project fuzzy logic system -- seven years
in the making, with help from 150 people.  He's taking
the system on a 15-city tour, and is soliciting local cases
to be re-evaluated.  "The public will be the ultimate jury
in deciding the value of AI and its application
to the judicial system."  See the CNN report on
<http://www-cgi.cnn.com/TECH/9512/virtual_jury/index.html>,
or contact Winston Smith <ailaw@echonyc.com>.  [comp.ai,
1/18/96.  Ken Barker.]


 2> Apple news:

    I've been putting out positive comments on Apple
and its Mac platform.  For the negative side, "check Brent 
Schlender's excellent piece on Apple in this week's Fortune."
He says that the focus of Apple management, for years,
has been grooming the company for acquisition (rather than 
success).  "They were busy trying to go out of business."
[Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 2/2/96.]

    Apple's board has fired CEO Michael Spindler, replacing
him with Gilbert F. Amelio.  Amelio is well-respected as
a "turn around" manager, and has been president and CEO of 
National Semiconductor since 1/91 (after rebuilding Rockwell).  
[WSJ, 2/2/96, A3.  EDUPAGE.]

    Amelio has a PhD in physics, and holds several CCD patents.  
In 1991, he said of National Semi: "We want to be co-designers...  
We need to change from just a high-volume, mass-commodity parts 
manufacturer.  We have to serve application-specific, design-
driven markets."  [Terry Costlow, EE Times, 1/17/91, p. 137.  
MacWay, 2/4/96.]  (And it worked.)

    Apple's wholly owned Claris ("cluh-RIS") subsidiary
in Santa Clara has announced a $60M profit for the quarter
ending 12/29/95, it's highest ever (and 40% above the
previous year).  It shipped 2.8M software packages
that quarter, up 87% y-to-y.  That's roughly the same
time period that Apple lost $69M.  Claris is the largest supplier 
of Mac software, and among the eight largest across all PCs.
It recently began distributing Apple-brand software, which 
accounted for most of the revenue growth.  [MacWay, 1/31/96.]

    Apple's Developer Technical Services (DTS) is soliciting 
suggestions for sample code they could write to help developers.  
Brian Bechtel <blob@apple.com>.  (Use a "Sample Code Survey" 
subject line.)  [c.s.mac.programmer.info, 1/31/96.  Bill Park.]

   OpenDoc is Apple's alternative to Microsoft's OLE
(for linking object-oriented programs in much the same way
that Unix uses pipes and shell scripts).  Infoworld has just 
chosen OpenDoc as "the most significant technology advancement
for 1995" with its Landmark Technology Award.  "OpenDoc
has become easily the more flexible, powerful, extensible,
and forward-looking object model."  <http://www.infoworld.com>.  
[Infoworld, 1/29/96.  MacWay, 1/30/96.]  (Microsoft, though, 
claims something like a million programmers using Visual Basic
and OLE.)

    Other 1995 Editor's Choice Awards for Apple products
are given in Byte magazine (2/96): Power Macs, PowerBook,
System 7.5.2, ColorLaser, QuickDraw 3D, QuickTime VR,
and the first Power Computing clone.  OpenDoc and Dylan
also received complimentary reviews, in separate articles.
See <http:www.byte.com> for articles.  [Larry Roth 
<rothl@wadsworth.org>, MacWay, 1/31/96.]

    (MacWay/EvangeList is hardly an unbiassed news source,
of course.  Readers were recently urged to leave old Mac catalogs 
in commercial aircraft seat pockets so that executives could
see how much flashy software is available for Macs. :-)


 3> Other industry news:

    Intel price cuts on microprocessor chips may bring today's
$3K computers down to $1,200 by the end of 1996.  133MHz may be 
the entry-level speed.  [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2/1/96,
E3.  EDUPAGE.]

    Lexicus, a Motorola division in Palo Alto, has announced
a "highly accurate Chinese character recognizer" for the Asian
PC markets.  The Windows 95 version can read 13K Chinese 
characters.  [Miami Herald, 12/4/95, p. 35.  EDUPAGE.]

    Synaptics claims that its neural-net-based HR 1200
Handwriting Recognizer is six times more accurate than competing 
solutions.  (408) 434-0110.  [PC Week, 10/16/95.  NewtNews.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

NSF (Arlington, VA): CISE program directors for CCR, CDA,
NCRI, MIPS, ASP, and IRIS.

  [CISE is the Computer and Information Science
  and Engineering directorate; CCR is its Computing
  and Computation Research division; and IRIS is the
  Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems division.]

NSF: CCR program directors for SE, Languages and Architectures, 
and for Experimental Software Systems.

Arizona State: tenure-track ML, data mining, probabilistic 
reasoning, planning, constraint satisfaction, etc.

Cornell (Ithaca, NY): tenure-track and non-TT CS faculty; also 
research positions in scientific computing and software systems.

Naval Postgraduate School: tenure-track CS faculty
in image understanding, networks, SE, and graphics/VR.

Penn State: PhD information scientists in AI, intelligent
control, modeling, architectures, or HPC.  (PA and DC.)

Boston University: two tenure-track faculty in networking, 
algorithms, data visualization/navigation, etc.

Aerospace company/Advanced Technology Lab (near Philadelphia):
US AI/expert systems research engineers.

Universite Laval (Quebec): tenure-track CS/Informatique.

USussex: two postdoc RAs in statistical parsing
and lexical learning.

UUlster (Derry, Ireland): RA in neuro-fuzzy signal
and image processing hardware.


 5> Education:

    The Computing Research Association (CRA) has published 
preliminary figures for 1995 academic salaries.  Mean 9-month 
salaries for US CS departments were $54K for assistant
professors, $62K for associates, and $83.5K for full professors.  
Those are also close to the averages for CS departments ranked 
25th or below by the NRC.  At the top 12 departments, average 
salaries were near $57K, $66K, and $92K, with a top salary
of $161K.  For newly appointed faculty, the preliminary
US figures (across all ranks) range from $36K to $59K.
Canadian figures are also available.  The full Taulbee survey 
results will be published in 3/96.  [CRN, 1/96, p. 10.]
    
    (Or see the latest Annals of Improbable Research for a study 
of salaries versus textbook weight in various disciplines. :-)

    "Where the Wild Things Are" lists over 1,500 information
sites for college students and faculty, categorized by major.  
<http://www.sau.edu/CWIS/Internet/Wild/index.htm>.  
[<mblock@saunix.sau.edu>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    The J. on Excellence in College Teaching is beginning
to post issues to <http://www.lib.muohio.edu/ject/>.
[Stacey Kimmel <kimmelse@muohio.edu>, newjour, 12/8/95.]

    "The Student Survival Guide" is a "hyperbook"
of humorous Top 10 lists and links to helpful resources.  
<http://www.skypoint.com/subscribers/jackp/survive.html>.
[J. Pejsa <jackp@skypoint.com>, c.i.www.announce, 12/11/95.
net-hap.]

    More than 700 college courses that can be taken online
are listed at <http://www.caso.com>, along with thousands
of educational links for the web, telnet, FTP, etc.  Comments
to <tellus@caso.com>.  [Dan Corrigan <dancorr@aol.com>, 
alt.education.distance, 12/23/95.  net-hap.]  (So what is
the weight of the textbook? :-)

    CAL is a list for computer-assisted learning.
Send a "join computer-assisted-learning you name" message
to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<computer-assisted-learning-
request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 12/5/95.]

    CMC-in-HE is about using computer-mediated communication
in higher education in the UK.  Send a "join cmc-in-he your name" 
message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<cmc-in-he-request
@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 12/11/95.]

    QM Web lets you post and score surveys, quizzes, and tests
on the Internet.  The vendor, Question Mark Software, will even 
rent you web space.  Question and answer files are encrypted
to prevent unauthorized access, and scoring is instantaneous.  
<http://www.questionmark.com>; <info@questionmark.com>,
1-800-863-3950.  [Educom UPDATE, 1/2/96.]  (For Windows, I think.  
But they'll also send out questionnaires by email for you.)


 6> Consulting careers:

    Janet Ruhl is extending her survey of computer consulting 
rates, organized by specialty, region, and experience level.
See <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JanetRuhl
/rate_sur.htm> for last year's tabulation (based on 150 entries) 
and to add your own rates.  [<102354.250@compuserve.com>, net-hap, 
1/16/96.]  (Ruhl is the author of The Computer Consultant's Guide, 
The Programmer's Survival Guide, and The Computer Consultant's 
Workbook.)

    Ruhl's new tabulation can be found on <http:
//ourworld.compuserve.com:80/homepages/JanetRuhl/realco96.htm>.    
[Network News, 2/3/96.]

    Ruhl has a new book on getting started in computer consulting 
(and whether that career makes sense for you).  Fact sheets, 
checklists, sample letters and phone scripts; marketing skills, 
landing contracts, protecting yourself with contract consulting 
firms, and common "gotchas."  Intended to complement her previous 
book.  <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JanetRuhl>.  
[Janet Ruhl <102354.250@compuserve.com>, 1/9/96.]
(For other business guides, see Ed Yourdon's "cool books" list
on <http://www.acm.org/~yourdon>.

    Business IS organizations are willing to pay an extra
$10K-$20K (on top of $50K-$60K base salary) for programmers 
experienced with Internet (esp. firewalls and security), 
networking, client-server computing (esp. C++, Visual Basic,
and Forte), GUI, relational databases, or help-desk support.
[IW, 1/1/96, p. 64.  EDUPAGE.]

    Tools and resources for retirement planning can be found
on <http://www.bookpageweb.com/kiplinger>, from the Kiplinger 
Washington Editors.  [<idealog@aol.com>, net-hap, 12/17/95.]


 7> Projects:

    Northwest AI Forum (NaiF) will hold its first
Portland chapter meeting on 3/13/96.  
<http://www.teleport.com/~dlamkins/naif/>.  [David B. Lamkins 
<dlamkins@teleport.com>, comp.ai, 1/25/96.  David Joslin.]

    SIGMOD is soliciting nominations for its annual $1K 
Innovations Award and Contributions Award.  3/15/96.  Peter 
Scheuermann <peters@moon.eecs.nwu.edu>.  [dbworld, 1/31/96.]

    EFF is soliciting nominations for its international Pioneer 
Awards in computer communications (technical, social, economic
or cultural).  2/15/96 deadline; Pioneer Awards <pioneer@eff.org>, 
c/o Mike Godwin.  [Karen Coyle <kec@stubbs.ucop.edu>, net-hap, 
1/17/96.]

    The Studmuffins of Science Project is
accepting self-nominations for next year's calendar.
<scistuds@aol.com>.  [mini-AIR, 2/96.]

					-- Ken


Don't take life so serious, son...  It ain't NOHOW permanent.  
[Richard Lee <rlee@vienna.itd.sterling.com>, 12/94.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 12
 IS                                           February 8, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Apple/Linux news.
 2>	Other updates.
 3>	Internet news and resources.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Virtual reality.
 6>	Entertainment.
_________________________________________________________________

Even if you're on the right track, you still get run over
if you don't keep moving.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Apple/Linux news:

    I missed this part of the story:  "In an unprecedented move," 
Gilbert Amelio was named both CEO and chairman of Apple.
Co-founder A.C. Markkula, the former chairman, will continue
as vice chairman.  (Michael Spindler is just "out.")
Amelio thus has full control of the company.  Apple's stock has
gone up slightly.  Amelio's successes at National Semiconductor 
required closing divisions and factories.  [Mark H. Anbinder 
<mha@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 2/5/96.]  (Markkula has been the
quiet power behind Apple ever since he financed Jobs and Wozniak.)

    Apple and the Open Software Foundation are developing
a Linux OS version for use with Mac OS.  The port will operate
on the PowerPC-native OSF Mach microkernel.  "This is part of 
Apple's overall effort to embrace more open industry standards."  
Linux ("linn-ux") provides true multitasking, virtual memory, 
shared libraries, demand loading, TCP/IP, SLIP, UUCP, etc.  
<http://www.mklinux.apple.com> or <http://product.info.apple.com
/pr/press.releases/1996/q2/960205.pr.rel.osf.html>.
[GD, TidBITS, 2/5/96.  Also MacWay, 2/5/96.]

    (Apple has its own AUX, and Macs can run MachTen for about 
$500, but Linux is more popular and has a very active developer 
community.  Apple wants to sell personal computers to engineers 
and engineering students, not just arts and humanities students.)

    Linux is a free, "copylefted" Unix clone originally from 
Linkoping University, now including Emacs, X11R6, gcc,
TeX/LaTeX, groff, ...  For more about it, see the Linux 
Documentation Project at <http://sunsite.unc.edu/mdw/>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 1/14/96.  net-hap.]  
For links to Linux and Unix sites, see the Yahoo collection at 
<http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Operating_Systems
/Unix/Linux/Indices/>.  [Gary Ewell <ewell@courier4.aero.org>, 
ibid.]

    Apple has demo'd (demoed? demonstrated?) Mac OS on
an IBM-built prototype of the coming OS-independent PowerPC 
Platform (PPCP).  PPCP Macs should be on sale in 1997.  Sun,
IBM, Microsoft, and others are also developing for the platform.  
[GD, TidBITS, 2/5/96.]

    Apple is also dropping some of its PowerPC Performa prices
by up to 11% -- $100 to $300 -- and is extending $150-$500 rebates 
on printers and monitors.  [NYT, 2/6/96, C6.  EDUPAGE.]

    FTPd 3.0 has become NetPresenz 4.0, a full-featured
Mac Web server with CGI scripting (plus FTP, Gopher,
and Open Transport) for $10 (or $5 upgrade).  
<ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/tisk/tcp/web
/net-presenz-400.hqx>.  [ACE, TidBITS, 2/5/96.]

    Or you can pay about $500 for WebSTAR.  Mac webmasters
might like the WebSTAR info at <http://www.starnine.com/webstar/>.  
[Jeff Logan <cole@olympus.net>, MacWay, 1/4/96.]
(I presume that it's backed by a much bigger effort.
The Starnine products are very well regarded.)

    If you manage Macintoshes, see the FAQ and links
on the Mac-Mgrs home page, <http://www.mrmac.com/mac-mgrs>.  
[<albert@seas.ucla.edu>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]



 2> Other updates:

    In TCC 6.11, I mentioned Joseph Bonuso's Solomon Project
for replacing the US jury system with fuzzy logic.  Clare Congdon 
and Kenneth Flaxman both noted that the current New Yorker
"Talk of the Town" calls it a hoax, and/or Bonuso a performance 
artist.  [<congdon@eecs.umich.edu> and <knf@kenlaw.com>, 2/6/96.]  
(My library doesn't have it yet.  It's not the 1/29/96 issue.)

    US and state income tax forms, instructions, laws, FAQs, 
software vendors, etc., may be found on 
<http://www2.best.com/~ftmexpat/html/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/16/95.]  (Or call 1-800-TAX-FORMS 
for federal forms and instructions.  Allow up to 14 working days.)

    "Don't take life so serious, son...  It ain't NOHOW 
permanent." is apparently a famous saying from Porky
the porcupine in Walt Kelly's POGO comic strip.
Thanks to Mark Boddy and Don Rosenthal for the attribution.  
[<boddy@src.honeywell.com> and <donro@interval-logic.com>, 
2/6/96.]  (I attributed it to "[Richard Lee ..., 12/94.],"
which means that I found it in his .signature in some net posting.  
If it had been in the body of a message, I would have given
a specific date.  And if I had known the source, I would have
put something like "-- Walt Kelly's "Porky," POGO.  [...].")


 3> Internet news and resources:

    Campus administrators are worried about unknowingly
publishing "indecent" material available to minors, and also
about First Amendment violations if they censor their websites
and forums.  [Chronicle of Higher Ed., 2/9/96, A23.  EDUPAGE.]

    What, exactly, is "indecency"?  In US law, the defining case 
is the Supreme Court's FCC v. Pacifica.  As the decision contains 
a full transcript of the material in question, it is indecent.  
(The law provides no exemption for such uses.  The material
was itself a radio program about indecency rules.)  Under
the new Telecom law, publishing the decision on the Internet
could be punishable by two years in prison and a $25K fine.
EFF is taking the risk, and is offering the text via 
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Legal/Cases/FCC_v_Pacifica
/fcc_v_pacifica.decision> or FTP from ftp.eff.org, 
/pub/Legal/Cases/FCC_v_Pacifica.  [Carl Kadie <kadie@eff.org>, 
2/5/96.]

    The InterNIC has registered 171K commercial domain names,
up from 29K a year ago.  .org address increased even faster
last month, as a percentage of its 13K base.  
<http://www.webcom.com/walsh>.
[Mike Walsh <p00426@psilink.com>, com-priv, 1/10/96.  net-hap.]

    (If 1 becomes 3, is that a 200% increase or a 300% increase?  
200%, but I've seen it both ways.  Is it 200% growth
or 300% growth?  I dunno.  Trust raw numbers more than
reported percentages.)

    DJSA Bulletin Board, Inc. e-publishes a quarterly
National Internet Directory of communications service providers.  
(Call the DJSA BBS at 305-749-6458 to download a free copy.)
Now they are starting an annual WHO'S WHO GUIDE, with free 5-line 
listings for Internet-related services, from <director@djsa.com>.  
For display advertising, send a "HELP" message to 
<archive@djsa.com>.  <http://www.djsa.com>.  [David Smith 
<djsabbs@djsa.com>, comp.bbs.misc, 11/10/95.]

    InterNIC's "Info Scout" project will now be known as
Net Scout Services.  See <http://rs.internic.net/scout>
for InterNIC services.  Read the weekly Scout Report
at <http://rs.internic.net/scout/report>, or send
a "subscribe scout-report your name" or
"subscribe scout-report-html your name" message to 
<listserv@lists.internic.net>.  [<scout@internic.net>,
Scout Report, 1/5/96.]

    The US Postal Service has moved its ZIP Code server
to <http://www.usps.gov/ncsc>.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 12/95.]

    iphone software for Internet voice calls is available
from <ftp://ftp.cs.cornell.edu/pub/maffeis/iphone-1.0.tar.Z>.  
Audio quality adapts to the available TCP/IP bandwidth.
Currently tested on SPARCstations running SUNOS 4.1.3, Solaris, 
and NetBSD (with SUNOS-specific audio-ioctls), using gcc or
an ANSI C compiler.  [Silvano Maffeis <maffeis@cs.cornell.edu>, 
alt.internet.services, 12/11/95.]

    Insitu Conference lets you collaborate in real time
over the Internet or local networks, editing documents
with your usual applications.  <webmaster@insitu.com>.  
[<webmaster@insitu.com>, net-hap, 11/5/95.]

    Workgroup Web Forum from DEC lets your website
host discussion groups.  <http://webforum.research.digital.com/>.  
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 11/95.]

    More than 100 Internet utilities are available
from <ftp://hobbes.nmsu.edu/os2/network/tcpip/>.  Also,
Michael Scott's SCOTT004.ZIP 110-category listing of over
22K URLs.  [Gary J. Ewell <ewell@courier4.aero.org>, net-hap, 
12/28/95.]

    LAN ON THE WEB offers product reviews and
strategies for enterprise network builders and managers.  
<http://www.lanmag.com/cover/cover.html>.  [Melanie McMullen, 
newjour, 11/16/95.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Machine Learning in Games: AI website links by Jay Scott.

Learning in Multiagent Systems: web page by Prasad and Haynes.

AAAI Symp. on Genetic Programming: archive of
brainstorming session.

NIPS*95: Abstracts and URLs of papers.

Learning in Bayesian Networks and Other Graphical Models:
NIPS*95 workshop summary.

Bibliography of genetic programming, by Koza and Langdon.

PGAPack: data-structure-neutral parallel genetic algorithm 
library.

NeuroGenetics web page from BioComp Systems, Inc.

NetGlos: multilingual glossary of Internet terminology.

SECC: a Simplified English grammar and style checker/corrector.

QuickDraw 3D documentation website, plus Webmaker demo.

Pathlink: Windows browser with FTP, Mail, News, Telnet,
Whois, and Gopher.

KDrill: kanji/kana phrase drill program.

"Writing for the Web: A Primer for Librarians," paper by Schnell.

On-Line Tutorial: website tutorial for lawyers, professionals,
and nonprofits.

"The Web Page Design Cookbook": 650-page book;
free suggestion file.

The Web Page Creator (WPC): user-designed web page editor.

alt.sources.mac WWW pages: 10-volume archive for Mac webmasters.

MacinStuff: links to Mac software, reviews, updates, etc.


 5> Virtual reality:

    Virtus Corp. has secured another $3.5M in financing,
probably for 3D VR website servers and browsers.  Virtus is
the leading provider of 3D desktop tools for Mac and the Internet.  
[Innovation, 1/15/96, and Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 1/26/96.]

    CyberPassage Conductor is a 3D browser for Enhanced VRML,
from Sony.  <http://vs.sony.co.jp/VS-E/vstop.html>.  [Liz W. 
Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 12/25/95.  net-hap.]

    Into 3D modeling?  CAD++VRML Newsletter is $48/$60/$276
from XYZ Publishing, PO Box 3053, Sumas, WA 98295-5053.
Ask for a sample from Ralph Grabowski <ralphg@xyzpress.com>.  
[comp.cad.autocad, 1/2/96.]

    UB Worlds, a 3D site for commercial activities, can
be found at <http://www.ub.com/>.  (UB stands for
Ungermann-Bass.)  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 1/24/95.]

    For a VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) tutorial,
see <http://www.clark.net/pub/theme/factinfo.html>.  [WEBster, 
10/31/95.]  Other links to VRML tools and sites can be found
on <http://www.lookup.com/Homepages/56215/vrml/list.html>.  
[William A. Orlowski <orlo@emi.net>, BESTWEB, 11/24/95.  net-hap.]  
(Or try MeshMart, <http://cedar.cic.net/~rtilmann/mm/vrml.htm>.)


 6> Entertainment:

    Virtual Vegas Online invites you to create textual reality
on its Multi-user Simultaneous Hallucination (MUSH).
"If the dealer shafts you, build your own."  Details on 
<http://www.virtualvegas.com>; telnet to virtualvegas.com
port 8888 for the real thing.  [<frances@virtualvegas.com>,
net-hap, 12/27/95.]

    Net resources related to computer games can be found on 
<http://www.mbmarktcons.com/mbmarkt/irdhome.htm> or 
<ftp://ftp.mbmarktcons.com/pub/mbmarkt/ird/ird-by-topic
/hobbyrec/compgame.exe>.  You'll need the Internet Resources
Database (IRD) Reader and Notebook program,
FTP'd from <.../IRD/ird-r&nb.exe>.  [Martin Bohnet 
<mbohnet@marktcons.f.eunet.de>, net-hap, 12/26/95.]

    The Game Report Online is the Web incarnation of
The Game Report, a quarterly publication dedicated to board, 
party, dice, card, family, and strategy games.  
<http://www.wolfe.net/~peter/tgr/>.  [<peter@wolfe.net>,
newjour, 11/10/95.]

    The INTERNUTS online comedy club features original
monologues, lists, spoofs, sketches, and  comic strips,
updated biweekly.  <http://sefl.satelnet.org/~iammefp/>.  
[<iammefp@sefl.satelnet.org>, net-hap, 12/26/95.]

    The WRIGHT-QUOTE daily distribution of Steven Wright
one-liners has moved.  Send a "sub wright-quote your name"
message to <listproc@listproc.gcnet.com>.  [Chris Owen 
<owenc@gcnet.com>, NEW-LIST, 12/22/95.]

    The history of the American comic book is celebrated
at <http://www.loa.com/~dsantos/>.  [<dsantos@cs.bu.edu>,
net-hap, 12/27/95.]

    Humor Connection offers cartoon and humor links.  
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/junger>.  
[<102670.3166@compuserve.com>, net-hap, 12/27/95.]

    "The information scientist's information scientist
answers the questions of the ages" on The Dr. Zeitgeist Fun Page, 
<http://www.simons-rock.edu/~rmiller/zeitpage.html>.  
[<rmiller@simons-rock.edu>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    There's a free "jokes, riddles, and wit" contest at 
<http://www.majon.com/majon/contest.html>.  [<majon@majon.com>, 
net-hap, 12/28/95.]

    Idiot of the Day Confessional lets you to confess
your daily boners, or laugh at those of others.  
<http://www.interlog.com/~aaron>.  [<aaron@interlog.com>,
net-hap, 12/25/95.]

    "100 Most Classic Guestbook Entries Ever" is said
to be worth a visit.  
<http://uptown.turnpike.net/~PaulaSchroeder/100guests/100.htm>.  
[D'n Russler <d_n@jer1.co.il>, BESTWEB, 12/26/95.  net-hap.]

    Love 101 is "a hilarious online advice column,
with special versions for men and women."  
<http://www.phantom.com/~barton/advice.html>.
[Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 4/20/95.]

					-- Ken


Among those whom I like or admire, I can find
no common denominator, but among those whom I love,
I can:  All of them make me laugh.  -- W.H. Auden.
[Forbes, 5/9/94.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 13
 IS                                          February 13, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	AI news.
 2>	Industry news.
 3>	Java tools.
 4>	Other web tools.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Journal calls.
 7>	Electronic publishing.
 8>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

Security is when everything is settled.
When nothing can happen to you.
Security is the denial of life.
-- Germaine Greer.  [AWAD, 2/8/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> AI news:

    IBM's Deep Blue under Dr. C.J. Tan defeated grandmaster
and world champion Garry Kasparov in Philadelphia on 2/10/96,
a first under strict tournament conditions (with each having
2 hours for his first 40 moves).  The play, for Deep Blue
v. Kasparov, was: 1.e4 c5 2.c3 d5 3.exd5 Qxd5 4.d4 Nf6
5.Nf3 Bg4 6.Be2 e6 7.h3 Bh5 8.0-0 Nc6 9.Be3 cxd4 10.cxd4 Bb4
11.a3 Ba5 12.Nc3 Qd6 13.Nb5 Qe7 14.Ne5 Bxe2 15.Qxe2 0-0
16.Rac1 Rac8 17.Bg5 Bb6 18.Bxf6 gxf6 19.Nc4 Rfd8 20.Nxb6 axb6 
21.Rfd1 f5 22.Qe3 Qf6 23.d5 Rxd5 24.Rxd5 exd5 25.b3 Kh8
26.Qxb6 Rg8 27.Qc5 d4 28.Nd6 f4 29.Nxb7 Ne5 30.Qd5 f3
31.g3 Nd3 32.Rc7 Re8 33.Nd6 Re1+ 34.Kh2 Nxf2 35.Nxf7+ Kg7
36.Ng5+ Kh6 37.Rxh7+ 1-0.  [Reuter, 2/10/96.  Tim Finin.]  
Kasparov won the second game.  "We are now seeing for
the first time what happens when quantity becomes quality."
[NYT, 2/12/96.]

    (My spelling checker had fun with _that_ section! :-)


 2> Industry news:

    Apple says it has discontinued all merger talks
(although other alliance negotiations may be continuing).
"Mike" Markkula told employees: "I have completely lost faith
in the press to report anything even near the truth."
[WSJ, 2/9/96, B1.]

    DEC has announced a new $29  StrongARM microprocessor
for low-cost Internet terminals, interactive video games,
cellular phones, and PDAs.  [WSJ, 2/5/96, B3.  EDUPAGE.]
(I think it runs on ordinary AA batteries.)

    There's a rumor that Apple intends to build Newton PDAs
based on the StrongARM chip, for speed improvement and longer 
battery life.  [Jeff Fabijanic.  John Schettino <js12@gte.com>, 
npc, 2/8/96.  Bill Park.]
    
    (Schettino also says "Why, in my day we had to *carry*
the bits by hand eight miles through the snow... and we only
had zeros, none o' them fancy ones!")

    Sun Microelectronics (Sunnyvale) has announced
a microprocessor family optimized for Java.  "Today
the average business person harbors more than 10 microcontrollers.  
By 1999, the average home will contain between 50 and
100 microcontrollers... millions of cellular phones, security 
systems, entertainment systems, low-cost network terminals,
and other internet appliances highly optimized for small 
applications or applets."  The new chips are called picoJAVA, 
microJAVA and UltraJAVA, available in mid-1996 to late 1997.  
Processors that incorporate them should sell for under $25
to $100.  <http://www.sun.com/stb>.  [WEBster, 2/6/96.]
(Java is an interpreted language, and hence a bit slow.
Soon these Java accelerators could be almost as common as
I/O controllers, floating-point units, paged memory managers,
and graphics accelerators.  Applet downloading time will be
solved in other ways, such as ISDN or cable modems.)

    A consortium of Intel's rivals have devised a "P-rating" 
microprocessor rating system based on more than just clock speed.  
[IBD, 2/5/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]  (Other benchmarks haven't caught on 
with the public, other than how long it takes to recalculate
a spreadsheet or apply a Photoshop filter.)

    A five-year project in holographic data storage is being 
pursued by ARPA, IBM, GTE, Kodak, Rockwell, Stanford, and others.  
A pinhead could hold 10MB, with ten times the I/O rates of 
magnetic drives.  [Computer, 1/96, p. 15.  Flash Information, 
1/29/96.]

    DEC has also filed for a patent on a Millicent tenth-of-a-cent 
system for web charges.  It doesn't include audit trails, but 
"cyberthieves would have to crack 10,000 transactions to make
just $10."  [BW, 1/15/96, p. 90.  EDUPAGE.]


 3> Java tools:

    The non-beta Netscape 2.0 has been released, as 
<ftp://ftp.netscape.com/2.0/mac/Netscape2.0Installer.hqx>.
Java support in the Mac version will have to wait for
at least 2.1 (due in a few months).  [GD, TidBITS, 2/5/96.]
(I believe there's a fee for the non-beta version.)

    A new Netscape Gold 2.0 browser and HTML web page editor
is available in beta for Windows.  See 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Hands/012996/gold.html>
for a review.  [Network News, 2/3/96.]

    PiSCES Coverage Tracker is a free Java applet testing tool
for Solaris and [soon?] Windows NT.  Reliable Software 
Technologies Corporation (RST), Stirling, VA.  Download from 
<http://www.rstcorp.com>, along with info on other RST tools.  
[Gary McGraw <gem@rstcorp.com>, 2/4/96.]

    Mike Schelling recommends the following Hot Java Web sites:  
The Java Boutique <http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jgurney/java/>; 
Linux Java Tips and Hints Page <http://www.parnasse.com
/java.shtml>; Gamelan - Hot Java <http://www.gamelan.com/>
and <http://www.gamelan.com/Gamelan.programming.html>;
Dimension X Java <http://www.dimensionx.com/dnx/java.html>; 
HotJava Info on the Web <http://www.iat.unc.edu/library
/liblinks/hotjava.html>; Roaster <http://www.natural.com/pages
/products/roaster/roasterpr.html>; and the Java Online 
Bibliography <http://www.rpi.edu/~decemj/works/java/bib.html>.  
[<mas0417@ix.netcom.com>, ACCMAIL, 1/17/96.  net-hap.]


 4> Other web tools:

    You can quickly generate a simple home page by filling in
the blanks on <http://www.clark.net/pub/alweiner/cgi-bin
/homepage.cgi?makehome>.  [<alweiner@clark.net>, net-hap, 
12/14/95.]  Or try HOME PAGE TOOL BOX for the Mac,
at <http://www.foxnet.net/users/apeltonen/toolbox.html>.  
Backgrounds, icons, scripts, etc.  [<apeltonen@mail.foxnet.net>, 
net-hap, 12/17/95.]

    HTML Editor 1.1 is a new Mac version, for "semi-WYSIWYG" 
editing of web pages, including forms and tables.  Start with 
<http://dragon.acadiau.ca/~giles/HTML_Editor/Documentation.html>.  
[Elizabeth Lane Lawley <itcs1@dbtech.net>, ADV-HTML, 11/5/96.  
net-hap.]

    The HTML-L list will assist with WWW questions,
including CGI scripts.  Send a "sub html-l your name" message
to <listserv@vm.ege.edu.tr>.  [Turgut Kalfaoglu 
<turgut@vm.ege.edu.tr>, NEW-LIST, 1/15/96.]

    HTML authors and webmasters can find over 700
annotated reference site links at <http://webreference.com>.  
[<aking@corpnet.com>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    Windows users can try the Formula Graphics multimedia 
authoring environment at <http://www.magna.com.au/~formula>.  
[<formula@magna.com.au>, net-hap, 11/9/95.]

    CGI (Common Gateway Interface) tutorials for intermediate-
level webmasters can be found on <http://lpage.com/cgi/>.  
[WEBster, 10/31/95.]

    Formula One/Net lets you embed spreadsheets in web pages,
for tasks such as comparing investment strategies.  
<http://www.visualcomp.com>.  [Computerworld, 12/26/95,
p. 68.  EDUPAGE.]

    To show an interactive calendar on your web page, link to 
<http://www.channel1.com/usbbs/calendar.cgi/{mon}/{year}>.
[Bob Breedlove <bob@sssc.slg.eds.com>, net-hap, 12/13/95.]
(Or try the techniques on <http://www.clark.net/pub/alweiner
/cgi-bin/homepage.cgi?calendar>.)

    Shopping carts, feedback forms, groupware calendar,
counters, clocks, animation, bulletin boards, etc.,
can be found in Selena Sol's Public Domain CGI Script Library, 
<http://www.eff.org/~erict/Scripts/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 12/26/95.  net-hap.]

    ZyView 2.0 is a WWW database system written in Perl.  
<http://scendtek.com/zv/>.  [Chuck Johnson <cdjohns@scendtek.com>, 
c.i.www.announce, 12/11/95.  net-hap.]

    Databases for WWW servers are reviewed in 
<http://grigg.chungnam.ac.kr/~uniweb/documents/www_dbms.html>.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 1/4/96.]

    MacSite Searcher lets you index and perform full-text
searches on HTML files from a Mac WebStar website.
Forms interface; custom hitlist headers, footers, and formatting; 
substring matching (soon).  $295; Frontier and Filemaker Pro 3.0 
required.  <http://www.blueworld.com/macsite/searcher.html>.
An alternative solution costing four times as much is compared
at <http://www.macsite.com/macsite/MacSite_Searcher_Docs
/pages/comparison.html>.  [Bill Doerrfeld <bill@blueworld.com>, 
MacWay, 1/18/96.]


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Southeastern Louisiana University: CS department head.

UMinnesota (Minneapolis): MS/PhD assistant to CS department head.

Oakland University (Rochester, MI): tenure-track positions
in CS and in SE.

USouth Florida (Tampa): tenure-track positions in networks and 
databases, multimedia, or perhaps AI and information systems.

UTexas at El Paso: tenure-track in systems or other CS.

SRI International/AAITP (Menlo Park): MS/PhD US AI research 
engineer for military or commercial planning, reasoning
under uncertainty, education/training, etc.

Princeton Capital (Princeton, NJ): LISP programmers
for financial applications.

UOttawa: postdoc or RA in knowledge-based reverse engineering.

UNewcastle/CPACC (UK): postdoctoral and PhD research in 
statistical or neural control of chemical/industrial processes.

ULeicester (UK): CS lectureship in AI, logic, theory,
formal methods, SE, etc.

Mitsubishi Electric Digital Library Co. (UK): developers
for intelligent web agents and distributed object systems.

ATR (Kyoto): postdocs in evolvable hardware (FPGAs)
and mechatronics to build a robot kitten.

Hong Kong Univ. of Science and Technology (HKUST):
CS department head.

HKUST: six faculty in algorithms, comp. biology, communications, 
digital libraries and IR, HCI, multimedia, NLP, and robotics.  
Also some postdoc positions.


 6> Journal calls:

    Learning with probabilistic representations: Machine
Learning Journal.  7/1/96; Padhraic Smyth <pjs@aig.jpl.nasa.gov>.  
[connectionists, 2/1/96.]

    Learning in distributed AI systems; J. of Experimental
and Theoretical AI (JETAI).  4/7/96; Gerhard Weiss 
<weissg@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>, +49 89 2105 2407,
+49 89 2105 8207 Fax.  <http://www7.informatik.tu-muenchen.de
/~weissg/si-jetai>.  [DAI-List, 2/2/96.]

    Geographic information systems; CACM, early-1997
theme section.  3/1/96; Shashi Shekhar <shekhar@cs.umn.edu>,
(612) 624-8307, (612) 625-0572 Fax.  
<http://www.spatial.maine.edu/max/cacmgis.html>.
[Sivakumar Ravada <siva@cs.umn.edu>, dbworld, 1/24/96.]

    Electronic news; Information Processing & Management.  
3/15/96; Mike Shepherd <shepherd@cs.dal.ca>.  [dbworld, 1/30/96.]

    J. of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering.
Papers and reviewers are solicited.  Kathy Wager <jrlwmse@vt.edu>, 
540-231-6296  540-231-7669 Fax.  [1/31/96.]


 7> Electronic publishing:

    Microsoft is abandoning its proprietary Blackbird web 
publishing project.  It will develop a new Internet Studio 
language, "compatible with standard Web format."  [WSJ, 2/5/96, 
B3.  EDUPAGE.]  (HTML, maybe?  Blackbird was more like SGML,
Adobe Acrobat, or Java, allowing the publisher to control page 
appearance.  HTML is supposed to provide semantic labels rather 
than layout commands, but Microsoft's extended version allows 
specification of font size and such.)

    The New York Times' new website includes much of the content 
of the daily newspaper, including front-page news, searchable 
classifieds, and forums.  A CyberTimes section covers computer
and Internet developments, and the "New York Times Navigator" 
points to sites used most often by Times reporters.
Free for domestic users, at present.  <http://www.nytimes.com/>,
or <http://www.nytimes.com/info/contents/textpath.html>
for a low-graphics format.  [Network News, 1/27/96.]
(This is a great site!  You must be at least 18 to register,
and capable of reading pages of legalese.)

    UniScience News Net is "the science news service
of the Internet," now offering US university
PR announcements at no charge.  Updated frequently.  
<http://www.cyberstreet.com/unisci/>.  [Don Radler 
<unisci@supernet.net>, net-hap, 1/17/95.]

    Tune in to ScienceDaily Magazine for daily updates
from leading research centers.  <http://www.sciencedaily.com>.  
[<aeditor@sciencedaily.com>, newjour, 12/23/95.]


 8> Computists' news:

    Mark Kantrowitz has been hospitalized for appendicitis,
so his ai-jobs, lisp-jobs, prolog-jobs, ai-postdoc,
and ai-predoc job lists will be backlogged through at least
early March.  Write to <ai+query@cs.cmu.edu> to subscribe.  
[<Mark.Kantrowitz@glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu>, ai-jobs, 2/8/96.]
(Get well soon, Mark!  Some of my other jobs sources have
also been dry lately, so the CCJ and CAJ digests are shorter
than usual.  You can find additional job listings in Usenet's 
misc.jobs.offered, if you have a way to filter it.)

    Tim Lundeen is looking for sites to run his Web Crossing 
server for online  threaded discussions.  He offers a 25% discount 
for any user linking back to his vendor site.  Web Crossing 1.0
is available for Mac, NT, and Solaris.  [<tlundeen@lundeen.com>, 
2/2/96.]

    Kenneth N. Flaxman says that the New Yorker piece
on the Solomon legal expert system is 2/5/96, pp. 24-25.  
[<knf@kenlaw.com>, 2/8/96.]  (Ken is a lawyer in Chicago,
should other Computists need one.  He notes that unpredictable 
juries -- Solomon's raison d'etre -- are why lawyers usually
chose to settle.)

					-- Ken


To me, a lawyer is basically the person that knows the rules
of the country.  We're all throwing the dice, playing the game, 
moving our pieces around the board, but if there is a problem
the lawyer is the only person who has read the inside of
the top of the box.  -- Jerry Seinfeld.  [Nathan Jacczak 
<jacczak.ucd.oramail@zeus.ucdavis.edu>, QOTD, 7/1/94.]

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Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 14
 IS                                          February 15, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Information services.
 2>	Electronic commerce.
 3>	Directory services.
 4>	Personal address services.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Linguistics.
 7>	Books and merchandise.
_________________________________________________________________

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility,
never an opportunity.  -- Kahlil Gibran.  [AWAD, 10/19/95.]


Goood Afternoon, Computists!

    We could use more reporters...  Are you reading about
machine learning, inference, AI languages, educational technology, 
consulting, software entrepreneurship, investment trends,
or other Communique topics?  If you've joined discussion lists 
mentioned in the Communique, can you share feedback on
what's worthwhile?  Or could someone monitor software-archive 
announcement lists for new research systems and tools?


 1> Information services:

    The New York Times (NYT) is now searchable via the Dow Jones 
News/Retrieval service.  [iNews Summary.  NewtNews, 1/9/96.]

    The National Digital Library Program will be getting
$1M from Eastman Kodak Co.  The Library of Congress is seeking 
$45M in private donations and $15M in government funding by
the year 2000.  [Information Today, 1/96, p. 14.]

    DOCDEL-L is a list about advances in document delivery.
Send a "subscribe docdel-l your name" message
to <listproc@www.ebscodoc.com>.  [Tim Strickland 
<tstricklan@ebscodoc.com>, NEW-LIST, 12/20/95.]

    Lewis-Guodo Liu's "The Internet and Library and Information 
Services" is a review, analysis, and annotated bibliography
of 446 items in 27 categories.  "The literature is
predominantly descriptive."  91pp., $8.00 plus shipping
from <puboff@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>, (217) 333-1359.  [GSLIS 
Publications Office <puboff@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>, IR-L, 1/9/96.]

    The Scout Toolkit helps new users identify useful network 
information tools, organized by function: searchable indexes, 
subject catalogs, annotated resource indexes, announcement lists, 
etc.  Also leads to graphical, 3D, audio, and video services.  
<http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit>.  [Scout Report, 1/5/96.  
net-hap.]

    Provenance is a new Pacific Rim e-journal for information 
specialists, librarians, archivists, records and document 
managers, distance education specialists, and information 
technologists.  <http://www.intergate.bc.ca/netpac/provenance
/index.html>, edited by Neal Chan <netpac@intergate.bc.ca>.  
[Adrian Cunningham <acunning@nla.gov.au>, newjour, 1/9/96.]

    IWR Discussion Group List is a closed forum for serious 
discussion of information intelligence issues (both public-
and private-sector).  <http://www.awpi.com/IntelWeb/>.  
[<tempest@tempestco.com>, net-hap, 1/3/96.]

    JUPR-DIS is a companion discussion list for the J. of 
Universal Peer Review, an e-journal for articles and commentary
in any field.  Abstracts are circulated to all subscribers,
with instructions on retrieving full text.  "JUPR will find 
respected scholars to critique the articles."  Send a "sub
jupr-dis your name" message to <listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>.
[Bob Zenhausern <drz@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>, NEW-LIST, 1/2/96.


 2> Electronic commerce:

    Cable modems handling 4Mb/sec cost $400, but 1997 models 
meeting international standards are expected to drop to $150.  
6.8M homes may have them by the year 2000.  (Web-based TV
is one likely application.)  ISDN service is already available
at 128kbps, and can handle phone calls and two-way 
videoconferencing (which are difficult for cable modems).
[BW, 1/29/96, p. 74; and America's Network, 1/1/96, p. 32.
Flash Information, 1/29/96.]

    AT&T will insure its Universal credit-card customers
against unauthorized Internet charges, if they connect using
AT&T WorldNet.  No deductible.  [WSJ, 2/7/96, B5.  EDUPAGE.]

    CyberCash Inc. (Redwood Shores, CA) has announced a
Mac Wallet service for secure payments over the Internet.
The free client software supports Visa, MasterCard, Discover,
and American Express.  Download from <http://www.cybercash.com>.  
[WEBster, 2/6/96.]  (Possible weakness: a downloaded Java 
environment or GUI could imitate Mac Wallet's interface
and steal your unencrypted card number.  But credit card numbers 
are hardly secure in any case, and clever thieves can guess 
numbers that will pass first-level verification services.)

    Internet-Sales is a new, moderated discussion list
for those selling products or services.  Over 700 subscribers
in 25 countries.  Contact <IS-sub@mmgco.com>, or see 
<http://www.mmgco.com/isales.html>.  [John Audette <ja@mmgco.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 12/20/95.]

    E-BUSINESS is a good e-pub about doing business on the net.  
Send a "subscribe e-biz" message to <listserv@infoback.com>.
John M. Reese <staff@successpub.com>.  [Network News, 10/21/95.]

    53 marketing-related discussion groups were listed
in Kim Bayne's 10/95 Marketing Lists on the Internet, 
<http://www.bayne.com/wolfBayne/htmarcom/mktglist.html>.  
[<kimmik@wolfbayne.com>, net-hap, 10/26/95.]


 3> Directory services:

    The Central Source Yellow Pages now list over 10M
US businesses.  The Commercial Sites Index has over 15K,
with an average of 73 new ones each day.  [Win Treese 
<treese@openmarket.com>, The Internet Index #12, 1/2/96.
net-hap.]

    McKinley Internet Yellow Pages, 3rd ed. 1996 -- formerly
New Rider's Internet Yellow Pages --  by Christine Maxwell is 
taken from the website information at <http://www.mckinley.com>.  
Coverage is chiefly of WWW sites, with other Internet resources
in appendices.  Star ratings are provided in 15 subject areas.  
828 pp., $29.99 paper, from New Riders Publishing
<order-processing@mcp.com>, <http://www.mcp.com>,
(800) 428-5331 or (317) 581-3500, (800) 882-8583 Fax.
[Steve Brock <brock@ucsub.colorado.edu>, rec.arts.books, 1/15/96.  
David Joslin.]  (For other book reviews, see the rec.arts.books 
archive on gopher.colorado.edu.)

    The Internet Yellow Pages, 3rd ed., 1996, by Harley Hahn.
188 subject areas, including newsgroups and FTP and gopher sites.  
A comprehensive list of Usenet newsgroups has been dropped from 
this edition.  880 pp., $29.95 paper, from  Osborne McGraw-Hill 
<gopher://mcgraw.infor.com:5000>, (800) 227-0900, (510) 549-6603 
Fax.  [Steve Brock <brock@ucsub.colorado.edu>, rec.arts.books, 
1/15/96.  David Joslin.]  (Other available books include  
"Internet Health, Fitness, and Medicine Yellow Pages," and 
"Internet Science, Research, and Technology Yellow Pages.")

    CyberSearch 2.0 is a Windows CD ROM for off-line searching 
through the .5M-website Lycos database.  $29.95 (available 3/96), 
with optional monthly updates and site reviews.  Frontier 
Technologies (Palm Springs), <http://www.frontiertech.com>.  
[WEBster, 2/6/96.]

    Team America is soliciting one-line descriptions of favorite 
websites, to be cross indexed and provided free online and as
DOS or Windows software for off-line browsing.  Free copy of
the software for 30 addresses.  You may also submit a description 
of your own site.  [Jim T. <71774.302@compuServe.com>, net-hap, 
1/16/96.]


 4> Personal address services:

    Four11 Directory Services stores current addresses
and past affiliations, making it easy to search for lost friends.  
<http://www.Four11.com/>.  [Network News, 1/20/96.]

    Find A Friend searches US government and commercial databases 
by prior address, SSN, surname, driver's license, phone number, 
subscription addresses, etc.  Email results in 48 hours.  
<http://www.ais.net/findafriend> or <ctdmsrb@mailhost.ais.net>.  
[Rick Botthof <ctdmsrb@eagle.ais.net>, net-hap, 11/20/95.]
($18, I hear.)

    The Lost Friends Center is a free service for locating
lost friends and relatives.  See <http://www.lost-and-found.com
/lfc/locate.html>, which includes links to sites for missing 
persons, reunion organizations, and alumni associations.
John Riley <findit@lost-and-found.com>, Lost and Found 
International (Scottsdale, AZ), (602) 483-8980.
[Richard Hoy <rhoy@tenagra.com>, net-hap, 1/6/96.]
    
    A similar search for missing friends is offered by 
<http://www.seeklost.com>.  [<heather@europa.com>, net-hap, 
12/4/95.]

    For officially missing children and other persons,
ask Mike Schelling <mas0417@ix.netcom.com> for his resource list.  
[BESTWEB, 11/26/95.  net-hap.]


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

KnowExec-20 beta: Mac expert system shell for CLIPS,
AGENT_CLIPS, and Netscape.

Robot Store Page: reviews of MINIBOT and other robotics kits.

ROL: deductive object-oriented database system.

FIR/TDNN Toolbox: FIR and time-delay neural networks for MATLAB.

Neural-based network demo from Bob Massey.

"The Schemer's Guide to C++": book by Ferguson.

GAOT: genetic algorithm optimization toolbox for MATLAB.

VRMLConvert: moves Mathematica graphics to VRML.

javalamp: provides Mathematica animations via Java.

ERIS Mac ISDN videoconferencing demo.

Artificial life (alife) tutorial web page from Stewart Dean.

VizAbility: interactive multimedia package to develop
visual skills.

"OpenDoc Programmer's Guide" and "OpenDoc Cookbook":
HCI books from Apple.


 6> Linguistics:

    Need public-domain texts for linguistic studies?
See Kevin Savetz' list of sites, <http://www.northcoast.com
/savetz/pd/pd.html>.  For freeware (as opposed to public-domain), 
try the 2,588 anonymous-FTP sites listed on <http://www.info.net
/Public/ftp-list.html>.  And for new commercial works on the net, 
see <http://www.awa.com/library/omnimedia/>.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 
12/95.]

    Kurzweil AI often advertises for computational linguists.  
Their home site is <http://www.kurz-ai.com>, with product info
and links to other speech recognition sites.  See 
<http://www.kurz-ai.com/gen-vr-cl.html> for references on 
computational linguistics, compiled by language modeler
Jeff Adams <jeffa@kurz-ai.com>.  [comp.ai, 10/24/95.  Ken Barker.]

    Words, Wit and Wisdom on the Web echoes a biweekly newspaper 
column about words, word origins, and language (since 1953).  
<http://www.interport.net/~words1>.  [<words1@interport.net>,
net-hap, 12/1/95.]

    Gakusei-L, for beginning romanized-Japanese conversation,
has moved.  Send a "subscribe gakusei-l your name" message to 
<listproc@hawaii.edu>.  Gakusei2-L is for intermediate learners 
and Gakusei3-L for advanced learners.  Bunpou-L is for
English-language discussion of Japanese grammar.  [Laura Kimoto 
<kimotol@hawaii.edu>, NEW-LIST, 12/9/95.]  (Contact the
list owner if your address contains any of "= % _ -".)

    BritSpeak offers a tongue-in-cheek look at British English, 
plus a British-American English dictionary.  
<http://pages.prodigy.com/NY/NYC/britspk/main.html>.  
[<ukmark@aol.com>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    GHOSTLETTERS is a discussion list for people pretending
to be fictional or historical characters, animals,
mythical beings, etc.  Send a "subscribe GHOSTLETTERS
your-character's-name" (e.g., "King Henry VIII") message
to <listserv@listserv.aol.com>.  Personae must be unique, but
can be changed later.  <http://www.halcyon.com/penguin/ghost.htm>.  
[Nan Hawthorne <penguin@halcyon.com>, NEW-LIST, 2/2/96.]


 7> Books and merchandise:

    1,300 educational multimedia CD ROMs are cataloged on 
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Edinburgh_Multimedia/>.  
[<k.gourlay@bbcnc.org.uk>, net-hap, 12/27/95.]

    CD Match is a free PC program to help users choose CD ROMs 
compatible with their systems.  The program prints out system 
capabilities that can be compared with IMA-standard CD ROM
label information.  <http://www.ima.org>.  [Heller Report, 2/96.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Free goods and services are the subject of 
<http://home.acadia.net/userpages/freebees>.  
[<freebees@acadia.net>, net-hap, 12/28/95.]

    Specialty advertising items such as imprinted pens, cups,
or baseball caps are available from <http://www.computek.net
/inroads/caps> or <http://eshnav.com/marcotes>.  Over 300K items.  
[<hrsp@airmail.net> and <marcotte@smartnet.net>, net-hap, 
12/12/95.]

    For laser engraving of any design, try 
<http://wyp.net/us/20001002>.  [<lazerit@bak2.lightspeed.net>, 
net-hap, 12/12/95.]

    Books available directly from their authors are listed in 
Basement Full of Books, <http://www.greyware.com/bfob
/default.htm> or <ftp.greyware.com/pub/literature/bfob
/basement_full_of_books.txt>.  Many of these are otherwise
out of print, but can be still be custom autographed.  [Jeffry 
Dwight <jeffryd@aragorn.greyware.com>, Internet-on-a-Disk, 12/95.]

    Biblio is a list for collectors and sellers of old, rare, 
scarce, and/or out-of-print books.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE"
message to <biblio-request@smartlink.net>.  
<http://www.smartlink.net/~biblio>.  [Shoshana Edwards 
<bree@auldbooks.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/4/96.]

					-- Ken


Raziel does not speak of [The Book of Magic] to the uninitiated.  
But since she had deposited it in the Tir Asleen library,
the castle librarian had access to it.  This slender man,
of duodecimo build, tightly bound, and yellowing at his edges, 
gazed on magical wonders that many scholars would trade their 
libraries for.  And what did he learn of this marvelous book?  
"Anonymous.  Untitled.  No date.  Folio vol., calfskin binding
w/ stamped brass corner pcs, sewn spine (silk).  ii + 54 pp 
vellum, handwrtn, unnumb.  Illustrated.  Good condition;
slightly foxed."  -- Allen Varney, "The Willow Sourcebook."

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 15
 IS                                          February 20, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Science funding.
 2>	Industry news.
 3>	Education and HCI.
 4>	Cognitive science and philosophy.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Job services.
 7>	Neural networks.
 8>	Robotics.
_________________________________________________________________

A government with the policy to rob Peter to pay Paul
can be assured of the support of Paul.  -- George Bernard Shaw.  
[Dave Hendrickson <hendrick@hpanvs.an.hp.com>, QOTD, 2/11/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    The Chinese Lunar New Year of the Rat started 2/19/96.
A good site for Chinese customs, stories, medicine, food, 
festivals, and art is <http://www.ceas.rochester.edu:8080/ee
/users/yeung/ch_culture.html>.  [Elizabeth Wellburn 
<ewellbur@cln.etc.bc.ca>, Network Nuggets, 2/8/96.  net-hap.]  
(Did you remember not to sweep, wash your hair, or use knives
or scissors?  You may have swept away or cut your luck.)


 1> Science funding:

    NASA Administrator Dan Goldin says the primary goal of 
planetary exploration is the search for present or past life 
forms, and that the search will begin with robotic probes.
He also told an AAAS meeting that "The shuttle has suppressed
a lot of science we could be doing...  We haven't landed on
a planet in 20 years...  We spent $10B on the space station
and didn't produce a piece of hardware, but boy did the 
contractors have fun.  It's shameful.  It's stealing from
the American public."  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 2/16/96.]

    A URhode Island study for the GAO found that deficits
from scientific research are a major factor in the past decade
of tuition increases.  "Even the best programs in science don't 
pay their own way."  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 2/9/96.]

    As Congress still looks to cut indirect cost rates on grants, 
"a report in the New England J. of Medicine raises serious ethical 
alarms over growing dependence of academic research on corporate 
funds."  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 2/9/96.]

    The White House is seeking unpaid summer interns to upgrade 
its website.  Useful skills are Spanish, VRML, Unix, Perl,
and CGI.  Part-time fall-semester interns are also needed.
By 3/1/96, send a message with your home page URL (only)
as subject line to <intern@ostp.eop.gov>.  The page must
include your name, address, email address, phone number, age, 
desired position, and links to sites you helped build or maintain.
[David Lytel <dlytel@ostp.eop.gov>, net-hap, 2/14/96.]


 2> Industry news:

    Netscape Communications, Silicon Graphics, and 50 other 
companies have endorsed the Java-based Moving Worlds standard
for 3D images on the Web.  An alternative Active VRML language
is favored by Microsoft.  [WSJ, 2/13/96, B5.  EDUPAGE.]

    CompuServe has launched Sprynet, an Internet-only service
for $19.95/month.  AOL says its Internet-only GNN has attracted 
100K customers in the past 90 days.  [St. Petersburg Times, 
12/12/96, p. 9.  EDUPAGE.]

    CPU-synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM) chips 
will take most of today's DRAM market.  NEC has begun sample 
deliveries of 256MB, 250MHz SDRAMs (with 0.25 micron geometry).  
Mass production should begin in 1998.  [AP.  Bill Park, 2/13/96.]

    Many corporations are wondering if it's time to
replace outdated software, rather than fix it to handle
the "millennium bug" as we enter the year 2000.  Repair costs
may be $40M per large corporation, or $400B-$600B worldwide.  
[Gartner Group.  Information Week, 2/5/96, p. 30.  EDUPAGE.]

    New macro-based viruses for Microsoft Word have
appeared, and two of the Windows versions can cause damage.  
<http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/bulletins/g-10a.shtml>.
Microsoft's initial fix for Mac platforms is 
<http://www.microsoft.com/msoffice/freestuf/msword/download
/mvtool/mvtool2.htm>.  You may need updated DOS-format
unpackers from <ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/cmp/>.
[GD, TidBITS, 2/13/96.]


 3> Education and HCI:

    The British Open University is making some of its courses 
available over the Internet to English-speaking students 
elsewhere.  <http://cszx.open.ac.uk/zx/>, or contact
<internet-course-info@open.ac.uk>.  [WICHE Communique, 1/96,
p. 13.  EDUPAGE.]

    A Western virtual university may be admitting students
by Summer '97.  Simon & Schuster's Education Management Group
has donated $150K in planning funds, to the Western Governors' 
Association led by Colorado's Roy Rohmer and Utah's Mike Leavitt.  
[Chron. Higher Ed., 2/16/96, A21.  EDUPAGE.]

    To run a single course, you might want LISTSERV-style
list management software.  Macjordomo 1.0b6 is a Mac version
of Majordomo.  Automatic or manual subscribe and unsubscribe, 
message digests, file retrieval, etc.  
<http://leuca.med.cornell.edu/Macjordomo>.  [Michele Fuortes, 
TidBITS, 10/30/95.]  (ListSTAR is another commercial alternative 
for the Mac.)

    The ACM SIGCHI Curriculum Development Group report,
"Curricula in Human-Computer Interaction," is online
(in HTML format) at <http://www.acm.org/sigchi/cdg/>.
An NSF/ARPA report, "New Directions in HCI Education, Research, 
and Practice," covers similar topics to different depths.
It's at <http://www.sei.cmu.edu/arpa/hci/directions
/TitlePage.html>.  And Saul Greenberg at UCalgary has made
his HCI course materials available, at 
<http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/projects/grouplab/481/481.html>.
For other HCI resources on the net, see Gary Perlman's ACM 
Interactions magazine column --  frequently updated --
at <http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~perlman/22-edu.html>.  
[<perlman@cis.ohio-state.edu>, educators.chi, 2/14/96.
John Murray.]

    System Concepts Newsletter is a new e-pub covering ergonomics, 
human factors, and HCI.   <http://www.system-concepts.com/>.  
[<helpdesk@system-concepts.com>, newjour, 10/20/95.]


 4> Cognitive science and philosophy:

    Carleton University (Ottawa) is planning to offer
the first Canadian PhD program in cognitive science, including
AI, CogSci, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience.  Contact 
Andrew Brook <abrook@ccs.carleton.ca> or see 
<http://superior.carleton.ca/~jlogan/Grad_Cog_Sci.html>.
[Istvan Berkeley <istvan@gpu4.srv.ualberta.ca>,
comp.ai.neural-nets, 2/14/96.  Ken Barker.]

    The CogPsy Mailinglist is merging with the Noetica
cognitive psychology e-journal at <http://psych.psy.uq.oz.au
/CogPsych/Noetica/>.  Send a "subscribe" subject line to
<cogpsy-request@neuro.psy.soton.ac.uk>.  A database of
current projects in cognitive science is available at 
<http://neuro.psy.soton.ac.uk/~at/>.  [Adriaan Tijsseling 
<at@cogsci.soton.ac.uk>, 11/18/95.]

    Imagery is a list for the investigation of all aspects
of mental imagery, including modalities, conscious experience,
and therapeutic uses.  Send a "sub imagery your name" message
to <listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>.  [Bob Zenhausern 
<drz@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>, NEW-LIST, 12/20/95.]

   Psy-lang is for clinicians and researchers interested
in language and psychopathology.  Send a "subscribe psy-lang
your name" message to <listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>.
[Eugenie Georgaca <e.georgaca@mmu.ac.uk>, NEW-LIST, 11/21/95.]

    CYBERMIND, on the philosophy and psychology of Cyberspace,
has moved.  Send a "subscribe cybermind your name" message to 
<listserv@listserv.aol.com>.  [Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 12/4/95.]

    Youngstown State U. has a new, moderated mailing list
for philosophy academics.  Contact Andrew L. Garman 
<algarman@cis.ysu.edu>.  [comp.ai.philosophy, 12/20/95.]

    FOP-L, for Fiction-of-Philosophy, is devoted to issues, 
presentations, and critiques of philosophical fiction
and fictional philosophy -- including writers such as
Jabes, Blanchot, Ballard, Cixous, Muller, and Lautreamont,
and theorists such as Kristeva, Heidegger, Sartre, and
Haraway.  Send a "subscribe fop-l your name" message
to <listserv@vm.cc.purdue.edu>.  (New site.)  [Alan Sondheim 
<sondheim@panix.com>, NEW-LIST, 12/4/95.]


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UCincinnati/ECECS: department head.

SUNY Buffalo/CS: tenure-track in experimental CS:
AI, CV, pattern recognition, complexity, linear algebra,
parallel algorithms, languages, systems, or VLSI.

UVirginia: postdoc RA on predictability
and scheduling in real-time databases.

Arizona State University: tenure-track SE, OS,
or intelligent information systems. (Extended.)

Utah State (Logan): CS lecturer in SE or AI.

Emory University (Atlanta): postdoc RAs
in parallel/distributed systems.

Motorola/Lexicus (Palo Alto): handwriting/speech recognition 
scientist in pattern recognition, vector quantization, NN,
HMM, and statistical language modeling.

Creative Optics, Inc. (Bedford, NH): two MS/PhD applied 
researchers in image understanding, GA, adaptive systems,
agents, VR, or cognitive systems.

Philadelphia AI/expert systems lab: US BS/MS/PhD researchers.

USussex: two postdoc RAs in stochastic lexicalized grammars.

French National Research Inst. for Agriculture (INRA-GEVES): 
postdoc in CV, NN, or AI to develop a classification structure
for roses.

Vrije Universiteit Brussel/AI Lab: researchers in intelligent 
agents.

Institut fuer Informatik (Switzerland): MS RA in KBS
for business and education.


 6> Job services:

    The San Jose Mercury News has introduced a Free Agent
resume matching service.  <http://www.sjmercury.com>.
The software is from IntelliMatch, Inc.  [SJM, 1/15/96, 7E.]

    For jobs outside the US, subscribe to the International 
Employment Hotline.  Editor Will Cantrell checks out each ad.  
$39/year from (703) ***-****.  [Carol Kleiman, SJM, 1/14/96.]
(No longer in operation.  -- KIL, 8/26/99.)

    The Canadian Resume Centre is <http://netaccess.on.ca
/~resume/>.  [<resume@netaccess.on.ca>, net-hap, 1/24/96.]


 7> Neural networks:

    The IEEE Neural Network Council is seeking
"computational intelligence research program" links for its
home page, <http://www.ieee.org/nnc>.  64 neural computing 
programs are currently lists.  [Payman Arabshahi
<payman@uw-isdl.ee.washington.edu>, connectionists, 2/11/96.]

    Rule Extraction from Artificial Neural Networks is
a new, moderated list being formed by Robert Andrews 
<robert@fit.qut.edu.au>.  Send your name, institution,
and email address.  [connectionists, 12/15/95.]

    Christopher M. Bishop's "Neural Networks for Pattern 
Recognition" is now available in a second printing from Oxford 
University Press.  The initial demand was much higher than 
anticipated.  <http://neural-server.aston.ac.uk/NNPR/>.  
[<bishopc@helios.aston.ac.uk>, connectionists, 2/6/96.]

    Athanasios Episcopos is collecting references about 
applications of NN in finance, economics, and business.
See the current list at <http://phoenix.som.clarkson.edu
/~episcopo/neurofin.txt>.  [<episcopo@icarus.som.clarkson.edu>, 
comp.ai.neural-nets, 2/9/96.]


 8> Robotics:

    The AAAI 1996 Mobile Robot Competition and Exhibition
now has a home page at <http://tommy.jsc.nasa.gov
/~korten/competition96.html>.  [David Kortenkamp 
<korten@mickey.jsc.nasa.gov>, comp.ai, 2/15/96.]

    Anyone planning to send a conference enrollment to
George Lasker (UWindsor) should check with previous attendees.  
Certain complaints haven't been resolved.  [Edgar Sommer 
<eddi@gmd.de> and Mark Sloof <sloof@cs.vu.nl>, comp.ai, 2/9/96.  
David Joslin.]  (I'm uncertain whether to report such warnings.
I haven't the resources to conduct an impartial investigation,
but it would be a disservice not to bring serious allegations
to our members' attention.  As for liability, I'm only reporting
-- as news -- that a warning was published on comp.ai on 2/9/96.)

    GNUPIC is a mailing list about the Microchip PIC16C84 
microcontroller, which can be reprogrammed in-circuit
without expensive equipment.  Documentation is at 
<http://www.ultranet.com/biz/mchip/> and 
<http://www.execpc.com/~digalog/.magic/address.html>.
DOS assemblers, compilers, disassemblers, a simulator,
and downloaders are available, with further development
(for other platforms) in progress.  To subscribe, contact
<gnupic-request@digalogsys.com>.  [Rick Miller 
<rick@digalogsys.com>, comp.robotics.misc, 12/1/95.]

     nanomech-l is a new list for high-precision manufacturing
and micromechanical technology, including nanomechanical 
actuation, control, and robotics.  Send a "subscribe nanomech-l" 
message to <listserv@netcom.com>.  [Nick Szabo <szabo@netcom.com>, 
comp.arch.storage, 12/14/95.]

    Electronic engineers will find reference data and circuit 
schematics on <http://www.wenzel.com/pages/mysterylb.htm>,
the Wenzel Associates technical library.  [WEBster, 12/12/95.]

					-- Ken


It can be said that NN is a good way for people to get
easy exposure to nonlinear tools.  Just plug in the data
and run the exe.  You just keeping playing around with data
and architecture and maybe one fine day, eureka.  With XYZ 
regression, cluster analysis, etc., you've got textbooks
that are meaner than NN s/w manuals.  And you've got to take 
responsibility for any screw-ups.  With NN, for some reason
or another, the attitude becomes positive, screw ups aren't
a sign that one is stupid, not mathematical, etc., it is part
of the process of learning.  In trading, you can blame the NN
and say it needs more work.  If an analytical tool was misapplied, 
the mind goes "WHO WAS THE IDIOT WHO ..."  -- Andrew Benjamin Ng 
<warlord@singnet.com.sg>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 12/21/95.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.16
To: ;@Charter_Computists
Message-ID: <824962951.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
Mail-System-Version: <SUN-MM(229)+TOPSLIB(128)@AI.SRI.COM>


_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 16
 IS                                          February 22, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	NSF funding news.
 2>	Cyberspace law.
 3>	Industry news.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	AI news.
 6>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

[Congresspeople are] approaching science with the wisdom
of a potted plant. ... Most approach science with policies 
appropriate for Fred Flintstone.  -- Vice President Al Gore,
AAAS national meeting.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 2/12/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I'll be taking next week off, to learn to use my new
web page and browsing/email tools.  Expect the next TCC,
CCJ, and CAJ on 3/5/96.  (That happens to be the next
full moon as well.)  Have a good week!


 1> NSF funding news:

    NSF is offering ten NSF Director's recognition awards
of $500K for Leadership for the Integration of Research
and Education by innovative academic institutions.
This activity will be managed by Dr. David Schindel 
<lire@nsf.gov>, Office of Science and Technology Infrastructure 
(OSTI), (703) 306-1040.  <http://www.nsf.gov:80/OD/OSTI/>.
[NSF Bulletin, 2/96.]

    Other NSF deadlines: CISE Educational Innovation Program,
NSF 96-17, 3/18/96;  New Millenium Computing Point Design Studies, 
NSF 96-38, 4/1/96; Partnerships for Advanced Computational 
Infrastructure Program (preproposals), NSF 96-31, 4/1/96;  
Academic Research Infrastructure Program (Facilities),
NSF 96-12, 3/15/96.  (FTP brochures from stis.nsf.gov)

    Other target dates: Collaborative Research in Neuroscience, 
Computer and Mathematical Sciences, and Engineering, NSF 96-20, 
3/15/96; CISE/IRIS Interactive Systems, Gary Strong 
<gstrong@nsf.gov>, 3/1/96; Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems, 
Larry Reeker <lreeker@nsf.gov>, 3/1/96; Robotics and Machine 
Intelligence, Howard Moraff <hmoraff@nsf.gov>, 3/1/96 and 9/1/96.
 
    NSF/INT's deadlines for US proposals with France and Germany 
have been moved back to 6/15/96.  <mjami@nsf.gov>, (703) 306-1702.  
Other international program deadlines -- often semi-annual -- 
include NSF-CONACyT Collaborative Research Opportunities,
NSF 96-4, 5/7/96; Japan Int. Research Fellow Awards (formerly 
Japan Postdoctoral and Junior Investigator Fellowship Program), 
NSF 96-14, 4/1/96;  Cooperative Science Programs with New Zealand 
and Australia, NSF 96-14, 4/15/96; Cooperative Science Programs 
with Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela, 5/1/96; 
U.S.-Japan Cooperative Research, Including Short-Term Visits
and Joint Seminars, NSF 96-14, 5/15/96; Western European 
Cooperative Programs, NSF 96-14, 4/1/96 target; and Cooperative 
Research Programs with the Americas, NSF 96-14, 5/1/96 target.  
<http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/int/intfund.htm>.


 2> Cyberspace law:

    A federal judge has blocked enforcement of the new 
Communications Decency Act, which makes it a felony to use 
computer networks accessible by minors to transmit indecent 
material.  "Patently obscene" materials can still be prosecuted.  
A three-judge panel will now review constitutionality of
the Act (which could take a year).  <www.epic.org/free_speech
/censorship/lawsuit/>.  [NYT, 2/16/96, A1.  EDUPAGE.]
(The Justice Dept. says it had no plans to enforce
the Act's decency provisions, and Senators Pat Leahy (D-VT)
and Russ Feingold (D-WI) have introduced legislation
to eliminate the provisions.)

    The US Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit has ruled that 
obscenity must be judged wherever information is downloaded.  
Cyberspace denizens do not form a special community.
One observer agreed: "You might as well say that pornography 
should be judged by the worldwide community of pornographers."  
Defense lawyer Thomas Nolan will appeal the Memphis conviction of 
two California adult BBS operators.  [Woody Baird, NYT, 2/16/96.]

    Meanwhile, the US House and Senate are busy rewriting
the US copyright laws with a bill (H.R. 2441) that would create
a new "transmission" right.  Defeating software "copyright 
management" information could lead to 5 years in prison and
a $500K fine.  The Digital Futures Coalition -- including consumer 
and library groups, the national writers union, Sun, 3Com,
and several other computer firms -- opposes the bill as not 
addressing traditional fair use issues and because Internet 
service providers would have to monitor transmission content.  
<http://guess.worldweb.net/dfc>.  [NETWORK NEWS, 2/18/96.]

    Dave Winer is organizing a 24 Hours of Democracy project
on 2/22/96, to celebrate freedom of speech.  "Judges in the US
are deciding that every community's standards apply to every bit 
of writing on the web!"  He's asking _everyone_ to write
and post an essay, lest the Internet becomes a one-way medium
for "soap commercials, sensationalism, imitation friendship
-- a continuation of the suburban culture of isolation,
lies, dysfunction and unhappiness."  <http://www.hotwired.com
/staff/userland/24/>.  [<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 2/18/96.]  
(Winer hopes to impress Congress with the power and immediacy
of Web culture, perhaps even convincing them that they should
keep their hands off.)

    John Perry Barlow has gone even further, issuing a
Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.  
<http://www.eff.org/pub/Publications/John_Perry_Barlow
/barlow_0296.declaration>.  [Matthew Kall <mkall@umich.edu>, 
TidBITS, 2/19/96.]  (He says, basically, that the Web is now
a growing, organic culture beyond the power of traditional 
governments.  Whatever problems exist can be solved without 
outside interference.)

    "Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century,"
by Mark Dery, is "happily, sometimes even exuberantly nonpedantic" 
in its description of avant-garde subcultures.  [NYT, 2/20/96, B2.  
EDUPAGE.]

     George Gilder's latest upbeat article about Internet
culture, ANGST AND AWE ON THE INTERNET, was printed in
Forbes ASAP (12/4/95).  "Richard Shaffer of the Computer Letter
counts 39,158 Internet stories during the first three quarters
of 1995, beating O.J. by some 15,000 citations." ...
"Last August, Windows 95, a modest advance in operating systems, 
exploded across the press and the airwaves as if the entire media 
had been preempted for a Microsoft infomercial."  The text is on 
<http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~gaj1/ggindex.html>.  Gilder's book, 
Telecosm, will be published in 1996 by Simon & Schuster.
[Chuck Morefield <clm@gtti.com>, 2/11/96.]


 3> Industry news:

    Motorola has licensed the Mac OS, with rights to sublicense 
(subject to Apple quality standards).  Motorola can thus sell
Mac OS-compatible motherboards or systems for resale under
other labels.  [MHA, TidBITS, 2/19/96.]

    Apple has at last released its Cyberdog beta,
an OpenDoc-based Internet technology for Power Mac.
Cyberdog needs OpenDoc 1.0, which needs 16MB of RAM and
System 7.5.1.  5MB download from <http://cyberdog.apple.com/>
or <ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/cyberdog/>.  [GD, TidBITS, 2/19/96.]

    Sun's Javasoft subsidiary has released its beta
Java Developer's Kit (JDK) for Macintosh, including a compiler
and Java applet viewer.  Sun's Virtual Machine (VM) implementation 
works with 68030 (or better) processors as well as Power Macs.
It needs System 7.5 and 3MB of free RAM.  3MB download from 
<http://www.javasoft.com/JDK-1.0/>.  [GD, TidBITS, 2/19/96.]

    Java-OpenDoc is a list for -- you guessed it -- Java
and OpenDoc programmers.  Send a "Subscribe" subject line
to <java-opendoc-request@cuesys.com>, or to
<java-opendoc-d-request@cuesys.com> for the digest version.
For more info on these modular, platform-neutral systems,
see <http://java.sun.com/1.0alpha3/doc/overview/java/index.html> 
and <http://www.cilabs.org/opendoc.overview.html>.  [Richard 
Kilmer <rich@cuesys.com>, comp.soft-sys.middleware.opendoc, 
1/2/96.]

    The JAVA-MAC list now offers a digest version.  Send a 
"subscribe java-mac-digest" message to <majordomo@natural.com>.  
[Sandy Schneible <java-mac-owner@natural.com>, NEW-LIST, 12/1/95.]

    Netscape's website now serves 40M hits/day, or over 1B/month.  
New French, German, and Japanese versions of Navigator 2.0 are 
available in beta from <http://home.netscape.com/>.  [2/21/96.]

    At least 23 shipping Netscape plug-ins are listed at 
<http://home.netscape.com/comprod/products/navigator
/version_2.0/plugins/index.html>.  (Only four currently
work with Mac: Lightning Strike, Envoy, Realaudio, and Talker.  
More are coming soon.)  [Chris Habig, MacWay, 2/14/96.]

    Netscape Communications is offering free Netscape Development 
Partners Program memberships and software through 3/31/96,
to help Blackbird developers move to Java, JavaScript, and 
Netscape open standards-based tools for creating live online 
applications.  (Microsoft has dropped its MSN-only Blackbird 
project.  <http://www.microsoft.com>.)  See the Netscape 
Developers site, <http://developer.netscape.com/reg_form.html>.  
[WEBster, 2/20/96.]

    Microsoft is creating an Interactive Media Division
for Internet and DVD multimedia projects.  It will include 
Microsoft Network (MSN), games, children's products, and 
Microsoft's information businesses.  [NYT, 2/20/96, C1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Softway Systems Inc. (San Francisco) is offering OpenNT,
a Unix subsystem for Windows NT.  It may take more than a year
to develop it into a full Unix.  <http://techweb.cmp.com
/iw/566/66iunt.htm>.  [NETWORK NEWS, 2/18/96.]

    IBM will add Solaris and Windows NT support to the RS/6000
for a  high-end Unix client or low-end server.  IBM will also 
support Solaris and NT on its PowerPC 604-based 43P series 
workstations and E20 workgroup servers, but is discontinuing
its PowerSeries machines.  "RS/6000 on Windows NT will become
a high-volume market in 1997,"  to run niche applications
only available on NT.  Also, IBM's AIX (Unix) business is growing 
at 25%-30%/year, esp. in the high-end and workstation market.  
[Press release.  Ian S. Nelson <nelsoni@rintintin.colorado.edu>, 
comp.sys.powerpc.advocacy, 2/19/96.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Correctness and Efficiency in NN Simulation: paper by Lawrence.

Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks: book by Brian Ripley.

SAS and neural networks: info from Warren Sarle.

MLC++: machine-learning library in C++.

Language and Vision Integration: 4 volumes edited by Mc Kevitt.

UMD Interactive Video Network (IVN) Faculty Guide.

Fantasm & Eddie: Macintosh assembly language development system.

cgihtml v1.2: C library for CGI web programs.

IPv6 for BSD Unix: free Internet security protocol.

Active Web Tools: agent-based free beta CD ROM from General Magic.

KE Texpress Shared Database Services: online database provider.

WebFX Beta:  VRML Netscape 2.0B6a plug-in for Windows.


 5> AI news:

    Garry Kasparov defeated Deep Blue 4 to 2 (including two 
draws), claiming the $400K prize.  IBM gets $100K for further 
research.  [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2/18/96, A1.  EDUPAGE.]  
(Deep Blue ran on a 512-processor IBM SP at the Cornell's
Theory Center, and over 200M operations/second.)

    InQuizit from Intelligent Text Processing (ITP; Santa Monica) 
is a natural-language database query system adapted for Internet 
and web searches by untrained users.  It parses English-language 
queries to disambiguate word sense, then performs a semantic 
search.  Marketing director Jack Reynolds says "This is what 
people have sought for years.  Top computer-linguistics experts 
see this as the first virtual intelligence system."
SBIR sponsor Mike Golden at the Army Research Lab (ARL)
says that "When we ran standard tests on their software,
it performed as they said it did."  ITP President Kathleen 
Dahlgren said that "InQuizit found the correct information
87% of the time and found 96% of the relevant material.
Competing search strategies at best hit 42% for both metrics."  
You can try it out at <http://www.itpinc.com>.  [Technology 
Transfer Week, 2/6/96.  Jack Reynolds <reynolds@itpinc.com>, 
comp.ai, 2/13/96.  Ken Barker.]

    New items on the UMBC agents web, 
<http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents>, will be announced on AgentNews.  
"When we are in the mood or have had too much expresso, we may 
editorialize or add our own interpretations and predications
on agent-related events."  Send a "subscribe agentnews"
message to <majordomo@cs.umbc.edu>, or write to
<agentnews-sample@cs.umbc.edu> for a sample issue.
Comments to <agentnews-owner@cs.umbc.edu>.  Past issues
are on <http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentnews/>.  [Timothy Finin 
<finin@cs.umbc.edu>, comp.ai, 1/2/96.  Ken Barker.]

    The J. of Experimental and Theoretical AI (JETAI) has
a new home page at <http://turing.paccs.binghamton.edu/jetai/>.  
Request a free trial issue.  [Gary McGraw <gem@rstcorp.com>, 
2/13/96.]

    A directory of Bayesian researchers is being compiled
by David Madigan <madigan@stat.washington.edu>.  
<http://bayes.stat.washington.edu/bayes_people.html>.
[ai-stats, 1/16/96.]

    For an update on "computing as compression" research
at Bangor, see <http://www.sees.bangor.ac.uk
/~gerry/sp_summary.html>.  Current work focuses on
multiple alignment of patterns (with unification and search), 
inspired by DNA sequence analysis in bio-informatics.
[Gerry Wolff <gerry@sees.bangor.ac.uk>, comp.theory, 1/4/96.]

    The ROOP machine-independent AI language combines
rule-based, procedural, logical, and object-oriented
programming techniques.  [Tao Li, ACM SIGPLAN NOTICES,
12/95, pp. 17-24.  Flash Information, 12/18/95.]          

    A calendar of logic-related conferences has been compiled
on <http://www.research.att.com/lics/logic-confs.html>.  
Conference organizers should send updates to <lics-request
@research.att.com>.  [Doug Howe <howe@research.att.com>,
dbworld, 12/5/95.]


 6> Computists' news:

    Adrian Stoica has joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 
in Pasadena, Concurrent Processing Devices Group, to work on
a hybrid expert system/fuzzy logic/neural network for
sensor fusion.  (He saw the job advertised in TCC.)  Adrian's 
thesis work in Australia was in training robot arms to imitate 
human training movements.  [<astoica@brain.jpl.nasa.gov>, 
2/12/96.]

    Mark D. Smucker will soon be getting his MS from
UWisconsin-Madison/CS, and would like to hear of product-orient 
R&D jobs in evolutionary computation or alife, complex
multi-agent systems, IR/filtering, machine learning,
or user modeling.  Mark also has a degree in physics and CS,
from Iowa State University.  Contact <smucker@cs.wisc.edu>
with leads, or see <http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~smucker/>.  [2/20/96.]

					-- Ken


You have everything but one thing: madness.
A man needs a little madness or else -- he never dares
cut the rope and be free.  -- Zorba the Greek.
[Chuck Patrick <chuck@bluestone.com>, 7/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Subject: TCC 6.17
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 17
 IS                                              March 5, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Research funding policy.
 2>	Computer industry news.
 3>	Portable computing.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Travel.
 6>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

Life begets life.  Energy creates energy.
It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
-- Sarah Bernhardt.  [AWAD, 1/22/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    The SIFT batch filters for Usenet newsgroups are running 
again, after a 6-week hiatus.  With their help, we've got
a bumper crop of good job ads in both our career (CCJ)
and applied (CAJ) jobs digests today.  SIFT is currently free
from Stanford's Digital Libraries project under Hector
Garcia-Molina, with Matt Jacobsen handling routine operation.
My guide to using SIFT is available free to Computists.


 1> Research funding policy:

    India currently has about 130K software engineers
(at a top salary of $10K); Russia, 60K (at $12K); Brazil,
64K (at $32.5K); and Ireland, 13K (at $45K).  [Computerworld, 
2/26/96, p. 1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Canada's Software Human Resources Council foresees
a shortage of 20K programmers and software workers by 1999.  
[Ottawa Citizen, 2/20/96, C1.  EDUPAGE.]  Canada is considering
a "high-tech superfund" to develop new technologies and jobs.  
[Toronto Sun, 2/22/96, p. 33.  EDUPAGE.]

    A new study of the Commerce Department's Advanced Technology 
Program (ATP) has found it effective in creating and accelerating 
high-risk, enabling technologies and collaborative research.  
Copies of the Silber and Associates study are available from
the ATP, (301) 975-4332.  [Michael Baum <baum@micf.nist.gov>,
NIST UPDATE, 2/20/96.]

    The House Science Committee is considering an NRC 
recommendation for a science and technology (S&T) budget rather 
than an R&D budget, for more accurate tracking of innovation 
investment.  American Physical Society president Robert Schrieffer 
is opposed, as that could impede the shift of weapons research 
funding to civilian research categories.  He also believes that 
academic institutions should not be favored over national labs.  
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 3/1/96.]

    Microsoft plans to spend $2.5B on R&D in the next two years
-- nearly as much as for its first 20 years of research.
[Michael Brown.  AP.  Bill Park, 3/1/96.]  (That's almost half 
NSF's entire budget.  And other companies will have to match
the effort.  A typical NSF program budget is only a few million, 
and 60% of it is usually committed from previous years.)

    MITI recently announced a $100M research program
in next-generation electronic technologies.  Memory chips
provide 1/3 to 3/4 of the profit of NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi,
Fujitsu and Mitsubishi Electric, but a glut of new chip factories 
is coming online next year.  [WSJ, 2/27/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]

    One NSF-funded CMU project is developing teams of
mini-robots to assemble computer disk drives.  [BW, 2/12/96,
p. 91.  NewtNews, 2/20/96.]  The $100B semiconductor fabrication 
equipment industry may face severe challenges in the next 5 years 
from innovative micro- and then nano-fabrication technology.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 2/22/96.]


 2> Computer industry news:

    Silicon Graphics is acquiring supercomputer maker
Cray Research.  [NYT, 2/24/96, p. 18.  EDUPAGE.]

    Thinking Machines (Bedford, MA) has emerged from Chapter 11 
protection.  [NewtNews, 2/20/96.]  I believe their court-approved 
plan is to market software for massively parallel computers, 
starting with Sun servers.  [BW, 11/20/95, p. 55.]

    Digital's new SA-110 StrongARM microprocessor runs on AA 
batteries and offers "supercomputer performance" at mass-market 
prices.  Apple's Newton team has been working with DEC for
the past 18 months, and Dragon Systems is working on speech 
recognition for hand-held devices.  The 100MHz chip delivers
115 Dhrystone 2.1 MIPS for $29 (in quantity); the 160MHz chip 
delivers 185 MIPS for $49; and the 200MHz chip delivers
230MIPS for under $50 [sic].  Those figures are for 300mW
at 1.65V to under 1W at 2.0 volts, but the chips can also 
interface to standard 3.3V memory chips.
<http://www.digital.com/info/semiconductor>.  [NewtNews,
2/28/96.]  (Smaller, cheaper, faster, better. :-)

    Three companies have demonstrated multifrequency transmission 
of 1Tb/s on single fibers.  That's 400 times the capacity of 
common fiber transmission.  [Janet Rae-Dupree, SJM, 3/1/96, 1C.]

    Iowa State's Ames Laboratory benchmark website at 
<http://www.scl.ameslab.gov/cgi-bin/hint.pl> shows performance
of different CPUs.  Numbers for the Mac 9500 have just jumped
due to the new CodeWarrior 7.0 compiler.  "It's now up to
5.9 MQUIPS, about twice a Silicon Graphics Indy!  It's also
about twice the high-end Pentiums we've tested.  It's faster
than a Pentium Pro."  [MacWay, 2/22/96.]

    Another benchmark site, for running Mathematica,
is <http://smc.vnet.net/mathbench.html>.  Power Macs perform 
nearly as well as a DEC Alpha.  [Jonathan Guyer, MacWay, 2/28/96.]


 3> Portable computing:

    When your Newton is sitting in its charging station,
you can use it to display a digital clock and a picture of your 
loved ones.  The software is Loved1, free from St. John Morrison 
<morrisoj@post.drexel.edu>.  [NewtNews, 2/20/96.  Bill Park.]
(If you don't have a loved one, it defaults to Lum, heroine of
the Japanese animated series Urusei Yatsura.  Tap the Newton
to play a sample of her voice.  Morrison will digitize
your own photo and recording for $15.)

    If you live near DC or adjacent MD and VA counties,
try plotting your travel routes with The Washington DC Motorcade, 
<http://www.motorcade.com>.  It will identify convenient stores, 
restaurants, and alternative routes.  [<dobkin@vais.net>,
net-hap, 12/19/95.]

    Say that I'm out shopping and I see Hormel chili at $1.19/can.  
Is it a bargain, or would my wife tell me she could get it 
cheaper?  I need a PDA loaded with current prices in my area!
(Or at least typical prices.)

    Steve Holden notes that a Newton with built-in GPS receiver 
could know where you are at all times.  (Or perhaps buildings 
would have built-in IFF transponders. :-)  When you're near
a Hallmark store, it could remind you of upcoming birthdays and 
holidays.  When you're on the highway, it could monitor traffic 
status.  [<sholden@owens.ridgecrest.ca.us>, NewtNews, 2/28/96.]

    Seahorse is a backlit, ruggedized Newton derivative with a 
snap-on modular nose for GPS, GSM, or diffused IR communications, 
available soon for under $2K from Digital Ocean, (913) 888.3380.  
[NewtNews, 1/2/96.]  (Bill Park suggests that it could be fitted 
with a  bar code reader, laser range measurer/3D scanner,
digital camera, environmental pollution sensors, voice stress 
analyzer.  Sort of a tricorder. :-)

    (And, BTW, there is a company now selling a TR-107 Tricorder 
Mark 1 with temperature and pressure sensors, electromagnetic 
field meter, and colorimeter.  Soon even a Geiger counter.
$398 from Vital Technologies, (905) 951-1219.  [Newsweek,
3/4/96, p. 12.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

NSF (Arlington, VA): program directors for Decision, Risk,
and Management Science; Linguistics; Human Cognition and 
Perception; Statistics and Probability; Geometric Analysis, etc.

UMass Amherst/CS: tt in text/multimedia representation,
indexing, retrieval, visualization, data mining, etc.

UWest Florida, Inst. for Human and Machine Cognition:
tt asst. prof.

CMU: postdoc in SOAR cognitive modeling for air traffic control.

CMU/Psych: research programmer for ACT-R cognitive simulation.

NASA Ames (CA): PhD AI computer scientist for automated 
programming.

IBM T.J. Watson Research Center (NY), Digital Libraries Dept.:
MS NLP Prolog programmer for machine translation.
        
Unisys (PA): computational linguist; also a telephone
HCI dialog designer.

Microsoft (Redmond, WA): Far East NLP program manager; also
a German computational grammarian and Japanese lexicographer.

USheffield (UK): 3 research associateships in multilingual IR
and data mining.

Lernout & Hauspie (Belgium): speech/dialog R&D specialists
and engineers.

German Research Center for AI (DFKI): NLP agent system
Projekt COSMA.

UBremen: research scientist for distributed software
process modeling.

Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (Mumbai, India):
visiting speech researchers.


 5> Travel:

    The ROADSIDE list covers great cheesy tourist attractions 
across the US, especially those that are still in operation.
Send a "subscribe roadside your name" message to 
<listproc@echonyc.com>.  [Brett Leveridge <brett@brettnews.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 10/24/95.]

    Over 1,975 websites offer information on California
and the San Francisco Bay area.  See <http://www.best.com
/~mentorms/sanjose.html> for a hierarchical index.  
[<mentorms@best.com>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    Net On the Road is a website to help international travelers 
stay connected to the net.  Event calenders have been contributed 
by Istanbul, Las Vegas, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro, and Malacca; 
others are solicited.  <http://www.xmission.com/~gastown
/ebb/global.htm>.  [Mehmet Kurtkaya <mkurtka@ibm.net>, BESTWEB, 
12/18/95.  net-hap.]

    Airlines are seeing an increasing percentage of wealthy 
business travelers.  Business is becoming more global, fewer 
middle managers are traveling (or even employed), and the initial 
work of foreign business deals can be accomplished via email, 
phone, fax, or videoconferencing.  Westin hotels are courting the 
new "summit travelers" with ergonomic chairs and surge protectors.  
[WSJ, 1/12/96, B1.  NewtNews, 1/23/96.]

    European airports are seeing an increase in the theft of 
laptops.  Many thieves work in pairs, with one bumping or spilling 
something on the mark and the other making off with the laptop.
A new trick is for one to walk just ahead of the laptop owner, 
setting off a metal detector after the computer is placed on
an x-ray conveyor belt.  An accomplice walks off with the machine 
while the owner is delayed.  [MacWay, 1/21/96.]

    Trying to log in to your home or work computer from elsewhere?  
Symantec's PC Anywhere is one good solution, esp. for accessing 
Novell networks.  Other options are discussed in the 1/96 issue
of Online Access magazine, pp. 58-59.  [Network News, 12/16/95.]  
(There are even surge arrestor/power sockets that will start up 
your Mac when a phone call comes in on a specific line.)

    If your computing will use power and phone systems in several 
countries, see the Road Warrior Outpost at <http://warrior.com>, 
800.274.4277.  [Fast Company, Premiere Issue, p. 38.  NewtNews, 
12/11/95.]

    Up-to-date fax numbers for China can be very useful
to business people.  An online listing from UOregon's
Council of East Asian Libraries (CEAL) is on 
<http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~felsing/ceal/welcome.html>,
under Reference Materials.  [Charlie Pfefferkorn 
<charliep@crystal-media.com>, Software Forum, 10/95.
Bill Park.]  (You can also explore Chinese calendars there,
or just about anything relating to East Asia.)


 6> Computists' news:

    Randy Calistri-Yeh is leaving Odyssey Research Associates
(ORA Corp), since the company is dropping AI research in favor of 
computer security work.  Randy is available to develop intelligent 
systems, and would like to hear of any leads in upstate New York 
or the Northeast.  Contact <randy@vivanet.com>, 315-789-0410,
or see his resume on <http://www.vivanet.com/~randy>.  [3/4/96.]

    Oscar Garcia says he still needs applications -- by 3/15/96
-- for the Dayton Area Graduate Studies Institute (DAGSI) 
competitive engineering scholarships at Wright State, UDayton,
and AFIT.  These include at least 30 doctoral scholarships 
(tuition plus $12K), 40 MS/PhD industrial scholarships, and
80 general MS/PhD scholarships (full- or part-time enrollment).  
[<ogarcia@cs.wright.edu>, 3/1/96.]  (See this week's
CAJ digest for more details, or contact Dolores Davis 
<ddavis@delta.cs.wright.edu>.)

					-- Ken


Most of us miss out on life's big prizes.  The Pulitzer.
The Nobel.  Oscars.  Tonys.  Emmys.  But we're all eligible
for life's small pleasures.  A pat on the back.
A kiss behind the ear.  A four-pound bass.  A full moon.
An empty parking space.  A crackling fire.  A great meal.
A glorious sunset.  Hot soup.  Cold beer.  Don't fret
about copping life's grand awards.  Enjoy its tiny delights.  
There are plenty for all of us.  -- United Technologies Corp., 
WSJ.  [TFTD, 2/15/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Date: Wed 6 Mar 96 23:18:30-PST
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.18
To: ;@Charter_Computists
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 18
 IS                                              March 7, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	News and reviews.
 2>	Science publications.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Journal calls.
 5>	Software development.
 6>	Consulting resources.
_________________________________________________________________

The one who dies with the most AOL free trial disks wins.
[Andrew Meggs <meggs@virginia.edu>, 2/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> News and reviews:

    Netrepreneur News is a weekly summary of news about
Internet business, from over 70 publications.  
<http://www.conceptone.com/netnews/netnews.htm> or by email.  
<http://www.conceptone.com>.  [<csf@conceptone.com>, inet.  
newjour, 1/5/96.]

    I-Way News offers current news about the net.
Advertising-supported.  <http://www.inf.net/~kprigel>.  
[<iwaynews@inf.net>, net-hap, 1/17/96.]

    WYSIWYG Computer News is a daily website about
the Web, personal computers, software, and hardware.  
<http://www.rochesterdandc.com/div/wys/dwhom.html>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 1/2/96.  net-hap.]

    Netsurfer Tools is an e-zine about web development tools, 
software, and hardware, with pointers to press releases.  
<http://www.netsurf.com/nst/>.  [<nstools-editor@netsurf.com>, 
newjour, 1/15/96.]

    CompuNotes is a free emailed weekly with reviews, news, 
interviews, hot web sites, and cool FTP files.  Over 10K readers.  
<http://users.aol.com/CompNote>.  [<patrick.grote@supportu.com>, 
net-hap, 1/26/96.]

    JavaWorld Magazine from IDG is on <http://www.javaworld.com>, 
and accessible from the Java home page at <http://java.sun.com> 
(which handles 1.5M hits/day).  This web publication will
include tutorials with live code, plus announcements
and business news.  <http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline
/swol-02-1996/swol-02-javaworld.html>.  [Michael O'Connell 
<michael.oconnell@javaworld.com>, newjour, 2/4/96.]

    Mac Reviews Digest is "a home-grown zine"
with Mac hardware and software reviews, plus news and links.  
<http://users.aol.com/macreviews/mac_revi>.  
[<macreviews@aol.com>, net-hap, 10/18/95.]

    Macintosh Software Update Report is a subscription-based, 
bimonthly newsletter and disk reviewing updates from over
800 companies.  A web version is even more current.
Check out vendor addresses and free info samples at 
<http://www.webcom.com/level6/>.  (Another vendor database
is <http://www.macfaq.com/vendor.html>.)  $150/year,
or $175 outside the US; discounted for self-employed consultants.  
LEVEL 6 Computing <msur@level6.com>, 818/888-0675, 818/888-5635 
Fax.  [Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 1/8/96.]

    A good source of shareware links is <http://www.galttech.com
/swsites.html>.  [Network News, 12/23/95.]

    For help choosing between Windows 95 and Windows NT,
see <http://www.microsoft.com/windows/product/comp_nt.htm>.
And if you want Microsoft's free Internet Explorer browser, 
download from <www.microsoft.com> or <www.microsoft.com/windows>.  
[Network News, 3/3/96.]


 2> Science publications:

    Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery is a new
Kluwer Academic journal edited by Usama M. Fayyad,
Heikki Mannila, and Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro.  
<http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/datamine/>.
Contact <datamine@aig.jpl.nasa.gov> for info or a free sample.  
[NL-KR, 1/22/96.]

    Access Online is a monthly from the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at UIllinois Urbana-
Champaign.  <http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Pubs/access/accessDir.html>.  
[<pubs@ncsa.uiuc.edu>, newjour, 1/17/96.]

    The Scientist, a life-sciences biweekly, joined the web
on 1/8/96.  (A text-only Gopher version has been available
since 1992.)  See <http://www.the-scientist.library.upenn.edu/>.  
[newjour, 1/22/96.]  (Feature include email addresses of authors 
and links to source materials.)

    PSYCHE is a refereed e-journal of research on consciousness, 
including cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, 
AI, and anthropology.  Send a "subscribe psyche-l your name" 
message to <listserv@iris.rfmh.org>, or subscribe to
PSYCHE-A for just the abstracts.  A web version is on 
<http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/>.  Patrick Wilken 
<patrickw@cs.monash.edu.au>.  [James O'Donnell 
<jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu>, newjour, 1/20/96.]

    The Noetica cognitive science e-journal is now
on the web at <http://psy.uq.edu.au/CogPsych/Noetica/> and 
<http://www.cs.indiana.edu/Noetica/toc.html>.  A text-only
Lynx browser can be used.  The join the cogpsy mailing list, 
contact <noetica@psy.uq.edu.au>.  [Simon Dennis 
<mav@psy.uq.oz.au>, connectionists, 1/23/96.]

    "Breakthrough!" is a free occasional e-newsletter
about "Wow!" scientific advances.  "Java is a breakthrough; 
Windows 95 is not."  Send a "subscribe breakthrough" message
to <majordomo@lucifer.com>, or see back issues at 
<http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/BT/>.  [Sean Morgan 
<sean@lucifer.com>, newjour, 1/18/96.]

    21st is a biweekly WebZine covering technology convergence, 
including: audio/video systems and content, computers,
the Web, molecular computing, and human consciousness.  
<http://www.vxm.com>.  [<francov@vxm.com>, newjour, 1/5/96.] 

    "ALMA -- Scores of the unfinished thought" is a new
e-magazine about science, AI, NN, communication, and Internet 
culture, with focus on Man's needs and aspirations at the end
of this century.  <http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma.htm>.
[Luigi Caputo <luigi@diemme.it>, comp.ai, 1/19/96.  David Joslin]

    "The fact of the matter is, we scientists are simply not
all that interesting.  If I may generalize wildly, we are usually 
dull people with interesting ideas -- as distinguished from 
artists (interesting people with dull ideas) and dancers and 
athletes (dull people with dull ideas and magnificent physical 
skills)."  -- James S. Trefil, Scientific American, 11/95.
[Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>, QOTD, 2/29/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

FreeLisp: free subset of Harlequin's LispWorks.

Kasie: CYC-style TMS inference engine.

Generator: demo of a GA optimizer for Excel spreadsheet functions.

NeuroGenetic Optimizer 2.0: adaptive NN demo.

NeuroSim 1.0: C++ Mac NN simulator source code.

Pattern Recognition Toolbox 1.01 for MATLAB, from Ahlea Systems.

Scilab v2.1a0 for Macintosh: free scientific computation package.

MSBN: free Microsoft Bayesian network modeling tool.

DX Solution Series: free Bayesian network tool for Windows.

FUZZLE 2.0 for Windows: fuzzy expert system development shell.

Rule-based Object Language (ROL): deductive OODBS from URegina.

AGENT_CLIPS 2.0: Rule-based Web/News filter for Mac
or Unix CLIPS.

Surfbot 2.0 for Windows 95: agent-based search tool
(formerly WebWatch).

all4one Search Machine: web-based search engine.

Robot Store: catalog from Mondo-tronics.

Neural Network Design: book by Hagan, Demuth, and Beale.

"Language Behaviour: Acquisition and Evolutionary History":
book by Narasimhan.

PERLBOOK - 5.002gamma: online PERL documentation in Acrobat 
format.

Perl 5 Desktop Reference: book from O'Reilly.

Java in a Nutshell: book from O'Reilly.

The Little Schemer and The Seasoned Schemer: books from MIT Press.

Soar Summer School: UMichigan course on cognitive modeling.


 4> Journal calls:

    Geographic information systems; CACM theme section,
early 1997.  3/10/96 paper deadline (extended); Shashi Shekhar 
<shekhar@cs.umn.edu>, (612) 624-8307, (612) 625-0572 Fax.  
<http://www.spatial.maine.edu/~max/cacmgis.html>.  [Sivakumar 
Ravada <siva@cs.umn.edu>, dbworld, 2/28/96.]
 
    Geometric representation and reasoning in design; AIEDAM.  
4/1/96; Jose Damski <jose@arch.su.edu.au>, +61-2-351 2053,
+61-2-351 3031 Fax.  [comp.ai, 2/19/96.]

    Inductive transfer; Machine Learning Journal.  6/1/96;
Lorien Pratt <lpratt@fennel.mines.edu>, (303) 273-3878.  
<http://vita.mines.edu:3857/1s/lpratt/transfer.html>.  
[connectionists, 2/24/96.]

    Learning with probabilistic representations; Machine Learning 
Journal.  7/1/96; Pat Langley <langley@cs.stanford.edu>.  
[Padhraic Smyth <pjs@aig.jpl.nasa.gov>, ai-stats, 2/27/96.]

    J. of Statistical Software (JSS) is a new peer-reviewed
WWW journal.  Submissions are manuals, or software for review
and distribution.  <http://www.stat.ucla.edu/journals/jss/>.
[Jan de Leeuw <deleeuw@stat.ucla.edu>, ai-stats, 2/27/96.]


 5> Software development:

    Unix World Online is for users, programmers, and sysadmins. 
<http://www.wcmh.com/uworld/index.html>.  [Becca Thomas 
<beccat@wcmh.com>, newjour, 12/6/95.]

    By making its software available for free, Cygnus Support 
"provides a straightforward mechanism for a group to innovate 
rapidly and yet remain united by a common core of technology."  
Cygnus takes in $10M/year for maintaining and modifying GNU's 
Unix-style software.  [Scientific American, 1/96, p. 35. EDUPAGE.]

    "If debugging is the process of removing bugs,
then programming must be the process of putting them in."
[Trevor Best <trevor@microprism.com>, 11/95.]

    The "must have" utilities list for OS/2 is 
<http://www.teamos2.org/software/must_have/>.  [<chaos-
request@pelican.cit.cornell.edu>, Chaos Corner, 10/8/95.]

    For other OS/2 info links, see Raj Singh's OS/2 Directory
at <http://www.teamos2.org/~rsingh/>.  [<rsingh@teamos2.org>, 
comp.os.os2.announce, 10/20/95.]

    The Digital Technical Journal is a refereed
quarterly journal from Digital Equipment Corporation.  
<http://www.digital.com/info/DTJ/dtj.html>.  
[<jane.blake@ljo.mts.dec.com>, newjour, 1/26/96.]

    IRIS On-Line is an email monthly from Silicon Graphics,
for users of their IRIS workstations.  
<http://www.sgi.com/Technology/Publications/iris_on_line.html>.  
[<iris-on-line-editor@sgi.com>, newjour, 1/15/96.]

    Glen McCluskey has started a free, monthly C++ newsletter
for technical subjects.  Send a "subscribe c_plus_plus" message
to <majordomo@world.std.com>.  [<glenm@glenmccl.com>, comp.lang.c, 
1/5/96.]

    DELPHI-L is for users of Borland's Delphi programming 
environment.  Send a "sub delphi-l your name" message
to <listserv@vm.ege.edu.tr>.  [Turgut Kalfaoglu 
<turgut@vm.ege.edu.tr>, NEW-LIST, 11/29/95.]

    CORBA-DEV covers client-server system development
using the Common Object Request Broker Architecture.  Send
a "subscribe corba-dev" message to <corba-dev-request@qds.com>.  
[Alan L. Pope <pope@qds.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/17/96.]

    db.HOTlinx is a new website for client/server database 
professionals.  <http://db.hotlinx.com>.  Over 200 products
are summarized, with links to vendors' sites.  Also news stories, 
articles, and columns.  [Chris Evans <cevans@evans.org>, 
comp.databases, 1/4/96.  Bill Park.]

    REUSE is a moderated mailing list for software reuse 
technology.  Send a "subscribe reuse your name" message
to <listproc@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us>.
[<reuseic@sw-eng.falls-church.va.us>, NEW-LIST, 12/11/95.]

    "Any program written by a truly gifted programmer cannot
be maintained."  [Robert D. Bliss, Computer, 12/92, p. 120.]

    "Microsoft Secrets" by Cusumano and Selby gives real insight 
into how development is done.  "Interesting without being 
gushing."  [Jason Elliot Robbins <jrobbins@chateau.ics.uci.edu>, 
TidBITS, 12/11/95.]  (Selby is a professor at UCI.)

    Resources for Visual Basic programmers: files,
articles, book reviews, software ratings, a Who's Who, etc.  
<http://www.iadfw.net/gbeene/visual.html>.
[<gbeene@airmail.net>, net-hap, 12/23/95.]

    Microsoft is shipping Microsoft Visual C++ development
system 4.0, a cross-development edition for Macintosh.
[NewtNews, 1/2/96.  Bill Park.]  (It will compete with
the CodeWarrior products from MetroWerks.)

    CWA3, an e-newsletter on Macintosh and CodeWarrior-based 
software, solicits contributors and subscribers.  Frank Gerratana 
<frankg@cwa.pcnet.com>.  <http://www.pcnet.com/~frankg/cwa/>.  
[comp.sys.mac.misc, 11/10/95.]

    The Apprentice 4 CD ROM for Macintosh offers 640MB of
entirely new or updated CodeWarrior, Symantec, and MPW C, C++,
and Pascal source code and development demos.  $25 each,
or just $22.50 if you subscribe to the semiannual series.
(Add $5 outside the US or Canada.)  If you buy #4, earlier 
versions are just $5 each; and/or get the $50 "Tricks of
the Mac Game Programming Gurus" book and CD ROM for just $35 
(while they last).  30-day money-back guarantee.  Paul Celestin 
<celestin@celestin.com>, (800) 835 5514, (360) 385 3767,
or (360) 385 3586 Fax.  <http://www.celestin.com/>.  [1/31/96.]

    "Discover Programming for the Macintosh" is a CD ROM 
containing a CodeWarrior compiler (for 68K Macs), three
Acrobat-format books about C/C++ programming, and four
Apple Guides that work with Netscape Navigator.  $79 from 
<ttp://www.metrowerks.com/products/books/>.  [GD, TidBITS, 
1/8/96.]

    Apple's Macintosh Developer Program provides access to
[pre-release] system software, technical support, developer kits, 
reference material, development tools, and business directions, 
plus other services and occasional discounts on hardware.  
<http://dev.info.apple.com>, <devsupport@applelink.apple.com>,
1-408-974-4897.  [MacWay, 2/15/96.]  (Local net addresses
and phone numbers are available for most countries.)


 6> Consulting resources:

    CONSULT-L is an unmoderated list for software consultants
and contractors: bidding on jobs, billing, tax issues, use of 
agencies, etc.  Job postings are also welcome.  Send a "subscribe 
consult-l <cr> your name" message to <listserv@switchback.com>.  
[Jay Jolicoeur <jay@switchback.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/18/96.]

    The Philadelphia IEEE Consultants' Network maintains
a web directory of consultants at <http://www.ece.vill.edu/conet>, 
email <conet.phila@ieee.org>.  It includes links to 36 other
IEEE consultants networks (with 3,500 members), plus
other resources for product development companies.
(IEEE is creating a national directory on <http://www.ieee.org>.)  
See the web page for an offer of a free day of consulting.  
Members from various engineering disciplines share the cost
of the directory -- $70/year -- hold monthly meetings,
and network to share contracts.  "It WORKS."
[Stephen Sokalski <s.sokalski@ieee.org>, SEML, 1/22/96.]

					-- Ken


What I need is a strong drink and a peer group.  -- Ford Prefect.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 19
 IS                                             March 12, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Competitions and NSF news.
 2>	Cyberspace citizenship.
 3>	Internet news.
 4>	Information retrieval.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

Reasonable laws made by reasonable men in reasonable times 
proscribe trying everything.  For a good reason: people get hurt 
trying stuff.  If you're bound to try stuff anyway, then either 
you're working directly for City Hall, or you're an outlaw,
or both.  One thing we need is better outlaws.  -- Stewart Brand, 
in Hugh Kenner's "Bucky."  [Bill Cavnar <wcavnar@vrcorp.com>, 
3/8/96.]  (Maybe.  But choose your fights carefully.)


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Competitions and NSF news:

    Prix Ars Electronica 96 will award prizes totaling $125K
for WWW sites, computer animation, computer music, and
interactive art.  <http://prixars.orf.at>.  [EDUPAGE, 2/28/96.]

    MIST '96 is a "binary Turing test," where the system need
only answer yes/no questions.  $5K for the first system to pass.  
See <http://www.clickable.com/mist.html> or email K. Christopher 
McKinstry <cmckin@clickable.com>.  [comp.ai, 3/2/96.]

    Details of the AAAI 1996 Mobile Robot Competition
and Exhibition are on <http://tommy.jsc.nasa.gov/~korten
/competition96.html>.  [David Kortenkamp 
<korten@mickey.jsc.nasa.gov>, comp.ai, 2/15/96.  David Joslin.]

    NSF's Computers and Information in Science and Engineering 
(CISE) Directorate has a website at <http://www.cise.nsf.gov>.  
Suggestions should be sent to Larry Brandt <lbrandt@nsf.gov>, 
(703) 306-1963.  [John R. Lehmann <jlehmann@nsf.gov>, CISENEWS, 
3/8/96.]

    Pre-proposals are dure 4/15/96 for NSF's Partnerships
for Advanced Computational Infrastructure, the follow-on
to NSF's Supercomputer Centers program.  See NSF 96-31
or <http://www.cise.nsf.gov/cise/ASC/>.  [John R. Lehmann 
<jlehmann@nsf.gov>, CISENEWS, 3/8/96.]

    The Feb/Mar NSF Bulletin mentions the following staff changes: 
Barbara Blaustein is the new program director (PD) for Database 
and Expert Systems (in CISE/IRIS).  (Maria Zemankova has moved up 
to assistant division director for Information, Robotics,
and Intelligent Systems.)  Leslie Gasser is PD for CISE/IRIS 
Information Technology and Organization.   Carol J. Burger
is the new  PD for Women's Programs, in the Division of Human 
Resource Development.  [grants, 2/20/96.]

    NSF program directors typically serve for 1-2 years,
at $62K-$97K/year (or an IPA salary matching your home salary).  
Candidates should have at least 6 years post-PhD research 
experience.  CISE is expecting vacancies in Advanced
Scientific Computing (ASC), Robert Borchers <rborcher@nsf.gov>; 
Computing and Computation Research (CCR) Experimental
Software Systems and also Software Engineering, Languages
and Architectures, Richard Kieburtz <rkieburt@nsf.gov>; 
Information, Robotics, and Intelligent Systems (IRIS)
Interactive Systems, Information Technology & Organizations,
and Database & Expert Systems, Yi-Tzuu Chien <ytchien@nsf.gov>; 
Office of Cross Disciplinary Activities (CDA) Institutional 
Infrastructure, John Cherniavsky <jchernia@nsf.gov>; 
Microelectronics Information Processing and Systems (MIPS) 
Microelectronic Systems Architecture, Bernard Chern 
<bchern@nsf.gov>; and Networking and Communications Research
and Infrastructure (NCRI) Networking Research and Communications 
Research, George Strawn <gstrawn@nsf.gov>.  [Paul Young.
John R. Lehmann <jlehmann@nsf.gov>, CISENEWS, 3/8/96.]


 2> Cyberspace citizenship:

    NSF Director Neal Lane is advocating that we become
"civic scientists," informing politicians and the public
of our work even if speeches at the Kiwanis Club and
the League of Women Voters don't contribute to tenure
or professional advancement.  [AAAS speech, 2/9/96.
AIP Bulletin, 2/16/96.  David Coombs.]

    The Committee for Shareware Guilt Abatement (Palo Alto)
has announced a 2nd Shareware Pay Up Day (SPUD 2), 3/17/96.
You can find shareware author addresses on 
<http://www.coolware.com/spud.htmlNOTE>.  Paul Pease
is the instigator.  [<pease@a.crl.com>, SEML, 2/23/96.]
(Spud 1 was five years ago, so it's not like he's bugging anyone.)

    Todd Herschberg is also building an address list for 
shareware/freeware authors.  Contact <herschberg@gnn.com>
to be added.  [NewtNews, 10/30/95.]

    Banyan Systems is offering a "Switchboard" directory
of email addresses, public key certificates, and other information 
for 93M people and 11M businesses worldwide.  Switchboard includes 
a "Caller ID" feature that alerts the listed person, allowing
him to block the download.  <http://www.switchboard.com>.
[IW, 2/12/96, p. 24.  EDUPAGE.]  (Sounds too slow.  Other 
companies will offer similar info without the alert feature, 
unless prevented by international law.)

    The concept of a website being "accessible" from remote places 
may pose problems.  A Western company with assets in Asia could be 
sued for defamation in Singapore or China if any of its websites 
criticise those governments.  [Steven Lieberman, IBD, 2/27/96, 
A10.  EDUPAGE.]

    The US Supreme Court has ruled that making a temporary 
electronic copy of a software program (e.g., by running it)
can violate copyright.  [IBD, 2/27/96, A11.  EDUPAGE.]
(The computer owner may have a license to make such copies
when other users do not.)

    Internet Law Journal covers business on the Internet,
plus pending legislation.  Email newsletter from 
<http://net.discnt.com/law>.  [<law@net2.discnt.com>,
newjour, 1/5/96.]

    The Computer Law Observer (formerly The Computer Law
Report) is a free weekly.  Contact William S. Galkin 
<wgalkin@earthlink.net> to subscribe.  [NEW-LIST, 2/2/96.]

    A cyberspace law seminar for non-lawyers -- copyright,
free speech, libel, privacy, contract, trademark -- will begin
in 4/96 or 5/96.  Send a "subscribe cyberspace-law your name" 
message to <listproc-request@counsel.com> to get a few paragraphs 
every few days from three law professors.  [Eugene Volokh 
<volokh@law.ucla.edu>, 2/26/96.  Dawn Cohen.]


 3> Internet news:

    Apple is terminating eWorld on 3/31/96, and will shift
its customers to AOL.  [WSJ, 3/4/96, B3.  EDUPAGE.]

    Netscape is cutting its low-end FastTrack Server from $495
to $295, to fight competition from Microsoft.  [WSJ, 3/5/96, B4.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Interested in running an online workshop?
See <http://www.bioele.nuee.nagoya-u.ac.jp/wec2/> for the 2nd 
Online Workshop on Evolutionary Computation (WEC2), 3/11-22/96.  
Optional registration is at <.../wec2/registration.html>
or with Takeshi Furuhashi <wec@bioele.nuee.nagoya-u.ac.jp>.  
[Rajkumar Roy <r.roy@plymouth.ac.uk>, genetic-programming,
3/7/96.  Bill Park.]

    WebBoard is a $249 multithreaded conferencing system
from O'Reilly & Associates (Sebastopol, CA), for any Windows 95
or NT web server that fully supports the Windows Common Gateway 
Interface (Win-CGI).  WebBoard supports an unlimited number
of conferences with various options, activity logs, user profiles, 
remote administration, private e-mail, and message search, 
preview, reply quoting, and automatic archiving.  32MB RAM 
recommended; 16MB required.  A 60-day demo version is available 
from <http://website.ora.com/wbboard>.  [Ellen Elias 
<elias@ora.com>, net-hap, 2/9/96.  Also WEBster, 2/20/96.]

    CU-SeeMe for Windows has been upgraded to 24-bit color; 
WhitePineBoard for collaboration and data/graphics sharing;
point-to-point and group conferencing; broadcasting and 
multicasting; high-quality audio; interoperability with
Macintosh, PowerMac and freeware versions; a phone book;
GUI control panel; caller ID; reflector support for UNIX and 
Windows NT; and security installation and support.  28.8kbps 
required for video, or 14.4kbps for audio only.  Under $100,
from White Pine at <http://www.cu-seeme.com> or soon from
retail outlets.  A Mac/PowerMac version will be available in 3/96.  
[WEBster, 2/20/96.]


 4> Information retrieval:

    VPI will require all theses and dissertations to be submitted 
electronically, starting 1/97.  Other universities are debating 
whether CD ROM drives will be available long enough for this
to be desirable.  It certainly would make research data more 
available.  [Chron. of HE, 3/8/96, A19.  EDUPAGE.]  (Copying
a CD ROM to newer media shouldn't be difficult if you don't
allow implementation-dependent user interfaces.  But including 
reading software such as Word 6.0 on the CD ROM could violate 
copyright.)

    Int. J. of Digital Libraries (JODL) is new quarterly
from Springer Verlag, starting Summer 96.  Editors in chief
are Nabil R. Adam <adam@adam.rutgers.edu>, (201) 648-5239,
and Yelena Yesha <yeyesha@cs.umbc.edu>.  For subscriptions, 
contact A. Hofmann <hofmann@springer.de>.  [Elke A. Rundensteiner 
<rundenst@berlin.eecs.umich.edu>, c.ai.nlang.know.rep, 1/13/96.]

    Trial access to the 1993 Computer Abstracts Journal
is currently free at <http://www.mcb.co.uk/compabs/home.htm>.  
Over 200 English-language periodicals are covered, plus
conference papers and US Government reports.  [Mathew Wills 
<mwills@mcb.co.uk>, newjour, 1/18/96.]  (Full subscriptions 
include a hardcopy journal and the CD-ROM version.)

    Kluwer publishers is considering a new journal
on mathematical and statistical methods in information retrieval.  
Visit <http://www.wkap.com/survey.html> to participate in
the survey.  [Paul B. Kantor <kantor@scils.rutgers.edu>,
IRLIST, 3/4/96.]

    The InQuizit NLP text retrieval engine from Intelligent
Text Processing (Santa Monica) is based on 200K of the
most common meanings for English words.  ITP hopes to license
it to websites for varying amounts, with a $10K minimum.
[Los Angeles Times, 2/14/96, D5.  Jack Reynolds 
<reynolds@itpinc.com>, comp.ai, 2/14/96.  David Joslin.]
(I mentioned this IR engine previously.  It's drawn flak because 
their marketing manager called it "the Holy Grail" of NLP.)

    Ultragem is a new SF Bay company offering custom data mining 
via genetic algorithms.  Business will be conducted over
the Internet.  <http://www.ultragem.com>.  Ursula Vere.
[Steven Vere <vere@ix.netcom.com>, comp.ai.genetic, 2/25/96.]

    Web search engines are adding features to remain competitive.  
InfoSeek offers summaries of culled information.  Architext
and Lycos are developing lists of Web sites that are likely
to be worth searching.  [BW, 2/12/96, p. 88.  Flash Information.]

    There are now so many "robot" software programs (or spiders) 
searching the web that they may threaten web performance.
Smarter searches may be needed.  [BW, 2/12/96, p. 88.  EDUPAGE.]

    C|Net has reviewed several web search engines,
at <http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/Search/>.
[Network News, 2/25/96.]

    IBM's infoSage beta currently offers 2,300 topics.
Register your profile at <http://www.infosage.ibm.com>
for free news clips.  [Network News, 2/25/96.]

    GroupLens is a collaborative filtering system.  Readers rate 
articles (with single keystrokes) to help other readers with 
similar tastes.  GroupLens then generates a personal prediction 
estimating how likely you are to find each article useful.
Trial users are needed, since performance depends on
the number of reviewers.  Topics are currently limited to 
comp.lang.c++ and java, comp.os.linux, comp.groupware,
comp.human-factors, rec.humor, rec.food.recipes, 
rec.arts.movies.current-films, and mn.general.  Supported 
newsreaders include gnus-5.x, September gnus, xrn-8.01,
and tin-1.22, and porting help is available for others.  
<http://www.cs.umn.edu/Research/GroupLens>.  [Brad Miller 
<bmiller@cs.umn.edu>, news.groups, 3/5/96.]


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Harvard (MA): postdoc in collaborative planning.

UTexas Austin/Qualitative Reasoning Group: immediate postdoc
in knowledge representation.

CMU: postdoc in statistical modeling of language.

CMU/Robotics Institute: MS programmer in reactive
intelligent scheduling.

GTE Laboratories (Waltham, MA): MS/PhD in database mining.

Nuance Communications (Menlo Park): speech recognition 
programmers.

UNijmegen (The Netherlands): four jr. CS/NLP/Cogsci researchers
in document filtering and retrieval.

Queensland UTechnology (Brisbane)/Neurocomputing Research Centre: 
postdocs in computational learning theory or hybrid 
AI/neurocomputing.


 6> Computists' news:

    John Murray will be finishing his UMichigan doctorate
in a few months, and hopes to move back to the SF area.
He's working on  knowledge sharing between intelligent agents
as a model of human-machine activity (in network control 
operations).  He'd like "an imaginative design organization,
an innovative research lab, or an inventive and intrepid
academic division."  John has led software engineering
and technical support projects, and has implemented intelligent 
systems for diagnosis.  Send leads to <jxm@engin.umich.edu>.  
[3/2/96.]

					-- Ken


It sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only
its own opportunities, but its own talents  -- Eric Hoffer.  
[AWAD, 9/15/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Date: Thu 14 Mar 96 00:00:06-PST
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.20
To: ;@Charter_Computists
Message-ID: <826790406.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 20
 IS                                             March 14, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Internet news.
 2>	Web design.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Career resources.
 5>	Online education.
 6>	Grant reform.
_________________________________________________________________

Kill Your Television.  -- Bumper sticker seen in Palo Alto.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Internet news:

    Intranets -- private Web-based networks -- are
"becoming the killer application for business."  It's a cheap
way to distribute phone books, manuals, training materials, 
interactive forms, databases, etc., all on one system accessible 
throughout the company.  Maybe even online conferencing.
Set-up cost is typically about $10K.  Webserver software sales
may jump from $476M this year to $4B in 1997, then $8B in 1998
-- four times the size of the Internet server market.
[IW, 1/29/96, p. 15; also BW, 2/26/96, p. 76.  Flash Information, 
2/12/96 and 2/19/96.]  (Security options will be critical,
of course.  Even within a company, not all employees can be 
trusted with all information -- except for a few innovative 
companies with openness as a fundamental policy.)

    ACTA, speaking for 130 US long-distance carriers
is petitioning the FCC to stop "misuse of the Internet"
via Voice-On-the-Net (VON) software.  A VON Coalition is being 
formed to fight such actions.  If you wish to hear more, send
a "subscribe vonyes" or "subscribe vonyes-digest" message
to <majordomo@pulver.com>.  [Sandy Combs <scombs@together.net>, 
Free World Dialup, 3/6/96.  net-hap.]

    The 2nd National Information Infrastructure (NII) Awards
will recognize innovation and excellence in use of the 
"Information Highway," showing the power and potential
of networked, interactive communications.  Categories are
Arts & Entertainment, Business, Children, Community, Education, 
Global Next Generation, Government, Health, Public Access,
and Telecollaboration.  Winners will get wide media exposure,
and all entrants will be featured on the Web (or in an 
"international database," which sounds more impressive).
Enter your project, service, or application via
<http://www.gii-awards.com>.  Early entries are due by 3/27/96; 
final deadline 4/1/96.  <info@gii-awards.com>, 1-800-250-2838.  
[Steve Cisler <sac@apple.com>, communet, 3/7/96.  net-hap.]

    If your first steps on the web are a bit tentative,
you may qualify for the "Bottom 95% of All Web Sites" award
from Pointless Communications Corp.  Just download the
Pointless Communications logo from <http://www.silcom.com
/~tonkin/pointless>.  [Nick Tonkin <tonkin@silcom.com>,
net-hap, 1/13/96.]


 2> Web design:

    Read about pay scales for HTML hackers, promoting
your website, imagemaps, forms, graphic resources, etc.,
in WEBsurf magazine, <http://www.zoom.com/~whisper/>
(or <http://www.jsp.fi/~whisper/> in Europe).  [Anthony Boyd 
<whisper@zoom.com>, c.i.www.announce, 12/12/95.  net-hap.]

    WEBSmith is a magazine about advanced website design, 
construction, and administration.  First issue in 1/96.  Authors 
and subscribers are solicited.  <http://www.ssc.com/websmith>, 
<wseditor@ssc.com>, (206) 782-7733 x19.  [Jonathan Gross 
<jong@ssc.com>, c.i.www.announce, 9/6/95.  net-hap.]

    Web page style guidelines are a feature of 
<http://info.med.yale.edu/caim/StyleManual_Top.HTML>,
from the Center for Advanced Instructional Media (C/AIM).
[Monica Norem <noremm@nhc.nhmccd.cc.tx.us>, web4lib, 12/12/95.  
net-hap.]

    Rick Levine's Guide to Web Style also has lots of
good information.  <http://www.sun.com/styleguide/>.
[Web Informant, 2/22/96.]

    WebMaster Magazine Online offers case studies, strategies, 
product reviews, online seminars, and links for webmasters.  
<http://www.cio.com/WebMaster/>.  [<thorgan@cio.com>, net-hap, 
12/17/95.]

    Internet Digest also discusses page design, HTML, site 
administration, etc.  <http://www.ibic.com/Digest
/DigestHome.html>.  [<harold@ibic.com>, newjour, 12/20/95.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Java KQML agent template, from Stanford CDR.

Programmer's Guide to Online Resources: book by Bob Kochem.

Advances in Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining: book
edited by Fayyad, Piatetsky-Shapiro, Smyth, and Uthurusamy.

NeuralCrunch/2 2.01: NN development utility for OS/2.

Rough Enough: Windows environment for rule induction
using rough sets.

GenJam: GA-based jazz CD ROM by the Al Biles Virtual Quintet.

GAOT: GA optimization toolbox for Matlab.

TimGA 1.0.1: free GA-based graph layout optimizer for Mac.

NDS/Map: demo of the Neuralog Digitizing System for Maps.

biotopia 2.1: alife simulator.

DOS/Windows demo of parsing/grammar checking, from Georgiev-Good.

Algorithmische Graphentheorie: book by Volker Turau.

An Information-Theoretic Approach to Neural Computing:
book by Deco and Obradovic.

teikade: OO development system from Japan.

Pop-11 Primer, 2nd ed.: free documentation.
[Linux Poplog is also available free.]

USIX: small, fast Unix clone.

V Version 1.06: free C++ GUI framework for X and Windows 3.1.

obTcl 0.56: Tcl object package and Megawidget extension.


 4> Career resources:

    FISC (Financial Grants and Jobs for Young Cognitive 
Scientists) is a weekly compilation of research and academic
job ads, mostly for European opportunities.  Send a "subscribe 
fisc" message to <listserv@univ-lille3.fr>, or "subscribe fisc-d" 
for the associated discussion list.  Ads can be sent to Damien 
Raczy <raczy@univ-lille3.fr>.  [Neuron Digest, 3/5/96.]  (Looks 
good!  Lots of speech, NLP, NN, HCI, and cognitive modeling.)

    High Technology Careers Magazine can be found at 
<http://www.hightechcareers.com>.  [<burrowes@vjf.com>,
net-hap, 1/1/96.]  (The hardcopy version is a freebie of
Westech Career Expo employment ads plus a few articles
about interviewing skills and high-tech advances.  See also
The Virtual Job Fair at <http://www.vjf.com>.)

    VP Gore says the new U.S. Business Advisor "is the first
in a family of electronic products aimed at 'customer groups'
such as veterans, travelers, the research community, and state
and local governments."  It offers online access to
small-business guides and government assistance forms.  
<http://www.business.gov>.  [WSJ, 2/14/96, B2.  EDUPAGE.]

    New Entrepreneur Online Magazine is a British "income 
opportunity" magazine.  <http://www.entrepreneur.co.uk/imprint/>.  
[Ray Berry <editor@entrepreneur.co.uk>, newjour, 1/15/96.]

    Minority Business Entrepreneur magazine (MBEMAG)
is a bimonthly for minority and women business owners.  
<http://www.mbemag.com>.  [<mbe_editor@mbemag.com>, newjour, 
1/28/96.]

    For info on banks and other investment resources
owned by women and minorities, see <http://www2.ari.net/cirm>.  
[Network News, 12/23/95.]

    Feminist.com is a site helping women network
more effectively on the Internet.  <http://feminist.com>.  
[<feminist@feminist.com>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    Women's Wire e-magazine is expanding, and now has an archive 
at <http://women.com/>.  The magazine features weekly advice 
columnists, daily news, statistics, entrepreneur profiles,
quotes, health tips, and links to other women-focused websites.  
[<webmaster@eunice.wwire.net>, c.i.www.announce, 1/18/96.
net-hap.]


 5> Online education:

    University Online is seeking university partners to create 
tutorials and online courses.  The company is negotiating with 
textbook publishers for electronic rights, and has been working 
with GWU and GMU.  [WSJ, 2/24/96, B5D.  EDUPAGE.]

    A Listserv conference about WWW-based course development
and administration will be held 4/8/96 through 4/26/96.
Register by 3/29/96 with <http://www.umuc.edu/iuc>
or <tsmith@nova.umuc.edu>, 301-985-7811, 301-985-7845 Fax.  
[Classroom.Connect <crc@classroom.net>, 3/4/96.  net-hap.]  
(There's also a physical conference in MD on 5/6-8/96.
I'm not sure which requires the registration.)


 6> Grant reform:

    Are you aware of scientific misconduct at your institution?  
Before you notify sponsors, take a look at the NIH study in 
Science, 1/5/96, p. 35.  Whistle blowers have been fired
or not renewed, denied raises and promotions, lost research 
support and desirable assignments, and have faced pressure, 
counter-allegations, threatened lawsuits, and ostracism.
But only 136 such incidents in 127 cases investigated.
[Arthur Sowers <arthures@access5.digex.net>, sci.research.careers, 
3/10/96.]

    Art Sowers has published several essays (and a self test)
on research careers in science.  He claims that there are more 
PhDs being graduated than positions or grant money for them.  
Professors are not being honest with students about this, or are 
themselves uncomfortable because of what they know is happening.  
Something like 10% of first-submission proposals are funded,
18% overall (i.e., after feedback and polishing), and only
40% of renewal proposals.  (See The Scientist, 3/4/96, p. 15,
for the latter two numbers.)  "Some folks get into cycles
of postdocs that last longer than 10 years and then end up
in their 40s without ever getting anything like a real position."  
Sower's "Contemporary Problems in Science Jobs" and
"Alternatives To Science Jobs" essays may be found at 
<http://www.sci-journal.com/ed/sowers1.txt>
or by FTP from /pub/ysn/html_articles/Sowers_CPSJ.txt
on snorri.chem.washington.edu.  A second edition is in the works.  
[<arthures@access5.digex.net>, sci.research.careers, 2/22/96
and 3/10/96.]

    About 18%-25% of CS proposals were funded when I was at NSF, 
perhaps reaching 40% in certain competitions for small grants.  
Success rates were thus higher for first-time proposers,
but only in special competitions.  In the regular programs, 
competition for the big bucks is much stronger.  The threshold
is higher, and it should be.  My impression was that more 
proposals were funded than were well-written and compelling.
NSF shouldn't be blamed if proposers can't think of research
that really needs doing, or can't convince their own colleagues.  
NSF is not a jobs entitlement for scientists.

    Why aren't students learning to work the system?
Perhaps it's the professors' fault, but most are doing
the best they know how (with the limited training they've had,
and the heavy teaching loads).  I'd fault the students
for trusting the system too much and not taking charge of their 
own careers.  Ditto for parents if they're paying the tuition.  
And I'd fault universities for putting short-term economics
ahead of faculty development.  And faculties for giving control
to administrators.  And most professional societies for slighting 
the mentoring, career-development, and income-development training 
that should be a primary mission.  (Look at mentoring programs
for women to see what should be available to all.)  And Congress 
is to blame for not requiring a "relevance statement" with
each proposal -- other than how many graduate students will be 
supported.  And taxpayers for allowing the pork-barrel
committee-chairman system that considers in-district spending
to be the greatest of all goods.

    What can we do about this?  First, each department
that is submitting proposals should implement a quality-review
and mentoring system.  (Yes, deadlines do make that difficult.  
Additional personnel may be needed.  But this is your bread and 
butter, and no less important than the quality of a book or 
magazine issue put out by a publisher.)  Expertise from 
professional societies should be tapped prior to submission,
not just as part of a review/rejection cycle.

    Second, NSF should be pushed toward open review on the net,
by anyone who cares to comment on a proposal -- even foreign 
scientists and ordinary taxpayers.  Each proposal should have
its own web pages and forum, and the PI should be available
to field questions and even modify the proposal.  (Secrecy
be damned; this is taxpayer money being sought.  Unless there's
a genuine need for secrecy, as occasionally happens.)
Reviews would be more meaningful -- no more "roll of the dice"
-- and scientists would get useful feedback on how to make
future proposals more compelling.

    Third, Congress should be pushed to increase NSF's 
administrative budget for handling such open reviews.
(Moderating and summarizing a forum is a time-consuming activity.  
Program directors might actually have to _read and understand_
the proposals and the arguments on each side.)  Perhaps the 
submitting institution should pay a processing fee -- but that 
denies "access" for the poor, so it ain't gonna happen.
Congress may also want to increase funding for the higher-quality 
projects it would be asked to fund, but that will take
a few years.

    Fourth, the results of NSF-funded research should also
be browseable online whenever possible, at the discretion
and expense of the funded institution.  Grant-indexed hotlinks 
from NSF's website would improve reviews and help generate
career-level feedback.

    Fifth, universities should budget more time for scientists
to participate in these and other online activities.
The net offers continuous "conference" activities,
much like having a relevant conference occurring on your
campus.  Participation should be expected to a similar extent.  
Professional citizenship is not a hobby.  (Sometimes it's
more like a knife fight. :-)   Base-level participation
should be on the university's time, not your own.

    Most of all, our whole university approach should change.
A university should not be a bastion of old boys under siege by 
young turks, some of whom will win promotion to the inner circle.  
Nor should it be a swamp with everyone mucking about independently 
hoping to find a path to a better life.  It should instead
be an "inverse pyramid" with students and research at the top 
being the most important, then junior faculty, then senior 
faculty, all supported by hired administrators.  Each segment 
should be pushed toward individual greatness by those below,
not pulled toward past departmental specialties and conformity
as in the current system.  Senior faculty should be coaches
and mentors, helping the younger faculty to "push the envelope."  
(Less of their time would be spent in teaching or research
than at present.)  And when the students graduate, they'll be 
successful enough and grateful enough to pump money back in
and keep the universities going.  Maybe we wouldn't even
need grant money.  I've heard that it once worked that way.

					-- Ken


There comes a time when you have to stop talking about
what kind of man you are gonna be and just be that man.
[Kurt Kiesel <kiesel@esu6.esu6.k12.ne.us>, 3/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 21
 IS                                             March 19, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Computing careers.
 3>	Computing salaries.
 4>	Internet culture.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Journal calls.
 7>	Technical discussion lists.
 8>	Personal advice.
_________________________________________________________________

Be thankful for problems.  If they were less difficult,
someone with less ability might have your job.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    The USIA's Fulbright Program is celebrating its
50th anniversary of sending scholars around the world.
See <http://www.usia.gov/education/fulbright50/fulbndx.htm>
for details on Fulbright grants.  [Chip Harman
<charman@usia.gov>, 3/5/96.  net-hap.]

    Initiatives in Environmental Technology Investment
is a bimonthly newsletter from the DOE Office of Science
and Technology, explaining DOE technology-exchange
and development opportunities.  <http://www.wpi.org/uetc>.  
[Patsy_Hosner@wpi.org, newjour, 3/8/96.]

    Microsoft is sponsoring a lab grant program that will
award $20M in software licenses for Microsoft development tools
to colleges and universities.  <http://msdeved.isu.edu/ms>.  
[EDUPAGE, 3/14/96.]


 2> Computing careers:

    A 1990 report from Stanford's Center for Economic Policy 
Research says that it takes 1-2 generations for a fundamental
new technology to mature and assimilate, and that the greatest 
benefits start coming about 2/3 through the transition.
General economic performance and prosperity plunge
during the first half of the maturation period.  Futurist
David Pearce Snyder says that the big payoff in computing
will begin in the next 5-10 years.  [The Futurist, 3/96, p. 8.  
Innovation, 3/5/96.  NewtNews.]  (The Stanford report is
"Computer and Dynamo:  The Modern Productivity Paradox
in a Not Too Distant Mirror.")

    The number of telecommuters may go from 10M last year
to 30M by the year 2000.  Telecommuters are 15%-20% more 
productive, on average, but it can take up to 18 months
to adjust.  Virtual workers (?) may also need technical
support 24-hours-a-day, plus quick maintenance support.
[IW, 1/22/96, p. 32.  Network News, 2/10/96.]

    There's a new book out on "The Rise and Resurrection
of the American Programmer."  Twice as many programmers are 
employed in the US as in Japan, and US productivity is high.
A Czech computer expert says, "By relying on sophisticated tools, 
Americans have shifted the competitive arena from sweat labor
to imaginative design."  [WSJ, 3/12/96, A3.  EDUPAGE.]
(So, what sophisticated tools have we mastered?)


 3> Computing salaries:

    IBM is passing out merit raises averaging 8% this year
-- twice what most companies are paying.  [NYT, 2/27/96, C3.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Salary survey info for LAN programmers can be found
in LAN Magazine, 3/96.  [Network News, 2/10/96.]

    How much does a supervisor make for managing one shift
of a help desk operation?  The national average is $41K,
ranging from $36K in the South Central US to $47K in the
Pacific region.  [Help Desk Institute of Colorado Springs.  
Network World, 2/26/96, p. 47.  NewtNews, 3/12/96.]

    Ernst & Young has published their Worldwide Executive
Tax Guide, 1996 Edition, on <http://www1.ey.com/exec.htm>.
130 countries are covered.  [Network News, 2/10/96.]

    Legal issues, employee rights, etc., for people in computer 
fields, are the subject of the jdav list from <jdav@mcs.com>.  
[Travis L. Hayden <travis.l.hayden@awo.com>, 2/12/96.]

    Results of the 1995 CRA Taulbee Survey of US/Canadian
CS faculty salaries have been posted to <http://www.cra.org/>,
in Acrobat and postscript formats.  Statistical results are
in the 3/96 Computing Research News (CRN).  Graphs are on
the website, and further tables will be posted in HTML.
[CRA Bulletin, 3/4/96.]  (We have a Computists' Communique
ad in this month's CRN, on p. 11.)

    The Computing Research Association (CRA) is also putting
CRN on <http://www.cra.org/CRN/>.  This hardcopy newsletter
is distributed six times per year to researchers and decision 
makers in academia, government and industry.  Articles since 1/95 
are in HTML format; issues back to 1991 are available in
Acrobat and postscript formats (and soon HTML).  See also
the CRA Bulletin archives at <http://cra.org/cra_b/>, or
sign up with a "subscribe cra_b firstname lastname" message
to <listproc@cra.org>.  [<webmaster@www.cra.org>, CRA Bulletin, 
3/4/96.]


 4> Internet culture:

    NETEX, The Internet Experience Digest, is for discussion
of what's happening on the net and what it means.  Send a
"sub netex your name" message to <listserv@listserv.aol.com>.  
[Timothy N. Trimmer <tnt@cyberia.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/30/96.]  
(Another such list is NetWatch Digest, from <owner-netwatch-
digest@pulver.com>.  It includes a web page for downloading 
Internet software.  CompuNotes also covers Internet and
the commerial online services, from <compunotes@supportu.com>.  
[Travis L. Hayden <travis.l.hayden@awo.com>, 2/12/96.])

    E-Conf is a new list about electronic conferencing -- 
including phone, video,  IRC, newsgroups, e-lists, MUDs/MOOS,
WWW, etc. -- training, and "virtual organizations."  Send
a "subscribe" subject line and null message to <e-conf
@chatsubo.com>.  [Mike Gurstein <mgurst@sparc.uccb.ns.ca>,
NEW-LIST, 2/18/96.]

    France's Minister of Culture and some "cyberspace crusaders" 
in Quebec are working on a French vocabulary for the Internet, 
plus French-language searching software.  [Montreal Gazette, 
3/11/96, A1.  EDUPAGE.  Bill Park.]  (Once we get machine 
translation, we can read the whole stream in French or in 
Klingon.)

    OCC-L, the On-Line College Classroom, is for those planning
to teach college classes online.  Send a "subscribe occ-l
your name" message to <listproc@hawaii.edu>.  [Jim Shimabukuro 
<jamess@hawaii.edu>, NEW-LIST, 1/20/96.]

    Windows 95 users should like sword from <sword@islandnet.com>, 
winnews from <winnews@microsoft.com>, and perhaps the tips ezine 
from <tips@pcworld.com>.  Sword's web page offers software for 
download.  [Travis L. Hayden <travis.l.hayden@awo.com>, 2/12/96.]


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Yale University (New Haven, CT), Neuroengineering and Neuroscience 
Center: PhD researchers in pattern recognition, signal processing, 
ML, adaptive control, NN, or image analysis.

UNevada/EE (Reno): CE prof. in embedded controller design
and intelligent/adaptive applications.

GE (Schenectady), Information Technology Lab:  PhD researcher
in data mining and knowledge discovery.

NEC USA's Computers & Communications Research Labs (San Jose): 
researchers in multimedia databases, image retrieval, HCI, 
authoring, etc.

CMU/CS (Pittsburgh): MS German technical leader for
machine translation; also a Portuguese knowledge engineer.

CMU Robotics Institute: scientist for robot-assisted surgery.

Information Extraction & Transport, Inc. (IET; DC):
US research engineers for computer vision applications.

UNottingham (UK): PhD RAs in diagrammatic knowledge acquisition.

Oxford University: head of Oxford Text Archive.
Also a computing officer, corpus resource development officer, 
possibly other programmers.


 6> Journal calls:

    Learning in distributed AI systems: J. of Experimental
and Theoretical AI (JETAI).  4/7/96 initial contact,
then 11/1/96; Gerhard Weiss <weissg@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>, 
+49 89 2105 2407, +49 89 2105 8207 Fax.  
<http://www7.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~weissg/si-jetai>.
[DAI-List, 3/9/96.]
 
    Artificial intelligence: Crossroads, the ACM
Student Magazine.  5/6/96; <xrds-submit@acm.org>.
<http://www.acm.org/crossroads/crossroads@acm.org>.  [Frank 
Klassner <klassner@freya.cs.umass.edu>, comp.ai, 3/8/96.]

    Advanced computational methods; Advances in AI in Economics, 
Finance and Management (refereed book).  E.g., intelligent
search (tabu search, simulated annealing, GA) or NNs applied to 
business problems.  John D. Johnson <johnson@bus.olemiss.edu>, 
(601) 232-5492.  [comp.ai.neural-nets, 3/6/96.]

    Electronic news delivery: Information Processing & Management.  
4/15/96 (extended); Michael Shepherd <shepherd@cs.dal.ca>.  
[dbworld, 3/6/96.]

    Simulation of social behavior: Int. J. in Computer Simulation.  
Alain Senteni <senteni@iro.umontreal.ca>.  
<http://www.cs.umr.edu:80/ijcs/>.  [DAI-List, 3/18/96.]


 7> Technical discussion lists:

    ewm-all is a list for European women academic mathematicians, 
including job ads and fellowship announcements.  Send a
"join emw-all your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>
(or to <cbs%uk.ac.mailbase::mailbase>, if you use VAX email).  
[Educom UPDATE, 1/15/96.]

    COMB-L is for discussions in combinatorial mathematics.  Send 
a "subscribe comb-l your name" message to <listserv@cmich.edu>.  
[Ken W. Smith <ken.w.smith@cmich.edu>, NEW-LIST, 1/19/96.]

    The BUGS list is for users of the BUGS software for Bayesian 
inference on complex statistical models using Markov chain
Monte Carlo techniques.  Send a "join bugs your name" message
to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  BUGS software is free from the
MRC Biostatistics Unit.  [<bugs-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-list, 
2/15/96.]

    SIMUL_MODEL (Simulacion y Modelacion de sistemas dinamicos) 
covers dynamic systems modeling and simulation.  In Spanish.
Send a "subscribe simul-model your name" message to 
<listserv@listserv@rediris.es>.  [Gabriel Lera <galera@upna.es>, 
NEW-LIST, 2/20/96.]

    ECONOMETRIA covers econometrics, economic statistics,
and mathematical economics.  In Spanish.  Send a "subscribe 
econometria your name" message to <listserv@listserv.redires.es>.  
[Ignacio Diaz-Emparanza <id@alcib.bs.ehu.es>, NEW-LIST, 3/3/96.]

    List about Fuzzy Logic and Technologies (LFLAT)
is from the Spanish Assoc. of Fuzzy Logic and Technologies.
In Spanish.  Send a "sub lflat your name" message to 
<listserv@listserv.rediris.es>.  [Antonio F. Gomez Skarmeta 
<skarmeta@dif.um.es>, NEW-LIST, 3/3/96.]

    SAMO, for sensitivity analysis of model output,
discusses uncertainty analyses and the relative importance
of model parameters in determining model predictions.  Send
a "join samo your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  
[<samo-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 11/27/95.]

   ITHURS (Intelligent Technologies in Human-Related Sciences)
is for discussion of systems that make intelligent decisions
under uncertainty.  Application areas include finance, economics, 
management, operations research, control engineering, law, 
medicine, etc.  Technologies include fuzzy logic, NN, GA, DAI, 
fuzzy ES, Tabu search, ML, chaos theory, pattern recognition, 
clustering, etc.  Send a "subscribe ithurs your name" message
to <listserv@listserv.rediris.es>.  <ithurs-request@rediris.es>.  
[Enrique Lopez Gonzalez <enrique.lopez@uleon.es>, NEW-LIST, 
3/12/96.]

    Learning Robots is a new list with a European focus.
Send a "subscribe learningrobots" message to 
<majordomo@ls8.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>.
<http://www-ai/LearningRobots/lrml.html>.  [Volker Klingspor 
<volker@kick.informatik.uni-dortmund.de>, comp.robotics.research, 
3/8/96.  David Joslin.]


 8> Personal advice:

    The HomeOwners Finance Center Web site has a mortgage 
calculator, current interest rates, mortgage dictionary,
and other useful files.  <http://www.internet-
is.com/homeowners/in-nethapp.html>.  [Dick Lepre 
<rlepre@hooked.net>, 5/10/95.  net-hap, 7/7/95.]

    Mark Kantrowitz distributes a SCAMS-L list for reporting 
suspicious scholarship-service offers.  One recent report warned 
of likely problems with National Scholarship Foundation (NSF)
of Delray Beach, FL, also known as or associated with
Better Business Foundation (BBF), D&B or DBF National Business
Reporting Bureau, Kimberly Credit Alliance, and Credit
Management Services Group.  Don't send money without knowing
who you're dealing with.  To subscribe to the list, contact 
<mkant+query@cs.cmu.edu>.  Mark's other financial aid info
is on <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~finaid/finaid.html>.  
[<mkant@cs.cmu.edu>, 3/12/96.]

    (Mark signs off with "If you must pay money to get money,
it might be a scam."  True, but legitimate opportunities also 
require investment.  There's still a lot of paranoia on the net 
about services that charge in advance.  Just be reasonably 
cautious.)

    Frugal Tip of the Week offers a weekly tightwad tip and an 
archive of previous tips.  <http://sooner.brightok.net/~neilmayo>.  
[<neilmayo@brightok.net>, net-hap, 1/8/95.]

    Paul Saffo has found a way to save time reading magazines:
he reads them standing up.  [IW, 10/30/95, p. 30.  Network News, 
12/2/95.]  (Your bones need weight on them for a couple of hours 
per day.  That may be why teenagers like to eat standing up.
Most of us could use some standing time, or even yoga-style 
stretching while watching TV.)

    OverTheBackFence is a list for friendly information sharing, 
jokes, problems, and support, to demonstrate that email 
friendships are just as valuable as friendships with
neighbors over the back fence.  Send a "subscribe otbf" message
to <majordomo@lists.best.com>.  [Reggie and Jeff Dwork 
<reggie@reggie.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/23/96.]

    Bad Hair Days List is for sharing your troubles
with compassionate people on the Internet.  
<http://www.hopper.com/hopper/book.html>.
[<asaig@hopper.com>, net-hap, 12/21/96.]

    The Relationships List is an unmoderated sharing of
day-to-day and long-term issues of "bonded" emotional 
partnerships.  Send a "subscribe relationships" message to 
<majordomo@rivertown.net>.  [Jack Schnapper <jjflash@pobox.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 3/11/96.]

					-- Ken


Peace can be made only by those who are peaceful,
and love can be shown only by those who love.
No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear,
or hollowness of heart.  -- Alan Watts,
"The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are," 1966.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 22
 IS                                             March 21, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Neural networks and AI.
 2>	Web authoring.
 3>	Java discussions.
 4>	Web guides.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Apple news.
 7>	Entertainment.
_________________________________________________________________

Everything that is done in the world is done by hope.
-- Martin Luther.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Neural networks and AI:

    According to citation analysis, information in the
IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks has a half-life of
just 3.1 years.  TNN will attempt to speed things up
even further by posting abstracts of submitted articles,
at <http://www.ieee.org.nnc>.  This site also hosts a list
of conferences in computational intelligence, plus research 
centers, books, and other resources.  [1994 J. Citation Reports.  
Robert J. Marks II <marks@u.washington.edu>, connectionists, 
1/30/96.]

    Journal Citation Reports tracks the "impact factor"
(citations per article) for various journals.  In the category 
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, the most-cited journals were
Neural Computation (3.1); IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis (2.0); 
IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks (1.9); Neural Networks (1.9); 
Artificial Intelligence (1.9); Chemometr Intell Lab (1.8);
Machine Learning (1.7); Network (1.2); Int. J. of Computer
Vision, Cognition and Brain Research (.88); AI Magazine;
Pattern Recognition; AI in Medicine; IEEE Expert; Image and
Vision Computing; Int. J. of Intelligent Systems; IEEE Trans.
on Knowledge and Data; AI Review; Int. J. of Software
Engineering Knowledge; and Pattern Recognition Letters (.38).  
[Terry Sejnowski <terry@salk.edu>, connectionists, 3/3/96.]

    Loren and Will Hill have created a web page linking to
online resources frequently mentioned on comp.ai.neural-net:
the FAQ, conference pages, Stuttgart Neural Network Simulator, 
etc.  <http://www.phoaks.com/phoaks/comp/ai/neural-nets/>.  
[<willhill@bourbon.research.att.com>, 2/22/96.  Ken Barker.]

    MCS-Alert (Mathematics and Computer Science - Alert) is
a free alerting, archiving, and access service for the journals 
Artificial Intelligence, Discrete Mathematics, Discrete Applied 
Mathematics, and Theoretical Computer Science.  Anyone may read
or search current and forthcoming tables of contents; members
of subscribing institutions may also read or search abstracts.  
Gopher to gopher.elsevier.nl and select "Mathematics and Computer 
Science", or send a "HELP" subject line to <mcs-e@elsevier.nl>.  
[<mcs-e@elsevier.nl>.  Phil Agre, RRE, 1/30/96.  Ken Barker.]


 2> Web authoring:

    A basic tutorial on setting up websites is 
<http://www.cris.com/~jmm/collegehill.html>.  [Joshua
Micah Marshall <joshua@pacenet.org>, net-hap, 12/21/95.]

    "Developing A Quality Presence on the NET" is
a free online RealAudio seminar from McQueen & Assoc.  
<http://www.training.com/315/contents.htm>.  [<howadr@mcq.com>, 
net-hap, 12/26/95.]

    The Spider's Web is an online magazine promoting excellence
in WWW design.  <http://www.incontext.com/spidweb/>.  [David
Gale <davidg@incontext.ca>, c.i.www.announce, 2/29/96.  net-hap.]

    The Web Developer list is a free database of contract
HTML programmers, CGI scripters, graphic artists, and other
web consultants.  <http://www.mport.com/vendors.html>.
[Mark Ryan <mark@mport.com>, net-hap, 2/7/96.]

    Webpage designers at 
<http://www.tgn.net/pambytes/contest.html> are offering
one free custom-designed website per month to contest winners.  
[<ggrafx@tgn.net>, net-hap, 1/10/96.]

    Dave Meaker suggests that you can save money by renting web 
pages from an Internet service provider outside the US; say,
in South Africa or the Czech Republic.  [<dgmeaker@aztec.co.za>, 
1/27/96.]

    UToronto's HTML Documentation Collection covers the recent 
extensions by Netscape and Microsoft. 
<http://www.hprc.utoronto.ca/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/intro.html>.
[Ian S. Graham <igraham@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>, c.i.www.misc, 
12/1/95.  net-hap.]

    The Webmaster Reference Library has recently moved to 
<http://webreference.com>.  [Andy King <aking@corpnet.com>,
ADV-HTML, 12/27/95.  net-hap.]

    The CGI-L list covers WWW's interactive Common Gateway 
Interface (CGI).  Send a "sub cgi-l your name" message
to <listserv@vm.ege.edu.tr>.  [Turgut Kalfaoglu 
<turgut@vm.ege.edu.tr>, NEW-LIST, 2/8/96.]

    WebMaster Magazine is now at <http://www.web-master.com/>.  
[<thorgan@cio.com>, net-hap, 3/11/96.]  (I've previously
announced this business-oriented publication at 
<http://www.cio.com/WebMaster/>.)


 3> Java discussions:

    The JAVA-WIN mailing list covers Java on Microsoft Windows 
operating systems.  Send a "subscribe java-win" or "subscribe 
java-win-digest" message to <majordomo@natural.com>.  [Sandra
L. Schneible <java-mac-owner@natural.com>, NEW-LIST, 2/20/96.]

    JavaP-UK is a UK-based support list for Java developers.
Send a "join javap-uk your name" message to <mailbase
@mailbase.ac.uk>.   [<javap-uk-request@mailbase.ac.uk>,
new-lists, 1/30/96.] 

    Dale Kirby has started a Web page about Java for Macintosh.  
<http://www.rain.org/~da5e/macjava.html>.  [MacWay, 2/26/96.]


 4> Web guides:

    CompuNotes is a free emailed weekly with PC reviews, news, 
interviews, hot web sites, and cool FTP files.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE" 
message to <notes@basic.net>.  [Patrick Grote <pgrote@basic.net>, 
net-hap, 1/26/96.]  (New address and sign-up procedure.)

    IWatch! Internet Resource Locator is a new, more ambitious 
incarnation of IWatch! Digest.  It's now an HTML-format 
publication describing 350-400 websites in 24 categories each 
month, with no advertising or sponsorship messages.  Subscribe
for $1/month (6 months minimum).  Send an "IRLNL" subject line
to <iwatch@pobox.com> for details.  [Calvin Merrick 
<cybernet@atlcom.net>, NEW-LIST, 3/14/96.]

    Web Rats' Magazine offers "a daily dose of wit, panache,
and an honest look at the 'Net."  <http://www.webrats.com>.  
[Richard A. Scott <rscott@itw.com>, net-hap, 3/2/96.]
(Sounds a lot like the Suck site, www.suck.com.)

   In-Touch: Win95 Edition is a moderated, weekly description
of 10-15 new 32-bit applications on the net: games, educational 
software, Internet apps, screen savers, shell enhancements,
etc.  Send a "subscribe in-touch your name" message
to <listserv@peach.ease.lsoft.com>, or fill out the form
at <http://www.islandnet.com/~sword/win95.html>.
[Lance Jones <sword@islandnet.com>, NEW-LIST, 2/24/96.]
(This is the "sword" list I mentioned on Tuesday.
Travis Hayden recommended it.)


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

CP Graphics Library: royalty-free DLL routines.

TINA computer vision algorithm development libraries
for X-windows.

UltraFind 2.2 information manager and file retrieval
for Mac networks.

Apptek Arabic/English machine translation workbench.

Perl 5.002 scripting language.

gawk 3.0: GNU awk string-pattern language.

Cyberdog: beta OpenDoc document-centric system for Mac.

Symantec Caffeine: free Mac Java toolkit.

Java Developer's Kit 1.0: Mac beta release 1 from SunSoft.

Mac VRML Netscape plug-in.

Java for Linux.

CmmCGI: free Mac CGI libraries in Cmm (C-minus-minus).

Common Lisp Web Server from MIT AIL.

LP/CLP HTML and WWW interface for Prolog systems.

Connectionist, Statistical, and Symbolic Approaches
to Learning for Natural Language Processing: book
edited by Wermter, Riloff, and Scheler.


 6> Apple news:

    Apple has promoted Dr. David Nagel from VP of
the Advanced Technology Group to Senior VP of Worldwide R&D.
He recently demoed CyberDog -- Apple's modular OpenDoc approach
to Internet client services: email, FTP, web browsing, chat, etc. 
-- for 170K attendees at MacWorld Tokyo.  [NewtNews, 2/27/96.  
Bill Park.]

    OdZ is the first e-Zine about OpenDoc solutions.
Write to <odz@partmerchant.com>.  [Steven T. Roussey 
<steven.roussey@partmerchant.com>, MacWay, 3/1/96.]

    Apple has new $1,099 ARA MultiPort Server 2.1 software
that can handle 16 dial-in ports for networked groups
of 10-200 people, with increased stability and security.  
<http://www.info.apple.com/>.  [MacWay, 2/15/96.]
(Mac servers are typically much more secure than Unix boxes.)

    If you develop for or support Macs, try The Small Business 
Listserver.  It's a support group sponsored by the not-for-profit 
Apple Business Consortium, aimed at helping solve small-business 
computing problems.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE" subject line to 
<smallbiz@applebiz.com>.  [Chuck Rogers <afcchuck@aol.com>, 
MacWay, 2/18/96.]

    "I'm looking for change at Apple -- an outward perspective 
that helps flow new products from developers to users without 
aloof judgement from Apple.  More attention to users and products.  
More air cover for developers, less sniper fire."
-- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 3/11/96.
(And he's not sure yet that it will happen.)

    Apple Developer Relations is reinstating their
It Shipped program, to help announce the new products of 
independent developers.  One venue is the monthly Apple Directions 
publication.  See <http://dev.info.apple.com/itshipped.html>
for a submission form.  [<aruns@applelink.apple.com>, MacWay, 
2/22/96.]

    MacinStuff Times is a free daily "newspaper"
with hyperlinked Mac news from AP, Reuters, CNN, MacWeek,
The NYT, EvangeList, and vendors.  Also software downloads
and exclusive "HOT DEALS."  <http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com
/webstuff/mactimes.html>, from MacinStuff 
<http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/webstuff>.  <informed@ambrosiasw.com>.  
[David S. Josephson <david@informedusa.com>, MacWay, 2/27/96.]

    Macworld Daily is a news service from Macworld Online, 
<http://www.macworld.com>.  Product announcements may be
submitted to <new_products@macworld.com> or via fax
to Tova Fliegel at (415) 442-0766.  [MacWay, 3/11/96.]

    Mac Today Magazine, "an irreverent, off-the-wall, totally 
biased look at the Macintosh," has moved to <http://MacToday.com>.  
You can browse online, download in Acrobat PDF format,
or subscribe to the 44-page tabloid printed edition.
There's also a MacToday AOL forum.  [<MacToday@aol.com>,
MacWay, 2/16/96.]

    The Assoc. of Independent Macintosh Engineers
and Developers (AIMED) is "a single reputable voice for
the state of Macintosh development" to counterbalance
press bashing of the Mac platform and its software.
"We will speak up with hard data."  The association will also 
build resource directories for Mac developers, including
a registry of products for each vertical market.
Volunteer teaching and other activism will also be discussed.  
Send a "subscribe aimed-talk" message to <listserv@mcf.com>.  
<http://mcf.com/aimed/>.  [<MacFrk1@aol.com>, MacWay, 2/28/96.]

    Carpe Diem is another list for Mac and Newton evangelists, 
taking some pressure off Apple's Semper Fi list for
developer relations.  Carpe Diem is for strategy discussions
about grassroots evangelism (often starting from the
upbeat case histories on Guy Kawasaki's MacWay/EvangeList).
Send a "subscribe Carpe.Diem your name" message
to <carpe.diem-request@ddg.com>.  [Nathan Tennies 
<bootstrap1@aol.com>, MacWay, 2/19/96.]

    The Info Zone is a Mac-centric news-and-gossip site,
including TidBITS, EvangeList, Digital Dispatch, and links
to other major news sources.  Updated daily and weekly.  
<http://pobox.com/~infozone>.  Submissions are solicited.
[Chris Sparno <cjsparno@pobox.com>, MacWay, 2/12/96.]

    MACTCP is an open discussion relating to anything Macintosh.  
Send a "subscribe mactcp" message to <majordomo@scescape.com>.  
[Joseph Bonin <webmaster@scescape.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/28/96.]

    MacShareNews is a 60KB e-pub about new Macintosh shareware, 
freeware and demo programs.  Send a "MacSN-request" subject line 
and "SUBSCRIBE MacSN your name" message to S. Gallton 
<steg@dircon.co.uk>, or visit <http://netmar.com/macsn/>.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 2/27/96.]

    I/O MUG is a free Internet-only Macintosh User's Group,
with over 1,500 members already.  Recognized by The Apple
User Group Connection, which makes members eligible for
discounts on the User Group Member Purchase Program.
Send a "subscribe io-mug your name" message to 
<listserv@utarlvm1.uta.edu> to get the membership form,
or visit <http://www.iomug.org>.  [Mark Luffman
<iomug@iomug.org>, MacWay, 2/12/96.]

    INUG is the Italian Newton User Group.  Contact 
<inug@pobox.com>.  [Max Sangalli <sangalli@irfmn.mnegri.it>, 
MacWay, 2/19/96.]

    Celestin Company is looking for "cool" Mac programs
they can publish.  <http://www.celestin.com/>,
(360) 385-3767, (360) 385-3586 Fax.  [<celestin@celestin.com>, 
alt.internet.services, 11/24/95.]


 7> Entertainment:

    Have A Nice Day (HAND!) is a "clean, funny" daily joke 
mailing.  Send a "subscribe hand your name" message to
Cheryl Rogers <smiles@vivid.net>.  [NEW-LIST, 1/27/96.]
Archives in Adobe Acrobat format are /info-mac/art/zine
/hand-001-pdf.hqx through hand-004 (on vivid.net, or direct.ca?).  
[Mike Romaniuk <romaniuk@direct.ca>.  Bill Park.]

    The free Sunshine Posts online newsletter arrives
every Friday with "news and happenings in the online world,"
plus "places to go to," tutorials, and humor.  Send a
"subscribe" subject line to <dbwild@clover.cleaf.com>.  
[comp.infosystems.www.browsers.ms-windows, 2/24/96.  newjour.]  
(If that fails, try <dbwild@cloaver.cleaf.com>.)

    Joke of the Day has a new home, and previous subscriptions 
will not be carried over.  Send a "subscribe joke" message to 
<majordomo@gnt.com>.  [Scott Anderson <joker@tdkt.org>, 2/24/96.]

    jhumor is a moderated list dealing with Jewish humor.  Send a 
"subscribe jhumor your name" message to <listserv@drcoffsite.com>.  
[Larry Kahn <kahn@drcoffsite.com>, NEW-LIST, 1/27/96.]

    Cafe Angst is a daily comic strip, at
<http://internet-plaza.net/zone/angst/>.  [<hans@xor.com>,
net-hap, 1/5/96.]

					-- Ken


If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door.  -- Milton Berle.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 23
 IS                                             March 26, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	NSF funding.
 2>	Industry news.
 3>	Brief opportunities.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Applied jobs.
 6>	Pseudo-linguistics.
 7>	Science and philosophy.
_________________________________________________________________

The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.
-- Linus Pauling.  [AWAD, 3/24/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I've included tables of contents for both our weekly jobs 
digests so that you can see what the applied listings look like.  
They're free to anyone who wants them.


 1> NSF funding:

    NSF has announced a program in Leadership for the
Integration of Research and Education: Recognition Awards
for Innovative Academic Institutions.  Ten awards of $500K each.  
Awardees may use the funds to evaluate, document, and disseminate 
their achievements in the integration of research and education 
and to experiment with new integration activities.  Preliminary 
applications are due 6/3/96.  The brochure is on STIS, and will be 
available in hardcopy by 4/15/96.  Contact David Schindel, OSTI, 
<lire@nsf.gov>, (703) 306-1040, <http://www.nsf.gov:80/OD/OSTI/>.  
[NSF Bulletin, 4/96.]

    NSF's Melvin Ciment points out that this year's lack of
a budget appropriation has a particularly strong effect on
new programs.  NSF must limit its obligations to 75% of
the 1996 authorizations.  (Money is authorized earlier in
the year, but isn't available until appropriated.  The amounts
can change, so appropriation is the more important process.)
Most programs are already 60% committed to continuing grants,
so the money for new grants has been cut from 40% to just 15%.  
The other 25% may or may not become available later this
fiscal year.  Even worse, new programs have not been created.
NSF was going to start a multidisciplinary challenge in
computer science, but money would have had to come out of
existing programs.  (Initiatives like this are begun by asking 
program directors for contributions of discretionary funds.)  
Money has also been lacking for travel expenses, consultants,
and ad hoc panels -- and new programs usually have review panels 
early in the calendar year.  Even if funding were available,
such panels can't be scheduled beyond the next continuing 
resolution deadline -- and Congress has been extending that
by as little as a week at a time.  One panel was to meet in
12/95 to review the CISE directorate structure; it is now
hoping to meet in 6/96, and may be delayed until next year.
A competition for new supercomputer centers is also facing 
scheduling problems but will probably pull through.  But there
is talk of a 2%-5% cut in NSF's budget this coming year -- 
supported by both Congress and the White House -- that would 
likely propagate forward to reduce grant funds for many years.  
And Robert Walker (R-PA), champion of basic science and chair of 
the House Science Committee, has decided not to seek re-election.  
[Bill Gregory, CRN, 3/95, pp. 1 and 5.]

    NSF deadlines: New Millenium Computing Point Design Studies 
(NSF 96-38), 4/1/96; Partnerships for Advanced Computational 
Infrastructure Program Preproposals (NSF 96-31), 4/15/96; 
Networking and Communications Research (NSF 89-110), 5/1/96;
Small Business Innovation Research (brochure in revision), 
6/12/96.  [NSF Bulletin, 4/96.]  (Also many of the
international programs are due in 4/96 through 6/96.)


 2> Industry news:

    CMU researchers have a robot helicopter that navigates
using vision and GPS.  It could be used for inspecting remote 
utility lines, or for dangerous tasks such as monitoring volcanos.  
[BW, 3/11/96, p. 91.  NewtNews, 3/19/96.]  (Or scouting forest 
fires, or finding lost hikers.  High-altitude scanners might
work better for large-area search such as finding lost boats,
if we could develop on-board visual processing.)

    Defense News now offers free articles
at <http://www.defensenews.com/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 3/6/96.  newjour.]

    NewsGuide covers Israel's leading-edge technologies
in aerospace, software, computers, communications,
semiconductors, etc.  <http://206.43.192.113/>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 3/3/96.  net-hap.]

    A new white paper examines OSF DCE object-oriented
technology and compares it to CORBA and Microsoft's COM/OLE.  
<http://www.osf.org/dce/literature>.  [WEBster, 3/19/96.]

    3M's $20 LS-120 floppy disks hold 80 times as much as
regular floppies.  (170MB?)  The new $210 drives will also
read 1.44MB diskettes, which may help them become the new 
standard.  Available 4/2/96.  [IBD, 3/5/96, A9.  EDUPAGE.]

    Microsoft's 1.68MB Distribution Media Format (DMF) packs
21 sectors onto a floppy instead of 18, but users can't make 
backup copies with standard DOS utilities.  (Windows 95's
1.44MB installer disk is able to read the remaining disks.  
Microsoft may offer backup disks for an extra charge.)
Micro System Designs offers a free FixFlop program that can
read the disks, as well as a shareware DiskDupe program that
can copy them (or create new 1.68MB products).  
<http://www.msd1.com/msd1>.  [Sysop News, 9/95.  Herb Caines 
<ghcaines@aol.com>, 1/3/96.]

    HP's new RealLife Imaging Pavilion home PCs include
a built-in 5"x7" color scanner, to help users create Web pages, 
newsletters, or photo albums.  [IBD, 2/29/96, A6.]

    Xerox PARC says it is trying to make screens that are
as good as the highest-quality printed pages.  Their new
13-inch active-matrix screen has 7M pixels, about 1.7 times
the linear resolution of the best previous screens.  At $15K each, 
early buyers may be in niche markets such as aviation or medicine.  
The MIT Media Lab is working on a "downloadable book" with pages, 
a spine, hard covers, etc. whose pages are actually flexible 
display screens that show the contents of a cartridge storage 
device in the spine.  We might be getting a hint of the 
[interactive, multimedia, intelligent, etc.] book/magazine
of the future.  "Didn't McLuhan say that all new media first 
attempt to mimic the media they replace?"  [Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, 3/21/96.  Also WSJ, 3/11/96.]

    SimulEyes VR is an "almost holographic" $180 stereo vision 
device for PCs.  StereoGraphics Corp. is licensing it to
3D game developers.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 2/29/96.]

  Moving Worlds is an open, cross-platform specification
for dynamic 3D environments on the Internet.  Apple has
recently joined Silicon Graphics and Netscape, and will adapt
its QuickDraw 3D metafile format (3DMF) technology (for Mac,
PCs, and Unix).   <http://www.info.apple.com/qd3d>.
[WEBster, 3/19/96.]

    Byte magazine recommends the following VRML or 3D web 
software: WebSpace from Silicon Graphics (SG and Windows NT);  
WebFX from Paper Software (Windows); Worldview from Intervista 
(Windows); Fountain from Caligari (Windows); Whurlwind (Mac); 
Voyager (Mac); VRweb (Unix and Windows); and Internet Explorer 
(Microsoft's beta VRML add-in for its browser).  For more info, 
see <http://www.sdsc.edu/vrml> from the San Diego Supercomputer 
Center.  [Byte, 3/96, p. 61.  Flash Information, 2/26/96.]


 3> Brief opportunities:

    A Mac/Windows CD-ROM version of the Merriam Webster Dictionary 
can be ordered for just $14.95 (including S&H) through 3/30/96.  
Call 1-800-806-4223.  [NYT Book Review ad, 2/11/96.
Kirk McElhearn <kirk@lenet.fr>, MacWay, 3/23/96.]

    A Japanese-to-English machine translation system
by email may be tried free through 4/29/96.  See
<http://www-jmt.jicst.go.jp/index-E.html> from JICST
Translation Network Service.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
inet-news, 3/18/96.  net-hap.]

    Michael Flower would like to know if Computists have
knowledge of the Formulab Neuro Computer, aka Neuronetic
Reasoning Machine.  They claim to have a massively parallel, 
scalable Adaptive Logic Network (ALN) machine suitable for
several applications such as speech recognition.  Anthony Richter 
is the founder, and apparently enjoys publicity; he's backed up
by Russell Dewey (of SRI) and A.J. Bate.  Formulab was listed at 
$.10/share on the Australian stock exchange just before Christmas.  
It's now above $.92 and climbing fast.  "Probably the most-traded 
share on some days.  The volumes are quite spectacular."
A US tour is planned soon, but stocks priced below $4
are said to do poorly in the US.  Anyone have technical info?  
[<m.flower@trl.oz.au>, 3/25/96.]  (ALNs have similar
applications to neural networks, but are based on 
faster/cheaper/more understandable discrete decision logic.
Where applicable, they could well be a cost-effective technology.)


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

MIT Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy: two postdocs
in psycholinguistics or the cognitive neuroscience of language.

UMaryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS): 
postdocs in video indexing, NLP, neural modeling, and 
neuroscience.

UColorado (Colorado Springs): postdoc RA in NN for sonar
or visual pattern analysis.

HNC Software (San Diego): PhD NN scientist for financial modeling.  
Also a BS/MS NN software engineer.

CMU Pittsburgh Area Cognitive Tutoring (PACT) Center:
programmer to develop geometry and algebra tutors.

USouthampton (UK): posdoc in speech synthesis by analogy.

King's College London: sr. lectureship in humanities computing
-- text encoding and analysis, computational linguistics, DB,
or hypermedia.

IDSIA (Switzerland): postdoc in NN for image compression
and classification.

UGeneva (Switzerland): a postdoc and an RA in NN
for machine vision.

Goeteborg U. (Sweden): tenured position in lexicology and NLP.


 5> Applied jobs (in our CAJ digest this week):

Transylvania U. (Lexington, KY): visiting or tenure-track
CS professor.

Gensym Corp. (Cambridge, MA): developer for the G2
real-time expert system tool.

NeuralTech, Inc. (Fairfax, VA): BS programmer
for credit applications.

AUM Systems, Inc. (New Brunswick, NJ):
speech recognition developer.

Silicon Valley company: Mac programmers
for new technology project.

Apple Computer (Cupertino): software engineer
for content indexing tools.

Arizona State University: two PhD assistantships in AI planning.

Brandeis/Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology: postdoc RA.

Harvard (Cambridge, MA): postdocs in cognitive neuropsychology 
relating to visual word and object recognition.

James S. McDonnell Foundation (St. Louis): visiting research 
fellow in cognitive science to develop and study Internet 
connectivity for nonprofits.

Princeton U. Office of Computing and Information Technology (CIT): 
two BS specialists to work on Web access to legacy journals.

UWolverhampton (UK): research studentship in anaphora resolution.

Institut Bonniot (La Tronche, France): postdoc in database
and image analysis for cancer screening.

Leiden University (The Netherlands): three GRAs
in connectionist modeling in psychology and perception.


 6> Pseudo-linguistics:

    An alphabet has been constructed for the Babylon 5's
Minbari language.  Look for it on T-shirts, spelling
English words.  The "Tenctonese" language in Alien Nation
was just funny-cursive English.  (UCLA's linguistics dept.
may have been working on a better version when the series
was canceled.)  Likewise, Vulcan language in the first
Trek movie was just mispronounced English.  Dr. Marc Okrand
-- visiting a friend at Paramount -- was retained to create
a better language for Leonard Nimoy and Kirstie Alley in
the second movie.  His Klingon Dictionary and instructional tapes 
are said to have wider spread now than Esperanto literature.
A couple of years ago, a Treknoid visiting a small Japanese 
village was having trouble finding the train station.
"He noticed a kid wearing a tee shirt that said 'I SPEAK KLINGON' 
in 'klingonese.'  It worked...  the kid was delighted to help
him out, gave good directions.  (He occasionally sends
the kid TrekCrud that's not yet available in Japan.)"  [Gharlane
of Eddore <gharlane@ccshp1.ccs.csus.edu>, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5, 
3/1/96.  Bill Park.]

    Linguists might enjoy John Lawler's Chomskybot site,
which strings together phrases from Chomsky's writings
in a way that almost seems to make sense.  
<http://www.ling.lsa.umich.edu/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl>.  [2/29/96.]  
(There's a lot of power in even simple phrase-based linguistics.  
I have a naive dream of advancing linguistics by studying
an enormous "vocabulary" of intertwined phrase structures.
Some of the machine translation systems work like that.)


 7> Science and philosophy:

    Science and Technology is an extensive list of science links.  
<http://www.physics.wisc.edu/~shalizi/hyperweird/science.html>.  
[Avi Bass <te0azb1@corn.cso.niu.edu>, net-hap, 2/13/96.]

    Weird Science Weekly features current or past events that are 
strange, unusual, or humorous.  Authors receive a $67 PC software 
package in return for items of 150-350 words.  <http://sqn.com>.  
[Stephanie Mora <sqn35net@sqn.com>, rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5, 
2/6/96.  Bill Park.]

    Nature, "the international weekly journal of Science"
and "the world's most cited science magazine," is now online
at <http://www.nature.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
inet-news, 2/28/96.  net-hap.]  (This includes listings
of "science jobs.")

    PHILOFHI is an unmoderated discussion on philosophy
of history, theoretical history, metahistory, and
global prognostics.  Send an "index philofhi" message to 
<listserv@yorku.ca> for the archives, or see 
<http://darwin.clas.virginia.edu/~dew7e/anthronet
/subscribe/philofhi.html> to subscribe.  [Nikolai S. Rozov 
<rozov@nw.cnit.nsk.su>, NEW-LIST, 2/2/96.]

    One of my former teachers, Wallace Gray,
is developing a global history of philosophy.
See <http://www.sckans.edu/~gray/plott95.html>.
"More info than the average individual wants to know,"
and soon to be expanded during his retirement.  
[<gray@sckans.edu>, 3/24/96.]

					-- Ken


When eras die, their legacies are left to strange police.
Professors in New England guard the glory that was Greece.
-- Clarence Day, from Thoughts Without Words.  
[<harvey@acf2.nyu.edu>, QOTD, 3/5/96.]
(Except that Dr. Gray is at Southwestern College in Kansas.
He did try to teach me Greek, though.)

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 24
 IS                                             March 28, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Research software.
 2>	Internet job services.
 3>	Spiders and search engines.
_________________________________________________________________

You must get involved to have an impact.  No one is impressed
with the won-loss record of the referee.  -- John H. Holcomb,
"The Militant Moderate."  [TFTD, 3/22/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Today completes the fifth full year of service from
Computists International.  (TCC 1.01 was published on 4/1/91.)
Of the 34 who signed up for that issue -- other than myself
-- 21 are still members.  I'd like to thank Jerry Brookshire,
Dan Corkill, James Critz, Tim Finin, Leonard Foner,
Enrico Franconi, Bob Futrelle, Ron Gershon, Nahum Goldmann,
Mary Dee Harris, Elizabeth Hinkelman, John Hopkins, Tod Levitt, 
Dave Lewis, Calton Pu, Ann Reid, Mark Rosenstein, Darrell Skinner, 
Ken Turner, Matthew Witten, and Bob Woodham for their belief
in me and their continuing support.

    It's Spring Break, so I'm taking next week off.  Look for
TCC, CCJ, and CAJ on 4/9/96.  Have a good vacation!  If you need 
anything, just email (or try the search engines listed below).


 1> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Free math-related Windows software from Phillips Exeter Academy.

Nutmeg: commercial Smalltalk-style class libraries for Java.

DOS/Windows software demos for NLP, reference, language learning, 
and English-Russian machine translation, from Good Language 
Software.

PILS: free Windows programming environment to supplant Lisp.

Abuse: source code for a Lisp game.

FreeWalk: VR "meeting room" or "party" environment where 
participants can see and hear what other participants
are viewing and saying.

SciPlot: cartesian and polar plotting widget.

Expert Systems Design and Development: book by John Durkin.

Adaption and Learning in Multi-Agent Systems: book
edited by Weiss and Sen.

Intelligent Agents II: book edited by Wooldridge, Mueller,
and Tambe.

Bibliography of automatic text summarization, from Marcos Casa.


 2> Internet job services:

    NSF has a new brochure on Information for Graduate Research 
Fellows (NSF 96-42).  FTP nsf9642.txt from stis.nsf.gov.
[grants, 3/25/96.]

    stu-serv-jshop is a UK list about helping students gain
part-time employment.  Send a "join stu-serv-jshop your name" 
message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<stu-serv-jshop-request
@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-list, 3/14/96.]

    1st Steps in the Hunt is a daily newsletter for job hunters.  
See <http://www.interbiznet.com/hunt/>, which also lists
job-hunting resources on the Web.  [<jrs@interbiznet.com>,
net-hap, 3/4/96.]

    4WORK lists US job opportunities, internships, and volunteer 
positions throughout the US.  You can ask for email notification 
when a suitable job is posted.  <http://www.4work.com>.  
[<recruit@4work.com>, net-hap, 4/4/96.]

    On Usenet, the national/international jobs listings
are misc.jobs.offered and misc.jobs.contract.  You might also
try posting to misc.jobs.resumes.

    Resume Robot is a Winsock application that finds
and parses resumes on the Web.  Its database can be used by
job seekers and recruiters.  <http://www.onramp.net/proquest
/resume/robot/robot.html>.  [James Stakelum, AgentNews, 3/12/96.]

    The Job Seeker's Resource Center is 
<http://www.interbiznet.com/hunt/>.  [Network News, 2/10/96.]

    Another info site for job seekers is 
<http://www.stetson.edu/~hansen/careers.html>.  
[<hansen@mbox.stetson.edu>, net-hap, 3/4/96.]

    The Job Search Links page at 
<http://members.aol.com/MGoodson2/jobsrch.htm> offers
job listings, recruiters, company profiles, a resume
distribution services, and a salary recalculator.
[Mike Goodson <mgoodson@combase.com>, net-hap, 1/31/96.]

    JobExpress job postings are listed on 
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/antony_arendt
/jobpost.htm>.  [<72341.456@compuserve.com>, 3/7/96.]

    The Job-Link mailing list is for job announcements
of any kind.  Send a "subscribe" subject line to
<job-link-admin@listserv.job-link.com>.  Resumes may be
posted at <http://www.job-link.com/>, and job ads should be
sent to <job-link@listserv.job-link.com>.  [Charles Boesel 
<webguy@job-link.com>, NEW-LIST, 3/15/96.]

    Shawn's Internet Resume Center (SIRC) offers members a home 
page and other job services.  <http://www.inpursuit.com/sirc/>.  
[WEBster, 3/19/96.]

    IS Opportunities Magazine lists career opportunities
around the world.  <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages
/is_opportunities>.  [<101350.3541@compuserve.com>, newjour, 
2/3/96.]

    ELSNET Job Placement Service covers NL and speech research, 
primarily for the European communities.  Send job ads
or short CVs (with dates of availability), preferably in English, 
to <elsnet-list@let.ruu.nl>.  You can browse job ads at 
<http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/elsnet/summary.html>, CVs at 
<http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/elsnet/cv-summary.html>,
or search by subject, location, etc., at 
<http://wwwots.let.ruu.nl/ELSNET/jobs_and_cvs.html>.  [Dawn 
Griesbach <dawn@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>, ELSNET, 3/19/96.  Joe Raben.]

    The National Assoc. of Programmers (NAP) serves programmers, 
developers, consultants, and students.  See <http://naponnet.org/> 
for benefits.  [<info@naponnet.org>, net-hap, 1/28/96.]

    The National Assoc. of Computer Consultant Businesses (NACCB) 
has a job board and resume bank  for computer consultants.  
<http://diads.com/rc/owa/jbb.search> or <http://computerwork.com>.  
[<naccb@resourcecenter.com>, net-hap, 3/23/96.]

    The National Home Workers Assoc. (NHWA) lists
more than 76K work-from- home job openings in North America, 
including many kinds of computer work.  
<http://www.homeworkers.com/homeworkers/>.  
[<nhwa@homeworkers.com>, net-hap, 2/13/96.]

    North Carolina has a career, jobs, and resume service at 
<http://www.webcom.com/nccareer/>.  [<ioshrink@ix.netcom.com>, 
net-hap, 2/2/96.]

    Georgia's High Tech Job Bank (and resume database) is 
<http://job.sid.net>.  [<webmaster@sid.net>, net-hap, 3/21/96.]

    Texas Job Reports offers employment listings
and career opportunities at <http://www.jobreports.com>.  
[<jlgarcia@jobreports.com>, net-hap, 2/3/96.]

    Riccione On-Line CompuSearch lists jobs for
software developers and hardware engineers, plus info on
Texas computer user groups.  <http://www.riccione.com>.  
[<riccione@onramp.net>, net-hap, 3/21/96.]

    TOPjobs USA currently has 13K "professional" job listings
in CA, 6K in TX; 2.2K in CO; 2K in AZ; 1.8K in Utah; 700 in
New Mexico; and almost 600 in NV.  Other states are also listed, 
for 32K total.  <http://www.fiber.net/topjobs>.  [D. Williams 
<williams@fiber.net>, net-hap, 3/22/96.]

  (Use WWW search engines to check for other states, countries,
or specialties.)


 3> Spiders and search engines:

    Prodigy now offers searching of 17M messages from
the past 18 months, by subject, sender, receiver, or keywords.  
[St. Petersburg Times, 3/11/96, p. 9.  EDUPAGE.]
(Privacy advocates are concerned about the ease with which
a contributor's participation can be reviewed.  Your postings
may someday be your biography, or evidence in a libel case.)

    ("Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder 
these many, many years.  Ink is handicapped, in a way, because
you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while
it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book.  But the 
gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book
can keep on exploding for centuries."  -- Chistopher Morley,
"The Haunted Bookshop."  [Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>, QOTD, 
12/15/95.])

    Andersen Consulting's webpage describes several projects
that monitor newsgroups and other online sources, finding articles 
of interest, contact names, and best prices for offered services.  
<http://www.ac.com/cstar/hsil/agents/>.  [AgentNews, 3/12/96.]

    Dynamic Mapping is a technique for displaying search hits
from an online database.  <http://www.discribe.ca/mapcover.htm>.  
[<lornap@discribe.ca>, net-hap, 3/4/96.]

    World Wide Web Launcher offers links to every major
search engine.  <http://www.flex.net/~greg/launch.htm>.  
[<greg@flex.net>, net-hap, 3/12/96.]  Signpost Information
Service also links to many of the WWW search engines.  
<http://www.cris.com/~Carroll/>.  [<carroll@cris.com>,
net-hap, 3/4/96.]  StoryNet Page has links to children's sites, 
teen sites, software, images, etc., plus many of the new
search engines.  <http://www.users.fast.net/~obe/links.html>.  
[Obe <obe@fast.net>, net-hap, 3/22/96.]

    Northwestern College SearchIt includes search engines
for the Internet, gopher, WWW, Usenet newsgroups, daily news,
and general reference services.  
<http://www.netins.net/showcase/nwc-iowa/>.  [Floyd Johnson 
<floydj@worf.netins.net>, c.i.www.announce, 1/4/96.  net-hap.]

    The Virtual Search Engines page includes the most popular 
search engines and tools for searching the Web, newsgroups, 
Listserv, FTP, Gopher, email addresses, ZIP codes, etc.  
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/frankvad/search.htm>.  
[<frankvad@dreamscape.com>, net-hap, 2/1/96.]

    Yahoo, <http://www.yahoo.com>, is probably the best
human-organized directory indexing the entire Internet.
The Whole Internet Catalog, <http://nearnet.gnn.com/gnn/wic>,
and Infomine <http://lib-www.ucr.edu/Main.html>, are also
easy-to-use, but less comprehensive.  Two of the best
search engines are InfoSeek, <http://guide.infoseek.com>,
and Alta Vista, <http://www.altavista.digital.com>.
[Fortune, 4/1/96, p. 147.  Flash Information.]

    MOO, Inc. is "the spot to visit if you're interested in 
Internet search engines, are an investor looking for the hottest 
technology, etc."  <http://access.digex.net/~holycow/index.html>.  
[<holycow@access.digex.net>, net-hap, 1/1/96.]

    The WWW Megalist index/search engine is at 
<http://www.worcester.com/cgi-bin/megalist/megalist>.  
[<root@misty.worcester.com>, net-hap, 1/26/96.]

    REX is another engine for searching a database of website 
descriptions.  <http://www.skyline.net/>.  [Thomas Kuegler Jr. 
<kuegler@skyline.net>, c.i.www.announce, 2/10/96.  net-hap.]

    BullsEye! is an off-line search tool, to save on 
communications costs.  <http://www.siriusquest.com
/bulls/agever.htm>.  [<aen-a1@mv.mv.com>, net-hap, 2/6/96.]
(I presume that it comes with a CD ROM.)

    Eureka! is a simple but powerful Internet search engine.  
<http://www.best.com/~mentorms/eureka.htm>.
[<mentorms@best.com>, net-hap, 1/30/96.]

    UCB's fast Inktomi search engine offers relevance retrieval 
with MUST (+) and NOT (-) search terms.  Over 2.8M documents
are searched.  <http://inktomi.berkeley.edu/>.  [Scout Report, 
2/2/96.]

    InfoScan is a network-based filtering tools for your own
text and email databases.  $35, but with a free demo version
at <http://www.machinasapiens.qc.ca/infoscanang.html>.
[Liz Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/7/96.  net-hap.]

    topicSEARCH from Verity (Mountain View, CA) is a new
text/HTML retrieval application for webmasters using
the Microsoft Internet Information Server.  "Seamlessly
integrated with Microsoft's Internet Server Application 
Programming Interface (ISAPI)" to be four times faster
than CGI, with built-in security and administration features.  
Distributed free with the Microsoft Internet Business
Development Kit or from <http://www.software.net>
or <http://www.verity.com>.  [WEBster, 2/20/96.]

    CyberDewey accesses Internet resources by the Dewey Decimal 
Classification system.  BUBL (Bulletin Board for Library Systems) 
does the same using the Universal Decimal Classification system.  
See the Scout Toolkit's Search Tools, Subject Catalog section,
on <http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b2.html>.  [Scout 
Report, 3/1/96.]

    Home Team Advanced Search Site can search multiple
databases on WWW.  <http://www.hometeam.com/>.  [David Gaddis 
<creator@hometeam.com>, c.i.www.announce, 1/26/96.  net-hap.]

    Mother Load is a searchable directory of other people's 
directories, lists, and web guides, plus a search engine that
can invoke at least nine other search engines.  Stored sections 
include Business, Computers, Government, Entertainment,
Medical & Health, Sports & Rec, Travel, World Wide Web resources, 
and about 15 very good Mac sites.  Other resource lists are 
solicited.  [Matt Hulbert <mhulbert@cosmix.com>, MacWay, 2/28/96.]

    Magellan is a searchable database of reviewed internet sites 
(rated * to ****).  You can block sites that had "adult" content 
at the time of review.  <http://www.mckinley.com/>.  [Elizabeth 
Wellburn <ewellbur@cln.etc.bc.ca>, Network Nuggets, 3/5/96.
net-hap.]

    Infoseek Guide, a free search/browse service, returns
both search hits and a list of topics related to your search 
terms.  In-depth news coverage has also been added.  
<http://guide.infoseek.com/>.  [Julian Stewart 
<julian@infoseek.com>, 3/7/96.  net-hap.]

    Savvy Search can query nineteen search engines, including
Alta Vista, Yahoo, FTPsearch95, the Virtual Software Library, 
Excite, Lycos, DejaNews, OKRA (email database), and the Internet 
Movie Database.  Boolean and phrase searches are supported.  
<http://savvy.cs.colostate.edu:2000/>.  [Scout Report, 2/23/96.]

    Metacrawler is a multithreaded Web searcher that queries
Open Text, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, Excite, Inktomi,
Alta Vista, Yahoo, and Galaxy.  It then verifies that each
URL is valid.  <http://metacrawler.cs.washington.edu:8080/>.  
[Christine Chiu <pitsco@pitsco.com>, LM_NET, 3/4/96.  net-hap.]

    SEARCH IT!!! offers a very simple interface to at least
ten search engines.  <http://users.why.net/flam/search.html>.  
[<flam@why.net>, c.i.www.browsers.misc, 3/14/96.  net-hap.]

    Prime Search is another search interface invoking
Yahoo!, Lycos,  Webcrawler, etc.  
<http://www.delta.com/prime.com/pssearch.htm>.  
[<70614.635@compuserve.com>, net-hap, 3/23/96.]

    SEARCH.COM from c|net helps you use over 250 search engines, 
including Yahoo, Excite, Infoseek, Alta Vista, and many
single-topic databases about cars, movies, recipes, stocks, etc.  
You can even set up a personal page with just your favorite
search engines.  <http://www.search.com>.  [Maida Stupski 
<maida@cnet.com>, net-hap, 3/18/96.]

    "RES-Links: The All-in-One Resource Page" is a categorized 
list of search engines and tools, catalogs, indexes,
databases, locators, resources, guides, and reference materials.  
A description is given for each tool.  "If you don't find what 
you're looking for, I will do the best I can to help you."  
<http://www.cam.org/~intsci/>.  [Sylvain Provencher 
<intsci@CAM.ORG>, c.i.www.announce, 3/7/96.  net-hap.]

					-- Ken


Sometimes I think I understand everything ...
Then I regain consciousness.  -- Ashleigh Brilliant.
[Amara Graps <agraps@netcom.com>, 10/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 25
 IS                                              April 9, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Industry/Internet news.
 3>	Electronic commerce.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	More on search engines.
_________________________________________________________________

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.  [AWAD, 3/25/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I'm back from two days on the road and three in Death Valley.  
There are few flowers this year because they've had no rain
-- vs. 1.9 inches/year average -- but the valley itself is
a geologic flower of exposed strata and mineral deposits.
Worth a visit to see how the entrepreneurial spirit worked
in the old-time mining days.

    I'd like to thank Ken Barker, Joe Raben, David Joslin,
Mark Kantrowitz, Bill Park, and others who kept news and job ads 
flowing in during my absence.  Ask for our CAJ digest
(in addition to CCJ) if you are interested in general CS 
positions, graduate assistantships, or expert systems projects.

    Last week my list of charter Computists skipped John Josephson 
of Ohio State.  Many of the charter members started with back 
issues -- due to my limited advertising of the new service --
but John was there from the first.  That was 259 issues ago,
not counting this one.


 1> Funding news:

    Bob Livingston, chair of the House Appropriations Committee, 
is proud of the government's reduction in discretionary spending 
this year.  He suggests that the government pocket the $23B
and "share this success story with the press."  The reduction 
comes from keeping half of the federal government limping along 
without full authorizations.  If the omnibus spending bill
is not passed, NSF will lose $73M.  NASA, NIST, and NOAA
will also be hurt.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 4/5/96.]

    Commerce Under Secretary for Technology Mary L. Good
says Republican-proposed cuts "would deliver a devastating blow
to our nation's current R&D infrastructure, eliminating
more than 35K scientists and engineers from the US R&D 
enterprise."  [BNA Daily Report for Executives, 3/29/96, A25.  
EDUPAGE.]

    The latest information on NASA's upcoming missions
to Mars can be found on The Martian Chronicle, 
<http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/mars/>.  [Liz Tomkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
inet-news, 3/16/96.  net-hap.]

    NSF has a new grant program for innovative ways of
regulating Internet traffic flow.  Mark Luker is the PD.
[Science News, 3/23/96, p. 181.]

    The Institute for Scientific Information (Philadelphia)
will award a $3K grant for a citation analysis research project.  
Apply by 5/24/96, with a hardcopy or emailed proposal of
up to 1K words.  Helen Atkins <hatkins@smtpgwy.isinet.com>.  
[IRLIST Digest, 2/12/96.]

    The Federal Information Exchange (FEDIX) now offers a 
consolidated database of RFPs, grants, fellowships, scholarships, 
and other funding opportunities from the Departments of Energy, 
Agriculture, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, and AID, NASA,
NIH, EPA, AFOSR, ONR, and DISA.  A search engine can be accessed 
at the FEDIX home page, <http://www.fie.com>, or via gopher at 
<gopher.fie.com> or telnet at <fedix.fie.com>.  Registration
via <http://nscp.fie.com/wincgi/fed/all/any/any/foa/any
/keywords.exe/Menu> for email notifications may take about
30 minutes to set up keywords.  [Daniel Minchew <minchew@act.org>, 
grants-l, 3/28/96.]

    The White House has established an annual Presidential Awards 
for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring 
(PAESMEM) competition to identify outstanding individual efforts 
or institutional programs for women, underrepresented minorities, 
and persons with disabilities.  PAESMEM is administered by NSF
for the NSTC and OSTP.  Nominations are invited for the 1996 
awards of $10K (and a special workshop), for efforts extending 
over the past five years.  4/15/96 deadline; NSF 96-79, Human 
Resource Development, (703) 306-0423 Fax.  [Gwendolyn Hardenbergh 
<ghardenb@nsf.gov>, grants, 3/29/96.]

    (Forgive me for being non-PC, but shouldn't the US broaden
or fade out "underrepresented minority" incentives as the
target groups start responding?  Why penalize "over-represented" 
minorities that are doing good science?  Equal opportunity
can be addressed by targeted advertising rather than set-asides.  
Let's stress "diversity" or "pioneering innovation"
instead of specific races, since it's easier to adapt
to changing circumstances.)

    ("OSHA -- A protective coating made by half-baking
a mixture of fine print, red tape, split hairs, and baloney
-- usually applied at random with a shotgun."
-- Government Contract Dictionary.  [LOTD, 3/28/96.])

    An anonymous donor has funded the nonprofit James Randi 
Educational Foundation.  Its Florida home office will house
and lend reference materials about paranormal, occult,
and supernatural claims, and files will be offered online
and by fax.  The foundation will also conduct seminars
and classes, and will finance original, basic research
with careful attention to experimental protocols.  Referees 
outside the Foundation will evaluate student competitions
for scholarship funds.  Volunteers interested in parapsychology
-- or opposing pseudoscience, superstition, quackery, nonsense, 
and misinformation -- are sought.  Materials -- in any language
-- that could be digitized are also solicited.  280 books
are already available.  There's no web page yet, but
Randi's is <http://www.sincity.com/randi/randi.html>.
[James Randi <randi-hotline@ssr.com>, Randi Hotline, 4/3/96.]
(The foundation would like to work closely with paranormal-related 
societies.  It's skeptical, but not close-minded.)


 2> Industry/Internet news:

    Silicon Valley "founder" David Packard, 83, died on 3/26/96.  
[NYT, 3/27/96, B12.  EDUPAGE.]  (He was an important node
in many people's personal networks.)
     
    ("Our thoughts, our words, and deeds are the threads
of the net which we throw around ourselves."  -- Swami 
Vivekananda.  [Greg Freedman <tamsgaf@home.interaccess.com>, 
2/96.])

    George Soros has pledged $100M to link 30 Russian universities 
to the Internet.  [Chronicle of H. Ed., 3/29/96, A23.  EDUPAGE.]

    Canada has a new Student Connection jobs program that will
pay $15M over three years for 2K students to help 50K small 
businesses connect to the Internet.  [Ottawa Citizen, 3/28/96, D8.  
EDUPAGE.]

    PC software sales grew 12% last year, but that's less increase 
than in past years.  Fastest revenue growth was in entertainment 
(42%), utilities (39%), personal information managers (42%),
and programming tools (41%).  [SPA.  IBD, 3/27/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]

    A Sony executive says that office-oriented operating systems 
may not be the path of the future.  The company is developing
a new audio/video/networking OS with small memory requirements
and the ability to download application modules.  [NYT, 3/28/96, 
C6.  EDUPAGE.]  (Much like Java.)

    A new kind of Trojan horse has appeared on the Web.  
<http://www.whitehouse.org> is nearly identical to 
<http://www.whitehouse.gov>, even linking to legitimate White 
House website pages.  The owner of the .org version has 
substituted a few things, though, such as a picture of Beavis and 
Butthead for Clinton and Gore.  (Clicking on the picture takes you 
to the real White House site.)  A Washington Post article (of 
3/11/96) notes that charity pages asking for contributions could 
be mimicked in a similar way.  [Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, 
BESTWEB, 3/11/96.  net-hap.]  (Fraud, trademark, or copyright law 
might apply.)

    A company that sends junk email for pay has sued AOL
for interfering or retaliatory efforts such as "email bombs."  
[St. Petersburg Times, 4/1/96, p. 8.  EDUPAGE.]

    The Canadian Alliance against Software Theft (including
Adobe, Delrina, Lotus, Microsoft, and Symantec) is suing three 
businesses for renting out computer software and thus possibly 
encouraging piracy.  [Toronto Globe, 3/22/96.  EDUPAGE.]  
(Shouldn't we punish the pirates instead?  We permit libraries
to loan books, and gun shops to sell guns.)


 3> Electronic commerce:

    Internet Entrepreneurs Support Service (IESS)
is a group discussing the creation and running of ethical 
businesses on the Internet.  Members-only online resources
are planned.  <http://www.entrepreneurs.net/iess/iess.html>,
or write to <info@iess.entrepreneurs.net>.  [Ron Ehrens 
<ron@kaiwan.com>, net-hap, 2/27/96.]

    IWatch NetBiz Alert! (INA!) is a monthly e-newsletter
about Internet/website-based marketing.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE INA!" 
subject line and "your_email_address, your_full_name" message
to <iwatch@pobox.com>.  [Calvin Merrick <cybernet@atlcom.net>, 
NEW-LIST, 1/30/96.]

    The Industry.Net Online Achievement Awards are designed to 
honor online-industry professionals who use this medium
to enhance productivity.  See <http://www.industry.net/c/indy>.  
[<bernal@industry.net>, net-hap, 1/25/96.]

    A guide to WWW mall retailers can be found at 
<http://www.ecola.com/ez/retail.htm>.  [<web@ecola.com>,
net-hap, 12/28/95.]

    Overdrive offers a free Worldwide Classified Advertising 
Database: computers & communications, employment, announcements, 
real estate, etc.  <http://www.ipworld.com>.  
[<pp000738@interramp.com>, comp.ai, 11/16/95.  David Joslin.]  
(One of many classifieds services.)

    Several sites have been offering free web pages
as an introductory bonus.  One is Pronet 
<http://www.pronett.com/member/pronet.htm>, with a 3-month
free offer.  Pronet also provides a free international business 
directory and reference library, with links to thousands of 
international companies.  [<pronet@direct.ca>, net-hap, 10/10/95.]

    Another free web page service is <http://www.geopages.com
/cgi-bin/main/homestead>.  Very easy to set up.  [John Mark Agosta 
<johnmark@sri.com>, 11/10/95.]  (I'm clearing out some old news 
items, and haven't checked the URLs or offers lately.)

    New Media Buyer's Rate Guide to the Web lists sites that 
charge for advertising.  Updated monthly.  The guide is free, 
supported by fees from webmasters.  Send a "START NEW MEDIA 
BUYER'S RATE GUIDE" message and your corporate affiliation
to John Hart <johnhart@teal.csn.net>, or see 
<http://www.csn.net/~johnhart/newmedia.htm>.  [newjour, 12/20/95.]

    Webconnect brokers advertising deals for websites.
The advertisers are offered package deals for advertising links
on hundreds of sites, all of which share the revenue.
(Webmasters can reject specific advertisers, of course.)
One such deal might bring in about $45/month -- and it's
often a site you'd like to point your readers to anyway
(such as The Encyclopedia Britannica at <http://www.eb.com>).  
<http://www.worldata.com/webcon.htm>.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 
11/95.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Pennsylvania State (PA and DC): sr. researchers in AI-based 
decision making, distributed intelligent control, modeling, 
networking, NII, or IS/DB.

Yale Neuroengineering and Neuroscience Center (New Haven, CT): 
PhDs in signal processing, adaptive control, pattern recognition, 
NN, ML, and image analysis.

JPL AI Group and ML Systems Group (Pasadena): BS/MS/PhD 
researchers and interns for planning, automation, diagnosis, 
scientific data analysis, and image understanding.

Mt. View company: software engineers for information filtering
and retrieval.

Prediction Company (Santa Fe): PhD researcher
for financial forecasting.

IBM Almaden (San Jose): visiting scientists for data mining.

Caterpillar Inc. (East Peoria): MA linguists and lexicographers 
for machine translation.

HP Laboratories (Palo Alto): systems-oriented PhD researcher
in collaborative computing.

Charles River Analytics (Cambridge, MA): MS/PhD business developer 
for information agents, text processing.

Apple Computer/ATG (Cupertino): MS/PhD researcher and interns
in IR, HCI, and information sharing in content-aware systems.

UManitoba (Winnipeg): two CS professors in AI, SE, OS,
networks, etc.

UMIST (Manchester, UK): 2-year lecturers and RAs
in computational linguistics.

Vocalis Ltd (Cambridge, UK): ten researchers and engineers
in speech recognition and spoken language processing.

UCyprus: professors or lecturers in AI, HCI, SE, DB, PDP, 
networks, etc.

IDSIA (Switzerland): 2-year postdoc in NN for image processing
and classification.

IDSIA Lugano with UBasel (Switzerland): 2-year Doctorand post
in lexical tools for multilingual IR.

Nanyang Technological U. (Singapore): MS/PhD faculty in NN,
GA, ML, AI, OOP, etc., for graphic synthesis and animation.


 5> More on search engines:

    The Mother Load <http://www.cosmix.com/motherload/>
has just added "Insane Search" to its metasearch and directory
of directories.  Insane Search gives keyword or concept search
by whole words or substrings, with Boolean connectives,
for search engines, newspapers, magazines, government
documents, mailing lists, newsgroups, etc.  [Matt Hulbert 
<matth@sol.cosmix.com>, c.i.www.announce, 3/21/96.  net-hap.]

    WebCompass Personal Edition is a configurable meta-search 
interface that runs from your desktop, sending simultaneous 
queries and summarizing documents that are found.  Free from 
<http://arachnid.qdeck.com/qdeck/demosoft/webcompass_lite/>.  
Brian Ulicny <ulicny@limbex.com>, <http://www.limbex.com/>,
(310) 309-4282 Fax.  [4/2/96.]

    The Netcom online service is offering a
PersonalNews filter for daily news.  Sign up with 
<http://www.netcom.com/newspage/direct.html>.
Other "Personal Services" services are planned, including
web pages.  <http://www.netcom.com>.  [Dave Garrison 
<management@netcom.com>, 4/5/96.  Bill Park.]

    The Snoopie search engine at www.snoopie.com is
advertiser-supported.  Useful for educators.  [Russell Smith 
<rssmith@tenet.edu>, NETTRAIN, 4/4/96.  net-hap.]

    "Search Engine Showdown" in Internet World (V7 N5, pp. 78-86) 
compares Alta Vista, Excite, InfoSeek, Lycos, Open Text, 
WebCrawler, and the WWWorm.  Other articles also concern
"finding stuff" on the Internet.  [Steve Cramer 
<scramer@davenport.edu>, NETTRAIN, 4/4/96.  net-hap.]

    For more info on search engines, see C|Net's Guide to Better 
Web Searching at <http://www.cnet.com/Resources/Tech/Advisers/>.  
[Network News, 3/24/96.]

					-- Ken


A link is a tunnel.  It connects two places that
weren't connected.  It allows new flows to build.
When www.suck.com links to DaveNet, DaveNet gets more flow.
When DaveNet points to PointCast, they get more flow.
-- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 2/8/96.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 26
 IS                                             April 11, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Security news.
 2>	Pattern recognition.
 3>	Expert systems.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Book and journal calls.
 6>	Self-publishing.
_________________________________________________________________

Intelligence is the ability to perceive patterns.
Genius is the ability to perceive patterns where the bulk
of mankind cannot.  Scholarship is the ability to perceive 
patterns where there aren't any.  -- Michael J. Moran.
[Darin S. Lory <p00403@psilink.com>, QOTD, 4/10/94.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Security news:

    The ersatz URL <http://www.whitehouse.org> no longer works.  
[David Joslin <joslin@cirl.uoregon.edu>, 4/9/96.]  (We'll just 
have to get by with <http://www.whitehouse.gov>.)

    President Clinton will permit civilians to access
the full accuracy of GPS satellite systems.  [WSJ, 3/28/96, A3.]  
(Users were already finding ways to null out the deliberate 
biases.  Full accuracy is needed if, say, your car is to
tell you when to turn.)

    San Francisco is installing smart systems to photograph 
drivers who don't stop at red lights.  [KCBS, 4/10/96.]

    PenOp has developed a $150 kit to capture handwritten 
signatures for digital documents.  [USA Today, 3/27/96, B6.  
EDUPAGE.]

    SmartAlex monitors the flesh tone content of downloaded 
graphics.  Companies are using it to check up on employees.
[IBD, 3/28/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]


 2> Pattern recognition:

    UGroningen has a face-recognition home page at 
<http://www.cs.rug.nl/~peterkr/FACE/face.html>.
[Rolf P. Wurtz <rolf@cs.rug.nl>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 10/31/95.]  
(If "huge tits" is one of the most popular web search phrases -- 
as Steven Zenith claims -- perhaps there's a market for
something simpler than face recognition.)

    A demo of ParaGraph's new $49.95 FreeStyle
trainable handwriting recognizer for Newton is available
at <http://www.landware.com/freestyle.html>.  [Ilya Poluektov 
<ilyap@paragraph.com>, comp.sys.newton.misc.  NewtNews, 3/26/96.  
Bill Park.]
 
    NEURALITY is a neural-nets website from ICE srl (Milan).  
Demos and papers include fractals, pattern recognition, arch dams, 
and Tetris.  <http://www.icenet.it/icenet/neurality/home_uk.html> 
or <http://www.icenet.it/icenet/neurality/links/home_uk.html>.  
[Alberto Fanelli <alberto.fanelli@icenet.it>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 
12/22/95.]

    Amara Graps offers an online wavelet tutorial at 
<http://www.amara.com/IEEEwave/IW_fbi.html>.  One of
the sections covers WSQ fingerprint image compression.
Sample data can be found on Chris Brislawn's site, 
<ftp://ftp.c3.lanl.gov/pub/WSQ/>.  [<amara@quake.stanford.edu>, 
comp.graphics.algorithms, 10/20/95.]

    The DOS/Unix Tsunami Plus wavelet software library
is described on <http://www.dfw.net/~mcody>, including
both technical articles and demo software.  Papers can also
be FTP'd from /pub/users/mcody on ftp.dfw.net.  [Mac A. Cody 
<mcody@dfw.net>, comp.dsp, 11/8/95.]

    The Python SIG mailing list covers image handling
and image processing in Python.  The Python Imaging Library
will be available, with interfaces to Khoros, ImgStar, XITE,
and other image processing packages.  Send a "subscribe" message 
to <image-sig-request@python.org>.  [<Fredrik_Lundh@ivab.se>, 
comp.lang.python, 3/9/96.]

    Benchmarking of neural-network systems is the subject
of <http://wwwipd.ira.uka.de/~prechelt/NIPS_bench.html>.
This was formerly a NIPS*95 workshop page.  [Lutz Prechelt 
<prechelt@ira.uka.de>, connectionists, 12/11/95.]

    The world of commercial speech recognition is covered
on <http://www.tiac.net/users/rwilcox/speech.html>.
[Russ Wilcox <rwilcox@tiac.net>, comp.speech, 10/16/95.]

    Universal Problem Solvers, Inc. has a website for
its pattern recognition applications and tools: 
<http://pages.prodigy.com/FL/lizard/index.html>.  
[<zlxx69a@prodigy.com>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 8/26/95.] 

    DRA's 18-member Pattern and Information Processing Group
has a web page for its signal-analysis research papers.  
<http://www.dra.hmg.gb/cis5pip/Welcome.html>.  [John V. Black 
<black@signal.dra.hmg.gb>, connectionists, 11/10/95.]

    Rik Harris maintains a list of over 310 sites that
distribute CS technical reports.  <http://www.rdt.monash.edu.au
/tr/siteslist.html>, or via a WAIS server to cs-techreport-
abstracts.  <compdoc-techreports-request@ftp.cse.ucsc.edu>.  
[<rik.harris@fcit.monash.edu.au>, news.answers, 3/11/96.]


 3> Expert systems:

    Expert systems and an expert-systems mailing list have
a home page at <http://goldstn.cs.ncat.edu/expertsystemspage.htm>.  
Topics include intelligent agents, knowledge representation,
and fuzzy expert systems.  Visitors can add new links
and new topics.  [David G. Goldstein <goldstn@jade.ncat.edu>, 
comp.ai, 3/20/96.  Ken Barker.]

    Cycorp has a Cyc Home Page at <http://www.cyc.com/>.
[William MacCartney <wcmac@cyc.com>, comp.ai, 12/5/95.
David Joslin.]

    The ART FAQ -- for the ART expert system shell --
is <http://www.wi.leidenuniv.nl/art/>.  [Egbert J.W. Boers 
<boers@wi.leidenuniv.nl>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 10/23/95.
Chuck Morefield.]

    In general, ART 1 is not superior to classic clustering 
algorithms.  Some of its peculiarities are described in
B. Moore, "ART 1 and Pattern Clustering", in Touretzky,
Hinton, and Sejnowski (eds.), "Proc. 1988 Connectionist Models 
Summer School," Morgan Kaufmann, pp. 174-185.  [Warren S. Sarle 
<saswss@hotellng.unx.sas.com>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 10/26/95.]

    An online system for medical diagnosis can be tried
at <http://www.uta.fi/~blshkh/com-diagnosis.html>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 1/5/96.  net-hap.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

CTIMIT: cellular-bandwidth speech corpus.

ROCK & ROLL 3.17: deductive OODB system.

MATH: Zentralblatt fuer Mathematik database of
900K articles (since 1972) in math, mechanics, CS, OR,
systems, and control theory.

MATH: ditto, for 1.5M abstracts back to 1931.
(Expired free offer.)

DDLab: Discrete Dynamics Lab for X-windows or DOS.
 
PHYSICA: 3D unstructured mesh framework
for multi-physics modeling.

MPIL: instance-based learning system for vector spaces.

osmSrch: C++ engine for staff scheduling or assignment problems.

Generator: curve fitting in Excel.

Bibliography of GA and GP reasoning, from Gene Sheppard.

Intelligent Agents: review paper by Jennings and Wooldridge.

Market-Based Control: complex-systems book by Scott Clearwater.

Planning Methods in AI: seminar notes from Kambhampati.

Neural Networks in Finance and Investing (2nd ed.):
book by Trippi and Turban, with ThinksPro NN software.

Parallel Implementations of Backpropagation Neural Networks
on Transputers: book by Saratchandran, Sundararajan, and Foo.

Explanation-based Neural Network Learning: book by Thrun.

Cognitive and Social Action: book by Conte and Castelfranchi.


 5> Book and journal calls:

        Hybrid neural networks for financial forecasting; 
NeuroVe$t Journal, 11/96.  6/30/96; <rbcaldwell@delphi.com>
or <72672.261@compuserve.com>.  [Neuron Digest, 4/3/96.]

    Natural deduction proof systems; Studia Logica.  8/15/96; 
Frank Pfenning <fp@cs.cmu.edu>.  [sci.logic, 3/22/96.]

    Research notes: AI in Medicine.  Linda van der Gaag 
<linda@cs.ruu.nl>.  [sci.med.informatics, 3/22/96.]

    Artistic and musical uses of connectionist systems -- 
including modeling of human creativity -- for a book
arising from a 1994 special issue of Connection Science.
A bibliography of known papers can be FTP'd as references.txt
from /pub/science/ptodd on canetoad.mpipf-muenchen.mpg.de.
Send new references or project descriptions to Peter Todd 
<ptodd@mpipf-muenchen.mpg.de>, (049) (89) 38 602 236,
(049) (89) 38 602 252 Fax.  [connectionists, 3/28/96.]

    Mary Loomis and Akmal Chaudhri are planning a book on OODBs, 
to help potential users decide whether to adopt the approach.  
Send abstracts to <akmal@sarc.city.ac.uk>, +44-171-477-8587 Fax, 
by 4/15/96.  [dbworld, 4/2/96.]

    Intelligent Data Analysis is a new Elsevier Science
web-based journal.  <http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ida>.
Fazel Famili <famili@ai.iit.nrc.ca>.  Subscription info
from <h.dalterio@elsevier.com> or <usdirect@elsevier.com>.  
[<fazel@ai.iit.nrc.ca>, comp.ai, 4/2/96.  Ken Barker.]

    GeoInformatica is a new Kluwer Academic journal on advances
of CS for geographic information systems.  Topics include
spatial modeling, spatio-temporal reasoning, spatial databases, 
HCI, cartography, visualization, etc.  Patrick Bergougnoux 
<bergougn@irit.fr>, (33) 09 70 13 36,(33) 61 77 06 71 Fax.  
[dbworld, 3/19/96.]


 6> Self-publishing:

    Starting a newsletter?  The UK's Periodical Publishers 
Association (PPA) offers career and legal info at 
<http://www.ppa.co.uk/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>,
inet-news, 1/14/96.  net-hap.]  (The US also has organizations
for newsletter publishers.)

    Ventana Press is seeking computer authors, editors,
reviewers, and book ideas.  Send your name, phone/fax,
ideas, areas of expertise, and any relevant experience to
Ventana Editorial Dept. <talent@vmedia.com>.  [J.J. Hohn 
<jj_hohn@vmedia.com>, 2/15/96.  net-hap.]

    "Lewis Carroll had fifty rejections from the publishers
before his book Alice in Wonderland was accepted."
-- Robert E. Wubbolding, "Understanding Reality Therapy."  
[<Reginald_Aubry.lotus@crd.lotus.com>, QOTD, 9/13/95.]

    "Publishers love writers the way owls love mice."
[Oliver Lange,"Kitchen Counter Publishing."]

    Dan Poynter's popular "The Self Publishing Manual"
is now out in a revised 8th edition.  Ask James R. Thomson 
<103353.2444@compuserve.com> for information.  "Publish yourself!  
No rejection slips!"  [misc.writing, 1/3/96.]

    (It's OK to use a reputable publisher to save yourself
time and work, or to self-publish via a commercial printer
to maximize profits.  But stay away from vanity publishers,
where you pay them to do (or fail to do!) what publishers
should take on at their own risk.  With a vanity publisher,
you may not even own the right to market your own book!)

    I recently read "The Self-Publishing Manual."  An incredibly 
useful book if you're interested in the trade.  Poynter writes
and publishes about writing and publishing -- wonderful
recursive niches.  He tells you what you need to know
and in what order you need to worry about it.  His chapters
on advertising and distribution are great summaries for
mail order business in general, but with emphasis on
the book trade.  (How to pack books for shipping, for instance,
or how to use slightly damaged books.)  If I ever find time
to edit TCC back issues, I'm buying the latest copy of this book
-- and some of Poynter's other titles as well, such as a 
compendium of business letters for publishers.  [10/28/95.]

    From Poynter's afterword:  "Learn the entire business
by doing everything yourself before you begin to farm out
some of the work.  Doing it all yourself will provide you
with a better understanding of publishing.  I hope it
introduces and guides you to a richer, more rewarding life.
... When you do get that first book into print, please
send me a copy -- autographed, of course."  [1984 edition.]

    Another book on self-publishing is Ted Nicholas'
"How to Publish a Book and Sell a Million Copies,"
(Dearborn Publishing Group, Chicago, 1980 & 1993, $19.95).
If you want to work through traditional publishers,
check your library for guides.  One such is Jeff Herman
and Deborah Adams, "Write the Perfect Book Proposal,"
(Wiley, 1993, $12.95 pb).  [Michael F. Weisbard 
<mweisbar@indyvax.iupui.edu>, SEML, 7/15/95.] 

    The "writing about writing" niche -- for self-publishing
and traditional publishing -- has spawned dozens of books
on graphic arts, newsletters, and desktop publishing.
One of the prettiest is Mark Beach's "Getting It Printed:
How to Work with Printers and Graphic Arts Services to Assure 
Quality, Stay on Schedule, and Control Costs (Revised Ed.)," 
(North Light Books, Cincinnati, 1993).  With so many books 
available, though, just check your library or book store.
The Mac Professional's Book Club is one good source.

    Writing is much easier than selling.  Although any book
on sales technique is likely to be helpful, you might as well
get one about book marketing -- another recursive category! --
or direct marketing via mail.  A new book for computer-based 
sellers is Baker and Baker's "Desktop Direct Marketing,"
(McGraw-Hill, 1995).  It has chapters on choosing a computer
and peripherals, desktop publishing software, databases,
online data sources, etc.  Much of the book, though,
is about demographics, mailing lists, and other topics general
to all direct marketing.  [10/28/95.]

					-- Ken


Ninety percent of what is thought shouldn't be said;
ninety percent of what is said shouldn't be written;
ninety percent of what is written shouldn't be published;
ninety percent of what is published shouldn't be read;
ninety percent of what is read shouldn't be remembered.
-- Israel Salanter.
[Gary Levine <glevine@gw.paradyne.com>, QOTD, 8/7/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 27
 IS                                             April 16, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Contests.
 2>	Internet culture.
 3>	Library services.
 4>	Reference services.
 5>	Business and personal directories.
 6>	Career jobs.
_________________________________________________________________

I'm certain there are some people in the Internet culture
who spend 26 weeks each year on the road just schmoozing at
trade shows, conferences, learned symposiums and assorted
summit meetings. When their bosses ask, "So what did you
actually _do_ this quarter?" what do they say?  And how can
I get one of those jobs?  -- David Plotnikoff, SJM, 1/11/96, 5E.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Lots of detailed information today -- something
for everyone, I hope.


 1> Contests:

    Universities and developers may apply for the 3rd annual 
Object Application Awards, in conjunction with Object World 
Frankfurt on 10/10/96.  The awards showcase the best custom 
applications (in use and not for resale) using object-oriented 
approaches.  Each must be either from scratch, a modification
of an off-the-shelf application, or a new front end, and 
categories include distributed applications, reusable components, 
OO tool use, demonstrations of OO cost/benefits, and best use
in large systems.  9/10/96 deadline; Astrid Schueller 
<101354.1426@compuserve.com>,+49-6173-2852, +49-6173-940420 Fax.  
[Akmal B. Chaudhri <akmal@sarc.city.ac.uk>, dbworld, 4/11/96.]

    Apple has announced a first annual Human Interface Design 
Excellence (HIDE) Award contest for Mac OS developers.
Software evaluation will include innovation, elegance,
look and feel, and overall design.  4/19/96 deadline (!);
free.  <http://dev.info.apple.com/developerservices.html>.  
[MacWay, 3/27/96.]  Or try <http://dev.info.apple.com
/hideawards.html>.  You have to download and mail in
a PDF application form and two copies of the software.
[GD, TidBITS, 4/8/96.]

    Apple has also been taking nominations for its
Usenet Macintosh Programming Awards (UMPA), from the 
comp.sys.mac.programmer.* community.  To vote, you have to
answer a Mac programming question.  This is the second year
of thus honoring individual developers (or teams).  
<http://www.best.com/~mxmora/UMPA.html>  [Geoff Duncan 
<geoff@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 4/8/96.]

    You might win a Pentium PC or a Power Mac
in the MacZone contest on 
<http://www2.pcy.mci.net/marketplace/mzone/html/form.html>.  
[Powers Foss <foss@ucsub.colorado.edu>, MacWay, 3/28/96.]


 2> Internet culture:

    GNN picked these up as good April Fools or satire sites:
AAA Killer Viruses Can Make You Rich! 
<http://www.dontbeafool.com>;
Death Lair <http://www.parentswerehippies.com>;
Gerald Guntherblat, III, Esq.'s Home Page 
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/youmustbekidding>;
The Ultimate Super Blue-Green Algae Page!!! 
<http://www.okayenoughalready.com>; and Jesus H. Christ
on a Popsicle Stick <http://www.nowtheresanidea.com>.  
<http://www.gnn.com/wn/whats-new.html>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 4/1/96.  net-hap.]

    For a report on Internet addiction, see Viktor Brenner's
paper at <http://www.ccsnet.com/prep/ptitle/ptit8b.html>.
If you'd rather revel in your addiction, try Kirsten Alexander's 
<http://www.webaholics.com>.  "Remember: admitting that you
have an addiction is the first step to finding more and more 
really cool Web pages."  [David Plotnikoff, SJM, 4/11/96, 5E.]

    Need to look up ROTFL, ILSHIBAMF, or IITYWTMWYKM?
Check the Netters Abbreviation Glossary at
<http://www-fes.gmd.de/kommunikation/abkuerz1.html>.  [Cecelia 
Franco White <korteng@rt66.com>, BESTWEB, 4/2/96.  net-hap.]


 3> Library services:

    The Library of Congress maintains a list of Internet guides 
and tutorials, at <http://lcweb.loc.gov/global/internet
/tutorial.html>.  [Carole Leita <leita@netcom.com>, WEB4LIB, 
2/29/96.  net-hap.]

    The InterCAT catalog of Internet resources from the
Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is a searchable and 
browsable database of Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC)
records.  See <http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b2-7.html>.  
[Scout Report, 3/15/96.]  (This InterNIC service also points to 
SavvySearch at <.../3b1-8.html>, Metacrawler at <.../3b1-7.html>, 
and various other search tools.)

    Culture in Cyberspace (CinC) is a free, bimonthly
e-newsletter about technology and culture, for managers
of cultural organizations -- arts, education, journalism,
history, and libraries -- and others who care how culture
is represented in the information age.  Send a "subscribe
cinc your name" message to Bill Lefurgy <wlefurgy@radix.net>.  
[NEW-LIST, 2/24/96.]

    Norm Friesen is developing InfoBahn Librarian, a meta-index of 
WWW resources for libraries.  <http://www.ualberta.ca/~nfriesen/>.  
[<nfriesen@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>, WEB4LIB, 1/30/96.  net-hap.]

    Rettig on Reference is a monthly review of new
library reference books and Internet-based reference sources.  
11/95 reviews include The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
and The UK/US Dictionary.  <http://www.hwwilson.com>.
[Jim Rettig <jrrett@swem.wm.edu>, newjour, 11/12/95.]


 4> Reference services:

    The Electric Library is a searchable archive of 900 full-text 
magazines; 150 newspapers; 2K books; 18K photographs, images,
and maps; and various news wires; TV and radio transcripts;
book, movie, and software reviews; an encyclopedia;
a dictionary; and other reference works.  Free trial.  
<http://www.elibrary.com/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
inet-news, 2/3/96.  net-hap.]

    The Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing (FOLDOC)
is a searchable dictionary of 8K computer terms:
programming languages, operating systems, networking,
standards, etc.  Most entries offer links to other
Internet resources.  <http://www.instantweb.com/~foldoc>
or <http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk>.  [Network News, 12/16/95.
Also <cath@infostreet.com>, net-hap, 2/15/96.]

    The Hypertext Handbook includes a huge glossary
of computer-oriented abbreviations and acronyms,
plus other dictionary and jargon resources.  
<http://world.std.com/~ldjackso/hthb5.htm>.
[Network News, 12/16/95.]

    Several Internet/hypertext/computing dictionaries
can be found on <http://world.std.com/~ldjackso/hthb5.htm>.  
[Scout Report, 12/15/95.]

    To go from definitions to a word, try Casey's Snow Day
Reverse Dictionary at <http://www.c3.lanl.gov:8075/cgi
/casey/revdict>.  There's also a Guru -- try asking
"What is the meaning of life?"  [Liz W. Tompkins
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/28/96.  net-hap.]

    AOL Reference Desk is "a good collection of references 
concerning numbers, words, businesses, directory information, 
maps, government and law, libraries, religions, and search 
engines."  <http://www.aol.com/community/channels/reference/>.  
[Gary Ewell <ewell@courier4.aero.org>, 2/9/96.  net-hap.]

    Research-It! offers free searches of dictionaries, thesauri, 
language translators, acronyms, quotations, maps, phone numbers, 
postal information, package tracking, and financial info.  
<http://www.iTools.com/research-it/research-it.html>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/17/96.  net-hap.]

    Area codes by city, state, or province (or vvs.) can be
looked up on <http://www.555-1212.com/aclookup.html>.  [Liz
W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/13/96.  net-hap.]


 5> Business and personal directories:

    The Four11 email address directory now has over 5M listings.  
See <http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b4-13.html> under 
"Search Tools/Specialized Directories".  [Scout Report, 3/29/96.]

    N.E.W. BASE Internet Directory Service lets anyone
publish a description, mail address, and electronic addresses
(with direct hypertext links).  Free searches.  
<http://www.theniche.com/niche>.  [Scott Nicely 
<nicely@theniche.com>, net-hap, 3/11/96.]

    Another email address archive, organized by city,
is <http://www.texnet.it/services/emailbank>.  Add your
own listing.  [Gianluca Chiti <texnet@texnet.it>,
net-hap, 2/11/96.]

    Switchboard is a US directory of 90M residential
and 10M business phone listings, taken from national
white pages.  Drop by and add your email address.  
<http://www.switchboard.com/>, or see 
<http://rs.internic.net/scout/toolkit/3b4-14.html>
under "Search Tools/Specialized Directories".  [Scout
Report, 3/8/96.]  (Also <http://www2.switchboard.com/>.)

    Internet Address Finder is <http://www.iat.net>;
Nynex Interactive Yellow Pages is <http://www.nyip.com>.
AOL and CompuServe also offer directory searches, and you
can get CD ROMs of 88M US listings ($60 from ABI) or
95M listings (Select Phone Deluxe, $169 from Pro CD).
Switchboard and WhoWhere <http://www.whowhere.com> rely on 
voluntary registry, but other providers may have picked up
your hobbies, mailing address, spouse's name, or other info.  
[Forbes, 3/11/96, p. 158.  Network News, 3/16/96.]

    BigYellow, from NYNEX Information Technologies, lists
phone numbers and addresses of 16M businesses by city,
state, address, business category, and business name.  
<http://www.bigyellow.com/>, or http://s15.bigyellow.com
/t_service/t_home.html> for text only.  [Scout Report, 3/29/96.]

    BigBook Yellow Pages will search for 11M US businesses and 
most residential addresses, showing street-level maps of the hits.  
You also get phone numbers, of course, and third-party reviews
or customer ratings may be included.  Search by business name, 
category, city, or state.  <http://www.bigbook.com/>.  [George 
Carden <cardboard1@aol.com>, inet-news, 3/30/96.  net-hap.]

    The World Yellow Pages Network includes 93M residential
and 12M business listings from the US and Canada.  Each listing
is a web page, and you can add a password-protected 300-word 
description to your own page.  <http://wyp.net>.  [Edwin Rutsch 
<edwinr@wyp.net>, net-hap, 3/11/96.]  (This is run from
a two-bedroom house in El Cerrito, CA.)

    Another Yellow Pages site is <http://superpages.gte.net>.
10M phone listings and 50K websites.  [<Peter_Marx@msn.com>, 
BESTWEB, 2/17/96.  net-hap.]

    AT&T's Internet Toll-Free Directory now offers web links as 
well as toll-free numbers.  <http://www.tollfree.att.net/dir800/>.  
AT&T is also licensing the Lycos web catalog.  [IBD, 4/10/96,
A8-9.  EDUPAGE.]

    The Internet Business Directory, International (IBDI)
is a search tool for over 20M local, regional, national,
and international companies by name, city, state, ZIP,
area code, or type of business.  Searches and listings are free.  
<http://www.ibdi.com>, or contact <info@ibdi.com>.
[Val Hicks <val@ibdi.com>, net-hap, 1/28/96.]

    Global Trade Network offers a web directory based on
over 25K product and service classifications.  Free 6-month trial 
for the first 2K companies to register; otherwise $720/year
and up.  <http://www.xport.net>.  [Kenneth Reidbord 
<qskc90a@prodigy.com>, net-hap, 3/22/96.]

    The SEARCH ENGINE for Commercial Goods and Services
is a free service.  Visit <http://www.comcomsystems.com/search
/indexadd.html> to register your business.  [Eberhard Kuehl 
<emory!comcomsystems.com!support>, SEML, 2/10/96.]

    LinkStar is a free search engine for user-listed email 
addresses or websites.  <http://www.linkstar.com>.  You can
also get a link for your own website that allows your readers
to access the database.  See <http://www.com.au/aaa/dosite.cgi>
for an example.  [Ray Moser <ray@linkstar.com>, net-hap, 1/25/96.]

    You can also list your personal home page
and email address with the "innovative search engine"
at <http://www.bltg.com/people/>.  [<home-page-dir@bltg.com>,
net-hap, 3/17/96.]

    For long-lost relatives and friends,
try <http://www.com.au/aaa/Missing.html>.
[<vacation@mpx.com.au>, net-hap, 3/11/96.]


 6> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

CMU HCI Inst. (Pittsburgh): postdoc in Soar cognitive modeling.

The Boeing Company (Bellevue, WA): PhD applied researchers
in ML for data mining and in knowledge representation
for aircraft design.

PHZ Capital Partners LP (Framingham, MA): MS/PhD
for nonlinear modeling of financial markets.  (The principals
are Tomaso Poggio, Jim Hutchinson, and Xiru Zhang.)

Siemens Corporate Research (Princeton, NJ): MS/PhD research 
scientist in Bayesian nets or constraint satisfaction,
or knowledge-based decision support systems using AI-based 
adaptive information and signal processing.

Metrica, Inc. (Houston or via Internet): AI LISP/C programmer
for NASA monitoring and control.

Stanford/Biochem: two CS/Math/Stat/ML postdocs for probabilistic 
and phylogenetic protein sequence analysis.

Hewlett-Packard European Research Laboratory (Bristol):
speech technology researchers for portable information appliances.

BT Laboratories (UK): postdoc in NN, GA, or adaptive learning
for database management and search.

The Dalle Molle Inst. for Perceptive Artificial Intelligence 
(IDIAP; Martigny, Switzerland): director of the institute.

UNew South Wales: postdoc in complexity of inductive learning.

					-- Ken


I have written 240 books (later 300) on a wide variety of topics. 
... Some of it I based on education I received in my school,
but most of it was backed by other ways of learning -- chiefly
in the books I obtained in the public library.  -- Isaac Asimov.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Subject: TCC 6.28
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 28
 IS                                             April 18, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Joy.
 2>	Education.
 3>	Mathematics and dynamics.
 4>	Logic.
 5>	Philosophy and psychology.
 6>	Linguistics.
 7>	AI resources.
 8>	Research software.
_________________________________________________________________

What joy to awake every morning in a world so filled with
things to learn. -- Harry M. Kriz <harry_m_kriz@vt.edu>, 10/94.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Joy:

    I just watched an ABC special on happiness research.
'Seems there's a large genetic component (about 50%),
with happy people naturally surviving better because
they attract many friends and supporters.  Happiness
begins at birth, and is correlated with activity of
the left frontal lobe; those without the lobe activity
suffer more stress and anxiety.  Long-term contentment
doesn't come from fame or recognition.  Money doesn't buy 
happiness (if you're above the poverty level), nor does
tragedy produce long-term unhappiness.  "Tell me that someone 
became a quadriplegic a year ago, or won a million dollars
a year ago, and you've given me no information about
their happiness."  Age is also irrelevant.  Health is largely 
irrelevant.  Optimistic people are happier, more productive,
and more determined to succeed.  (Joyous companies are also
more productive.)  Happiness also comes from being in control, 
involvement in life -- forgetting self through "flow" and
activity rather than couch-potatoism -- personal relationships, 
and religion.  "Joy comes from God," believers say, with
religion providing a community and a sense of purpose.
(The Amish are particularly happy, on average.  No doubt
it helps to be surrounded by joyful friends.)  To become
happier, act happier and get involved with people.
Force a smile and get on with life.  [4/15/96.]


 2> Education:

    Samuel C. Florman's "The Whole Engineer" says Eastern
European universities are beating the US at incorporating 
humanities and social sciences for the engineer-citizen.
The US tends to combine engineering with CS, chemistry,
or manufacturing.  [Technology Review, 4/96, p. 67.  EDUPAGE.]

    International Data Corp. says that the global market
for corporate information technology training and education
is increasing by 13%/year, from $14.4B last year.  [IBD,
4/11/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]

    Companies are seeing the "hidden IT cost" of training
and support in distributed systems.  Equipment costs are
only 20% of the total.  Employees who stop to fix printer jams
are extremely costly computer technicians.  [IBD, 4/9/96, A8.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Flexnews is a newsletter about distance learning
and telecommuting, or the effects of learning and working
in cybertime and cyberspace.  Visit <http://www.flexlearn.com>,
or send a "get flexnews flexnews.v011n01" message to 
<majordomo@flexlearn.com>.  [Coombs <nrcgsh@osfmail.isc.rit.edu>, 
net-hap, 2/12/96.]

    INTERNET RESOURCES is a free WWW newsletter from Heriot-Watt 
University Library, about net resources for higher education.  
<http://www.hw.ac.uk/libWWW/irn/irn.html>.  An email version
is also available, in four parts.  [Roddy MacLeod 
<R.A.MacLeod@hw.ac.uk>, net-hap, 3/3/96.]


 3> Mathematics and dynamics:

    "Exploring the Space of Cellular Automata" is an interactive 
tutorial website.  <http://alife.santafe.edu/alife/topics/ca
/caweb>.  [Howard A. Gutowitz <hag@santafe.edu>, connectionists, 
12/18/95.]

    The Society for Mathematical Biology gopher site
lists meetings, conferences, and jobs.  
<gopher://gopher.nih.gov:70/11/res/SMBdigest>.
[Tim Cox <coxta@aol.com>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 3/10/96.]

    MathVISION Technical Journal is for new graphical
or mathematical algorithms and inventions.  Also articles
in recreational mathematics.  <http://www.olympus.net/personal
/7seas/tjour.html>.  Otto J. A. Smith <otto@olympus.net>,
(206) 385-1956.  [newjour, 3/29/96.]

    Steve Baum's list of free Matlab-like data-analysis
and graphics packages is <http://www-ocean.tamu.edu/~baum
/ocean_graphics.html>.  [<baum@astra.tamu.edu>,
comp.soft-sys.matlab, 10/9/95.]

    For some interesting mathematical series -- and a book about 
same -- see <http://netlib.att.com/math/sloane/doc/eisfav.html>.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 3/96.]

    The Electronic SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing (ESISC) 
offers both archival issues (back to 1/94) and unedited articles 
up to a year in advance of publication.  PostScript format;
paid subscribers only.  <http://www.siam.org/esisc/esisc.htm>.  
[newjour, 3/28/96.]  (Read about science _before_ it happens! :-)

    LANL's Center for Nonlinear Studies maintains a web interface 
to archives in chaotic dynamics, pattern formation and solitons, 
adaptation, noise and self-organizing systems, computational 
methods, and exactly solvable and integrable systems.  There's 
also a calendar of conferences and events, plus related links.  
<http://xyz.lanl.gov/>.  [WEBster, 10/3/95.]

    ESAIM: Control, Optimization, and the Calculus of Variations 
(COCV) is a new e-journal in the European Series in Applied
and Industrial Mathematics of The Societe de Mathematiques 
Appliquees et Industrielles (SMAI).  <http://www.emath.fr
/Maths/Cocv/cocvEng.html> or <.../Cocv/souscriptionEng.html>,
(33) 1 44 27 66 61.  [<cocv@esaim.emath.fr>, newjour, 1/30/96.]

    Mark Woodard's database of hundreds of mathematics-related 
quotations is <http://math.furman.edu/~mwoodard/mquot.html>.  
[WEBster, 10/3/95.]


 4> Logic:

    Stephen's Guide to the Logical Fallacies gives
definitions, examples, proof methods, and references.  
<http://www.common.net/~downes/fallacy/fall.htm>.  
[<downess@docker.com>, net-hap, 10/26/95.]

    Papers and software from the Disjunctive Logic
Programming project at UKoblenz-Landau will be available
on <http://www.uni-koblenz.de/~arvind/dlp.html>.  The site's
links may include logic programming, AI, automated reasoning,
non-monotonic reasoning, etc.  [Chandrabose Aravindan 
<arvind@mailhost.uni-koblenz.de>, comp.ai, 11/22/95.
David Joslin.]

    Fixed and tentative dates of logic-related conferences are 
tracked on <http://www.research.att.com/lics/logic-confs.html>.  
Send listings to <lics-request@research.att.com>.  [Doug Howe 
<howe@research.att.com>, comp.ai, 12/5/95.  David Joslin.]


 5> Philosophy and psychology:

    LogicAL is a page of logic, philosophy, and alife
resources.  You can set up email notification of changes.  
<http://uu-gna.mit.edu:8001/~napoli/LAMBDA/logical.html>.
[S. Kritikos <napoli@wwa.com>, net-hap, 3/14/96.]

    "Philosophy around the Web" is Peter J. King's
comprehensive page of annotated philosophy links.  
<http://sable.ox.ac.uk/~shil0124/phil_index.html>.
[Scout Report, 3/15/96.]

    The nature of human consciousness is explored by
the Int. Assoc. for Near-Death Studies (IANDS) service
at <http://www.iands.org/iands>.  [<khw@indra.com>,
net-hap, 3/21/96.]

    Resources for cognitive and developmental neuropsychology
are listed on Neuropsychology Central, 
<http://www.premier.net/~cogito/neuropsy.html>.  
[<cogito@premier.net>, net-hap, 10/30/95.]

    Cognitive and agent architectures are surveyed
on <http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/cogarch0/index.html>.
[Jesse Montrose <jesse@spine.com>, DAI-List, 12/1/95.]


 6> Linguistics:

    A comprehensive collection of linguistics links can be found 
at <http://www.worldnet.net/~xmd/Resources_Linguistiques.html>.  
Most are in English, although the site is French.  [Gary Ewell 
<ewell@courier4.aero.org>, inet-news, 3/4/96.  net-hap.]

    SPEAKINGL is about "powerful committed speaking"
to create organizational change -- speech that alters paradigms, 
shifts context, and declares possibility.  Authors inspiring
the change agent language-based transformation approach include 
Heideggar, Sartre, Dreyfus, Flores/Winograd, Wittgenstein, Searle, 
Berne, and Whiteside.  Send a "sub speakingl your name" message
to <speakingl@aol.com>.  [Francis Wade <speakingl@aol.com>,
NEW-LIST, 4/5/96.]  (Sounds like evangelism!)

    NEURO-LINGUISTIC PROGRAMMING is for discussion of this NLP 
human change model.  Contact Jeff Oliver <j.oliver@cowan.edu.au>.  
[NEW-LIST, 3/26/96.]


 7> AI resources:

    Intelligent Systems Online is free for a limited time
at <http://lionhrtpub.com>.  The monthly newsletter covers NN,
VR, speech recognition, expert systems, fuzzy logic, OOP, and 
interactive multimedia.  [Helen Newling <helen@lionhrtpub.com>, 
Neuron Digest, 3/25/96.]

    Nina Pinto has collected a list of FAQs, repositories, 
bibliographies, hotlists, software libraries, lab directories, 
newsgroups, and other Internet meta-resources for embedded
systems and practical AI.  <http://www.cera2.com/ai.htm>
or <http://www.cera.com/ai.htm>.  [<ninapint@ix.netcom.com>, 
comp.ai, 2/12/96.  David Joslin.]

    An AI primer is offered at <http://pages.prodigy.com/NY
/jsw/indexjsw.html>, with info on expert systems, NN, and NLP.  
[<lvnf51a@prodigy.com>, net-hap, 10/12/95.]

    A bibliography/abstracts server is available for Information 
and Computation and for J. of the ACM, plus full bibliographies 
(with hypertext links) for the STOC, LICS, and FOCS symposia.
The service supports keyword searches and links to author
home pages.  <http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/%7Edmjones/hbp/>.  [David
M. Jones <dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu>, c.i.www.misc, 9/18/95.]

    The Online Symbolics Museum is <http://www.inference.com
/~rwk/symbolics/>.  It includes a directory of former employees, 
The Association of Lisp Users (SLUG), The Usual Suspects 
discussion list (<the-usual-suspects@mc.lcs.mit.edu>),
software info, and various files from the Symbolics culture.
Also a link to The Software Museum in Amsterdam.  Additional 
contributions are solicited.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 
8/25/95.]


 8> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Introduction to RBF Networks: Matlab routines and 67-page radial 
basis intro from Mark Orr, including "nearly linear" networks.

Hybrid Connectionist-Symbolic Models: IJCAI'95 workshop report
by Ron Sun.

Spanish News Corpus: Spanish-language newspaper text.

PlainTalk stand-alone speech recognition and text-to-speech 
software for Macintosh.

QuickTime VR Tools: free Macintosh beta.

Game Sprockets: royalty-free multimedia software development kit 
for Power Mac: multiplayer networking, speech recognition,
3D sound manager, joystick control, display buffering,
and graphic accelerator interface.

Web Translator: Netscape plug-in to translate web pages
to or from English and French, Spanish, or German.

Shodouka: Japanese web page display.

DiDa v.1.001: simple freeware HTML editor.

Atlas: Netscape Navigator beta with VRML, audio, video, phone, 
chat, Java, email, news, etc., for Windows, Mac, and Unix.

NCSA Mosaic v2.1.1: free browser for Windows.

NCSA X Mosaic 2.7b4 for Unix.

Java in a Nutshell, and Symantec Cafe: review by Scott Gavin.

					-- Ken


Thrummular, thrummular thrilp,
Hum lipsible, lipsible lilp;
  Dim thricken mithrummey,
  Lumgumptulous hummy,
Stormgurgle umbumdular bilp.
[Alan Watts, "The Book: On the Taboo Against
Knowing Who You Are."]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 29
 IS                                             April 23, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Education grants.
 2>	Politics and policy.
 3>	Industry news.
 4>	High-tech news sources.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Job services.
 7>	Joy again.
_________________________________________________________________

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
-- Albert Einstein.  [AWAD, 4/6/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Education grants:

    NSF's new CISE/EHR/ENG/MPS Collaborative Research
on Learning Technologies (CLRT) has announced its program 
guideline, NSF 96-80.  Projects should include research
in the information, computation, communications, and engineering 
aspects of learning technologies, esp. in science, mathematics, 
engineering, and technology.  CRLT will fund collaborations, 
including a number of small exploratory research grants and 
several "real or virtual" Centers for Collaborative Research
on Learning Technologies.  Projects may include computational 
tools (visualization, simulations); technology-rich classrooms; 
virtual communities; studies of learner behavior; use of
digital libraries; adaptive technology design; teacher support; 
education/workplace integration; intelligent tutors;
knowledge-on-demand pedagogies; etc.  Funds may support
10 proposals this year, for $300K-$600K over three years,
plus planning and exploratory grants of $50K for one year 
(including planning of CRLT Flagship Center proposals).
Eight-page (max) preliminary proposals from US institutions, 
school districts, professional societies, state agencies,
public libraries, museums, etc., are due 6/1/96; full proposals 
7/15/96.  "Industry participation is encouraged, with
cost-sharing consistent with their role in the project
encouraged but not required."  For info, contact John
C. Cherniavsky, CISE <jchernia@nsf.gov>; Nora H. Sabelli,
EHR <nsabelli@nsf.gov>; John W. Prados, ENG <jprados@nsf.gov>;
or Alvin Thaler, MPS <athaler@nsf.gov>.  [Maria Zemankova 
<mzemanko@nsf.gov>, dbworld, 4/19/96.]  (This is part of
an NSF-wide initiative on Collaborative Research in Learning
and Intelligent Systems, which focuses on technology for K-12
and university student learning, including informal and
self-directed learning.  One influence was the NSF Educational 
Technology Workshop Report, available from CRA and at 
<http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/edtech/nsfws/>.)

    Other educational and centers programs are
described briefly in the NSF Guide to Program (NSF 95-138).
Programs related to CRLT include
CISE Educational Supplements (NSF 90-154);
Combined Research-Curriculum Development (NSF 94-11); 
Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement (NSF 96-10); 
Undergraduate Faculty Enhancement (NSF 96-10);
Educational Innovation (NSF 96-17); Applications of
Advanced Technology (NSF 93-143); Research in Teaching
and Learning (NSF 93-143); Study and Indicators (NSF 93-143); 
Engineering Education Coalitions (NSF 92-34); and
Engineering Research Centers (NSF 94-150).
Brochures, including the Grants Proposal Guide (NSF 95-27),
may be ordered from Forms and Publication Unit, Room P15,
NSF, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, VA  22230;
(703) 306-1130, (703) 644-4278 Fax.

    NSF Education and Human Resources (EHR) deadlines: 
Experimental Projects for Women and Girls, 5/15/96;
Course and Curriculum Development, 6/10/96; Institution-Wide 
Reform of Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, 
Engineering, and Technology, 6/10/96; Undergraduate Faculty 
Enhancement Program, 6/10/96; Advanced Technological Education, 
6/25/96; Model Projects for Persons with Disabilities, 7/15/96.  
Target dates: Informal Science Education, 6/1/96; Research
in Teaching and Learning, 6/15/96; Networking Infrastructure
for Education, 6/17/96; Instructional Materials Development, 
8/15/96.  [NSF Bulletin, 5/96.]

    The solicitation for NSF's new "Recognition Awards
for the Integration of Research and Education" is now on 
<http://www.nsf.gov/od/osti>, in ASCII and Word 6.0 formats,
and can be found on the stis.nsf.gov server as NSF 96-87.  
Preliminary applications are due 7/5/96.  [grants, 4/18/96.]

    Proposal tips and links to US government sources
for educational grants have been collected in the
Washington DC Information & Communication CyberGuide, 
<http://www.ari.net/kendrick/>.  [Jim Kendrick 
<vrnf46a@prodigy.com>, AERA, 1/4/96.  net-hap.]


 2> Politics and policy:

    An AAAS study of Clinton's balanced budget plan shows
a deep plunge in nondefense R&D by FY 2000, with a sharp upturn
in FY 2001 and 2002 if Clinton's optimistic economic forecasts 
prove correct.  Al Teich at AAAS is warning that universities
and industry may face a 12% cut by FY 2002.  "People aren't
going to get grants, research programs are going to have to die, 
laboratories are going to have to close."  R&D funds for
federal agencies would decline 15%-50%, adjusted for inflation.  
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 4/19/96.  Also Rory J. O'Connor,
SJM, 4/17/96, 1C.]

    NASA headquarters staff may be cut 50% within 18 months,
to just 650 (down from 2,200 in 10/93).  Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) 
says she'll fight for their jobs.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
4/19/96.]

    Computing Research News (CRN) from the Computing Research 
Association (CRA) is a good CS news source for job seekers, 
department heads and lab directors.  Published six times
per year, including a special PhD-level jobs issue in December.  
Articles since 1/95 are in HTML on <http://www.cra.org/CRN/>; 
issues back to 1991 in Acrobat and PostScript (and soon HTML).  
See also the CRA Bulletin archives at <http://cra.org/cra_b/>,
or send a "subscribe cra_b your name" message to 
<listproc@cra.org>.  Over 1K readers also receive CRA's
free emailings of faculty opportunities.  The hardcopy CRN
is free to US/Canadian CS faculty members, research staff,
and policy makers; $30/$45/$54 to others in the US, Canada,
and elsewhere.  Contact Joan Bass <jbass@cra.org>,
202-667-1066 Fax.  [3/11/96; also newjour, 4/8/96.]


 3> Industry news:

    Dave Nagel, 50, is leaving Apple (as senior VP
in charge of worldwide R&D, plus product planning, marketing,
and the Copland OS development) to become the president of
AT&T Labs, the 1,900-member continuation of half of Bell Labs.  
There's no hint of animosity at Apple; it was just an opportunity 
he couldn't pass up.  No successor has been named yet.
Nagel lives in Los Gatos, and will manage a new AT&T Labs
facility somewhere in Silicon Valley.  Size, location,
and mission of the lab will be decided in the next few months.  
[Mike Langberg, SJM, 4/16/96, 1D.]

    Be Inc. is said to have completed a $14M financing round,
and will soon be selling its high-end, multimedia BeBox computer.  
[SJM, 4/17/96, 1C.]

    Corporations are finding that websites typically cost
four times as much to implement as expected, with large
commercial sites costing $840K to $1.5M (for high security).  
About 80% of the costs are for custom software and integration.  
Operating expenses can double the cost again, and may increase
as consumers come to expect better quality and service.  [Business 
Communications Review, 3/96, p. 8.  Flash Information, 4/8/96.]

    RSA Data Security, the leader in public-key encryption 
systems, is being purchased by Security Dynamics Technologies Inc. 
for a reported $200M in stock.  [WSJ, 4/16/96, B1.  EDUPAGE.]

    An IDC study of 62 companies doing data warehousing found
a 3-year return on investment of 400%, from average expenditures 
of $2.2M.  [IBD, 4/18/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]

    The FCC has received an application from Sky Station 
International to build 250 geostationary relays for personal 
communicators, each providing 64kbps to 600K units at about 
$.10/minute.  [Broadcasting & Cable, 4/1/96, p. 54.  EDUPAGE.]

    Banks, hotels, car rental agencies, and other
front-counter industries are finding that people will tolerate 
"efficient service" much better from a machine than from busy
or less-than-attentive clerks.  [Technology Review, 4/96, p. 64.  
NewtNews.  Bill Park.]

    America Online (AOL) now generates 30% of all web traffic, 
according to Find/SVP.  Over 100K people have signed up for
its GNN Internet-only service.  On "a good Thursday night,"
AOL may have 400K subscribers logged on -- vs. 20M watching 
Seinfeld.  It has its eye on that other 20M.  The company's 
success is tied to ventures with nearly every other big player.  
[BW, 4/15/96, p. 78.  EDUPAGE.]


 4> High-tech news sources:

    The Daily Brief is a 2-3-page US/world news summary
emailed every weekday morning.  Send a "subscribe db"
subject line to Intelligent Network Concepts <incinc@tiac.net>.  
<http://www.tiac.net/users/incinc/>.  [NEW-LIST, 4/11/96.]

    PC Magazine evaluated 12 custom daily news services.
Topic coverage is the most important criterion, of course,
but the editors felt the Profound service for MS Windows was
the best overall.  It offers original layout and graphics from 
4,000 newspapers, magazines, and journals (from 190 countries); 
major wire services and news publishers; business data for
300 market sectors; economic data for 100 countries; and stock, 
futures, and commodities prices.  [PC Magazine, 4/9/96, p. 199.  
Flash Information.]

    OCP is a directory of links to web pages about technology, 
including free daily/weekly/monthly news.  Very ambitious.  
<http://www.ocprometheus.org/>.  [Network News, 3/24/96.]

    "Exposure: a technology buzz line" is a weekly
technology column about the computer industry.  
<http://www.TheTemple.com/Exposure/>.  [Steven Ericsson Zenith 
<steven@thetemple.com>, net-hap, 1/2/96.]  (In prose poetry.)

    Interesting use of technology: answers to some 2,263
questions on McDonalds' Disney Trivia Challenge game cards
have been collected on <http://www.galaxymall.com/storms/>.
Don't lose out on a small drink or maybe a major prize.
[Steven Hackstadt <hacks@cs.uoregon.edu>, uo.cs.grad, 4/17/96.  
David Joslin.]  (News you can use. :-)


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

NSF (Arlington, VA): assistant director for CISE
(succeeding Paul Young).

Sloan/DOE postdoctoral fellowships in computational
molecular biology.

Kestrel Institute (Palo Alto): MS/PhD for scheduling applications 
and automated software synthesis.

MCC (Austin, TX): three MS/PhD researcher for agent-based 
knowledge discovery in heterogeneous information resources.

MIT Sloan School of Management: MS/PhD KR/DB researcher
in intelligent integration of information systems.

ISX (Westlake Village, CA): US BS/MS/PhD software engineers
and technical leads for AI-based information systems.
(Possibly Atlanta, St. Louis, or DC.)

Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd  (Guildford, UK): speech 
processing and recognition developers and computational linguists.

Rank Xerox Research Centre (Meylan, France): lexicographers
for idioms in English plus French, German, or Spanish.

ULimburg (The Netherlands): postdoc in mathematical economics
and DAI for decentralized problem solving.

Fukui University/IS (Fukui, Japan): assoc. prof. in biological 
information processing or simulation (incl. artificial NN).

City University of Hong Kong: researchers and assistants
for underwater inspection robots.  (Also one position
at UPortsmouth, UK.)


 6> Job services:

    AT&T College Network provides career tips and job-hunting
aids for college students.  <http://www.att.com/college/>.
[IBD, 4/4/96, A4.  EDUPAGE.]

    GEOSCI-JOBS is for job ads in the geosciences,
including seismology and other data-rich domains.
Send a "subscribe geosci-jobs your name" message
to <listproc@eskimo.com>.  (Also send
"set geosci-jobs mail digest" if you want the digest form.)  
<ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/t/tcsmith/geosci-jobs>.
[Ted Smith <ted.smith@mtnswest.com>, NEW-LIST, 3/25/96.]

    MET-JOBS is for job ads in meteorology, climatology,
and other atmospheric sciences.  Send a "subscribe met-jobs
your name" message to <listproc@eskimo.com>.  
<ftp://ftp.eskimo.com/u/t/tcsmith/met-jobs>.  [Ted Smith 
<ted.smith@mtnswest.com>, NEW-LIST, 3/25/96.]

    In the Chicago/IL area, look for jobs in the online
Chicago Software Newspaper, <http://www.chisoft.com/>.
[George Cross <cross@world.std.com>, 4/12/96.]


 7> Joy again:

    ABC's "happiness special" quoted researchers as saying that 
the Amish score consistently high on tests (or self-tests,
such as choosing a smiley face).  I mentioned this in TCC 6.28, 
citing religion and a community of joyful friends as likely 
causes.  David Coombs points out that the strong genetic component 
of happiness -- about 50% in the general population, from studies 
of twins -- could also explain the Amish phenomenon.  Adopting 
their ways might have no benefit for outsiders.  [4/18/96.]
    
    It's hard to pry truth from statistical data, and sometimes 
even harder from TV specials.  Perhaps there are many happy 
cultures, of which only the Amish were profiled for TV.
There are also many roads towards happiness, not just
"Force a smile and get on with life."  Most religions
and many folk practices aim to comfort the afflicted, and the 
quotation books are full of advice for leading happy lives.
    
    An interesting claim in the TV special was that the pursuit
of earthly happiness by the masses is a rather new concept.
Most of humanity has been concerned with getting through
this "vale of tears" to reach happiness in an afterlife.
Even today, people in many cultures are surprised when asked if 
they are happy; they have words for the concept, but haven't
given it much thought.  An over-simplification, I'm sure,
but I've seen such a reaction [on TV] by a Japanese salaryman.  
Romance in marriage is likewise a peripheral concept
in many cultures.  We haven't developed a single artificial 
intelligence yet, but it may take a community of AIs
to reason about divergent cultural frameworks.

					-- Ken


He who lives with the most joys -- wins.
[Douglas Hoskins <hoskinsd@bcsaic.boeing.com>, 12/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------
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Date: Thu 25 Apr 96 00:03:06-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.30
To: ;@Charter_Computists
Message-ID: <830419386.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 30
 IS                                             April 25, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Silicon Valley news.
 2>	Immigration.
 3>	Patent databases.
 4>	Information technology law.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Women's resources.
 7>	Education resources.
 8>	Futurism.
_________________________________________________________________

The meek shall inherit nothing.  -- Frank Zappa.  
[<Nick.Taylor@gb.swissbank.com>, QOTD, 3/15/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Silicon Valley news:

    1994 was a good year for Silicon Valley stocks and profits, 
but 1995 was even better.  Semiconductor manufacture
(chips and tools) accounted for 49% of the Valley's profits; 
computer hardware another 28%.  Networking, communications,
and other technology brought in 10%; software 7%;
and disk drives 4%.  [Scott Thurm, SJM, 4/15/96, 8E.]

    Looking at the top 150 companies -- which differ somewhat
from year to year -- chip profits were up 50% over last year; 
semiconductor equipment 107%; networking 96%; and disk drives 
249%.  Only 16 software companies made the top 150 -- down 7
from last year -- but profits for the sector were up 324%.
(The software companies are Oracle, Adobe, Informix, Cadence 
Design, Electronic Arts, Intuit, Symantec, Synopsis, Borland, 
Santa Cruz Operation, Boole & Babbage, McAfee Associates,
Netscape Communications, Global Village Communications, Rational 
Software, and Ross Systems.)  [Scott Thurm, SJM, 4/15/96, 8E.]

    Many of the gains were reinvested in R&D.  The top 150 
companies put $11B into R&D in 1995, up 18.4% from 1994.
Cisco Systems doubled its R&D to $165M.  Young companies
such as Netscape have a higher percentage of R&D, but at
lower dollar levels.  [Ricardo Sandoval, SJM, 4/15/96, 4E.]

    Now that the US government has dropped GSA competitive
bidding of all computer purchases, there's a possibility of
a return to "thousands of unintegrated, hard-to-maintain, 
impossible-to-manage, contractor-dependent islands of automation."  
Supporters of the modular upgrade policy foresee savings of
$175B over five years.  [SciAm, 5/96, p. 30.  EDUPAGE.]
(I foresee an easier market for small software developers,
vs. the previous impossibility of selling to the government
unless you were a big systems house.)


 2> Immigration:

    A new study claims that immigrants to the US get a quarter
of all new US patents (1988-1994) despite being only 8.7%
of the population.  The patents presumably generate jobs.  
[Catherine Yang, BW, 4/15/96, p. 8.]

    Asian-American immigrants are a quarter of Silicon Valley's 
high-tech workforce (or 15K people), and 50% (or 9K) of its 
manufacturing labor force.  Asian-Americans also head 300
of the 800 high-tech firms, and immigrant entrepreneurs
founded 15 of the top US technology firms.  (Intel's Andy Grove
is a Hungarian immigrant.)  Many immigrants have opened markets
in Asia, bringing back venture capital and financial 
infrastructure.  A new study claims that benefits of immigration 
far outweigh any costs.  Opposing groups claim that the US
now has an over-supply of workers, and that most jobs given
to cheap foreign workers could be handled by US workers.
(Average salaries of foreign-born computer professionals
in Silicon Valley are $7K below those of natives with similar
age and education.)  Employers claim that the real issues
are quality and availability, with best-qualified applicants
often being immigrants.  They come from the best US school
and programs, and they get top salaries because they are
in demand.  [Carolyn Jung, SJM, 3/28/96, 1C.]


 3> Patent databases:

    A full-text US patent database for 1994-95 (200K patents)
is available free from Questel/Orbit on <http://www.qpat.com/>.
A 20-year version will be offered for $195/month or $1995/year.  
[Paul Albert <paul@questel.orbit.com>, net-hap, 3/18/96.]

    A patent database -- all topics, back to 1971 -- is available 
free from Chemical Abstracts Service.  You can do Boolean search 
of the full text, getting back titles and abstracts.  Additional 
info costs money: $1.25 for the patent number and front page; 
$1.50 with image; $3.75 for the full text; $12 for fax delivery; 
etc.  Free G4 TIFF page-image viewers for Windows and Mac.
New patents are posted by Thursday mornings.  
<http://casweb.cas.org/chempatplus/>.  Tommy Ebe <tebe@cas.org>, 
614-447-3600 x3093, 614-447-3709 Fax.  [Gregory Aharonian 
<srctran@world.std.com>, PATNEWS, sci.chem, 4/23/96.]
(Other providers charge $125/hour for searches.)


 4> Information technology law:

    The CompLaw unmoderated discussion covers computer/Internet 
law, intellectual property, and general legal issues.  Send a 
"subscribe" subject line and blank message to <complaw-request
@complaw.com> or <complaw-digest-request@complaw.com>,
or sign up at <http://www.complaw.com/cgi-bin/lwgate/COMPLAW>
or <...-DIGEST>.  [Samuel Lewis <slewis@complaw.com>, NEW-LIST, 
4/23/96.]

    Information Law Alert covers law and technology for the 
digital environment, esp. intellectual property, cryptography,
and electronic commerce.  <http://infolawalert.com/>.  
[<mark@infolawalert.com>, net-hap, 4/17/96.]

    The legaltech list covers technology used in law practices
and courts, including announcements from the ABA's Legal 
Technology Resource Center (LTRC).  Send a "subscribe legaltech 
your-email-address" message to <listserver@abanet.org>,
or sign up on <http://www.abanet.org/discussions>.  [J. Carey 
<jmcarey@attmail.com>, NEW-LIST, 4/12/96.]

    Internet Law Journal reports legal issues affecting life
and business on the Internet, in accessible English.  Sample
the monthly newsletter at <http://www.towncrier.com/law>.  
[Monique <monique@www.towncrier.com>, net-hap, 3/21/96.]

    web-law-info is an announcement list for UK and international 
news about WWW and Internet law.  Send a "join web-law-info
your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.
[<web-law-info-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 3/22/96.]

    Cyberspace Lawyer is a monthly newsletter (and subscriber 
website) about cyberspace legal developments.  Free sample
from <legalwks@aol.com>, (800) 308-1700, (201) 890-0042 Fax.  
[Michael D. Scott, newjour, 3/27/96.]

    Related discussion lists include lawsrc-l@austin.onu.com; 
legal-webmasters@listserv.law.cornell.edu; net-lawyers
@webcom.com; ail-l@acc.wuacc.edu; cyberia-l@listserv.cc.wm.edu;
cmplaw-l@nervm.nerdc.ufl.edu; data-protection@mail.ac.uk;
elaw-j@cleo.murdoch.edu.au; cprs-announce@cprs.org; amendl-l
@uafsysb.uark.edu; sea-legal@sea.org; tech-law@TechLaw.com;
comp-privacy@pica.army.mil; cni-copyright@cni.org; lnet-
llc@usa.net; and net-lawyers@lawlib.wuacc.edu.


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

ConceptBase 4.0: deductive object manager with C++ object store.

WebLS (alpha release): Prolog/CGI logic base for
tech support queries.

Logtalk 1.3: object-oriented Prolog extension.

Harlequin Lisp patches online.

Yorick 1.2: C-like interpreted language for scientific 
applications, with X-windows graphics package.

Symantec C++ 8.5: Power Mac support for Java and Pascal.

SWIG 1.0 Beta: C++ scripting language interface for Tcl/Tk,
Perl, Python, and Guile.

NetHack 3.2.0: Rogue-like game update.

Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma simulator, from LIFL.

Digital Humans CD-ROM: anatomy 3D visualization product.

"Negation. A Notion in Focus": workshop proceedings
ed. by Wansing.

Rule Extraction from Trained ANNs: AISB workshop proceedings.

Evolutionary Search and the Job Shop: book by Dirk Mattfeld.

"ComputerMoney: Making It in High-Tech Consulting":
book from Adams-Blake Pub.


 6> Women's resources:

    Wells Fargo Bank (San Francisco) is "leading a revolution"
in its easy loans under $100K for small businesses (including 
women-owned businesses).  Credit-scoring algorithms helped it
earn $108M on small-business lending last year, with application 
processing time averaging just 15 minutes.  The bank now
finds it profitable to extend lines of credit as small as $5,000 
(at high interest rates), allowing it to compete with community 
banks nationwide for "prequalified" small accounts by mail.
Wells Fargo uses a slightly modified credit scoring system
from Fair, Isaac & Co. (San Rafael, CA), the leading US developer 
of such software.  [Sam Zuckerman, BW, 4/15/96, p. 98.]
(Catching fraud is still a problem.  There's still a market
for credit scoring and auditing research.)

    The Advancing Women Web Site is for business and
professional women, with news, career strategies,
personal networking, financial resources, etc.  
<http://www.advancingwomen.com>.  [<gretchen@texas.net>,
net-hap, 4/3/96.]  (Guys might benefit, too.)

    The Women's Information Network has moved to 
<www.winfonet.com>.  [<pwalsh@winfonet.com>, net-hap, 4/23/96.]

    Herspace is a comprehensive Internet gateway to
women's resources, from business advice to political issues.  
<http://www.herspace.com>.  [WEBster, 4/2/96.]

    FeMiNa is a large, searchable database for
women-related online information -- the "Yahoo for Women."  
<http://www.femina.com>.  [<asherman@interport.net>, net-hap, 
4/19/96.]

    WWWomen is a comprehensive search directory for women's 
content online.  <http://www.wwwomen.com/>.  [Kathleen McMahon 
<kmcmahon@craftweb.com>,  net-hap, 4/4/96.]  (Content by women, 
about women, or "for women," such as food and fashion.  Also 
business and finance, computers and the Internet, and education.) 


 7> Education resources:

    The Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) project
will provide engineering information resources for UK
higher education.  To join the discussion list, send a
"join eevl your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.
[<eevl-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 4/12/96.]

    The new ORTELIUS database on higher education and academic 
mobility in Europe describes the 15 European Union
higher-educational systems and their institutions, faculties, 
departments, research centers, student services, mobility grants, 
curriculum structures, course requirements, and admission criteria 
for international students.  Other European training programs
are also included online, on CD ROMs, and in print.
Eleven languages will be supported, but the preliminary version
is in English.  Access is free for a limited time, via
the new International Education Forum <http://www.csc.fi/forum>.    
[<John.Hopkins@csc.fi>, 4/24/96.]

    (John Hopkins is soliciting 500-word comments to accompany
his keynote plenary address at a mid-May ORTELIUS conference in 
Florence, on "New Technologies and the Future Dimension of
the University."  Contact <hopkins@csc.fi>, +358-31-2157200 Fax, 
by 5/6/96.)

    Kevin Savetz' Unofficial Internet Book List is back, with over 
450 Internet books listed.  Now a WWW site, with several browsing 
and search options.  <http://www.northcoast.com/savetz/booklist/>.  
[<savetz@northcoast.com>, net-hap, 3/27/96.]

    "Multidisciplinary WWW Subject Directories for Scholars"
is a guide to broad or deep subject-oriented Internet
resource directories compiled by academic libraries.  
<http://info.lib.uh.edu/wsub.htm>.  [Charles Bailey 
<lib3@uhupvm1.uh.edu>, web4lib, 4/3/96.]

    The Liszt directory of 32K mailing lists -- discussion groups, 
listserv or majordomo lists, etc. -- now includes info files 
describing half of the groups.  <http://www.liszt.com>, or contact 
<liszter@bluemarble.net> for instructions on searching by email.  
[Scott Southwick <scotty@bluemarble.net>, CARR-L, 4/1/96.
net-hap.]

    Diane Kovacs' "10th Revision Directory of Scholarly
and Professional E-Conferences" now includes MUDs, MOOs, Mucks, 
Mushes, and other VR environments.  <http://www.n2h2.com/KOVACS> 
or gopher.usask.ca (Computing/Internet Information).
[Scout Report, 3/29/96.]

    Northwestern's Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS)
has put some of their educational software on the net,
at <http://www.ils.nwu.edu/>.  AI-related research
projects include Creanimate <http://www.ils.nwu.edu
/projects /creanimate.html>; Engines for Education 
<http://www.ils.nwu.edu/~e_for_e/index.html>;
and Evidence-Based Reporting
<http://www.ils.nwu.edu:80/~korcuska/projects/ebr/ebrhome.html>.  
[Andy Carvin <acarvin@kudzu.cnidr.org>, EDTECH, 4/2/96.]


 8> Futurism:

    European Telework Online covers telework and telecommuting 
issues.  Send a "join etw-forum" message to <etw-plan@eto.org.uk>, 
or "join etw-announce" to <etw-info@eto.org.uk>
for announcements only.  <http://www.eto.org.uk>.  [Horace 
Mitchell <eto-info@eto.org.uk>, NEW-LIST, 3/30/96.  net-hap.]

    Ctheory offers an online review of books on
political/social theory, technology, and culture.  
<http://english.hss.cmu.edu/ctheory/ctheory.html>.
[newjour, 3/27/96.]  (Recent articles focus on computers, 
communications, and "Discovering CyberAntarctic:
A Conversation with Knowbotics Research.")

    HIT, the list for highly imaginative tech
and science fiction, has moved.  Sign up with Blaine Thompson 
<phredd@mcs.net>.  [NEW-LIST, 4/5/96.]

    Clifford Stoll says it's not true that only
the computer-literate will be employable.  "Jobs, as they
always have, will go to people who can get along with others.  
Now, how do you avoid developing those skills?  By standing
at a keyboard and staring off into cyberspace for hours."
[NYT, 4/15/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]

					-- Ken


... we are getting perilously near the ideal of the modern
Utopian when life is to consist of sitting in armchairs
and pressing a button. It is not a desirable prospect;
we shall have no wants, no money, no ambition, no youth,
no desires, no individuality, no names and nothing wise
about us.  -- The Electrician, 1891.  [Keith Bostic 
<bostic@bsdi.com>, QOTD, 4/18/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 31
 IS                                             April 30, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	US funding news.
 2>	Science and mathematics.
 3>	Machine learning and neural networks.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Apple news.
 6>	Software development.
 7>	Corporate culture.
_________________________________________________________________

The problem is not that there are problems.
The problem is expecting otherwise and thinking
that having problems is a problem.
-- Theodore Rubin.  [George Osner, MacWay, 2/19/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> US funding news:

    Congress and the President have agreed on a spending bill
for FY 96, adding $40M for NSF beyond the recommendation of
House and Senate conferees.  (Scientists are beginning to form
an effective lobby.)  However, the Senate is already cutting
NSF's FY 97 request by $75M, and long-term funding is likely
to be weak.  The Science Committee under Robert Walker (R-PA)
has reported out an amendment to the Omnibus Science Bill 
requiring NSF to eliminate one of its seven directorates --
"NSF's choice," but probably intending Social, Behavioral
and Economic Sciences (which Walker has criticized for serving
the forces of "political correctness").  Another amendment
would change NSF to the National Science and Engineering 
Foundation.  A floor vote is expected 5/9/96.  [Robert L. Park, 
WHAT'S NEW, 4/26/96.]

    The US Air Force has commissioned a structured survey
of current and emerging software development, operation,
and maintenance technologies, for C4I (command, control, 
communications, computers and intelligence) in particular.
It will produce a late-1996 reference document to be used
in technology planning and in setting system goals and research 
agendas.  Contact the Software Engineering Institute (SEI)
at <techsurv@sei.cmu.edu> by 5/15/96 to participate, or fill out
a form at <http://www.sei.cmu.edu/participation/tech.survey/>.  
John Foreman <jtf@sei.cmu.edu>, 412 268-6417, 412 268-5758 Fax.  
[comp.databases.theory, 4/23/96.]  (Rapid prototyping?
Automated programming?  Visualization?  Future calls
for proposals by all US forces and agencies may draw on
the language of this report.  Better participate if you want
your field included.)

    NSF's first FY 1997 Regional Grants Conference will be
at Cornell University, 10/21/96-10/22/96.  NSF staff will cover 
proposal preparation; merit review; electronic filing;
grant administration, compliance, and accountability;
new programs and initiatives; and future directions for national 
science policy.  For info, contact NSF at <policy@nsf.gov>,
(703) 306-1243, or Cornell at <nsf_conference96@cornell.edu>,
607-255-5014, 607-255-5058 Fax.  [grants, 4/24/96.]

    NSF/CISE deadlines: Networking and Communications Research, 
5/1/96; Database and Expert Systems, 7/15/96 (target);
CISE Instrumentation, 8/5/96.

    NSF Engineering deadlines: Combined Research Curriculum 
Development Program (concept paper), 5/3/96; NSF-CONACyT 
Collaborative Research Opportunities, 5/7/96; Small Business 
Innovation Research (SBIR), 6/12/96.

    To access the SBIR 1996 solicitation, browse
<http://www.nsf gov/> (Grants & Programs Areas/Program 
Areas/Cross-cutting Activities) or FTP file nsf9667.txt
from stis.nsf.gov.  Another route is (Info & Pubs/STIS
Publication Database(via gopher)/ENG/Program Guidelines/nsf9667), 
or you can do a search for NSF9667.  Your browser will show the 
PDF version if you have Adobe Acrobat Reader.  [grants, 4/18/96.]


 2> Science and mathematics:

    The Computational Chemistry and Molecular Modelling Forum
is an e-conference with peer-reviewed articles on the Web
and CD ROM.  English and Latin-derived languages.  
<http://bilbo.edu.uy/agora/welcome.html> and mirrors in the US
and Europe.  [newjour, 3/27/96.]

    NLM's Grateful Med databases are on the Internet now,
with a typical physician's search costing about $1.25.
Register with <http://igm.nlm.nih.gov/> or 800-638-8480.  
[Chronicle of HE, 4/26/96, A25.  EDUPAGE.]

    The National Library of Medicine is displaying a
Visible Woman in 39B bytes of web data, including MRI
and CAT scans and 5,200 cross section images.  
<http://www.nlm.nih.gov>.  [BW, 12/18/95, p. 94.  EDUPAGE.]
(The resolution is much higher than for the Visible Man.)

    Q-IA is a new digest list for quantitative image analysis, 
including 3D methods.  Send a "subscribe Q-IA-list" message
to <majordomo@unixg.ubc.ca>.  [Clint Young <c-young@unixg.ubc.ca>, 
comp.graphics.visualization, 3/23/96.]
 
    The ai-geostats mailing list for spatial data analysis -- 
variograms, kriging, sampling, GIS, etc. -- reaches more than
700 subscribers in 42 countries.  Fields include agriculture, 
atmospheric physics, biology, forestry, geography, informatics, 
hydrology, mining, remote sensing, transportation, and statistics.  
<http://java.ei.jrc.it/rem/gregoire/>.  [Gregoire Dubois 
<gregoire.dubois@ei.jrc.it>, c.i.gis, 4/14/96.]

    The Journal of Convex Analysis touches on calculus of 
variations, control theory, measure theory, functional analysis, 
differential equations, integral equations, optimization,
and mathematical programming, especially non-smooth analysis, 
generalized differentiability, and set-valued functions.  
<http://www.emis.de/journals/index.html>.  [C. Castaing 
<lacan@math.univ-montp2.fr>, newjour, 4/17/96.]


 3> Machine learning and neural networks:

    Machine Learning Online is a new online version of Kluwer's 
Machine Learning Journal.  Full authoritative text is accessible 
only to subscribers, but the website offers multiple indices, 
hypertext links, a search facility, and links to other ML sites.  
<http://mlis.www.wkap.nl>.  Thomas G. Dietterich is the editor
in chief.  [Mike Groth <mgroth@wkap.com>, newjour, 3/29/96.]

    Open Sesame! is a NN-based agent for learning user interaction 
patterns with a Mac operating system.  A fully functioning version 
can be downloaded from <http://www.opensesame.com> for study by 
the agent community.  [Alper K. Caglayan <akc@crasun.cra.com>, 
DAI-List, 10/28/95.]

    Genetic programming systems, groups, calls, conferences,
and resources are listed on <http://tommy.jsc.nasa.gov/~jjf/gp/>, 
mirrored on <http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~jjf/gp/> and 
<http://www.ecisa.com/users/jjf/www/gp/>.  [Jaime Fernandez 
<jjf@mickey.jsc.nasa.gov>, genetic programming, 3/11/96.
Bill Park.]

    A hyperlinked bibliography on the Baldwin effect (in GA
and ML) is at <http://ai.iit.nrc.ca/baldwin/bibliography.html>.  
[Peter Turney <peter@ai.iit.nrc.ca>, genetic-programming, 
10/30/95.  Bill Park.]

    Vienna U. of Technology has started a BibTeX bibliographic 
database of computational intelligence journals and proceedings.  
Initial listings are for IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks; 
Machine Learning; and Proceedings of NIPS.  Visit the Center
for Computational Intelligence archive at 
<http://www.ci.tuweien.ac.at/docs/ci/bibtex_collection.html>, or 
FTP files from <ftp://ftp.ci.tuwien.ac.at/pub/texmf/bibtex/bib/>.  
Contributions are solicited.  [<Friedrich.Leisch@ci.tuwien.ac.at>, 
comp.ai, 4/24/96.  David Joslin.]

    Neural Processing Letters has moved to Kluwer
Academic Publishers.  Contact Mike Casey <casey@wkap.nl>,
+ 31 78 6392254 Fax, for details or samples.  
[<verleysen@dice.ucl.ac.be>, connectionists, 4/18/96.]

    The NNC homepage at <http://www.ieee.org/nnc> now offers
links to over 120 neural-network research projects, plus
a directory of NNC member addresses.  [Payman Arabshahi 
<payman@ebs330.eb.uah.edu>, Neuron Digest, 3/25/96.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UMass Amherst: 2-year postdocs in DAI, stochastic scheduling, 
agent systems, and CSCW. 

Penn State, Applied Research Laboratory: two PhD senior
IS researchers in AI-based decision making, distributed 
intelligent control, HPC, NII, and other IS areas.  (PA and DC.)

Creative Optics (Bedford, NH): US MS/PhD PIs in image 
understanding, adaptive systems, GA, NN, FL, VR, agents,
cognitive systems, etc.

Molecular Applications Group (Palo Alto): scientists in sequence 
analysis, homology search, interactive visualization, etc.

Bell Labs (Lucent Technologies): PhD in finite-state methods
in NLP and speech processing.


 5> Apple news:

    Although Apple has enviable technology, its cash reserve
has bled from $1.1B to $592M in just one quarter.  With a $740M 
deficit (largely from inventory devaluation), gross margins
at 9% (down from 26% last year), US sales lagging, potential 
licensees scared off, layoffs announced, and the Copland
operating system again delayed (into 1997), Gilbert Amelio
doesn't have much time to turn the company around.  Bill Gates 
says Amelio deserves a honeymoon, but will the business world
give him one?  [Peter Burrows, BW, 4/29/96, p. 36.]  (The power
of the press.  They're determined to have foreseen the death of 
Apple, even if that makes it happen.  But with 20M-50M Macs
out there, someone is going to be serving that market for
a long time to come.  Microsoft, if no one else.  I'm still 
betting it will be Apple, and I'm holding onto my shares.
But I'll probably buy my next "Mac" from Power Computing
instead of Apple, to get a fast processor and $800 in bundled 
software.  Apple has to keep moving toward high-end video-based 
machines, and video isn't my thing -- at least until everyone
on the Web gets a cable modem.)

    Guy Kawasaki is asking that websites hosted on Macs
display an Apple graphic element, from 
<http://www2.solutions.apple.com/AppleLogo/>.  [MacWay, 4/12/96.]

    Information Alley, Apple's free technical newsletter,
is now a daily email publication.  Send a "subscribe"
subject line (only) to <infoalley@lists1.austin.apple.com>.  
[<alley@apple.com>, IO-MUG, 3/21/96.]  (This was formerly 
biweekly, in Adobe Acrobat format.  It's interesting to see
ASCII win over graphic presentation, at least in the short term.)

    The Macintosh Software Update Report is a bimonthly
compendium of changes to Apple and third-party Macintosh software 
and firmware, for network managers, developers, and consultants.  
Free sample at <http://www.webcom.com/level6/>, along with
a hotlist of vendor and support websites.  [newjour, 4/8/96.]

    MacWEEK Online sends you the top headlines and summaries
each Monday.  Send a "subscribe" subject line or message
to <macnews@macweek.com>.  <http://www.zdnet.com/macweek
/mailing_list.html>.  [Christopher Poterala <potsie@umich.edu>, 
MacWay, 4/11/96.]

    MacAddict is a new monthly magazine for Macintosh enthusiasts.  
CD ROM with each newsstand or subscription issue.  Fun, lively 
style and a slightly irreverent attitude, with special focus
on games, music, education, and personal finance.
"Lively, passionate clubhouse atmosphere."  Late 7/96 premier, 
from Imagine Publishing.  See <http://www.macaddict.com>
(by late 4/96), or call 415-468-4869 to subscribe.  MacAddict,
150 North Hill Dr., Brisbane, CA 94005; 415-468-4684,
415-468-4686 Fax.  [MacWay, 3/28/96.]

    Lightsoft has opened a web-based BBS for Mac programmers
at all levels and with all languages (but with special
emphasis on their own Fantasm and PowerFantasm environments).  
<www.tau.it/lightsoft>.  [Rob Probin 
<lightsoft@zedworld.demon.co.uk>, c.s.m.programmer.games, 
3/30/96.]  (As a BBS, it includes archives, software, 
announcements, columns, discussion lists, and chat.)

    The Apple Developer Catalog of tools, books,
T-shirts, and technical resources is now online at 
<http://www.devcatalog.apple.com>.  [MacWay, 4/12/96.]


 6> Software development:

    c_plus_plus is a 6-page newsletter for C++ programmers,
issued every three weeks.  Independent of any vendor.  Send
a "subscribe c_plus_plus" message to <majordomo@world.std.com>.  
<http://www.rmii.com/~glenm>.  [Glen McCluskey 
<glenm@glenmccl.com>, newjour, 4/8/96.]

    ETH Zurich is looking for beta testers for its
Native Oberon compiler for the PC (which is not the same
as PC-Oberon).  <http://www-cs.inf.ethz.ch/~muller/Native>.
[Pieter Muller <muller@inf.ethz.ch>, c.l.oberon, 3/30/96.]

    The Internet Parallel Computing Archive can be reached
at <http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/>, 
<ftp://unix.hensa.ac.uk/pub/parallel/>, or by gopher to 
unix.hensa.ac.uk port 70.  Mirror sites for FTP are listed
on <http://www.hensa.ac.uk/parallel/www/mirror-sites.html>.
[Dave Beckett <d.j.beckett@ukc.ac.uk>, comp.parallel, 10/19/95.]

    gclist is a comp.compilers spin-off covering garbage 
collection in programming languages.  Send a "sub gclist" message 
to <majordomo@iecc.com>.  [John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com>,
NEW-LIST, 2/22/96.]  (Would you tell your mother you've joined
The Garbage Collection List?)

    The free inquiry.com Online Research Database offers over
100K searchable technical articles for software developers and 
information technology professionals.  <http://www.inquiry.com.>  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 4/9/96.]


 7> Corporate culture:

    In response to a quotation in TCC 6.26, Doug Fraser responds:  
Ninety percent of what is thought shouldn't be designed.
Ninety percent of what is designed shouldn't be coded.
Ninety percent of what is coded shouldn't be run.
Ninety percent of what is run won't do what you thought.  
[<dwf@apian.att.com>, 4/11/96.]
    
    (Doug is with Lucent Technologies Inc., formerly known as
half of Bell Labs plus all of AT&T's Systems and Equipment 
division.  He's seen several projects killed early in their
life cycles, and two that were "DOA": killed by the project 
management just months prior to delivery.  "I guess they keep it
a secret so you don't get any ideas about having spare time.")

    I've heard a rumor about a company that recently bought 
another, then tried to force the programmers to change to
a less-advanced corporate-standard programming language
and environment.  49 of the 50 programmers quit, leaving
two large software applications unsupportable.  Ouch.

    I loved the 4/15/96 Dilbert cartoon:  The manager says
"Alice, you've been working eighteen hours a day.  I realized
I must add a person to the effort, so I hired a night shift 
manager.  After I go home at five o'clock he'll take over
and ask why you're behind schedule."

					-- Ken


Never ask what sort of computer a guy drives.
If he's a Mac user, he'll tell you.  If not, why embarrass him?
-- Tom Clancy.  [Brian Quinlan <quinlan@sfu.ca>, 4/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 32
 IS                                                May 2, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Design news.
 2>	Webpage design.
 3>	Java.
 4>	Virtual reality.
 5>	Web browsers.
 6>	Research software.
 7>	Application development.
 8>	Contracting.
_________________________________________________________________

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, 
that is where they should be.  Now put the foundations under them.  
-- Thoreau.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Design news:

    NSF/CISE, NSF/ENG, and DARPA have a new initiative
for Experiments in Distributed Design and Fabrication
and Rapid Prototyping using Agile Networking.
By analogy with VLSI design and remote fabrication,
micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), solid freeform
fabrication (SFF), and traditional manufacturing need
standard subelements, design languages, interface formats, 
structured design methodologies, CAD tools,
design-rule-checking programs, and central/remote fabrication 
systems.  Clean separation between design and process domains
may require some compromise, but could permit vastly increased 
complexity using standardized production facilities.  Awards
will be for 3 to 6 fabrication testbeds (up to $459K/years)
and for 5 to 8 design research groups ($250K/year), for
three years.  Abstracts are due 8/2/96; proposals 8/15/96.
Contact Bernard Chern <bchern@nsf.gov>, 703-306-1940;
Bruce Kramer <bkramer@nsf.gov>, 703-306-1330; or the
Distributed Design and Fabrication Initiative <ddf@nsf.gov>.
[NSF 96-94.  Michael J. Foster <mfoster@nsf.gov>, ciselist, 
5/1/96.]

    With regard to software complexity, Jeff Braun -- chairman
and CEO of Maxis, the SimCity company -- says that a good product 
for 8-bit systems could be created in a year.  16-bit systems 
require 1.5 years; 32 bits takes 2 years; and 64 bits will
require 3 years.  Rather than Future Shock, users are experiencing
Future Anticipation: they expect rapid advances and are 
disappointed by delays.  [SNS, 4/27/96.]  (Braun defines
a good product or game as one with compelling software that 
customers demand.  To some extent, customers would demand ever 
more complex applications even if CPU designs were stable.)

    INVENTORS is a moderated non-commercial list about invention, 
patenting, and licensing.  Send a "subscribe inventors your name" 
message to <listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com>.  [Victor Lavrov 
<newideas@earthlink.net>, NEW-LIST, 1/20/96.]

    The annual Lego Robot Competition at UMD College Park
has a home page at <http://symons-90.umd.edu/robots/>.
The contest is based on MIT's course 6.270, in which students 
construct task-specific autonomous robots.  
[<pycckuu@wam.umd.edu>, net-hap, 2/6/96.]

    DEEM Controls Inc. offers industrial encoders,
proximity sensors, counters, linear controllers, and
other control products at <http//www.execulink.com/DEEM>.
(519) 452-0432, (519) 457-4147 Fax.  [<deem@suspects.com>,
net-hap, 10/4/95.]


 2> Webpage design:

    INFO-QUALITY-L is a scholarly e-forum about developing
high-quality online information resources (esp. websites).
Send a "subscribe info-quality-l your-email-address" message
to <majordomo@coombs.anu.edu.au>.  <http://coombs.anu.edu.au
/WWWVL-InfoQuality.html>.  [T. Matthew Ciolek 
<tmciolek@coombs.anu.edu.au>, CARR-L, 3/31/96.  net-hap.]

    The IE-HTML discussion list covers Web content authoring
in HTML using Microsoft Internet Explorer.  Send a "subscribe
ie-html your-email-address" or "digest ie-html your-email-address" 
message to <listadmin@lists.msn.com>.  See also 
<http://www.microsoft.com/ie/> and <http://www.microsoft.com
/intdev/> for developer info.  [inetannc, NEW-LIST, 4/20/96.]

    The Sandia National Laboratory HTML Reference Manual
is frequently updated and extremely detailed.  
<http://www.sandia.gov/sci_compute/html_ref.html>.
See also their complete HTML Elements reference list, 
<http://www.sandia.gov/sci_compute/elements.html>.
[Aaron Bradley <abradley@mail.awinc.com>, web4lib, 4/2/96.]

    Internet Digest covers news of the Web for webmasters
and HTML coders.  <http://www.ibic.com/Digest/>.  Back issues
are on <http://www.ibic.com/Digest/DigestHome.html>,
or <ftp://www.ibic.com/pub/> for text only.  [Harold Carey Jr. 
<harold@ibic.com>, c.i.www.announce, 3/5/96.  net-hap.]

    WEBsmith Magazine and WEBsmith On-line specialize in
how-to articles for webmasters.  <http://www.ssc.com/websmith/>, 
(206) 782-7733, (206)782-7191 Fax.  [<websmith@ssc.com>, 
c.i.www.announce, 3/19/96.  newjour.]

    The Web Weaver is a discussion list and newsletter
about intranets.  Contact <ww-sub@frontiertech.com>.
David Strom's white paper on intranets can be found
at <http://www.strom.com/pubwork/intranetp.html>.
[Network News, 3/24/96.]


 3> Java:

    java_letter is a 6-page newsletter for Java programmers, 
issued every three weeks.  Send a "subscribe java_letter" message 
to <majordomo@world.std.com>.  <http://www.rmii.com/~glenm>.  
[Glen McCluskey <glenm@glenmccl.com>, newjour, 4/8/96.]

    java-interest is now a moderated companion to
the comp.lang.java newsgroup.  MageLang Institute instructors
will be online to answer questions.  Send a "subscribe" message
to <java-interest-request@java.magelang.com> or to
<java-interest-digest-request@java.magelang.com>.
[Terence John Parr <parrt@magelang.com>, c.l.java, 4/13/96.]

    Learn HTML, java, frames, javascript, and VRML
from "the ultimate guide to creating a web site."  
<http://www.lookup.com/Homepages/69499/home.html>.  
[<rsavin@ucla.edu>, net-hap, 4/17/96.]

    Egor will help you design your very own Java animations, 
complete with audio.  Read C|Net's review of it at 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Hands/040996/egor.html>.  
[Network News, 4/13/96.]


 4> Virtual reality:

    VR Monthly is offering a free online sample issue
about virtual reality in advertising, entertainment centers, 
medicine, home multimedia, design, education, the military,
and on the Internet.  Send a "get freevrm" message to 
<auto@rome.servint.com>.  [<dysart@delphi.com>, alt.toys.hi-tech, 
3/27/96.  David Joslin.]

    Geographic or architectural VRML simulations for Netscape 2.0 
and the WebFX PlugIn can be found via A World of Worlds, 
<http://www.cic.net:80/~rtilmann/mm/wow/wowintr.htm>.
[Gary Ewell <ewell@courier4.aero.org>, inet-news, 3/22/96.]

    Mojoe is a new submittal site for multimedia resources,
VRML, Java, JavaScript, animations, etc.  <http://www.mojoe.com
/mojoe/mojoe.html>.  [<mojoe@mojoe.com>, net-hap, 3/27/96.]  
(Submittal sites help announce new web pages.)


 5> Web browsers:

    The Multilingual Mosaic browser supports web pages
in Russian, Greek, Japanese, Arabic, and Hebrew.
It's part of a commercial package from Accent Software, 
<http://www.accentsoft.com/>, that includes a multilingual
HTML editor.  Try browsing the W3C world servers at 
<http://www.w3.org/hypertext/DataSources/WWW/Servers.html>
with an evaluation copy from 
<http://www.accentsoft.com/product/iwaa/moseng.htm>.
[Scout Report, 3/22/96.]

    NCSA has released a beta version of Mosaic 3.0 for the Mac.  
2MB, from <ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/Mosaic/Mac
/NCSAMosaic30A2.hqx>.  [Rob Pelkey <rpelkey@abacus.bates.edu>, 
ADV-HTML, 4/8/96.]  (NCSA Mosaic isn't as fancy as Netscape,
but it's smaller and its free.)

    WebSurfer 3.0 is a bare-bones browser (that wants 4MB RAM).  
1MB, free. from <http://www.netmanage.com/netmanage/products
/macapps.html>.  [GD, TidBITS, 4/29/96.]

    Microsoft Internet Explorer 2.0 for the Mac can be
downloaded from <http://www.microsoft.com/ie/platform/macdl.htm>.  
[GD, TidBITS, 4/29/96.]

    Netscape has announced a Navigator 3.0, with LiveAudio
and Internet-based phone (CoolTalk), LiveVideo and a shared 
"whiteboard," QuickTime graphics, Live3D (VRML), and VeriSign 
security for electronic commerce, plus new HTML tags,
Java enhancements, and caching improvements.  Download from 
<http://home.netscape.com>.  [WSJ, 4/29/96, B7.]  (I've been
using Netscape's "Atlas" beta version for the Mac, which
sometimes crashes my system.)

    Navigate! is an online zine for Netscape Navigator 2.0
users.  <http://www.netscapepress.com/>.  [Netscape Press 
<netscapepress@vmedia.com>, newjour, 3/8/96.]

    Collaborative Computing will publish innovative research
in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), computer-
mediated communications (CMC), and groupware development.  
<http://hermes.chaphall.co.uk/cc.html>.  [Steve Benford 
<chsub@itps.co.uk>, newjour, 1/20/96.]

    "Dr. Bob" Rankin's "The Whole Internet... By E-Mail"
describes email interfaces to FTP, Gopher, WWW, Usenet, WAIS, 
Listserv, Finger, Whois, and Netfind, plus dictionary lookup, 
currency conversion, virus protection software, faxing,
Internet service providers by area code, and sources
of US government information.  Versions are available
in 26 languages.  <http://www1.mhv.net/~bobrankin/inetbook.txt>
or <http://www.vip.at/cfeichtner/InternetByEmail.htm>, or post
a "send usenet/news.answers/internet-services/access-via-email" 
message to <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>.  Or a "send lis-iis
e-access-inet.txt" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.
[Scout Report, 3/29/96.]

    Minitel provides Internet email and TCP/IP services
to over 20M paying customers.  Access info is available from 
<http://www.minitel.fr>, <telnet://minitel.fr>, or email to 
<info@minitel.fr>.  [Odd de Presno <presno@grida.no>, net-hap, 
2/2/96.]


 6> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

ThoughtTreasure: free agent-based English/French NLP prototype.

KnowExec: CLIPS-based expert system applet.

ThinksPro: NN development system, 30-day free trial.

"Towards Evolvable Hardware": book ed. by Sanchez and Tomassini.

"Knowledge Acquisition from Databases": book by Xindong Wu.

"Principal Component Neural Networks": book by Diamantaras
and Kung.

"The Importance of Us": philosophy/DAI book by Tuomela.

"CGI Programming on the World Wide Web": book from O'Reilly.

ObjectStore: OODB (US university rate).

SOMobjects 2.1: free object class library support
for distributed systems.

WebSite 1.1: free web server.

Cinnamoney: engineering and financial math class for Java.

"Amber" Acrobat PDF filer reader (beta) for Mac.


 7> Application development:

   ADV-CGI is a moderated discussion of all applications
of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) for interactive websites.  
Send a "subscribe adv-cgi your name" message to 
<listproc@lists.nyu.edu>.  [Adam Donahue <donahue@acf2.nyu.edu>, 
NEW-LIST, 4/24/96.]

    The VBScript discussion list covers Microsoft Visual Basic 
Scripting Edition.  Send a "subscribe vbscript your-email-address" 
or "digest vbscript your-email-address" message to 
<listadmin@lists.msn.com>.  See also <http://www.microsoft.com
/vbscript/> and <http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/>
for developer info.  [inetannc, NEW-LIST, 4/20/96.]

    ActiveXScript is for discussion of Microsoft's OLE
scripting engines and the use of OLE scripting languages
(other than VBScript).  Send a "subscribe activexscript
your-email-address" or "digest activexscript your-email-address" 
message to <listadmin@lists.msn.com>.  For more information
about ActiveX Script, see <http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/>.  
[inetannc, NEW-LIST, 4/27/96.]

    Perl (Practical Extraction and Report Language) has
a resource site at <http://www.virtualschool.edu/mon/Perl.html>.  
[Network News, 3/24/96.]

   DocObj is a discussion list for OLE Document Objects
and DocObj container applications.  Send a "subscribe docobj
your-email-address" or "digest docobj your-email-address" message 
to <listadmin@lists.msn.com>.  For more information about DocObj, 
see <http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/> and 
<http://www.microsoft.com/oledev/>.  [inetannc, NEW-LIST, 
4/27/96.]

    Literary agent Bill Adler, Jr., is looking for new books
on ActiveX, Live Wire Pro, groupware, Java, VRML, 
videoconferencing, graphics programming, data mining, etc.
Ask for his short guide to writing book proposals.
Adler & Robin Books Literary Agency (DC), <badler
@cis.compuserve.com> or <adlerbooks@earthlink.net>,
202-363-7410.  <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages
/adlerbooks>.  [<73340.1527@compuserve.com>, m.j.contract, 
4/15/96.]


 8> Contracting:

    web-consultants is a discussion list about WWW consulting 
resources, issues, and stories.  A moderated digest is also 
planned.  Send a "subscribe web-consultants" message to
<web-consultants@just4u.com>.  [Al Silverberg <alsil@phantom.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 4/12/96.]

    The US has 5M home-based consultants, even though 70%
of new consultants drop out in the first year.  Earnings may
reach $200K (or only $20K), but count on subsidizing yourself
100% the first year, 70% the second, and 20% the third.
The hours will also be long.  Start networking before leaving
your salaried job, and try to keep your employer as a customer.  
Barter for services if you can.  Organizations serving
non-management consultants include NASE, (202) 466-2100,
and the National Assoc. of Home-Based Businesses, (410) 363-3698.  
[Laura Koss-Feder, BW, 4/15/96, p. 118 E-4.]  (NASE is primarily 
an insurance group, but does offer books and discounts.)

    The IRS has a new internal memorandum about contracts
where a programmer promises to debug software before acceptance.  
The agency holds that the programmer is selling a product --
bug-free software, to spec -- rather than programming services.  
The purchaser must capitalize payments when the software is 
put into service -- possibly over 15 years -- rather than
deduct them in the year paid, and cannot claim an R&D tax credit.  
It doesn't matter if the programmer gets an advance, periodic 
payments, or a royalty, if the programmer accepts the risks
of development and the customer owns the finished software.  
Milestone payments (rather than timesheet compensation) point
to an acceptance of risk.  [David Simon and Jennifer Cherniss, 
MicroTimes, 4/1/96, p. 92.]

					-- Ken


I recently had someone evaluate my computer system
and make recommendations for improving speed and efficiency,
but all he did was make fun of my setup.  The mistake was mine:
I had accidentally hired an insultant.  -- Richard M. Romano 
<rromano@pipeline.com>.  [LOTD, 4/12/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 33
 IS                                                May 7, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Internet politics and policy.
 2>	High-tech publishing.
 3>	News services.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Shareware archives.
_________________________________________________________________

Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to
the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, 
obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists
and of the government officials and corporation executives
who provide the funds for research.  -- Unabomber Manifesto.  
[Terry Labach, 4/14/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Lots of UK jobs in our CAJ applied/student jobs digest
this week.  I'm currently delivering CCJ on Tuesdays
(with the first TCC), CAJ on Wednesdays, and CRS on Thursdays 
(with the second TCC).  Our humor list (HMR, if you must know :-) 
is circulating a few messages per week, as is our forwarding
of Palo Alto-local seminar announcements.  I hope you will
start other such redistributions in your own interest areas.
I'll be happy to help advertise them.


 1> Internet politics and policy:

    The InterNIC has now registered over 300K domains
(including computists.com).  Over 276K are commercial domains,
up 60% since December.  See <http://www.webcom.com/walsh>
for a geographic distribution.  [Mike Walsh <p00426@psilink.com>, 
com-priv, 4/20/96.  net-hap.]

    Over 1,100 information technology companies
are listed (and 400 are profiled) by Computer Review, 
<http://www.ComputerReview.com>.  [Liz Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
inet-news, 4/1/96.]

    Internet-related companies created 36K jobs in 1995 --
for a total of about 40K -- and another 100K are expected
this year.  Most of the new jobs are at content companies
rather than Internet service providers.  [CACM, 4/96, p. 9.
Flash Information, 4/22/96.]

    AOL will locate its $16M tech support center in New Mexico, 
creating 1,050 jobs.  [NewtNews, 4/30/96.  Bill Park.]

    MIT is forming an Internet Telephony Interoperability Project.  
This includes use of the Internet for long distance calls,
plus other personal communications services that may develop
in this digital environment.  The project will be based in
MIT's Research Program on Communications Policy (RPCP).  
<http://rpcp.mit.edu/~itel/>, Lee McKnight 
<mcknight@rpcp.mit.edu>, (617) 253-0995.  [Cal Gundy 
<cgundy@achilles.net>, sci.econ.research, 5/3/96.  Bill Park.]

    Interested in database and network development prospects
in China?  The Telecommunications Research and Law-On-Line 
Projects have put together "a unique programme of
hands-on experience and intensive discussion" at 
<http://lawhk.hku.hk/trp/conference>.  [<trp@lawhk.hku.hk>,
net-hap, 4/30/96.]

    Georgia's legislature and governor have now "protected" 
citizens by making it a crime to falsely identify yourself
on the Net, or to direct people to someone else's computer
without the owner's explicit permission.  [Chronicle of HE, 
5/3/96, A29.  EDUPAGE.]  (Post a URL, go to jail. :-)

    CYBER-SOC is a discussion list for members of the Cyberspace 
Society, established to "sustain the democratic mission and
the universal right of the people to govern their own affairs."  
To join, send a "subscribe cyber-soc your name" message
to <listserv@listserv.readadp.com>.  [Vigdor Schreibman 
<fins@access.digex.net>, NEW-LIST, 4/27/96.]  (Schreibman
is e-famous for polemics against corporate influence and
in favor of central planning for the good of the masses.
I don't have his faith in well-intentioned government committees.)


 2> High-tech publishing:

    cc:Browser is a free weekly e-zine dedicated to technology, 
including software reviews.  <http://www.voicenet.com/DVbiz
/faulkner/index.html>.  [newjour, 3/28/96.]

    Computer Bits Online offers the text of Computer Bits Magazine 
from Portland ("Silicon Forest").  <http://www.computerbits.com/>.  
[<paulh@computerbits.com>, newjour, 4/11/96.]

    California Computer News presents the view each month from 
Sacramento and the Central Valleys.  <http://www.ccnmag.com>.  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 4/6/96.  newjour.]

    Mass High Tech is "New England's high technology
weekly newspaper."  <http://www.boston.com/mht/>.
[Liz Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 4/22/96.]


 3> News services:

    Farcast is "a 24-hour personal news and information
delivery service" via email.  <http://www.farcast.com>.  
[<sales@farcast.com>, net-hap, 5/1/96.]

    Individual Inc. is another company offering customized
news delivery (for a hefty price, after a two-week free trial).  
To draw traffic to their website, <http://www.newspage.com>,
they are offering free subsets of daily business and
industry stories to other webmasters.  [Sam Sternberg 
<aa002@freenet.toronto.on.ca>, inet-news, 1/4/96.]

    The LA Times Online will create a personal newspaper
for you, for free.  It's busy and slow for now, though.  
<http://www.latimes.com/>.  [Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, 
BESTWEB, 4/15/96.  net-hap.]

    USA TODAY Online is <http://www.usatoday.com>.
[Liz Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 3/7/96.]

    Full text of Forbes (and soon Forbes FYI and Forbes ASAP)
can now be found on <http://www.forbes.com/>.  [Liz Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 5/3/96.]

    The Wall Street Journal is offering free news services
at <http://www.wsj.com/>, but will soon charge $29/year
for print subscribers and $49/year for others.  [WSJ, 4/29/96, B1.  
EDUPAGE.]  (I tend to lose my passwords after the first visit.)

    Dave Winer prefers the CNN website, <http://www.cnn.com/>.  
Free, no password, quick loading, summaries of top news stories, 
and full online archive pages that you can point people to.  
[<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 5/1/96.]

    US News & World Report is now available on the Internet
at <http://www2.USNews.com/usnews/main.htm>, with an online 
catalog of books and CD ROMs.  [Network News, 11/24/95.]
(Maybe merchandise sales will pay for much of the online news.  
That's been a good model for print newsletters.)

    Daily news commentary "by experienced journalists": 
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/current>.  
[<ut986@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>, net-hap, 4/19/96.]

    Reuter Business Briefing (RBB) gives access to news stories 
from over 2,000 publications, with Boolean search by country, 
industry, company, topic, source, and full text.  Original source 
language is sometimes available.  (Photos will be implemented 
later.)  RBB for the Macintosh gives access to the past five 
years, with downloading for off-line browsing.  $500 for 10 
hours/month (in the US).  Free full-text article downloads
by email for 50 searches over three months: just send your
request including your city/state to Bruno Bloch 
<bruno.bloch@reuters.com>.  [MacWay, 3/20/96.]

    The Electric Library lets you search over 900 magazines,
150 newspapers, two news wires, 2,000 books, and Compton's 
Encyclopedia.  Also 20,000 photographs and maps.  Queries
can be in plain English.  Free trial.  <http://www.elibrary.com>.  
[<josh@infonautics.com>, net-hap, 2/6/96.]

    For links to other news sources on the Web, see Newslink
at <http://www.newslink.org>.  [Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, 
BESTWEB, 4/15/96.  net-hap.]

    Another collection of daily news links
is <http://www.infi.net/~opfer/daily.htm>.  For topical
news sources -- including business and financial --
see <http://www.el.com/ToTheWeb/Topical/>.  [Gary Ewell 
<ewell@courier4.aero.org>, inet-news, 1/25/96.]

    Time Magazine's senior VP of new media says that ads
on their Pathfinder Personal Edition are not generating enough 
revenue to pay for content.  They will repackage it as a 
subscription-based service with news from Time and People.
[IBD, 4/25/96, A10.  EDUPAGE.]

    One model that doesn't work is building up a big readership 
and then asking for donations.  Tony Lindsey did that with 
Mac*Chat, and readers have sent only $68.75 in the past five
or six months.  Mac*Chat is now on hiatus while he attends
to his day job.  [<tlindsey@cts.com>, Mac*Chat, 4/24/96.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

GTE Laboratories (Waltham, MA): PhD sr. computer scientists
in interactive Internet applications and in electronic commerce.

CuraGen Corp. (Branford, CT): R&D openings for intelligent 
integration of heterogeneous biological information.

UCambridge (UK): postdoc RA in Lisp/C for parsing
and lexical knowledge extraction.

Keele University (UK): 3-year postdoctoral fellowship
in time-frequency representation for speech processing.

UOttawa: a postdoc and an RA for knowledge-based
software engineering.

UHamburg (Germany): Arbeitsbereich "Natuerlichsprachliche 
Systeme."


 5> Shareware archives:

    "Nerd's Heaven: The Software Directory Directory" is
an attempt to list software resources on the net.  Additions
are solicited.  <http://boole.stanford.edu/nerdsheaven.html>.  
[Vaughan Pratt <pratt@cs.stanford.edu>, net-hap, 1/3/96.]

    Rene Guerrero maintains a "comprehensive list" of freeware and 
shareware sites, at <http://pilot.msu.edu/user/heinric6/soft.htm>.  
[<heinric6@pilot.msu.edu>, c.i.www.announce, 4/1/96.]

    Simon Laven has been collecting "AI" programs for the PC.
You can download zipped versions of Shampage, Claude, Borland's 
Eliza, Santa, Fred, The Broadcasters Database Eliza,  Frank, 
Meliza, or Campus Draiu.  <http://www.inetgate.com/sjlaven/>.  
[<simon.laven@theshack.co.uk>, comp.ai, 4/23/96.]

    Randy's Windows 95 Resource Center is a large collection
of downloadable 32-bit software for Windows 95.  
<http://www.pcwin.com>.  [Rick Nott <ricknot2@oeonline.com>,
inet-news, 4/22/96.]

    Business software/shareware programs are offered
at <http://www.jumbo.com/bus/>.  [Network News, 2/10/96.]

    Over 500 shareware, freeware, or public-domain software 
programs for small businesses can be searched at 
<http://www.sbaonline.sba.gov/shareware/sharopts.html>.
[Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, BESTWEB, 4/12/96.]

    QUE's Software Library includes over 150
shareware and freeware programs for downloading.  
<ftp://ftp.mcp.com/pub/que/inetapps/>.
[<tbennett@que.mcp.com>, net-hap, 2/6/96.]

    14K products for the Mac can be searched on the Australian 
Macintosh Product Guide, <http://www.apple.com.au/MPG/> --
also available on a 4-disk set.  Another such list, with pointers 
to vendor websites, is <http://dev.info.apple.com/thirdparty/>.  
[Rob Russell <r.russell@apple.co.nz> and Guy Kawasaki 
<kawasaki@eworld.com>, MacWay, 2/19/96.]

    King Link & Games lists over 25K software titles.  
<http://www.earthlink.net/~tday>.  [<kinglink@whiterock.com>,net-
hap, 1/1/96.]

    The Software Sharing Resource Library is a 4GB database
of websites and PC/Unix software.  <http://ssrl.rtp.com:443/>.  
[Eric L. Beser <beser@ssrl.rtp.com>, c.i.www.announce, 3/19/96.]

    The Guide to Computer Vendors lists over 1,300 hardware
and software vendors.  <www.ronin.com/SBA>.  [Wayne Spivak 
<waynes@netcom.netcom.com>, net-hap, 3/7/96.]

    See <http://www.tickit.com> for a country-by-country list
of sources for CDs, software, freeware, shareware, games,
and information -- more than 100K software products, publications, 
and articles, much of it free.  [Liz Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, 
inet-news, 1/4/96.]

    Shareware developers' sites can be found through
the "Official Shareware Developer Web Sites," 
<http://SliceOfLife.com/Official/>.  Most operating systems
are represented.  [<jthompson@SliceOfLife.com>, 
alt.internet.services, 4/4/96. net-hap.]

    The "definitive shareware registration site" is at PsL, 
<http://206.109.101.6/register.htm>.  Downloadable commercial 
software may be purchased from the Internet Shopping Network, 
<http://www6.internet.net>.  [Phil Hord <emory!msn.com!phord>, 
SEML, 2/20/96.]

    You can buy and sell software of all types
at The Used Software Exchange (USoX), 
<http://www.hyperion.com/usox/index.html>.  No charge for
the service.  [Christine Chiu <chiu@pitsco.com>, CoSN, 2/15/96.]

    Search engines are a good way to find product reviews,
but you may want to browse the Mac software reviews
at <http://www.ziff.com/~macweek/reviews.html>, 
<http://www.ziff.com/~macuser/reviews.html>,
and <http://www.macworld.com/static/search.html>.
[Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 2/19/96.]

    You can search for software with the Virtual Library
Quick Search Form, <http://www.acs.oakland.edu/cgi-bin
/vsl-front/QuickForm>.  Files are tagged with brief descriptions.  
[WEBster, 1/23/96.]

    Another way to locate software is SoftSearch Online, 
<http://www.softsearch.com/>.  [Richie Creech 
<info@spanky.oroad.com>, net-hap, 3/7/96.]

    The Internet Software Downloads Index at Mr. Bill's World
is one of the most comprehensive lists of freeware/shareware 
download sites.  <http://www.aone.com/~mrbill/software.html>.  
[<mrbill@aone.com>, net-hap, 3/12/96.]

    More than 170K software titles can be downloaded
from shareware.com, <http://www.shareware.com/?STPT.link>.  
[<maida@cnet.com>, net-hap, 3/19/96.]

    Ziff-Davis' ZD Net Software Library offers 10K categorized, 
tested, rated, and reviewed software titles.  More than 200 titles 
are added each week, of which only 100 or so survive screening
for viruses, defects, usability, and trademark or copyright 
infringements.  The best new packages are flagged as Preston's 
Picks.  The Software Library also offers a Road Warrior Toolkit 
(for mobile computing) and several other toolkits.  
<http://www.zdnet.com/zdi/software/>.  [Michael Katz 
<mkatz@zd.com>, net-hap, 3/20/96.]

   Beware software downloaded from novice sites, including 
government sites.  You can find more than ten anti-virus
software packages -- including F-Pront and Thunderbyte v7.00
-- at <http://www.valleynet.com/~joe/top10.html>.
[NETWORK NEWS, 2/18/96.]  (For the Mac, get Disinfectant.)

					-- Ken


If what you did yesterday still looks good to you,
then your goals for tomorrow are not big enough.
-- Ling Fu Yu, ca. 600 BC.
[Michael S. Hart <hart@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>, 12/11/93.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Subject: TCC 6.34
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 34
 IS                                                May 9, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Computing environments.
 2>	Encryption and security.
 3>	Electronic commerce.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Entrepreneurship.
 6>	Business services.
_________________________________________________________________

There is no point at which you can say,
"Well, I'm successful now.  I might as well take a nap."
-- Carrie Fisher.  [AWAD, 3/1/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Computing environments:

    The US Dept. of Energy is committing $2M to promote
commercial software products written in Ada 95.
[Computer Industry Daily, 5/6/96.  EDUPAGE.]
(A legitimate government function?)

    Santa Cruz Operation bought Novell's Unix business
(in 12/96) to merge with its SCO Unix for Intel-based servers,
and has now signed up Compaq, DG, ICL, NCR, Olivetti,
Niemens Nixdorf, and Unisys.  [WSJ, 4/23/96, B5.  EDUPAGE.]

    An Intel official says Pentium Pro PCs will drop from $4K
to just $2,500 by the end of 1996.  [WSJ, 5/3/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]

    Digital has a new line of $50K servers that compete with Sun, 
HP, and IBM for the mid-range server market.  Capabilities rival 
Digital's $100K Turbolaser machines.  [WSJ, 5/3/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]

    IBM has licensed the Mac OS from Apple, hoping to boost
the market for PowerPC chips and boards via sublicensing
of low-cost Macintosh clones.  (Windows NT will also be offered
on the PowerPC, but Intel has most of the Windows market.)
This is good news for Mac developers.  [InfoWorld, 
<http://www.infoworld.com>.  Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, 
DaveNet, 5/3/96.]  This arrangement, and a similar one by 
Motorola, "will help Apple expand the low end of the market."  
[IBD, 5/7/96, A9.  EDUPAGE.]

    Apple Computer has licensed Sun's Java for use on Macintosh, 
Newton, and Pippin.  Other licensees include Microsoft, IBM,
and HP, giving Java a good shot at being "an operating system for 
the Internet."  [WSJ, 5/1/96, B7; and IBD, 5/2/96, A9.  EDUPAGE.]

    Lucent Technologies Inc. (formerly Bell Labs) has launched its 
Inferno operating system, a distributed architecture-independent 
OS using "Limbo," a Java-like byte code language.  [NYT Business 
section, 5/7/96, p. 2.  Doug Fraser.]  Inferno is suitable
for low-cost hand-held devices, requiring only 1MB of memory.  
Java doesn't include OS functions.  [WSJ, 5/7/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]


 2> Encryption and security:

    Phil Zimmermann, Jonathan Seybold, and Dan Lynch are starting 
a company (PGP Inc.) to market, support, and further develop 
Zimmermann's Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and PGPfone.  Dan Lynch
is the founder of Cybercash.  Zimmermann says there will always
be a free version of PGP on the net.  [Simson Garfinkel, SJM, 
5/4/96, 1D.]

    Brandeis professor Martin Cohn has found that text can
often be compressed more efficiently by starting with the ends
or middles of words.  (617) 736-2705.  [Sharon Block 
<sblock@logos.cc.brandeis.edu>, Brandeis News Bureau, 5/6/96.]

    The CryptoAPI discussion list covers Microsoft
Cryptographic API for Win32.  Send a "subscribe cryptoapi
your-email-address" or "digest cryptoapi your-email-address" 
message to <listadmin@lists.msn.com>.  See also 
<http://www.microsoft.com/intdev/> for developer info.
[Microsoft Internet Announcements <inetannc@microsoft.com>,
NEW-LIST, 4/20/96.]

    IBM's AntiVirus system outperforms human experts
at detecting new viruses.  Suspicious files on subscribers' LANs 
are transmitted to IBM's research labs for study, or for
an "antidote" if one is known.  AI systems are being developed
to "culture" such files and develop cures.  [Steve R. White.
Otis Port, BW, 4/8/96, p. 61.]


 3> Electronic commerce:

    Internet World has outgrown the San Jose convention center, 
and will move to Los Angeles next year.  This year's exhibits
took six acres (and brought about $5M to San Jose).
[David Plotnikoff, SJM, 5/2/96, 1E.]

    Adobe Systems' new Bravo technology will permit
magazine-style graphics and typefaces on the Web.  Sun plans
to add the capabilities to Java.  [WSJ, 5/7/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]  
(This could be a turning point in Web evolution.  Publishers want 
to control every aspect of page layout, and could only do that 
with high-bandwidth bitmapped images or CPU-intensive PostScript 
drawing commands.  If Adobe succeeds, Web publishers may force
the world to upgrade their display systems, rather than the text 
display adapting or "dumbing down" to fit what's available.
Web search engines could also lose the ability to parse
page layouts -- treating headers differently from body text
-- and page readers for the blind may be more difficult
to construct.  But maybe the advance in graphic sophistication
is worth the cost.)

    Yahoo and Lycos are allowing advertisers to sponsor
an individual word, such as "golf" or "telephone."
[NYT Magazine, 5/5/96, p. 32.  EDUPAGE.]

    C|Net's "Product finder" is a custom search guide
to more than 500 sites about computer products and technology.  
<http://www.cnet.com/Product/>.  Network News, 2/18/96.]

    The Computer ESP JavaScript Agent lets you search dozens
of computer stores for products.  Netscape 2.0 required.  
<http://www.uvision.com/shop/index.html>.  [<tonny@uvision.com>, 
net-hap, 3/25/96.]

    The Student Market lists used textbooks for sale.  
<http://www.studentmkt.com>.  [Educom UPDATE, 3/1/96.]

    The Great CyberMall has over 4K shopping sites, at 
<http://www.iao.com/greatcybermall.htm>.  [<sonya@iao.com>,
net-hap, 4/4/96.]

    The Internet World Trade Center is an interesting mall site.  
<http://www.internetwtc.com>.  [Network News, 12/23/95.]

    Want some free catalogs?  Choose from the hundreds at 
<http://cataloglink.com>, including business-to-business catalogs.  
[<kurt@cataloglink.com>, net-hap, 1/3/96.]

    Hundreds of links to computer-related sites -- hardware, 
software, magazines, and information -- can be found
at <http://boss.cpcnet.com/personal/wgogle/computer.html>.  
[<nns@luzskru.cpcnet.com>, net-hap, 1/5/96.]

    Dave Wagner offers a free WWW database of over 100K
published technical articles, at <http://www.inquiry.com/>.
"Lots of useful information about new software products
and emerging technologies."  [<davidw@ix.netcom.com>, 
alt.internet.services, 5/2/96.  net-hap.]

    The Magazine CyberCenter sells subscriptions to
a range of magazines.  <http://www.magamall.com>.  
[<stephen@inforamp.net>, net-hap, 1/11/96.]

    Magfinder Online claims "the widest-ranging selection of 
magazine links on the Web."  <http://www.magazinebusiness.co.uk/>.  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 12/30/95.]

    See <http://www.maui.net/mic/mag.html> for "a comprehensive 
list of computer-related magazines available on the Internet."  
[<mic@maui.net>, net-hap, 1/23/96.]

    The Web Assurance Bureau aims to offer Better Business
Bureau-type reliability reports for companies doing business
on the Web.  <http://www.wabureau.com>.  [WEBster, 4/16/96.]

    If you're looking for a new Internet service provider (ISP), 
check out the customer comments at 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Compare/ISP/rate.html>.
Or you can add your own.  [Network News, 4/7/96.]}

    If you've got a Windows PC, check 
<http://www.internetdatabase.com/wwwguide.htm> for some of
the best websites to visit.  [<fritzbb@seefeld.cube.net>,
net-hap, 5/1/96.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

BGP-MS: interactive shell for modeling user knowledge,
beliefs, and goals.

Ode 4.2: free object-oriented database.

FoxWeb: WWW interface to FoxPro databases.

JAGG 1.0: free NT-based Java server for SQL requests.

Catalog of Compiler Construction Products (8th ed.).

Java Resource Center: free site from The Java Sourcebook.

WebMania! 1.2: HTML editor for Windows.

Access: Adobe Acrobat PDF plug-in for Netscape (on Windows).

Internet Phone for the Macintosh (beta).

Ewgie: Java-based chat and shared whiteboard system.


 5> Entrepreneurship:

    Entrepreneur Issues is a free e-journal about starting
and growing a business.  Send a "subscribe entrepreneur-issues" 
message to <majordomo@cedar.cic.net>.  
<http://ic.net/~epn/business.htm>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/29/96.  newjour.]

    The Internet Entrepreneurs Support Society (IESS)
publishes a free newsletter.  Request a copy from 
<news@iess.entrepreneurs.net>, or get general info from 
<info@iess.entrepreneurs.net>.  [Ron Ehrens <ron@kaiwan.com>,
net-hap, 3/11/96.]

    Home Biz Cyber Weekly publicizes Internet resources
for home businesses and small businesses.  Free from 
<homebiz@world.std.com>.  [<priority@cris.com>, 3/11/96.]

    HomeBased-L is a list for non-MLM entrepreneurs.
Send a "subscribe homebased-l" message to <listserv@citadel.net>.  
[Leonard A. Manion <ceo@citadel.net>, NEW-LIST, 4/19/96.]
    
    (MLM is multilevel marketing, like Amway.  Participants 
typically make money from recruiting rather than sales, hence are 
prone to lengthy recruiting spiels with little product detail.)

    NetMarket-L is an unmoderated list for entrepreneurs, 
webmasters, and marketing pioneers.  Send a "subscribe
netmarket-l" message to <listserv@citadel.net>.  [Leonard
A. Manion <ceo@citadel.net>, NEW-LIST, 4/19/96.]


 6> Business services:

    The Small Business Journal offers free online back issues.  
The 10/95 issue featured home offices; 12/95 evaluated computers.  
<http://www.tsbj.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>,
inet-news, 2/11/96.  newjour.]

    CyberVPM is for discussion of volunteer program management: 
recruitment, screening, training, placement, supervision, 
evaluation, and recognition.  Send a "subscribe cybervpm
your name" message to <listserv@listserv.aol.com>.
[Nan Hawthorne <penguin@halcyon.com>, NEW-LIST, 2/3/96.]

    Corporate New Media Newsletter focuses on multimedia issues 
for the corporate environment: bandwidth, cost, justification, 
etc.  <http://www.tiac.net/users/gschroed/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/3/96.  newjour.]

    Achievement International offers a free home page to any 
worthwhile cause.  <http://www.achiever.com/design/freehmpg.html>.  
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/15/95.]

    Over 91 public relations agencies and resources are listed
on <http://www.webcom.com/impulse/prlist.html>.  [Bob Novick 
<bnovick@netcom.com>, net-hap, 12/18/95.]

    You can join an international business discussion group
made up of business owners, government trade officials,
and trade desk consultants.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE INTL. BUSINESS" 
subject line and a message with your company name and address, 
email, URL, and short description of products and services
to Leah Woolford <woolford@trip.net>.  [NEW-LIST, 2/16/96.]

    Over 220 free or inexpensive resources for exporters
are listed in the ExportFree database, 
<http://www.imex.com/assist/ex_free/ex_free.html>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 12/15/95.]

    The Smart Business Supersite "can keep you clicking
for weeks."  <http://www.smartbiz.com>.  Thousands of articles, 
checklists, publications, resources, services, tips, and news 
items for executives, managers, and employees.  [WEBster, 4/2/96.]

    "Less Than A Second - Using the Internet To Revolutionize
the Way You Work" is a new e-book for business people,
along the lines of "One Minute Manager."  It comes with
a hotlist of over 850 links to vendors, resources, and tools.  
<http://www.moms.com/hvl>.  [Guy Huntington <guy@cyberstore.ca>, 
inet-news, 3/20/96.  net-hap.]

					-- Ken


You know, we can't get out of life alive!
We can either die in the bleachers or die on the field.
We might as well come down on the field and go for it!
-- Les Brown.  [Dan Millman, "No Ordinary Moments," p. 81.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Date: Tue 21 May 96 01:40:02-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.35
To: ;@Charter_Computists
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 35
 IS                                               May 21, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Accounting.
 2>	Funding news.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Online directories.
 5>	Search sites.
 6>	Map retrieval.
_________________________________________________________________

The highest reward for a person's toil is not what
they get for it, but what they become by it.  -- John Ruskin.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Accounting:

    I spent much of last week learning Quicken 5, a helluva
good bookkeeping package for tracking personal finance
and cash-based businesses.  Highly recommended.  Quicken
can combine home and business accounting in a single database, 
with transfers between accounts treated differently from expenses.  
Or you can keep separate databases.  It's all "object oriented"
or "truth maintenance," so that changing an entry updates
all its ramifications.  (There's no audit trail other than
your periodic backups, so this isn't for employers who
don't trust their bookkeepers.)

    Setting up report templates taught me a lot about accounting, 
and the budgeting and retirement functions illuminated my 
financial situation.  My wife interprets the numbers differently, 
but at least we now have a common vocabulary.  (This is
a woman who set up our investments and who feeds her family well 
on $2.35/person/day, so I'm inclined to listen.)  I hear that 
Managing Your Money is even better for tracking investments,
but I'm satisfied with Quicken's fund portfolios -- with
simple graphs and ugly-but-flexible reports -- and mortgage,
college-planning, and retirement calculators.  The chief 
limitation I found is that tax-deferred and non-deferred savings 
can't be combined in a single retirement planning computation.  
(You have to do the analyses separately and then add the results 
on paper.  Perhaps Quicken 6 has fixed that.)  Next year
I'll try out the built-in tax reports.  Now that I've got
the categories set up, I can barely wait for the next ten years
of data.

    Now when I buy software or plan an expense I have to think 
about my goals:  Recreation?  Entertainment?  Education?  
Personal?  I need a similar discipline for budgeting my time
-- but entering all the "transactions" would leave no time
for anything else. :-(   (I hear that Fred Brooks kept several 
time clocks by his desk and would "punch" them every time
he switched activities -- even just to speak with a visitor.
He's the efficiency expert who noted that adding manpower
to a late software project makes it later.)


 2> Funding news:

    NSF deadlines: Robotics and Machine Intelligence, 9/1/96 
(target); Database and Expert Systems, 7/15/96 (target);
CISE Instrumentation, 8/5/96; Numeric, Symbolic, and Geometric 
Computation, 9/15/96 and 2/28/97; Programming Languages
and Compilers, 9/15/96; Software Engineering, 9/15/96;
Experiments in Distributed Design and Fabrication and
Rapid Prototyping Using Agile Networking, 8/15/96; Partnerships 
for Advanced Computational Infrastructure Program, 9/1/96; 
Computational Neuroscience, 7/10/96 (target); Human Cognition
and Perception, 7/15/96 (target); Linguistics, 7/15/96; Social 
Psychology, 7/15/96; Science and Technology Studies, 8/1/96; 
Decision, Risk, and Management Science, 8/15/96;
Small Business Innovation Research, 6/12/96; Recognition
Awards for the Integration of Research and Education, 7/5/96;
US-France Cooperative Science Program, 6/15/96; US-Germany 
Cooperative Research, 6/15/96; US-Japan Cooperative Research 
(including short-term visits and joint seminars), 6/15/96; 
Cooperative Activities with Africa, the Near East, and South Asia, 
9/1/96; Medium- and Long-Term Visits in Japan for US Researchers, 
9/1/96; and Cooperative Science Programs with New Zealand
and Australia, 9/15/96.  [NSF Bulletin, 6/96.]

    NSF's Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program
will award 250-300 Phase I grants of $75K for 6 months of effort.  
Winners can compete for 2-year Phase II awards of up to $300K.  
(Phase III requires 100% private-sector funding.)  For more info, 
see <http://www.nsf.gov/>, <http://www.cise.nsf.gov>, or download 
document NSF 96-67 from stis.nsf.gov.  The deadline is 6/12/96.  
[Craig Mattocks <mattocks@aoml.noaa.gov>, NewtNews, 4/30/96.
Bill Park.]  (Other government agencies have similar SBIR 
programs, more focused on applications in their own domain than
on basic research.  It's hard to propose basic research
with near-term commercial potential, so any half-decent proposal 
has an excellent chance of winning at NSF.)

    NSF and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
now offer a JSPS Postdoctoral Fellowship for Foreign Researchers, 
an opportunity to conduct research in Japan for twelve months.  
The fellowship will support all fields within the humanities, 
social sciences, natural sciences, engineering, and medicine.
The fellowship provides round-trip air fare for the Fellow only;
a monthly maintenance of Y270,000, a setting-in allowance
of Y100,000, and a monthly family allowance of Y50,000
if accompanied by dependents.  Applications are due at the JSPS
in May and September of each year.  NSF, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, 
Arlington, VA 22230; 703-306-1701, 703-306-0474 Fax.  JSPS,
Yamato Bldg, 5-3-1 Kojimachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 102, JAPAN;
+81-3-3263-1721, +81-3-3222-1086 or +81-3-3263-1673 Fax.
[L-Soft.  FISC, 5/20/96.]

    Financial support may be available for US graduate students
to participate in a US-Japan Graduate Student Forum on Robotics 
(Osaka, 11/96).  See <http://RVL4.ecn.purdue.edu/~kak/forum.html>.  
[Avi Kak <kak@mozo.cc.purdue.edu>, VISION-LIST, 5/18/96.]
(Phil Kahn's VISION-LIST Digest is now hosted by Teleos Research, 
a Palo Alto robotics/planning spin-off from SRI International.  
Contact vision-list-request@teleosresearch.com to subscribe,
or read comp.ai.vision.  Archives can be FTP'd from 
teleosresearch.com.)


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

CMU/Psychology: research programmer for the ACT-R
cognitive simulation.

URochester (NY): NIH postdoc in interdisciplinary
language studies, esp. computational linguistics and NLP.

UIowa (Iowa City): postdoc in information systems,
incl. AI, DB, decision support, networking, etc.

Sensar Inc. (Moorestown, NJ): MS/PhD vision scientists/developers 
for real-time embedded systems.

Empirical Media Corp. (Pittsburgh, PA): scientists and developers 
in HCI, ML, IR, ML, and agents for Internet information filtering.

UWestern Ontario: CS department chair.

City University (London): postdocs and GRAs in computational
logic research.

Middlesex U. (London):  BS/MS/PhD researchers for user
cognitive modeling in engineering design.

Building Research Establishment (Watford, UK):
3 BS/MS researchers in VR, robotics, 3D modeling,
simulation, DAI, KBS, NL, OOP, DBMS, CSCW, etc.,
for the construction industry.

The Queen's U. of Belfast (Ireland): PhD researcher for
a speech and language modeling system.

Ecole Normale Superieure (LIP; Lyon): 1-year CS professorship, 
esp. parallel systems or neural computing.

Uppsala University (Sweden): senior lecturer in IS,
constraint programming, or logic programming.

KTH Centre for Speech Technology (Stockholm): postdocs,
guest researchers, and senior researchers in speech understanding, 
NLP, or speech production.

Carmen Systems AB (Gothenburg, Sweden): algorithm developers
for airline crew optimization.

Linkoping Institute of Technology (Sweden): 3 researchers
in aerospace and manufacturing VR and HCI.

Queensland U. of Technology (Brisbane): postdoc
in knowledge discovery and heterogeneous databases.

KAIST (Korea): faculty in networks, theory, and NLP.


 4> Online directories:

    Over 3K links for 100 subjects are listed on
InfoService SUPER SITES, <http://www.basenet.net/~tci/sites.html>.  
[Cecelia Franco White <korteng@rt66.com>, BESTWEB, 4/4/96.]

    PowerLinks is a downloadable interactive index to 10K
WWW sites by 1K topics in 300 subject areas.  
<http://www.abacom.com/innomagi/>.  [<innomagi@abacom.com>,
net-hap, 5/1/96.]

    Online telephone, fax, and business directories from around 
the world can be found at <http://www.c2.net/~buttle/tel/>.  
[James Porteous <ah688@freenet.toronto.on.ca>, inet-news, 
4/26/96.]

    The Usenet Addresses Service from MIT, listing 4M authors
of Usenet NetNews messages, is now available via <http:
//usenet-addresses.mit.edu/>.  Access was previously restricted to 
an email server at <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>.  The new site also 
has links to over 2000 local email  directories, phone books,
and home page indexes.  [<mhpower@mit.edu>, net-hap, 4/25/96.]

    One of the best personal email address directories is the 
WhoWhere engine at <http://www.whowhere.com>.  You might enjoy 
stories in its "Wow" section about the family reunions and lost 
loves who were found.  [<ewellbur@cln.etc.bc.ca>, Network Nuggets, 
4/24/96.]  (Try looking up your own name.)

    Know any college alumni?  Then you may want to search
for them using <http://www.infophil.com/World/Alumni/>.
[Andrew Capule <jucdrewc@uclink4.berkeley.edu>, net-hap, 5/15/96.]

    UC Riverside's OKRA "net.citizen Directory Service"
lists 5.3M email addresses.  <http://okra.ucr.edu/okra/>.
[Brian Harvey <brian@cs.ucr.edu>, c.i.www.announce, 5/7/96.]

    Yahoo has added a People Search form, 
<http://www.yahoo.com/search/people/>, to access Database 
America's switchboard.com telephone directory and the four11.com 
email address database.  [Scout Report, 5/10/96.]

    Remember the Similarities Engine, which recommends music 
selections similar to your favorites?  David Whiteis wants
to try a new application, predicting web sites that you're
likely to enjoy.  To contribute to his database, connect to 
<http://www.ari.net/se/> and enter your favorite URLs.  
[<whiteisd@mtolympus.ari.net>, 4/30/96.  Bill Park.]


 5> Search sites:

    The Search Page is a categorized hotlist for finding people, 
Internet information, businesses, software, news, and jobs.
If that doesn't help, there are links to more than 25
search engines and meta-searchers.  <http://www.accesscom.com
/~ziegler/search.html>.  [J. Marcus Ziegler 
<ziegler@accesscom.com>, net-hap, 5/12/96.]

    The REX engine lets you search by keyword or subject matter.  
<http://www.skyline.net/REX/>.  [Thomas Kuegler Jr. 
<kuegler@skyline.net>, net-hap, 5/14/96.]

    Several people offers access to multiple search sites.  
<http://users.why.net/flam/search.html> links to at least
14 engines.  [Robert Samet <stamer@erosl.com>, BESTWEB, 4/11/96.]

    Search4it! offers 20 engines, at 
<http://members.aol.com/searchwww/>.  [<stellarltd@aol.com>,
net-hap, 5/9/96.]

    Search-It! offers more than 100 search engines.  
<http://users.aol.com/leapentrps/mosearch.htm>.  [net-hap, 
4/28/96.]

    Go Net-Wide at <http://www.shout.net/~whitney/html
/gopublic.html> has over 200 links to search engines, directories, 
and announcement sites.  [Whitney R. Proffitt <whitney@shout.net>, 
c.i.www.announce, 4/19/96.]

    Internet Sleuth claims to link to more than 1K
Internet search engines arranged by subject categories.  
<http://www.intbc.com/sleuth>.  [WEBster, 4/30/96.]

    Over 100 search engines "in clickable tables on one page" can 
be found at <http://pacific.discover.net/~dansyr/engines.html>.  
Or for the major engines "in their own forms on one page"
see <http://pacific.discover.net/~dansyr/formengs.html>.  
[<dansyr@discover.net>, net-hap, 5/13/96.]

    SuperSearch invokes all major Web search engines.  
<http://www.postnet.se/internet/SuperSearch.htm>.
[Lars Jansson <janzon@abc.se>, net-hap, 4/19/96.]

    Superseek accesses Alta Vista, Deja News, Excite, Inktomi,
New Riders WWW Yellow Pages, Lycos, Magellan, Yahoo,
Usenet archives, and the Information SuperLibrary Bookstore.  
<http://w3.superseek.com/superseek/>.  [Peter Scott 
<scottp@moondog.usask.ca>, inet-news, 4/25/96.]

    The BUSTER! search page uses minimal graphics so that
you get fast access to search engines via any browser.  
<http://members.aol.com/bustercom/search.htm>.  
[<rwneill@netdoor.com>, inet-news, 4/16/96.]

    I/spy Internet News Search is a meta-tool that can
search many databases on the Web simultaneously.  
<http://www.oneworld.net/ispy/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 4/11/96.]

    Where-Is-It is a collection of the best search engines
on the Internet.  You can search websites, usenet messages,
stock quotes, businesses, a dictionary, software, email
addresses, and the top 5% of all sites.  
<http://www.virtualynx.com/whereisit>.  [Charlo Barbosa 
<cbarbosa@virtualynx.com>, c.i.www.announce, 4/25/96.]

    Karen Campbell has compiled reviews
and comparisons of web search tools.  
<http://www.hamline.edu/library/links/comparisons.html>.  
[<kcampbel@seq.hamline.edu>, web4lib, 4/10/96.  net-hap.]


 6> Map retrieval:

    Yahoo has also added access to the Etak map database,
letting you display a zoomable map for an address, street, 
intersection, or city.  <http://maps.yahoo.com/yahoo/>.
[Scout Report, 5/10/96.]

    An interactive street guide to the continental US is 
<http://www.mapquest.com>.  There's also a travel planning 
service, and your maps can show local landmarks and businesses.  
[Tim Finin <finin@cs.umbc.edu>, 3/18/96.]
(You may seldom look up distant hotels, but do you often
need to find home-town street addresses?)

					-- Ken


'Nerd' is so negative; I prefer 'digitally enabled.'
[John F. Whitehead <jfw@cs.duke.edu>, 12/93.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 36
 IS                                               May 23, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Journal calls.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Software update alerts.
 5>	Entertainment.
_________________________________________________________________

The boomerang turns and keeps turning until it comes full circle, 
simply and elegantly.  Kind of makes you wish Aborigines
had designed Windows 95.  [Outside Magazine, 4/95.
Bill Prigge <priggew@rs6000.cmp.ilstu.edu>, MacWay, 3/24/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    Bill and Melinda Gates have a new daughter,
Jennifer Katherine.  [Newsweek, 5/13/96, p. 79.]

    Industry leader Stewart Alsop is leaving InfoWorld to become
a partner at New Enterprise Associates, a Baltimore venture 
capital firm.  [Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 5/16/96.]

    The Big Six accounting firms are now earning 20% of their 
revenue from technology consulting, vs. 3% for tax and audit 
revenue.  "Everybody wants to do enterprisewide transformation.  
It's a secure way to lock a client up and keep them billable."
At Coopers & Lybrand, technology consulting is 40% of revenue.  
Information technology companies such as AT&T, MCI, IBM,
and Oracle have also acquired or established strategic consulting 
units.  [Information Week, 4/22/96, p. 48.  NewtNews.]

    Apple has announced the first developer release (DR1)
of MkLinux, a Mach-based port of the Linux operating system.
This version works for NuBus Power Macs -- 6100, 7100, 8100 -- 
rather than the newer PCI machines.  Complete source can be 
purchased from Prime Time Freeware on CD ROM for $10, or you
can download from <http://www.ptf.com/ptf/products/MKLP/>
or <http://www.mklinux.apple.com/>.  [Geoff Duncan 
<geoff@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 5/20/96.]  (This is the third
flavor of Unix that Apple supports.  You'll need 400MB of
disk space just to install it, and probably 1GB for real use.
It's still got plenty of holes and bugs.)

    Metrowerks has released CodeWarrior 9, offering Mac support 
for Java and plug-ins.  The company also plans to support
ActiveX, Microsoft's Internet version of OLE (Object Linking
and Embedding).  <http://www.metrowerks.com/>.  [Geoff Duncan 
<geoff@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 5/20/96.]

    Skeptics are still asking "What's the use of Java?  If Java
is the answer, what's the question?"  You can make a really good 
web page without Java.  Who needs animated icons if they take
two minutes to load?  Often the glitz is just distracting.  
[DaveNet, 5/21/96.]  (I'm not sure that Java will survive,
but it does answer a chicken-egg problem.  Companies couldn't
sell well-presented "content" because nobody had the proprietary 
viewers and players.  They tried giving viewers away free
to build market share, but others were giving away competing 
standards.  With Java, viewers are downloaded whenever needed.  
Such applications tend to be limited by platform -- Windows 3.1, 
Windows 95, Mac -- but Java will let developers write for a single 
virtual platform.  Is that worth the speed penalty?  Maybe not.  
The market for free and commercial Netscape plug-ins appears 
strong even without Java.)

    Mark R. Anderson notes in his Strategic News Service 
newsletter that the anti-Microsoft coalition of Sun, SGI, Oracle, 
Apple, Novell, Netscape, etc., is strongly dependent upon Sun,
and Sun is dependent on Unix.  Unix has never been a commercial 
success, and WindowsNT is likely to displace it in the server 
arena.  It's no wonder that Sun and its cohorts are scrambling
to establish Java.  [<markrander@aol.com>, SNS, 5/19/96.]

    Mark Anderson also says that parallel processing is about to 
blossom again.  "It is generally true that today, if you were
to ask someone on Wall St. for money for a new massively parallel 
computer, you would be quietly led to the rear alley door, given
a tin cup, and not allowed back in for the rest of the Web year 
(i.e., three months)."  This is partly due to disappearance
of the defense sector.  However, the rise of graphics, intra-
and Internets, and multi-threaded operating systems is creating 
opportunities that don't depend on parallelizing serial 
algorithms.  WindowsNT is an SMP operating system that has been 
used on Sequent multiprocessors and recently on DEC clusters
for the AltaVista search engine.  Oracle, SGI, Intel, and others 
are also poised to cash in on parallel processing for multiple 
streams of video, audio, and other data, including virtual reality 
applications.  [SNS, 5/13/96.]

    MicroUnity Systems Engineering has a new microprocessor that 
uses parallel processing to move video, audio and data streams a 
thousand times faster than current chips.  It will be cheap enough 
for budget-priced cell phones.  [BW, 5/13/96, p. 78.  EDUPAGE.]

    Nintendo's new 64-bit video game player will out-perform 
personal computers, for about $250 in the US this fall.  The 
company says it has a strategy for multiplayer gaming on the 
Internet, but is not ready to reveal it yet.  [NYT, 5/16/96, C1.  
EDUPAGE.]


 2> Journal calls:

    Int. J. of Speech Technology.  Howard Nusbaum 
<hcn@ccp.uchicago.edu>, (312) 702-6468.  [comp.speech, 4/23/96.]

    The Information Society needs editors for special issues.
Rob Kling <kling@binky.ics.uci.edu>, (714) 824-5160,
(714) 824-8096 Fax, or 812-855-0078 Fax after 7/15/96.  
<http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kling/tis.html>.  [IRLIST Digest, 
5/13/96.]

    Fault-tolerant and reliable computing; IEEE Computer, 4/97.  
7/10/96; Nitin H. Vaidya <vaidya@cs.tamu.edu>, (409) 845-0512.  
[comp.os.research, 5/19/96.]

    Parallel data servers and applications; Parallel Computing.  
8/10/96; Richard R. Muntz <muntz@cs.ucla.edu>, (310) 825-3546, 
(310) UCLA-CSD Fax.  <http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~leana/pc>.  
[Leana Golubchik <leana@cs.columbia.edu>, dbworld, 5/15/96.]  
(Send abstracts to <pc96@cs.columbia.edu> by 7/10/96.)

    Robot learning; Robotics and Autonomous Systems.  8/1/96;
 Noel Sharkey <n.sharkey@dcs.shef.ac.uk>.  
<http:\www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/groups/nn/RASspecial.html>.  
[connectionists, 5/2/96.]

    Multirate systems, filter banks, wavelets, and applications; 
IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems II, 11/15/97.  12/15/96; 
Truong Nguyen <nguyen@ece.wisc.edu>, (608) 265-5739,
(608) 265-4623 Fax.  <http://saigon.ece.wisc.edu/
~waveweb/specialissue.html>.  [Yan Hui <huiy@cae.wisc.edu>, 
comp.compression.research, 5/5/96.]

    Constraint logic programming; The J. of Logic Programming, 
early 1998.  9/13/96; Peter Stuckey <pjs@mundook.cs.mu.oz.au>.  
[comp.constraints, 5/6/96.  David Joslin.]

    Knowledge discovery and its applications to business
decision making; Decision Support Systems Journal, 6/97.
5/31/96; Alex Tuzhilin <atuzhili@square1.stern.nyu.edu>,
212-998-0832, 212-995-4228 Fax.  [dbworld, 5/6/96.]

    Int. J. of Applied Software Technology.  Lu Si-Wei,
Dept. of CS, Memorial U. of Newfoundland, St. John's, 
Newfoundland, Canada  A1C 5S7.  Enquiries to <iapc@acm.org>.  
[comp.ai.genetics, 5/13/96.]

    Security in the World Wide Web (WWW); The J. of Computer 
Security, 5/97.  9/30/96; Pierangela Samarati <samarati
@dsi.unimi.it>, +39-2-55006227/272/257, +39-2-55006253 Fax.  
<http://www.dsi.unimi.it/Users/jcs-www>.  [dbworld, 5/17/96.]

    Complete agent learning in complex environments; Adaptive 
Behavior.  6/1/96; Maja Mataric <maja@garnet.cs.brandeis.edu>, 
(617) 736-2708, (617) 736-2741 Fax.  
<http://www.cs.brandeis.edu:80/~maja/abj-special-issue/>.  
[connectionists, 5/19/96.]

    CAD-based computer vision; Computer Vision and Image 
Understanding, 3/96.  10/1/96; Patrick J. Flynn 
<flynn@eecs.wsu.edu>.  <http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~flynn/cbv.html>.  
[Vision-List, 5/18/96.]

    Knowledge-based systems in cardiovascular medicine;
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 7/97.  8/1/96;
Lawrence E. Widman <widman@amplatz.uokhsc.edu>.
[dbworld, 4/29/96.]  (Abstracts were requested by 5/15/96.)

    Fuzzy set theory in  medicine; Artificial Intelligence
in Medicine, 6/97.  8/6/96; Friedrich Steimann <aim-fs
@med-informatik.uni-hildesheim.de> or <100607.704@compuserve.com>.  
<http://www.iao.fhg.de/Library/conferences/>.  
[news.announce.conferences, 5/21/96.]  (Abstracts are requested
by 5/31/96.)

    Decision support in the operating theatre and intensive care; 
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, 9/97.  9/1/96; Jim Hunter 
<jhunter@csd.abdn.ac.uk>, +44 (0)1224 272287, +44 (0)1224 273422 
Fax.  <http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/~jhunter/AIM_call.html>.  
[dbworld, 5/10/96.]  (Abstracts are requested by 6/15/96.)


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Langenscheidt's T1: METAL-based German-English machine translation 
for Windows.  ($60K last year -- for the Unix version -- to $200 
this year.)

ASA 12.24: adaptive simulated annealing package.

ThinksPro: new mirror for Windows NN demo.

Frontier 4.0: free Mac scripting tool and web authoring 
environment.

InfoTicker: Java agent software from Erik Mueller.

Linux Monthly CD-ROM: new series from Pacific HiTech.

Meta-Heuristics: book ed. by Osman and Kelly. (Discount.)

"Expert Systems: Catalog of Applications": book by John Durkin.

Applying Neural Networks, A Practical Guide: book by Swingler.

Rapid Application Generation of Business and Finance Software: 
book by Khebbal and Sharpington.

Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence: book
ed. by O'Hare and Jennings.

Communication and Cooperation in Agent Systems: book by Haddadi.


 4> Software update alerts:

    TechHelper is a guide to technical support resources
on the web, including vendor tech-support pages and
a searchable index of thousands of frequently asked questions.  
<http://www.techhelper.com>.  [<tsmith@cmp.com>, net-hap, 5/1/96.]

    The Net-Troubleshooting Listserver is a moderated
discussion list for network managers and administrators.
Send a "subscribe net-troubleshooting" message to 
<listserv@aggroup.com>.  <http://www.aggroup.com/mm/
listserv/README.Net-Troubleshooting.txt>.  [Chris Stuart 
<chris@aggroup.com>, 4/12/96.]

    Win95-Announce-L will announce Windows 95 bugs, updates, 
patches, and killer apps.  Send a "subscribe win95-announce-l" 
message to <majordomo@teleport.com>.  [Ted Timmons 
<tedder@teleport.com>, NEW-LIST, 4/20/96.]

    Versions is a for-pay search engine that looks for
new software announcements and info such as minimum system 
requirements, emailing you when it finds a match to your stored 
profile.  <http://www.versions.com/>  Another company offers
a free VersionCheck search engine looks for tech support
websites and phone numbers.  <http://www.versioncheck.com/>.  
[Network News, 3/24/96.]


 5> Entertainment:

   NETHUMOR identifies an Internet humor site of the day.
Send a "subscribe nethumor your-email-address" message
to <majordomo@bapp.com>, or visit the archive at 
<http://www.bapp.com/nethumor/>.  [Cheryl Rogers <funny@bapp.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 4/7/96.]

    The Comedy Magazine offers articles, reviews, interviews,
and jokes.  <http://www.earthchannel.com/comedymg/>.  
[<tom@earthchannel.com>, net-hap, 3/27/96.]

    Zone Interactive offers comic strips and other morning fun.  
<http://internet-plaza.net/zone/>.  [Hans Bjordahl <hans@xor.com>, 
net-hap, 4/3/96.]

    "Hey, Stuff This!" is a weekly Mac-biased
or anti-Windows cartoon from Peter Steinfeld.  
<http://www.macworks.com/stuffthis/stuffthis.html>.  
[<dndavis@voyager.net>, MacWay, 4/4/96.]

					-- Ken


It strikes me that America's reputation for materialism
is unfounded -- that is, if a materialist is a person
who thoroughly enjoys the physical world and loves material 
things. ... For our pleasures are not material pleasures
but _symbols_ of pleasure -- attractively packaged,
but inferior in content.  The explanation is simple:
most of our products are being made by people who do not
enjoy making them, whether as owners or workers.
Their aim in the enterprise is not the product but the money,
and therefore every trick is used to cut the cost of production 
and hoodwink the buyer, by coloring and packaging chicanery,
into the belief that the product is well and truly made. ...
But the whole scheme is a vicious circle, for when you have
made the money what will you buy with it?  Other pretentious
fakes made by other money-mad manufacturers.  -- Alan Watts,
"The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are,"
(Pantheon Books, NY, 1966).

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 37
 IS                                               May 28, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Applications news.
 3>	Information retrieval.
 4>	Library science.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Safe computing.
 7>	Now or never.
_________________________________________________________________

We are more than the sum of our knowledge;
we are the products of our imagination.
-- Ferdi Serim <ferdi_serim@monet.prs.k12.nj.us>, 5/96.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Somewhat delayed today, because of Memorial Day and my urge
to include the latest news.  Just pretend that Tuesday was Monday.  
(I'll bet CBS News would love to pull this trick occasionally. :-)

    We had a good crop of jobs this week for both our research 
career (CCJ) and applied (CAJ) jobs digests.  The full-text 
versions run to about 45KB each, and some of the applied jobs 
would have made it into CCJ if there had been fewer there.


 1> Funding news:

    NSF CISE/IRIS, NSA Office of Research and SIGINT Technology, 
CIA Office of R&D (ORD), and DARPA Information Technology Office 
(ITO) have announced a "STIMULATE" fundamental research initiative 
in speech, text, image, video, gesture, facial expression, 
handwriting, discourse and dialog phenomena, and other advanced 
technology for multimodal human communication.  This includes 
degraded or noisy signals, such as from OCR or cellular 
telephones.  "Further advances in understanding human 
communication may require taking advantage of the modality
at the same time, or may require the development of new approaches 
to understanding a single modality."  Multidisciplinary proposals 
are sought.  NSF will conduct the merit review, followed by
joint-agency panel evaluation.  9/1/96 deadline.  NSF 96-85,
from <ftp://stis.nsf.gov> or <pubs@nsf.gov>.  Gary W. Strong 
<gstrong@nsf.gov>, (703) 306-1928.  [IRLIST Digest, 5/20/96.]  
(NSF suggests visiting <http://www.nsf.gov> to look for work
in progress by potential collaborators.  Conference proceedings 
and online preprints (or queries to discussion groups)
are other ways of locating partners.  Multi-institutional 
proposals definitely have an advantage at NSF, as long as
they aren't just "umbrella" proposals for independent work.)

    A $1K Information Science Abstracts (ISA) Research Grant
is awarded each year by Documentation Abstracts, Inc. (DAI)
for library or information science graduate degree holders
working in the primary or secondary literature of information 
science.  Apply by 8/30/96.  Signe E. Larson 
<webster@well.sf.ca.us>, 503/368-6990.  [Judy Watson 
<jwatson@cas.org>, IRLIST Digest, 5/13/96.]

    CONACyT-List is an open discussion of the Mexican Council
for Science and Technology.  <http://www.eng.usf.edu/faq>.  
[<palomare@sunflash.eng.usf.edu>, net-hap, 5/10/96.]


 2> Applications news:

    Cyberware and the US Air Force have developed a body scanner 
for fitting military clothing and equipment.  It can measure
a person's size and shape in 15 seconds.  [WSJ, 4/25/96, A1.  
NewtNews.]

    Menswear designer Jhane Barnes uses a CAD program called 
Canvas for garment design and tailoring.  She also uses 
MandelMovie and FractaSketch to create symmetrical and fractal 
pattern designs, then WeaveMaker to control a loom than can
make a small fabric sample in about an hour.  [Wired, 6/96.  
<pr@wired.com>, net-hap, 5/11/96.]

    There are at least four competing technologies
for rapid physical prototyping, also known as "3D printing": 
photo-hardening of liquid polymer, sintering of sprayed metal 
powder, spraying melted wax or plastic, and lamination of
laser-cut plastic or paper sheets.  The San Diego Supercomputer 
Center uses the latter, forming any fist-sized prototype
in under 24 hours.  The prototype is similar to wood, and
can be sanded, sawed, bolted, nailed, varnished or painted.  
They're currently working on software that can detect likely
flaws (holes) in submitted designs prior to fabrication.  
[Chronicle of HE, 4/12/96, A25.  NewtNews, 4/30/96.  Bill Park.]

    John Koza is offering a PostScript paper on four problems
in cellular automata, molecular biology, and circuit design
for which genetic programming has performed at least as well
as humans.  He says that genetic techniques often give you
domain-independent automatic programming in which What You Want
Is What You Get (WYWIWYG, pronounced "wow-eee-wig").
<http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~koza/> (Research
Publications /Recent Papers).  [<koza@cs.stanford.edu>, 
connectionists, 5/25/96.]

    Jordan Pollack and his students have used simple hill-climbing 
in a 4K-parameter feed-forward network to develop a competitive 
backgammon evolution function.  An initial champion of all
zero weights was played against a slightly mutated challenger.
Results show co-evolution to be a powerful machine learning 
method.  A demo and an ALIFE 5 paper can be found on 
<www.demo.cs.brandeis.edu>.  [<pollack@cs.brandeis.edu>.
Sharon Block <sblock@logos.cc.brandeis.edu>, 5/6/96.]

    IBM's Deep Blue chess computer searches about 20B moves
in three minutes -- enough to check "every possible move
and countermove 12 sequences ahead and selected lines of attack
as much as 30 moves beyond that," but not enough to beat Kasparov.  
Chess masters "are doing some mysterious computation we can't 
figure out."  [Scientific American, 5/96, p. 16.  EDUPAGE.]

    If you have a game engine you'd like to license
for Internet use, contact Joshua Shaub <shaub@riddler.com>,
(415) 547-1410.  [Mario Palumbo <97mariop@gsb.stanford.edu>, 
colloq, 5/16/96.  Bill Park.]


 3> Information retrieval:

    HotBot is a new parallel-processor search engine from
HotWired and Inktomi.  They claim to have indexed every
publicly accessible word on the web, from about 50M pages.
Plus email lists and Usenet newsgroups.  The public beta is 
<http://www.hotbot.com/>.  [Bruno Giussani <giussani@hebdo.ch>, 
CARR-L, 5/20/96.]  (It works; I just used it to find tips
on removing acrylic paint stains.)

    CyberHound is a new Internet directory service from Gale 
Research, promising focused searches on selected "relevant sites" 
in 75 topic areas.  "Less is more."  Free until at least 8/1/96.  
<http://www.cyberhound.com>.  [Sara Burak <burak@gale.com>,
net-hap, 5/22/96.]

    Where-Is-It offers links to selected search engines
and databases, including news and stock quotes.  
<http://www.virtualynx.com/whereisit>.  [net-hap, 4/4/96.]

    Infoseek Personal is a free news-tracking service that 
"delivers a well-organized news page created just for you."  
<http://personal.infoseek.com>.  [Jennifer Wu <jen@infoseek.com>, 
net-hap, 5/22/96.]

    Apple will soon be offering a free CGI search engine
for Mac-based web servers, called "Apple e.g."  It uses
the Cyberdog/System_8 V-Twin search engine to do keyword
and similarity full-text searches with output sorted by relevance.  
A developer's kit for OEM applications will soon be available on 
<http://cybertech.apple.com/>, but won't include the full V-Twin 
engine.  [Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 5/20/96.]

    Starting in 6/95, the SIFT filtering service from
Stanford's Digital Library project will move to InReference, Inc. 
-- a start-up at the NASA Ames Technology Commercialization Center 
that will combine database technology from Oracle, search engines 
from Verity, servers from Sun, high-speed Internet access from 
Pacific Bell, and high-speed RAID storage from Storage Computer.  
InReference will make the SIFT functionality available through
its Reference.COM service, <http://www.reference.com/>, free
of charge.  This will bring a vast improvement in service,
as Reference.COM offers structured search (header fields, threads, 
list topic, etc.) of 1K mailing lists and over 13K newsgroups 
(with 6-month archive!).  Queries can be submitted (soon)
at <http://www.reference.com> or by email.  Costs for the service 
will be borne by the strategic partners and by advertising.  
<info@reference.com>.  [Tak Yan and Hector Garcia-Molina 
<hector@db.stanford.edu>, 5/16/96.]

    Hsinchun Chen and Bruce Schatz on the Illinois Digital
Library Initiative project have begun large-scale tests of 
document retrieval using clusters of co-occurring terms to 
disambiguate word senses.  Two- or three-word [canonicalized]
noun phrases within sentences are collected to form a graph of 
terms representing "all the concepts in a given subject domain."  
This "conceptual space" approach can expand a requested term to 
others that are likely to co-occur with it.  Another possibility 
is "vocabulary switching," where terms in one subject area are 
mapped to similar terms in another, allowing queries in a familiar 
vocabulary to turn up related papers in a different field.  
Experiments with 3M journal abstracts and 1K subject areas
are being done on supercomputers at NCSA.  Results may improve
as even larger collections are studied.  
<http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Apps/DLIS/DLI/X/Overview.html>.
[Alan Beck, WEBster, 4/30/96.]


 4> Library science:

    Cognito offers full-text searches of electronic
encyclopedias and over 600 magazines, by subscription.  
<http://www.cognito.com>.  [Network News, 12/16/95.]

    The UnCover database of 17K periodicals and over 8M articles 
can now be reached at UnCoverWeb, <http://www.carl.org/uncover>.  
[<Betty_Edwards@krinfo.com>, PACS-L, 4/25/96.  net-hap.]

    Need a publisher address or bibliographic info for
a journal or newsletter?  Readmore, Inc. has placed their
catalog of serial titles on the net, at <http://www.readmore.com>.  
[Marilyn Geller <mgeller@readmore.com>, PACS-L, 4/25/96.
net-hap.]

    The Catalog of Electronic Journals has over 1800 listings.  
<http://www.edoc.com/ejournal/>.  [Network News, 12/16/95.]

    ss-thesauri is for discussion of thesauri and classification 
in the social sciences, esp. in networked information services.  
Send a "join ss-thesauri your name" message to 
<mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<ss-thesauri-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, 
new-lists, 4/15/96.]

    Computing in the Humanities Working Papers are
refereed publications on computer-assisted research.  
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/epc/chwp/>.
[<epc-chwp@chass.utoronto.ca>, newjour, 4/17/96.]

    I don't know if it's been updated in a couple of years,
but you might look for "Online Information Hunting"
by Nahum Goldmann, one of our Canadian Computists.  He says
it's "the first book for the end-user" about researching info
over the net.   <nahum.goldmann@arraydev.com>.  [Suggested by
Bill Park, 5/28/96.]  (Writing a book is a great way to
establish your credentials as a consultant.  I wish I could
find the time...)


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

JPL (Pasadena): BS/MS/PhD researchers in AI, ML, pattern 
recognition, and image understanding for space applications.

Science and Technology Corp. (Pasadena): BS/MS AI
software engineer for planning and scheduling systems.

Intelligent Automation, Inc. (Rockville, MD): BS/MS control
or signal processing engineer for robotics.

Motorola (Chicago): computational linguist
for text-to-speech synthesis.

UHawaii/EE: 2-3 postdocs in AI for generating training scenarios.

ERIM (Ann Arbor, MI): BS/MS/PhD research engineers and scientists 
in statistical signal/image processing and sensor fusion.

Austin (TX) company: MS/PhD AI database/agent/KQML developer.

Intelligent Investments, Inc. (Greensboro, NC): US BS/MS/PhD 
applied researcher/PI in KBS, adaptive systems, autonomous agents, 
distributed processing, or image understanding.

Dalhousie U. (Nova Scotia): chair in Marketing Informatics.

UBirmingham/CS (UK): chair in applied CS or AI.

UAlberta/Psychology: asst. professor in cognitive neuroscience.

UCambridge (UK): postdoc RA computational linguist for parsing
and lexical knowledge extraction.

UHertfordshire (UK): lecturers in psychology,
including perception, human factors, social psychology,
and cognitive neuropsychology or computational modeling.

UDundee (Scotland): chair in applied computing,
e.g. health informatics or speech and signal processing for HCI.

Massey U. (New Zealand): 2-year postdoctoral fellowship
in NN-based image processing.

Chungbuk National U. (Korea): professor of AI.

UNAM (Mexico): two postdocs in [statistical or linguistic]
gene sequence analysis and computational biology.


 6> Safe computing:
  
     I'm not sure if this is only in the UK, but... If you got
a CD ROM with the 5/24/96 issue of MacUser, watch out for
an MBDF A virus in the QuickTime VR demo movie called
"Blah Blah Blah, It's QTVR" (in the AMXDigital QTVR Folder).
If you activate it, your system will appear to hang for a time.  
Don't "force quit" or reboot to interrupt the virus, as you
may lose your system folder.  [Michael Wehner 
<wehner@abalkin.wupper.de> and Richard P. Grant 
<rpgrant@molbiol.ox.ac.uk>, comp.sys.mac.games.flight-sim, 
5/25/96.]  (The free Disinfectant 3.6 program can deal with
this virus.  One source is <ftp://hipark.austin.isd.tenet.edu
/mac/anti-virals/Disinfectant>.  Or use a search engine.)

    If you're shutting down your computer in a sudden 
thunderstorm, do a "Save As" instead of just "Save."
Then unplug your power strip and modem phone line.
The Save As lets you recover if lightning hits during the save.  
[Dale Saukerson <sauke001@gold.tc.umn.edu>, Mac*Chat, 6/20/95.]  
(Also a good idea if you notice file/system corruption
of any kind.  My Mac once crashed after I noticed that
the clock was showing the wrong time.)

    For "Five Steps When Your Hard Drive Fails,"
see <http://www.cnet.com/Content/Features/Techno/Hdisk/>.  
[Digital Dispatch, 1/18/96.  Bill Park.]


 7> Now or never:

    A demo of the Microsoft FrontPage 1.1 design tool
for websites is available free through the end of 5/96.  
<http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/defaultB.htm>.
[Network News, 5/25/96.]

    If you're running Mac System 7.5 in the US, you can get
a free CD ROM upgrade to 7.5.3 by calling (800) 293-6617 x984
or (408) 987-7000 before the end of 5/96.  Tony Lindsey says
it's a solid implementation, "something Apple did right."
If you don't have a PowerMac, though, there's no pressing reason 
to upgrade from System 7.1.  [<tlindsey@cts.com>, Mac*Chat, 
5/10/96.]  (This is the same as System 7.5 Update 2.0,
which I believe you can download over the net.)

    You can find special deals and free trials on the net
by using any of the major search engines.  Last night I found
a limited-time trial offer of Graphics Tools! for the Mac,
via a "free jpeg viewer" search on Infoseek.  The standard price 
is more like $99.  (The company did ask for my name and address
so they could mail me add-on offers.)

					-- Ken


GOOD THINGS come to those who wait...
Because all the EXCELLENT STUFF is gone by then!
[Pete Batterton <70337.261@compuserve.com>, 2/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
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Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 38
 IS                                               May 30, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Website security.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Cognitive science and linguistics.
 5>	Electronic publishing.
_________________________________________________________________

The winds and waves are always on the side of
the ablest navigators.  -- Edward Gibbon.  [TFTD, 5/28/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    Half of major US corporations will have intranets running
by 6/96.  Traffic on the Internet itself is expected to increase 
fourfold between 11/96 and 5/97, due partly to audio-video 
applications, automated search agents, and a doubling of
the number of websites (to 95M).  [Information Week, 4/29/96,
p. 36.  Flash Information, 5/6/96.]

    The Intranet Journal -- intranet, not Internet --
offers articles on in-house business web building.  
<http://www.brill.com/intranet/>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 5/2/96.]

    URLs are a pain to type, but now there's a shortcut
for Netscape users accessing .com sites.  You don't have to
type "http://www.website.com"; just type "website"
and the browser will do the right thing.  [Dave Winer 
<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 5/14/96.]

  ("www.ill/smbdy.ple@se x.pl@in. th:s2me/in.Engl/sh?"  
[<capeem@nlis.net>, KIDSPHERE, 3/28/96.  net-hap.])

    Microsoft and Adobe Systems are working on a new OpenType 
universal font technology, intended as an Internet standard.  
[IBD, 5/9/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]

    The World Wide Web Consortium has released HTML 3.2,
an updated specification that supports HTML extensions
by Netscape and Microsoft.  It supports additional languages; 
toolbars, frames, and subsidiary windows; balloon help on links; 
the new PICS standard for website content rating; and payment 
information.  <http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/>.  [NetGuide Now.  
Network News, 5/11/96.]  (I started using HTML recently,
and I'm aghast at how primitive it is.  Nothing comparable
to SCRIBE or to word processor commands -- not even control
of margins or centering.  Why can't we have LaTeX capability 
instead?  I'm now sympathetic to Adobe's PDF approach,
if it can be made as available as HTML.)

    Asymetrix Corp. (Bellevue, WA) is introducing Super Cede VM,
a Java compiler that can generate 50-fold speed-up in Java 
programs.  [SJM, 5/28/96, 1E.]

    You can find out more about the Java-like Plan9
and Inferno operating systems on Lucent's Web page, 
<http://plan9.bell-labs.com/> or <http://plan9.att.com/>.
[Doug Fraser <dwfraser@lucent.com>, 5/16/96.]  (Also AMPL,
a modeling language for mathematical programming; netlib,
a repository of mathematical software; and the Unix
Seventh Edition manual.)

    Tim Lundeen has announced Web Crossing 1.2 for public or 
private Web discussion groups that operate like Usenet newsgroups 
or BBS forums.  Users need only browser software to participate.  
See Web Crossing in operation at Salon (with 10K Table Talk 
members), <http://eweb06.online.apple.com/webx>; The Chicago 
Tribune Online <http://tribapps.tribune.com/cgi-bin/WebX.cgi>;
or KidSource <http://www.kidsource.com/forums>.  Upgrades
are free; new licenses are $395 for Mac and Windows NT
or $695 for Unix.  <http://webx.lundeen.com/>, (510) 521-8228.  
[<tlundeen@lundeen.com>, 5/23/96.]  (Tim is one of our Computists, 
and was the principal author of Microsoft Works.)

    Dartmouth College has a new transmission method
for graphics and images that speeds up downloads by 2-4 times.  
FLIIT (fast lossy Internet image transmission) adds forward
error correction during compression so that lost fragments
can be reconstructed.  [Inside R&D, 5/1/96, p. 1.
Flash Information, 5/6/96.]

    AT&T's Bell Labs has a Watson ASAP speech processing system 
that operates at conversational speeds, recognizing up to
100 commands for controlling electronic systems.  One use is
to read email messages to you.  [WSJ, 4/10/96, B6.  EDUPAGE.]

    Plaintalk-Talk is a mailing list for developers and users
of Apple's Plaintalk technology.  Send a "subscribe" subject line 
to <plaintalk-talk-request@thelorax.res.cmu.edu>, or sign up
at <http://thelorax.res.cmu.edu/lists/listserver.cgi>.
[Joshua D. Baer <josh@starnine.com>, MacWay, 2/22/96.]


 2> Website security:

    Tony Lindsey discovered that traffic from web spiders --
on the order of 30K visits per month -- was costing him up to 
$40/month.  [<tlindsey@cts.com>, Mac*Chat, 5/17/96.]
(The bigger your archive, the more time the spiders will take.  
But one webmaster got even by posting a page with numerous links 
that do nothing except take five minutes to return.)

    Web spiders are getting so intrusive that they're even
picking up test pages and log files on developing sites.
To prevent this, add a robots.txt file containing
"User-agent: * <cr> Disallow: /dirname1 <cr> Disallow: ...".
This asks spiders not to catalog anything from /dirname1 on down.  
(Use just "/" to protect your root directory and everything below 
it.)  See <http://web.nexor.co.uk/mak/doc/robots/robots.html>
or <http://info.webcrawler.com/mak/projects/robots/norobots.html> 
for more info.  [<polk_a@hccs.cc.tx.us> and 
<Gordon_Oppenheimer@qm.airage.com>, Mac*Chat, 5/17/96.]

    Don't depend on this to keep anything secret, though;
you also need access protection on your private folders.
Snoops will check the robots.txt file to see what directories 
you'd rather not share.  One safety is to put an index.html file 
in each directory that just loops back to your home page, thus 
denying access to browsers.  [Marvin Carlberg <marvin@netcom.com>, 
Mac*Chat, 5/24/96.]

    If you're really into privacy:  The NRC's study of
national cryptography policy should be released on 5/30/96.
Check with <http://www2.nas.edu/cstbweb/220a.html>.
[Herb Lin, 202-334-2605.  Cyber Rights <cyber-rights@cpsr.org>, 
comp.org.cpsr.talk, 5/11/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

PHYSICA: computational mechanics simulation
using unstructured meshes.

FUZZLE 2.0 for Windows: fuzzy expert system development shell.

Beta testers needed for WizSoft data mining AI software.

DELVE: datasets for evaluation of machine learning techniques.

BitVectors: C code for manipulating bit arrays.

lq-text 1.14 beta 3: Unix text retrieval package.

Common Lisp HyperSpec: ANSI Common Lisp standard (X3.226-1994)
in HTML.

The Application of Neural Networks in the Forecasting
of Share Prices: book by Van Eyden.

Neuronal Adaptation Theory: neurobiology book by Carmesin.

Lateral Interactions in the Cortex: online HTML book
ed. by Sirosh, Miikkulainen, and Choe.

Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks: book by Ripley.
(Home page with text additions and searchable bibliography.)


 4> Cognitive science and linguistics:

    Rod Brooks' Cog project "has gotten the community
thinking about 'solving AI' again for the first time in
a couple decades."  Although still unfunded, work has been 
contributed by "an unusually interdisciplinary team for
an American AI project, ... some of the brightest people
in cognitive science."  For details, see 
<http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/cog>.  [Joanna Bryson 
<joannab@holyrood.ed.ac.uk>, comp.ai, 5/4/96.  David Joslin.]  
(Bryson offers comments about current practice in behavior-based 
AI, on <http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/joanna/joanna.html>.) 

   COGSCI is an unmoderated list about cognitive science.  
Participants may subscribe to subsets, including AI, linguistics, 
philosophy, connectionism, psychology, conferences, lectures,
and publications.  For instructions, send a "sub cogsci your name" 
message to <listserv@nic.surfnet.nl>.  [Michel Weenink 
<weenink@psych.kun.nl>, NEW-LIST, 5/5/96.]

    Figurative Language Network (FLN) serves scholars
of figurative language.  Disciplines include psychology, 
linguistics and computational linguistics, AI,
and literary studies.  Send a "join fln your name" message
to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<fln-request@mailbase.ac.uk>,
new-lists, 4/18/96.]

    Neuroscience-Net is the first online-only mainstream 
neuroscience journal.  <http://www.neuroscience.com>.  
[<jej@neuroscience.com>, net-hap, 5/8/96.]

    Psycresearch-online is a forum about using the Internet
for psychological data collection and research.  Send a
"subscribe psycresearch-online your-email-address" message
to <majordomo@premier.net>.  [Jeffrey N. Browndyke 
<cogito@premier.net>, sci.med.informatics, 4/13/96.]

    The gesture, sign language and technology list
(gesture-sign-lang-tech) covers gestural and sign language
human-machine interaction; automatic sensing and interpretation
of human movement; and aspects of gesture relating to technology 
development.  Send a "join gesture-sign-lang-tech your name" 
message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<gesture-sign-lang-
tech-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 5/14/96.]

    Scientific and technical documents of up to 20K Kanji
can be translated into rough English by an Internet service
from the Japan Information Center of Science and Technology 
(JICST).  <http://www-jmt.jicst.go.jp/index-E.html>.
A CD-ROM version of the software will be available this summer
for about $500.  [Japan Sci/Tech News, 3/96, p. 5.  Flash 
Information, 4/15/96.]

    Nihon-no-Kotowaza provides English translations of Japanese 
idioms and proverbs.  Translation of English idioms to Japanese
is under construction.  <http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~timd
/kotowaza/kotowaza.html>.  [Victor Story.  Robert Johnson 
<johnsorl@colorado.edu>, comp.org.cpsr.talk, 5/27/96.]

     Aquarius Directory of Translators and Interpreters is the 
most comprehensive database of translators and interpreters on 
WWW, organized by language, specialization, and location.  Free 
referrals.  <http://www.xs4all.nl/~jumanl/>.  [Luis Fierro 
<lfierro@eco.utexas.edu>.  Robert Johnson <johnsorl@colorado.edu>, 
comp.org.cpsr.talk, 5/27/96.]


 5> Electronic publishing:

    Richard Seltzer noted that the Gutenberg Project is becoming 
"an incredible treasure trove of less well-known 19th century 
American and English literature."  You can download largely 
forgotten works, long out of print, that give social context
to better-known classics.  Over 30 books are added each month.  
<http://jg.cso.uiuc.edu/pg_home.html> or FTP from 
uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu /pub/etext/gutenberg/etext95.  
[<seltzer@max.tiac.net>, Internet-on-a-Disk, 5/96.]
(Want a Horatio Alger story?  How about Baum's "Life and 
Adventures of Santa Claus" or "The Enchanted Island of Yew"?
Or maybe Edgar Rice Burroughs, Zane Grey, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 
Robert Louis Stevenson, or Joseph Conrad?)

    The computer book industry now has a discussion list
for authors, agents, publishers, editors, booksellers,
and everyone else.  Join the Computer Book Publishing List
with a "subscribe" message to <list@studiob.com>.  
[<studiob@studiob.com>, net-hap, 4/27/96.]

    MediaPub is a forum for publishing professionals
and media developers to discuss multimedia authoring
and publishing.  Send a "subscribe" message to
<mediapub-request@lists.mindspring.com>.  [Adam Rainoff 
<adam@afterhours.com>, NEW-LIST, 5/19/96.]

    IEEE Multimedia Newsletter covers R&D in digital
and interactive multimedia systems.  
<http://www.computer.org/tab/tcmm>.  [Liz W. Tompkins 
<liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 2/13/96.  newjour.]

    ForeQuest Publications Quarterly (FPQ) is an experimental 
newsletter about creating large-scale publications and digital 
libraries on WWW.  Papers will be reviewed.  A current article, 
"Advancing to the Web: A Primer," discusses pressure on
academic publishers to move to the web.  
<http://www.forequest.com/fq/quarterly/>.  [newjour, 4/29/96.]

    The Home Improvement Encyclopedia CD ROM uses
a Netscape Navigator browser interface, which works
beautifully for the CD ROM and also allows hotlinks to the Web.  
(A sample is at <http://www.btw.com>.)  The encyclopedia
even has animations, based on Macromedia's ShockWave plug-in.  
[Stephen H. Wildstrom, BW, 5/20/96, p. 17.]

    Web Review e-magazine has given up on subscription support, 
and is ceasing publication until it finds sponsors (or can
develop a shareware distribution mechanism of some sort.)
[Mike Allen, NYT.  SJM, 5/28/96, 1E.]

    Randy Cassingham will accept advertising in his This is True! 
mailings of weird news items, as an alternative to shutting down 
the freebie version.  (Book sales have been marginal, so he was 
thinking of concentrating his effort on newspaper syndication.)  
Over 1K readers commented -- 200 to 1 in favor of permitting 
advertising.  One grouch threatened to cancel his free 
subscription if Cassingham didn't keep the newsletter a purely 
volunteer effort -- but Cassingham can't do it all himself, and 
doesn't want to "exploit" volunteers.  If the work is worth doing, 
it's worth paying for.  [<arcie@netcom.com>, This is True!, 
5/12/96.]  (For his interesting tales of human stupidity, send a 
"subscribe this-is-true" message to <listserv@netcom.com>.)

    Stanford's Jeff Ulman recommends "impact, not publications" 
for tenure decisions.  Reviewers and gatekeepers are needed,
but "anyone can write anything, put it up on the Web
and have it read by far more people than would ever see it
in a journal."  Self-publication is now so important that
"if a journal or conference proceedings is not economically
viable without exclusive right to the contents, then it is
time to stop publishing paper copies."  Societies such as ACM 
should have area editors (and perhaps referees) creating
web pages pointing to the important documents in each field.  
Tenure decisions should be based on letters of reference
from people in a candidate's technical field.  (Ulman would
also like to measure impact through counts of web page hits,
but that could be manipulated under current technology.)
[CRN, 5/96, p. 2.]

    (I suspect that societies are not eager to pick winners
and losers in current research, although it's only a small step 
beyond publishing books of reprints or granting fellow status.
I hope it comes to pass, as one of many review mechanisms.
In any case, letters of reference could be augmented or replaced 
by spider-based checking of who is linking to your archive site
or citing your papers, with tenure committees able to look at 
individual comments.)

					-- Ken


Writers desire to be paid, authors desire recognition.
-- James L. Davis.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 39
 IS                                               June 4, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Web news.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	HTML vs. LaTeX.
 5>	Java agents.
_________________________________________________________________

What we do to the Web, we do to ourselves.  -- Chief Seattle.  
[Erik Goetze.  Russ Jones <rjones@pa.dec.com>,
Internet-on-a-Disk, 5/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    W. Daniel Hillis -- co-founder of Thinking Machines --
has been named the first Disney Fellow and head of the
Walt Disney Imagineering Unit.  He has previous helped them
with an Aladdin virtual reality ride.  Disney will name
several other high-technology fellows, possibly to work on 
Internet content.  [Paul Eng, BW, 5/27/96, p. 6.]

    Wired Ventures Inc. (San Francisco), publisher of HotWired
and Wired magazine, has filed for an initial public offering 
(IPO).  It hopes to sell 17% of the company (6.3M shares)
for about $77M.  [SJM, 5/31/96, 1C.]  The company is positioning 
itself as a New Age media company rather than a traditional 
publisher.  It will use the new funds to finance ventures
such as HotBot and a new technology book publishing unit, 
HardWired.  Wired has 325K subscribers and HotWired has
375K active users, but the company has yet to be profitable.  
[Linda Himelstein, BW, 6/10/96, p. 4.]

    New York City is the content capital of the US, and a home
for small startup companies that bridge the old and new
publishing realms.  Landlords there are beginning to offer
high-speed Internet connections.  [The Economist, 5/25/96, p. 90.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Silicon Graphics recently acquired Cray Research Inc.,
and will now sell to Sun Microsystems any assets that are
based on Sun technology.  The architecture of Cray computers
will henceforth be tied to SGI's MIPS microprocessors.
[IBD, 5/20/96, A18.  EDUPAGE.]  (And Sun will inherit
some of Cray's multiprocessing expertise.)


 2> Web news:

    Apple is now offering its free beta "Apple e.g." 
indexing/search engine, at <http://www.cybertech.apple.com>.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 6/3/96.]

    The Japanese Web is just starting to take off,
and Japanese search engines are proliferating.
Approximately 17 are available, including UTokyo's
Odin <http://kichijiro.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp/odin/>,
Hitachi's Hole-in-One <http://hole-in-one.com/>,
NTT's Titan <http://isserv.tas.ntt.jp/chisho/titan.html>,
and Keio University's Nippon Search Engine 
<http://www.juno.sfc.keio.ac.jp/NSE-NS/dive/>.
Some search only Japanese (.jp) domains, other pick up
foreign-based Japanese pages. Some can translate search terms
and allow for romanized Japanese.  [Victor Story.  Robert Johnson 
<johnsorl@colorado.edu>, comp.org.cpsr.talk, 5/27/96.]

    FLIPPER searches the Web for German documents, with
more than 100K now indexed.  <http://flp.cs.tu-berlin.de/flipper>.  
[Victor Story.  Robert Johnson <johnsorl@colorado.edu>, 
comp.org.cpsr.talk, 5/27/96.]

    Inktomi ("ink-to-me") Inc., the company providing
the Inktomi and HotBot Web indexes, was founded in 1/96
by UC Berkeley assistant Eric Brewer (now CTO) and his
student Paul Gauthier (VP of R&D).  They have been joined by
other scientists from Berkeley, MIT, and Caltech, plus alumni
from Microsoft, Sybase, Digital, PacBell Internet Services,
and Silicon Graphics.  The name is from a Plains Indians'
spider that brought culture to the people.  Inktomi plans to
do more than just index every page of the Web.  They will
also track user information for individualized advertising,
and will offer parallel supercomputing technology for other 
network applications.  Their workstation-based solutions
are scalable, so growth can be accommodated simply by adding 
processors.  If processors go down, the others are able to
carry on.  HotBot, was co-developed with HotWired Ventures LLC,
a subsidiary of Wired Ventures.  Other industry partners
are being sought.  <http://www.inktomi.com>.  [WEBster, 5/28/96.]  
(HotBot user profiles are currently limited to preference settings 
for searches and displays.  Other applications could store
more about you.)

    Yahoo! has accepted Proctor & Gamble's demand that charges for 
P&G ads will be based on ad clicks rather than number of viewer 
exposures.  Only about 1% to 2% of Web ads are actually followed.  
Lycos had turned P&G down, not wanting to "put a stake
in the heart of the industry."  [BW, 6/3/96, p. 44.  EDUPAGE.]  
(What's the problem?  Just charge enough for each click to get
the same total revenue.)


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Informix Corp. (Menlo Park, Oakland, and Portland): 10-20 R&D 
computer scientists in DBMS, data mining, visualization, 4GLs, 
distributed DBs, and novel applications.

NEC Research Institute (Princeton, NJ): summer student
in time-series prediction for disk file organization.

MIT/Brain and CogSci (Cambridge, MA): postdoc
in computational models of cortical development.

CMU and UPittsburgh: postdoc in computational models
of cortical function.

Bell Labs: top database researchers.

Boeing/Research & Technology (Seattle):
advanced database technologist. 

Center for Adaptive Systems Applications (Los Alamos):
postdocs in NN and pattern recognition for financial modeling.

Austin (TX) company: DSP algorithm developer for
signal processing, speech recognition, pattern recognition,
image classification, etc.

UBirmingham (UK): 2-year postdoc in radial basis function 
networks.

The Entropic Cambridge Research Laboratory (ECRL; UK):
engineers and scientists for speech processing and recognition.

USouthampton (UK): electronic document specialist
to develop preprint archives.

UDublin Trinity College/CS (UK): lecturer
in computational linguistics.


 4> HTML vs. LaTeX:

    I criticized HTML in TCC 6.38.  Two readers defended
its platform-independent semantic tagging, which was designed
as a basic structure markup for hypertext.  Sorry, I don't
buy the argument.  HTML is barely adequate for simple,
linear text articles with embedded emphasis (italics,
boldface, color, or nothing at all, depending on the browser
or display device), itemized lists, code samples,
quotation blocks, horizontal rules, and embedded images
(with limited image/text placement options).  Recent extensions 
permit centering, tables, very primitive math expressions,
and sometimes left/right justification -- for Netscape browsers, 
anyway -- but there are no tags for footnotes, citations, 
captions, page numbers, index entries, bibliographic formatting, 
tables of contents, etc.  And no extension mechanism for adding 
message header fields or semantic tags for other documents.

    Margins, paragraph indentations, and other white space
are left up to the browser.  Even leaving a blank space,
like "      ", is difficult, since browsers usually collapse
or ignore blanks -- even in code samples, if the entire string
is blank.  (One layout trick is to embed a transparent image the 
size of the white space you want.)  SCRIBE did it better
15 years ago.  LaTeX is better yet, if you've got the compute 
power to optimize line and page breaking.  Adding hyperlinks
is no big deal (and has been done, at LANL).
    
    It's beside the point that HTML wasn't designed
for page layout, or that SGML was.  HTML is currently
the language of the Web, and it is inadequate for the task.
It doesn't have the semantic tags for complex documents,
as Philip Greenspun, <philg@mit.edu>, points out in his
"Shame and War" paper, <http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu
/philg/research/shame-and-war-revisited.html>.  HTML lacks
even good defaults for plain text documents, forcing the addition 
of <p> tags and &<lt;/&gt;/&amp; escapes.  (HTML is thus
difficult to clip and mail to a friend in an email message.  
Besides, for formatted display you need the document's <body> 
tags.)  Why can't a blank line signal a paragraph break, by 
default?
    
    Worst of all, HTML doesn't have the formatting commands
needed for advertising layout.  The Web is developing as
a graphic medium, pumped up by millions in advertising dollars.  
Since HTML can't make a slick presentation, webmasters are
using bitmapped images to do their layout.  That defeats
the idea of semantic tagging.  It also makes pages slow
to download, so authors have to include alternative text
for people who turn off image downloading.  Sometimes even 
different alternatives for differing browsers.  It's a mess.
It's brain-damaged.
    
    Adobe might have take taken over with PostScript by now,
had it been willing to make the language an open standard.
Ditto for Microsoft Word formatting.  Instead, the powers
that be are adding word-processor style sheets to HTML --
adopted 3/5/96 -- but without adding new semantic tags.
Style sheets use parameters added the the few tags that HTML has, 
with the parameters ignored by older browsers.  Not elegant
or particularly expressive, but at least one will be able to 
control simple white space.  See Philip Greenspun's paper for an 
ambitious plan to add additional semantic fields to Internet 
message traffic, in the manner of the Information Lens project.
    
    There is a tradeoff between expressiveness and simplicity,
of course, but that can be handled with layout tools such as
Adobe PageMill or even Quark XPress.  Amost any formatting system 
could be used, if Netscape agreed to support it.  LaTeX would be 
especially good, since it is a customizable display language
with layer on layer of macros for translating semantic tags
to intelligent display choices for any printer or screen.
I think the time is right for someone to implement
LaTeX-plus-hyperlinks in Java -- it's the obvious next step.  
Maybe Sun, Netscape, NCSA, or CERN would fund the effort.
I'll bet one could even find venture capital.

    Of course, you'd have to change the links to such pages
from http: to ltx:, java:, or whatever.  Maybe sun:, or named 
after some other sponsor -- the advertising value could be worth 
billions!  Come to think of it, the Java-based standard should be 
tagged tcc:, since that's where it was proposed.  :-)


 5> Java agents:

    There are now 20 books on Java in print, with 70 more
in production.  60 companies are courting 5,500 attendees
at Sun's Java One developer conference in San Francisco this week.  
Oracle's $500 network computer (NC) will only run Java software, 
and Java is being built into cellular phones.  JavaSoft's CEO
says "It should have been called WD-40, because parts of
the computer industry had rusted shut."  Regardless of
the language's technical merits, it's "totally buzzword 
compliant."  [Mike Langberg, SJM, 5/30/96, 1C.]

    What's the point of Java?  Dave Winer says it's about
remote procedure calls.  The user deals with a highly responsive 
interface machine, but big computing jobs are forked off
over the net to specialized servers.  With Java, the application 
pieces don't even have to be collected until needed.  "Java will 
be a software distribution system with a very short pipe."
Each piece can be updated at will, by people who understand
and care about that piece.  "No single developer gets to do
it all. The resources available to users include people. ... 
Nirvana is perfect blessedness achieved by the extinction of 
individual existence.  It's groupware! ... People communicating 
and getting along with each other; happily making each other 
richer, and more powerful.  What more could you want from
a computer?  Hey -- what more could you want from life!"  
[<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 5/28/96.]

    Laurens Dorsey notes that any agent-based system
can implement remote procedure calls.  Although Sun hopes
for Java to fill that role, Java applets are not currently
able to open sockets or manage remote file I/O.  [<lmd@tiac.net>, 
5/28/96.]

    Sun has announced JavaOS, an operating system that can
run on pagers, telephones and other communications devices.
Also JavaBeans, allowing applets to be built from reusable parts.  
[WSJ, 5/30/96, A3.  EDUPAGE.]

    For updates on agent technology, get the AgentNews
webletter.  The issue for 5/96 can be found on 
<http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentnews/96/06/>.  From the
agentnews site you can subscribe to ASCII or HTML versions,
or to monthly URL announcements.  For other agent info,
see <http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents>.  [Timothy Finin 
<finin@cs.umbc.edu>, comp.ai.alife, 5/15/96.]

					-- Ken


No Man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece
of the Continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away
by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, 
as well as if a Manor of thy friends' or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; 
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.  -- John Donne  (1542-1631).
[Marian Kemp <mikpfs@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca>, 6/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Subject: TCC 6.40
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 40
 IS                                               June 6, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Groupware.
 2>	Multimedia and VR.
 3>	Internet commerce.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Job services.
 6>	Education.
_________________________________________________________________

Both science and art map experience to symbols.
Science symbols reveal the structure of the world.
Art symbols add structure to the world.  -- Bart Kosko.
[Louis Leon <louis@cia.cc.emory.edu>, 5/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Groupware:

    White Pine Reflector for Windows NT and Windows 95
is a server for Enhanced CU-SeeMe group videoconferencing.
Users can conduct multiple chat group or audiovisual and shared 
"white board" discussions via TCP/IP networks.  Cybercasts
to large audiences are also supported.  White Pine Software, Inc. 
(Nashua, NH), <http://www.wpine.com>.  [WEBster, 5/28/96.]
(But can you spin off for lunch with your conference buddies?  
What about that great hotel food?  Without workshop and
conference trips, this could be the end of science as we know it. 
:-)

    NCSA has developed a free "Habanero" Web application
to support real-time collaborative group activities.
[WSJ, 5/30/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]

    A recent report forecasts only two years before TCP/IP 
intranets take over Lotus Notes' groupware market.  Notes 
currently has about 18M users.  Lotus is moving to TCP/IP,
but competing Internet applications include Radnet's WebShare
and Action Technologies' Action Workflow Metro.  INPUT
(Mountain View) predicts 58M groupware uses by the end of 2000, 
with Notes accounting for less than half (or about $350M
in sales).  <http://www.input.com>.  [WEBster, 5/28/96.]


 2> Multimedia and VR:

    Want to attend conferences as a virtual-reality avatar?
The first conference on "virtual humans" will start 6/19/96 in 
Anaheim, CA.  Experimentation with avatars has been carried out
in just a few Internet 3D communities, but "the market is 
maturing, and multimillion dollar contract awards are
no longer a rarity."  Silicon Graphics's InfiniteReality
computer is a step toward VR on the desktop within three years.
"Virtual shopping malls will have sales 'bots; historical 
reconstructions will have guides, sometimes taking the form
of contemporary inhabitants; virtual fashion shows will have 
mannequins; virtual learning environments will have virtual 
teachers, demonstrators, and difficult customers [for training
sales people]."

    At the conference, Marc Raibert -- former MIT roboticist,
and founder of Boston Dynamics -- will show robotic control 
applied to physics-based simulations to create realistic animation 
from minimal specifications.  Jeff Kleiser's  Synthespian Studios 
creates human animations (e.g., Judge Dredd) from 3D full body 
scans.  Kristinn Thorisson of MIT's Media Lab will discuss 
gesture, facial expressions, eye tracking, speech recognition,
and other multimodal dialog components.  And CMU's Michael Mauldin 
will show Julia, a MUD "robot user" able to construct intelligent 
conversations from an encyclopedic database of response 
components.  Julia can employing humor, sarcasm, politeness, 
impatience, and diplomacy, as appropriate.

    USC's Paul Rosenbloom will demonstrate an Intelligent Forces 
simulation, which since 1994 has generated teams of automated 
pilots for operational military exercises.  The pilots' behavior 
in simulated battlefields is nearly indistinguishable from
that of humans, and includes learning while pursuing individual 
and collective goals -- all based on the Soar cognitive model.  
[Robert Jacobson <bob@worldesign.com>, sci.virtual-worlds, 
6/1/96.]

    Autodesk has a Biped plug-in module for its 3D Studio Max
(for Windows NT) that simulates bipedal walking or dancing --
for humans or for parsnips with legs.  An animator specifies
only where the feet and hands are to be; Biped solves for
the rest, including head bob.  A Physique module then fleshes out 
the stick figures with wire frames, adding detail such as
biceps bulge.  Silicon Graphics is reducing the price of its 
competing Kinemation program.  [Peter Coy, BW, 4/29/96, p. 93.]

    Industrial Light and Magic did such a good job of turning
Sean Connery into a dragon -- sardonic, charming, introspective, 
melancholy -- that Newsweek's Jack Kroll prefers Dragonheart
to the real Connery in The Rock.  [Newsweek, 6/10/96, p. 91.]

    Hollywood dialogue may not be up to the standards of
its graphics.  In Mission Impossible, the hacker demands
a "thinking machine laptop" with a "686-based artificial 
intelligence RISC chip."  They give him an Apple PowerBook 520c.  
[Deepak Kumar <dkumar@blackcat.brynmawr.edu>, 6/4/96.]


 3> Internet commerce:

    First Monday is a new, reviewed, electronic journal
about the Internet, from Munksgaard International Publishers.  
<http://www.firstmonday.dk>.  [RRE.  Robert Morse 
<morse@northcoast.com>, inet-news, 5/7/96.]

    Networker Magazine is an online Internet-technology
news magazine from USC, in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format.  
<http://www.usc.edu/UCS/userserv/Networker/>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 5/5/96.]

    The Information Society (TIS), a refereed quarterly
since 1981, is offering selected articles on 
<http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kling/tis.html>.  [newjour, 5/9/96.]

    The death of Web Review earned nearly a full page in Newsweek.  
'Zine editor Dale Dougherty says they were getting $10K/month
in advertising, but spending $50K/month to put out the magazine.  
They've lost $500K since last July.  Marketing to potential 
advertisers actually cost more than they were getting back
in ad revenues.  (Potential customers would rather put up
their own websites.)  Web Review may survive if readers are 
willing to contribute, PBS-style, but so far there are few
willing to pay $19.95/year.  Dougherty sees hope for
deep-pockets publishers such as the Wall Street Journal,
and also for newsletters, home pages, and "digital amateur hour," 
but medium-sized publishers may vanish.  Then the Internet
will revert to a reference service and means of communication 
(like phone and fax) rather than an interesting destination
with quality content.  [Michael Meyer, Newsweek, 6/10/96, p. 55.]

    Online bookstores also have their problems.  Amazon.Com, Inc. 
(Seattle) offers nearly every book in print, but has yet to make
a profit.  One problem is that over 200 bookstores are now on
the net.  Amazon.Com has only been online for a year, though,
and has already moved twice to larger warehouses.  Founder
Jeffrey Bezos, formerly a "very well compensated Wall Street 
type," got in because the Web was growing by 2,300%/year.
He expects to be making profits in another four years.
[David Gates, Newsweek, 6/10/96, p. 86.]  (You want
a guaranteed income _before_ you quit your current job?  
Entrepreneurship seldom works that way -- but Bezos
is probably drawing a good salary now.)


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

NNMODEL 1.22: NN-based multivariable statistical modeling program.

PowerLisp 2.0: Mac Lisp with CLOS.

Franz and Harlequin free Lisp versions.

Free Poplog AI development environment for Linux.

Music produced by a genetic algorithm, from Niall Hepburn.

MsqlPerl: Perl version update.

Geometry 1.00 LaTeX2e package for page layout.

WebCamToo v1.1d0: free Mac web app to broadcast live video.

dumpb: Java byte code disassembler.

stooop 2.2.2: Simple Tcl-Only Object Oriented Programming.

scwoop 1.0: Simple Composite Widget Object Oriented Package.

Tcl-BlobX: binary large object cryptography with Tcl.

Agent: prototype information agent system.

BASIC Stamp: single-board BASIC processor for robotics
and instrumentation.

Integration of Natural Language and Vision Processing:
AI Review Journal book series ed. by Mc Kevitt.

"Power Programming with Mathematica: The Kernel":
programming book by Wagner.


 5> Job services:

    Canada has over 7K unfilled software jobs, nearly
half of them in the Ottawa area.  Competition for talent
is pushing up wages by 10%/year, with graduate degrees
and experience in multimedia and Internet design sometimes worth 
close to $100K/year.  [Ottawa Citizen, 5/18/96, B1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Need a programmer?  The Resume Robot wanders webspace
looking for resumes, then extracts contact info and skill words 
(C++, PERL, SYBASE, UNIX, DB2, OS/2, etc.).  Job seekers
can also submit their resumes directly.  The database is stored
at <http://www.onramp.net/proquest/index.html>.  [James Stakelum 
<proquest@onramp.net>.  Annamaria Profit, 4/20/96.]

    Career Magazine offers a jobs database, resume bank,
executive directory, career forum, and articles.  
<http://www.careermag.com/>.  [<gary@careermag.com>,
net-hap, 3/25/96.]

    First Steps In The Hunt is a comprehensive resource center
and daily tip page for Internet job hunters.  
<http://www.interbiznet.com/capabilities/>.  [WEBster, 4/16/96.]

    CareerWEB is another job/resume/resource site.  
<http://www.cweb.com>.  [<info@cweb.com>, net-hap, 4/3/96.]

   Jobline is a meeting site for Internet/web consultants
and the organizations who need their services.  Job ads can be 
submitted by email to <jobline@just4u.com>, or interactively
at <http://just4u.com/webconsultants>.  To receive postings, send 
a "subscribe jobline" message to <jobline-request@just4u.com>.  
[Al Silverberg <alsil@just4u.com>, NEW-LIST, 5/5/96.]

    The FISC list of [mostly European] opportunities
for cognitive scientists and linguists has moved to 
<http://www.univ-lille3.fr/www/fisc/default.html>.
[Damien Raczy <raczy@univ-lille3.fr>, FISC, 4/25/96.]


 6> Education:

    PBS will be showing "Triumph of the Nerds" soon,
possibly on 6/12/96 (Wednesday) at 8-11 pm EDT.  It's based on 
"Robert X. Cringeley's" irreverent history of the personal 
computer industry.  [WSJ, 5/30/96.  Michael F. Weisbard 
<mweisbard@indyvax.iupui.edu>, SEML, 5/31/96.  Bill Park.]

    The Mad Scientist Network is a Web-based "ask a scientist" 
forum.  <http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/YSP/MAD.SCI/MAD.SCI.html>,
or <http://pharmdec.wustl.edu/YSP/MAD.SCI/wu/rec.html>
to volunteer as a Mad Scientist.  [Scout Report, 3/29/96.]

    Spectrum Virtual University is offering several free
8-week classes and focus groups this summer, including
"Exploring the Internet," "Creative Writing, and "Writing
for Publication."  Enroll by 6/14/96 at <http://horizons.org>
or contact <register@horizons.org>.  [<spectrum@horizons.org>, 
CampusNews, 5/14/96.]  (The Internet class drew 40K students
from 128 countries last year.  One can build a heck of a lot of 
good will -- and a valuable address list -- from such an effort.)

    Make the Link Workshop is an 8-week email workshop
for WWW beginners, for $20.  <http://www.crl.com/~gorgon/>.  
[Thomas P. Copley <tcopley@arlington.com>, net-hap, 5/9/96.]
  
    You can enter the Diversity University MOO (DU MOO)
from Lynx or Netscape Navigator at <http://moo.du.org:8888/>, 
"connect guest".   Other educational MOOs include
Athemoo <moo.hawaii.edu 9999>,
Athena <athena.edu 8888>,
BBIO <bioinfo.weizmann.ac.il 8888>,
College <patty.bvu.edu 7777>,
Daed <daedalus.com 7777>,
Div <moo.du.org 8888>,
Don <donut.stark.k12.oh.us 7777>,
EMOO <tecfasun1.unige.ch 4242>,
Eon <mcmuse.mc.maricopa.edu 8888>,
Eric <io.syr.edu 1234>,
Fred <avatar.phys-plant.utoledo.edu 5555>,
Global <general.uoguelph.ca 8888>,
Globalvillage <info.ic.gc.ca 7777>,
GNA <gnalab.uva.nl 7777>,
Johns <rdz.stjohns.edu 8888>,
Library <ipl.sils.umich.edu 8888>,
Lingua <lingua.utdallas.edu 8888>,
Media <purple-crayon.media.mit.edu 8888>,
Meridian <sky.bellcore.com 7777>,
Schmooze <arthur.rutgers.edu 8888>,
School <schoolnet.carlton.ca 8888>,
Tassar <vassun.vassar.edu 7777,
Tecf  <tecfamoo.unige.ch 7777>,
Tech <whyanext.com 8888>, and
Theatre <moo.hawaii.edu 9999>.

    For non-English speakers, try Canada <info.ic.gc.ca 8888>, 
French <logos.daedalus.com 8888>, Portuguese <moo.di.uminho.pt 
7777>, Portuguese2 <moo.cpdee.ufmg.br 7777>, or Spanish 
<europa.syr.edu 8888>.  [Jeff "Mr.C" Cooper <jeffc@rop.edu>, 
neteach-l, 4/2/96.]

    Nigel Ward has created a WWW page on
"How to be a Professor: Some Good Books."
<http://www.sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~nigel/professing.html>.
For assistant professors, he recommends "Advice to
a Young Scientist," "A Ph.D. is Not Enough!,"
"The Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery,"
"The Compleat Academic," and "The Structure of
Scientific Revolutions."  Good books on teaching include 
"Mastering the Techniques of Teaching," "Improving your
Classroom Teaching," and "53 Interesting things to do
in your Seminars and Tutorials."  Graduate student advisors
should read "How to be a Terrible Research Advisor,"
"Becoming a Manager," and Robert Kreitner's "Management."
Books on the weird world of academia include "The University:
An owner's manual," "Lucky Jim," "Moo," and "Changing Places."  
Other suggestions are solicited.  [<nigel@sanpo.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp>, 
sci.research.careers, 4/30/96.]

					-- Ken


As, like, class valedictorian, you know, I was trying to think, 
you know, in my head, like, what to say and junk... and,
you know, like it's really weird but twelve years of public 
education -- I mean, Whoa!... anyway, that's what I think
in my head, you know?  -- From cartoonist Doug Marlette.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 41
 IS                                              June 11, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Politics and policy.
 3>	Industry news.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Neural networks.
 6>	Projects and opportunities.
_________________________________________________________________

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
-- Jonathan Swift.  [AWAD, 6/6/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    US scientists wishing to work with counterparts in Belarus, 
Kazakstan, Moldova, or Romania should check with the Office of 
Central Europe and Eurasia (F02014), National Research Council, 
2101 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20418; <ocee@nas.edu>, 
202-334-2644, 202-334-2614 Fax.  Proposals for NSF support
are due 9/2/96, and may be for $12K-$15K.  [grants, 6/6/96.]

    NSF and The Whitaker Foundation have announced a third-round 
grant competition for multidisciplinary research and educational 
projects to develop cost-reducing health care technologies.  
8/5/96 deadline.  <http://bme.www.ecn.purdue.edu/bme/whitaker
/cost.html> or <http://engweb.eng.nsf.gov/hdevey/nsf9699.htm>,
or FTP file nsf9699.txt from stis.nsf.gov.  [Peter Katona.
Frank Blanchard <fb@whitaker.org>, sci.bio.technology, 5/20/96.]

    NIH has a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA)
for biomedical and behavioral scientists working with educators, 
media experts, community leaders, and others to improve K-12 and 
public understanding of the health sciences.  Applications are
due each 10/1.  Robert F. Hendrickson <roberth@ep.ncrr.nih.gov>, 
(301) 435-0760.  [L-Soft, 6/9/96.  FISC.]

    Funding News is an information source for public/private 
community grant seekers (in education, housing, AIDS, drug abuse, 
etc.).  Features include grant announcements (RFAs and RFPs, 
including Federal Register listings and state resources),
contact names, foundation profiles, agency funding priorities, 
community coalition success stories, workshops, and technical 
assistance.  <gopher://gopher.igc.apc.org:7003/11/mny>.
Bob Curley, <hn3078@handsnet.org> or <info@jointogether.org>.  
[<aedelman@dept.english.upenn.edu>, newjour, 6/3/96.]
(You can download federal grant application kits,
but the editors advise getting an agency's printed kit
before filing the final forms.)

    NIST is building a national electronic repository of solid 
models and mechanical designs, for distributed and network-centric 
computing in CAD.  It will provide benchmark designs and process 
plans in a variety of file formats (STEP AP 203, ACIS .sat, DXF, 
IGES, DGN, Parasolid .xmt, etc.) to help develop automated process 
planning technologies.  Over 500 parts are currently on file,
or about 500MB of information.  <http://elib.cme.nist.gov/msid
/pptb/repository.html>.  Contact William C. Regli 
<regli@cme.nist.gov> about contributing data, or for his
list of network-centric CAD websites.  [DAI-List, 6/4/95.]


 2> Politics and policy:

    NSF has released the National Science Board's biennial
Science and Engineering Indicators, a compendium of
R&D statistics (including patent counts) and comparison
with other countries.  This "fat" report is accessible at 
<http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind96/start.htm>.  It says that
the US remains the leading R&D investor -- 44% of world 
investment, of which 60% is from industry -- but that figure
is dropping as the US reduces spending and Asian nations catch up.  
US technology trade surpluses are sizable but declining,
and patent grants are increasing by only 1% per year.
25% of US industrial R&D is non-manufacturing, such as software
or communications, up from 5% in the early 1980s.  (It's still 
under 5% for the Japanese.)  In absolute dollars, US nondefense 
R&D was comparable to the total for France, Germany, Japan,
and the UK; but Japan and Germany invest a higher percentage
of their GDPs.  One trend is for US R&D to follow overseas 
production, with US R&D investment abroad increasing three times 
faster than domestic R&D.  US science and engineering jobs
in industry are increasing (esp. in computers and math),
although total employment in S&E occupations has declined.
S&E doctorates earn 23% more than MS or professional degrees,
and 43% more than BS degrees.  23% of the S&E PhDs in the US
are foreign-born, with 1/3 having received their PhDs abroad.  
Other countries also award many S&E doctoral degrees to foreign 
students: 40% in Japan; 1/3 in France.  [Jon Putnam 
<putnam@econ.yale.edu>, sci.econ.research, 6/6/96.]

    All reports issued by the Congressional Office of
Technology Assessment during its 23 years can now be accessed
in electronic form -- over 220K pages covering wireless 
communication to virtual reality.  The Web version is at 
<http://www.wws.princeton.edu/~ota/>.  An award-winning
5-volume CD ROM set can be ordered from GPO (202-512-1800;
#052-003-01457-2; $23) or from NTIS (703-487-4650; #PB96-501903; 
$50).  [David Jensen <jensen@cs.umass.edu>, 5/30/96.]

    The Office of Technology Assessment was killed last year,
but some of its alumni have founded a new Institute for Technology 
Analysis (Washington, DC).  ITA will analyze technology issues
and policy options through workshops at which all vested interests 
are represented, but will solicit contracts from industry, 
professional societies, and all federal agencies.  [Science News, 
5/25/96, p. 331.]  (Maybe Congress was right to privatize
policy evaluation.  A congressman is like a football,
pushed toward opposing goals by powerful factions.
How informed does a football need to be?)


 3> Industry news:

    Dell's new Optiplex GXpro desktop computers can drive
two 200MHz PentiumPro processors in an SMP parallel processing 
mode under Windows NT Workstation software.  $8,100 (or $2,899 
with just one processor).  There is now "a large new top-end 
landscape to explore."  [Mark R. Anderson <markrander@aol.com>, 
SNS, 5/28/96.]  (Some of the Mac clones also have 2-4 processors, 
but I don't know if they can be programmed in SMP fashion.)

    Texas Instruments says it will have a 125M-transistor
TImeline chip next year, "20 times more powerful than
a Pentium Pro" for its intended applications.  Then again,
so might everyone else.  [St. Petersburg Times, 6/3/96, p. 8.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Internet World tested several Internet phone programs,
and found two favorites:  VocalTec's IPhone is simple to use; 
Quarterdeck Corp.'s WebTalk has even better sound quality.  
CoolTalk is also good.  [IW, 6/96, p. 40.  Flash Information, 
5/13/96.]  (But I hear that even the best aren't very good yet.  
More bandwidth is needed.)

    AT&T Paradyne's GlobeSpan modems will soon permit 200 times 
the speed of 28.8kbps modems, over existing twisted pair
phone lines and switching equipment.  GlobeSpan Rate Adaptive 
Digital Subscriber Line (RADSL) technology can accommodate 
multiple simultaneous calls, video phone calls, or movies.
The modems should be available in 1997.  [Tampa Tribune, 6/4/96, 
B&F1.  EDUPAGE.]  (Wow!  That's unbelievable.  It sounds like
the death of ISDN.)

    Novell's new Powerline solves cabling problems
by sending printer or PC data over house electric wiring.  
[Forbes, 11/20/95, p. 196.  INNOVATION.  Chuck Morefield.]

    Three online services are offering data archiving,
letting you back up your PC files or website over the net.
(One use is to back up your laptop work while you're traveling.)  
Connected Corp. (Framingham, MA) offers DataSafe at $14.95/month 
for 50MB, or will produce archival CD ROMs for $24.95.
Macs will be supported by the end of summer.  Data transfers
are DES encrypted.  <http://www.connected.com>.  McAffee 
Associates (Santa Clara) offers Personal Vault at $10/month
for 10MB, with unlimited access.  <http://www.mcafee.com>.  
Surefind (Pittsburgh) uses dial-in or the CompuServe network
to serve users worldwide.  $9.95/month for 5MB/week into 100MB 
storage.  <http://www.surefindpgh.com>.  [WEBster, 5/28/96.]  
(Datamation estimates that 50% of companies who lose their data 
never recover and 80% are out of business within two years.)

    Strategic analyst Mark R. Anderson says that the $500
network computer (NC) being introduced by Oracle and others
is going to follow a "telephone model."  I think he means that
the NC will be pretty much just a picture phone with a keyboard, 
competing with smart display-based cellular phones, message pads, 
and other communication devices.  [<markrander@aol.com>, SNS, 
5/21/96.]  (It's too expensive and complex for a phone,
and computers with far more power will be available at similar 
prices.  But I still think it could catch on for schools
and for home use, where someone "out there on the net"
would handle all the storage problems, software upgrades,
and other maintenance.  The browser or chat room is the computer, 
for these users, and that's simpler than even the Mac OS.)

    "In the meantime, the best $500 network computer
is still a used Mac."  [Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>,
TidBITS, 5/27/96.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Associative Computing, Inc. (San Jose): MS/PhD AI/NLP/ML
research engineer experienced in IR, KR, computational 
linguistics, and NN.

Rockwell Automation-Allen Bradley/ATG (Cleveland): DAI/ML PhD
for R&D in distributed/agent-based control architectures.

GE Corporate R&D/Information Technology Laboratory (Schenectady): 
MS/PhD scientists in computational linguistics, NLP, and IR.

EBSCO Publishing (Ipswich, MA): AI engineer for automatic
text summarization, categorization, and indexing.

UPortsmouth/Information Science (UK): two sr. lecturers in AI, 
HCI, parallel processing, SE, and ITS.

UGeneva/CS: postdoctoral fellow in mobile software agents.

FAW Research Institute for Applied Knowledge Processing
(Ulm, Germany): environmental information systems research.

Latrobe University (Bendigo, Australia): postdoc research 
fellowship in Chinese computing.

Nanyang Technological U. (Singapore): 10 teaching positions
in linguistics and computational linguistics.

Yokohama National U. (Japan): professor of cognitive science
and theoretical linguistics.


 5> Neural networks:

    CONNECTIONS is a new quarterly WWW newsletter from the IEEE 
Neural Networks Council, for book reviews and research trends
as well as committee reports and conference listings.
The current issue includes "A Virtual Reality Interface
to Complex Neural Network Software Simulations" by T.P. Caudell.  
<http://www.ieee.org/nnc>.  [Payman Arabshahi 
<payman@ebs330.eb.uah.edu>, connectionists, 5/24/96.  Bill Park.]

    The Society for Neural Networks (SNN) has updated
its article archive, <http://www.mbfys.kun.nl/snn/publ/>.
[Pierre van de Laar <pierre@mbfys.kun.nl>, comp.ai, 4/18/96.
Ken Barker.]

    Ron Sun's review of the IJCAI'95 workshop
on Hybrid Connectionist-Symbolic Models can be read
as <ftp://cs.ua.edu/pub/tech-reports/sun.ai-magazine.ps>.
It will appear later this year in AI Magazine.
[<rsun@cs.ua.edu>, Neuron Digest, 5/9/96.]

    If your neural network must produce continuous outputs
from continuous inputs, try separating the input signal
into linear and nonlinear parts.  Then use a shortcut connection 
direct to a linear output unit, passing only the nonlinear part
of the signal to your nonlinear hidden units.  That saves them 
from having to [badly] approximate a linear transmission line.  
Often you will need only a few hidden units.  [Scott E. Fahlman 
<sef+@cs.cmu.edu>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 5/28/96.]


 6> Projects and opportunities:

    Grady Ward is giving away his "Moby" lexicon, hyphenator, 
part-of-speech identifier, pronunciator, million-entry thesaurus, 
comprehensive rhyming dictionary, Scrabble list, and other 
language resources.  He's been licensing them for $100-$600
for the past six years, but has decided to put them irrevocably 
into the public domain as a public service.  Sites willing to
host the free 30MB compressed downloads are needed.  During
June (or so), you can get the files on a DOS-formatted ZIP disk
for $25 from Grady Ward <grady@netcom.com>, 3449 Martha Court, 
Arcata, CA 95521; +1 707 826 7715.  [<grady@northcoast.com>, 
comp.ai, 5/21/96.  David Joslin.] 

    Victor Johnston and Craig Caldwell (NMSU) have been
using genetic algorithms to search through a space of human
face images (e.g., for criminal suspect identification
or for identifying the characteristics of beauty).
They'd like webpage visitors to help "evolve" certain faces.  
<http://www-psych.nmsu.edu/~vic/faceprints/>.  
[<vic@crl.nmsu.edu>, 5/22/96.  Bill Park.]

    Companies needing summer help from college students
can post a free classified job ad at <http://www.JobSource.com>, 
through 7/15/96.  JobSource is an online job list and resume-
posting service for entry-level job seekers.  Jason Fischel 
<jobsource@marketsource.com>, 609-655-8995.  [Educom UPDATE, 
6/1/96.]

    Need a keynote speaker?  LectureAgent at 
<http://www.expertspace.com/experts.html> lists
top conference speakers and answers questions on selecting
and hiring them.  [<lectureagent@expertspace.com>, net-hap, 
5/29/96.]

    Barry Shell is looking for good speakers to invite to the 
Simon Fraser University Centre For Systems Science (Vancouver), 
all expenses paid.  He needs to know who "gives good lecture,"
and suggests that Computists might find it interesting to
discuss or tabulate crowd pleasers in CS and related fields.  
[<shell@sfu.ca>, 6/1/96.]  (Sounds like something worth doing
only if it's done well.  Is there a Computist willing to put
some effort into collecting recommendations?  I'd be happy
to offer a web page for a condensed listing, or a link
or advertising for other info files.)

					-- Ken


It's kind of fun to do the impossible.  -- Walt Disney.
[John Rehling <rehling@nickel.ucs.indiana.edu>, 6/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Subject: TCC 6.42
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 42
 IS                                              June 13, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Politics and policy.
 2>	Electronic publishing and commerce.
 3>	Updates.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Scientific computing.
 6>	Obituary -- Amos Tversky.
_________________________________________________________________

Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world
through the eyes of a child  -- Ron Wild.  [AWAD, 5/8/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    My birthday is coming up on the 16th, and I'm going to
take the week off to catch up.  Look for TCC 6.43 on 6/25/96.


 1> Politics and policy:

    NSF has won an appeal to maintain confidentiality
of its proposal reviewers.  For details, FTP pr9627.txt
from stis.nsf.gov.  [grants, 6/3/96.]

    The National Software Council (NSC) Forum in St. Louis
this June 25-26 will debate whether software engineers should
be certified and licensed.  <http://www.nscusa.org/forum96>.
[NSC <forum@nsausa.org>, dbworld, 6/10/96.]

    IEEE wants to span the gap between copyright and
patent protection by offering "useful article registration"
for three years.  Registration would be simple, inexpensive,
and without a required search for prior art.  [Computer
Industry Daily, 6/7/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    Hmmm, I don't think so:  CyberCash founder Dan Lynch says
that developing countries will soon experience a power shift
to those who use the net for communication and commerce.
Since Internet technology spreads from the universities,
this is an opportunity for the intelligentsia to assume power.  
[Internet World, 7/96, p. 75.  EDUPAGE.]


 2> Electronic publishing and commerce:

    Hybrids of CD ROM with online services should grow 
exponentially through the turn of the century.  Some 720 hybrids 
are expected in 1996; 6,500 in 2000.  (That would be 9% of all
CD-ROM titles.)  [NewMedia, 5/13/96, p. 31.  Flash Information.]

    The US advertising market is about $125B/year.  Online 
advertising was only $80M in '95, $343M in '96, and maybe $5B
in 2000.  Advertisers consider current web advertising to be
non-intrusive (and some would say ineffectual).  Some consumers 
disagree, and object to paying for downloads of ads, graphics,
and blinking or scrolling text.  A company called PrivNet
hopes to sell software to block such material.  
<http://www.privnet.com>.  [LA Times, 6/10/96, B6.  EDUPAGE.]

    eShop Inc. (San Mateo), a 4-year-old company helping set up 
WWW storefronts, has been purchased by Microsoft.  [WSJ, 6/11/96, 
B6.  EDUPAGE.]  (Selling your business is often a good business 
move.)

    Seignorage is the amount of profit that a government makes
by converting silver bullion into coins.  Electronic commerce 
threatens that revenue, which amounted to about $20B in the US in 
1994.  [Mark Bernkopf, Electronic Cash and Monetary Policy, 1996.  
AWAD, 6/5/96.]  (Couldn't they just print more digital money?)

    On the other hand, government profits when business profits.  
Californians who want help selling software internationally
should contact the State of California Trade & Commerce Agency, 
which has eight overseas offices.  Katie Vorreiter 
<kvorreiter@sanjose.baytrade.org>, San Jose Export Resource 
Center, (408) 277-3506 (or 2506?), 408-282-1005 Fax.  See also
the BAYTRADE information system at <http://tradeport.org>.  
[Charlie Pfefferkorn <73771.1176@compuserve.com>, 5/14/96.
Bill Park.]


 3> Updates:

    Ann Robinson notes that her NewJour compilation has grown
to over 2,000 scholarly e-journals and discussion lists.
However, about 100 sites die each month, and tracking those that 
change servers is a continuing problem.  [<ann.okerson@yale.edu>, 
5/29/96.]

    How does one cite Internet resources?  Nine online
citation guides can be reached from <http://www.pitsco.com
/pitsco/cite.html>.  [Christine Chiu <chiu@pitsco.com>,
ednet, 3/28/96.]

    Resume Robot appears to be off the Web now, if it was
ever operative.  Mail to the developer hasn't been answered.

    Users of the Simtel repository for DOS/Windows shareware
may have heard that the hosts are splitting.  Coast to Coast 
Telecommunications has locked up the current archive,
but Simtel.Net will continue from Walnut Creek's 
<ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet> and other sites.
A list of mirrors may be retrieved with a "get mirrors.info" 
message to <listserv@simtel.net>.  Shareware authors should
write to <upl-info@simtel.net> for upload instructions.  
Announcements will still be circulated to 
comp.archives.msdos.announce, which has about 90K readers.  
<http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/>.  [Keith Petersen 
<w8sdz@simtel.net>, c.a.msdos.d, 6/5/96.]

    Dave Winer's DaveNet website has moved
to <http://www.scripting.com/davenet/>.  Check 
<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/> for Dave's UserLand
Frontier 4.0 scripting environment for Mac, plus lots of
related material that gets upgraded so fast "it's like watching
an ant farm."  Frontier 4.0 provides extensive hooks into
WebSTAR, FileMaker, Netscape, Internet Explorer, and other 
applications, plus BBEdit 4.0 for HTML processing and authoring.  
CGI developers even get native, multithreaded performance.
And Java tools are being implemented.  Getting started
with Frontier isn't easy, but there are a User's Guide
and tutorials that you can download from 
<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/docs.html>.
If you need help, try the Frontier-Talk mailing list
at <http://www.scripting.com/frontier/mailinglists.html>.  
[<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 5/21/96.  Also GD, TidBITS, 5/13/96.]  
(Frontier was formerly Aretha, plus elements of Clay Basket.
It's becoming an application environment for webmasters.)

    I said on Tuesday that Grady Ward would ship you
a DOS-format ZIP disk of his Moby linguistic resources
for just $25.  Well, he tells me that he'll also do Mac-format
ZIP disks.  Check with him if you need other formats.
I'd rather pay for the media than download for four hours
at 28.8kbps, and I hope Grady makes a little "shareware" money 
from his contribution to the public domain.  <grady@netcom.com>, 
3449 Martha Court, Arcata, CA 95521; +1 707 826 7715.

    I saw the PBS broadcast of Robert Cringeley's
Triumph of the Nerds last night.  Three hours is a lot
to sit through.  Those who did got to see a history of
the PC industry in terms of personalities, corporate cultures,
and market opportunities.  Apple was in the end portrayed
as a failed shell still ruled by John Sculley, destroyer of
all that Steve Jobs had worked to create.  NeXT and Be weren't 
mentioned.  Xerox, IBM, and Microsoft all got their lumps,
though, and the overall presentation was fair.  I think
this program will help to draw young people into computing.
(It helps that most of the pioneers are still around, soaking
in their hot tubs and sailing their yachts.  Or at least
still programming, if that's what they love.  And it was neat that 
my daughter got to see acquaintances shopping at Weird Stuff.)

    I mentioned advanced architectures in TCC 6.41,
so Bill Park filled me in on some chip statistics.
Processor power is related to the number of transistors
per unit area -- or per total chip area -- which goes up as
the inverse square of the line width.  Sandia has achieved
a FET gate width of 0.13 micrometers with extreme ultraviolet 
lithography (as documented in Semiconductor International,
6/96, p. 28).  IBM has demonstrated a .07 micron gate,
but its production systems are still limited to .44 microns.  
Digital is using .50-micron technology.  Intel's Pentium
is at .35 microns, but the company is moving to .25.
The Pentium Pro is currently at .28.  (These stats are from
Peter Rohman <mrpeter@inetnebr.com> in misc.invest.stocks.)  
Although we are not at the limits of lithography, large
increases in transistor count are difficult to achieve.
Sometimes marketing hype gets ahead of reality.  
[<park@netcom.com>, 6/11/96.]

    Early software didn't have a lot of development cost,
but later versions (such as Windows 3.0) have been incredibly 
expensive.  The difficulty of updating legacy code was
a major factor in the decline of Lotus 1-2-3, Ashton-Tate, 
Borland, Wordperfect, etc.  At some point it's better to start 
over than to update ever more complex legacy code.  We may see 
this company killer at work again when DVDs provide a jump
in media capacity over CD ROMs.  [Mark Anderson 
<markrander@aol.com>, SNS, 5/19/96.]  (Or perhaps it will
be easier to fill DVDs than to prune content down to what
a CD will hold.) 


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

"Learning From Data: Artificial Intelligence and Statistics V": 
book ed. by Fisher and Lenz.

PowerLisp 2.01: Lisp update for PowerMacs.

CLisp: CLOS for Linux.

neuroinf: demo of a connected-handwriting recognition product.

jmedia: beta Java class library for multimedia applets.

MtScript: MULTEXT multilingual text editor.

textutils 1.17: GNU text-processing utilities (cat cksum
comm csplit cut expand fmt fold head join md5sum nl od paste
pr sort split sum tac tail tr unexpand uniq wc).

awk-based minimal literate programming system from Phil Bewig.

OnLine Auction: software to conduct commercial auctions.

JLib: portable graphics and gaming library for DOS/Linux/X.

Escape Velocity 1.0.1: arcade role-playing space game for Mac.


 5> Scientific computing:

    Robot soccer?  Michael Huhns sees it as a great domain
for DAI and multiagent research.  Someone else does too, with
a Robot World Cup (RoboCup) initiative to spur developments
in autonomous agents, multiagent collaboration, strategy 
acquisition, real-time reasoning, robotics, and sensor fusion.  
Unlike the AAAI robot competition, RoboCup is a task for
a team of fast-moving robots in a dynamic environment.
It's also planned for software only, at present.  
<http://www.robocup.org/RoboCup.html>.  [<huhns@sc.edu>,
DAI-List, 6/4/96.]

    Since its loss to Garry Kasparov, IBM's Deep Blue
chess computer has a new job.  It will be providing
weather forecasts to Atlanta's Summer Olympics participants.  
[Information Week, 5/27/96, p. 12.  EDUPAGE.]

    The MacSciTech Association (Worcester, MA) for scientists
and engineers now has a website, at <http://www.macscitech.org/>.  
Members get SciTech Journal (archived on the website)
and discounts on CPUs, hardware, software, videos,
and publications.  Dozens of public-domain software packages
can be downloaded from <ftp://ftp.ari.net/pub/MacSciTech>.
You'll also find technical notes and images for applications
in biology, chemistry, physics, EE, space sciences, test and 
measurement, CAD, molecular modeling, finite element analysis, 
visualization, data acquisition, etc.  A technical experts panel 
is available to answer questions.  Or you can tap The Consultants' 
Network (TCN) for almost any kind of technical problem, service, 
design, or documentation.  [<ShariLee@aol.com>, MacWay, 2/23/96.]

    Researchers and developers of the CRISP geotechnical finite 
element program can now interact on the CRISP-USERS forum.  Send a 
"join crisp-users your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  
[<crisp-users-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 5/14/96.]

    UGeorgia's Complex Carbohydrate Research Center is using
a neural network to find carbohydrate spectra most closely 
matching  that of an unknown compound.  Just in case
you need to search combined gas chromatography-electron impact 
mass spectra (GC-EIMS) of partially methylated alditol
acetates (PMAAs), or 500-MHz NMR spectra of xyloglucan subunit 
oligosaccharides.  CarbNet, <http://www.ccrc.uga.edu/>.
[Faramarz Valafar <faramarz@mond1.ccrc.uga.edu>, Neuron Digest, 
5/28/96.  Bill Park.]

    The UK's National Museum of Science & Industry is
looking for applications of neural networks in medicine.
Contact Jo Quinton-Tulloch <j.qtulloch@nmsi.ac.uk>.
[Mark Bishop <j.m.bishop@reading.ac.uk>, Neuron Digest, 6/11/96.]

    You can try an expert system for whale identification
on <http://vvv.com/ai/demos/whale.html>.  [Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, 4/17/96.]

    AI and Statistics List has moved to a new machine.  Send a 
"subscribe ai-stats" message to <majordomo@watstat.uwaterloo.ca>.  
Back issues can be found on the Society for AI and Statistics
home page, <http://cswww.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~dfisher/ai-stats
/society.html>.  [Robyn Landers <rblander@math.uwaterloo.ca>,
ai-stats, 5/13/96.]


 6> Obituary -- Amos Tversky:

    Stanford psychologist Amos Tverksy died 6/2/96
of metastatic melanoma at age 59.  He was famous for
his studies of non-Bayesian reasoning in humans.
Tversky won a 5-year McArthur Foundation fellowship in 1984.  
[Palo Alto Weekly, 6/12/96, p. 20.]  (Statisticians are still 
trying to find alternative explanations for Tversky's examples.  
"Failure of Bayesian reasoning" is an explanation only if
you begin with Bayesian models of the world, as in context-free
urn-drawing experiments.  It's a shame that Tversky
won't be able to develop his theories further.)

					-- Ken


Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.
If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them
down people's throats.  -- Howard Aiken.
[Wayne Geiser <wayne_geiser@avid.com>, 2/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 43
 IS                                              June 25, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Privacy and security.
 3>	Travel tips.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Journal calls.
 6>	Internet directories.
 7>	Free speech.
 8>	Internet addiction.
_________________________________________________________________

Satire dramatizes better than any other use of it,
the inherent contradiction of free speech -- that it
functions best when what is being said is at its most outrageous.  
-- Tony Hendra, "Going Too Far."  [EFF Quotes Collection, 9/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    NIST's FY 96 Advanced Technology Program (ATP) is now open, 
with proposals due 9/18/96.  Proposals from any area of technology 
may compete for $20M-$25M in first-year, cost-shared funding.  
Proposers Conferences are scheduled for NYC (7/12),
Chicago (7/15), SF (7/16), Denver (7/17), Dallas (7/18), and
Charlotte (7/19).  See <http://www.atp.nist.gov> or ask for the 
ATP Proposal Preparation Kit from <atp@nist.gov>, (800) ATP-FUND, 
(301) 926-9524 Fax.  [CBD, 5/31/96.  NIST UPDATE, 6/10/96.]

    NSF has updated its brochure on Research Planning Grants
and Career Advancement Awards for Women Scientists and Engineers 
(NSF 93-130).  FTP file nsf93130.txt from stis.nsf.gov, or send
a "get nsf93130.txt" message to <stisserve@nsf.gov>.
For a printed copy, contact <pubs@nsf.gov>.  [grants, 6/10/96.]

    NSF's Database and Expert Systems Program has extended
its proposal deadline to 9/16/96 for winter funding.
The target date for summer funding is 2/15/97.  
<http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iris/DBEShome.html>.
[Barbara Blaustein <bblauste@nsf.gov>, dbworld, 6/13/96.]

    NSF is seeking a director for its Div. of Advanced
Scientific Computing.  FTP file vep965.txt from stis.nsf.gov.  
[grants, 6/10/96.]  (Or see our CCJ digest today.)


 2> Privacy and security:

    The average corporation with 1K PCs lost nearly $300K
in productivity due to computer viruses in 1994.  Roughly 1%
of corporate computers are currently infected, and four new 
viruses appear each day.  [IBM.  Flash Information, 5/27/96.]

    NTT (Japan) has introduced a two-chip encryption set
much stronger than the Clinton administration wants to allow.
RSA Data Security is negotiating to sell it in the US.
[NYT, 6/4/96, C1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Can webmasters capture your email address when you visit,
even if you don't give it to them?  Sometimes they can.
I've heard that site <http://www.anonymizer.com> will
echo back whatever it can find out about your computer.

  Yale librarian Ann Okerson puts out the NewJour list
and a directory of scholarly e-journals, and was recently 
mentioned in Scientific American for her thoughts on electronic 
copyright issues.  She's a good person to talk to about
copyright questions.  [<ann.okerson@yale.edu>, 6/22/96.]
(Alas, I called her "Ann Robinson" in TCC 6.42; different
person entirely.)

    "Online Law" from Addison-Wesley is a comprehensive legal 
guide commissioned by the Software Publishers Association (SPA).  
1996, 560 pages.  <http://www.mbc.com>.  [WEBster, 5/14/96.]

    "Community Memory -- Discussion List on the History
of Cyberspace" is a new project of Computer Professionals
for Social Responsibility (CPSR).  Send a "subscribe
cpsr-history your name" message to <listserv@cpsr.org>.  
<http://www.cpsr.org/home.html>.  [Scout Report, 6/14/96.]


 3> Travel tips:

    VISA-FREE is an unmoderated discussion and e-journal
about nationality law, passport problems, and gaining another 
nationality for visa-free travel.  Send a "subscribe visa-free" 
message to <majordomo@pobox.com>.  Sam Riley <s.riley@pobox.com>.  
[Sanwar Ali <sanwar@bclimser.demon.co.uk>, NEW-LIST, 3/28/95.]

    Odd de Presno's hypertext "Online World" resources handbook, 
V. 2.4.25, now includes thousands of hotels and travel sites, 
hundreds of study-abroad programs, and an international
news clipping/alert service.  Available on 
<http://login.eunet.no/~presno/bok/i.html> and 
<http://www.simtel.net/simtel.net/presno/bok/i.html>,
or send a "get tow where" message to <listserv@vm1.nodak.edu>.  
[<presno@grida.no>, net-hap, 2/28/96.]

    The new Global Link modem card from Smart Modular Technologies 
(Fremont, CA) comes with a EuroKit to work with most jacks and all 
Western European phone companies.  [IBD, 4/8/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

NSF (Arlington): director, Div. of Advanced Scientific Computing.

Johns Hopkins U./APL Submarine Technology Dept. (Laurel, MD); 
BS/MS MTS for knowledge-based distributed interactive simulations.

Charles River Analytics (Cambridge, MA): MS/PhD contract R&D 
leader in KBS, agents, Internet-based CAI, and applied AI.

DC/VA database management group: MS/PhD leader for long-range
R&D in data mining.

IBM T.J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY): MS/PhD research staff
or postdoc/visiting scientists in NLP, dialogue, and multimodal 
collaboration.

NCR Human Interface Technology Center (Atlanta), Knowledge 
Discovery group: two researchers in ML, statistics, data mining, 
or very large databases.

North Dakota State U. (Fargo): assistant prof. of CS and OR.

Boeing Research and Technology (Seattle): PhD NLP
R&D project leader.

NASA Ames Research Center (CA): PhD AI/SE scientist
for automated programming and software validation.

STC/JPL (Pasadena): BS/MS AI software engineer.

ULondon/Royal Holloway: research assistant
for machine meta-learning.

Hewlett-Packard's European Research Centre (Bristol, UK):
agent researcher for mediated communication systems.

Daimler Benz Research (Ulm, Germany): research scientist
for text filtering.

Australian National U. (Canberra): department head
and sr. fellow, automated reasoning project.

Macquarie U. (Australia): research fellow in temporal databases.

LGIS R&D Center/Machine Intelligence Lab (Anyang, Korea): research 
engineers in intelligent control and autonomous mobile robotics.


 5> Journal calls:

    Neural networks; J. of Information Science and Engineering 
(JISE), 6/97.  7/31/96; Hsin Chia Fu <hcfu@csie.nctu.edu.tw>,
886-35-712121-54730, 886-35-724176 Fax.  [Neuron Digest, 6/5/96.]

    Applications of Neural Networks to Signal Processing; IEEE 
Transactions on Signal Processing, 11/97.  12/1/96; Yu Hen Hu 
<hu@eceserv0.ece.wisc.edu>, (608) 262-6724, (608) 262-1267 Fax.

    Neural networks and fuzzy logic for imaging applications;
J. of Electronic Imaging, 7/97.  11/15/96; Hong Yan 
<yan@ee.usyd.edu.au>, +61 2 351-3515, +61 2 351-3847 Fax.  
[comp.ai.fuzzy, 5/28/96.]

    Evolutionary computation in biochemistry and molecular 
biology; BioSystems.  11/30/96; David B. Fogel 
<fogel@sunshine.ucsd.edu>.  <http://www.natural-selection.com
/biosys>.  [sci.bio.evolution, 5/25/96.]

    Distributed and network-centric computing in CAD; Computer 
Aided Design.  10/31/96; William C. Regli <regli@cme.nist.gov>, 
(301) 975-4427, (301) 258-9749 Fax.  [DAI-List, 6/4/96.]

    "What is inductive learning: on the foundations of pattern 
recognition, AI, and cognitive science": Pattern Recognition.  
8/20/96; Lev Goldfarb <goldfarb@unb.ca>, 506-453-4566,
506-453-3566 Fax.  [connectionists, 6/9/96.]

    Metadata and digital libraries; Int. J. of Digital Libraries, 
2/97.  10/15/96; Terence R. Smith <smithtr@cs.ucsb.edu>,
805-893-2966, 805-893-8553 Fax.  [dbworld, 6/11/96.]

    Multiagent learning; Machine Learning, 1/98.
2/1/97; Michael Huhns <huhns@sc.edu> or Gerhard Weiss
<weissg@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>.  <http://www7.informatik.tu-
muenchen.de/~weissg/si-mlj>.  [DAI-List, 6/11/96.]

    Enterprise modelling; SIGOIS Bulletin, 4/97.
9/30/96 (intent); Andrew Blyth <ajcblyth@glamorgan.ac.uk>,
+44 1443 48 2245, +44 1443 48 2715 Fax.  [DAI-List, 6/11/96.]


 6> Internet directories:

    InfoSpace is a new phone directory claiming 112M listings
from the US and Canada, including fax numbers.  US "blue pages" 
list government and toll-free numbers.  Email addresses and maps 
are planned.  <http://www.infospaceinc.com/>.  [Scout Report, 
6/14/96.]

    Most Internet service providers don't forward your email
after you leave, and some don't even return bounced messages
to the sender.  You can arrange for a permanent net address
by having NetBox, Inc. (Palo Alto) forward your email to
one or more other addresses.  You can also use your own name 
instead of a CompuServe number, company name, or other
system-assigned code.  The cost is about $1/month.  NetBox
for Business offers additional services.  <http://www.netbox.com> 
or <sales@netbox.com>, 415-324-0997, 415-324-0998 Fax.
[Jeff Gray <jwgray@netbox.com>.  Bill Park, 6/9/96.]
(As long as the company stays in business, of course.  ACM offers 
a similar service, as does pobox.com.  Maybe IEEE as well.)
    
    (You can also register with the Four11 directory service, 
<http://www.four11.com>, so that friends can look up a new address 
from your old one.  Four11 will eventually capture your new 
address if you participate in public forums, but by registering 
you can confirm that both addresses refer to the same person.)

    Yahoo! Inc. has licensed Digital's Alta Vista search engine
to augment its own directory service.  Alta Vista
currently indexes about 30M web pages.  [SJM, 6/7/96, 1C.]

  "Beyond Bookmarks: Schemes for Organizing the Web" is a list
of WWW sites that index Web resources by standard classification 
schemes or controlled vocabularies.  These include 
Klassifikationssystem for Svenska Bibliotek, Danish Veterinary
and Agricultural Library Classification, Dewey,
Ei Classification Code, Mathematics Subject Classification, 
Nederlandse Basisclassificatie, Universal Decimal System (UDC), 
National Library of Agriculture's AGRICOLA, Computing Reviews 
Classification System, and Gerry McKiernan's Cyberstacks
using Library of Congress classification.  
<http://www.public.iastate.edu/~CYBERSTACKS/CTW.htm>.
[Scout Report, 6/14/96.]


 7> Free speech:

    The Communications Deceny Act of the Telecommunications
Act of 1996 has been declared unconstitutional by a three-judge 
panel.  "Unlike traditional media, the barriers to entry as
a speaker on the Internet do not differ significantly from the 
barriers to entry as a listener. ... The Internet has achieved
the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that the world 
has yet seen. ... Law imposing [jail terms] must clearly define 
the prohibited speech."  "Any content-based regulation,
no matter how benign the purpose, could burn the global village
to roast the pig."  [NYT, 6/13/96, A1; Todd Lappin 
<telstar@wired.com>; et al.]  (Full 300KB text of the decision
is at <http://www.cdt.org>.  Other discussion sites include 
<http://www.aclu.org/issues/cyber/trial.htm>, 
<http://www.hotwired.com/special/indecent/>, 
<http://www.eff.org/Alerts/HTML/960612_aclu_v_reno_decision.html>, 
<http://www.cnet.com/Content/News/Files/0,16,1541,00.html>, and 
<http://www.cdt.org/ciec/>.)

    The Justice Department may or may not appeal -- in earnest -- 
to the Supreme Court, depending on election-year politics.  
President Clinton says "I remain convinced that our Constitution 
allows us to help parents by enforcing this act to prevent 
objectionable material transmitted through computer networks."  
[NYT, 6/13/96, A1.]

    "The First Amendment was designed to protect offensive speech, 
because  nobody ever tries to ban the other kind."  -- Mike 
Godwin.  [EFF Quotes Collection, 9/95.]

    "Communication used to suck.  TV is a narrow pipe.
It supported the freeway lifestyle.  It simulates community,
but we all end up with the same friends -- Roseanne and Homer.  
Butthead and Picard."  -- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>,
DaveNet, 2/8/96.

    "Communications over the Internet do not 'invade'
an individual's home or appear on one's computer screen unbidden.  
Users seldom encounter content 'by accident.'"  If you wish
to block receipt of pornography, try SurfWatch, 
<http://www.surfwatch.com/> or CyberPatrol, 
<http://www.cyberpatrol.com/>.  Another approach is the PICS 
system for rating websites, <http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/PICS/>.  
[Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 6/17/96.]

    To see what all the fuss is about, you might visit
the sexually explicit sites listed on 
<http://webbworld.com/steamy/steamy.htm> or 
<http://pair.com/mugician/redhot!/redhot!.htm>.
Perhaps a million pictures are also available for tens of dollars 
per year, from sites such as <http://www.diode.com/adultdirect>
or <http://www.webpower.com/amateurs/>.  If you don't have WWW, 
alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.* offers similar free content.
Or for the really gross stuff, try the *.tasteless.* groups.  
Frankly, I find all the cross-posted ads, misleading teasers, and 
dumb comments to be more objectionable than uncensored pictures.

    "I have read the Constitution carefully, and nowhere in it
do I find a guarantee of Freedom from Being Offended."  -- W.F. 
Salkind.  [Pieter D. Breitner <pieterb@gramercy.ios.com>, 5/96.]

    "Thumb your noses, cock your snooks, for as the myths tell us, 
it is by defying the gods that human beings have best expressed 
their humanity."  -- Salman Rushdie.  [Aaron Price 
<flashbyt@shore.net>, FlashByte, 5/26/96.]


 8> Internet addiction:

    On the other hand:  UPittsburgh researcher Kimberly Young
says that Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is as real as 
alcoholism, with loss of control, cravings and withdrawal 
symptoms, social isolation, marital discord, academic failure, 
excessive financial debt, and job termination.  [Toronto Globe
& Mail, 6/15/96, A1.]

    If you have to work night shifts, check out 
<http://www.nightshift.com> for info on sleep, health,
and relationships.  <info@ns.entrepreneurs.net>.
[Neal R. Voron <nvoron@voron.com>, net-hap, 3/5/96.]

					-- Ken


The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends
for which we live.  Our scientific power has outrun
our spiritual power.  We have guided missiles and misguided men.  
-- Martin Luther King.  [Forbes, 1/31/94.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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Date: Thu 27 Jun 96 00:00:57-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.44
To: ;@Charter_Computists
Message-ID: <835858857.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 44
 IS                                              June 27, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Computer industry news.
 2>	Software careers.
 3>	Entrepreneurial news.
 4>	Electronic publishing.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Macintosh news.
_________________________________________________________________

Knowledge is of two kinds.  We know a subject ourselves,
or we know where we can find information upon it.  -- Samuel 
Johnson, 1775.  [Edmund Jimenez <ejimenez@primenet.com>, 6/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Not surprisingly, American folklore has names for each
full moon of the year.  When two moons appear in one month
-- as happens this Sunday -- the second is a blue moon.
Only two more will occur this century: 1/31/99 and 3/31/99.
(2/99 will have no full moon.)  The name most likely comes
from a rarely observed phenomenon: a truly blue moon, perhaps
due to soot in the atmosphere.  A witness to one on 9/26/1950
in England said "The moon was in a slightly misty sky and had
a kind of lovely blue color comparable to the electric glow 
discharge."  Other reports are from 1944 in America and 1949
in Queensland; also one in 1954.  [Ask the Astronomer,  
<http://www2.ari.net/home/odenwald/qadir/q390.html>.
Chuck Curry <chuck_curry@uncg.edu>.]


Computer industry news:

    Fairchild Semiconductor is back!  The original was
a prolific source of Silicon Valley companies: Intel, AMD, LSI, 
National Semiconductor, etc., which then spawned many others.  
Fairchild itself was spun off from Shockley Laboratories
in 1957, by Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and others of the 
"traitorous eight."  Fairchild ran into financial problem
in the 60s and was bought by Schlumberger in 1979 and then 
National Semiconductor Corp. in 1987.  (A 1979 spin-off was
the Fairchild AI Laboratory, FLAIR, later bought by Olivetti.)  
The new Fairchild will inherit about 25% National's revenues
-- in consumer electronics and computer chips -- along with
6,600 employees.  It won't be in Silicon Valley, but in
South Portland, Maine -- one of Fairchild's original factory 
sites.  National Semi will focus on more-profitable analog
and mixed-signal chips, and on microcontrollers and embedded 
processors.  [Dean Takahashi, SJM, 6/21/96, 1C.]

    Scientists at ROLIC Ltd. in Basel, Switzerland, have
created LCD computer screens that are visible from more angles
and in poorer lighting.  The trick is to align the liquid crystals 
in varying orientations instead of a single direction.  [Science 
News, 6/1/96, p. 348.  EDUPAGE.]

    To reduce support costs, several PC and software companies
are going to bundle SystemWizard with their products.  
SystemWizard from SystemSoft detects and corrects common
PC problems, possibly saving $1B/year in help-desk costs.
[WSJ, 6/19/96, B12.]  (PCs develop an immune system!)

    Now would be a good time to upgrade your RAM.  Prices have 
dropped sharply, but word on the street is that they may go up 
again soon.  [TidBITS, 6/17/96.]  (There's always someone
saying that now's the time to buy.  Sometimes they're right.
Be content with a bargain, and don't sweat it if prices drop
a bit lower next week.  For best street prices and a list of 
suppliers, see the RamWatch page at 
<http://www.cs.miami.edu/~stevent/macresource/ramwatch.html>.  
Most vendors will negotiate to similar prices.  For the Mac 
community, MacMall usually has the lowest advertised catalog 
prices; MacZone has no CA sales tax; CDW likes to deal
(and offers lifetime warranty from a US manufacturer);
and UGStore will throw in rebate points for your Mac user group 
(such as the Internet-only IO-MUG).  Or try DealBITS at 
<http://www.tidbits.com/dealbits/> for other online vendors.)


Software careers:

    Several corporations have recently appointed a chief
knowledge officer (CKO) to manage account histories, training 
software, intranets, internal consulting or mentoring, and 
"institutional memory."  Coopers & Lybrand's new CKO, Ellen Knapp, 
has degrees in math and computer cartology.  [BW, j/10/96, p. 6.]

    Sybase (Emeryville, CA) is spending over $36K to advertise
900 database-related positions.  It even rented a biplane to
tow a recruiting banner over the Oracle and Informix campuses.  
Software employment grew at 11.5% in 1995, after growing at 9.6% 
annually the previous eight years.  (The US economy, meanwhile, 
averaged only 1.6% job growth since 1987.)  Demand will continue 
for executives, systems analysts (6.4%/year for the next decade), 
and others -- especially those with Internet expertise.  NeXT
is offering employees a $10K bonus for recruiting an executive,
$2K for an engineer.  Autodesk Inc. is allowing new employees 
nationwide to work from home offices.  Microsoft is looking for
2K people next year, and even agreed to air-ship one important 
hire's 27 dogs.  [Kathy Rebello, BW, 6/17/96, p. 40.]

    Intranet consulting or web page management may be lucrative 
careers.  A $9B market in Internet-related outsourcing services 
has been predicted for the year 2000, up from less than $1B
last year.  Information technology outsourcing may rise to $42B, 
up from $19B.  [IBD, 6/19/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]


Entrepreneurial news:

    Venture capitalists are still bullish on Silicon Valley, 
injecting over $464M in the first quarter of 1996.  Investment
may be dropping off slightly -- following a "normal three-year 
boom cycle" -- but low rates of investment this cycle may equal 
the peaks of the 1980s.  [Ricardo Sanduval, SJM, 5/20/96, 1E.]

    Venture capitalists are backing two new Internet startups
per week.  Stock in such companies, used as a recruiting bonus,
is being called "Internet currency."  Execs used to expect
a $500K equity stake vested over five years, but are now asking 
for up to $5M over two years.  [Kathy Rebello, BW, 6/17/96,
p. 40.]  (The IPO market is saturating, and Internet companies 
will have a harder time getting those high stock valuations.  
Lycos and Excite didn't draw the same enthusiasm as Yahoo!,
even though all three hit the market in April.)

    What does a high valuation buy you?  Other companies.  
Netscape has traded over $400M in stock for Paper Software, 
Collabra Software, Insoft, and a minority interest in Voxware.  
Such purchases -- at what seem like outrageous prices -- are
a hedge against declining stock prices.  Also, buying a company 
that's actually earning money can help the new owner look better.  
For the small company, selling all or part of the company can be
a lot easier than going public.  RSA Data Security (Redwood City) 
was getting two informal offers per week, prior to its purchase
by Security Dynamics Technologies (MA).  The sale price was about 
$200M, but the stock value quickly rose to $450M -- impressive, 
for a 50-person company making less than $1M/year.  [Janet
Rae-Dupree, SJM, 5/20/96, 1E.]

    Startups are encountering higher employment costs, shorter 
product life cycles, and an earlier need to expand overseas than 
ten years ago.  Capital needed for a company's first five years 
has thus increased from $7M average to $11.6M.  [SJM, 5/10/96, 
1C.]  (A typical venture-backed startup begins with 16 employees, 
growing to 282 within six years.)

    Apple has a new site to help small businesses,
at <http://smallbusiness.apple.com>.  The company is also planning 
to donate Mac systems to all SBA Business Information Centers.  
[iNews.  NewtNews, 6/11/96.]

    The Enterprise Network (TEN) offers unpaid executive mentors
-- and their business connections, and an investor matchmaking 
service -- to Silicon Valley startups.  They help technical 
entrepreneurs think about markets and business instead of
just products and technology.  TEN is itself a startup,
spun out of the "Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network" project.  
It has worked with about 80 companies, of which 39 recently 
reported 287 employees and a need for another 300 this year.
For a free entrepreneur's resource guide, contact Joe Becker 
<tenbecker@aol.com>, (408) 554-6816, (408) 554-5474 Fax.
[James J. Mitchell, SJM, 4/28/96, 1E.]


Electronic publishing:

    EurekAlert, from the American Assoc. for the Advancement
of Science, distributes daily press releases in science,
medicine and technology.  It also has a searchable archive
at <http://www.eurekalert.org/>, or <http://www.eurekalert.org
/E-lert/current/mainpage.shtml> for a low-graphics version.
Free at present, but a fee for submissions is planned.
[Scout Report, 6/14/96.]

    A few online newspapers -- such as SJM's Mercury Center --
are nearly breaking even, but most online publications are not.  
One lesson has been that readers want "blurbs" or "textual
sound bytes" of less than 500 words.  As publications learn
to draw readers, advertising revenues may jump from $80M
at present to $4.8B by the year 2000.  [Forrester Research.  
Elizabeth Wasserman, SJM, 6/24/96, 1A.]

    Wired Ventures has been losing $3.5M on $7.5M in revenues, 
leading one analyst to call it a hobby.  Others consider it
a real business that just isn't making any money right now.
Its initial public offering is valued at 18 times revenues
for last year.  [NYT, 6/14/96, C6.  EDUPAGE.]

    Slate is an ambitious new online magazine owned by Microsoft, 
but more or less independent.  The premier issue opened with
a debate on "Is Microsoft Evil?"  The magazine is currently free, 
but hopes subscribers will pay $19.95/year.  "Self-supporting 
journalism is freer journalism."  <http://www.slate.com>.  
Elizabeth Wasserman, SJM, 6/24/96, 1A.]

    Dan Gillmor reviews Slate as "serious consideration
of serious issues, wittily written and smartly edited."
He won't trust Slate for Microsoft coverage, though.
[SJM, 6/25/96, 1E.]

    (The twice-weekly Computists' Communique and its services
are independent and receive no advertising revenue.  Members
can be proud of helping each other and their companies
or departments through support of this service.  Non-members 
should give serious thought to their career plans and
economic priorities.  'Nough said.  Enjoy the blue moon. :-)


Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Saturn V4.2: AI natural-language database query system.

MissionLab v1.0: multiagent robotics mission simulation software.

Copy Cat 2.0: alife mimicry simulation.

C++ Matrix class vs C/C++ Lapack extension.

Macwavelets v1.00: 1D wavelet analysis.

CLARITY: visual/graph framework for functional programming.

SmallEiffel: small, fast, free Eiffel compiler for 68K
and PowerMac.

MachTen 2.3: Unix environment and web server for Mac.

Debian Linux 1.1: CD-ROM version.

Wine: MS Windows emulator for Linux, developer release.

ez2load: free Ada 95 compilers, editors, and tutorial.

Framed! PGS v1.0: Netscape frames editor for Mac.

WebSite PRO for Teachers: educational price.

NSF Workshop on Workflow and Process Automation:
online proceedings.

Neural Adaptive Control Technology: book ed. by Zbikowski
and Hunt.

Optimizacion Heuristica y Redes Neuronales: book by Diaz,
Glover, et al.


Macintosh news:

    (I'm independent, but biased!)

    Do you wonder about all the extensions in your Mac system 
folder?  The Pruning Page describes what they do, with tips
on avoiding conflicts.  <http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/DEF/>.
[Dan Frakes <frakes@gseis.ucla.edu>, MacWay, 5/21/96.
Chuck Morefield.]

    "Go ahead.  Drop us a note.  It's free.  It's cool.
It's shiny.  It's useful.  It's gonna make you smile.
Go for it.  It's the Mac Way."  -- <scott@devtools.symantec.com>, 
EvangeList, 12/7/95.
    
    For a database of "specs" on all the different Mac models, 
download <ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/Apple.Support.Area
/Apple.Software.Updates/US/Macintosh/Utilities/Apple_Spec_5-
96.sea.hqx>.  If you don't have Filemaker Pro, you'll also need 
Apple Spec App, <.../Apple_Spec_5-96_app.sea.hqx>.  [Tony Lindsey 
<tlindsey@cts.com>, Mac*Chat, 5/17/96.]  (OK, Apple website 
addresses are not cool or shiny.  Boo!)

    If you want email notification of each new Apple
software update, send a "subscribe your name" message
to <swupdates@thing1.info.apple.com>.  A return message
will describe many additional sources of Apple press releases
and user info.  [Becky Jimenez <bjimenez@loop.com>, Mac*Chat, 
5/17/96.]

    Another good lead is the MacInTouch Catalog of Mac Resources, 
<http://www.macintouch.com/%7Ericford/Macintosh.html>.
[Glenn Cole <gcole@netcom.com>, ibid.]  (And there are some
online stores, such as MacSale and MacSciTech.  Web search engines 
will also take you to the Used Computer Mall, Used Software 
Exchange, Cyberstore, Cybrarian, Starlink, and config.sys.)

    For a limited time, Microsoft is offering its Macintosh
Visual C++ cross-development system for $199, a 90% discount.  
[iNews.  NewtNews, 6/11/96.]

    The EchoSpeech voice-compression program for Mac or Windows
is free to individuals, non-profit organizations and educational 
institutions.  It can be used to add speech to Web pages
or software.  Echo Speech Corp. <http://www.echospeech.com>.  
WEBster, 5/28/96.]

    One place Macs rule is the locker room of the Chicago Bulls.  
They have "walls of rack-mounted Macs" digitizing video feeds
from multiple cameras controlled by a team of specialists,
plus three operators at 21" touch screens logging and tagging
each play.  Coaches on the bench use Newtons to note which plays 
they want to review at half time, using several Macs to put
slow-motion replays on a 52" screen.  It's the league's
most sophisticated computerized video coaching system.  
[<hanson1@applelink.apple.com>, MacWay, 6/17/96.
Chuck Morefield.]

					-- Ken


Knowing is not enough, you must apply.
Willing is not enough, you must do.  -- Bruce Lee.
[Thomas B. Stanley <tstanley@uoknor.edu>, 6/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 45
 IS                                               July 2, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Pattern recognition.
 3>	Projects.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Education.
 6>	Music.
_________________________________________________________________

Dreams are renewable.  No matter what our age or condition,
there are still untapped possibilities within us and new beauty 
waiting to be born.  -- Dale E. Turner.  [AWAD, 5/9/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    IBM has a new 32-bit OS/2 Warp (for Intel processors)
in 10K-unit public beta test.  Code-named Merlin, it includes 
IBM's VoiceType control and dictation with no need for training
or additional hardware.  A Java Developers Kit and run-time code 
are included, along with support for Internet access, OpenGL, 
TrueType fonts, OpenDoc, and the Open32 API extensions.  
<http://www.austin.ibm.com/pspinof/betahome.html>.  [Timothy F. 
Sipples <tsipple@vnet.ibm.com>, comp.os.os2.announce, 6/25/96.]

    Client/server hasn't been a complete success, given that
it costs $7K/year per user vs. just over $2K/year for long-term 
mainframe support.  The average cost per transaction is $.46
by client-server, $.03 by mainframe.  [Information Week, 5/37/96, 
p. 44.  Flash Information.]  (Different types of transactions, 
maybe?  Anyway, there's now a new name for client/server: 
Intranets.  Wired magazine this month called them "a clever kind 
of shell game going on in MIS departments."  Not that second-
generation client/server won't be a good thing...
[Web Informant, 6/22/96.])

    Microsoft has a series of case studies and articles
on Intranets: <http://www.microsoft.com/intranet/casestudy.htm> 
and <http://198.105.232.5/intranet/prodinfo.htm>.  An excellent 
white paper from Netscape is <http://home.netscape.com/comprod
/at_work/white_paper/intranet/vision.html#community>.
[Network News, 6/23/96.]

    O'Reilly & Assoc. is offering its Website 1.1 webserver
free to educators.  Download it from <http://www.ora.com>,
along with three chapters of their book on building your own 
website.  [Educom UPDATE, 6/1/96.]

    Adobe Systems (Mountain View) has announced Acrobat 3.0
for Windows and Mac (available 8/96) and other platforms (9/96).   
This version will integrate with various browsers, including 
Microsoft's ActiveX controls (formerly known as OLE).  PDF readers 
will be free, but the authoring program suite will cost $295.  
Beta versions of Acrobat Reader 3.0 and related software are 
available now for free on <http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/3beta/>.  
[WEBster, 6/11/96.]

    Verity's free SearchPDF for Web Servers v1.0 will find
and display documents that have been indexed with Acrobat Catalog, 
highlighting the search terms.  <http://www.verity.com>.  
[WEBster, 6/25/96.]

    Automated information agents might save themselves a lot
of work if they could talk to other agents on the Web and pick up 
partial solutions from related search efforts.  That's the premise 
of Firefly technology from Agents, Inc., a spin-off from the MIT 
Media Lab.  [Forbes, 7/1/96, p. 79.  EDUPAGE.]  "Check out Firefly 
at www.ffly.com!"  [Mark D. Smucker <smucker@agents-inc.com>, 
6/96.]  (I can imagine a web of such agents replacing our 
encyclopedias and technical literature.  Instead of searching
for information, it would be pumped to them by related agents -- 
much as I send news to you.  Each agent would have it's own world 
view, which could differ significantly from that of its neighbors 
-- no need for consistency.  Knowledge would come with attitude 
and social connections, just as it does from people.)


 2> Pattern recognition:

    The data mining market is $90M, growing to $300M by 1997
and $800M by 1999.  Corporate projects range from $50K
to more than $1M/year.  [META Group, 3/96.  Craig S. Mullins 
<mullc@platinum.com, comp.databases, 6/24/96.]

    CalliGrapher 3.0 from ParaGraph International handles natural 
cursive, print, and mixed handwriting with about 95% word 
accuracy.  Versions exist for Newton, Mac, UNIX, Windows 3.1, 
Windows 95, and NT; in English, German, French and Swedish.  
<http://www.paragraph.com>, (408) 364-7718, (408) 374-5466 Fax.  
[NewtNews, 6/11/96.]

    Xerox researchers have designed a desk with ceiling-mounted 
camera that can capture documents for online use.  CMU's Dan Olsen 
suggests that it could recognize documents you're reading and 
track where you put them.  [John W. Verity, BW, 6/24/96, p. 119.]

    Georgia Tech's Kathleen Cummings is working to characterize 
sober and inebriated speech.  Police could use a portable unit
to test for drunk drivers.  [Neil Gross, BW, 6/10/96, p. 109.]

    Universal Problem Solvers, Inc. offers 40 pattern recognition 
problems on its WWW page, along with demos of its pattern 
recognition software.  <http://users.aol.com/UniProSol>.
[Steve Romaniuk <zlxx69a@prodigy.com>, net-hap, 6/24/96.]

    Warren Sarle of the SAS Institute has compiled a FAQ
for Neuron Digest and comp.ai.neural-nets.  Its seven parts are 
Intro; Learning; Generalization; Books and Data; Free Software; 
Commercial Software; and Hardware.  The current copy is 
ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/FAQ.html>, with a version circulated 
monthly on c.ai.neural-nets and archived on rtfm.mit.edu in 
/pub/usenet/news.answers/ai-faq/neural-nets.  For email access, 
send a "help" or "index" message to <mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu>.  
[<saswss@unx.sas.com>, ND, 6/12/96.  Bill Park.]  (Sarle is
a leading authority on NN and statistics, and a valuable presence 
on the net.)


 3> Projects:

    Robert Andrews is seeking URLs and other info on
rule extraction from neural networks, to be made available
in a new WWW page.  <robert@fit.qut.edu.au>.  [annrules, 6/18/96.  
Bill Park.]

    George Woltman has recruited about 155 volunteers to use
spare PC CPU cycles in searching for Mersenne primes; several 
hundred more volunteers are needed.  The largest Mersenne prime 
currently known is M859433: (2^859433)-1, which has 258,716 
digits.  Testing a number that size takes about 21 hours on
a Pentium.  Woltman suspects the next Mersenne prime may be
near M17000000, but is only planning to search to M2600000
by the end of this century.  <http://ourworld.compuserve.com
/homepages/justforfun/prime.htm>.  [Dan Gillmor, SJM, 6/22/96, 
1C.]

    Jonathan Karp, Dale Bloom, and Nicholas Cohen are writing
a book about the graduate school experience and "rules of
the game" for scientific PhDs.  If you have a story to tell, 
advice to give, or an [anonymous] quotation, contact 
<jonk@troi.cc.rochester.edu>, by 8/1/96.  [sci.research.careers, 
6/26/96.]

    Eric Harry is looking for reviewers for his new novel, 
"Society of the Mind" (HarperCollins, 6/96), about AI, VR, and 
robotics.  <http://www.eharry.com>.  [<rick10@netropolis.net>, 
comp.robotics.misc, 6/20/96.]

    Early editions of Scientific American (from 1845)
are being "reprinted" online by the URochester History Dept.,
at <http://www.history.rochester.edu/Scientific_American/>.
See also Penny Magazine, from 1835, at 
<http://www.history.rochester.edu/pennymag/>.  [James
O'Donnell <jod@ccat.sas.upenn.edu>, newjour, 1/5/96.]

    Ann Okerson's featured SciAm article on copyright
proposals and academic information exchange can be viewed
at <http://www.library.yale.edu/~okerson/sciam.html>.  
[<ann.okerson@yale.edu>, 6/26/96.  Peter Stangl.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

MITRE (VA, MA, NJ): US BS/MS/PhD developers for DB, IR, NLP, 
digital libraries, AI, intelligent agents, uncertainty reasoning, 
planning, OR, image analysis, visualization, GIS, information 
fusion, HCI, cognitive modeling, CAI, economic analyses, etc.
(3 ads.)

Unisys (Blue Bell, PA): spoken language/dialog AI developers.

CMU Intelligent Coordination & Logistics Laboratory (ICLL):
MS CLOS research programmers for mixed-initiative 
planning/scheduling.

Boston-area R&D firm: US MS/PhD scientist in IR/EO sensor 
modeling, signal processing, and pattern recognition
for target recognition.

IBM T.J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY): MS researcher
and BS+ analyst for data abstraction and data mining research. 

Educational Testing Service (Princeton, NJ): PhD
computational linguists for NLP in testing applications.

Natural language group [Microsoft?]: manager.

Rockwell Science Center (Thousand Oaks, CA): MS/PhD R&D engineers 
for HCI, VR, computer vision, speech recognition, voice synthesis, 
information agents, etc.

Washington U. Inst. for Biomedical Computing (St. Louis): two 
assistant professors in novel biomolecular computing applications.

Philadelphia VA Medical Center: postdoc in medical informatics 
(NLP, HCI, modeling, simulation, 3D visualization, etc.).

Loughborough U. of Technology (UK), Lutchi Research Centre: 
researcher for KBS/logic programming in CAD.

Sharp Laboratories of Europe (Oxford): PhD researcher
in intelligent agents for multimedia information systems.

Siemens Nixdorf Advanced Technologies GmbH (Dresden, Germany): 
theoretical physicist or mathematician for applications
in face and object recognition.

Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum fuer Informationstechnik Berlin (ZIB):
MS programmer to develop WWW-based scientific visualization.

Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI; Amsterdam): 
postdocs and sr. research visitors in multimedia databases, 
digital libraries, data mining, etc.


 5> Education:

    Brunel University (London) is starting an advanced
MSc program in Neural and Evolutionary Systems.  
<http://http2.brunel.ac.uk:8080/~csstdcd/NES_Msc.html>.  
[<Dimitris.Dracopoulos@trurl.brunel.ac.uk>, connectionists, 
6/14/96.]

    Oregon Graduate Institute of Science & Technology (OGI)
is offering an MS concentration in Computational Finance.  
<http://www.cse.ogi.edu/CompFin/>.  [<compfin@cse.ogi.edu>, 
dbworld, 6/17/96.]

    University satellite course transmissions have increased
to $1K/hour, up from half that two years ago and a tenth of that 
in the mid-1980s.  The bandwidth shortage may ease in a few years, 
as satellites switch to digital and educators try phone
or Internet videoconferencing.  [WSJ, 6/6/96, B1.  EDUPAGE.]

    High-powered diplomas do pay off, on average, but there
may be little difference between public and private schools
of similar quality.  A recent study found US men from top-quintile 
colleges earning 20% more than those from the bottom quintile,
ten years after graduation.  Black men gained even more than
white men, and ethnic diversity on campus increased the earnings 
of all graduates.  [BW, 4/29/96, p. 26.]

    BAD SCIENCE is a set of web pages fighting myths, 
misconceptions, and lazy science teaching.  
<http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/BadScience.html>.
[Alistair B. Fraser <abf1@psu.edu>.  Bill Park, 6/24/96.]
("Be very, very careful what you put into that head,
because you will never, ever get it out."  -- Cardinal Wolsey.)


 6> Music:

    John Kao's "Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business 
Creativity" is a new book about improvisational music (jazz) as 
training for business management.  [Sherri Eng, SJM, 6/23/96, 1E.]

    Several recent studies have confirmed that practicing
or listening to music produce short-term and permanent
improvement in pattern recognition, "spatial-temporal IQ,"
and classroom learning.  A 1993 report in Nature documented
an increase in IQ scores from listening to Mozart for 10 minutes 
rather than a relaxation tape or meditating.  [Bill Hendrick,
Cox.  SJM, 6/25/96, 12E.]

    Koan Music is randomly generated (or "improvised")
from downloaded constraint scripts and user-supplied inputs.
A 1-7KB file can play for up to eight hours.  Koan Music players 
and samples are free from <http://www.sseyo.com/browser.html>
or <http://www.sseyo.com/genmus1.html> and mirrors, but you
do need a MIDI soundcard for your PC.  A SSEVO Koan Pro
authoring system lets you control over 150 musical and
sonic parameters, for any effect from wind chimes and ambient 
music to rhythmic Techo pieces.  [<koaninfo@sseyo.com>, 
c.i.www.authoring.misc, 6/24/96.]

    "Music is the sound of math."  -- Bart Kosko.
[Louis Leon <louis@cia.cc.emory.edu>, 5/96.]

    Pianos are usually tuned to an "equal temperament" that is 
nearly in tune for any key, but not quite.  Justonic Tuning Inc. 
(Vancouver) builds electronic keyboards that solve the problem: 
pitches are retuned dynamically to produce perfect harmonies.
The company is joining with Virtual DSP Corp. (Everett, WA) to 
similarly retune electric guitars, for availability this fall.  
[Paul Raeburn, BW, 6/24/96, p. 158.]

    brit-comp-music is a list for the computer music research 
community in Britain.  Send a "join brit-comp-music your name" 
message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<brit-comp-music-request
@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-list, 3/1/96.] 

					-- Ken


Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap
crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while all the while
we long to make music that will move the stars to pity.
-- Gustave Flaubert.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 46
 IS                                               July 4, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Web authoring.
 2>	Art lists and resources.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Databases and information systems.
 5>	Entrepreneurship.
 6>	Personal advice.
 7>	Bargain hunting.
_________________________________________________________________

1. Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech,
press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed.
2. No censorship shall be maintained, nor shall the secrecy
of any means of communication be violated.  -- Article 21, 
Constitution of Japan.  [EFF Quotes 6.0, 5/18/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Happy Fourth of July!  (Void where prohibited.)

    Remember: Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right
to do wrong.  -- John Diefenbaker.  [TFTD, 2/7/96.]


 1> Web authoring:

    web-consultants is a discussion list about WWW consulting 
resources, issues, and stories.  A moderated digest is also 
available, with an archive on <http://just4u.com/webconsultants/>.  
Send a "subscribe web-consultants" message to [new address]
<web-consultants-request@just4u.com> or <webcons-digest-request
@just4u.com>.  [Al Silverberg <alsil@phantom.com>, NEW-LIST, 
4/12/96.]

    WebToolz Magazine is "the webmasters online resource,
with toolz, linkz, articlez, reviewz, tipz, trickz, and more."  
<http://www.webtoolz.com>.  [<scott@webtoolz.com>, newjour, 
6/1/96.]

    TopSpin "is the simplest web server yet: you just plug in
a CD ROM SCSI drive and network cable."  <http://www.strom.com
/pubwork/iwtopspin.html>.  [Web Informant, 5/26/96.]

    A new Javascript mailing list is described in 
<http://www.inquiry.com/techtips/js_pro/>.  [Dave Wagner 
<davidw@ix.netcom.com>, comp.lang.javascript, 6/21/96.]

    Java-networking is for people interested in Java
and Java library networking issues.  Send a "subscribe" message
to <java-networking-request@cdt.luth.se>.  [Peter Parnes 
<peppar@cdt.luth.se>, comp.lang.java, 6/1/96.]

    The Java Developers Journal (JDJ) aims to be helpful,
with lots of code examples.  Articles and ideas are needed by 
Andrew Zolli <azolli@siegelgale.com>.  For subscriptions, call
1-800-513-7111.  [<paradox@inch.com>, comp.lang.java, 5/27/96.]

    Internet Developers Association (IDA) is for webmasters, 
programmers, graphic designers, marketers, etc.  $45/year.  
<http://www.association.org/membership/join.html>.  [WEBster, 
6/25/96.]

    WebWomen-Tech provides a space for technical women on the web, 
such as female webmasters.  Send a "subscribe" message to 
<webwomen-tech-request@niestu.com>.  A companion WebWomen-HTML 
list is for content providers, with discussions covering HTML, 
Java and Javascript, standards, and design issues.
For more general discussions of WWW, sign up for WebWomen-Chat.  
[Donna <donna2@tigerbase.niestu.com>, NEW-LIST, 6/12/96.]


 2> Art lists and resources:

    Leonardo, the J. of the Int. Society of the Arts, Sciences
and Technology, offers a home page, articles, gallery, sound 
files, and forum at <http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/Leonardo
/leohome.html>.  [newjour, 5/28/96.]

    cti-art-design is a CTI-sponsored list about computers
and software in higher-education fine art and design courses.  
Send a "join cti-art-design your name" message to 
<mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<cti-art-design-
request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 6/18/96.]

    Acropolis is "the magazine of Acrobat publishing,"
published only in Acrobat Portable Document Format (.pdf).
Free on <http://www.acropolis.com/acropolis>.  
[<webmaster@acropolis.com>.  Alex Edelman 
<aedelman@dept.english.upenn.edu>, newjour, 6/18/96.]

    The AMKDEV mailing list covers the Apple Media Kit (AMK) 
cross-platform multimedia development tool.  Send a "subscribe 
amkdev your name" message to <mail-server@earthchannel.com>.  
[Gess Shankar <gess@earthchannel.com>, NEW-LIST, 6/6/96.]

    Over 30K stock science photos can be found on 
<http://www.scinetphotos.com>.  Hank Morgan Photography.
[net-hap, 8/1/95.  Ken Barker.]

    If you generate murals or other computer art, or even
business cards, how do you print them out?  OUT-OPTS is about 
hardcopy options for artists, publishers, and marketeers.
Send a "subscribe out-opts" message to <majordomo@TreeO.com>.  
[David E. Le Vine <david@TreeO.com>, NEW-LIST, 2/15/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Mariposa Distributed DBMS, V. Alpha-1, from UCB.

PolyAnalyst v2.01: data mining product.

PCRaster V. 2: spatio-temporal modeling in GIS.

Fuzzy Logic Pack for Mathematica: fuzzy t-norm and t_conorm, etc.

Neural Planner: NN system for MS Windows.

Neural Network Recipes in C++: book by Timothy Master.

Java neural network software from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum.

Java-based Prolog Logic Server from Amzi! inc.

Amzi! Logic Explorer: logic programming environment and tutor.

ADATE: Automatic Design of Algorithms Through Evolution.

Mindy 1.5: simple Dylan language implementation.

Mac CodeWarrior compiler bundle with Pilot 5000 Organizer.
Also a discount on MacTech Magazine.

Harvest C: free C compiler.

LibMoto: Motorola's free math library for PowerPC.

Matlab for Linux: old ("classic") version.

Emacs editor/interface for Poplog (including Pop-11, Prolog,
Common Lisp, and ML).

Pixcon/Anitroll 1.0: free 3D rendering and animation source code.

Primordial Life/Primordial Arena 3.0: alife simulation
for Windows.

How to Finance the Start-up and Growth of Your Business:
self-published book for entrepreneurs.


 4> Databases and information systems:

     A quarterly peer-reviewed Int. J. on Failures and Lessons 
Learned in Information Technology Management has been founded,
to start 1/97.  Dr. R. Sadananda is seeking articles
for a special issue on information systems for sustainable 
development.  <sada@cs.ait.ac.th>, (66-2) 524-5702,
(66-2) 524-5721 Fax.  [dbworld, 5/20/96.]

    Requirements Engineering Journal will cover software 
specification and the elicitation, representation, and validation 
of requirements for software-intensive information systems
and applications.  The first issue is on 
<http://www.mac.co.umist.ac.uk/RE/Journal.html>; subsequent
issues will post abstracts only.  Springer-Verlag London; 
<rej@svl.co.uk>, +44-(0)1483-415144 Fax.  
[<Alan.Florance@umist.ac.uk>, dbworld, 6/13/96.]

    ONLINE and DATABASE magazines are now on the net,
at <http://www.onlineinc.com/onlinemag> and 
<http://www.onlineinc.com/database>.  You'll also find links
to ONLINE USER, CD-ROM Professional, and MultiMedia Schools.  
[Nancy Garman <ngarman@well.com>, newjour, 5/31/96.]
(A gopher version, <gopher://online.lib.uic.edu>,
will no longer be updated.)

    Geographic data, maps, and other resources are the subject
of the GRC list.  Send a "subscribe grc email_address" message
to <majordomo@geog.hkbu.edu.hk>.  <http://www-geog.hkbu.edu.hk
/geogmail>.  [c.i.gis, 6/15/96.]

    Datapoints Online is a new online newsletter from SPSS,
a leading vendors of statistical software.  Product announcements, 
bug patches, etc.  Contact <dp@spss.co.uk>. <http://www.spss.com>.  
[John Penn <penny@spss.co.uk>, comp.soft-sys.spss, 6/24/96.]


 5> Entrepreneurship:

    Inc., "the magazine for growing companies," has a new
website with articles, work sheets, and even a free area
for entrepreneurs' web pages.  <http://www.inc.com>.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 6/4/96.]

    Inc. magazine recently profiled owners of home businesses, 
using data from Find/SVP.  Of 11M-14M people working at home
in the US, 75% run their own businesses.  5% of those businesses 
are technical (including programming).  Average age is 42.9 years, 
with nearly as many home-based proprietors female (47%) as male.  
44% are college graduates, most are married (85%), and 54% have 
children under 18.  Average household income is about $55K.
[Inc. special issue on The State of Small Business 1996, p. 58.  
NewtNews.  Bill Park.]

   Network-l is a semi-moderated support list for those
in small or home-based businesses.  Send a "subscribe
email-address" <network-l-request@post.io.org>.
[David McDermit <crane@madison.tdsnet.com>, NEW-LIST, 5/21/96.]

    Internet Entrepreneurs Support Association (IESS) has
a new email-based Q&A list for Internet entrepreneurs.
Send a "subscribe iesslist-digest email-address" message to 
<majordomo@ix.entrepreneurs.net>.  For info about IESS, contact 
<tools@iess.entrepreneurs.net> or <info@iess.entrepreneurs.net>.  
[Ron Ehrens <ron@kaiwan.com>, net-hap, 5/25/96.]

    BizWeb lists over 4K companies on the net, by category.
19 subcategories for computer-related businesses.  
<http://www.bizweb.com/>.  [Home Biz Cyber Weekly, 6/2/96.]

    The Home Biz Cyber Weekly is a free resource newsletter
(or ad listing) and forum for entrepreneurs.  Contact 
<succeed@gate.net>.  [newjour, 6/1/96.]  ("FREE Internet
RESOURCES to PROSPER your HOME BUSINESS.  DIRECTLY PROMOTE
Your Business or Service * ONLY * in a PERSONAL EXCLUSIVE
Home Biz SUPPLEMENT."  The style gives me a headache,
and they signed me up by default, without asking first --
along with 100K other people.  Ads are about $5/line or $70
for a separate mailing; business directory listings are free.)

    The Ultimate Mastermind (TUM) is a free newsletter
about running a business -- online or off.  It's from
the Let's Talk Business Network, serving entrepreneurs
and small businesses.  Send a "subscribe tum your name
email-address" message to <biztalk@ltbn.com>.
[Larry Kesslin <lkesslin@interport.net>, NEW-LIST, 5/13/96.]

    Business Roundtable is a "business networking" forum for 
executives, lawyers, and other professionals.  Send a "subscribe 
roundtable your name" message to <listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com>.  
[Ralph Welsch-Lehmann  <rwl@pipeline.com>, NEW-LIST, 4/29/96.]


 6> Personal advice:

    Enter Magazine is "a dynamic, take-charge monthly magazine
for young people who want to set their own course after college."  
<http://www.entermag.com>.  [<enter@entermag.com>, newjour, 
3/8/96.]

    YoungWives is a new life/career discussion group
for women.  Send a "subscribe yngwives your name" message
to <listserv@sjuvm.stjohns.edu>.  [Kristina S. Brown 
<kschelbert@aol.com>, NEW-LIST, 4/7/96.]

    Success Express Journal is dedicated to passing on "positive 
energy," to public speakers and others.  <http://www.success.ie>.  
[<sej@success.ie>, 6/17/96.]  (This is a promotional vehicle
for public speaker and author Eric Edmeades <kaizen@success.ie>.)


 7> Bargain hunting:

    Price Watch, a "street price search engine,"
is <http://www.pricewatch.com/>.  [John Doyle 
<doylej@liberty.uc.wlu.edu>, net-hap, 4/4/96.]

    Cyber$mart is a new e-magazine about saving or earning money 
on the Internet (including software offers and contests with
cash prizes).  Write to John Dillman <jad7@xnet.com>
for a free trial subscription.  [net-hap, 5/16/96.]

    GRATIS! is a free, sponsored, weekly newsletter
about free software and services on WWW or the Internet.
Send a "subscribe gratis" message to majordomo@mystery.com.
[Bob Collister <odat@juno.com>, NEW-LIST, 6/20/96.]

    Free contests, games, and "stuff" can be found listed
on <http://www.lookup.com/Homepages/72970/freebies.html>.  
[<rsavin@ucla.edu>, net-hap, 4/5/96.]

    You can subscribe to the Free Stuff Mailing List from
the Free Stuff Homepage, <http://www.zia.com/free/>.
[Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, net-hap, 4/21/96.]

    The Free District listing is <http://net.discnt.com/free>.  
They'll even give you a free link, if you're giving something 
away.  [Monique <monique@net2.discnt.com>, net-hap, 4/26/96.]

    Scrooge's Freebie Page is 
<http://www.oberlin.edu/~eholtz/free.html>.  
[<seh0492@oberlin.edu>, net-hap, 5/9/96.]

    FREEway is another guide to free samples, trials,
net services, internet access, magazines, etc.  
<http://www.vivanet.com/~woodj/money-mart/freeway/index.html>.  
[S. Wood <woodj@vivanet.vivanet.com>, net-hap, 5/14/96.]

					-- Ken


I choose free libraries as the best agencies for improving
the  masses of the people, because they give nothing for nothing.  
They only help those who help themselves.  They never pauperize.  
They reach the aspiring and open to these chief treasures of the 
world --  those stored up in books.  A taste for reading drives 
out lower tastes.  -- Andrew Carnegie.  [EFF Quotes Collection, 
9/19/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 47
 IS                                               July 9, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	NSF news.
 2>	Politics and policy.
 3>	Industry news.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Online education.
 6>	Virtual personae.
_________________________________________________________________

The bird of paradise alights only upon
the hand that does not grasp.  -- John Berry.
[John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> NSF news:

    Richard Karp has been awarded NSF's Medal of Science
for applying theoretical CS advances to real-world problems.  
James Flanagan also won the award, for solving basic problems
in speech communications.  [Computer Industry Daily, 6/11/96.  
EDUPAGE.]

    NSF has new online documentation of "PECASE -- Presidential 
Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers," pecase.txt
on nsf.stis.gov.  The awards are for 5 years, to US citizens, 
nationals, or permanent residents.  Awardees will be selected
this year from applicants to the Presidential Faculty Fellows 
program, which is being terminated after FY 96.  Thereafter, 
awardees will be from the Faculty Early Career Development 
(CAREER) program.  CAREER applicants must have tenure-track 
employment at an institution in the US, its territories
or possessions, or the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, or must be 
engaged in significant education and research activities
at two-year colleges or non-profit or non-academic institutions 
such as museums, observatories, or research laboratories.
Get NSF 95-118 from <http://www.nsf.gov/> or from <pubs@nsf.gov>, 
703-306-1130, 703-644-4278 Fax.

    Presidential Early Career Awards and other young investigator 
awards, with somewhat different eligibility criteria,
are also available from NASA (202-358-1809);
EPA (<rosenthal.shiela@epamail.epa.gov> or <http://www.epa.gov>); 
Veterans Health Administration (202-565-7160); NIH (301-435-0714); 
DOE-Energy (<antionette.joseph@oer.doe.gov> or 202-586-5447);
DOE-Defense (<http://www2.dp.doe.gov/ysea/award.html>);
ONR (<http://www.onr.navy.mil/>);
AFOSR (<http://web.fie.com.web/fedix/AFOSR.html> or 202-767-4969); 
ARO Young Investigator Program (U.S. Army Research Office,
ATTN: AMXRO-PR, 4300 South Miami Boulevard, P.O. Box 12211, 
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709-2211);
USDA Agricultural Research Service (301-344-0339);
USDA Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension
Service (CSREES) (<srockey@reeusda.gov> or 202-401-1761);
USDA Forest Service Research (<fwsa/s=res/ou=w01C@attmail.com>
or 202-205-1665); NOAA (202-482-1437); and NIST 
(<william.ott@nist.gov>, 301-975-4202).  [uwisc.nsfdoc, 7/4/96.]

    NSF has updated its "Instrumentation Grants for Research
in Computer and Information Science and Engineering"
program guideline.  FTP nsf96113.txt from stis.nsf.gov.
[grants, 6/25/96.]


 2> Politics and policy:

    The government of Japan has announced plans to double
its investment in research -- esp. university faculty and 
facilities -- by the year 2000.  This is in response to a 2-year 
economic slump that caused corporations to cut back on research.  
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 7/5/96.]

    NSF's 1996 Summer Institute Program in Japan is hosting
57 US graduate students, bringing the total since 1990 to 369.
36 men and 21 women from 34 US universities are joining corporate, 
governmental, non-profit, and university labs in Tsukuba, Tokyo, 
and Kyoto.  The next application deadline is 12/1/96.  
<rsoderqu@nsf.gov>, 703-306-1701, 703-306-0474 Fax.  
[comp.research.japan, 7/3/96.]

    The NSB's biennial Science and Engineering Indicators reports 
that half the  journal articles published by industry researchers 
are now co-authored with academics.  (Fifteen years ago it was 
less than 1/3.)  Industry has also formed nine times as many 
cooperative agreements with national labs as in 1987.  
International research collaborations and journal co-authorships 
have also increased sharply.  [Cora B. Marrett, clari.tw.science.  
Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 6/12/96.]

    A House budget amendment by Bob Walker (R-PA) has tentatively 
moved $9M next year from NSF salaries to research funding.
NSF already operates on just 4% of budget, and the shift will
slow down grant processing. [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 6/28/96.]  
(Retaining program directors may be difficult, even if it is 
clerical help that is cut.  NSF may have to depend more on career 
bureaucrats, since they cost less than visiting scientists.
Or it may favor younger program directors over those with 
experience.  Or those from low cost-of-living states, since
NSF matches home salary.  Travel budgets could be cut, reducing 
the number of review and overview panels or favoring reviewers 
from the DC area.  If our US members have opinions on this,
let your representatives know.)


 3> Industry news:

    Digital has had a bad quarter, and plans to cut 7K jobs
in the next year.  [NYT, 7/3/96, C1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Netscape now gets 80M hits per day on its home page,
from 38M users.  The page's advertising content is starting
to bring in major revenue.  <http://home.netscape.com
/ads/index.html>.  [Network News, 6/23/96.]  (38M users?
Anyway, note that Netscape is distributing a new beta, 3.0b5.  
Also, that it crashed my Mac twice within the first ten minutes 
while browsing some of Netscape's own pages.)

    Apple has a new executive VP/chief technology officer,
Ellen Hancock.  She has been a sr. VP for computer networking 
hardware and software at IBM, where she worked for 28 years
before moving to National Semiconductor last fall.
[SJM News Center, 7/4/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    Traditional database systems will soon have competition
from Internet search engine suppliers such as Yahoo! and 
AltaVista.  The newer systems can search unstructured documents.  
[Forrester Research.  Computer Industry Daily, 7/5/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    Excite Co. will acquire McKinley Group and its Magellan
Online Guide, for $10M in stock.  Excite and Magellan together 
receive 4M hits/day, compared with 6M for Yahoo! and 4M each for 
Lycos and Infoseek.  Consolidation will help concentrate available 
ad dollars.  [IBD, 7/1/96, A7.  EDUPAGE.]  (I've also seen $18M 
mentioned as the price, in Seidman's Online Insider.  George Rios 
recommended this e-newsletter, which covers financial news
about the online services.  [Robert D. Seidman <robert@clark.net>, 
online-l@peach.ease.lsoft.com, 6/30/96.])

    Sometimes you need an interpreter:  "Suppose the competitor
of the local phone company were the Washington Redskins and
the incumbent phone company was the Dallas Cowboys.  Congress
has said that the Redskins have the right to borrow Emmit Smith 
for any number of plays.  That is called unbundling an element
of the incumbent's network.  And the Redskins can use the entire 
Cowboy team at a discount off what Jerry Jones has paid them.  
That's called resale.  Also the Redskins can hand off the ball
to Smith if their own runners aren't doing so well.  That's
called interconnection.  If Smith helps the Redskins get a 
touchdown, that's called termination, for which some think
the Cowboys should be paid nothing but the Skins should get the 
points."  [FCC Chairman Reed Hundt.  IBD, 5/20/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]

    Dave Winer says that Microsoft is making some excellent
Mac-only Internet software now -- including its Internet Explorer 
-- built with native Mac development tools and supporting the 
Frontier scripting language and advanced non-Apple application 
program interfaces (APIs).  Microsoft has shown willingness
to work with the independent developer community -- WebStar, 
Eudora, Stuffit, Filemaker, Anarchie, BBEdit, Internet Config -- 
to make software advances that are unique to the Mac.  "They know 
our names. They know what we do.  They implement our suggestions.  
They offer to share what they have.  They want to work with us."  
Dave is ticked at Netscape for giving Mac users "buggy, warmed up 
leftovers."  And he's ticked at Apple for wanting to develop
and integrate all functions in-house, taking ideas from developers 
but giving little back.  "If net standards can't originate
from this community, we don't have a prayer for relevance.
We'll be running ported Windows apps and parts forever."  
[<dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 7/2/96.]
    
    (On the other hand, Apple's heavy-handed integration
has given the Mac it's uniform user interface and easy-to-use 
operating system.  Independent utility programs can be great,
but really clutter up a computer.  Plug-ins are less of a problem.  
Although Netscape's email and newsreader interfaces aren't
the greatest, their integrated approach has great promise
as an "Internet operating system."  I'm not happy with having
to do separate login negotiations for Eudora, Fetch, Telnet, 
NewsWatcher, Anarchie, a browser, etc., each with its own 
interface style.  Dave's Frontier scripting/webmaster environment 
may be powerful, but it's not user-friendly enough for Apple and 
Netscape -- or for the masses.  It's good that both approaches
are competing.)


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Honeywell Technology Center (Minneapolis), Automated Reasoning 
group: PhD sr. research scientist in planning/scheduling, 
constraint satisfaction, DAI, reasoning under uncertainty,
or data mining.  Also a BS/MS research scientist.

NASA Ames (Mountain View): MS/PhD computer scientist
for automated planning and mission operations scheduling.

Information Extraction & Transport (IET; Rosslyn, VA):
US decision scientists for work in pattern recognition,
evidential reasoning, etc.  Also knowledge discovery/
machine learning scientists to model human expertise.

CMU's HCI Institute: postdoc in cognitive modeling.

San Jose co.: MS/PhD computational linguist for R&D
in concept detection, automatic formatting, content correlation, 
and summarization.

Language Systems Inc. (LA): BS/MS sr. scientist for NLP systems.

Southwestern Bell Technology Resource (Austin): MS/PhD MTS
in speech and language technology, multimodal interfaces.

UWestminster (UK): RA in machine vision and NN
for face recognition.

Aston U. (UK): 2-year postdoc in combining spatial outputs
of neural networks (for weather prediction).

Royal Holloway, ULondon:  PhD RA in constraint satisfaction.

Royal Melbourne Inst. of Technology (RMIT): CS department head.

Chinese U. of Hong Kong: BS+ speech researcher in DSP, NN,
speech technology, NL understanding, or CL.


 5> Online education:

    Governors of 10 western states have pledged funds for
a virtual university next year.  "It's not the technology that 
slows you down, it's the sociology."  [NYT, 6/25/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    group-l is a discussion of group psychology and dynamics: 
leadership, facilitation, personality typing, etc.  Send a 
"subsingle email-address" message to <group-l-request
@lists.best.com>.  See <http://www.cgl.org/OtherGrpResources.html> 
for other group-related resources.  [John Abbe <johnca@cgl.org>, 
NEW-LIST, 6/2/96.]

    The online journal RhetNet has begun discussion
of peer review and quality in scholarly publication.  
<http://www.missouri.edu/~rhetnet/net_texts.html>.
[EDUPAGE, 7/7/96.]


 6> Virtual personae:

    Julia the Chatterbot can be interviewed by telnet
to fuzine.mt.cs.cum, login "julia".  You have to kind of
go along with what Julia wants to talk about.  For more info,
see <http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/mlm/julia.html>.  Other virtual 
humans are available from Silicon Graphics Inc. 
<http://www.studio.sgi.com/Features/PerfAnimation/intro.html>;
the Center for Human Modeling and Simulation 
<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~hms/home.html>; and Boston Dynamics 
<http://www.bdi.com>.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 6/26/96.]

    You can also chat with a computer at 
<http://debra.dgbt.doc.ca/chat/info.page.html>.
[Dave Morris, 7/96.]

     "Virtual Girlfriends" is a popular video game in Tokyo.  
Players steer a boy through high school, where he must look nice, 
get good grades, be popular, and win dates and love.
"The fun lies in the process of finding out what makes
a girl happy."  [UPI.  This is True, 6/16/96.]
(There's an earlier game where men get to raise a daughter
from infancy.  Very popular.)

    AIVR Corp. (Richardson, TX) offers several
"virtual companions" that converse via natural language typing
and PC sound card as you branch through photo sequences.
About $40 for the G-rated versions, or $60 with sexually explicit 
conversations and scenes.  "Our AI actually reacts to
the sentence in much the same way that a human being would."
The Girlfriend personalities understand psychology and
their bodies, clothing, and apartments, and can learn words
and personal facts (retained between sessions).  Free catalog
from <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/dave_morris>,
(214) 235-4999, (214) 235-4992 Fax.  [comp.ai.nat-lang, 6/26/96.]

    (The company is also available for custom programming
of NL front ends and AI reasoning in games.  Contact 
<71334.1136@compuserve.com>.  Dave Morris first developed
an NL database query system for banks, then wrote a program
for ham radio packet modem that impersonated him and conversed 
about ham radio equipment, antennas, transceivers, modems, etc. 
(and then printed a QSL postcard).  He claims that his current 
software is far beyond the Loebner Prize Competition demos
at <http://www.csusm.edu/loebner_contest.html>.)

    For Microsoft research into life-like characters,
see the brief description and .wav download at 
<http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/ui/persona/home.htm>.  
[Dave Morris, 7/96.]

					-- Ken


"What do you mean we don't communicate?  Just yesterday
I faxed you a reply to the recorded message you left
on my answering machine."  -- The Wall Street Journal.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 48
 IS                                              July 11, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Software and online marketing.
 2>	Research software.
 3>	Education and groupware.
 4>	Shareware archives.
 5>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

This time, like all times, is a very good one,
if we but know what to do with it.  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.  
[Robert Wolff <kupuna@interpac.net>, 6/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Software and online marketing:

    The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that software 
shrink-wrap licenses are enforceable.  However, the box should 
have a notice says that there is a licensing agreement inside
and that buyers may return the software if they don't agree to
the terms.  [IBD, 7/3/96, A5.  EDUPAGE.]

    PC vendors are planning to cut back this fall on the number
of applications bundled with their CPUs.  Most people use few
of the applications anyway.  [St. Petersburg Times, 6/19/96, E4.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Cyberland Mega Mall offers free lifetime listings of shopping 
sites.  <http://www.cyberland.net/free/>.  [WEBster, 6/25/96.]

    Shopping on the Web "is like shopping at a Kmart the size
of Texas with the products placed randomly on the shelves" --
yet it could displace half of today's retail business by 2010.  
Sales are only $518M this year, but may reach $6.5B by 2000.  
Online shopping allows more information to exchanged with
the shopper, for a better commercial relationship.  Although
the Web offers mainly ads at present, it will increasingly offer 
reviews, comparisons, product tie-ins, and extra-value services.  
Viewing speed is the missing element, but it's coming soon.
[Wes Conard, Bloomberg Business News.  SJM, 7/9/96, 1C.]

    Best Products Co. is abandoning its catalog business,
just as Sears did.  The printed catalog made it too difficult
for Best's retail stores to adapt offerings to local needs.
[SJM, 7/9/96, 2C.]  (Internet marketing can be even more flexible, 
of course.  This has shown up first in the pornography businesses, 
where gateways to photo archives are touted differently to 
differing audiences.  Other retailers will get the hang of it,
and thousands of jobs will open up for "window dressers" packaging 
selections from a single line of merchandise.  Small businesses 
won't even need their own warehouses, since drop shipping
from a shared warehouse will work just as well.)

    Most companies selling via the Web won't see a profit
for another four years.  A typical newsletter or magazine
will lose $3.9M beyond its initial investment before it starts 
making money.  [Forrester Research.  IBD, 7/3/96, A5.  EDUPAGE.]  
(Yipes!  I don't have $3.9M!  :-)

    Wyse Technology is offering software at $1/hour,
run on servers accessed from $500 Internet terminals.
Game software -- and possibly commercial success -- will have
to wait for faster communication speeds.  [WSJ, 6/17/96, B2.  
EDUPAGE.]  (Thus far, there has been little demand for
"network computers" without hard disks.  But then there
wouldn't be, unless online services provided storage
and other centralized services.  Online services have been
going the other way, converting to an Internet model.)

    Cybermedia's "Oil Change" service automatically checks
the Web for upgrades to any of your PC software, offering
to install them for you.  A beta version can be downloaded from 
<http://www.cybermedia.com/>.  [IW, 6/24/96, p. 114.  EDUPAGE.]

    VIRUSAFE WEB 2.0 automatically scans WWW downloads
for viruses.  <http://www.eliashim.com>.  [WEBster, 6/25/96.]

    Wells Fargo Bank is giving customers free copies of
Netscape Navigator for Windows (so that they can try online 
banking services.)  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/10/96.]  
(Whatever you want to sell on the net, someone else will give away 
free.  But that doesn't mean you shouldn't go into business.)


 2> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

CLIPS/R2: CLIPS expert system tool using Rete II rule engine.
(Up to 50 times faster.)

AionDS expert system shell: new online info.

PREVia: NN financial modeling and forecasting tool, Windows demo.

pro Fit 5.0: scientific data analysis and graphing on the Mac.

plotbot: gnuplot graphs by email (in GIF, EPS, HPGL, or ASCII).

Design Advisor/Neural Analyzer (DANA): advisor for NN modeling
of physical and chemical processes.

Grace 1.0: Graphical Constraints Environment for ECLiPSe
finite domain constraint programs.

Einstein's Daydream 1.0: algorithm toolbox for VRML moving worlds 
with MIDI music.

AI II course materials using C++, from Larry Holder
(UTexas Arlington).

chaosbib: nonlinear systems bibliography (7603 entries).

Recent Advances in Robot Learning: book ed. by Franklin,
Mitchell, and Thrun.

Computational Intelligence PC Tools: book by Eberhart,
Dobbins, and Simpson.

SPSS Bookstore: documentation for SPSS, SYSTAT, QI Analyst,
Neural Connection, SPSS Diamond, and BMDP Classic.

"Getting Connected: The Internet at 56K and Up":
book from O'Reilly.


 3> Education and groupware:

    US Dept. of Education white papers on future directions
of educational technology can be downloaded from 
<http://www.ed.gov/Technology/Futures/>.  Authors include
Chris Dede, Bob Tinker, Bev Hunter, and Jan Hawkins.
[Lud Braun <ludbraun@aol.com>, net-hap, 7/5/96.]

    The Int. Society for Technology in Education has published
six new books on integrating computers into education.  See also 
their free Spring/Summer 1996 ISTE Resources and Services for 
Technology-Using Educators.  <http://www.isteonline.uoregon.edu>, 
541-346-2400.  [Educom UPDATE, 7/1/96.]

    A free 40-lesson internet training course is available
by email from the MJRB-TRAINING LIST.  The first half covers
email access to the net; the second half is for MS Windows users.  
Send a "Course Info" subject line to Robert R. Behrens 
<rbehrens@kersur.net>, or send a "subscribe mjrb-training"
message to <majordomo@world.std.com>.  [NEW-LIST, 7/3/96.]

    Farrallon, PSINet, and SurfWatch have announced a grant 
program for Internet education.  Five schools or colleges will 
each get $7,500 worth of Internet products and services including 
routers, support, software, LAN-ISDN services.  11/10/96 deadline.  
<http://www.farallon.com>, 800-859-7761.  [Educom UPDATE, 7/1/96.]

    Synergy Journal, with 30K readers, covers "Internet as
a life form," virtual classrooms and offices, interactive
work groups, online education, public policy, case studies, etc.  
Weekly distribution.  Send a "request synergy journal" message
to Peter E. Pflaum <pflaump@sprynet.com>, or visit 
<http://metro.turnpike.net/~pflaump> for 24MB of documents
and links.  Also SYNERGY-NET on 
<http://emporium.turnpike.net/~pflaump>.  
[<cicano@cis.qmced.ac.uk>, lis-fid, 6/10/96.  newjour.]

    The Como System won a $75K Sun JavaCup prize, for applets
that let website users interact via chat, shared whiteboards, 
surveys, voting, games.  The applets are small
(e.g., 6KB for chat), and several such websites can be
run on a single server.  See <http://www.comopro.com>
or <http://www4.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>.
[Ulrich Gall <uhgall@faui45o.informatik.uni-erlangen.de>, 
c.i.www.authoring.misc, 7/7/96.]


 4> Shareware archives:

    The G6G Directory of Intelligent Software contains abstracts 
for over 700 software/hardware systems in 15 categories and
140 sub-categories: NN, FL, hypertext, hypermedia, multimedia, 
intelligent tools, expert systems, GA, OOP, VR, voice and
speech systems, etc.   A demo of Vol. II (of 7) is available
from <http://source.asset.com/g6g.html>.  Al Shapiro 
<g6g@source.asset.com>.  [<mclark3434@aol.com>, comp.ai, 6/30/96.  
David Joslin.]

    Software Age offers a searchable database of
over 1,600 software products and company descriptions,
at <http://www.softwareage.com/ACGI/FindProduct.html>.
See also <http://www.softwareage.com> for other info on software, 
developers, publishers, user groups, trade associations, 
conferences, and software-related sites.  [George Heilborn 
<heilborn@softwareage.com>, net-hap, 4/30/96.]

    CyberSpace Guru offers over 200 Internet software programs, 
with descriptions and ratings.  Easy-to-use Windows front end.  
<http://www.pcsicd.com/>.  [Sanford Carr 
<spcarr@nebula.isapce.com>, net-hap, 5/10/96.]

    Shareware for Amiga, DOS, Mac, OS/2, Win3 and Win95
can be found via the search engine at 
<http://www.alberts.com/software1.htm>.  [<todd@alberts.com>,
net-hap, 5/17/96.]

    PCDeals is a bimonthly UK/European newsletter
announcing special deals on PC and Internet products.
Send a "join pcdeals email_address" message
to <publisher@silverquick.com>.  [Gordon Burns 
<gordon@silverquick.com>, NEW-LIST, 7/10/96.]

    DISTRIBUTERS OF SHAREWARE is a list of shareware
library links.  <http://www.halcyon.com/knopf/distrib.htm>.
[Kurt Laursen <kurt@avci.net>, net-hap, 5/17/96.]

    Consumer reviews, ratings, and specifications for 70K 
commercial software products can be found in the software 
directory at <http://www.benchin.com>.  [<bfraser@benchin.com>, 
net-hap, 6/24/96.]

    FreeBeez is a catalogue of business-oriented
software links: freeware, betaware, tryware, etc.  
<http://www.swiftech.com/~swiftech/merlin/index.html>.  
[<merlin@swiftech.com>, net-hap, 6/26/96.]

    Another source is Alex's Shareware Garage, 
<http://www.netcom.com/~apolonn>.  [<apolonn@ix.netcom.com>,
net-hap, 6/30/96.]

    And another, with PC and Mac software descriptions,
is <http://server2.powernet.net/~cksoccer>.  
[<cksoccer@powernet.net>, net-hap, 7/2/96.]

    Shareware for Windows 95 can be found on 
<http://www.microsoft.com/windows/software/shareware/week6.htm>.  
[Network News, 6/6/96.]

    Internet Software Outlet has 15K titles in stock, covering
all platforms.  You can also register each month to win
a free copy of PageMaker 6.0.  <http://www.shoplet.com/software>.  
[Tony Ellison <ellison@ingress1.murdoch.edu.au>, net-hap, 
6/21/96.]

    Or you can register every month for a free
U.S. Robotics 28.8kbps modem from Internet Hardware Outlet, 
<http://www.shoplet.com/hardware>.  [Tony Ellison 
<ellison@ingress1.murdoch.edu.au>, net-hap, 6/25/96.]

    OK, maybe you need an airplane or an x-ray machine.
Used Equipment Network lists 60K items and over 5K dealers
in 35 major markets.  <http://www.buyused.com>.  
[<jmack@hsix.com>, net-hap, 6/21/96.]

    A new site for Macintosh and Newton shareware is MacUser's 
Software Central, <http://www.zdnet.com/macuser/software/>.  
[NewtNews, 6/25/96.  Bill Park.]

    The Nexus offers a new, searchable index of Mac resources.  
<http://www.go-nexus-go.com/macresources/>.  [NewtNews, 6/18/96.  
Bill Park.]

    Search through Mac and Windows/DOS software descriptions
and ratings at <http://www.softwarez.com/>.  Daily updates, and 
over 20 download sites are offered.  <http://www.softwarez.com/>.  
[<bnordby@webinnovators.com>, net-hap, 6/19/96.]

    For students with special needs, check out the
Exceptional Software Company at <http://www.xceptional.com>.
They also carry general educational software.  
[<xcptnlsftw@xceptional.com>, net-hap, 6/24/96.]

    Mac freeware and shareware can be downloaded
from <http://net2.netacc.net/~scs/stanley.html>.  
[<scs@netacc.net>, net-hap, 7/5/96.]

    The Software Directory Directory can help you find just
about anything.  <http://boole.stanford.edu/nerdsheaven.html>.  
[<xwhyzee@pobox.com>, net-hap, 6/24/96.]

    Previously Owned Programs & Software (POPS) can
help you buy or sell software in original vendor packages.  
<http://www.marsweb.com/bigskypub/pops.htm>. 
[<bigskypub@marsweb.com>, net-hap, 7/3/96.]


 5> Computists' news:

    Robert Schrag is looking for a research position
in planning, scheduling, constraint satisfaction, search,
or AI reasoning.  Bob is about to get his PhD from UTexas, 
following 16 years of AI R&D experience.  He's worked
at Honeywell, and was the principal behind a large temporal 
reasoning contract for DARPA/Rome Laboratory.  Now he wants
to build other research programs for real-world applications.
If you know of an opportunity, please contact 
<schrag@cs.utexas.edu>.  Information about his dissertation
on knowledge-base SAT/CSP (propositional satisfiability
and constraint satisfaction) can be found on 
<http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/schrag/>.

    Robert Jacobson is finishing up his book "INFORMATION
DESIGN," to be published by MIT Press in time for SIGCHI '97.  
Pre-publication details are on <http://www.worldesign.com> 
(Resource Room/Book).  [<bob@worldesign.com>, 7/2/96.]

					-- Ken


If the colleges were better, if they really had it,
you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order
in the inrushing multitude.  See in college how we thwart
the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method
of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that
you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for.
The college, which should be a place of delightful labor,
is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted
to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits.
I would have the studies elective.  Scholarship is to be created 
not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.  
The wise instructor accomplishes this by opening to his pupils 
precisely the attractions the study has for himself.
The marking is a system for schools, not for the college;
for boys, not for men; and it is an ungracious work
to put on a professor.  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.
[David T. Huang <dth2@acpub.duke.edu>, QOTD, 6/25/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 49
 IS                                              July 23, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Information agents.
 2>	Development tools.
 3>	Image processing.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Linguistics.
 6>	Projects.
_________________________________________________________________

A programmer who wears T-shirts and polyester pants
shouldn't design screens.  -- Dvorak's Axiom 43.
[Robert D. Bliss, Computer, 12/92, p. 120.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Our new website at <http://www.computists.com> is drawing 
praise from members who like the simple style.  Apparently it 
works well with all browsers, even Lynx.  I'm frustrated, though, 
that I can't completely control the spacing between individual 
paragraphs.  Browsers can ignore a leading or trailing blank line 
in order to save screen "real estate," and different browsers
make different choices.  Netscape Navigator even does it 
differently depending on whether I'm downloading or reading from
a local file.  The newest HTML version allows white-space control, 
but that won't work with older browsers.


 1> Information agents:

    A top technology visionary may be paid $750K/year or more.  
That's not common, but good chief information officers (CIOs)
are in such demand that companies may pat a $50K-$100K premium
to get them.  More than half of IS executives earn less than 
$100K/year, though.  [IW, 7/8/96, p. 46.  EDUPAGE.]

    Agents, Inc. <http://www.firefly.com>, an "intelligent agent" 
development company, is backed by $8M from Merrill Lynch,
Dun & Bradstreet, Softbank, and Atlas Ventures.  MIT Media Lab's 
Dr. Pattie Maes is the founder.  CMU's WebWatcher spider, 
<http://ww.cs.cmu.edu>, will soon be spun out as WiseWire 
<http://www.empirical.com> with at least $2M in funding from
U-Media and federal grants.  [Forbes, 7/1/96, p. 79.  NewtNews.]

    Pattie Maes is also leader of the Autonomous Agents Group
at the Media Lab, and believes agents will bring about a "social 
revolution."  VR pioneer Jaron Lanier opposes agent technology
as "evil and wrong."  Wired Online's Brain Tennis is sponsoring
a debate, 7/15 to 7/24, on <http://www.wired.com/braintennis/>, 
archived on Wired Threads <http://www.hotwired.com/cgi-bin
/interact/replies_all?msg.20829>.  [Roderick Simpson 
<rod@wired.com>, comp.ai, 7/15/96.  David Joslin.]

    NCSA is discontinuing its What's New listings, after three 
years of trying to track all the new Web services.  Web indexes 
and search engines better meet the needs of most users.
Archives of What's New will be kept on <http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu
/SDG/Software/Mosaic/Docs/whats-new.html>, through 9/96.
[David Plotnikoff <plotnikoff@sjmercury.com>, SJM, 7/4/96, 1E.]

    Bjorn Hermans has Web-pushed his dissertation, "Intelligent 
Software Agents on the Internet: an inventory of currently offered 
functionality in the information society and a prediction of 
(near-)future developments."  <http://www.hermans.org/agents/>.  
[<b.t.hermans@kub.nl>, net-hap, 7/10/96.]  (Use Netscape 1.11
or higher, or any browser that supports tables.)

    CyberHound lets you limit WWW/FTP/Gopher searches by about
75 parameters, such as personal vs. corporate sites.  Reviews
of many sites are also available.  <http://www.cyberhound.com>.  
[WEBster, 6/25/96.]

    Danny Sullivan's analysis of search engines
and how to create pages for them can be found on 
<http://www.maxonline.com/searchstudy>.  Nicholas Tomaiuolo
has also done a good study of five search engines,
at <http://neal.ctstateu.edu:2001/htdocs/websearch.html>.
For a comparison of server and browser features, see WebCompare
at <http://www.webcompare.com>.  [Web Informant, 5/26/96.]

    I've put a lot of AI-related keywords on our intro page, 
<http://www.computists.com/intro.html>, to make sure that spiders 
retrieve the page whenever someone searches for AI-related 
keywords.  Some sites go even further, adding sex terms to draw 
people to unrelated sites.  WebWeek calls this spamdexing,
in an article on <http://www.webweek.com/ww-online/96May20
/undercon/cheaters.html>.  [Web Informant, 5/26/96.]

    The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and the World-Wide 
Web Consortium (W3C) are working on a new Simple Agent Transfer 
Protocol (SATP) specification.  [Joanie Wexler, Network World, 
7/896, p. 1.  NewtNews.]

    An apology, of sorts:  WWW founder Tim Berners-Lee
never expected web users to type in all those http:// strings.  
"URL syntax was never intended for human consumption.
It was intended for a machine."  He's been surprised that
people are willing to code hyperlinks manually, instead of through 
page editors and invisible copy/paste.  [Technology Review, 7/96, 
p. 32.  EDUPAGE.]

    A vertical market: the Perkin-Elmer Corp. is investing $4.5M 
in Paracel, Inc. (Pasadena), a leading provider of information 
filtering technology.  PE's Applied Biosystems Division is 
collaborating with Paracel on filtering data from DNA sequencers 
and on organizing and exploiting Internet information banks.  
[Forrest Fleming  <ir000069@interramp.com>, sci.med.informatics, 
7/11/96.]  (Paracel apparently hopes to make similar deals
in other industries.)

    Intranet company Simply Interactive Inc. (San Jose) is buying 
intranet search-and-retrieval company Info.NET Technology Corp.  
[SJM, 7/4/96, 1C.]

    For more on agent technologies, see Tim Finin's AgentNews, 
<http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/>.  [<finin@umbc.edu>, 
7/22/96.]


 2> Development tools:

    IBM's AgentBuilder toolkit (based on RAISE) is now available 
in alpha, at <http://www.raleigh.ibm.com/iag/iagsoft.htm>.  
Another alpha release -- for OS/2 and Win95 -- is their Web 
Browser Intelligence (WBI), <http://www.raleigh.ibm.com/pwa
/pwasoft.htm>.  [AgentNews, 7/6/93.  NewtNews.]

    Adobe's "Amber" .pdf formated-page reader is an official
3.0 beta, available for Windows, Mac, and Unix from 
<http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/3beta/main.html>.  (An OS/2
alpha version is also available.)  Amber integrates with both 
Netscape and Internet Explorer, and can display HTML and even
PDF embedded within HTML.   [Network News, 6/6/96.]

    Jess is a CLIPS expert system shell re-written in Java.  
<http://herzberg.ca.sandia.gov/jess/>, or 
<http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/~clips/CLIPS.html> for info on CLIPS.  
[AgentNews, 7/6/93.  NewtNews.]

    See also SRI International's Generic Knowledge Base Editor 
(GKBE), at <http://www.ai.sri.com/~gkb>.  [AgentNews, 7/6/93.  
Bill Park.]

    Apple has released its Game Sprockets software developer's kit 
(SDK), to help create advanced multimedia and Internet-based 
games.  [iNews Summary.  NewtNews, 7/9/96.]

     K.J. Bricknell's "MACINTOSH C: A Hobbyist's Guide
to Programming the Macintosh in C" (CodeWarrior Edition --
Version 1.0) would be a $30-$50 book, but you can get it free
as a 1.5MB download from <http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com
/alt.sources.mac/macintosh-c/codewarrior.html>.  Microsoft
Word format.  Another 1.3MB of demo code and executables
is also available.  "Really covers the nittys and the grittys
of writing full-featured Mac applications.  Major winnage!
Get it while it's hot!"  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/8/96.]


 3> Image processing:

    Steve Jobs' Pixar has closed its TV unit and will
concentrate on full-length movies.  The company is being forced 
into ever-more-difficult projects as competitors learn to 
duplicate Pixar's special effects.  [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 
7/11/96, B8.  EDUPAGE.]

    CMU's Jose Moura claims their interframe video compressions 
scheme -- using segmented scenes -- offers up to 10,000:1 
compression.  Unfortunately, the encoding side can't yet be
done in real time.  [Data Communications, 7/96, p. 18.  NewtNews.]

    Scientists at UCB and the Hungarian Computer and Automation 
Institute have a low-power retina chip with 500 programmable 
analog processors -- a cellular neural network -- capable of
1T operations/second.  Early trials showed success in locating 
small tumors in x-ray images.  The US Navy financed part of
the $1M project.  Another $5M is needed to commercialize
the technology, to produce $300 chips ten years from now.  
[clari.tw.computers.pc.hardware.  Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 
7/9/96.]  (Carver Mead's Synaptics also makes retina chips.)


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Temple U./CIS (Philadelphia): two IS/CS/AI faculty professors.

MIT Spoken Language Systems Group: BS research specialist.

Syracuse Language Systems (Syracuse,NY): two MS/PhD NLP 
researchers for text processing, dialog understanding,
and grammar verification.

Motorola's Chicago Corporate Research Laboratories
(Schaumburg, IL): BS/MS intern, to work with HMM/NN
speech recognizer. 

SRA International, Inc. (Fairfax, VA): BS/MS NLP research 
programmers for AI-based multilingual data extraction/IR, 
summarization, routing, machine translation, content clustering, 
fusion, and data mining.

Seattle aerospace company: PhD NLP technologist.

VISA Int. (San Francisco): BS AI engineers for NN data mining
and fraud modeling.

Fortune 500 co. (Chicago?): PhD in NN OCR and handwriting 
recognition, for a new research group.

UWaterloo (Ontario): CS chair.

BT Labs/Intelligent Systems Research Group (Ipswich, UK):
PhD for R&D in intelligent agents for machine learning, 
scheduling, AI, etc.

UBirmingham (UK): PhD research fellow in evolutionary computation 
for intelligent agents.

USussex (UK): two research fellowships in evolutionary robotics 
and biological sensory modeling.

Rank Xerox Research Centre (Cambridge, UK): research scientist
in distributed document technologies.

UStirling (Scotland): lecturer in descriptive and computational 
linguistics.

The German Research Center for AI (DFKI GmbH; Saarbruecken):  
computational linguists for information access, message 
extraction/understanding, and grammar engineering.

Austrian Research Inst. for AI (OFAI; Vienna):  German-speaking 
NLP research engineer.

CSIRO Australia's Div. of Information Technology (Melbourne):
PhD research leader for text-based information management.

National University of Singapore/ISCS (NUS): 2 PhD research 
fellows and 3 BS RAs in medical informatics (AI, knowledge 
acquisition, probabilistic reasoning, decision theory).

The Chinese University of Hong Kong/CSE: PhD faculty in SE, data 
mining, digital libraries, visual programming, and architectures.


 5> Linguistics:

    Grady Ward's Moby lexicon project is now in the public domain, 
available from ILASH (Sheffield) as a 26MB download or as
subfiles for Moby Hyphenator (185K entries);
Moby Part-of-Speech (230K entries); Moby Pronunciator
(175K entries); Moby Thesaurus (30K root words, 2.5M synonyms);
Moby Words (610K words and phrases); Moby Language
(word lists in 5 languages); and the complete and unabridged
Moby Shakespeare.   <ftp://ftp.dcs.shef.ac.uk/share/ilash/Moby/> 
or <http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/ilash/Moby/>.
[Malcolm Crawford <m.crawford@shef.ac.uk>, sci.lang, 7/18/96.  
David Joslin.]

    Microsoft is replacing the thesaurus in its Spanish-language 
Word 6.0.  Customers were apparently offended that the word 
"Indian" listed synonyms "savage" and "man-eater," while
"Western" was paired with "civilized."  "Lesbian" and "pervert"
is another controversial pair.  [SJM, 7/6/96, 1C.
Also THIS is TRUE, 7/7/96.]

    MISTIC (Minumum Intelligent Signal Test Item Corpus)
is a WWW-based effort to create a "conscious" software system.
To contribute to the knowledge base, visit 
<http://www.clickable.com/mist_corpus.html> and enter statements 
or questions with T/F values:  The Moon orbits the earth (true); 
people have feelings (true); etc.  [Christopher McKinstry 
<chris@clickable.com>, net-hap, 7/15/96.]

    "Legislators do not merely mix metaphors: they are
the Waring blenders of metaphors, the Cuisinarts of the field.
By the time you let the head of the camel into the tent,
opening a loophole big enough to drive a truck through,
you may have thrown the baby out with the bath water by putting
a Band-Aid on an open wound, and then you have to turn over
the first rock in order to find a sacred cow."  -- Molly Ivins.  
[Eric Scouten <scouten@gofast.net>, 7/96.  Bill Park.]


 6> Projects:

    Infinity Project aims to use net discussion in creating
a non-profit WWW game design company.  Explore ideas
at <http://nether.net/~genx/infinity>.  [Kevin Swarts 
<genx@nether.net>, comp.apps, 7/4/96.]

    John December is preparing a major update of his
"December List" of computer-mediated communication (CMC)
and Internet resources and services, "one of the most
well-known Internet reference documents ever created."
See <http://www.december.com/cmc/info/> for lists of technologies, 
applications, culture, discussion forums, and bibliographies.  
Send additions to <john@december.com>.  [alt.internet.services, 
7/16/96.  net-hap.]

    Don Tveter has been putting together a backprop 
FAQ/bibliography and tutorial/tip sheet called Backpropagator's 
Review.  Many of the articles are available online.
See <http://www.mcs.com/~drt/bprefs.html>, or 
<http://www.mcs.com/~drt/svbp.html> for free Unix/DOS code.  
<http://www.mcs.com/~drt/probp.html> is the professional version.) 
[<drt@mcs.com>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 7/20/96.]  (One of Don's
new listings is UYork's special-interest collaboration network
in neural networks and remote sensing, 
<http://dcpu1.cs.york.ac.uk:6666/~aaron/nnrs/>.)

					-- Ken


It is easier to build a road than to build an organization
to maintain that road.  -- Arturo Israel.
[Andre Carrel <acarrel@eps01.eps.gov.bc.ca>, QOTD, 7/15/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 50
 IS                                              July 25, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Politics and policy.
 3>	Scientific computing.
 4>	Physics and nanotechnology.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Advanced technology.
 7>	AI news and resources.
_________________________________________________________________

The trouble with life is, you're halfway through it before
you realize it's a do-it-yourself thing.  -- Gregory Singleton 
<ugsingle@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu>.  [TFTD, 7/15/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Let me know if you need a home page on our website.


 1> Funding news:

    NSF Deputy Director Anne Petersen is leaving to become
a senior VP of the Kellogg Foundation.  [Robert L. Park,
WHAT'S NEW, 7/19/96.]

    NSF will hold a Regional Grants Conference at UGeorgia
on 4/3 and 4/4/97, following one at Cornell 
<http://www.osp.cornell.edu/NSFC96.html>.  Workshops by NSF
staff will cover proposal preparation; merit review; electronic 
initiatives; grant administration; new programs and initiatives; 
and future directions for a national science policy.  Register 
with <sponprog@ovpr.uga.edu>, (706) 542-5939, (706) 542-5946 Fax.  
[grants, 7/9/96.]

    NSF has a new brochure for its Faculty Early Career 
Development (CAREER) program, including NSF's component
of the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists
and Engineers (PECASE).  Proposals are due 10/17/96,
for awards of $200K-$500K over 4-5 years (plus matching
support for partnerships).  Proposals are limited to 16 pages, 
including a 1-page statement from your department head.
FTP file nsf96115.txt from stis.nsf.gov, or order NSF 96-115
from <pubs@nsf.gov>.  A CAREER-FAQ document will soon be posted
to <http://www.nsf.gov>.  [Barbara Blaustein <bblauste@nsf.gov>, 
dbworld, 7/17/96.]  (The Presidential Faculty Fellows (PFF) 
program is terminated for FY97.  Other news from the Database
and Expert Systems Program can be found on 
<http://www.cise.nsf.gov/iris/DBEShome.html>.)

    Ameritech (Chicago) is offering $2M for National Digital 
Library projects, with proposal application forms available 
8/19/96.  Ameritech wants to build a small Internet version
of the Library of Congress.  <http://www.ameritech.com>.  
[Newsbytes, 7/9/96.  Bill Park.]


 2> Politics and policy:

    The Senate Appropriations Committee has, for now, rejected
a House transfer of $9M in NSF salaries to research funding.  
[WHAT'S NEW, 7/12/96.]

    "Science and Engineering Indicators 1996" from NSF/NSB
is on the web (in Adobe .PDF format) at <http://www.nsf.gov/sbe
/srs/seind96/start.htm>.  Topics include K-12 and higher
S&E education, the S&E work force, R&D, technology development
and diffusion, and public attitudes, plus science and technology 
outside the US.  A new feature is the final chapter, "The Economic 
and Social Significance of Scientific and Engineering Research."  
[Scout Report, 7/19/96.]

    The "Reinventing America" online budget simulation game
drew 3.5M web page "hits," with perhaps 3,400 core participants.  
Participants favored technology and research funding over
the military, drug interdiction, foreign aid, poverty/pension 
programs, and affirmative action.  [Broadcasting & Cable, 7/15/96, 
p. 53.  EDUPAGE.]

    NSF is offering documentation of its Innovative Industrial 
Technology R&D Promotion Program (INT 96-16), and Japan's
Monbusho Research Experience Fellowships for Young Foreign 
Researchers, 1996 (INT 96-15).  FTP int9616.txt or int9615.txt 
from stis.nsf.gov.  [grants, 7/17/96.]  (Monbusho is the Ministry 
of Education, Science, Sports and Culture, roughly equivalent
to NSF.)

    Monbusho has allocated 11B yen ($100M) under the FY'96 budget 
to the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) to launch 
an ambitious Research for the Future (RFTF) support program.
17 scientific fields are covered, including Intelligent 
Information and Advanced Information Control (visualization,
HCI, NLP, AI, SE, automated programming, distributed computation) 
and Advanced Multimedia Information and Communication Systems.  
100 specific 5-year projects will be chosen at the end of July.  
[NSF Tokyo 96-16, 7/3/96.  comp.research.japan.]

    China claims that its software market has expanded 20%
per year since 1993.  Its computer industry will be worth $7.2B
by the year 2000.  [UPI, 6/23/96.  Bill Park.]


 3> Scientific computing:

    German and Swiss physicists have found that their models
for flow of turbulent water are a "surprisingly good fit"
for flow of currency through the world economy.  [Nature.
THIS is TRUE, 7/14/96.]

    cfdcc-dataexch is for discussion of data exchange in 
computational fluid dynamics CAD, visualization, and analysis.  
Send a "join cfdcc-dataexch your name" message to 
<mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  For computational fluid dynamics
in general, join the cfdcc list.  [<cfdcc-dataexch-request
@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 6/12/96.]

    netcad covers distributed and network-centric computing
in computer-aided design and manufacturing.  Send a "subscribe 
netcad" message to <majordomo@cme.nist.gov>.  [William C. Regli 
<regli@cme.nist.gov>, DAI-List, 6/3/96.]

     The Mathematical Programming Society has a new website
at <http://www.caam.rice.edu/~mathprog/>.  [Stephen Wright 
<wright@mcs.anl.gov>, sci.op-research, 6/14/96.]


 4> Physics and nanotechnology:

    The Institute of Atomic-Scale Engineering (IASE) is a new
non-profit, dedicated to nanotechnology R&D and education.  
Articles by Forrest Bishop are available on 
<http://www.speakeasy.org/~forrestb>. IASE, P.O. Box 30121, 
Seattle, WA 98103.  [<forrestb@ix.netcom.com>, sci.nanotech, 
7/1/96.]

    Nanothinc is assembling a nanotechnology info site
at <http://www.nanothinc.com>.  [Jerry Franklin 
<jerry@nanothinc.com>, net-hap, 4/23/96.]

    science-dialog is a list about large-scale structure
of the world and the nature of scientific enquiry.  Send a "join 
science-dialog your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  
[<science-dialog-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 6/7/96.]


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

ThoughtTreasure .00013: English/French lexicon, parser,
agents, utilities.

DemoGNG: Java implementations of "neural gas" NN algorithms.

aiNet: NN system for MS Windows.

PALM: 36-processor Programmable Adaptive Learning Memory chip.  
(Cascadeable, with 3-microsecond k-nearest-neighbor recognition.)

Search and Solve: IF/Prolog promotion for non-commercial orgs.

SimTools 4.5: a list of simulation software.

The Handbook of Parallel Constraint Logic Programming 
Applications: final documentation of the four ESPRIT APPLAUSE 
applications.

"Parallel Implementations of Backpropagation Neural Networks
on Transputers": book by Saratchandran, Sundararajan, and Foo.


 6> Advanced technology:

    A new GAO report says it's not clear that any of the "smart" 
weapons used in Desert Storm were more effective than their dumb 
counterparts.  The Pentagon blames weather factors, which will be 
mitigated by using GPS positioning in future models.  [Robert
L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 7/12/96.]

    Neural-network software from NASA Ames and McDonnell Douglas 
Corp. (St. Louis) may help land damaged jet fighters.  In cases
of wing, fuselage, or sensor damage, the plane's computer may
be able to learn new flight characteristics in less than a second.  
The software will soon be tested on a high-fidelity simulator, 
then in an F-15.  Certification of various aircraft by Dryden's 
Air Worthiness Board and the FAA may be 5-15 years away.  Other 
applications of neural damage control may include power plants, 
automobiles, and simpler systems.  John Bluck, 415/604-5026.
[Ron Baalke <baalke@kelvin.jpl.nasa.gov>, sci.space.news, 7/1/96.]

    Manning & Napier Information Services (MNIS; Rochester, NY) 
offers PC-based search for prior art in computer and software 
technology.  Their DR-LINK system -- used by the US Patent
and Trademark Office -- searches for published technology in 15M 
documents in an in-house repository and on the Internet (including 
Gopher sites and CS repositories).  Companies that fail to do
such searches now risk rejection or delay of patent applications 
that could easily have been restricted to valid claims.  Mike 
Weiner <74405.1451@compuserve.com>, MNIS <http://www.mnis.net>, 
716-325-6880.  [Randy Calistri-Yeh <randy@textwise.com>, 7/3/96.]

    Wired (p. 135) has an article about online payment systems: 
First Virtual, Cybercash, Netbill, Digicash, and Millicent.
No obvious winners yet.  [NewtNews, 7/16/96.]

    Split Up is a divorce advisor, from John Zeleznikow of
La Trobe University.  It asks questions about work, history, 
health, children, property, and future needs, then suggests
a percentage property split (with supporting arguments).
The software uses NN, CBR, and expert systems technology.  
<johnz@latcs1.cs.latrobe.edu.au>.  [Sydney Morning Herald, 
5/28/96, p. 10.  IDSS, 7/1/96.  Bill Park.]

    jrm&aFLUX magazine "explores the future of technology
and society," plus tips for entrepreneurs, authors, and
computer users.  <http://members.aol.com/jrspacer/ixmag.html>.  
[<jrspacer@aol.com>, newjour, 6/2/96.]

    Remember when you wrote punchcard or database programs
that recognized 99 as a code for EOF (or some other special case)?  
Well, those programs are still out there, and may trigger
the Year 2000 problem a year early.  [Newsbytes.  Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, 7/11/96.]


 7> AI news and resources:

    Genetic algorithms and genetic programming are
"on the threshold of solving problems that humans have found 
difficult (in a few selected areas)."   Last year, Juille
used GAs on the "14-sort" problem to do better than a long
string of human mathematicians.  Recently, David Andre 
<andre@flamingo.stanford.edu> and Forrest Bennett used GP
to work on the "GKL" problem, achieving a 0.148% improvement
-- similar to the advances by each of 5 mathematicians over
a 20 year period.  The GP used 64 Power PCs to try 6M solutions.  
<http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~phred/>.  [John Koza 
<koza@cs.stanford.edu>, genetic-programming, 6/25/96.  Bill Park.]

    The Genetic Programming Notebook is a recently updated
website for genetic programming, genetic algorithms, AI,
alife, and robotics.  It offers tutorials, software, links,
group descriptions, a bibliography, FAQ, conference and
journal calls, etc.  <http://www.jjf.com/gp>, with mirrors at 
<http://holgate.jsc.nasa.gov/~jjf/gp/>, 
<http://tommy.jsc.nasa.gov/~jjf/gp/>, 
<http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~jjf/gp/>, 
<http://metricanet.com/people/jjf/gp/>, and 
<http://www.mysite.com/jjf/gp>.  Versions exist in Japanese
and Spanish.  [Jaime Fernandez <jjf@jjf.com>, c.ai.neural-nets, 
4/24/96.  Ken Barker.]

    Nova Genetica, "being a compendium of useful information 
regarding the industrious application of that technique most 
excellent, the Genetic Algorithm," is also newly revised.  
<http://www.aracnet.com/~wwir/NovaGenetica>.  [Darin R. Molnar 
<molnard@pdx.edu>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 5/20/96.  Ken Barker.]

    Research notes on optimization problems can be found
on <http://www.umr.edu/~jteng/Project/prj_opt.html>.
Approaches include NN and GA.  [Jackson J.C. Teng <jteng@umr.edu>, 
c.ai.genetic, 6/28/96.]

    The Data Mine, <http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~anp
/TheDataMine.html>, solicits contributions of data-mining
links and bibliographic entries.  A related site is the
Knowledge Discovery Mine, <http://info.gte.com/~kdd/Welcome.html>.  
[Andy Pryke <a.n.pryke@cs.bham.ac.uk>, comp.ai, 5/2/96.
David Joslin.]

    The Neuro-Fuzzy page has information about DANIELA neuro-fuzzy 
controllers. <http://polimage.polito.it/~marcello>.  [Marcello 
Chiaberge <marcello@polimage.polito.it>, comp.ai.fuzzy, 7/11/96.]

    Resources in expert systems (esp. the G2 real-time
expert system), fuzzy control, NN, scheduling, and other AI
for manufacturing have been collected on <http://www.kbe.co.za/>.  
[Charles Tonkinson <charles@icon.co.za>, c.ai.fuzzy, 5/11/96.]

    The Rule Extraction page lists research groups deriving
rules from neural networks.  <http://www.fit.qut.edu.au
/~robert/rulex.html>.  [Robert Andrews <robert@fit.qut.edu.au>, 
annrules, 7/19/96.  Bill Park.]

    Several issues of the long-running
INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS REPORT newsletter have been posted to 
<http://lionhrtpub.com/ISR/ISR-index.html>, as ISR Newsletter 
Online.  [D. Blanchard <blanchardd@aol.com>, comp.ai, 6/4/96.  
David Joslin.]

    LogicAL is a page of links for logic, philosophy,
and artificial life and evolutionary systems.
<http://uu-gna.mit.edu:8001/~napoli/LAMBDA/logical.html>.
[S. Kritikos <napoli@wwa.com>, net-hap, 6/19/96.]

    A report on the ALife V conference is available
at <http://www.hip.atr.co.jp/~degaris>.  [Hugo de Garis 
<degaris@hip.atr.co.jp>, genetic-programming, 7/10/96.
Bill Park.]

    The Alife Online site, <http://alife.santafe.edu/>,
has recently been upgraded.  [Simon Fraser <smfr@santafe.edu>, 
comp.ai.alife, 5/10/96.  Ken Barker.]

    IJCAI-97 will host the 1st World Cup Robot Soccer Competition 
(RoboCup-97).   See <http://www.robocup.org/RoboCup> or contact 
<robocup@csl.sony.co.jp>.  IJCAI-97 will also host the 3rd
World Open Computer Go Championship, <ijcai97-go@etl.go.jp>.   
[Hiroshi G. Okuno, genetic-programming, 7/10/96.  Bill Park.]

    Matt Ginsberg has been working on a system that bids
bridge hands.  An early version used Monte Carlo trials
to search double dummy deals.  His newer version applies
partition search without the double dummy requirement,
for improved bids in difficult situations.  If you'd like
progress reports, contact <ginsberg@dt.cirl.uoregon.edu>.
The reports will also be posted to rec.games.bridge.
[comp.ai, 6/7/96.  David Joslin.]  (The technique may be 
applicable to other games of imperfect information.)

					-- Ken


Citius, Altius, Fortius.  -- Olympic Games motto,
"to be faster, higher, stronger."  [AWAD, 7/15/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 51
 IS                                              July 30, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	DOD grant competitions.
 2>	Privacy and security.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Software development and marketing.
 5>	Projects.
_________________________________________________________________

Just as mainframes represent the greatest power available
to corporations, PCs represent the same for individuals.
It turns out the individual is more important.
-- Mark R. Anderson, SNS, 7/24/96.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> DOD grant competitions:

    DOD has released its FY97 announcement for
the Multidisciplinary Research Program (MURI) of its
University Research Initiative (URI).  MURI supports 
interdisciplinary science and engineering teams in sensors
and materials technologies, cognitive design, intelligent agents, 
consistency in heterogeneous information systems, and other 
topics.  Eleven 3-year awards are planned, by ARO, ONR,
and AFOSR, at about $1M/year.  (Five-year funding is
also possible.)  White papers are due 9/4/96; proposals
on 12/10/96.  See "Funding Opportunities" on the Office of Naval 
Research (ONR) home page at <http://web.fie.com/fedix/onr.html>.  
[Helen M. Gigley <gigley@itd.nrl.navy.mil>, 7/24/96.]
(Also check ONR's Young Investigator program, postdoctoral 
fellowships, summer faculty research, support for universities, 
and programs for women and minorities.  You can also register
for FEDIX opportunity alerts via <http://web.fie.com/fedix>.)
    
    DOD has also announced its FY97 Defense University Research 
Instrumentation Program (DURIP) competition, in AFOSR BAA 96-3.  
Topics include cognitive modeling and intelligent assistants; 
preprocessing and visualization for high-performance computing;
3D and VR displays; and interactive visualization of complex
data sets (e.g. target analysis, battle management, GIS,
virtual prototyping, or drug design).  $38M will be awarded,
by ARO, ONR, AFOSR, and BMDO, for equipment costing $50K-$1M 
(typically $135K).  About 25% of proposals were funded last year.  
Proposals are due 9/13/96, for award announcement by 1/6/97.  
DURIP '97 is under the Air Force Office of Scientific Research,
at <http://web.fie.com/fedix/afosr.html#general> -- or see 
"Ongoing Program Descriptions/Education and Special Research 
Opportunities" on the ONR page.  [Ibid.]  (Synopses of the two 
research programs can also be found in Commerce Business Daily, 
7/12/96.)

    AFOSR also has an ongoing program in AI for information 
analysts, with proposals preferred "between October 1 [1995?]
and September 30, 1996" for FY97.  Interests include information 
management, decision support, uncertain information, data fusion, 
distributed intelligent agents, image understanding, and CAI.  
Contact Dr. Abraham Waksman <waksman@afosr.af.mil>, 110 Duncan 
Ave., Suite B115, Bolling AFB, DC 20332-0001; (202) 767-7903.  
[AFOSR website, 7/29/96.]

    For the same date range, AFOSR is soliciting Software and 
Systems proposals -- esp. software engineering and distributed 
computing -- in  avionics, logistics, engineering design,
and command, control, communications, and intelligence (C3I).  
Contact Maj. David R. Luginbuhl <luginbuh@afosr.af.mil>,
(202) 767-5028.  [Ibid.]

    Rome Laboratory has several ongoing broad agency announcements 
of interest.  BAA 95-03-PKPX (CBD 2/8/95) is for evaluation
of complex, intelligent, and information-driven systems (CIIS)
and the development and integration process for intelligent system 
components.  "These improvements are urgently required to enable 
the Air Force to measure, rate and certify the use of intelligent 
software in real-time, safety-critical operational C4I systems."  
The next deadline for white papers is 2/20/97.  Contact Louis J. 
Hoebel, (315) 330-3655.  [RADC website, 7/29/96.  Helen Gigley.]

    Another is Tools and Techniques for the Engineering of 
Intelligent Systems, BAA 96-04-PKPX (CBD 1/4/96), open until 
4/30/98.  The goal is large-scale, intelligent systems with 
multiple independent intelligent agents accessing heterogeneous 
data sources.  Techniques may include collaborative computing, 
representation languages, negotiation and reasoning protocols, 
resource allocation, intelligent active knowledge bases,
machine learning, and HCI.  Awards are typically $150K-$400K
over two years.  White papers are due 2/17/97 and 2/20/98.
Craig S. Anken, 315-330-4833.  [RADC website, 7/29/96.]

    (To receive a copy of the Rome Laboratory "BAA & PRDA:
A Guide for Industry," March 1994 (Rev), write to ATTN: Lucille 
Argenzia, Rome Laboratory/PKR, 26 Electronic Pky, Griffiss AFB,
NY 13441-4514.  You can also download it from the website, 
reachable from the AFOSR home page.)


 2> Privacy and security:

    The US government is planning an interagency response team
to deal with threats to the phone system, Internet, electronic 
banking, or systems maintaining oil and power grids.
CMU's  Computer Emergency Response Team will participate.  
[Chronicle of HE, 7/5/96, A19.  EDUPAGE.]

    A Senate subcommittee was recently told that DOD computer 
systems experience about 250K intrusions/year -- about 65%
of them successful.  [BNA Daily Report for Executives, 7/17/96, 
A22.  EDUPAGE.]

    NIST is joining with AT&T, BBN, VeriSign, and other companies 
to develop standards for a public-key infrastructure (PKI).  [Anne 
Enright Shepherd <anne.shepherd@nist.gov>, NIST UPDATE, 7/22/96.]

    "Cookies" are a way that Web programs can store session info 
on your hard disk.  (Netscape Navigator stores a cookie file
in its preferences folder.  You can set a preference that keeps 
the program from accepting cookies without your permission.)
If this is to be done at all, it should be done right.
A standards document for cookies can be found at 
<http://ds.internic.net/internet-drafts
/draft-ietf-http-state-mgmt-02.txt>.  Other proposals for
HTTP state management can be found in <.../draft-ietf-http-
state-mgmt-03.txt>. [WEBster, 7/23/96.]  (Or grab them with FTP.)

    "Joyous distrust is a sign of health.
Everything absolute belongs to pathology."  -- Nietzsche.
[Susan J. Howard <sfrazir@emory.edu>, QOTD, 6/26/96.]


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Michigan State U./CS (East Lansing): four professors
in visualization and graphics, robotics, SE, DB,
programming languages, and CS theory.

USC (Los Angeles): professor of robotics and AI.

GMU Molecular Biosciences and Technology Institute (MBTI; VA): 
postdoc in biologically plausible self-organizing visual
pattern recognition.

Boeing Applied Research (Seattle): MS/PhD researchers
in information retrieval, document management, and data mining.

HNC Software Inc. (San Diego): PhD in NN and pattern recognition 
for text retrieval and NLP, fingerprint identification, etc.

The MITRE Corp. (VA, MA, NJ, OH, CO, TX, MD): AI,
modeling and simulation, spatial information engineering,
computer security, etc.

UCentral Florida: MS RAs in terrain modeling and networked 
simulation.

UWestminster/Centre for AI Research (London): RA in machine
vision and NN for face recognition.

Aston U. (Birmingham, UK): postdoc RAs in NN theory
and in satellite data analysis.

Aston U.: postdoc in geometric theory for NN generalization.

Siemens Nixdorf Advanced Technologies GmbH (Dresden, Germany): 
theoretical physicist or mathematician for 3D object recognition, 
face recognition, failure prediction, etc.

Philips Research Laboratories (Aachen, Germany): two MS/PhD 
researchers in speech recognition and spoken language processing.

Istituto Trentino di Cultura (ITC)/Istituto per la Ricerca 
Scientifica e Tecnologica (IRST; Trento, Italy): MS/PhD researcher 
in CBR and ML for banking decision support, fraud detection, 
resource management, etc. 	

USouth Australia/CIS: lecturer in intelligent systems, GUI/HCI, 
DB, SE, etc.

USouth Wales/CSE (Sydney): lecturer in visualization,
HCI, distributed DB, decision support, or multimedia IR.


 4> Software development and marketing:

    SOFTWAREDEV-L is an unmoderated list for software developers, 
for technical and business discussions.  Send a "subscribe 
softwaredev-l your name" message to <listserver@switchsoft.com>.  
[Jay Jolicoeur <jay@switchsoft.com>, NEW-LIST, 6/12/96.]

    Microsoft's ActiveX is "a kind of glue that can be used to 
stick Web servers, browsers, Windows applications and intranet 
servers together."  See <http://www.activextra.com> for info, 
discussion, and resources.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 
7/16/96.]

    "After starting all this bodywork stuff last summer --
and then resuming software development -- I learned how
software is held together.  By the muscles in the developer's 
neck!"  -- Dave Winer <winer@well.com>, DaveNet, 3/10/95.

    The VBScript website has more than 120 links to Microsoft 
VBScript and ActiveX resources.  <http://www.km-cd.com/scribe/>.  
[Paul A. Benson <pbenson@ecst.csuchico.edu>, net-hap, 7/26/96.]

    "Fifty years of programming language research,
and we end up with C++ ???"  [Richard A. O'Keefe 
<ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>, 6/96.]

    "When your hammer is C++, everything begins to look like
a thumb."  -- Steve Hoflich, compl.lang.c++.  [QOTD, 5/3/96.]

    "I use Lisp because I know C, C++, Ada, ..."
[Roy M. Turner <rmt@umcs.maine.edu>, 7/96.]

    "The beauty of Forth is that it describes your project
in English.  Well-written Forth is poetry, complete with verbs, 
adjectives, and nouns.  Each application results in a unique 
dialect of Forth due to its extensibility.  Were you aware
that Forth is the third artificial intelligence language
after Prolog and Lisp?"  -- Albert Lee Mitchell 
<support@amresearch.com>, comp.robotics.misc, 6/22/96.

    TechWeb and Windows Magazine have posted a database
of 2,000 tips on using Windows 95 and Windows 3.x.  
<http://www.techhelper.com/default.cgi?WINTIPS>.
[Network News, 6/6/96.]

    Frequent Mac questions have been compiled in
the comp.sys.mac FAQ at <http://www.macfaq.com/faq/faqs.html>
and <ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/macintosh/>.

    To find Mac user groups worldwide, look on the MOUSE site
at <http://snazzy.com/mouse/usergroups.html>.  [Andrew Johnson 
<sabre@sabresoft.com>, MacWay, 4/3/96.]  (For advice from other 
Mac users, consider Usenet newsgroups or the Internet-Only Mac 
User Group (IO-MUG) on <listserv@utarlvm1.uta.edu>.)

    Shareware authors should get Bob Schenot's book,
"How to Sell Your Software" (John Wiley, 1994) -- now in 2nd ed.  
In addition to pricing, it discusses terms: how soon or how often 
resellers should settle up, what right the author has to audit, 
etc.  [Michael F. Weisbard <mweisbar@indyvax.iupui.edu>, SEML, 
4/10/96.]

    Need publicity for your software?  See "The Proper Care
and Feeding of Your News Media" by software journalist
J.W. Olsen <72241.2207@compuserve.com>, or possibly a newer book 
by the same author.  Olsen includes a list of software reviewers.  
Another list is maintained by the Assoc. of Shareware Publishers 
(ASP), at <http://www.asp-shareware.org/>.  [Gene Weinbeck 
<edgewalk@townsqr.com>, SEML, 1/14/96.]


 5> Projects:

    Lincoln Center in NY is hosting Tod Machover's
Brain Opera, 7/22 through 8/3/96, from the MIT Media Lab.
This is an interactive "real and cyber event," with Java applets 
that create computer-enhanced music.  Play the Rhythm Tree,
Cyber-Metal, and the Multi-Rhythm-Bouncer, among others.
Read the description at <http://brainop.media.mit.edu
/text-site/intro/textintro.html>, or interact with it at 
<http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music/main.html>
(if you have a fast connection).  Broadcasts are on 
<http://brainop.media.mit.edu/online/net-music
/net-broadcast.html>.  [The Scout Report, 7/26/96.]

    The 4th International Paderborn Computer Othello Tournament 
will be held October 5-6, via TELnet.  Contact Michael Buro 
<mic@research.nj.nec.com> by 10/1/96.  [6/30/96.  David Joslin.]

    A member request: Dr. Lorien Pratt of Evolving Systems, Inc. 
(Englewood, CO) would like to correspond with people who have 
implemented software configuration or re-use via drag-and-drop 
modules, plug-ins, or other graphical means of end-user 
programming.  (The underlying programming language might be
rule-based, scripts, or C.)  Contact <lorien.pratt@evolving.com>, 
(303) 689-1111, (303) 689-1399 Fax.  [7/27/96.]

					-- Ken


I'm convinced a new kind of social responsibility is emerging
-- an imperative to be succinct.  Just as we've had to curtail
our gaseous emissions in an increasingly smoggy world,
the information glut demands that we be more economical about
what we say, write, and post on-line.  With time an ever
more valuable commodity, the long-winded are beginning to
resemble people who open their car door at a stoplight
to dump trash onto the street.  -- David Shenk,  Wired, 7/96.  
[Reginald Aubry/CAM/Lotus, QOTD, 7/12/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 52
 IS                                             August 1, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	AI resources.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	New journals.
 5>	Book and journal calls.
 6>	Entertainment.
_________________________________________________________________

The problem with trying to "reinvent government" is this:
First you have to appoint a commission to study the problem.
The commission will then hire a staff.  The staff will hire 
assistants.  The assistants will ...  -- Robert Orben.
[TFTD, 7/17/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    August already.  Amazing.


 1> Industry news:

    IBM has a $94M DOE contract for a computer -- "Option Blue"
-- handling 3T operations per second and accessing 2.5T bytes of 
memory.  Its function will be modeling of aging nuclear weapons.  
DOE is also purchasing a 1.5T-op "Option Red" machine from Intel.  
[St. Petersburg Times, 7/27/96, E2.]

    Visual Information Service Corp. (VIScorp) has purchased
all of the Amiga technology and inventory from ESCOM AG,
for about $40M.  ESCOM bought the technology from Commodore.  
<http://www.amiga.de/>.  [<harv@cup.portal.com>, NewtNews,
7/9/96.  Bill Park.]

    What's happening with Jean-Louis Gassee's BeBox computer?
See a new user's description at <http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com
/Whats_New/BeBox.html>.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/8/96.]

    Iomega has cut the cost of its portable/removable gigabyte 
Jazz drive by about $100, or 20%.  Iomega is also offering $50 
mail-in rebates on Zip drives and $20 rebates on 10-packs
of 100MB disks, apparently to build market share against
new competition from Mitsubishi.  [SJM, 7/4/96, 1C.]
(I've seen comments on the net that Jazz drives are
[sometimes?] very noisy and run very hot.)

    An annoying "spreadsheet macro virus" has turned up in
Alaska and Africa, affecting Excel 5 and 7 running on Windows 3.x, 
Windows-95, and Windows NT.  See <http://www.mcafee.com/>.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/25/96.]

    The Wingz spreadsheet is back, as Wingz 2.1.1b8 (public
beta) for the Mac and in updated versions for Windows and Unix.  
New charting and analytical capabilities.  Investment
Intelligence Systems Corp. (IISC) purchased the product
(renamed Claris Resolve) from Informix Software, to go with its 
HyperScript Tools multiplatform visual programming environment.  
Download a demo from <http://wingz.iisckc.com/betadown.html>.  
[GD, TidBITS, 7/29/96.]  (Can Excel dominate forever?
Wingz is an impressive, graphics-intensive product,
but lost the market-share war in 1991 when development
took several years longer than expected.)


 2> AI resources:

    Kurzweil AI offers a 12K-vocabulary discrete recognition 
engine as shareware, downloadable from <http://www.kurzweil.com>.  
It's called VoicePad -- for the Windows NotePad application --
and is a teaser for their KVWin line of large-vocabulary dictation 
products.  [Elizabeth Hinkelman <elizh@kurzweil.com>, 7/26/96.]

    ("Rude alert!  Rude alert!  An electrical fire
has knocked out my voice-recognition unicycle!  Many Wurlitzers
are missing from my database!   Abandon shop!  This is not a 
daffodil!  Repeat: This is not a daffodil!"  -- Holly, Red Dwarf.)

    "Genetic Programming Tools Available on the Web: A First 
Encounter" is a GP-96 paper from Anthony Deakin and Derek Yates.  
See <http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/users/anthony/> for the full text 
and a 1-page summary.  [<A.G.Deakin@csc.liv.ac.uk>,
genetic-programming, 7/20/96.  Bill Park.]

    Free and commercial NN software is described in the
Neural Networks FAQ <ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/FAQ.html>,
esp. section <ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/FAQ5.html#A18>.  [Ken 
Duda <duda@larix.geo.msu.edu>, sci.image.processing, 7/20/96.]

    Warren Sarle says that the best book on time-series 
forecasting with NNs is Weigend and Gershenfeld (eds.),
"Time Series Prediction: Forecasting the Future
and Understanding the Past" (Addison-Wesley, 1994).  
[<saswss@unx.sas.com>, c.ai.neural-nets, 7/13/96.]

    Donald Tveter maintains a FAQ -- called
Backpropagator's Review -- on NN backpropagation.  
<http://www.mcs.com/~drt/bprefs.html>.  Contact <drt@mcs.com>
to submit new citations.  [comp.ai.neural-nets, 6/20/96.]

    Roboticists have reverse-engineered the Gameboy QuickCam 
driver protocol, as documented on <http://www.crynwr.com/qcpc>.  
[Wim Lewis <wiml@netcom.com>, comp.robotics.misc, 7/3/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

ARL Directory of Electronic Journals, Newsletters
and Academic Discussion Lists (6th Edition).

Proxy: filter for capturing Usenet articles.

Tecumseh Scout: Boolean and NL search engine for NT websites.

Scribe 2.0: Windows publishing software for electronic books.

EP92-6: Evolutionary Programming Society proceedings TOCs.

"MACINTOSH C: A Hobbyist's Guide to Programming the Macintosh
in C CodeWarrior": book and source code for free download.

PowerSecretary: speech/dictation system for Mac.

Consultant 1.0: personal information and project manager
for Mac.  (Accepts NL commands such as "Meet Bob Jones
tomorrow from 10 to 11.")

immv110: Internet voice chat and whiteboard for Windows 95.

SquareNote3.5: organizer for "index card" notes.

LaHow 1.0: Chinese kit for Newton.

NAMD: molecular mechanics program.

PLS_Toolbox: MATLAB statistical subroutine library.


 4> New journals:

    "VIDERE -- A Journal of Computer Vision Research" is a new, 
refereed Internet journal from MIT Press.  Quarterly
for archival purposes (starting Spring 97), but each article
will be distributed when ready.  Although covering all of computer 
vision, the emphasis is on 3D vision and robotics.  Contributions 
may include image sequences, interactive (Java) demonstrations, 
source code, etc.; archives may include correspondence with 
authors.  Edited by Chris M. Brown <brown@cs.rochester.edu>, 
Giulio Sandini, and Michael J. Swain.  $30/$125, from
<journals-orders@mit.edu>, 617-253-2889, 617-577-1545 Fax.  
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/videre.html>.  [<giulio@ai.mit.edu>, 
VISION-LIST, 7/9/96.]

    (Interesting policy: "The contents are currently available
for perusing...  However, when you decide to employ journal 
articles in your work or studies, you should subscribe
or persuade your library to subscribe."  Budget decisions
seldom work that way.)

    Neural Computing Surveys is a new, refereed Web journal
(and searchable repository).  Attachments via web links
are unrefereed and changeable.  <http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu
/~jagota/NCS> or <ftp://ftp.icsi.berkeley.edu/pub/ai/jagota>.  
Send submissions to Arun Jagota <jagota@icsi.berkeley.edu>.  
[connectionists, 7/19/96.]

    Evolutionary Optimization is a new, peer-reviewed
e-journal with archival hardcopy publication.  May be out
by 1/97.  Andrzej Osyczka is editor in chief.  See
<http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~koza/> for more info.
[John Koza <koza@cs.Stanford.edu>, genetic-programming, 7/20/96.  
Bill Park.]

    IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation (IEEE TEC)
will begin quarterly publication in 5/97.  Rapid review.
David Fogel <dfogel@natural-selection.com> is editor in chief.  
[<fogel@ece.ucsd.edu>, genetic-programming, 7/20/96.  Bill Park.]  
(John Koza says TEC will be inexpensive and projected to
start off with an order of magnitude more individual subscribers 
and libraries than the usual academic journal.)

    "Intelligent Data Analysis -- An International Journal"
is a new Web-based e-journal from Elsevier Science.  AI, data 
visualization, fusion, mining, filtering, etc., using NN, FL, ML, 
statistical pattern recognition, and knowledge filtering.  70% 
applications.  A. Famili <famili@ai.iit.nrc.ca>, (613) 993-8554, 
(613) 952-7151 Fax.  <http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ida> or 
<http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/ida>; <usdirect@elsevier.com>
to subscribe.  [<Fazel.Famili@nrc.ca>, comp.simulation, 6/20/96.]

    Machine Translation has a new editor and editorial board,
and is broadening its scope to all multilingual branches
of computational linguistics and language engineering.
Harold Somers <harold@ccl.umist.ac.uk>, +44 161 200 3099 Fax.  
<http://www.ccl.umist.ac.uk/harold/MTjnl>.  [IRLIST, 7/8/96.]

    The NEW-LIST alerting service has moved.  Send a
"sub new-list" message to listserv@listserv.nodak.edu.
[Marty Hoag <nu021172@vm1.nodak.edu>, 5/29/96.]


 5> Book and journal calls:

    Consciousness and the Algorithms of Evolution;
refereed book ed. by Gregory Mulhauser <scarab@udcf.gla.ac.uk>.  
10/31/96 deadline.  [sci.psychology.consciousness, 6/25/96.]

    CS area overview papers; Informatica.  Marcin Paprzycka 
<paprzycki_m@utpb.edu>.  <http://www2.ijs.si/~mezi
/informatica.html>.  [<kmpst6+@pitt.edu>, comp.ai, 6/7/96.
David Joslin.]

    Epistemological aspects of embodied AI and artificial
life; Cybernetics and Systems.  10/14/96; Erich Prem 
<erich@ai.univie.ac.at>.  <http://www.ai.univie.ac.at/~erich
/cascall.html>.  [comp.ai.philosophy, 7/4/96.]

    Consciousness as informational phenomenalism; Informatica, 
Vol. 21 (1997) No. 3.  11/15/96; Anton Zeleznikar 
<anton.p.zeleznikar@ijs.si>.  [sci.psychology.consciousness, 
7/11/96.]

    Simulation of social behavior; Int. J. in Computer Simulation.  
8/1/96; Alain Senteni <senteni@iro.umontreal.ca>, (819) 821-7426.  
[Les Gasser <gasser@dli-sun.iris.cise-nsf.gov>, DAI-List, 
6/27/96.]

    Data mining; J. of Intelligent Information Systems (JIIS).  
aa/1/96; Jiawei Han <han@cs.sfu.ca>.  
<http://www.isse.gmu.edu/JIIS/>.  [dbworld, 7/9/96.]

    Robot learning; Robotics and Autonomous Systems.  8/1/96;
Noel Sharkey <n.sharkey@dcs.shef.ac.uk>.  
<http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/research/groups/nn/RASspecial.html>.  
[<torras@ic.upc.es>, comp.robotics.research, 7/1/96.]

    "ALMA - Scores of the unfinished thought" is a Web magazine 
about AI, NN, FL, expert systems, and Internet culture.
Next deadline is 9/8/96. <http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma.html>.  
[Luigi Caputo <luigi@diemme.it>, comp.ai, 7/24/96.  David Joslin.]

    Applications of neural networks in biomedical imaging/image 
processing; J. of VLSI Signal Processing Systems for Signal, 
Image, and Video Technology, 3QTR 1997.  8/15/96; Tulay Adali 
<adali@engr.umbc.edu>, (410) 455-3521, (410) 455-3969 Fax.  
[connectionists, 6/13/96.]

    Neural techniques for industrial applications; J. of 
Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering.  11/30/96; Vincenzo Piuri 
<piuri@elet.polimi.it>, +39-2-2399-3606, +39-2-2399-3411 Fax.  
[connectionists, 6/17/96.]

    Innovations in serials; Serials Review.  Web journals,
online archives, citation studies, etc.  10/15/96;
Anita Sundaram <asc@uiuc.edu>.  [<sundaram@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>, 
IRLIST, 7/29/96.]

    "Internet: state of the art"; Computer Communications,
Spring 97.  9/1/96; Gurdeep Singh Hura <g.hura@ieee.org>,
(65) 799-1271, (65) 792-6559 Fax.  [Xie Min 
<isexiem@leonis.nus.sg>, comp.software-eng, 6/24/96.]


 6> Entertainment:

    The Similarities Engine offers personal music recommendations, 
at <http://www.ari.net/se/>.  [NetNews, 7/16/96.]

    Erik Mueller's Thought Treasure project (announced in
our CRS 6.25) includes a fairly sophisticated English/French 
conversational agent.  Try it out at 
<http://www.panix.com/~erik/tt/html/Talk.html>.  Source code
is available online.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/26/96.]

    The WRIGHT-QUOTE daily mailing of a Steven Wright one-liner
is back online.  Send a "sub wright-quote your name" message
to <listproc@listproc.gcnet.com>.  [Chris Owen <owenc@gcnet.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 4/30/96.]

    Some of the better tag lines (.signatures) on the net
have been collected at <http://www.npr.org/~scifri/wacky.html>.  
[Joseph Schaller <schaller@aol.com>, Mac*Chat, 6/20/96.]

    Swaniees' Humorous Links Page has lists of URLs
for computer humor and other joke archives.  
<http://www.pixelation.com/swaniee/humor.shtml>.  [8/1/96.]

    The Int. Fed. of Library Associations (IFLA) humor site
is <http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/ifla/I/humour/humour.htm>.  How many 
reference librarians does it take to change a light-bulb?  "Well, 
I don't know right off-hand, but I know where we can look it up!"  
[Julia Files Steger <jsteger@pen.k12.va.us>, LM-NET, 4/22/96.]

					-- Ken


I had a bad day.  I had to subvert my principles and kowtow
to an idiot.  Television makes these daily sacrifices possible, 
deadens the inner core of my being...  -- Matthew answering 
Maria's request to "stop watching TV," from the movie "Trust." 
[Bran Muffin <captain@armadillo.net>, 7/23/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------

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Date: Tue 6 Aug 96 02:44:46-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS>
Subject: TCC 6.53
To: ;@Charter_Computists
Message-ID: <839324686.0.LAWS@AI.SRI.COM>
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 53
 IS                                             August 6, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Opportunities.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Job services.
 5>	Travel.
 6>	Weather pages.
_________________________________________________________________

Man must sit in chair with mouth open for very long time
before roast duck fly in.  -- Chinese proverb.
[Forbes, 3/1/93, 148.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Here comes another duck!


 1> Funding news:

    DOD's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program
has a "Fast Track" initiative offering up to a 4X match
on private-sector investments in small high-tech companies.
DOD's SBIR program will fund $450M in defense-related early stage 
R&D projects in 1996, giving highest priority to small companies 
able to attract independent investors -- e.g., venture capital 
firms, large companies, or individual "angels."  The small
company can receive uninterrupted DOD funding of up to $850K over 
2.5 years, which is 1 to 4 times the required outside investment.  
This fast track was approved by Under Secretary of Defense 
(Acquisition & Technology) Dr. Paul Kaminski in 6/95, to 
significantly increase DOD's success in converting SBIR
research into affordable, high-performance products which
serve military and commercial customers.  Contact David Speser 
<david@foresnt.com>, (407) 791-0720, or see 
<http://www.seeport.com/SBIR/fasttrk.htm>.  You can also contact 
the DOD Fast Track listserver by sending a "join DoD" message
to <list@seeport.com>.  [Mary Hilts <maryh@foresnt.com>,
(360) 385-9560, (360) 385-9598 Fax.  David Lloyd-Jones 
<dlj@pobox.com>, 8/4/96.]  (Foresight Science & Technology
(Port Townsend, WA) has a DOD contract to publicize this
fast-track initiative.  I'm not sure if they're also helping
to find candidates.  They specialize in commercialization
and technology transfer support.)

    NSF has new or updated guidelines on CISE Postdoctoral 
Research Associates in Computational Science and Engineering
& Experimental Computer Science (nsf96119.txt);
University-Industry Cooperative Research Programs in
the Mathematical Sciences (nsf94100.txt); Graduate Education
and Postdoctoral Training in the Mathematical and Physical 
Sciences (nsf9630.txt); University-Industry Cooperative
Research Programs in the Mathematical Sciences (nsf94100.txt);
and Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI) 
(nsf95111.txt and nsf95112.txt), or send a "get ..." message
to <stisserve@nsf.gov>.  FTP them from stis.nsf.gov.
[grants, 8/5/96.]

    NIST and the Russian Academy of Sciences have a new
memorandum of understanding for scientific and technical 
cooperation in theoretical and experimental physics, chemistry, 
and the engineering sciences (which I assume includes CS).  
Cooperative activities may include exchanges of scientists, 
information, seminars, and joint research projects.  NIST has 
similar agreements with Canada, China, Egypt, France, Italy, 
Japan, Mexico, the Republic of Korea, South Africa and the UK, 
possibly others.  Claire Saundry, Office of International and 
Academic Affairs <OIAA@nist.gov>, A505 Administration Bldg., NIST, 
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-0001; (301) 975-3069, (301) 975-3530 Fax.  
[NIST UPDATE, 8/5/96.]

    The Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) supports 
international cooperation in basic research about living organisms 
-- including perception and cognition; movement and behavior; 
memory and learning; and language and thinking.  Applications
are solicited for the support of trans-national research grants, 
fellowships, and workshops.  Grant and long-term fellowship 
support must be requested by 9/1/96; no deadline for workshops
and short-term fellowships.  Eligible countries are:  Austria, 
Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,
Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal,
Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US.  HSFP 
<info@hfsp.c-strasbourg.fr>, Bureaux Europe, 20, place des Halles, 
67080 Strasbourg Cedex France; (33) 88 21 51 21 Fax.  [APA
Science Directorate Funding Bulletin Files.  FISC, 8/1/96.]


 2> Opportunities:

    Milwaukee School of Engineering is offering a Symbolics 3600 
Lisp Machine and software for sale, for best offer above $1K.  
Includes Genera 7.2, KEE 3.1, Knowledge Craft 3.1, and MACSYMA 
Rel. 13.  Jeffrey Blessing <blessing@msoe.edu>, (414) 277-7194.  
[<blessing@allmalt.cs.uwm.edu>, comp.ai, 7/31/96.  David Joslin.]

    Last week I mentioned the free downloadable book "Macintosh C: 
A Hobbyist's Guide to Programming the Macintosh in C."
A web page for errata, bug fixes, and enhancements has been added, 
at <http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/alt.sources.mac/macintosh-c/>.
Demo code comes with the book.  [K.J. Bricknell, 
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior.  Bill Park, 8/5/96.]

    Book reviews are needed for the journal
Engineering Applications of AI.  See 
<http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cjp/books_main.html> for a list
of available books.  [Chris Price <cjp@aber.ac.uk>, comp.ai, 
8/1/96.  David Joslin.]  (You get to keep the book, I presume.)


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Johns Hopkins U. (Baltimore): postdoc in speech processing
and language acquisition.

MIT AI Lab (Cambridge, MA): postdoc in learned hand-eye 
coordination and cognitive robotics.

IntelliNet (Dallas, San Jose, Philadelphia, and Greensboro): 
researchers in VR, tutoring systems, and financial expert systems.

IBM TJ Watson Research Center(NY): MS/PhD graduates for careers
in data mining, decision support, DB, IR, visualization, etc.

David Sarnoff Research Center (Princeton, NJ): two MTS
(BS and PhD) in NN and image understanding for adaptive 
information and signal processing.

HNC Software Inc. (San Diego): BS software engineer
for NN and GA in IR and text processing.

Georgetown U. (DC): postdoc in the neural basis
of visual cognition.

Apple (Cupertino): Internet and R&D jobs.

Navy: NRC postdoctoral RAs in EEG data analysis
and biomedical signal processing.

UYork (Heslington, UK): 3-year RA in SE, HCI, or KBS
for case memories, strategic planners, and simulation.

Defence Research Agency (Malvern, UK): scientists
in financial modeling and distributed, real-time simulation.

Thomson-CSF/LCR (Orsay, France): NLP HCI researcher.

German National Research Center for Information Technology
(GMD; Sankt Augustin): postdoc in HCI for IR and information 
brokering.

Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU; Trondheim): 
2-year postdoc in cooperating web agents.

National University of Singapore (NUS): 2-year postdoc
in constraint programming.


 4> Job services:

    TalentScout is a new high-tech career service from SJM's 
Mercury Center, <http://www.sjmercury.com>.  You can browse 
interviewing tips and salary tables or search through
the San Jose Mercury's classified ads.  (For start-up companies, 
look for "stock options.")  Or you can post your HTML resume,
at <http://www.sjmercury.com/freeagent>.  The software for 
confidential resume access was developed by IntelliMatch, Inc.  
[SJM, 6/15/96, 2C.]  (To advertise the service, SJM has been 
sending good-quality plastic binoculars to local businesses.
What gets into these people?)

    Computer Jobs in Israel (CJI) is a bi-weekly compilation
from Jacob Richman.  The 7/5/96 issue offered 64 positions
at 22 companies.  (Most of the positions are low-level.)
Send a "sub cji your name" message to <listproc@jer1.co.il>,
or check <http://www.jr.co.il/cji> for back issues and 
<http://www.jr.co.il/cji/cji-mast.htm> for a combined list
of over 2,000 jobs from 600 companies.  Also a calendar
of computer events in Israel and a Hebrew/English dictionary
of computer terms.  [<jrichman@jer1.co.il>, CJI, 7/5/96.]

    IBM will be posting its 24K job openings this year to 
America's Job Bank, starting in 9/96.  <http://www.ajb.dni.us>.  
[Reuter.  Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/9/96.]

    The Web Consultants Association at 
<http://just4u.com/webconsultants> has a Jobline distribution
for help wanted ads.  Send a "subscribe jobline" message to 
<jobline-request@just4u.com>.  [Al Silverberg <alsil@phantom.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 5/5/96.  net-hap.]

    Hired! - The HTML Job Database lists freelance HTML writers, 
web design companies, and a place for posting job ads.  
<http://www.dk-online.dk/users/simon_e_sorensen/hired/>.  
[<Simon_Es@po.ia.dk>, net-hap, 5/3/96.]

    Executives and aspiring execs have a career/jobs site at 
SearchBase, <http://www.searchbase.com/home.htm>.  Info includes 
travel and investing.  [<kkantz@aol.com>, net-hap, 5/6/97.]

    Electronic Recruiting News is a daily newsletter covering
the trends, techniques and tactics of online recruiting,
for head hunters, staffing professionals, and human resource 
managers.  <http://www.interbiznet.com/hrstart.html>.  
[<staff@interbiznet.com>, net-hap, 5/15/96.]

    "The Riley Guide" from Margaret F. Riley can now be found
at <http://www.jobtrak.com/jobguide/>.  Riley is coauthor of
"The Guide to Internet Job Searching" (VGM Career Horizons, 4/96); 
ntcpub2@aol.com, 1-800-323-4900.  (She lists herself as an 
Internet job search/recruiting consultant.)  [info-quality-l, 
5/8/96.  Joseph Raben.]

    The recruiting-links.com database of employer page links
is searchable by location, industry, and occupational preferences. 
<http://www.recruiting-links.com>.  [Curtis Swartzentruber 
<skills@gnn.com>, c.i.www.announce, 5/12/96.  net-hap.]

    HTML Resume Link carries Web-formatted resumes.  
<http://www.asb.com/usr/dennisb/res_link.htm>.
[Dennis Butler <dennisb@unix.asb.com>, net-hap, 5/1/96.]

    Academic Employment Network for teachers, 
<http://www.academploy.com> or <info@academploy.com>.    
[Christopher Gaudet <cgaudet@stckman.com>, EDTECH, 4/17/96.]

    National Association of Colleges and Employers, 
<http://www.jobweb.org/>.  Job info, tips, search page.  
[<KurtYeager@aol.com>, BESTWEB, 4/27/96.  net-hap.]

    Career Path, <http://careerpath.com/nonregsearch.html>.
Free search of US newspaper ads.  [Ibid.]

    Employer and Recruiter Services, <http://www.jobbankusa.com
/infoform.html>.  (Employer registry.)  [Ibid.]

    The Summer Jobs Web index lists seasonal and summer employment 
worldwide.  <http://www.summerjobs.com/>.  [<fishnet@ahoy.com>, 
net-hap, 5/28/96.]


 5> Travel:

    Shoestring Travel E-zine covers inexpensive travel with
its user exchange pages, <http://www.stratpub.com/shoeuser.html>.  
See also the listing of hotels on the net,
<http://www.all-hotels.com/>; The Lodging Guide WorldWide, 
<http://www.lgww.com/>; and The Room Exchange for discount
hotel reservations, <http://www.lgww.com/>.  [Cecilia Franco
White <korteng@rt66.com>, BESTWEB, 6/9/96.  net-hap.]

    The Travel Exchange lists home swaps and low-cost
hospitality stays.  Free for the first six months.  
<http:/www.travex.com/travex/index.html>.  [net-hap, 9/13/95.]

    Travelocity is a meta-site where you can check schedules,
make reservations, etc., with many vendors.  Users can chat
with one another and with experts.  <http://www.travelocity.com/>.  
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 7/8/96.]

    Need Visa/Plus ATM machines while traveling?  Check the 
addresses and maps on <http://www.visa.com>.  [IBD, 7/22/96, A6.  
EDUPAGE.]

    Cyber Cafes Around the World.  <http://www.easynet.co.uk
/pages/cafe/ccafe.htm>.  [WEBster, 10/17/95.]

    Safe Return offers detailed reports on health and safety risks 
in specific countries.  <http://www.mdtv.com/safe.html>.  
[<gregp@earthlink.net>, net-hap, 7/2/96.]

    Maiden Voyages, a quarterly magazine about women's travel,
has an electronic supplement at <http://maiden-voyages.com>.  
[<info@maiden-voyages.com>, net-hap, 3/12/96.]

    The Nomadic Research Labs website documents Steve Roberts'
11 years and 17K miles as a technomad on his computerized 
recumbent bicycle (known first as the Winnebiko and then 
BEHEMOTH).  Also the developing Microship with satellite Internet 
connection, two Macs, and onboard video production capability.  
<http://microship.ucsd.edu>.  [Scout Report, 8/11/95.]

    Immigrating?  See <http://www.immigrant.com/~akcnslt>
for details on US visas; labor certification; family petitions; 
the US lottery; and waivers for foreign medical graduates.
[net-hap, 5/1/96.]


 6> Weather pages:

    The WeatherLab has forecasts for 2,000 cities worldwide.
Also airport delays, weather maps, satellite cloud photos,
and other near-real-time info.  <http://www.WeatherLabs.com>.  
[Brendan Lane Larson <blarson@weatherlabs.com>, net-hap, 4/24/96.]

    weatherOnline! offers comprehensive weather info and news, 
forecasts for thousands of sites, and links to other
weather sites.  <http://www.weatheronline.com/>.  
[<weather@weatheronline.com>, net-hap, 7/10/96.]

    Another quick weather page is 
<http://members.aol.com/weathernow/>.
[James M. Julstrom <jjulstrom@aol.com>, net-hap, 4/18/96.]

					-- Ken


While I have been fumbling over books and thinking about
God and the Devil and all, other young men have been battling
with the days and others have been kissing the beautiful women.
-- Aldous Huxley.  [John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
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Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 54
 IS                                             August 8, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Research software.
 2>	Regional job services.
 3>	More job services.
 4>	Other job-related websites.
 5>	Job-hunting advice.
_________________________________________________________________

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of 
mechanized private file and library.  It needs a name, and,
to coin one at random, "memex" will do.  A memex is a device
in which an individual stores all his books, records, and 
communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be 
consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.  It is
an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.  -- Vannevar Bush, 
"As We May Think," The Atlantic, 1945.  [MEME, 7/5/96.]


Goood Evening, Computists!

    A boring issue today, but one that can be scanned quickly.  
I'm clearing out backed-up announcements of job hunting resources.  
Eventually this reference material will show up on our website, 
<http://www.computists.com>.  I won't be checking all the links 
and descriptions for currency, so let me know if you discover 
errata.


 1> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Drop Formatter 1.2: text-to-HTML converter for Mac.

NIH-Image: microscope video capture for Mac.

The InformInit v1.1.1: explanation of all Apple init functions.

Oil Change 2.0 beta: Windows 95 software updater.

ASSOCIATION INFORMATION MANAGER: Windows software
for managing nonprofit association functions.

BBSChat v6.3: "intelligent" chat door for BBS systems.

The Palace: VR-based WWW chat client and server for Windows.

fpArchie v0.8 beta 1: streaming FTP for Windows 95.

"Adaptive Individuals in Evolving Populations: Models and 
Algorithms": book ed. by Richard K. Belew and Melanie Mitchell.

FreeBSD 2.1.5R: free UCB Unix/Linux for Intel i386/i486/Pentium.


 2> Regional job services:

The Appointments Section (UK), <http://taps.com>.

Australian Employment Opportunities, 
<http://www.employment.com.au/>.

Carolinas jobs and resumes: <http://www.carolinajobs.com>.  
[<nccareer@aol.com>, net-hap, 7/1/96.]

Commonwealth Jobsearch (Canada), 
<http://www.corpinfohub.com/cjs.htm>.

Denver Metro Publications, 
<http://www.aescon.com/denver/packages.htm>.

INFOTECH WEEKLY (New Zealand), <http://www.infotech.co.nz/>.

Massachusetts Job Search, <http://ma.jobsearch.org/>.

Minnesota Jobs, <http://Mn.jobsearch.org/general/on_line.htm>.

NJ JOBS Home Page, <http://www.njjobs.com/>.

REED JOBNET (UK), <http://www.reed.co.uk/>.

Rice University's RiceInfo, 
<gopher://riceinfo.rice.edu/11/Subject/Jobs>.
(Links to other university job centers.)

South Dakota's Job Bank, <http://sd.jobsearch.org/>.

Texas A&M's Jobs Page, <http://ageninfo.tamu.edu/jobs.html>.  
(Links to other university job centers.)


 3> More job services:

    Opportunities for home computer workers: 
<http://www.primenet.com/~ches>.  [<ches@primenet.com>,
net-hap, 5/4/96.]

    The Home-Based Employment Search Company offers free search of 
its listings.  <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/HBESC>.  
[<Tanya-Scurry@uiowa.edu>, net-hap, 5/15/96.]

    The College Grad Job Hunter Website offers entry-level 
computer-related jobs, plus tips and links to related sites.  
<http://www.collegegrad.com/>.  [Network News, 6/6/96.]

    The Academic Employment Network lists jobs by district
or institution and job title.  <http://www.academploy.com/>.
[The Scout Report, 6/21/96.]

    Career Mosaic carries employment ads for high-tech companies.  
<http://www.careermosaic.com>.  [Daniel Leighton 
<dleight@witi.com>, BESTWEB, 6/25/96.  net-hap.]

    The Monster Board has over 55K job listings, and will
also help you circulate your resume.  <http://www.monster.com>.  
[Ibid.]

    WITI Campus Career Center, Career Opportunities section, 
carries ads from major corporations.  <http://www.witi.com/Career
/Opportunities/>, or sign up for their "classifieds@witi.com" 
mailing list.  [Ibid.]  (Men are welcome, although WITI stands for 
Women in Technology International.)

    Career Companion, from E-Span, is for "upwardly mobile 
professionals."  <http://www.careercompanion.com>.  [Richard M. 
Miles <rmmiles@ix.netcom.com>, inet-news, 6/26/96.  net-hap.]

    The UConsultUs Global Directory of Consultants is a networking 
and advertising resource for independent service providers.  
<http://www.uconsultus.com/>, or in hardcopy from (888) 826-6785 
or (303)-772-1714.  [Linda Kreitz <lmk3@lehigh.edu>, net-hap, 
7/15/96.]

    The following come mainly from net-happenings,
from Mike Schelling <mas0417@ix.netcom.com>,
Mary S. Fahley <breyes@execpc.com>, and John Kosakowski 
<AskERIC@ericir.syr.edu>:

1st Steps in the Hunt, <http://www.interbiznet.com/hunt/>.

1st Steps: Top 25 Electronic Recruiters, 
<http://www.interbiznet.com/ibn/top25.html>.

4Work, <http://www.4work.com/>.

Academic Position Network, <gopher://wcni.cis.umn.edu:11111/>.

Best Jobs in The USA Today, <http://www.bestjobsusa.com/>.

Career Magazine, <http://internet-plaza.net:80/careermag/>.  
(Recruiter directory; company profiles; discussion groups;
and up to 12K job ads.)

Career Match, <http://www.fleethouse.com/career/cm-pg1.htm>.

CareerNET Career Resource Center, <http://www.careers.org/>.

Career Resource Homepage 
<http://www.rpi.edu/dept/cdc/homepage.html>.

Careers Page from J. Edgar & Associates,
<http://www.the-wire.com/careers/>.  (Information systems
and technical manufacturing recruiters.)

careerWEB, <http://www.cweb.com/>.

The Chronicle of Higher Education, 
<http://chronicle.merit.edu/.ads/.links.html>.
(Over 700 positions.)

DICE Online Job Search, <http://dice.com/>.

Developer and Marketer Database, <http://www.pair.com/dmd/>.

Educator's Job Corner, <gopher.inform.umd.edu>
(Educational Resources/Academic resources by topic/Education 
resources/Educator's job corner),

Extreme Resume Drop, <http://www.mainquad.com/resumeDrop2.0/>.

Federal Times/Jobs, <http://www.federaltimes.com/list.html>.

FRS Federal Jobs Central, <http://www.fedjobs.com/>.

Galaxy Jewels Employment Opportunities and Resume Postings, 
<http://galaxy.einet.net/GJ/employment.html>.

Getajob!, <http://www.teleport.com/~pcllgn/gaj.html>.

Heather's Jobs on the Net Page, 
<http://www.cs.clemson.edu/~hdsmith/jobs-on-the-net.html>.

High Technology Careers Magazine, 
<http://www.vjf.com/pub/htc/htchome.html>.

Hotwired: Dream Jobs, <http://www.hotwired.com/dreamjobs/>.

Informus Employment Screening, <http://www.informus.com/>.

Interactive Employment Network, <http://www.espan.com/>.

Internet Educator Resume/Job Registry Service, 
<http://users.aol.com/IEResumeS/iers.html>.

Internet Resume Registry, 
<http://amsquare.com/america/resload.html>.

I/T PositionWATCH Interactive Career Search Site, 
<http://www.recruitad.com/>

Jane's Professional Opportunities in Defense & Aerospace, 
<http://www.janes.com/janes/jempl.html>.

JobCenter Employment Service, <http://www.jobcenter.com/>.

JobGuide, <http://www.jobtrak.com/jobguide/>.

JobHunt: On-Line Job Meta-List, 
<http://rescomp.stanford.edu/jobs/>.

JobLinks Recruiter Access, <http://www.joblinks.com/>.

JobNet & Online Opportunities, <http://www.jobnet.com/>.

Job Network, <http://www.conquest-prod.com/resume.html>.

JobTrak, <http://www.jobtrak.com> or gopher.jobtrak.com.  
(College-level jobs from 150K employers.)

JobWeb, <http://www.jobweb.org/>.  (Over 400 resources.)

MicroTemps, <http://microtemps.com/>.

NACCB Job Board and Resume Bank, <http://computerwork.com/>.  
(Computer  consulting and contracting.)

NationJob, <http://www.nationjob.com/>.

NetJobs Resume-O-Matic, <http://www.ypn.com/jobs/>.

Net-Temps Agencies of The Word Wide Web,
<http://www.net-temps.com/>.

NYU Career Services Page, 
<http://www.nyu.edu/careerservices/jobsites/jobsites.html>.

Office of Personnel Management Federal Jobs Library, 
<ftp://ftp.fedworld.gov/pub/jobs/jobs.htm>.

Online Career Center (OCC), <http://www.occ.com/>.
(High-tech jobs.)

RESUME ONLINE, <http://www.monster.com:80/online.html>.

RON - Recruiters OnLine Network, 
<http://www.onramp.net/ron/ron.html>.

Scope's Online Resume Banks, 
<http://www.webcom.com/scope/construc.html>.

Technology Registry: The Online Employment Service, 
<http://www.techreg.com/>.

TOPjobs(tm) USA by DiSX, <http://www.fiber.net/topjobs/>.

Virtual Job Fair, <http://www.vjf.com/>.

WANT work, <http://www.finesse.com/wantwork.shtml>.

World Wide Resume, 
<http://www.phlab.missouri.edu/~c592282/bin/resume.html>.


 4> Other job-related websites:

A GUIDE TO EFFECTIVE RESUME WRITING, 
<http://www.ceweekly.wa.com/grw.html>.

HOT RESUME HOW TO'S, <http://www.monster.com:80
/resumehows2.html>.

The Hot Seat (Interview test), 
<http://www.kaplan.com/career/hotseat/>.

How to Survive in a Resume Databank, 
<http://www.webcom.com/~resumes/keyword.html>.

How To Write An Electronic Resume, 
<http://www.occ.com/occ/JLK/HowToEResume.html>.

Job Search Tips, <http://www.fsnw.com/1stnw/jobsrch.html>.

Relocation Salary Calculator, 
<http://www.homefair.com/homefair/cmr/salcalc.html>.


 5> Job-hunting advice:

    Newspaper ads don't usually have AI-related jobs.
Ads are for hard-to-fill positions, and it's currently
pretty easy to find AI-trained graduates.  Ads may also be
for entry-level and undesirable positions, yet you have to
compete with hundreds of other people to get them.  And you
have to go through personnel, with Resumix-style screening
of your resume for industry keywords.

    Phone contacts or mass mailings can turn up good jobs
before they're advertised.  A rule of thumb is that
1,000 letters (to banks, legal offices, insurance companies, 
anyone running computers) will likely turn up 20 hot 
leads/interviews and four job offers.  In difficult cases,
send 3,000 letters.  (Yes, that does cost a lot of money.)
If it doesn't work, mail to the same people two weeks later
and ask if they've developed any recent openings.  New jobs
pop up unexpectedly in all corporations, with an average
life span of two weeks.  It's a Poisson process.

    To save money, you can use the phone and try chaining
from one contact to another.  Always get the name of someone else 
you can call.  Call back every two weeks to see if a job has
come to their attention or if they can think of anyone else you 
can call, or just to thank them for past help and keeping you
in mind.  (People like to get feedback on past suggestions.
If they refer you to someone, do follow up -- it's impolite not 
to.  Use the referring person's name only if given permission.)

    Research jobs are plums given either to existing employees
or to new PhDs; it's rare for others to get them.  You might want 
to choose a target company, take any job you can get -- even an 
apprenticeship at no pay -- and then work your way into the kind 
of job you really want.

    To create your own job, you may have to convince someone to 
create a new project.  It's easiest to come in for a consultant's 
interview -- low stress, not asking to be hired, just wanting
to see what a generally smart person with time on his or her hands 
could address.  Then generate a written proposal to do that work 
for them.  They have money and no time, you have time and no money 
-- so trade.  It really makes no difference whether they take you 
on as a consultant, contractor, or employee.  Or they might want 
to start with a feasibility study, which funds you to develop
a better proposal with detailed cost estimates.

    In general, don't submit a resume until you have no choice.
A resume is not a sales tool, and it turns a friendly contact
into a forced hire/no-hire decision.  Companies use resumes
to screen people out, not to screen them in.  It's like the 
ingredients list and nutritional analysis on the side of
a cereal box.  Your job is to build desire for your help,
not to recite your history.  The best time to hand over a resume
-- for the personnel department to check out -- is after you've 
accepted a job offer.

    If you must submit a resume before then, shorter is better.  
Half a page, well spaced, sent with a cover letter that "sells" 
you for this particular job opportunity.  But just a business card 
and oral presentation would be better.

    If there's a particular type of research that you really
want to do, you'll have to sell that specific work.  Much harder 
than poking around for work that needs to be done.  But it is 
possible, especially if you learn to focus on why the customer 
needs the research results.  You might be able to sell yourself 
better as a project manager (who can hire PhDs and hackers)
than as someone to do the work yourself.

    If selling yourself -- your time, enthusiasm, and
general capability, not your history or specific expertise --
is difficult, get some books at the library on how to sell.
And put a hot water bottle or heating pad under your belt
when you make phone calls, to relax your belly muscles.
(Yogic breathing is even better, but takes years of practice.)  
Don't worry; if you're really offering to help people,
they'll be glad to talk with you.

					-- Ken


Success is the ability to go from failure to failure
without losing your enthusiasm.  -- Winston Churchill.
[QOTD, 7/13/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 55
 IS                                            August 13, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Education grants.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Professional writing.
_________________________________________________________________

The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything.  
Except what is worth knowing.  Journalism, conscious of this,
and having tradesman-like habits, supplies their demands.
-- Oscar Wilde.  [AWAD, 8/12/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
will issue BAA 97-1 on 10/1/96 calling for a New World Vistas 
basic research initiative in six areas: Global Awareness,
Dynamic Planning and Execution Control, Global Mobility
in War and Peace, Projection of Lethal and Sublethal Power,
Space Operations, and People.  Some of the 41 science
and technology subareas are: C. People (POC Dr. William O. Berry, 
(202) 767-4278): (11) Human Machine Interface, (12) Team
Decision Making, (13) Cognitive Engineering; E. Dynamic Planning 
and Execution Control (POC Dr. Charles Holland, (202) 767-7899): 
(25) Planning and Scheduling, (26) Communications, (27) Knowledge 
Bases, (28) Intelligent Agents for Air Force Battlefield
and Enterprise Information Assistants, (29) Information Warfare, 
(30) New Models of Computation, (31) Domain-Specific Component-
Based Software Development; F. Global Mobility in War and Peace 
(POC Dr. Jim C. I. Chang, (202) 767-0467): (40) Battlefield 
Awareness and Weather Predictions, and (41) Human Systems 
Interface and Training.  AFOSR will be inviting submission
of basic research proposals.  This initiative stems from
a New World Vistas report by the Air Force Scientific Advisory 
Board, summarized at <http://web.fie.com/htdoc/fed/afr/sab/edu
/text/any/afrtnwv.htm>.  Lt Col James C. Garcia, AFOSR/XP,
110 Duncan Avenue, Room B115, Bolling AFB DC 20332-8080;
(202) 767-5015.  
<http://web.fie.com/htdoc/fed/afr/afo/any/menu/any/af2index.htm>.  
[cbd.procurements, 8/9/96.]

    NSF's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research 
(EPSCoR) program supports research activities involving Puerto 
Rico, AL, AR, ID, KS, KY, LA, ME, MI, MO, NE, ND, OK, SC, SD, VT, 
WV, or WY.  Get publication NSF 95-141.  In particular, EPSCoR
is adding $2M to the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) 
Program for these states, for proposals properly marked for EPSCoR 
co-sponsorship consideration.  This requires a letter of support 
from your state's EPSCoR Project Director, as well as appropriate 
cover page notations.  [Barbara Blaustein <bblauste@nsf.gov>, 
dbworld, 8/7/96.]  (EPSCoR is one of the reasons NSF has
broad-based support in Congress.  It's pork for the states
lacking big-bucks research universities, supposedly to help them 
catch up and enter the research mainstream.  You will have
the best chance of winning if you propose collaboration with
a major university lab.)

    Clinton has declared verification of life on Mars
a national priority, and NASA's Dan Goldin has pledged that
"We will do whatever we have to do [to validate the claim]
but we will be driven solely by scientific considerations."
This could save the taxpayers billions.  Since Mars must not
now be contaminated by Earth organisms, robotic exploration
seems the only way to go.  Robots will be less than a tenth
the cost of manned visits, and eliminate the rationale for
a $90B space station.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 8/9/96.]

    There's lots more happening at military research agencies,
and plenty of funding if you can tie your research to materials, 
manufacturing, sensors, image analysis, communications, security, 
weapons control, transportation, logistics, training, 
documentation, or other military topics.  Many of the agency 
websites contain program descriptions and links to other useful 
information.  Here is a list circulated by librarian Donna Wair 
<wair@library.vanderbilt.edu>:  Advanced Information Technology 
(AIT), U.S. Navy, <http://www.ait.nrl.navy.mil:80/home.html>;  
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), <http://ftp.arpa.mil/>
-- cross-service basic research, e.g. in communications and 
control;  Air Intelligence Agency (AIA), Kelly Air Force Base, San 
Antonio, <http://tecnet2.jcte.jcs.mil:8000/cybrspke/aialink.html>; 
Armament Research Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC), 
Picatinny Arsenal, NJ, <http://www.pica.army.mil/>; Army Research 
Laboratory (ARL), <http://info.arl.army.mil/>; Brooks Air Force 
Base Human Systems Center, <http://www.brooks.af.mil/>; Central 
Intelligence Agency (CIA), <http://www.odci.gov/cia/>; Defense 
Information Systems Agency (DISA), <http://www.disa.mil/>
-- C4I and mission support; DISA Center for Standards, 
<http://www.itsi.disa.mil/>; Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), 
<http://www.dia.mil/> -- military intelligence and combat support; 
Defense Logistics Service Center (DLSC), 
<http://www.dlsc.dla.mil/>; Defense Research and Engineering 
Network, <http://www.arl.mil/HPCMP/DREN/index.html> --- high-
performance digital networks; Defense Technical Information
Center (DTIC), <http://www.dtic.mil/>; DefenseLINK, 
<http://www.dtic.mil/defenselink/> -- press releases;
Intelligence Community, <http://www.odci.gov/ic/> -- coordinating 
group for 13 government agencies; National Defense University 
(NDU), <http://www.ndu.edu/> -- military education, research, 
executive training, public policy management, library, etc.; 
National Security Agency (NSA), <http://www.nsa.gov:8080/>;
Naval Command, Control and Ocean Surveillance Center (NCCOSC), 
<http://www.nosc.mil/>; Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), 
Carderock Division, <http://navysgml.dt.navy.mil/>;  NSWC 
Hydromechanics Directorate, <http://www50.dt.navy.mil/>; 
NavyOnLine, <http://www.navy.mil/> -- gateway to the Naval 
Postgraduate School (NPS), Naval Research Laboratory (NRL),
Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, etc.; Office of
the Director of Information Systems for Command, Control,
Communications and Computers (ODISC4), <http://www.army.mil
/disc4-pg/disc4.htm> -- Army information mission;
Office of Naval Research (ONR), <http://www.onr.navy.mil/>
-- Navy and Marine Corps; Office of Strategic Phenomena (OSP), 
<http://vader.nrl.navy.mil/osp.html> -- simulation studies;
The Pentagon, <http://www.dtic.mil/defenselink/pubs/pentagon
/index.html>; Space & Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR), 
<http://www.spawar.navy.mil/>; US Air Force, 
<http://www.dtic.mil/airforcelink/> -- lists more than
40 Air Force web sites; US Army Center of Military History, 
<http://www.army.mil/cmh-pg/default.htm>; US Army Homepage, 
<http://www.army.mil/>; and the US Marines Corp Homepage, 
<http://www.usmc.mil/>.  [CARR-L, 8/7/96.  net-hap.]
(Now get out there and sell yourself.)


 2> Education grants:

    Universities are looking for ways to replace (or augment) 
faculty with software, to cut costs.  That market is in addition 
to a predicted market increase in K-12 educational technology
from $2.6B in 1993/94 to $4.5B by 1999.  [SPA.  NYT, 7/29/96, C5.  
EDUPAGE.]

    "Foreign Academics in Japan (FAJ)" features recent trends
in employment of foreigners at Japanese universities.  
<http://www.iac.co.jp/~issho/faj>.  [Matt Stein <matty@yahoo.com>, 
net-hap, 7/25/96.]

    How to Win Funds and Influence Panels is a UWestern Australia 
page on grantsmanship.  <http://www.acs.uwa.edu.au/research
/welcome/win/main.html#contents>.  [Magdalena Mok <ed_mok
@hope.ocs.mq.edu.au>, educational-research, 7/8/96.  net-hap.]

    Grant information for education, plus links to other sources: 
<http://www.technogrants.com>.  It's from Arlene Krebs'
"The Distance Learning Funding Sourcebook" (3rd ed., Kendall/Hunt 
Publishing, 800/228-0810).  Other sites include the Foundation 
Center, <http://fdncenter.org>; GrantsWeb,
<http://info-serv.rttonet.psu.edu/gweb.htm>; Grant Writers 
Assistant, <http://www.fallingrock.com>; the US Department
of Education, <http://www.ed.gov>; and the American
Communications Association's Grants and Fellowship Online Index, 
<http://www.uark.edu/depts/comminfo/www/grants.html>.
[Anne Ward <award@nsba.org>, ednet, 5/17/96.  net-hap.]

    Peer and Mentoring Resources: <http://www.islandnet.com
/~rcarr/peer.html>.  [Network News, 4/20/96.]

    The Financial Aid Information Page, from Mark Kantrowitz,
has moved to <http://www.finaid.org/>.  (Previous editions were
on www.cs.cmu.edu.)  The new contact address is <info@finaid.org>.  
[<mkant@finaid.org>, 7/24/96.]


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Oregon Graduate Institute of Science and Technology (Beaverton): 
assoc. prof. of spoken language technology.

The Institute for the Study of Learning and Expertise (ISLE;
Palo Alto): postdoc in machine learning (induction)
for computer vision, planning, or robotics.

Daimler-Benz Research and Technology Center (Palo Alto):
two postdocs in learning and intelligent agents
for mobile systems.

IBM Almaden Research Center (San Jose): data mining analysts
or consultants.

GTE Laboratories Inc. (Waltham, MA): MS/PhD AI software developer 
for diagnostic KBS.

BHASHA, Inc. (Wayne, PA): BS/MS/PhD software engineers
for text retrieval, NLP, symbolic math, etc.

Northern VA company: US MS/PhD R&D project leader in data mining, 
KDD, active DB, object DB.

DC-area research lab: researchers in Internet, multimedia,
NLP, OOP, and virtual communities.

Seattle aerospace company: PhD linguistics technologist
to develop NLP systems.

Cambridge U. (UK): RA for large-vocabulary speech recognition.

UDurham (UK): 2-year postdoctoral fellowship in computer-assisted 
mathematical reasoning with natural language.

The Open University (Milton Keynes, UK): project officer
for intelligent meeting scheduling agent.

ULiverpool/CS (UK): four lecturers in Internet technologies, 
electronic commerce, distance learning, multimedia, etc.

Entropic Cambridge Research Laboratory (ECRL): speech recognition 
developers.

Carnegie Group, Inc. (Germany): knowledge-base engineer
for Army logistics planning.

Max-Planck-Institut fuer Informatik (Saarbruecken, Germany): 
postdoc in nonmonotonic logic and probabilistic inference.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST): postdocs 
in IR, query processing, information discovery, agents, etc.


 4> Professional writing:

    "Scientific English: A Guide for Scientists
and Other Professionals" (2nd ed.) helps scientists write clearly, 
simply, and accurately.  Oryx Press, 1-800-279-6799.  [Educom 
UPDATE, 6/19/95.]

    "Substitute 'damn' every time you're inclined to write 'very'; 
your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as
it should be."  -- Mark Twain.  [Fortune, 3/95.  David Coombs.]  
(Dave says "As clear as Strunk & White and more colorful.")

    Inklings is a free biweekly e-journal for professional writers 
and writing teachers.  Send a "subscribe inklings" message to 
<majordomo@samurai.com>.  
<http://www.inkspot.com/~ohi/ink/inklings.html>.  [Debbie Ridpath 
Ohi <ohi@inkspot.com>, newjour, 7/2/96.]

    "A writer is someone for whom writing is much harder than
it is for the others."  [Soizic Quintin <soizic@cs.mcgill.ca>, 
3/93.]

    "Of writer or reader, only one will have fun."
[Ray Weiss <rweisscd@aol.com>, misc.books.technical, 1/16/95.]

    "Those who can't write, write manuals."

    Trafford Publishing is seeking unpublished manuscripts,
tech reports, manuals, training materials, policy manuals, etc., 
that might have value if "micro published" via the Internet
and on-demand printing.  Trafford maintains a "bookstore"
at <http://www.trafford.com/> and a web page for each document, 
files for an ISBN and Books in Print listing, does a bit of 
advertising, and handles orders, payment, printing, mailing,
and customer notification of updates -- for a set-up fee
(e.g., $400) and quarterly retailing charge (e.g., $180), plus 
manufacturing costs.  You provide camera-ready copy (or data),
a promotional blurb or HTML sample copy, and the retail price,
and you retain copyright and control.  Internet search engines 
handle much of the advertising effort, but you can do as much more 
as you want.  You can also sell through traditional channels.
Don Allen <don_allen@trafford.com>, Suite 2, 3050 Nanaimo Street, 
Victoria, BC V8T 4Z1; 1-888-232-4444 or 604-383-6864, 383-6804 
Fax.  "We're not officially open yet, and we've already sold
over 1200 copies of the few titles listed!"  [<sfisher@vvv.com>, 
comp.publish.prepress, 7/12/96.]  (No per-copy charge?  Maybe it's 
part of the retailing charge.  No set-up fee or retailing deposit 
for the first 50 new authors.  "Better odds than the lottery.")

    A book generally sells better if it has an index.  Some 
publishers use professional indexers, others let the author
supply an index.  The latter gives you more control over quality 
and cost, even if you just hire an indexer.  The publisher might 
even let you charge off indexing against royalties.  Preparing
an index yourself is usually a mistake, since it requires special 
skills for fast, quality work.  Check out the American Society
of Indexers, at <http://www.well.com/user/asi/>.  [David Holzgang 
<cheshire@halcyon.com>, TidBITS, 6/17/96.]  ("Proofread carefully 
to see if you any words out.")

    If you publish a newsletter, e-journal, or other electronic 
serial, you can file for an ISSN on <http://lcweb.loc.gov/issn/>.  
US publishers only, but with links for other countries.
[Regina Reynolds <rrey@loc.gov>, newjour, 6/12/96.]

    The Association of Research Libraries now lists 3,000 academic 
and professional discussion lists and 1,688 electronic journals, 
newsletters, and newsletter-digests, a 26% increase in lists
and 257% increase in journals since a year ago.  See 
<http://www.n2h2.com/KOVACS> for discussion lists or 
<http://arl.cni.org/scomm/edir/> for journals and newsletters.  
[IRLIST, 7/30/96.]

					-- Ken


People become writers because they can't do things
that bosses tell them to do.  -- Les Whitten.
[Susan Shaughnessy, "Walking On Alligators:
A Book of Meditations for Writers."
Carol Sorgen <csorgen@delphi.com>, freelance, 2/10/95.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 56
 IS                                            August 15, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	AI news.
 2>	Industry news.
 3>	Futurism.
 4>	Research software.
 5>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

We live in a world where it is as unthinkable to walk 5 miles
to visit a friend as it was once unthinkable to speak across
that distance through a wire.  -- Sven Birkerts, "The Gutenberg 
Elegies."  [Bob Wray <robert.wray@umich.edu>, 7/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I have relatives coming to visit, so I'll be taking
next week off.  Look for TCC 6.57 and CCJ 6.29 on 8/27/96.


 1> AI news:

    NASA and the US Air Force are testing neural-network
control of an eight-foot model jet aircraft, using in-flight 
learning capability developed on an SBIR grant by Accurate 
Automation Corp. (Chattanooga, TN).  The subsonic model
is a Langley Mach 5 Waverider design -- developed for speeds
above Mach 4 -- and will be tested for take-off and
landing control.  [Rod Woolley <ab507@freenet.carleton.ca>, 
rec.models.rc.air, 8/2/96.]  (Woolley says "If I had a smart plane 
it would quickly learn to prevent me from starting the engine!")

    Cycorp (Austin) is releasing its top-level ontology
for the Cyc common sense reasoning system, in the hope of 
establishing a standard for collaborative efforts.  Cyc's
IF-THEN rules are not included.  Cyc is designed for NLP,
semantic information retrieval, data mining, user models, 
knowledge sharing, and knowledge-based simulations.
Liberal licensing, at no cost.  <http://www.cyc.com>.
[Fritz Lehmann <fritz@rodin.wustl.edu>, comp.ai, 8/9/96.
David Joslin.]  (See our CRS 6.28.)

    Kablooey is a Mac naval battle game using an AI engine.  
kablooey.hqx at /info-mac/game mirrors, or check out this
and other Mac software at <http://www.a-o.com/sbsams/software
/games.htm>.  [Scott Sams <sbsams@a-o.com>, 8/6/96.  Bill Park.]


 2> Industry news:

    The best give-away at Macworld Expo in Boston last week
was by Aladdin Systems, makers of StuffIt and other compression 
products.  They distributed shrink-wrapped StuffIt T-shirts
that 50 tons of pressure had compressed to a large "soap bar."  
Power Computing drew attention with a 225-foot bungie jumping 
tower.  Their volume dealers received a simulated CPU tower box 
that, when opened, screams as a paper doll on a rubber band
falls out.  And if you couldn't make it to Macworld Expo,
you can still try the 4MB demo of Bad Mojo.  That's the
highly realistic CD-ROM VR game where you get to be a cockroach.  
<http://www.badmojo.com/bmintro1.html>.  [Tonya Engst 
<tonya@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 8/12/96.]

    Compaq will be entering the Pentium-based workstation market 
later this year, competing with Sun, HP, Digital, Silicon 
Graphics, and IBM.  This could trigger lower prices and better 
office interfaces.  [IBD, 8/6/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    Microsoft's "Talisman" chip will soon permit $300 PC boards
to offer the fast, realistic graphics of a $50K workstation.  
[WSJ, 8/6/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]

    Apple has announced new, top-end Macs -- but is being eclipsed 
by a 240 MHz "clone" from Power Computing.  DayStar and UMAX
are also releasing new high-end clones.  Power Computing also
has a new PowerBase line, starting at $1,500, with 180MHz-240MHz 
603e processor and accelerated 3D texture-mapped graphics.  
<http://www.powercc.com/Product/CPUs/pbase.html>.  [TidBITS, 
8/6/96.]  (Clone companies are impatient to get into the laptop 
business, but Apple hasn't managed to separate its PowerBook 
operating system from the PowerBook hardware.)

    Microsoft is adding ESPN Sports Zone and the Wall Street 
Journal's Interactive Edition to the content available through its 
Internet Explorer 2.0 browser.  The company hopes to lock in users 
with bundled "content" the way it did with bundled applications.  
"Content is the application of the Internet."  [NYT, 8/13/96, C2.  
EDUPAGE.]  (Of course, that hasn't worked for CompuServe and other 
proprietary services.  And Internet Explorer still has a user 
share of about 3%, versus over 80% for Netscape Navigator.  But 
the bet changes when Microsoft integrates convenient Web services 
into every copy of Windows it sells.)

    Microsoft says it's Cairo next-generation object-oriented 
operating system will be released in an "annuity" upgrade fashion 
rather than a single "Windows 95" bash.  Ditto for other Microsoft 
products.  [Computerworld, 8/5/96, p. 93.  EDUPAGE.]

    Apple CEO Gilbert Amelio says that future enhancements to the 
Mac OS will also be delivered incrementally rather than as large, 
monolithic packages.  Increments are currently scheduled for 1/97 
and 7/97.  [GD, TidBITS, 8/12/96.]  (Amelio is also cutting back 
on R&D funding at Apple, partly because Apple is moving toward use 
of PC (or "industry standard") components in future [CHRP] models.  
This may lead to increased coordination with independent 
developers, but Dave Winer says that isn't happening yet.)

    Apple stock sank to $19.38 on 7/3/96, a 10-year low
(down from about $47 in 11/96).  [Mike Langberg, SJM, 7/4/96, 1C.]  
(It's now holding around $21.  Some say Apple "turned the page" 
and that its new, professional managers are getting on top
of things.  Others say Amelio and his hirelings know little
of the PC industry, and will soon sell the company or lose it
in a hostile take-over.)

    (If you think Apple is going under, you might want a framed 
share of their stock -- $89 from <http://www.oneshare.com>, 
including commission.  Or you can get one share of stock
from any other public company.  [Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>, 
TidBITS, 8/12/96.])

    The Wall Street Journal has drawn attention to a year-old 
Microsoft development group in San Jose that is working with
Apple and other developers on the Mac version of Internet 
Explorer.  The real news is that Microsoft is supporting 
independent Mac-only applications, without regard to Windows 
portability.  Microsoft sells a lot of Mac software, and wants
to help the platform succeed so that it can sell more copies
of Microsoft Office.  A healthy Apple may also keep antitrust 
regulators off Microsoft's back.  Microsoft's real competition
at the moment is Netscape, and Microsoft would like to have
some of the better Mac developers on its own side -- and their 
Internet-based products integrated with Microsoft Office.
[Lee Gomes, WSJ, 8/15/96.  Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>, 
TidBITS, 8/12/96.]  (Grants of up to $100K are said to be 
available to strategic partners, but only in exceptional cases.)

    Average developer revenues per software unit remain higher 
overall for Macintosh than for Windows applications -- in the US 
and overseas, across nearly all product categories.  Further, 
average wholesale revenues per unit are not falling as rapidly
as for Windows titles.  A 1995 IDC study found that cost to 
develop and support Wintel applications is 50% higher (per dollar 
of revenue) than for Macintosh, and that software marketing costs 
are 26.3% of revenues for Wintel applications and only 13.5% of 
revenues for Mac. In fact, Macs generate almost 75% more software 
revenue per machine than Windows machines.  More than 21 new,
Mac-only products (and 9 dual-platform products) were shipped
in 3/96.  Over 1,000 Mac-only products are on the market, out of 
8,000 Mac "solutions" (and 1,400 Power Mac programs).  Absolute 
Zero, the first Power Macintosh-native game, sold over 25K units 
in the first three months.  Apple Developer Programs membership
is rising rapidly, as is attendance at Mac developer conferences.  
Over 30K developers have purchased the Metrowerks CodeWarrior 
developer tools, and Apple's website downloaded 45K OpenDoc 
development kits in three weeks.  [PCData and SPA.  Apple.
Jag <arena@eden.com>, c.os.ms-windows.advocacy, 8/2/96.]
(Apple's US market share has been eroding, though, and Wintel
wins big on total sales revenue.)

    The Macintosh Internet Developers Association (MIDAS)
is a new standards group and clearinghouse for Mac-based Web
and scripting tools.  Founding members include Akimbo Systems, 
Aladdin Systems, Apple, BareBones Software, Clearway Technologies, 
Cornell University, InterCon Systems, Maxum Development, 
Microsoft, Netscape, ResNova Software, Stairways Software,
the StarNine division of Quarterdeck, and Userland Software.
See <http://www.biap.com/midas/>, or send a "subscribe"
subject line to <midas@biap.com>.  [Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>,
DaveNet, 8/7/96.]


 3> Futurism:

    Remember the excitement with the first Mac's on-screen 
calculator that looked like a calculator?  Well, nine students
at London's Royal College of Art recently implemented nine
very different Mac calculators.  One has results receding into
the background, fading with time.  Another is a transparent sphere 
that can be rotated to enter digits and produce calculations.  
These were among 200 entries in ID Magazine's 42nd Annual Design 
Review, Interactive Media category.  The most creative entries 
were found to come from students, and to have little in common 
with point-and-click windows, drag-and-drop documents,
or 2D Web pages.  Structures were "more whimsical than useful, 
more beautiful than efficient, more about play than work,"
much as we have seen with screensavers.  Other such designs
turned up at a six-month University Workshop on "interactive 
play," sponsored by Interval Research (Palo Alto).  One
input device was a squeezable, putty-like egg containing
internal pressure sensors, a camera, and a microphone --
designed for virtual-reality teleconferencing by hospitalized 
children.  The new designers work at the level of Photoshop, 
Macromedia Director, and Alias Wavefront, and will likely
displace the hacker priesthood (with their sneakers and
red shoelaces).  They come from places like Stanford, CMU,
NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, the Art Center 
College of Design in Pasadena, the Kyoto Institute of Technology, 
and the National College of Art and Design in Norway.
[David S. Bennahum <davidsol@panix.com>, MEME, 8/1/96.]
(Bennahum calls the new paradigm "fragmented computing,"
and sees it spreading via cool/neat Java applets swapped around 
like baseball trading cards.)

    Interactive websites that estimate, calculate,
evaluate, translate, etc., are listed at 
<http://homepage.interaccess.com/~wolinsky/measure.htm>.  
[<wolinsky@interaccess.com>, net-hap, 8/4/96.]

    Smokestack industries operate under the law of diminishing 
returns, but information businesses generates increasing returns 
as more resources are used.  "Increasing returns are the tendency 
for that which is ahead to get further ahead, and for
that which loses advantage to lose further advantage."
Hardware and software companies face market instability, 
unpredictability, and fat profits for the winner.  [W. Brian 
Arthur, Harvard Business Review, 7/96, p. 100.  NewtNews.
Bill Park.]  (The "gorilla in the tornado" principle.)

    Business research topics -- virtual corporations,
electronic commerce, intranets, knowledge management, 
organizational learning, etc. -- are the subject of 
<http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/interest.html> from the
Association for Information Systems.  [Educom UPDATE, 8/1/96.]

    ECONOMIC-TREND is a serious discussion of the US exporting
up to $1T in computer-based work to Third World countries.
Send a "subscribe economic-trend your name" message
to <listserv@listserv.readadp.com>.  [Jim Schoening 
<jim@readns1.readadp.com>, NEW-LIST, 7/15/96.]

    The House of Lords Select Committee on Science
and Technology has released its report on
"The Information Society:  Agenda for Action in the U.K."  
<http://www.hmsoinfo.gov.uk/hmso/document/inforsoc.htm>.  
[WEBster, 8/6/96.]

    "Computers as Tutors: Solving the Crisis in Education" is
a complete book available at <http://www.concentric.net/~faben1>.  
[<faben1@cris.com>, net-hap, 7/30/96.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Cyc Upper Ontology: CYC ontology hierarchy with 3,000
linked concepts.

LEE 2.0: Latent Energy Environments alife simulator.

AI~WHEEL: Universal Robotic Brain Cell natural-language
alife shell.

GAMusic: genetic algorithm to evolve short melodies.

MGR: Viterbi/HMM real-time speech recognizer.

GiST/libGiST: generalized search tree (B+, R, R*) software
from UCB.

NNelmos 1.06: DOS English/German tutorial BP NN simulator.

NeuroGenetic Optimizer 2.1: PNN, GRNN, BP, time delay,
and continuous adaptive time architectures.

NeuroGenetic Optimizer (NGO): demo of genetic
input-variable selection.

PMNEURO 1.0a: backprop generator for OS/2.

DELVE: archive of machine-learning datasets and source code. 

Clementine: data mining tool with graphic interface.

XPSPEAK 2.0: peak-fitting software for XPS spectra.

Apprentice 5: 600MB of Mac source code, libraries, compilers,
and utilities.

Info-Mac CD IX: 2-CD set with 1GB of Mac software.

Teleport Pro: personal Web spider for Windows 95.

WebFerret v0.86: WWW search engine for Windows 95.

CLIPS/WebExpert/WebObject KB training courses: 33% discount
for Internet-based versions.

Internet Conference Professional: multiperson moderated
audio conference and whiteboard system (free beta).

"Beyond Humanity: Cyberevolution and Future Minds":
book by Paul and Cox.  (Sample chapters.)

"Algorithmic Number Theory, Vol. 1: Efficient Algorithms":
book by Bach and Shallit.


 5> Computists' news:

    Michael D. Stiber has returned from a professorship
in Hong Kong, to be a research assistant professor at
the UCB Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology.  Interests
include neural networks, computational neuroscience,
and scientific visualization.  His new email address is 
<stiber@cicada.berkeley.edu>.  [8/14/96.]  (Mike says
the Berkeley area has a housing crunch, but he's found
a place.  Are there any Bay Area professional organizations
he should be linking up with?)

					-- Ken


The Mac did something that no computer did in the past.
It asked you to love it.  Before that computers were loveable,
but they weren't cute.  The original Mac fully accessed our
Inner Mommy: the spot inside of us that adores bright-eyed
little things that are trying.  -- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, 
DaveNet, 7/26/96.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 57
 IS                                            August 27, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	New TCC archive.
 2>	Digital libraries.
 3>	Industry news.
 4>	Browser wars.
 5>	Career jobs.
 6>	Business finance.
_________________________________________________________________

All the news that's bits, not print.  -- Will Cate 
<wcate@prubank.com>, suggested for the NYT online edition.  
[DaveNet, 8/23/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I'm back!  I enjoyed showing my brother-in-law the Monterey 
Bay Aquarium, Yosemite, and the Hang Ah Tea Room in San Francisco.  
Meanwhile, net traffic has been light but the newspapers
have had a lot of good articles.

    This Wednesday's full moon is the last for which our
free sample issue will be emailed to individual subscribers.
I'll post each succeeding Full Moon edition to 
<http://www.computists.com> and will email it only to
group redistributions.  Sort of a "car pool lane" concept,
to cut down on address changes and bounce messages.
I'm hoping this will increase readership, departmental 
memberships, and exposure to our website.


 1> New TCC archive:

    Members have been asking for years for a browseable archive
of back issues, and now we have one!  The New Zealand Digital 
Library has implemented full-text search of past Communiques,
back to the first issue on 4/1/91.  Terrific!  This is freely 
available to the public, courtesy of NZDL.  Bookmark 
<http://www.cs.waikato.ac.nz/~nzdl/tcc>, as you're likely to
need it often.  (Or get there from the CI web page, 
<http://www.computists.com>.)  You'll be amazed at how many 
resources we've covered in five and a half years.

    The New Zealand Digital Library also offers a Computer Science 
Technical Report Library of 30K research reports (750K pages)
from 300 sites worldwide, with powerful full-text phrase indexing; 
500 or so works of English literature; and an index to over 3000 
FAQ lists.  Thanks go to Sally Jo Cunningham 
<sallyjo@waikato.ac.nz> and Craig Nevill-Manning 
<cgn@rose.cs.waikato.ac.nz> for setting this up.  More to come...


 2> Digital libraries:

    Apple recently demoed "Project X," a "2.5-dimensional" 
document clustering and browsing program.  The user navigates 
through layers of topic "bubbles," such as a science bubble 
containing biology and chemistry bubbles.  An indexing capability 
in Apple's next operating system will identify document concepts 
from frequently used words.  Apple also has "data detectors"
that can pull phone numbers, email addresses, and URLs out of 
documents without the user having to open and read or edit
the text.  None of these have announced release dates,
but Apple says its new policy will be to release technology
as soon as it's "good enough" rather than waiting to perfect it.  
They want us to know that "innovation is at the heart of
what we do."  [Mike Langberg, SJM, 8/7/96, 1C.]

    Bruce Schatz' digital libraries team at the National Center 
for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA; Champaign, IL) has been 
trying to index the Internet by clustering documents -- possibly 
"the toughest problem NCSA has ever undertaken."  A test run
of 10M abstracts and 1000 subject clusters required 4 days
of supercomputer time.  [Peter Coy, Newsweek, 8/12/96, p. 83.]

    The transition to digital libraries will take much longer
and cost more than commonly thought, according to participants
in the 5-year Project TULIP scholarly journals experiment.  
Problems include storage capacity, bandwidth, and user issues.  
<http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/tulip/>.  [Chronicle of Higher 
Education, 8/16/96, A21.  EDUPAGE.]


 3> Industry news:

    Microsoft is releasing an Internet services library
accessible from C, Java, or scripts.  
<http://www.macweek.com/mw_1032/news_microsoft.html>.
[MacWEEK.  DaveNet, 8/19/96.]

    Sun has introduced its Java WorkShop programming environment 
at $99.  IBM will integrate its Taligent technology with Java,
for easy application customization for non-English users.
And Novell has announced a TCP/IP-based Intranet Ware version
of its network environment.  [SJM, 8/21/96, 1C.]

    IBM and Sun will also cross-license their CORBA technologies 
for object-oriented software.  [SJM, 8/22/96, 1C.]

    Nolan Bushnell -- inventor of Pong, Atari, and Chuckie Cheese 
-- has a new product.  His Aristo International Corp. will soon
be installing coin-operated touch screens for public Internet 
access to email, games, and music.  [Bloomberg Business News.  
SJM, 8/23/96, 2C.]


 4> Browser wars:

    More than 32K people downloaded Internet Explorer 3.0 in the 
first 6 hours, overloading Microsoft's servers.  [SJM, 8/16/96, 
1C.]  1M copies were downloaded in a week.  [WEBster, 8/20/96.]  
(Shipping IE with each copy of Windows 95 may distribute another 
46M copies next year.  After that the browser will be built
right into Windows.  Microsoft has sold 40M copies of Windows 95 
in the past year, but had hoped to do better.)

    Netscape and Microsoft are now competing on content
as well as browser features and HTML extensions.  The $49 
Navigator 3.0 comes with Inbox Direct, which sends you a daily 
selection of audio/video web pages from 25 publications such as 
the NYT, CNET, Sony Music, SportsLine USA, Express Travel 
Magazine, and The HotWired Network.  Navigator runs on 16 
platforms, including Windows 3.1; over 175 plug-ins are available 
or announced.  Microsoft's Internet Explorer 3.0 is free, as are 
links to several commercial news, investment, and entertainment 
sites through at least 12/96.  (Connection charges may apply.)  
Internet Explorer runs only on Windows 95 and NT, but comes
in English, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, 
Italian, Spanish, and soon 20 other languages.  Macintosh,
UNIX, and Windows 3.1 versions should begin beta testing soon,
for release by the end of the year.  [Janet Rae-Dupree, SJM, 
8/19/96, 7E.  Also WEBster, 8/20/93.]

    Navigator 3.0 is available from from Netscape's home page, 
<http://home.netscape.com>, or 
<ftp://ftp.netscape.com/navigator/3.0/mac/> for the Mac.
The Mac version is 3.5MB and needs 7MB-9MB of RAM.  New features 
include Java capability; LiveAudio and QuickTime plug-ins; 
Internet telephony and shared whiteboards; security features;
and support for multicolumn text and other HTML extensions.  
[TidBITS, 8/19/96.]

    See <http://www.microsoft.com/ie/offers/> for the Microsoft 
content offers such as ESPNET Sportszone, WSJ Interactive Edition, 
Hollywood Online, InvestorsEdge, Microware House, and MTV;
or see <http://www.microsoft.com/ie/> for features of the browser: 
borderless frames, animated GIFs, advanced table formatting, 
integrated ActiveX controls, support for Visual Basic Script and 
JavaScript, Internet phone and conferencing, etc.  Instructions
on optimizing your website are at 
<http://www.microsoft.com/workshop/>.  Download the browser
from the Microsoft site, or from <http://www.moraetes.com>.  
[George Moraetes <george@moraetes.com>, net-hap, 8/18/96.]


 5> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Robotics/control company (Rockville, MD): equity position
for a top-level strategic planner, to re-engineer and lead
a 23-person SBIR/contracting company.

Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science 
(DIMACS; Piscataway NJ): postdocs in algorithms, combinatorics, 
complexity, computational algebra, discrete and computational 
geometry, discrete optimization, graph theory, etc.

UIllinois at Urbana-Champaign: 6 postdocs in pure and applied 
mathematics.

UCSD (San Diego): 2-year postdoc to study skill acquisition
in Tetris.

IBM Almaden Research Center (San Jose): PhD researchers
and BS scientific programmers for data mining, machine learning, 
NN, statistics, etc.

Texas Instruments: Interactive Technologies web research team 
leader/branch manager; also computer scientists for Java, adaptive 
software agents, distributed systems, and software engineering.

Boston-area company: BS/MS advanced software technologist for AI, 
NN, and distributed interactive simulation.

New England company: pattern recognition engineer.

Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM): postdoc in document
image processing.

Computer Based Systems, Inc. (Fairfax, VA): consultant
in NLP software development, via telecommuting.

Atlanta company: senior AI scientist.

California company: PhD senior engineer/scientist for AI,
expert systems, and NN.

Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. (Belmont, CA): BS/MS software 
engineer in AI scheduling, simulation, and other AI.

UOregon's Computational Intelligence Research Laboratory (CIRL): 
PhD research faculty in AI, planning, etc., and applications.

UWaterloo (Ontario): faculty in AI, DB, distributed systems,
OS, programming languages, or SE.

Aston U. (Birmingham, UK): lecturer in NN, pattern recognition, 
time series, or machine vision.

National U. of Singapore, Inst. of Systems Science: RAs in 
pattern/character recognition and image/video processing.

National Chiao Tung U. (Hsinchu, Taiwan): prof. of computational 
linguistics or speech perception.


 6> Business finance:

    President Clinton has signed a bill with a simplified
and improved R&D tax credit, but the 11-month span of that
tax credit is unlikely to influence corporate R&D planning.  
[James J. Mitchell, SJM, 8/25/96, 1E.]

    A $100M Java Fund has been created by venture capitalists 
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (Palo Alto) to invest in
Java-based companies.  Sun, Cisco, Oracle, Netscape, IBM,
and other companies have put up about $5M-$15M each.
Three start-ups have already won funding, including the Marimba 
(Palo Alto) spin-out of Sun's Java-for-the-Web development group.  
Analysts are debating whether the single-technology fund is 
needed, and whether it is wise to have fund investors so closely 
linked to the recipients.  [Ricardo Sandoval, SJM, 8/22/96, 1C.]  
(Dave Winer says that Marimba is hiring now, but only
the very best MacOS developers.  See <http://www.scripting.com
/frontier/jobfair.html>.  [DaveNet, 8/13/96.])

    Investors put a record $761M into Silicon Valley companies
in the 2nd quarter, but funding is now expected to level off.
43 telecommunications companies got $249M, and 50 software 
companies attracted $148M.  Only $101M went to 12 computer
and semiconductor companies, and investors are worried about
an oversupply of computer chips.  See 
<http://www.sjmercury.com/business/venture> for the full 
investment statistics.  Nationally, telecom and the Internet 
scored 263 of 565 venture capital deals.  [Ricardo Sandoval,
SJM, 8/19/96, 1E.]  (Total US investment was about $3B,
in 584 companies.  [iNews.  NewtNews, 8/13/96.])

    Venture capitalists are finding that they can reap their 
profits much faster now by selling fledgling companies --
via mergers or acquisitions -- rather than doing an initial
public offering (IPO).  Mergers are a way to cash out,
whereas IPOs just bring in additional investment.  Mergers
and acquisitions are also good for bringing a new product
into an established marketing channel.  However, the companies 
must have similar cultures.  IBM killed Rolm by imposing a 
conservative East Coast culture, then later forcing Rolm
to hire displaced IBM employees.  The acquiring companies
these days are usually young, entrepreneurial companies.
[Steve Kaufman and Ricardo Sandoval, SJM, 8/19/96, 1E.]

    For more on what makes joint ventures tick or explode,
see the 8/96 Inc. magazine interview with Kaleida Labs'
CEO Michael Braun, p. 57.  [Steve Holden <newtnews@pobox.com>, 
NewtNews, 8/13/96.]

    The investor's magazine Red Herring (6/96) lists percentage
of founder/VC ownership of some of the new Internet services,
as of their IPO dates: Lycos (10%/75%); Excite (11%/52%);
Infoseek (27%/33%); and Yahoo! (34%/19%).  Advertising revenues 
during the first quarter were about $3M for InfoSeek and Lycos, 
$2M for Yahoo! and Netscape, and $1M for c|net, ZD Net, ESPNET 
Sport Zone, Pathfinder, and WebCrawler.  The big spenders were
IBM ($1.5M), Microsoft ($1M), Netscape, c|net, AT&T, Nynex, MCI, 
ISN, Saturn, and Excite ($400K).  [NewtNews, 7/9/96.  Bill Park.]

    The Nasdaq stock market -- a favorite of high-tech companies
-- will implement SEC-initiated reforms that may cause some 
companies to switch to the NYSE.  SEC and the Justice Dept. found 
that Nasdaq policies were enriching brokers at the expense of 
customers.  New practices will encourage a narrower spread
between buying and selling prices, so brokers will have to charge 
larger commissions to compensate.  [NYT.  SJM, 8/20/96, 1E.]

    The Financing Companion web pages offer financing tips, a
free database of venture capital sources, and "The Financing NEWS" 
newsletter.  <http://www.datamerge.com/financingcompanion.html>.  
[WEBster,  8/20/96.]

    Need corporate profiles, a trademark or patent search, 
industry newsletters, science and engineering news, market data, 
or other business information?  Brainwave, at 
<http://www.n2kbrainwave.com>, accesses 250 databases at prices
as low as 50 cents per search.  [WEBster, 8/20/96.]

					-- Ken


Security is mostly a superstition.  It does not exist
in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it.  
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright 
exposure.  Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
-- Helen Keller.  [Benjamin E. Delfin <aramchek@apocalypse.org>, 
QOTD, 8/23/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------
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Date: Sat 31 Aug 96 13:01:10-PDT
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 58
 IS                                            August 29, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Technical advances.
 2>	Science and manufacturing.
 3>	Education.
 4>	Digital archives.
 5>	Research software.
 6>	Book and journal calls.
 7>	Mathematics.
 8>	Cognitive science.
_________________________________________________________________

Knowledge is one.  Its division into subjects is a concession
to human weakness.  -- Sir Halford John Mackinder.
[John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Technical advances:

    CMU's NASA Robotics Engineering Consortium has developed 
Demeter, a harvesting machine that can follow crop rows at 10 mph, 
vs. 4 mph for a human driver.  It uses both computer vision
and GPS position checking.  A human will still be aboard for
the current version, to be marketed by New Holland North America 
Inc.  [Peter Coy, Newsweek, 8/12/96, p. 83.]

    DNA-based computing hasn't been in the news lately, mainly 
because there was no good way to grow custom DNA sequences.  
Researchers had to start with an enormous vat and then select
the strands matching problem constraints.  Mitsunori Ogihara
of URochester has suggested a possible solution, via a process 
that quickly shuts down growth of incorrect strands.  A pound
of DNA might out-perform the world's supercomputers.  [Otis Port, 
Newsweek, 8/26/96, p. 53.]

    A UInnsbruck scientist has developed a clever way of encoding 
information in ternary "trits," based on a technique from quantum 
mechanics.  [Science news, 7/13/96, p. 31.  NewtNews.]

    Apple has shown a new technology called Speech Phoneme 
Information Description Interchange (SPIDI) that combines
text-to-speech, digital sound sampling, and voice modeling
for life-like voice tracks (e.g., for use over the Web).
[Farcast <http://www.farcast.com>.  NewtNews, 8/13/96.]


 2> Science and manufacturing:

    MacSciTech Association is an international, professional 
association of scientists and engineers  who use Macintosh 
computers.  Monthly technical journal; conferences; CD ROMs;
and discounts on hardware, software, and books.  
<http://www.best.com/~mst/mst.html>.  [<sharilee@aol.com>,
net-hap, 8/25/95.]

    A new meeting-group for scientific visualization may be 
forming in the New York City area.  Contact David Cook 
<cook@worldnet.att.net>.  [comp.graphics.visualization, 8/4/96.]

    The Nova Genetica site for genetic algorithms has been 
upgraded, at <http://www.aracnet.com/~wwir/NovaGenetica>.  Much 
faster.  [Darin Molnar <molnard@pdx.edu>, comp.ai.alife, 8/5/96.]

    Int. J. of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (IJCIM)
uses CatchWord RealPage Windows 3.1 client software, free from 
<http://www.catchword.co.uk>.  The online journal includes
all images and tables from the hardcopy version.  
<http://www.tandf.co.uk/jnls/cim.htm>.  [David J. Williams 
<adaly@tandf.co.uk>, newjour, 7/1/96.]

    J. of Computer-Aided Materials Design highlights
computational manufacturing R&D.  Abstracts are at 
<http://jcamatd.ethz.ch/jcamatd/jcamatd.html>.  [Anthony
K. Cheetham <akc@voodoo.ucsb.edu>, newjour, 7/1/96.]

    The Electronic J. of Information Technology in Construction 
includes research in AI, CBR, simulation, NN, genetic algorithms, 
etc.  <http://itcon.org/misc/bjork.htm>.  [Bo-Christer Bjork 
<editors@itcon.fagg.uni-lj.si>, newjour, 6/29/96.]

    ContentsDirect delivers Elsevier Science journal tables
of contents via email, for free, 2-4 weeks before publication.  
<http://www.elsevier.com/homepage/about/caware/condir/>,
or contact <cdsubs@elsevier.co.uk >.  [newjour, 7/1/96.]

    Aerotech News and Review is Southern California's
journal of aerospace and defense technology news.  
<http://www.avimall.com/aerotech/index.html>.
[Leanne <aerotech@netport.com>, net-hap, 7/11/96.]

    J. of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS) is a refereed
e-journal covering all aspects of computer science.  Free in 
1995/96, but $100 in 1997.  <http://hyperg.iicm.tu-graz.ac.at
/CJUCS_root;sk=46043E2C>, with an annual archive on CD ROM
from <schies@springer.de>.  [Hermann Maurer <hmaurer
@iicm.tu-graz.ac.at>, newjour, 7/2/96.]

    Informatik -- Forschung und Entwicklung is an e-version
for subscribers of a print journal from the Gesellschaft fuer 
Informatik.  <http://science.springer.de/ife/ife-main.htm>.  
[newjour, 7/4/96.]


 3> Education:

    US school districts are planning to increase technology 
spending to $4.1B this year (up from $3.9B), or $92.70 per 
student.  62% of that will be hardware, and more than half
the computers will be Macintoshes.  [QED <http://qeddata.com>.  
Educom UPDATE, 8/15/96.]

    Technology Coordinator Discussion Forum is for school 
technology coordinators.  <http://www.cybergate.com/~blesig
/hoffman/tech/discussion/>.  [David Hoffman <dhoffman@telis.org>, 
EDTECH, 8/14/96.  net-hap.]

    Intelligent Agent is a monthly print newsletter
about interactive media and technology in arts
and education.  Resources and full back issues on 
<http://www.intelligent-agent.com>.  [Christiane Paul 
<hyperact@interport.net>, newjour, 7/11/96.]

    The J. of Technology Education offer full text
at <http://borg.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JTE/jte.html>.
[Mark Sanders <msanders@vt.edu>, newjour, 7/2/96.]


 4> Digital archives:

    Project Aristotle is a clearinghouse for research into 
automated categorization of Web resources -- including filtering 
systems, text extraction, data discovery agents, data mining,
and machine learning.  <http://www.public.iastate.edu
/~CYBERSTACKS/Aristotle.htm>.  [Gerry McKiernan 
<gerrymck@iastate.edu>, web4lib, 8/8/96.  net-hap.]

    archivists is a moderated digest about large-scale digital 
archives such as WWW, Gopher, Netnews, and the Internet Archive.  
Send a "subscribe archivists your@address" message to
<archivists-request@archive.org>.  [Brewster Kahle 
<brewster@archive.org>, NEW-LIST, 8/5/96.]

    E-LEX is a new email discussion of hypertext
and other electronic interfaces (HCI) for dictionaries.  Send a 
"sub e-lex your name" message to <listproc@listserv.acns.nwu.edu>.  
[Sean M. Burke <sburke@babel.ling.nwu.edu>, NEW-LIST, 7/27/96.]

    The Free Internet Encyclopedia organizes info from the 
Internet into a MacroReference and detailed MicroReference.  
<http://www.cs.uh.edu/~clifton/encyclopedia.html>.
[Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, BESTWEB, 5/18/96.  net-hap.]

    Newsletter Access offers a searchable directory of
over 5,000 newsletters.  <http://www.newsletteraccess.com>.  
[<ccook@newsletteraccess.com>, net-hap, 7/10/96.]

    The Journalists' Guide to Satellite Remote Sensing
Resources, including Earth imagery index, is at 
<http://gurukul.ucc.american.edu/earthnews/>.  [James Porteous 
<ah688@freenet.toronto.on.ca>, inet-news, 7/1/96.  net-hap.]

    The Quotations Page searches ten Internet quotation archives 
by subject, author, or keywords.  Links are also given to other 
quotation resources.  <http://www.starlingtech.com/quotes/>,
or <http://www.starlingtech.com/quotes/randquote.cgi> for
a random quotation.  [The Scout Report, 6/28/96.]

    The QuoteMaster Library is shareware, with
over 15K quotations.  <http://www.QuoteMaster.com>.  
[<quotecom@ix.netcom.com>, net-hap, 5/8/96.]

    How-to Heaven: over 28 categories of how-to articles
and links -- business, career, computers, cooking, crafts, 
gardening, personal finance, etc.  <http://www.concentric.net
/~Videoweb/index.shtml>.  [net-hap, 5/15/96.]


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

Instant TEA: Java-based expert system shell.

SATURN 5.0l: AI/NLP data storage and retrieval system
with 10K-entry encyclopaedia.

ConceptBase V4.1: deductive and object-oriented database.

H-PCTE 2.8: high-performance distributed object management system.

CLEARS: computational semantics education/research tool.

ALN Educational Kit: fast neural-network approach.

Communication Networks Class Library (CNCL) 1.8: tree-structured 
C++ class library for event-driven simulation, fuzzy logic, etc.

daVinci V2.0.1: graph visualization system.

FAMOS: waveform analysis software.

PARS/RUMP: Russian/Ukrainian/English machine translation systems.  
(Also German and Spanish.)

Dragon Dictate 2.5: speech recognition/dictation system.

TALRIK: autonomous mobile robot kit.

MATLAB Robotics Toolbox V.4.

CCRMA Common Lisp music software.

HTML 3.2 ("Wilbur") draft specification.

Pinpoint Search: personal website search engine.

"MODELING NATURE: Cellular Automata Simulations with Mathematica": 
book by Gaylord and Nishidate.

Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives: 200-page guide
on document capture.

Electronic Publishing on CD-ROM: book by Cunningham and Rosebush.


 6> Book and journal calls:

    The Sociologies of Cyberspace; book from the Virginia
Review of Sociology.  10/31/96; J.E. Godard 
<jeg5s@faraday.clas.virginia.edu>, (804) 296-9692.
Mention intent by 9/30/96.  [sci.virtual-worlds, 8/1/96.]

    IEEE Trans. on Evolutionary Computation is a new journal in 
need of submissions.  David Fogel <dfogel@natural-selection.com>, 
Editor-in-Chief, c/o Natural Selection, Inc., 3333 N. Torrey Pines 
Ct., Suite 200, La Jolla, CA  92037.  [<fogel@sunshine.ucsd.edu>, 
comp.ai.genetic, 8/12/96.]

    Hybrid neural networks for financial forecasting; NeuroVe$t 
Journal, 1/97.  9/3/96, Zoran Obradovic <zoran@eecs.wsu.edu>, 
(509) 335-6601, (509) 335-3818 Fax.  [comp.ai, 7/28/96.]

    Intelligent design and operation of advanced manufacturing 
systems; J. of Intelligent Manufacturing.  2/1/97;
F. Frank Chen <chenff@eng.fiu.edu>, (305) 348-3723,
(305) 348-3721 Fax.  Mention intent by 10/31/96.
[Chong Peng <chong@itchy.eng.fiu.edu>, comp.ai.alife, 7/30/96.]

    Epistemological aspects of embodied AI and
artificial life; Cybernetics and Systems.
10/14/96; Erich Prem <erich@ai.univie.ac.at>.  
<http://www.ai.univie.ac.at/~erich/cascall.html>.
[comp.ai.alife, 8/6/96.]

    Neural networks and hybrid intelligent models;
IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks.  2/28/97; C. Lee Giles 
<giles@research.nj.nec.com>, 609-951-2642, 609-951-2482 Fax.
[ai-stats, 7/31/96.]

    Model-based diagnosis in medicine; Artificial Intelligence
in Medicine, 1997.  10/1/96; Peter Lucas <lucas@cs.ruu.nl>,
+31 30 2534094, +31 30 2513791 Fax.  <http://www.cs.ruu.nl
/~lucas/mb-diag.html>.  [sci.med.informatics, 8/11/96.]

    Parallel and distributed database systems; INFORMATICA,
mid-1997.  11/1/96; Bogdan Czejdo <czejdo@beta.loyno.edu>
or Tadeusz Morzy <morzy@pozn1v.put.poznan.pl>.  [Katarzyna
M. Paprzycka <kmpst6+@pitt.edu>, comp.databases, 8/18/96.]

    User modelling and information filtering; User Modeling and 
User-adapted Interaction.  10/31/96; Judy Kay <judy@cs.su.oz.au> 
or Nicholas Belkin <belkin@cs.rutgers.edu>.  Abstract by 9/30/96.  
[comp.human-factors, 8/21/96.]


 7> Mathematics:

    The Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications (JGAA)
is a new Web-based e-journal, starting Spring 97.  
<http://www.cs.brown.edu/publications/jgaa/>, and mirrored
in ELibEMS, the Electronic Library of the European Mathematical 
Society.  [Roberto Tamassia <rt@cs.brown.edu>, newjour, 7/2/96.]

    The Electronic J. of Combinatorics is a refereed e-journal
of discrete mathematics.  
<http://ejc.math.gatech.edu:8080/Journal/journalhome.html>.
[Neil Calkin <calkin@math.gatech.edu>, newjour, 6/29/96.]

    The Electronic J. of Probability is free to individuals.  
<http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp/>.  
[<ejpecp@math.washington.edu>, newjour, 6/29/96.]

    Applied Probability Newsletter is from the INFORMS Section on 
Applied Probability.  <http://hong.commerce.ubc.ca/www/informs>.  
[Arnold H. Buss <buss@or.nps.navy.mil>, comp.simulation, 7/8/96.]  
(See also the probability webserver at 
<http://www/maths.uq.oz.au/%7Epkp/probweb/probweb.html>.)

    Numerische Mathematik Electronic Edition covers
efficient numerical representation and scientific computing.  
Includes formulae and graphics; by subscription.  
<http://science.springer.de/nmee/nm-main.htm>.
[<em-helpdesk@springer.de>, newjour, 7/9/96.]

    Southwest J. of Pure and Applied Mathematics (SWJPAM).
Free semiannual e-journal.  <http://rattler.cameron.edu
/swjpam/swjpam.html>.  [Ioannis Argyros 
<ioannisa@cua.cameron.edu>, newjour, 7/10/96.]


 8> Cognitive science:

    Anthrobotics is a new approach to AI, autonomy, language, 
learning, emotion, etc.  See <http://www.anthrobotics.com
/anthrobotics/> for details of the software demo platform.  [Marty 
Stoneman <marty@indirect.com>, comp.ai, 7/27/96.  David Joslin.]

    Learning and Memory is a research journal for human
and invertebrate memory research.  Abstracts are at 
<http://207.22.83.2:443/cshl/journals/lnm/>.
[Judy Cuddihy <cuddihyj@cshl.org>, newjour, 7/3/96.]

    Psycoloquy is a refereed e-journal of articles and
peer commentary in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, 
behavioral biology, AI, robotics/vision, linguistics,
and philosophy.  20K readers.  Read sci.psychology.digest
or send a "sub psyc your name" message to 
<listserv@pucc.princeton.edu>.  <http://www.princeton.edu
/~harnad/psyc.html>.  [newjour, 7/17/96.]

    The Scottish Postgraduate Philosophy Association has
a scot-pg-phil list for announcements and discussions.
See <http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_sppa/index.html>,
or send a "join scot-pg-phil your name" message
to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<scot-pg-phil-request
@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 6/18/96.]

    J. of New Music Research incudes music theory,
cognitive modeling, brain theory, AI and information science,
and philosophy.  Its Electronic Appendix includes abstracts
and sound clips.  <http://www.swets.nl/jnmr/jnmr.html>.  
[<Marc.Leman@rug.ac.be>, newjour, 7/17/96.]

					-- Ken


All that we know is nothing, we are merely crammed
wastepaper baskets, unless we are in touch with that
which laughs at all our knowing.  -- D.H. Lawrence.
[John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 59
 IS                                          September 3, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Politics and policy.
 3>	Competitions and projects.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Career news.
 6>	Philosophy writing.
_________________________________________________________________

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare;
it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.  -- Seneca.  
[AWAD, 8/7/96.]


Goood Afternoon, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    NSF has updated its Graduate Fellowship and Minority
Graduate Fellowship Programs announcement, NSF 96-122.
About 1K new 3-year fellowships will be awarded in 3/97, 
consisting of $14,400/year stipend and $9,500/year for
the institution.  A $1K international travel allowance may also
be approved, and minority fellows are eligible for $700/month 
summer mentoring assistantships.  Fellows and honorable mentions 
also get up to 10 CPU hours at an NSF supercomputer center.
Each program includes awards for women in engineering or computer 
and information science; covered minorities are American Indian, 
Black/African American, Hispanic, Native Alaskan (Eskimo or 
Aleut), or Native Pacific Islander (Polynesian or Micronesian)  
You must be nearing graduation or near the beginning of your 
graduate career.  NSF may pay applicants' 12/14/96 GRE fees
if ETS receives the registration form by 11/8/96.  Applications 
may be submitted online via <http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/>,
or get application forms from <stisserve@nsf.gov>
("get fmgfkitp.txt") or NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program 
<nsfgrfp@orau.gov>, Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU),
P.O. Box 3010, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-3010; (423) 241-4300,
(423) 241-4513 Fax.  The deadline is 11/7/96.  [stsful-l, 
8/24/96.]  (Minority applicants are encourages to compete
in both the minority and general competitions, with a single 
application form.)

    A 50KB description of ten Dept. of Education grant programs
is available on <http://www.gpo.ucop.edu/search/fedfld.html>,
or from Daniel Minchew <minchew@act.org>, (202) 223-2318,
(202) 293-2223 Fax.  These include Undergraduate Intl. Studies
and Foreign Language Program (11/4/96); Intl. Research and Studies 
(11/4/96); Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad (11/8/96); 
Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (10/21/96); Fulbright-Hays 
Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (10/21/96); Endowment 
Challenge Grant (?); Minority Science Improvement (11/22/96); 
Business and International Education (11/8/96); American Overseas 
Research Centers (8/30/96); and the Fund for the Improvement
of Postsecondary Education (10/18/96).  [Federal Register, 
8/20/96, pp. 43127-43135.  grants, 8/26/96.]

    The American Council of Learned Societies offers $500 
competitive grants for travel to international meetings
outside the US.    2/1/97 deadline for travel after 6/1/97.  
Contact Ruth Waters <ruth@acls.org>, 212-697-1505 x136.  
<http://www.acls.org>.  [grants, 8/28/96.]

    NSF/CISE/IRIS is advertising for a new Program Director
for Intelligent Systems, at $62K-$97K (depending on home pay).  
This is a 1-year or 2-year visiting scientist position.
Send a "get vex9626.txt <cr> get vex9627.txt" message
to <stisserve@nsf.gov> for details, then apply by 9/9/96.  
[grants, 8/22/96.]  (Conversion to permanent status is possible
if they like your performance.)


 2> Politics and policy:

    Canada's largest funding agency, the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council, is telling scientists
to explain their projects in everyday languages.  [Toronto Globe
& Mail, 8/27/96, A1.  EDUPAGE.]  (This is in response to
a Golden Fleece-style complaint from a member of Parliament.)

    Computist Winston Maike is assisting in an Australian
study of government information technology investments
over the coming 5 years.  You can register your views
at <http://www.peg.apc.org/~infos/otl.html>.
[INFOS <infos@peg.apc.org>, 8/27/96.]

    Party platforms may or may not matter, but the current US 
platforms do differ with respect to nuclear weapons research.  
Both sides want a national missile defense by the year 2003.  
Republicans oppose the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and want
a program of basic research; Democrats want to keep the treaty
and favor "technology" research.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
8/30/96.]

    Not for travel: cotton T-shirts with the RSA encryption 
algorithm in Perl and bar code, classified as a munition
by the US government.  See 
<http://colossus.net/wepinsto/wsft_f/wspp_f/wsppts.html>
for pictures.  UK and Japanese versions are also available.  
[Chaos Corner, 7/14/96.]


 3> Competitions and projects:

    The ACM's $5K Kanellakis Theory and Practice Award
is given to an individual or group for a theoretical development 
or analysis that has improved the practice of computing.
The current endowment will permit an award every three years,
with previous nominations carried forward.  Nominations for
the 1997 award, based on theoretical contributions since 1972, 
should be sent by 11/1/96 to Peter Wegner <pw@cs.brown.edu>,
+1-401-863-7632, +1-401-863-7657 Fax.  [Moshe Vardi 
<vardi@cs.rice.edu>, comp.constraints, 8/11/96.]

    The 7th Annual Loebner Prize Contest in AI has announced
its 3/15/97 deadline for the 4/29/97 contest at the Salmagundi 
Club in NYC.  $2K and a bronze medal will be awarded.  Rules are 
on <http://info.acm.org/~loebner/lpr97.html>.  [Hugh Gene Loebner 
<loebner@acm.org>, comp.ai, 8/14/96.]  (Previous winners are 
Joseph Weintraub (4 times), Thomas Whalen, and Jasen Hutchens.)

    O'Reilly & Associates has announced a $2K prize for
the best WebSite (TM) desktop application, plus 2nd and
3rd prizes of $1K and $500.  Submit intention by 9/30/96.  
<http://software.ora.com/contests/dev_contest.html>.
[Ellen Elias <elias@ora.com>, net-hap, 8/15/96.]

    Ed Felten and Computist Gary McGraw will soon release
"Java Security: Hostile Applets, Holes, and Antidotes"
(John Wiley and Sons, $24.95).  A CD ROM is also planned.  
<http://www.rstcorp.com/java-security.html>.  [Gary McGraw 
<gem@rstcorp.com>, 8/29/96.]  (Ed Felton and students recently 
discovered a serious security hole in Microsoft's Internet 
Explorer, as documented on <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/sip/>.
Be sure to get the patch.)

    Howard Oakley is collecting citeable genetic programming 
literature for an at-cost ISO-9660 CD ROM.  Papers will be offered 
in both original formatting language and in Acrobat PDF.  Contact 
<howard@quercus.demon.co.uk> to submit royalty-free contributions.  
[GP List, 8/12/96.  Bill Park.]

    Craig Pollatz is compiling a database of leading researchers 
in operations research -- linear programming; logistics; 
mathematical programming; network flows; nonlinear, probabilistic, 
or combinatorial optimization; integer programming -- and in 
"innovation and technology management."  2,100 people are listed 
so far.  Contact <pollatz@aol.com>, 301-986-4699.  [Hans Kashyap 
<hkashyap@ids2.idsonline.com>, comp.constraints, 8/7/96.]

    Engineering Applications of AI needs book reviewers.
Check <http://www.aber.ac.uk/~cjp/books_main.html>
and then contact Chris Price <cjp@aber.ac.uk>.  [comp.ai, 8/1/96.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

DoD HPC Major Shared Resource Centers (MSRCs) at CEWES (VA),
ASC (OH), NAVO (MS), and ARL (MD): research scientists/engineers 
for programming tools, scientific visualization, and computational 
science.

Colorado School of Mines (Golden): two professorships in AI, 
visualization, and HPC.

BFGoodrich Aerospace/Aircraft Integrated Systems (Vergennes, VT): 
MS/PhD adaptive systems software engineer for expert systems,
ML, NN, fuzzy logic, etc.

North Carolina State University (Raleigh): assistant prof.
of real-time animation, including believable agents, behavioral 
animation, interactive animation, and intelligent interfaces.

Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC; Redwood Shores):
MS character/handwriting recognition R&D.

Lockheed Martin Advanced Tech Center (Palo Alto):
MS/PhD intelligent systems programmer.

Creative Optics, Inc. (Bedford, NH): associate investigator
in image analysis, pattern recognition, NN, GA, fuzzy logic,
VR, etc.

Charles River Analytics (Cambridge, MA): MS/PhD sr. researcher
to head applied AI/agents projects.

Virtual Technologies, Inc. (Palo Alto): developers for VR
and gesture recognition.

UWaterloo (Ontario): postdocs, RAs, and GRAs
in multilingual speech recognition.

UNewcastle upon Tyne/Centre for Software Reliability (UK):
RA in adaptive and agent-based control software.

USheffield (UK): RA and postgraduates in NN
and object recognition.

Imperial College (UK): postdoc RA in exact real number 
computation.

Queen Mary and Westfield College (London): prof. in AI, HCI, 
logic, or parallel or distributed systems.

USouthampton (UK): lecturer in multimedia HCI, intelligent
agents, CSCW, or DB.

UAberdeen (Scotland): chair in CS, esp. AI/DB.

UEdinburgh/Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute
(AIAI; Scotland): technical staff in planning/scheduling, 
information management, etc. 

UBonn (Germany): postdoc in NN for vision, navigation,
and robotic control.

UAntwerp (Belgium): postdoc in query languages, spatial
and constraint DB, and new models for databases.


 5> Career news:

    Demand is strong for high-tech university graduates.
Twice as many companies are recruiting on campus as in 1994, 
according to UIllinois Urbana-Champaign.  [WSJ, 8/9/96, B5.  
EDUPAGE.]

    This year's SIGGRAPH had a "hiring frenzy" with major 
hollywood studios begging for resumes -- even fancy
riverboat recruiting parties.  [Richard Ottolini 
<stgprao@sugarland.unocal.com>, sci.geo.petroleum, 8/12/96.]

    There's a nice Frank & Ernest cartoon where Frank
and his dog have set up business on the sidewalk, with
a sign offering "Sticks Chased, $.25".  Unfortunately,
that's how a lot of PhDs approach business: "What I want
to do is non-negotiable, but I'll let you pay me to do it."
[Bob Thaves, SJM, 7/4/96.]

    Computerworld reports that 29% of men in IS earn less than 
$45K and 41% earn more than $55K.  Women, constituting 30%
of the field, are paid less on average: 62% earn under $45K
and 13% over $55K.  [CW, 6/24/96, p. 84.  EDUPAGE.]

    A survey by Parents magazine found that 49% of working mothers 
envied at-home moms, whereas only 11% of the latter envied
working mothers.  "Motherhood is the most powerful job
that anybody could have."  Online resources for mothers
include Feminist Mothers at Home, 
<http://www.millcom.com/pvallen/fmah.html>; The CyberMom, 
<webmaster@thecybermom.com>; and The Mommy Times, 
<tmtimes@ix.netcom.com>.  [Rachel L. Jones, SJM, 5/10/96, 1C.]


 6> Philosophy writing:

    PHIL-LIT and "Philosophy and Literature" have completed
their second Bad Writing Contest.  Sponsors note that
the winning writing is not necessarily incompetent,
as it comes from published papers of leading scholars.
Perhaps the writing should be emulated.

    Here is the winning sentence, from Roy Bhaskar's "Plato etc: 
The Problems of Philosophy and Their Resolution" (Verso, 1994): 
"Indeed dialectical critical realism may be seen under the aspect 
of Foucauldian strategic reversal -- of the unholy trinity
of Parmenidean/Platonic/Aristotelean provenance; of the
Cartesian-Lockean-Humean-Kantian paradigm, of foundationalisms
(in practice, fideistic foundationalisms) and irrationalisms
(in practice, capricious exercises of the will-to-power or some 
other ideologically and/or psycho-somatically buried source)
new and old  alike; of the primordial failing of western 
philosophy, ontological monovalence, and its close ally,
the epistemic fallacy with its ontic dual; of the analytic 
problematic laid down by Plato, which Hegel served only to 
replicate in his actualist monovalent analytic reinstatement
in transfigurative reconciling dialectical connection, while
in his hubristic claims for absolute idealism he inaugurated
the Comtean, Kierkegaardian and Nietzschean eclipses of reason, 
replicating the fundaments of positivism through its transmutation 
route to the superidealism of a Baudrillard."  (The jacket says 
that this is the author's most accessible book to date.)

    Second prize went to a Stephen T. Tyman essay,
"Ricoeur and the Problem of Evil," in The Philosophy of
Paul Ricoeur (Lewis Edwin Hahn, ed.; Open Court, 1995):
"With the last gasp of Romanticism, the quelling of its
florid uprising against the vapid formalism of one strain of
the Enlightenment, the dimming of its yearning for the imagined 
grandeur of the archaic, and the dashing of its too sanguine
hopes for a revitalized, fulfilled humanity, the horror of its 
more lasting, more Gothic legacy has settled in, distributed and 
diffused enough, to be sure, that lugubriousness is recognizable 
only as languor, or as a certain sardonic laconicism disguising 
itself in a new sanctification of the destructive instincts,
a new genius for displacing cultural reifications in the 
interminable shell game of the analysis of the human psyche,
where nothing remains sacred."

    Winners can also be short and parseable, as in this
(tied for 3rd place) from "Tonya's Bad Boot" in Women on Ice 
(Cynthia Baughman, ed.): "This melodrama parsed the transgressive 
hybridity of un-narrativized representative bodies back into 
recognizable heterovisual codes."  (Question: does embedding
the quotation in my larger sentence above make it better or worse?  
Is badness non-monotonic?)

    To submit entries for next year, contact Denis Dutton 
<d.dutton@fina.canterbury.ac.nz> or David G. Myers 
<dgmyers@tamvm1.tamu.edu>.  [Tim Finin, 8/13/96.]

					-- Ken


I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty.
Empty what's full.  Scratch where it itches.
-- Alice Roosevelt Longworth.  [John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                              Vol. 6, No. 60
 IS                                           September 5, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Industry news.
 2>	Internet/Web news.
 3>	Online news sources.
 4>	Newsgroups and online experts.
 5>	Research software.
_________________________________________________________________

Education ... has produced a vast population able to read
but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
-- G.M. Trevelyan.  [AWAD, 9/3/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    Intel says that there's no further progress to be made
using its Pentium architecture, so it's assembling a
Microcomputer Labs team of scientists and engineers to do
long-term, original hardware/software design research
in collaboration with Stanford, MIT, UCB, UNC, and
other universities.  [WSJ, 8/26/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]
(Analyst Mark R. Anderson notes that Dr. Richard Wirt's
initial $2M research budget is small, but it's backed up
by Intel's $2B commercial R&D budget.  Increased parallelism
will certainly be one topic of research.  [<markrander@aol.com>, 
SNS, 8/27/96.])

    NCR has developed an architecture with up to 128 servers of 32 
Pentium Pro chips each, for $140M.  [IBD, 8/20/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]

    Sun, Cadence, and 33 other companies have joined in a Virtual 
Socket Interface Alliance to develop modular "building blocks"
for advanced chip design.  [Janet Rae-Dupree, SJM, 9/4/96, 1C.]

    HP's new Vectra XW workstations will use Windows/Intel 
("Wintel") parallel processor technology rather than Unix
and traditional HP technology.  A two-chip processor for $8K-$10K 
is said to run 2.5 times as fast as comparable SGI workstations.  
HP also has a line of low-cost Wintel servers, introduced in May.  
[WSJ, 8/26/96, B6.  EDUPAGE.  Also SNS, 8/27/96.]

    HP has introduced a $199 DeskJet 400 color printer,
replacing the 600 and 600C.  [SJM, 8/13/96, 1E.]

    Entertainment software sales grew by 6% last year,
but educational software was up 56%.  The latter also has
a much longer product life cycle.  Indeed, much of last year's 
revenue was from products such as the 12-year-old Math Blaster.  
[SPA.  IBD, 8/27/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]

    Chase Manhattan Bank and Softbank Corp. of Japan will each
be investing $25M in Flatiron Partners, a venture fund for
the "Silicon Alley" new-media start-ups around Manhattan's
Soho and Flatiron districts.  [NYT, 8/23/96, C1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Sony is delaying introduction of its DVD video disc players 
until more content is available.  Entertainment and software 
companies are arguing about copyright protection schemes.
One analyst says it will take 5 years for DVD to become
a major product.  [IBD, 8/29/96, A5.  EDUPAGE.]
(Players will have lockouts by geographic region so that movies 
released in one part of the world can't be played elsewhere.)

    "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet,"
a new book by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, "rescues from 
oblivion the collection of geeks and nerds, bureaucrats
and geniuses, who changed everyday life for millions of people
all across the planet."  [NYT, 8/21/96, B2.  EDUPAGE.]
("Their account offers an intimate view into how nontechnical 
factors -- the pressure to justify funding, personality quirks, 
chance meetings -- affected the way the global network works 
today."  [Newsweek, 9/9/96, p. 74.])


 2> Internet/Web news:

    NSF is ending its support of the commercial Internet,
but is funding a new "super net" for research and education.
This expands the "very high speed Backbone Network System" (vBNS) 
used by five supercomputing centers, soon to operate at 622Mbps 
(vs 45Mbps for the Internet).  The initial beneficiaries will be 
researchers trying to use video over the net.  NSF is giving
$350K to each of 13 colleges, and expects to spend $50M over
five years.  About 35 more grants will be made in the second 
round, for innovative solutions of broad applicability.
Current winners include distributed computing, remote access
to instruments, visualization of weather, chemical reactions, 
medicine, transportation studies, interactive multimedia 
collaboration, digital libraries, etc.  [Steve Johnson, SJM, 
8/17/96, 1C.  Also WEBster, 8/20/96.]

    Tired of .com, .org, .edu, etc.?  Up to 50 new registry 
services will be licenced before 2/97, with authority to 
administer up to 150 new international top-level domains.
[BNA Daily Report for Executives, 8/26/96, A9.  EDUPAGE.]
(This should reduce lawsuits about trademarked addresses.
One Canadian company recently reserved over 9K common surnames, 
for lease to people who want a vanity address.  Registered
domain names have been increasing by 45K-50K/month.
[Mike Walsh <mwalsh@pulver.com>, net-hap, 8/11/96.])

    ADV-CGI is a moderated discussion of the Common Gateway 
Interface (CGI) and other advanced Web programming topics
-- but not Java and Javascript, which are covered by other lists.  
Send a "subscribe adv-cgi your name" message to <Common Gateway 
Interface (CGI)>.  [Scout Report, 5/10/96.]

   JAVA-L is a new discussion list about JAVA.  Send a
"sub java-l your name" message to <listserv@vm.edu.tr>.
[Veli Hazar <sysadm8@vm.ege.edu.tr>, bestweb, 7/26/96.  net-hap.]

    Sun has dropped their Java WorkShop system developer kit (SDK) 
from $200 to $99 until 12/31/96.  A free 30-day evaluation copy
of is available at <http://www.sun.com/developer-products>.  
[Farcast.  NewtNews, 8/27/96.  Bill Park.]

    The PageMill 2.0 website authoring package for the Macintosh 
is available in a free beta from <http://www.adobe.com/>.
Similar releases for Windows 95 and NT may be available soon.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 8/8/96.]

    The NetscapeWorld online publication for webmasters has a new, 
"techno-savvy" format.  <http://www.netscapeworld.com>.  [Gerald 
R. Viers <grviers@csupomona.edu>, ADV-HTML, 7/8/96.  net-hap.]

    IntraNut is a new online journal about intranets.  
<http://www.intranut.com>.  [<lesli@arbuthnot.com>,
comp.infosystems, 7/18/96.  newjour.]


 3> Online news sources:

    A collection of daily news links is free from The Virtual 
Daily News, <http://www.infi.net/~opfer/daily.htm>.  For topical 
news sources -- business, education, technology, career, etc. -- 
see <http://www.el.com/ToTheWeb/Topical/>.  [Gary Ewell 
<ewell@courier4.aero.org>, inet-news, 1/25/96.]

    News about Stanford research and events is available
from Stanford News Service on the Web,
<http://www-leland.stanford.edu/dept/news/>.  Searchable archive.  
[<David.Salisbury@forsythe.stanford.edu>, net-hap, 1/25/96.]

     News of the Weird is a weekly syndicated column, available 
online at <http://www.nine.org/notw/notw.html>.  [Robert Samet 
<stamer@erols.com>, BESTWEB, 7/11/96.  net-hap.]

    Nine media companies are providing content from 225 US daily 
newspapers on New Century Network, <http://www.newcentury.net/>.  
[Todd Smith <tsmith@admin.fsu.edu>, inet-news, 5/24/96.]

    Online info for more than 1001 online newspapers worldwide can 
be found by name or map location from Editor & Publisher Magazine, 
<http://www.mediainfo.com/ephome/npaper/nphtm/online.htm>.  
[Network News, 6/6/96.]

    The full-text Washington Post site also offers 1,000 pages
of links to other news and reference sites.  Features include
a news archive, movie and book reviews, and 15 comic strips.
Also several chat rooms.  <http://www.washingtonpost.com/>,
or <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/guide/contents.htm>
for the site index.  [Scout Report, 6/21/96.]

    TIME Techwatch Daily includes GIZMO!, a look at new products, 
toys, and gadgets.  Also news, reviews, editorials, etc.  
<http://www.techwatch.com/latestnews/techdaily.html>.
[Steve Baldwin <sbaldwin@pathfinder.com>, net-hap, 6/28/96.]

    Your WebScout publishes 22 specialized newsletters.  
<http://www.webcom.com/webscout/>.  [<webscout@webcom.com>,
net-hap, 7/11/96.]

    The Network News Node (n3) lets you tailor your news
via keywords and other selections.  
<http://www.armory.com/~spectre/n3/main.html>.
[Liz Tompkins <nbnsoft@juno.com>, inet-news, 6/20/96.]

    Infoseek Personal will create a web page tracking companies, 
sports teams, or other topics of interest to you.  
<http://personal.infoseek.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 
3/15/96.]

    ComputerWire is a UK service offering customized news,
from computer and information technology sources.  Fee-based
after a beta period.  [Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 7/11/96.]

    NBNSOFT Content Awards serves up news of the best new services 
on the net -- 20KB every ten days.  Categories include journalism, 
business, education, reference, Internet news, etc.  Archives
are on <http://www.tricky.com/liz/>.  Send a "subscribe" message 
to Liz Tompkins <nbnsoft@juno.com>.  [NEW-LIST, 7/24/96.]

    NewsFlash is a free Windows 95 Internet information agent: 
headlines, stock ticker, weather, and email.  
<http://www.scroller.com>.  [Ken Shapiro <kensh@well.com>, 
comp.os.ms-windows.apps.winsock.mail, 7/25/96.]
(Similar to PointCast.)

    ZD Net Personal View has been enhanced, offering faster 
retrieval and better personalized selection from 650 news 
resources.  Select from 24 topics or create your own filters.  
<http://www.pview.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 7/31/96.]

    Newspage is another daily news filter, selecting from
20K stories on 700 news services in 30 industries.  
<http://www.newspage.com>.  [net-hap, 7/30/96.]

    Tech Talk's HOT NEWS is a free daily newsletter of top 
technology stories.  Contact <news@ttalk.com> to subscribe.
[Ken Rutkowski <ken@ttalk.com>, net-hap, 8/7/96.]

    What's New on the Web will send you customized daily email 
matched to your personal profile.  Free.
<http://www.inet-access.net/~newonweb>.
[<dbartle@inet-access.net>, net-hap, 8/4/96.]

    The Webcatcher will email you a weekly list of new URLs 
matching your topics of interest, for free.  Their "computer.ai" 
topic pulls in about a dozen web pages per week from new AI groups 
and programs.  <http://www.dev-com.com/~rfactory/webcatcher.html>.  
[Dave J. Mills <dmills@noao.edu>, comp.ai, 8/19/96.]

    LifestyleFinder is an "intelligent agent" using inferred 
lifestyle profiles to target user information, rather than
the usual keyword-based "interest list" filtering.
See <http://lifestyle.cstar.ac.com/lifestyle>.
[Bruce Krulwich <krulwich@cstar.ac.com>, comp.ai, 8/26/96.]


 4> Newsgroups and online experts:

    Usenet newsgroup descriptions and FAQs can be searched at 
<http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/>, from the Usenet Info Center.  
[<kirkwood@localnet.com>, net-hap, 1/22/96.]

    Usenet News-Filter is an adaptive, individual news filter
and manager for Usenet newsgroups.  English and German.  
<http://jod.informatik.uni-bonn.de:8080/>.  [<haneke@cs.bonn.edu>, 
net-hap, 7/25/96.]

    Liszt Select is a browseable, subject-oriented directory
of public email discussion groups.  <http://www.liszt.com/>  
[<scotty@bluemarble.net>, net-hap, 8/12/96.]

    About 125 engineering newsgroups can be searched at
the Engineering Newsgroup Archive, <http://www.eevl.ac.uk
/cgi-bin/nwi>.  [<R.A.MacLeod@hw.ac.uk>, net-hap, 6/25/96.]

    The Journalist's Guide for Finding Data on the Internet
is <http://www.probe.net/~niles/>.  If you can't find a fact
any other way, it includes a link to the Profnet service
for farming out queries to university professors.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/21/96.]

    FINDOUT, from FIND/SVP, offers users direct access to
expert information researchers for free.  Like a public library 
reference desk, they'll turn up whatever facts, leads,
or contacts they can in under 15 minutes.  Supported by 
advertising: "We hope to profit in this endeavor, we just
haven't figured out exactly how."  <http://www.findout.com>.  
FIND/SVP is <http://www.findsvp.com>.  [Julie Kirsh 
<jkirsh@torqmail.sunpub.com>, newslib, 8/13/96.  CARR-L.]

    Author Morris Tischler and his staff will be glad to field 
your questions about electronics engineering, telecommunications, 
satellite technology, or bio-related technology.  His
"Ask an Engineer" webpage is <http://www.omgsic.com/ask.htm>.  
[Richard Siegel <sicandomg@aol.com>, EDTECH, 8/14/96.  net-hap.]


 5> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

GAEA V1: "organic programming" cooperative situated
inference agents language from ETL.

Bayesian Learning for Neural Networks: PhD thesis software
from Radford Neal, UToronto.

QwikNet V1.0: NN simulator for Windows.

Genetica Visual Basic source.

TIERS 1.0: random network generator.

INL 38 Million Words Corpus 1996: Dutch newspaper text corpus.

Megahedron: 3D graphics engine.

RAPID: polygon interference detection library.

Leeds U. Hand Tracker Demo for SGI Indy.

NADIP: neural and digital image processing library
for texture classification.

TI microprocessor development systems.

CADalog Web: 2K AutoCAD shareware/freeware files.

Enterprise Modeling Server (EMS) 1.0: NN forecasting system
for business use.

SkedEzy Scheduler 1.6 for Windows: shareware personal
schedule tracker.

Cafe 1.50 Beta 1: Java compiler.

Garbo archive of Windows 3.x shareware.

AnySearch 1.0b6: search tool for Mac developer sites.

Online C programming course from U Strathclyde.

Neural Networks in Financial Engineering: Proc. 3rd. Conf.
on NN in the Capital Markets.

Replication Techniques in Distributed Systems:
book by Helal, Heddaya, and Bhargava.

					-- Ken


Can I go home now?  My brain is full.
[<bluekites@inmind.com>, 3/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 61
 IS                                         September 10, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Programming news.
 2>	Hardware/software reviews.
 3>	Investment resources.
 4>	Career jobs.
 5>	Electronic publishing.
 6>	Updates and corrections.
_________________________________________________________________

Life happens too fast for you to ever think about it.
If you could just persuade people of this, but they insist
on amassing information.  -- Kurt Vonnegut.
[John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Programming news:

    There is an increasing demand for AionDS programmers, 
according to Allen Childress.  Companies and agencies
have had successes over the last decade and are now implementing 
second-generation applications, esp. in scheduling, configuration, 
help desks, data mining, fraud detection, and process control.  
Salaries are good, since demand is outpacing supply.  
<http://www.platinum.com/redwood/aionds/aionds.html>.  
[<abc3@ix.netcom.com>, comp.ai, 9/4/96.]

    Syntel (Detroit) says it can't find the 500 programmers
that it needs, so it's going for an IPO partly to get
the stock options that talented programmers want.  The company
was hiring foreign-born programmers, but got in trouble with
the US government for paying reduced wages.  (It still maintains
a Bombay facility with satellite and fiber-optic links to the US.)  
"Anybody who is qualified at all is not only gainfully employed, 
but his or her phone is ringing every week with job offers.
There will be a shortage of nearly 100K computer programmers
and engineers through the year 2000."  Much of Syntel's business 
during that time will be correcting code that can't handle
the millennium change.  Companies that don't address the problem 
now will soon find that no programmers are available.
[Detroit News.  SJM, 9/6/96, 1C.]

    "2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a byte; come on coders,
TYPE! TYPE! TYPE!"  [Mike Swaim <swaim@phoenix.net>, 6/96.]

    SIGADA-OOWG is an object-oriented working group
of ACM SIGAda.  Send subscription requests to David Brookman 
<brookman@eci-cec.com>.  [<intrepid!brookman@uunet.uu.net>,
NEW-LIST, 7/17/96.]

    The Code Warrior Users' Group will be a Web-based hangout
for Mac Codewarrior programmers.  Contact Michael K. Neylon 
<mneylon@engin.umich.edu> to volunteer help with setting up web 
pages or learning teams.  [comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 
8/19/96.  Bill Park.]

    The X Advisor is a monthly technical journal for
X Window System professionals.  Free online version
at <http://landru.unx.com/dd/index.shtml>.
[Steven Mikes <editor@unx.com>, newjour, 6/28/96.]


 2> Hardware/software reviews:

    PC World Online site, for product reviews and daily news.  
<http://www.pcworld.com/cgi-bin/w3com/start?pcw+main>.
[Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 6/27/96.]

    Computer Weekly is from the UK.  
<http://www.computerweekly.co.uk>.
[Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 7/7/96.]

    Computerist Magazine covers PC and Macintosh computing.  
Updated daily.  <http://www.p3p.com/>.  
[<scribe4hire@mindlink.bc.ca>, newjour, 6/25/96.]

    MacSense is a free monthly e-magazine about the mainstream 
Macintosh computer market.  Up to 16-bit color.  
<macsenseed@aol.com>.  See /info-mac/per/sns/mac-sense-96-07.hqx 
on any info-mac mirror for the 1,289KB July issue.
[Alex Narvey <anarvey@precursor.mb.ca>, 7/20/96.  Bill Park.]

    MacSource is a news publication for Mac enthusiasts.  
<http://hotx.com/mb/macsource/>.
[Terry Weakly <tweakly@tddc.net>, c.i.www.announce, 5/12/96.]

    SunWorld Online magazine is at 
<http://www.sun.com/sunworldonline>.  For email announcements, 
send a "subscribe sunworld your@address" message to 
<majordomo@flashback.com>.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/8/96.]

    The Sunshine Post promises weekly Internet tips,
reviews, alerts, how-to's, and news about the online world.  
<http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/mkuba/>, or send a "SUBSCRIBE" 
subject line to Joshua Holt <gandolf@earthlink.net>.
[net-hap, 6/19/96.]

    Intranet Design Magazine is a biweekly for intranet 
professionals.  <http://www.innergy.com/>.
[G. Benett <gbenett@shore.net>, newjour, 7/23/96.]

    Intranet Success is a non-technical hardcopy newsletter
for intranet managers, covering security, legal concerns, 
training, publishing protocols, etc.  Free sample
from Sam Gardiner <intserve@aol.com>.  [Leslie Norins 
<qlyh68a@prodigy.com>, net-hap, 7/26/96.]

    "mobilis: the mobile computing lifestyle magazine"
covers PDAs, wireless communication, etc.  Monthly.  
<http://www.volksware.com/mobilis>.  [John Jerney 
<jerney@volksware.com>, inet-news, 5/14/96.]


 3> Investment resources:

    AI Finance Digest is a new mailing list that hopes to cover 
bankruptcy prediction, futures trading, bond rating, etc.,
as well as NN, GA, fuzzy logic, and chaos theory.  Unmoderated,
at present.  <ai_finance@dial.pipex.com>.  Zac Harland 
<zachar@dial.pipex.com>.  [<aan74@dial.pipex.com>, 6/5/96.
Bill Park.]  (Four issues have been published, as of 6/23/96.]

    Charles Lam is building a discussion group about
neural networks in finance.  Check out 
<http://hkusub.hku.hk:8000/~kclam/report/group.htm>.  
[<kclam@hkusua.hku.hk>, c.ai.neural-nets, 6/17/96.]

    UChicago's Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP)
puts out a set of FORTRAN-accessible databases on stock prices, 
dividends, and returns on equity.  Users may join a discussion
by sending a "sub crsp-l your name" message to 
<listserv@tamvm1.tamu.edu>.  For similar help with S&P's
SEC-filing database, send a "sub compstat your name" message.
[H. Alan Montgomery <fhd@tamvm1.tamu.edu>, NEW-LIST, 5/17/96.]

   ProStream delivers stock quotes, sports scores, etc.,
to a small corner of your PC screen, paid for by advertising.  
<http://www.ps-group.com>.  [Doug Stephan <doug@ps-group.com>, 
net-hap, 7/2/96.]

    INVESTMENT-TALK is an unmoderated discussion of investments
in commodities, bonds, stocks, funds, futures, etc., mainly for 
the US markets.  Send a "subscribe Investment-Talk" message
to <majordomo@mission-a.com>.  <http://www.mission-a.com
/ml/maillist.html>.  [Bruno Bloch <bbloch@mission-a.com>,
NEW-LIST, 6/20/96.]

    Upside magazine is the leading journal for venture 
capitalists.  Now there's Upside Online, with free access to
all the features, columns, and cartoons.  Also links to
deeper information than in Upside's print articles.  
<http://www.upside.com/>.  [<feedback@upside.com>, newjour, 
5/28/96.]

    Web Finance is a new online publication from Investment 
Dealers' Digest, a Wall Street magazine for 60 years.  
<http://nestegg.iddis.com/webfinance/>.
[Hal Lux <webfinance@iddis.com>, newjour, 5/28/96.]

    If you're in San Diego, or an investor, try the weekly
San Diego Technology News at <http://websites.earthlink.net
/~braincafe/sdtn/>.  Email delivery is also planned.
[Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 6/14/96.]

    Stocks of Internet-only and net-related companies are tracked 
by Cowen & Co., on <http://www.cowen.com>.  Mecklermedia's
iWorld Financial Network offers a 24-company Internet Stock Index, 
at <http://www.netday.iworld.com/stocks>.  [David Plotnikoff,
SJM, 7/4/96, 1E.]

    Internet Stock Newsletter is offering 2 months of
online issues free.  Send name, email address, mail address,
and occupation to Raj Sehgal <vijar@pipeline.com>.
[newjour, 6/21/96.]  (Offer still open?)

    The Investors List is for discussion of mutual funds.
Send a "subscribe investors" or "subscribe investors-digest" 
message to <majordomo@shore.net>.  [Rodger Frego <rfrego@usa.net>, 
NEW-LIST, 8/9/96.]

    Money TAlks investment magazine is at 
<http://www.talks.com/moneytalks.html>.  
[<claygordon@interramp.com>, newjour, 7/20/96.]

    Investor's Business Daily (IBD), the Los Angeles-based 
"newspaper for important decision makers," has scrapped
its proprietary electronic format for an open website, 
<http://ibd.ensemble.com/>.  For the current issue each day,
see <http://ibd.ensemble.com:80/web_edition/today/>.
Computers & Tech will be of particular interest.  Also,
volume tables for NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX show current
stock activity vs. a 50-day average.  [Scout Report, 7/26/96.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UCB (Berkeley): assistant prof. in HCI, IR, electronic documents, 
security, or collaborative systems.

Arizona State U. (Tempe): faculty in SE, DB, multimedia,
computer-aided geometric design, distributed computing, and OS.

Motorola, Inc. (Schaumburg, IL): PhD spoken language systems 
developer.

JPL Robotic Vehicles Group (Pasadena, CA): PhD computer vision 
scientist.

Case Western Reserve U. (Cleveland): postdoc in adaptive behavior 
and computational neuroscience.

Edinburgh U. (Scotland): RA in genetic algorithms and scheduling.

Sony Deutschland GmbH (Stuttgart): R&D personnel for speech 
recognition and synthesis.

Otto-von-Guericke University (Magdeburg, Germany): BS/MS GRA
in NN for signal identification and mechanical control systems.

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL; Switzerland):
GRA, RAs, and sr. researcher in data and process
conceptual modeling, query languages, and visual interfaces.

UWollongong (Australia): chair in CS, possibly head of department.  
Also CS lecturers in AI, DB, SE, distributed systems, or robotics.

NOVA Inc. (Tokyo): MS computational linguist for English/Japanese 
machine translation.

National Chiao Tung U. (Hsinchu, Taiwan): prof. of spoken language 
processing.


 5> Electronic publishing:

    The New Scientist website at <http://www.newscientist.com> 
offers a searchable archive of text and graphics since 1989.
A Windows CD ROM is also available.  [Jan A. Witkowski 
<witkowsk@cshl.org>, MacWay, 7/23/96.  Chuck Morefield.]

    Neural Processing Letters offers its table of contents
on <gopher://gopher.wkap.nl:70
/00gopher_root1%3A%5Bjournal.nepl%5Dnepl.inf>, or 
<ftp://gopher.wkap.nl/journal/nepl>.  <kluwer@wkap.com>.  
[<Jeroen.vanDeutekom@wkap.nl>, connectionists, 7/31/96.]

    SIGMOD Record -- from the Special Interest Group
for Management of Data -- is now online from 9/93, mostly
in PostScript format.  SIGMOD conference proceedings,
comprising the June issue each year, is not available online.  
<http://bunny.cs.uiuc.edu/sigmod/sigmod_record>.
[Jennifer Widom <widom@db.stanford.edu>, dbworld, 7/24/96.]

    The NewJour list for online journal announcements
has a searchable archive of about 2,500 entries,
at <http://gort.ucsd.edu/newjour>.  [Ann Okerson 
<ann.okerson@yale.edu>, 9/3/96.]

    Desktop Publishers Journal is a free email newsletter.  
<http://www.dtpjournal.com/ezine.htm>, or send a "subscribe
dtp-news" message to <listserv@dtpjournal.com>.  
[<webmaster@dtpjournal.com>, newjour, 7/24/96.]

    Emerge EXTRA is a biweekly newsletter about Adobe Acrobat.  
<http://www.emrg.com/796extra.html>.  [<kfoss@emrg.com>,
net-hap, 7/19/96.]

    O'Reilly & Associates has announced an Early Adopter Program, 
making online versions of books available before the titles appear 
in print -- some even chapter by chapter as they are written.  
Readers pay full price, but do get the hardcopy version 6-8 weeks 
later.  O'Reilly's first such books are on JavaScript and Perl.  
"Programming Perl, 2nd ed." is to be an 800-page Nutshell 
Handbook.  Register at <http://www.ora.com/info/early/>.
[Sara Winge <sara@ora.com>, net-hap, 7/30/96.]

    Wolff New Media runs a NetBooks "newsroom" with 50 editors 
compiling Web information and writing or updating online and 
hardcopy books.  They've got over 50K site reviews at Your 
Personal Network, <http://www.ypn.com/>, and plan to publish
a new book every three weeks.  [Tonya Engst <tonya@tidbits.com>, 
TidBITS, 8/12/96.]  The books are being posted to the Web as well, 
in the hope of spurring hardcopy sales.  Another YPN feature is 
NetClock, a listing of 500-600 scheduled chat events each day.  
[David Plotnikoff, SJM, 8/29/96, 1E.]

    The Charlesworth Group Award for Electronic Journals is a new, 
500-pound annual award for excellent overall design, functionality 
and innovation in online and parallel online journals --
including accessibility, presentation, and navigation through
the publication.  This is from The Charlesworth Group 
(Huddersfield, UK) -- which also offers Charlesworth Group Awards 
for Typographical Excellence in Journal and Serial Publishing -- 
in association with The British Library, The Association
of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP),
The Electronic Libraries Programme (e-Lib), and The Serial 
Publishers Executive of the Council of Academic and Professional 
Publishers of The Publishers Association.  Entry deadline is 
10/14/96.  <electronicaward@charlesworth.com>, +44 (0)1484 517077, 
+44(0)1484 517068 Fax.  <http://www.Charlesworth.com>.  
[<Oliver.Parker@charlesworth.com>, comp.text, 9/5/96.]

    Tired of text-based navigation through Web space?
Apple's Project X technology -- available in free pre-release 
plug-ins for Macintosh and Windows, from the Apple website
-- allows developers to create "fly-through" 3D overviews
of web pages, databases, gopher directories, FTP files, and email.  
"The locations spread out before you, and you can change course 
easily -- you just can't do this with text links."  Yahoo! and 
CNET will be the first to implement such site maps, base on
the open Meta Content Format (MCF).  [<MacWay@aol.com>, 9/4/96.  
Chuck Morefield.]


 6> Updates and corrections:

    The security patch for Microsoft's Internet Explorer
browser can be downloaded from <http://www.microsoft.com
/msdownload/iepatch.htm>.  (Without it, websites can access
and delete your files.)  [Bert Kortegaard <korteng@rt66.com>, 
BESTWEB, 8/26/96.  net-hap.]

    Sign-up for the ADV-CGI moderated discussion of
the Common Gateway Interface to WWW requires a "subscribe
adv-cgi your name" message to <listproc@lists.nyu.edu>.
Once enrolled, you can choose to set it to digest format.
There's also an ADV-CGI website at 
<http://www.nyu.edu/acf/dcis/adv-cgi/>.  [9/6/96.]

    The J. of Logic Programming has extended its deadline
on "Inductive Logic Programming" articles to 9/16/96.
[David Page <dpage@ecs.ox.ac.uk>, comp.ai, 9/2/96.]

    "Can I go home now?  My brain is full." is a variant of
a Gary Larson caption.  (I should have asked my kids.)
Anthony Tomasic and Aaron Armstrong identified the source.

					-- Ken


Exit muttering "Gopher was good enough for my granddad..."
-- David Harley <d.harley@icrf.icnet.uk>, 9/96.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 62
 IS                                         September 12, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	High-tech news.
 2>	Telecom news.
 3>	Research software.
 4>	Entrepreneurship.
 5>	Personal topics.
 6>	Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

Jean-Louis Gassee, who used to run Apple Computer's
research labs, has called it "Silicon Valley sophism":
the assumption among the wired elite that a new technology
will take off "because it would be cool if it did."
Examples include virtual reality, personal digital assistants,
and practically everything dreamt up at the Media Lab of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  These innovations
thrill boffins but make little impact on consumers.  -- 
"Tomorrow's Network, Tomorrow," The Economist, 4/20/96, p. 57.  
[Keith Bostic <bostic@bsdi.com>, QOTD, 6/29/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> High-tech news:

    ABC's Nightline on 8/23/96 aired a 20-minute segment
called "Machines Like Us," about genetic algorithms.
Inspiring and reasonably accurate.  If you need a copy of
the tape, order it for about $30 from ABC News at 1-800-505-6139.  
[Neil Rieck <anonymous@on.bell.ca>, comp.ai, 8/30/96.]

    CMU's new National Robotics Engineering Consortium 
(Pittsburgh) will help move mobile robotics technology
into American industry: mining, excavation, agriculture,
cargo handling, construction, space and sea exploration, 
transportation, hazardous materials handling, military 
applications, etc.  NREC's 7-year research plan will start
with harvesting machines and a lunar rover.  Funding comes
from corporate contributions and a $2.5M NASA grant.
David Pahnos is the director.  [Reuter.  clari.tw.features, 
9/2/96.  David Joslin.]

    Anatoly Karpov recently played an online chess match against
a committee of about 250 opponents.  Contestants had 7 minutes
for each response, with the most frequently suggested response 
accepted.  Karpov won in 32 moves and 4.5 hours.  See 
<http://www.tele.fi/karpov/gameworl.htm> for commentary and
a Shockwave-enabled replay.  [NYT, 8/27/96, B9.  EDUPAGE.
Also the Scout Report, 8/30/96.]

    Garry Kasparov will play IBM's Deep Blue again in NY
on May 3-10.  C.J. Tan says:  "We're not conducting a scientific 
experiment any more.  This time, we're just going to play chess."  
His team has been working on adaptive strategies.  [NYT, 8/20/96, 
B1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Sega (Japan) and Trocadero (UK) are opening Europe's
first interactive retail/entertainment theme park, in Piccadilly, 
London.  Segaworld uses graphics and VR to entertainment,
rather than traditional movement-based rides.  Sega has two
such parks in Tokyo and plans others in Sydney and elsewhere.  
[Financial Times, 9/7/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    Angela Lansbury's "Murder She Wrote" was the last TV show 
using electromechanical "moviola" film editing machines.
All TV film is now edited digitally.  [Herb Dow, Variety's
On Production, 9/96.  Bill Park.]  (The Computists' Communique
is also edited digitally.  :-)

    Lucent (nee Bell Labs) has a new electron-beam parallel 
patterning process for integrated circuits, using beam 
interference through an "inverse blur" pattern mask to produce 
sharp features in a photosensitive resist layer.  Lines on
the chip are about 1/8 the width with microphotolithography.
A 4x linear reduction during imaging makes mask fabrication 
easier, but such small chip features will push the limits of 
environmental control, wafer inspection, and other fab equipment, 
as well as computer circuit design.  Commercial use will be 
several years off.  [New Scientist.  Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 
9/4/96.]

    Dell Computer is offering new Pentium Pro servers at $3,799, 
50% below comparable models.   [WSJ, 9/9/96, B8.  EDUPAGE.]

    Ford Motor Co. used massive computational power to design
and produce a new steering column in 2 months rather than 14, 
saving $7 per vehicle.  [IBD, 8/29/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]

    Optimax Systems Corp. (Cambridge, MA) is a spinoff by
some BBN engineers who used genetic algorithms to schedule work 
for a US Navy lab.  Their OptiFlex software was in several plants 
in early 1995, competitively breeding manufacturing schedules.  
Deere & Co. -- a $10B company -- runs it in a 80486 PC to plan 
assembly of 1.6M variations on 84 models of farm machinery.  
[Information Week, 9/9/96.  Bill Park.]

    PeopleSoft, Inc. -- a human resources, payroll, and financial 
applications company -- has just bought Red Pepper Software, Inc. 
(San Mateo, CA) for an impressive $225M.  PeopleSoft will use this 
as an entry into manufacturing systems markets, including a 
project for Corning (Corning, NY).  [Information Week, 9/9/96,
p. 30.]  (Bill Park says "Red Pepper is Monty Zweben's 3-year-old 
spinoff to exploit simulated annealing planning/scheduling 
algorithms that he developed at NASA Ames.  Monty rewrote his
LISP code into C++, tied it into real enterprise software
like Baan, Oracle, and SAP, and sold systems to Coors, HP,
Sun, and TI.  NASA Ames, meanwhile, seems to have returned
to symbolic reasoning approaches.")

    Cisco Systems was founded by ex-Stanford AI Lab sysadmin
Len Bosack and his ex-Stanford business school sysadmin wife.  
Cisco has just bought Andy Bechtolscheim's gigabit ethernet
start-up company, Granite Systems, for $200M.  [Monua Janah, 
Information Week, 9/9/96, p. 32.  Bill Park.]

    Nominations for the Computer Entrepreneur Award are due 
9/18/96, for managers or leaders of at least 15 years ago
who have helped build the computer industry.  Past recipients 
include Kenneth Olsen, Gene Amdahl, J. Presper Eckert,
William Norris, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, Erwin Tomash,
William Hewlett, David Packard, and Daniel Bricklin.
The IEEE Computer Society selection committee will be
glad to assist with researching possible nominations.  
<http://www.computer.org/awards/nomfms/cenomfm.htm>.
Elliot Chikofsky <e.chikofsky@computer.org>, +1-617-272-0049,
+1-617-272-8464 Fax.  [dbworld, 9/10/96.]


 2> Telecom news:

    Johan "Julf" Helsingius has closed his anon.penet.fi
anonymous remailer, pending clarification of Finland's legal code.  
There are about 40 such remailers worldwide, but his was the
most popular.  [<julf@penet.fi>, Network News, 9/1/96.]
The action was triggered by a subpoena of records concerning 
Church of Scientology material allegedly published illegally
by a user.  The server has been handling more than 7.5K messages 
per day, for half a million users.  Julf doesn't want to put
those people at risk if anonymity can't be guaranteed.
[LA Times.  SJM, 8/31/96, 1C.]

    The free anonymous surfing service at 
<http://www.anonymizer.com> gives you an opaque intermediary
for WWW, gopher, and FTP -- "because on today's Internet,
people _do_ know you're a dog."  It's slow, though, and adds 
Anonymizer banners to your screen displays.  [David Plotnikoff, 
SJM, 8/29/96, 1E.]

    "Do you stay on line longer than originally intended?"  
Academic failure and divorce are just two of the problems
caused by online addiction.  [Kimberly Young, UPittsburg.
SJM, 8/10/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    When the long distance operator in TX asks what carrier
you want, be careful what you answer.  An entrepreneur
has registered his premium-priced services as "I Don't Care,"
"It Doesn't Matter," and the somewhat less popular
"I Don't Know" and "Whoever."  [AP.  THIS is TRUE, 7/21/96.]

    If you're having trouble getting through a company's
voice mail system, these tips might help.  To suppress a lengthy 
intro message, try pressing the pound key (#).  If the proffered 
options don't include 1, pressing 1 may get you to an operator.  
And if you want to bypass the whole system, call 1-800-555-1212
to see if the marketing department has its own 800 number.  
They're probably willing to transfer your call.  If there's
no 800 number, there may be a local number you can use.
[Frank Greve, SJM, 4/7/96, 3E.]  (An investor relations
department can also be very helpful.)


 3> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

LayerCake: library applications of concept maps.

IRIS: Java KBS for interactive mapping and visual data 
exploration.

SYMOLAC: G2-based GIS framework for monitoring land cover.

HIPS: image processing software package for Unix.

Ulysses: interactive tool for census data analysis.

ORIT++: object-oriented rule-based inference toolkit for C++.

FLORID: F-Logic deductive object base and reasoning system.

SR/KB Embedded Inference Engine: demo version.

AGAR: simple alife simulator.

ILOG Talk 3.2 for Linux: free Lisp/C++ environment.

CLISP 1996-07-22: Common Lisp implementation update.

ILU 2.0: free CORBA/C++/C/Python/Java/Common Lisp/Modula-3 
environment for Unix and MS Windows.
  
Frontier: free Mac scripting tool subsuming AppleScript
and soon PERL, Python, TCL, and other Open Scripting
Architecture (OSA) languages.

WebDataServer 1.3: database engine for WebStar servers.

Post-on-the-Fly Conference: intranet webserver
conferencing system.

KeepTalking: WWW chat server.

Wall Street Raider: investment simulation game.

SieFuzzy: software development tool for fuzzy logic systems.

Fuzzy Logic in Autonomous Robotics: workshop report.

Software Technology Parks of India (STP): ATIP report 96.080.


 4> Entrepreneurship:

    There's a new information-age trend of people developing 
parallel careers rather than just moonlighting for extra money.  
The second career is a backup in case of layoff, and can be 
satisfying in its own right.  [Hal Lancaster, WSJ, 8/13/96, B1.  
NewtNews.]

    Want to be a consultant over the net?  Seneca Corp. (Vienna, 
VA) brokers freelance remote consultants, including Apple and PC 
help-desk personnel.  Contact Joseph Sobsey <jsobsey@seneca.com>.  
<http://www.cyberserv.com/seneca/index.html>.  [Patrick Henebry 
<tpatrick@ix.netcom.com>, Mac*Chat, 8/16/96.]

    You can see a nice example of web pages used to sell 
consulting services in Isabelle Guyon's ClopiNet site, 
<http://www.clopinet.com>.  Information retrieval, knowledge 
discovery, pattern recognition, machine learning, statistics.  
[Lily Laws <llaws@nuancecom.com>, 8/7/96.]

    Inc. Online offers over 4K articles for people starting
and running their own companies.  <http://www.inc.com/>.
[Scout Report, 6/21/96.]

    AT&T Business Network is a new service for entrepreneurs
and business professionals.  Current links to over 1K
business-related sites are supported by advertising, but
fee-based services are planned.  [IBD, 6/18/96, A9.  EDUPAGE.]

    Business Power Magazine carries tips and inspirational 
interviews for entrepreneurs.  <http://www.athenet.net/~dmgedit
/bpm.html>.  [<dmgedit@athenet.net>, net-hap, 8/13/96.]

    BIZTIPZ is a weekly newsletter of Internet marketing tips.  
Send a "SUBSCRIBE" message to <tipbot@web-star.com>.
[Howard V. Barton <syscon@web-star.com>, NEW-LIST, 8/13/96.]

    "Serious Business" newsletter for international marketers 
offers a free trial subscription.  <http://www.EarthOne.com>.  
[<ray@earthone.com>, newjour, 7/31/96.]


 5> Personal topics:

    Retirement Newsletter is a free monthly email newsletter
about investment strategies.  <http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet
/3550>.  [<michaelk@ind.tds.net>, newjour, 7/25/96.]

    Internet contests, games, sweepstakes, and freebies
are listed in the free weekly Games & Giveaways Newsletter, 
<http://www.why.net/user/game/news/newslet.htm>.  
[<lshone@why.net>, newjour, 7/28/96.]

    Want to reconnect with people from your past?  Instead of 
tracking them down, just list their names on a Web page.  
(Acknowledgements in published papers you put online can also 
serve this purpose.)  Your contacts will find your page when
they search Web indexes for their own names.   You can likewise 
put up pages for your hobbies, books you've enjoyed reading,
or any other topics of email conversation. Richard Seltzer
calls this a "flypaper" approach to finding people.  It can work
with potential customers, employers, or employees as well,
or for finding publishers for your unpublished manuscripts.
You needn't link from your home page to the flypaper, but do 
provide links from the flypaper to your home page or resume.
Then submit the URLs to Alta Vista and other search engines.  
[<seltzer@samizdat.com>, Internet-on-a-Disk, 9/96.]

    San Francisco has again been named US city with the least-
affordable housing, along with 12 other CA cities in the top 25.  
For affordable housing, try Kansas City or Minneapolis/St. Paul.  
[SJM, 8/22/96, 1C.]


 6> Computists' news:

    Steve Weyer recently joined Gaia Software 
<http://www.teleport.com/~gaia>, a startup company in Portland, 
OR.  He'll be "telecomputing" from his home in rural Pennsylvania, 
working on Gaia's "Newt's Cape" technology for Newton-based
Web forms and wireless communication applications.  See also 
<http://www.netaxs.com/~weyer/newton/releases.html> for Steve's 
shareware Newton software.  [<weyer@netaxs.com>, 9/10/96.]

    Mark Kantrowitz <mkant@cs.cmu.edu> got a mention in my
local paper, but they left off his financial-aid Web page address.  
Mark is warning that there are 100-200 fraudulent scholarship 
search services out there, ripping off about 300K students
per year.  See <http://www.finaid.org/finaid> for details,
and for tons of useful scholarship info.  [AP.  SJM, 9/6/96, 2C.]  
(Mark also offers extensive tips on web page design, at 
<http://www.finaid.org/finaid/style.html>.)

					-- Ken


Excellence can be attained if you care more than
others think is wise; risk more than others think is safe;
dream more than others think is practical;
expect more than others think is possible.
[Rick Wintheiser <rickw@individual.puug.pt>, 8/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
-------
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 66
 IS                                         September 26, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  NSF news.
 2>  Graduate and postgraduate funding.
 3>  Research software.
 4>  Award competitions.
_________________________________________________________________

Academic life has this sort of obscene, blood sucking quality.  
This is a co-dependent sort of thing.  ...  An academic is penned 
like a veal animal and stuffed full of corn, so he or she can be
a cash cow for their institution, writing grants that get skimmed 
for over 50% overhead.  -- Marc Andelman <drgonfly@ultranet.com>, 
sci.research.careers, 6/26/96.


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> NSF news:

    NSF is encouraging computer scientists and anthropologists
to propose joint research.  A report from the recent CRA/AAA 
workshop on Culture, Society and Advanced Information Technology 
can be downloaded from <http://cra.org/Reports/Aspects/>,
in PostScript or Acrobat format.  [John C. Cherniavsky 
<jchernia@nsf.gov>, 9/24/96.]

    The following are selected deadlines from the 10/96 NSF 
Bulletin.  I've omitted programs for handicapped scientists, 
education or curriculum development, and international 
collaboration.  [grants, 9/23/96.]

Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) programs:  
Theory of Computing, 10/1/96, <zzalcste@nsf.gov>.  CISE
Research Infrastructure Program, 10/21/96, <jchernia@nsf.gov>.  
CISE Postdoctoral Associateships, 11/1/96, <jvanrose@nsf.gov>.  
Experimental Software Systems, 11/1/96 target, <rkieburt@nsf.gov>.  
Computer Systems, Architecture, and Software, 11/4/96 and 2/14/97, 
<tripath@nsf.gov>.  Networking and Communications Research, 
12/1/96, <abush@nsf.gov>.  New Millenium Computing Point Design 
Studies, 12/15/96, <jvanrose@nsf.gov>.  CISE Institutional 
Infrastructure Program--Minority Institutions, 2/13/97, 
<rrodrigu@nsf.gov>.  Database and Expert Systems, 2/15/97
and 9/15/97 targets, <bblauste@nsf.gov>.  Information Technology 
and Organizations, 2/15/97 and 9/15/97 targets, <lgasser@nsf.gov>.  
Interactive Systems, 2/15/97 and 9/15/97 targets, 
<gstrong@nsf.gov>.  Knowledge Models and Cognitive Systems, 
2/15/97 and 9/15/97 targets, <lreeker@nsf.gov>.  Robotics
and Machine Intelligence, 2/15/97 and 9/15/97 targets, 
<hmoraff@nsf.gov>.  Numeric, Symbolic, and Geometric
Computation (including computer graphics), 2/28/97 and 9/15/97, 
<kabdali@nsf.gov>.  CISE Educational Innovation Program,
3/18/97, <tfeng@nsf.gov>.  CISE Instrumentation, 8/7/97, 
<rrodrigu@nsf.gov>.  Software Engineering and Languages,
9/15/97, <fanger@nsf.gov>.

Education and Human Resources (EHR) programs:
Academic Advancement in Research and Education (AARE)
for nontenured scientists, 10/15/96 and 2/15/97, <aare@nsf.gov>.  
Graduate and Minority Graduate Research Fellowships, 11/7/96, 
(423) 241-4300.  Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement, 
11/15/96, (703) 306-1666.  NATO Postdoctoral Fellowships
in Science and Engineering, mid-11/96, 306-1696.  Centers of 
Research Excellence in Science and Technology (CREST), 12/1/96, 
<hrdmrce@nsf.gov>.  Advanced Technological Education, 12/10/96
and 4/29/97, 306-1668.  Applications for Advanced Technologies, 
1/15/97 target, 306-1651.  Research Experiences for Undergraduates 
(REU)--Sites, 9/15/97, 306-1603.
 
Engineering (ENG) programs: Management of Technological 
Innovation, 10/1/96 and 4/1/97, <jhenness@nsf.gov>.  Faculty
Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, 10/17/96, 
<engcarr@nsf.gov>.  Grant Opportunities for Academic Liaison
with Industry (GOALI), 1/5/97, (703) 306-1330.
Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR), 1/17/97, 306-1391.  
Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR), 6/12/96.

Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) programs: 
University/Industry Cooperative Research Programs in
the Mathematical Sciences, 11/13/96 target, (703) 306-1880.  
Research Planning Grants and Career Advancement Awards for
Women Scientists and Engineers (RPG/CAA), 1/15/97 target,
306-1880.  Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU),
9/17/97 target, 306-1880.

Office of Science and Technology Infrastructure (STI) programs: 
Recognition Awards for the Integration of Research and Education, 
11/15/96, (703) 306-1040.  Academic Research Infrastructure 
Program (Instrumentation), TBA, <ari@nsf.gov>.

Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) programs:  
International Research Fellow Awards (formerly Postdoctoral
and Junior Investigator Research Fellowship Program), 11/1/96, 
(703) 306-1706.  Decision, Risk, and Management Science, 1/15/97 
target, 306-1757.  Human Cognition and Perception, 1/15/97
and 7/15/97 targets, 306-1732.  Linguistics, 1/15/97 and 7/15/97 
targets, 306-1731.  Also numerous programs with specific 
countries.

Staff changes:  Frank Anger, PD for Software Engineering
and Languages, (703) 306-1911; James M. Davenport,
PD for Statistics and Probability, 306-1883;
Raymon Glantz, PD for Computational Neuroscience, 306-1416;
Anand Tripathi, PD for Computer Systems, Architecture,
and Software, 306-1912; and Zeke Zalcstein,
PD for Theory of Computing, 306-1912.


 2> Graduate and postgraduate funding:

    The following graduate and postgraduate grant sources
are selected from a list on <http://pubweb.ucdavis.edu
/documents/gradstudies/gradpage.html>.  [ucd.gsa, 8/16/96.]

NSF Graduate Fellowship and NSF Minority Graduate Fellowship
1997-98 for research-based master's or doctoral degrees
in science, mathematics, and engineering.  Stipend $14,400.  
11/7/96; <http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/a10/A10Menu.htm>.

NSF 94-119 Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral
Research Fellowships for research in pure mathematics,
applied mathematics, and statistics.  10/17/96; 
<http://www.nsf.gov:80/mps/dms/dmsdead.htm>.

NSF Computational Science/Experimental Computer Research 
postdoctoral research associateships.  Must have finished PhD
by 9/30/97 or less than 3 years before 11/8/96.  11/8/96;
(703) 306-1970.

US Dept. of Energy Integrated Manufacturing Predoctoral 
Fellowships.  US citizens, nationals, or permanent residents.  
12/6/96; <http://www.nas.edu/fo/DOEINFO>.

National Physical Science Consortium 6-year PhD fellowships
for Minorities and Women in the Physical Sciences (including
CS and mathematics).  11/15/96; 1 (800) 952-4118.

The National Center for Graduate Education for Minorities (GEM) 
1997-98 MS/PhD Fellowship Programs in science and engineering.  
12/1/96; <http://www.nd.edu/~gem>.

American Assoc. of University Women (AAUW) 1997-98 Fellowships
and Grants.  American Fellowships for doctoral and postdoctoral 
study (with no restriction on place, field, or age); 11/15/96.  
Selected Professions Fellowships for MS/PhD students in fields 
with low female participation; 12/17/96.  International 
Fellowships for graduate or postgraduate study by foreign women; 
12/2/96.  Career Development Grants for women with a bachelors 
degree before 6/92; 1/3/96.  AAUW Educational Foundation,
(319) 337-1716, (319) 337-1204 Fax.

Spencer Dissertation Fellowships for education research.
30 fellowships of $17K.  10/11/96; Spencer Foundation,
(312) 337-7000.

Indiana University Minority Faculty Fellowship Program, to teach 
during the 1997 summer sessions and/or 1997-98 academic year. 
10/15/96 and 11/15/96; Alberto Torchinsky, (812) 855-0543.

Ford Foundation Predoctoral and Dissertation Fellowships
for Minorities, for research-based programs in the behavioral
and social sciences, humanities, engineering, mathematics, 
physical sciences, and biological sciences.  Early 11/96; 
<http://www.nas.edu/>.

1997-98 US Student Fulbright Grants and Other Grants for
Graduate Study and Research Abroad.  Full and travel grants
for recent graduates and master's and doctoral candidates.
Must be a US citizen at time of application.  10/1/96.
(Check with your graduate studies office.)

American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) -- Council for 
International Exchange of Scholars for lecturing or postdoctoral 
research abroad under the Fulbright Scholar Program.  
<http://www.acls.org>, (202) 686-7877.

German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Grants for Graduate 
Students, for study, research and information visits to Germany.  
DAAD-Fulbright Grants, 11/1/96.  DAAD-Canadian government grants, 
10/15/96.  DAAD-Bourses Quebec-RFA, 10/12/96.  Young Lawyers 
Program, 3/15/97.  Study Visit Research grants for faculty, 
11/1/96.  Research Grants for Recent PhDs and PhD candidates, 
11/1/96.  DAAD-NSF Collaborative Research Grants, 4/1/97.
DAAD-ACLS Collaborative Research Grants, various deadlines.  
<http://www.daad.org/usa3.htm> or (212) 758-3223.

(For other grant sources, check with your reference library.
One listing is the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance,
issued annually by the Office of Management and Budget and 
available from the Government Printing Office at (202) 512-1800.)


 3> Research software (in our CRS 6.33 digest this week):

DELVE: software environment for statistical evaluation of NN
and machine learning methods.

ain16121: DLL-based NN development kit for Windows 3.1
(replacing ainet120).

Neural Net OCX Control: simple NN for Windows 95.

nn/xnn shareware NN development and simulation system.

JETNET: NN code in FORTRAN.

Fuzzy Logic & Control: hardware/software tool for 
learning/building fuzzy systems.

EMA-XPS 2.1.4: hybrid graphic expert system shell.

DragonXTools: VBX components for speech recognition.

CMU CL: CMU-lisp for Linux 2.0.

Information Exploration Shootout datasets: intrusion data
and newspaper archives for discovery and visualization systems.

Signalworks 2.01: signal/sound/image/seismic data/time 
series/stock price processing and analysis software
for Windows 3.1.

Baseline Wavelet Transform Coder Construction Kit: grayscale
image compression source code.

SoundHack, Csound, MixViews, cmix, CommonLispMusic: programs for 
stretching and manipulating audio.

Sigma Chess 2.0: commercial chess program for Macintosh (review).

The Mathematica Programmer II: book/CD ROM by Maeder.

Expert Systems Design and Development: 800-page book by Durkin. 

New Trends in Fuzzy Logic: proc. of the  WILF '95
Italian Workshop on Fuzzy Logic (Naples).

Foundations of Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, and Knowledge 
Engineering: MIT Press book by Kasabov.


 4> Award competitions:

    Computational neurobiologist and connectionist pioneer 
Terrence J. Sejnowski has won $15K with the 12th Wright Prize
for interdisciplinary study in science and engineering.
The award, from Harvey Mudd College, has new criteria favoring
up-and-coming, early-to-mid career researchers.  
[<Randy_Ringen@hmc.edu>, connectionists, 9/19/96.]

    Nomination deadline for the 22nd Alan T. Waterman Award is 
12/31/96.  The award will be presented in May to an outstanding 
young science or engineering researcher.  Mrs. Susan Fannoney, 
NSB, (703) 306-1096.  [NSF Bulletin.  grants, 9/23/96.]

    I mentioned in TCC 6.63 that Juris Hartmanis of Cornell
has been appointed assistant director of NSF/CISE.
John Cherniavsky tells me that Hartmanis is a Turing Award
winner with high academic credentials, as well as founder
and chair of a major CS department. The Turing Award winners
since 1966 are A.J. Perlis, Maurice V. Wilkes, Richard Hamming, 
Marvin Minsky, J.H. Wilkinson, John McCarthy, E.W. Dijkstra, 
Charles W. Bachman, Donald E. Knuth, Allen Newell,
Herbert A. Simon, Michael O. Rabin, Dana S. Scott,
John Backus, Robert W. Floyd, Kenneth E. Iverson,
C. Anthony R. Hoare, Edgar F. Codd, Stephen A. Cook,
Ken Thompson, Dennis M. Ritchie, Niklaus Wirth, Richard M. Karp, 
John Hopcroft, Robert Tarjan, John Cocke, Ivan Sutherland,
William (Velvel) Kahan, Fernando J. Corbato', Robin Milner,
Butler W. Lampson, Juris Hartmanis and Richard E. Stearns,
Edward Feigenbaum and Raj Reddy, and Manuel Blum.  
[<jchernia@nsf.gov>, 9/18/96.]

    "..., the wise man should always follow the roads that
have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have
most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection,
he may at least acquire something of its savour.  Acting in this 
like the skillful archer, who seeing that the object he would hit 
is distant, and knowing the range of his bow, takes aim
much above the destined mark; not designing that his arrow
should strike so high, but that flying high it may alight
at the point intended."  -- Niccolo Machiavelli, "The Prince."  
[TFTD, 9/11/96.]

    (John Cherniavsky and I have been discussing awards.
He notes that nearly all of the Turing awardees have made 
fundamental contributions in AI and other fields, and continue
as lifelong contributors to computer science and engineering.  
Such people can be entrusted with responsible positions.
I don't dispute that, but I'm more concerned with motivating
and empowering the rest of us.  Do prestigious awards really 
motivate, or do they create despair of ever joining such
elite ranks?  They may create a glass ceiling, giving
influence repeatedly to those who brought us here while
denying opportunities to those who could take us further.
Or perhaps the awards motivate those who are already close,
such as PIs, department heads, conference chairs, and
book authors -- and perhaps that's enough.  Whatever;
I rejoice that anyone can create any award that they wish.
I'll probably create one myself someday.)

    SIMPLICITER -- Excellence Without Excess -- is a new award
for Web authors who have created profound, informative, 
intelligent, and entertaining pages without the use of
extraneous graphic devices.  It celebrates good taste and 
moderation.  Winners will get a link on the Simpliciter home page 
and may display the Simpliciter logo on their pages.  Anyone may 
nominate any page, and there is no limit on the number of awards.  
"Simpliciter is an independent effort by an independent Internet 
user."  <http://www.albany.net/~geenius/simpliciter.html>.
[Keith Ammann <geenius@magik.albany.net>, c.i.www.announce, 
9/17/96.]

    WWWorld Ribbon Award is a site giving out awards to
the Web's best sites.  A critique will be returned for any page 
submitted.  <http://home.earthlink.net/~delmont43/awards/>.  
[<delmont43@earthlink.net>, net-hap, 7/12/96.]

    The awards compendium lists 70 sites where your URL can 
compete for awards.  <http://hyperchat.co.uk/u/stjohnmollusc>.  
[<chris@aspen-computers.co.uk>, net-hap, 8/19/96.]

    If the world is slow to acknowledge you ...
The Anarchy Award offers every Net junkie the chance to review 
his/her own site.  <http://www.anythingbut.com/~chant/anarchy/>.  
[Cecilia Franco White <korteng@rt66.com>, BESTWEB, 6/28/96.
net-hap.]

					-- Ken


No great man ever complains of want of opportunity.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson.  [AWAD, 9/23/96.]

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 63
 IS                                         September 17, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>	Funding news.
 2>	Internet news and e-publishing.
 3>	Career jobs.
 4>	Journal calls.
 5>	Great ideas in AI.
_________________________________________________________________

If you don't make an investment that you need to make,
you risk paying for it without getting it.  -- Henry Ford.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 9/9/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    We now have several years of back issues on our website, 
<http://www.computists.com>, but with a three-month delay on
the TCC archive.  Download what you need for personal use.
Back issues of CCJ, CAJ, and RSW will soon be added.


 1> Funding news:

    NSF's spending bill has passed the Senate and will go to 
conference, with no special problems anticipated.  Both the House 
and Senate have appropriated close to $3.25B, slightly less than 
the President requested but more than was expected.  Last year's 
appropriation was $3.22B.  The Defense research appropriations 
bill is in similar circumstances, with more than a 7% research 
increase.  [Rick Weingarten <rick@cra.org>, CRA Bulletin, 9/6/96.]

    Research earmarks for universities are down by 50%.
Academic pork is harder to arrange when budgets aren't growing.  
[Chronicle of Higher Education.  Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
9/13/96.]

    Juris Hartmanis of Cornell has been appointed assistant 
director of NSF's Directorate of Computer and Information Science 
and Engineering (CISE), reporting to NSF Director Neal Lane.  
Hartmanis is an expert in the theory of computation and 
computational complexity.  He gained interest in science policy
as 1992 chair for an NRC study committee that produced
"Computing the Future: A Broader Agenda for Computer Science
and Engineering."  [CRA Bulletin, 9/6/96.]

    NSF projects, reports, and funding guidelines available on 
WWW, often several weeks prior to printed versions.  Also listed 
are abstracts and principal investigator (PI) information for
all awards of the past several years.  Most of NSF's divisions
now have home pages listing programs, activities, guidelines, 
publications, and personnel.  <http://www.nsf.gov>.
[Gene Glass <atg2g@asuacad.bitnet>, AERA, 9/5/96.  net-hap.]

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is seeking proposals
for NSF-funded on-site fellowship research, possibly including 
user modeling; categorization and indexing for thesaurus-building; 
interactive interfaces and usability testing; guides to US 
statistical databases; or tools for computerized questionnaires.  
1/17/97; <http://stats.bls.gov:80/orefell.htm>, fellowprg@bls.gov, 
(202) 606-7377.  [D. Klein <kleind@opub.psb.bls.gov>, IRLIST, 
9/9/96.]


 2> Internet news and e-publishing:

    "How to Access the Federal Government on the Internet" is
a 455-page book by Bruce Maxwell.  <bookhelp@cqalert.com>,
1-800-638-1710 or 202-822-1475.  [<bmaxwell@netcom.com>, CARR-L, 
7/15/96.  net-hap.]

    The Substantial Times is an HTML-format monthly review
of websites: best shareware site, best game site, best gardening 
site, etc.  Send a "freeissue" message to N. Bell 
<nbell@www.substantial.com> for a sample.  [8/9/96.]

    NewsFlash is now a free PC service for capturing, sorting,
and browsing newswire data.  <http://www.portup.com/~jmccabe
/newsflash.html>.  [Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 7/20/96.]

    WinUser is a new online magazine for Windows 3.1, 95 and NT 
users.  <http://www.WinUser.com>.  [<winuser@win95.com> or Justin 
Higgins <jhiggins@dn.net>, c.i.www.announce, 7/29/96.  net-hap.]

    Que Publishing has put complete editions of all its technical 
reference works online, for free: WWW, networking, programming, 
groupware, etc.  <http://www.mcp.com/que/bookshelf/>.
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 9/96.]

    The online J. of AI Research (JAIR) is one of the few 
electronic journals in Science Citation Index.  (JAIR is also 
published in hardcopy by Morgan Kaufmann Publishers.)
The journal has been receiving about 120 papers per year,
with 20%-25% acceptance rate.  Median review time is 9 weeks.  
Some papers have source code or demos, and there's a new
ASK THE AUTHOR forum for public dialogue.  A searchable
archive and links to AI sites can be found on 
<http://www.cs.washington.edu/research/jair/home.html>.
<jair-ed@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>, or copy papers from 
<ftp://p.gp.cs.cmu.edu/usr/jair/pub/> or 
<ftp://ftp.mrg.dist.unige.it/pub/jair/pub/>.  Usenet readers
can see papers on comp.ai.jair.papers.  [Steve Minton 
<minton@isi.edu>, comp.ai, 7/29/96.  David Joslin.]

    GWEB is an electronic trade journal for computer animation
and graphics.  <http://www.gweb.org/>.  [Rob Letterman & Shahril 
Ibrahim <gweb@cinenet.net>, newjour, 8/5/96.]

    Globetrotter is a bimonthly WWW magazine covering popular 
science, technology, and techno-culture.  "To show the human face 
of science and technology, to promote good and novel ideas,
and to show how people can benefit from technology."  
<http://gate.dungeon.com/~globe/>.  [Mike Barnes 
<mike@globe.dungeon.com>, newjour, 8/4/96.]

    $66B is a lot of money.  That's how much people spend each 
year on advertising via local television, radio and newspapers, 
and that money is up for grabs as the Web becomes a prime 
advertising medium.  Newspapers are moving to protect their
$36B advertising market, but will find competition from Internet 
service companies.  Each wants to set up "digital cities" with 
information about real cities.  Microsoft's "Cityscape" project 
has a $500M budget; AOL and AT&T are spending more like $100K 
each; and some 300 newspapers are spending $100K to millions each.  
The Boston Globe, NYT, and Washington Post are among the leaders, 
but most newspaper don't have the money to put up an impressive 
website while waiting for more people to come online.  They also 
can't afford not to.  Last year, the average newspaper employee 
brought in corporate profits of just $6,781.  The average 
Microsoft employee generated $108,103 in profits.  That gives 
Microsoft a lot more working capital.  But after Microsoft and 
others have posted "best store" guides, will people keep coming 
back to read them?  Local news is a better bet for repeat readers.  
(National news can be provided better by a national service, 
except where there's a local spin.)  Maybe real-time news 
reporting would keep people hooked.  It's all very speculative.  
To see what's out there now, try <http://www.citysearch.com/>, 
<http://www.boston.com/>, <http://www.cityview.com/>, 
<http://www.wcco.com/>, <http://www.sacbee.com/>, or 
<http://www.digitalcity.com/>..  [David S. Bennahum 
<davidsol@panix.com>, MEME, 9/5/96.  Chuck Morefield.]

    (What this Web thing is good for?  When my brother-in-law
came to visit, he mentioned that there was a new, small Indonesian 
restaurant somewhere in Chicago.  I was able to find a name, 
address, phone number, street map, food/price review,
and even a photo of the proprietors outside their establishment.)


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

Stanford: tenure-track assistant CS professor.

Boston-area start-up: equity opportunities in AI, ES, TMS,
GA, combinational optimization, and query optimization.

Nets, Inc. (MA): MS software engineers to support NLP, IR, ML,
and intelligent agents research.

MA company: MS/PhD to develop GUIs and intelligent
information agents.

Thomson Technology Services Group (Rockville, MD):
BS researcher in IR and text tools.

Texas Instruments Software Research Lab (Dallas):
computer scientist for Internet autonomous agent technology.

Rockwell Automation/ATL (Mayfield Heights, OH): PhD in DAI
and distributed real-time control for flexible manufacturing.

Northern VA advanced technology group: MS/PhD researchers
for data visualization, clustering, ML, DB design,
and other knowledge discovery in databases.

Northern VA R&D group:  US MS/PhD data mining project leader.

Los Altos start-up: BS/MS sr. software engineer for IR concept 
searching and indexing.

CA company: PhD sr. scientist in AI, ES, NN intelligent systems.                                            

Queen Mary and Westfield College (London): postdoc RA
in cognitive robotics.

Canon Research Centre Europe Ltd. (Guildford, UK):
speech recognition researchers and software engineers.

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Oxon, UK): 1-year research fellow 
in 3D-5D neutron data manipulation and visualization.
No nationality restrictions.

Vocalis Ltd. (Cambridge, UK): researchers in speech recognition, 
speaker verification, language modeling, etc.

Center for Sprogteknologi (Copenhagen): MS/PhD RA
in language technology.

UAdelaide (Australia): postdoc or RA in signal processing and 
pattern recognition for sensor and image processing, data fusion.

The Cooperative Research Centre for Advanced Computational
Systems (ACSys; Canberra, Australia): postdoc in statistics
and data mining.


 4> Journal calls:

    "CONSTRAINTS: An International Journal" is a new Kluwer 
journal starting 9/96, edited by Eugene C. Freuder 
<ecf@cs.unh.edu>.  Planned special issues include "Constraints
and Databases," "Interval Constraints," and "Selections from CP96, 
the 2nd Int. Conf. on Principles and Practice of Constraint 
Programming."  $37.50/$212 from <kluwer@wkap.com>, 617 871 6600, 
617 871 6528 Fax.  [comp.constraints, 9/5/96.]

    Computational finance; Algorithmica, 6/30/98.  6/1/97;
Ming-Yang Kao <kao@kao.cs.duke.edu>.  [sci.math, 8/27/96.]

    Enterprise modelling; ACM SIGOIS Bulletin, 4/97.  11/30/96; 
Andrew Blyth <ajcblyth@glamorgan.ac.uk>, +44 1443 48 2245,
+44 1443 48 2715 Fax.  Express intent by 9/30/96.  [DAI-List, 
8/27/96.]

    The J. of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering is 
soliciting papers.  <jrlwmse@vt.edu>, 540-231-6296, 540-231-7013 
Fax.  [9/4/96.]

    Knowledge representation for natural language processing
in implemented systems; Natural Language Engineering.
12/31/96; Syed S. Ali <syali@cs.uwm.edu>, (414) 229-5375.  
[Linguist, 8/30/96.  Joseph Raben.]

    Treewidth, graph minors, and algorithms; Algorithmica.  
2/1/97; Hans Bodlaender <hansb@cs.ruu.nl>, 9/4/96.

    Reasoning about function in engineering; AI in Engineering.  
12/6/96; Luca Chittaro <chittaro@ten.dimi.uniud.it>,
+39 (432) 558.450, +39 (432) 558.499 Fax.  [comp.ai, 8/29/96.  
David Joslin.]

    Petri nets applications in advanced manufacturing systems; 
Int. J. of Intelligent Manufacturing.  3/1/97; F. Frank Chen 
<chenff@eng.fiu.edu>, (305) 348-3723, (305) 348-3721 Fax.
Mention intent by 10/31/96.  [Chong Peng 
<chong@itchy.eng.fiu.edu>, comp.ai.alife, 8/26/96.]

    CAD-based computer vision; Computer Vision
and Image Understanding, 3/98.  10/1/96; Patrick J. Flynn 
<flynn@eecs.wsu.edu>.  [VISION-LIST, 9/4/96.]

    Projection-based transforms; Image & Vision Computing,
11/97.  1/15/97; Mohammed Atiquzzaman <atiq@eng.monash.edu.au>, 
+61 3 9905 5383, +61 3 9905 3454 Fax.  [VISION-LIST, 9/4/96.]

    Machine vision for intelligent vehicles and autonomous robots; 
Engineering Applications of AI, 2/98.  3/1/97; Alberto Broggi 
<broggi@verdi.eng.unipr.it>, +39 (521) 90 5707, +39 (521) 90 5723 
Fax.  [DAI-List, 9/13/96.]

    Computational modeling of brain disorders; AI in Medicine.  
3/15/96; Eytan Ruppin <ruppin@math.tau.ac.il>.  Send abstract
by 11/15/96.  [connectionists, 9/6/96.]
		
    Everyday applications of neural networks; IEEE Trans.
on Neural Networks, 7/97.  11/15/96; Payman Arabshahi 
<payman@isdl.ee.washington.edu>, 206 236 2694, 206 543 3842 Fax.  
[connectionists, 9/9/96.]


 5> Great ideas in AI:

    comp.ai participants have been asking what are the 20
great ideas of AI (or at least stolen by AI).  Some suggestions:  
Machines can manipulate symbols as well as numbers. (Newell, 
Simon)  Programs are data. (Von Neumann?)  Intelligence is
a matter of effect, not media. (Turing)   Learning can be achieved 
via non-symbolic adaptation, as in clustering or neural networks.  
Symbol manipulating may be sufficient for intelligence. (Newell, 
Simon)  Predicate calculus, with extensions, can be used to 
describe real-world reasoning. (McCarthy)  Symbolic discovery
can be automated.  Search is important.  Avoiding search
is also important, and heuristics are a good way to avoid search.  
Knowledge (in databases, inference links, rules, frames, scripts) 
is always a good way to avoid search. (Feigenbaum)  Choosing
a good representation is important. (E.g., object-oriented 
programming.)  Before you can discover something, you must be 
capable of being taught it. (McCarthy)  Large spaces can often
be searched efficiently via genetic selection. (Holland)
Real-world reasoning requires imprecise concepts. (Zadeh)  
Intelligence springs from self-organizing systems or societies
of agents. (Selfridge, Minsky)  Intelligent systems have to deal 
with intractable problems. (Cook)  [Matthew Ginsberg, Tim Finin, 
William Grosso, Philip Jackson, et al., comp.ai, 9/11/96.]
(I would add that rapid prototyping is a key to conceptual 
breakthroughs, as well as a great way to sell research to 
sponsors.  It doesn't necessarily sell systems to corporate 
clients, though.  Also, analogy and case-based reasoning
are important, even though we don't know how to do them
in general yet.  Recognition is often the most difficult part
of reasoning.)

    Sean Luke came up with some practical suggestions,
softened by smiley faces.  Paraphrasing:  1) An "important
first step" toward an AI-complete goal is the way to fame.
2) Develop a toy application domain to make your abstract idea 
look good.  3) Intelligence is defined by theory, as that
which is just beyond our implementation capability.
4) Being outspoken is more important than being right.  
[<seanl@carmi.cs.umd.edu>, comp.ai, 9/11/96.]

					-- Ken


Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas
are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
-- Howard Aiken.  [Wayne Geiser <wayne_geiser@avid.com>, 2/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 64
 IS                                         September 19, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Speech recognition.
 2>  Handwriting recognition.
 3>  Education and groupware.
 4>  Research software.
 5>  Version tracking.
 6>  Online shopping.
 7>  Shareware archives.
 8>  Software development.
_________________________________________________________________

No!  You cannot dial 911!  I am downloading my mail!
-- Maarten D. de Jong <dejong@cpt6.stm.tudelft.nl>, 6/96.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I keep thinking that I'll run out of things to report,
but the news keeps pouring in.


 1> Speech recognition:

    IBM's new MedSpeak/Radiology continuous-speech recognition 
system claims 95% accuracy on a vocabulary of 25K North American 
English words.  No training is typically required, although
15 minutes is recommended.  $4,395 with headset microphone,
or $100 more with a hand-held noise-canceling microphone.
The system requires a 200MHz Pentium Pro running Windows NT.
IBM plans a family of VoiceType speech-recognition products.  
[Reuters, 9/13/96.  Lily Laws.]  The system costs $12K-$15K.  
[NYT, 9/12/96, C1.  [EDUPAGE.]

    Kurzweil VOICE for Windows Release 2.0 claims a vocabulary
of 60K discrete words, plus continuous digit recognition.
$499 from PC/Mac Connection.  <www.kurzweil.com>.  Other 
commercial PC systems include Dragon Dictate ($299 from Dragon 
Systems) and Power Secretary ($595 from Articulate Systems).  
Dragon Dictate claims continuous phrase capability; Power 
Secretary offers customized vocabulary for ClarisWorks, Filemaker, 
Word, or WordPerfect.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 9/11/96.]

    A speech interface thesis and demo by Matthew Marx
of Altech can be found on his MIT Media Lab home page, 
<http://groucho.www.media.mit.edu/people/groucho/mailcall.html>.  
Applications include stock quotes and email message reading.  
[Lily Laws, 9/13/96.]

    I can't resist:  You take out your communicator
and contact the starship Enterprise. In Star Trek,
you are immediately contacting the right party.  But in reality,
here is what you'd have to contend with: "Thank you for calling 
the Starship Enterprise.  If you are sending a distress signal, 
press 1.  If you would like to be beamed up, press 2.
If you are an omnipotent god-being who is trying to take over
the universe, press 3.  If you are a green-skinned alien
female interested in seducing our captain, press 4.  If you
have a rotary-dial communicator, please hold and wait for
Lieutenant Uhura."  -- Richard M. Romano <rromano@pipeline.com>.
[Laugh of the Day, 4/12/96.]

    Nuance Communication (Menlo Park, CA) is now providing
Unix-based large vocabulary, speaker-independent speech 
recognition technology for a new Charles Schwab VoiceBroker 
system.  VoiceBroker recognizes over 13K company/security names
in any major US regional accent, plus commands for retrieving 
quotes or setting up other information services.  (And this is
via telephone, which is harder than with a quality microphone).  
[PRNewswire, 9/17/96.  Lily Laws <llaws@nuancecom.com>.]
(My wife works at Nuance, a commercial spin-off from SRI 
International.  Check with her if you're looking for work
in this research area.)


 2> Handwriting recognition:

    Apple's MessagePad 130 with UniFEP 2.0 Japanese software
now supports Kanji handwriting recognition via the HWCR package 
from Enfour and Nippon Steel's X-Century division.  HWCR can be 
loaded with 200KB or 900KB dictionaries for speed or depth,
and sells for 13K yen.  [Richard Northcott <richard@enfour.com>, 
NewtNews, 8/13/96.  Bill Park.]  (Demand for the MessagePad 130
in Tokyo has been very high.)

    Simon Lucas and A. Amiri have applied scanning n-tuple 
classifiers to handwritten OCR, with Pentium-based training
of 20K character images per second and recognition of 1,200 cps.  
(Including preprocessing steps, that drops to 500 and 200 cps.)  
Accuracy on the CEDAR hand-written digit test set is said to be 
98.3%, which is almost as good as the best reported score
(at 98.9%).  See papers on <http://esewww.essex.ac.uk/~sml>.  
[<sml@esesparc2.essex.ac.uk>, connectionists, 8/27/96.]

    HP's $300 "Pilot" personal organizer is smaller and cheaper 
than the Apple Newton, with Grafitti handprinting recognition, 
very simple controls, and automatic synchronization with your
PC files or [in 11/96] Mac files.  It's been selling very well, 
and add-on capability modules are in development.  Bill Park 
suggests that this would be a good platform for third-party 
application development.  Metrowerks has been offering CodeWarrior 
for Pilot bundled with Pilot devices, while supplies last,
in the US and Japan.  <www.metrowerks.com>.  [Ron Liechty 
<mwron@metrowerks.com>, comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 
9/10/96.  Bill Park.]


 3> Education and groupware:

    Waite Group Press is launching an Interactive Course
series published on WWW at the Education Zone, 
<http://www.mcp.com/waite/ezone>.  Initial eZone courses are
in Perl 5, HTML 3, and C++, and include online testing and 
certification.  Students can ask questions by email, and can 
socialize in the online "Chill Zone."  "We were publishing books 
about computers with 800-year-old ink-on-paper technology.  
Today's digital revolution gives millions of readers access to 
powerful computers that are capable of running programs, 
displaying animation, linking to on-line experts, and enhancing, 
improving, and amplifying the printed word."  Future courses
will cover Java, JavaScript, and Visual Basic Scripting Edition.  
Cost is $40-$50.  [Network News, 9/8/96.]

    The Altos Education Network offers college and graduate
school business courses for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs.
The Altos system is based on threaded discussion groups
without fixed-time classes.  <http://www.altosnet.com>.
[K.R. Smith <rysmith@altosnet.com>, net-hap, 9/5/96.]

    cscw-scotland is a discussion list for Scotland's
computer-supported cooperative work SIG.  Send a "join
cscw-scotland your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  
[<cscw-scotland-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 7/1/96.]

    Enhanced CU-SeeMe is White Pine's Windows/Mac desktop color 
video conferencing software for Internet/Web person-to-person, 
group, or broadcast conferencing.  Audio, chat window, and
white board communications are included.  28.8kbps modem or ISDN 
link required.  <http://www.wpine.com/cuprodinfo.htm>.  [9/18/96.]

    The "Conferencing on the World Wide Web" page lists software 
for implementing group forums.  Over 50 products are available.  
<http://freenet.msp.mn.us/~drwool/webconf.html>.  [Scout Report, 
4/26/96.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS digest this week):

NNMODEL V1.28: statistical modeler and data mining software.

PNN MATLAB toolbox: probabilistic neural networks toolbox.

MATLAB neuro-fuzzy data analysis software from Gianluca Bontempi.

NN shareware list from Gregor S.

KAMELEON: simulation software.

Hybrid Query Processor (HQP): beta demo text retrieval software.

ODB Engine 1.0: Java/Mac/Windows file system for developers.

WarpSearch CGI 2.0: fast text/HTML Mac webserver searcher.

Converse: portable parallel programming framework.

COMLEX Syntax English lexicon utility package.

VideoToolbox 96-08-22: Mac C subroutines for psychophysics 
experiments.

HISTORY OF COMPUTING: electronic book for Windows.

Numerical Recipes in C: online book by Press.

Partial Evaluation: book by Glueck and Thiemann.

Analogue Imprecision in MLP Training: book by Edwards and Murray.

AI Agents in Virtual Reality World: book by Watson.


 5> Version tracking:

    The Versions website lists the latest version numbers
for over 35K products.  You can even set up email notification
of new versions.  <http://www.versions.com/>.  [Liz Tompkins 
<designs@ix.netcom.com>, BESTWEB, 5/21/96.]

    PCVersions is a free online databases for tracking
DOS, Windows, and OS2 software version information.  
<http://www.mrmachead.com/PCversions/>.
[Nathan F. Gilkes <nfgilkes@bighit.com>, net-hap, 6/19/96.]

    MacVersions is a similar site for Macintosh,
at <http://www.mrmachead.com/MacVersions/>.  To see if your
Mac software is out of date, download the program at 
<http://www.mrmachead.com/macversions/listcompare/>.
If you're a developer, you can list your products.
Awards for excellence are listed at 
<http://www.mrmachead.com/macversions/iexplorer/feature.html>.  
[Nathan F. Gilkes <nfgilkes@bighit.com>, net-hap, 7/24/96.]


 6> Online shopping:

    The Used Computer Mall offers free buy/sell ads for used 
equipment, plus a price guide and an index to about 1K dealers.  
<http://www.usedcomputer.com>.  [<mall@usedcomputer.com>,
net-hap, 5/10/96.]

    The Computer Price Sheet lists nationwide dealer prices
for PC/Mac hardware, software, and services.  
<http://www.ejmtech.com>.  [<webmaster@ejmtech.com>,
net-hap, 7/21/96.]

    Surplus Software sells discontinued, outdated, or surplus 
software at low prices.  (And sometimes a $20-$40 discontinued 
package makes you eligible for a cheap upgrade to the current 
version.)  Academic pricing for current software is also 
available.  <http://www.surplusdirect.com>, 800-753-7877.
[Paul Heymont <phey@panix.com>, EDTECH, 7/14/96.  net-hap.]

    Search dozens of stores for price and terms via ESP Internet 
Search covers store catalogs, business directories,  magazine
and newsgroup indicies, and computer industry links.  
<http://www.uvision.com/search.html>.  [<tonny@uvision.com>,
net-hap, 12/1/95.]

    You can bid on an item or list one for sale at Online Auction, 
<http://www.ropi.com/>.  [Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, 
BESTWEB, 7/14/96.  net-hap.]


 7> Shareware archives:

    Thousands of free or shareware Windows NT programs
and utilities can be found at Beverly Hills Software's
Windows NT Application Center, <http://www.bhs.com>.  Over
14GB are downloaded daily.  Additional software is solicited,
by <dave@exchange.bhs.com>.  [Bob Elston <bob@exchange.bhs.com>, 
net-hap, 7/18/96.]

    The Monster Shareware site for Mac, DOS, and Windows
is <http://members.aol.com/ski6662154/mSOFTWARE.htm>.  
[<photos@westworld.com>, net-hap, 7/15/96.]

    Another resource list is The Shareware and Freeware Kingdom, 
<http://www.mdc.net/~hayes/3freew.html>.  
[<hayes@netway1.mdc.net>, net-hap, 7/13/96.]

    Freeware Favorites is an ezine that reviews
Windows 3.x freeware, with links to sources.  
<http://www.execpc.com/webdesigns/frefavmn.html>.
[Robert Samet <stamer@erols.com>, BESTWEB, 7/7/96.]

    Software reviews and user opinions for 70K commercial titles 
can be found on Benchin' Software Review.  Anyone reviewing
25 or more titles can get a free Benchin' Beanie.  
<http://www.benchin.com>.  [Robert G. Kreisel, Jr. 
<rkreisel@benchin.com>, c.i.www.misc, 7/8/96.]

    Windows'95 Tips, Questions and Answers are the subject
of <http://www.m-man.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.html>.  You can also 
post your own questions.  [<m_man@m-man.com>, net-hap, 7/29/96.]


 8> Software development:

    The International Programmers Guild (IPG) is at 
<http://www.ipgnet.com/>.  [<jun@ipgnet.com>, net-hap, 5/29/96.]

    The Internet Developers Associaton (IDA) offers a new job 
listing service at <http://www.association.org/jobs>.  IDA claims 
about 1,000 members.  [Joe Andrieu <andrieu@association.org>, 
NetWIRE, 9/11/96.]

     Marshall Cline's excellent C++ FAQ is available
at <http://www.cerfnet.com/~mpcline/On-Line-C++-FAQs/>,
and in a more extensive paperback: Cline and Lomow, "C++ FAQs"
(Addison-Wesley, 1995).  See also <http://heg-school.aw.com
/cseng/authors/cline/FAQ/FAQ.html>.  [Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 9/10/96.]

    Visual J++ is a new beta Java development environment
from Microsoft, available on its website.  See 
<http://www.activextra.com/control/control.cgi/b2VJa.html>
for a review.  [Network News, 9/7/96.]

    The MUMPS programming language has a website
at <http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/7041/>.  
[<chribonn@keyworld.net>, net-hap, 5/1/96.]  (MUMPS is often
used for hospital databases and information systems, as it
has more flexibility than relational DBs.  Or so I've heard.)

    SNOBOL4 is for discussion of the SNOBOL4 programming language 
for string processing and textual pattern matching.  Also covers 
SPITBOL, Rebus, and Snocone.  Send a "subscribe SNOBOL4 your name" 
message to <listserv@mercury.dsu.edu>.  [Mark Emmer 
<marke@rmii.com>, NEW-LIST, 8/7/96.]

    Metrowerks is also making compilers for the Sony PlayStation 
game unit.  Metrowerks "Let's Create Development System
for PlayStation" (or "Net Yarouz," in Japan) allows hobbyists
to create and share their own games.  Programming is via a cable 
to a PC.  <http://www.scei.co.jp/Net/>.  [Ron Liechty 
<mwron@metrowerks.com>, comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 
8/29/96.  Bill Park.]

    To convert English-language applications to Chinese 
characters, see the Yangtze Bridge 95 Chinese System v2.0
at <http://members.aol.com/yrsoft/yrsoft.htm>.  
[<diana2@ix.netcom.com>, net-hap, 8/4/96.]

					-- Ken


How do you tell a real Unix from a Unix-like system?
"It must fulfill one's desire to be in control of the computer 
instead of the other way around -- but only if you're willing
to pay the price."  -- Mike Gancarz <mgancarz@aol.com>, 
comp.os.linux.advocacy, 1/17/95.

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 65
 IS                                         September 24, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry news.
 2>  Java and Web authoring.
 3>  Career jobs.
 4>  Peer review.
_________________________________________________________________

Man is not the creature of circumstances.
Circumstances are the creatures of men.  -- Benjamin Disraeli.  
[AWAD, 7/5/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    3D video game maker 3DO is selling of its Interactive 
Multiplayer hardware business and will concentrate on game 
software for PCs and the Internet.  [WSJ, 9/17/96, B5.  EDUPAGE.]

    Paradyne Corp. has a new HotWire "rate adaptive digital 
subscriber line" (RADSL) modem that can send 2Mbps over ordinary 
telephone lines -- 15 times the speed of ISDN.  [Tampa Tribune, 
9/21/96, B&F1.  EDUPAGE.]

    Digital Equipment Corp. will soon offer a 1GHz Alpha chip, 
twice as fast as its current high-end chip.  A new low-priced 
Alpha (under $400) is being prepared for the PC market,
and will out-perform the current low-end Alpha.
[WSJ, 9/12/96, B4; also IBD, 9/12/96, A7.  EDUPAGE.]

    Metalithic Systems Inc. is introducing a $1,500
Digital Wings sound card next month that turns Windows 95
into a professional-quality sound studio.  Up to 128 sound
tracks can be edited.  [BW, 9/23/96, p. 86.  EDUPAGE.]

    Microsoft is releasing its Windows CE ("Pegasus") operating 
system for hand-held 32-bit computers from Casio, Compaq, HP,
LG Electronics, NEC, and Philips.  It uses the kernel of Win95
and supports many Win96 APIs.  Units are expected to weigh 1 
pound, have QWERTY keyboards and gray-scale LCDs, and cost
$500-$1K.  [Mark Moore, PC Week, 9/2/96, p. 106.  NewtNews.]

    I goofed last week when I attributed the Pilot to HP.
It's a 5.7-ounce PDA (or "PC accessory") from Palm, for $299.  
Pilot's principal use is keeping address lists up-to-date.
[BW, 9/9/96, p. 111.]

    Motorola is now making a line of Mac clones to be sold 
worldwide.  It's also starting a line of PowerPC Windows NT 
machines, and expects to merge the two lines in another year.  
[NYT, 9/17/96, C4.  EDUPAGE.]

    (Incidentally, Michael Spindler's severance package
from Apple will be more than $3.7M.  [SJM, 8/13/96, 1E.])

    Corporate spending on information technology is up 5%
this year, but it's going to intranets and training rather than 
desktop computers or software.  Gartner Group estimates that 
client-server networks cost $12K/year per PC user
(over 5 years), with 79% going to administration, training, 
support, and other labor costs.  [Fortune, 9/9/96, p. 104.  
EDUPAGE.]  (Wow!  I could'a had a Mac! :-)

    MCI plans to offer complete computer network services -- 
including installation, management, and maintenance --
for mid-size businesses, at just $2,700 per computer.
Many businesses are currently spending $6K-$12K per user.
[WSJ, 9/12/96, B4.  EDUPAGE.]

    Diskless network computers (NCs) are still being talking up
as a way to beat that $12K cost -- and to keep software consistent 
across all the computers in a company, and to reduce the spread
of viruses.  [Information Week, 9/9/96, p. 20; also WSJ, 9/18/96, 
B8.  EDUPAGE.]

    Wiring public libraries will cost $2B-$3B, comparable to 
philanthropist Andrew Carnegie's investments.  Much of that
is in $6K workstations that need replacing about every three 
years.  Worse, one new staff member is needed for every
20 workstations -- and the New York Public Research Libraries
are already running 250 public workstations.
[Nicholas von Hoffman, Architectural Digest, 10/96, p. 130.]


 2> Java and Web authoring:

    javaTeX is a list for discussion of Java and TeX.
[Timothy Murphy <tim@maths.tcd.ie>, comp.text.tex, 8/10/96.]
(See <http://small.sar.usf.edu/~haller/this/TeXface.html>
for a Java front end to TeX.)

    Java-Lex is a free lexical analyzer generator for Java, 
written in Java.  <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/fac/appel/modern
/java/JavaLex/>.  Elliot Berk <ejberk@princeton.edu>.
[Muthu Venkatesh <mvenkatesh@hss.hns.com>, net-hap, 7/24/96.]

    A public beta version of Corel WordPerfect written entirely
in Java will be available on <http://www.corel.com> this month.  
[Information Week, 9/2/96, p. 24.  EDUPAGE.]

    ChatterBox is a WWW-based chat environment
with multiple rooms.  <http://www.chatterbox.net>.
[<webmaster@chatterbox.net>, net-hap, 8/12/96.]

    LiveCD is a PC software development toolkit for linking
CD-ROM pages or data files with Web-based pages.  Users of
a LiveCD service can also communicate with one another by email, 
fax, or chat.  Supported environments include MacroMind
Director (Xtras interface), Asymetrix Multimedia Toolbook, 
iMedia's infoShip, and Microsoft Visual C++.  Download from 
<http://livecd.ncsa.uiuc.edu>.  [William Toh Eng Whatt 
<engwhatt@iti.gov.sg>, net-hap, 7/29/96.]

    VRMLSite Magazine helps webmasters develop 3D sites.  
<http://www.vrmlsite.com>, or <http://www.vrmlsite.com/lessvrml> 
for those with non-VRML browsers.  Free email notification of new 
issues.  [Adrian Scott <theme@clark.net>, c.i.www.misc, 8/12/96.]

    Need your photo digitized for your web page?  Fastfoto, Inc. 
will do it for $8.95.  <www.jet.laker.net/fastfoto>; 2754 West 
Atlantic Blvd., Suite 19, Pompano Beach, FL 33069.
[Cheryl Broussard <fastfoto@suzton.com>, 9/15/96.]


Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.33 digest this week):

Iowa State U. (Ames): assistant prof. in experimental multimedia, 
intelligent agents/robotics, or computational biology.

UWyoming (Laramie): assistant prof. in computer vision,
image processing, graphics, or spatial data analysis.

Brandeis U. (Waltham, MA): assistant prof. in parallel
or distributed computing, OS, DB, HCI, graphics,
visualization, multimedia, networks, or Web applications.

UIllinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC): faculty in graphics, 
multimedia, or experimental systems.

Ohio State University/Linguistics (Columbus): assistant prof.
of computational phonetics or discourse modeling.

UOregon/CIRL (Eugene): BS/MS research programmer.

XSoft (Palo Alto): software engineer for advanced linguistic 
analysis of text.

Nuance Communications (Menlo Park): MS/PhD speech recognition 
algorithm engineers and computational linguists.

SYSTRAN Software, Inc. (La Jolla, CA): sr. computational 
linguist/SE for machine translation.  Also a jr. NL SE.

GDE Systems, Inc. (San Diego): MS/PhD statistical data mining 
expert -- AI, textual pattern recognition, semantic pattern 
recognition, etc.

Siemens Corporate Research, Inc. (Princeton, NJ): PhD R&D in ML, 
ES, AI, adaptive signal processing, fuzzy logic, user agents,
NN, and intelligent control.

Associative Computing, Inc. (San Jose): MS AI engineer for ML, 
planning, CBR, and knowledge representation.

Battelle (Columbus, OH): MS/PhD sr. research scientist
in adaptive/cognitive control theory.

Johnson Controls, Inc. (Milwaukee, WI): BS/MS/PhD knowledge 
systems team leader and R&D engineers.

NH industry/university consortium: US researcher
for distributed DB R&D.

MA company: MS/PhD SE to develop intelligent information agents 
and services.

Countrywide Home Loans, Inc. (Pasadena, CA): AI specialists
for data mining and financial expert systems. 

UCalgary (Alberta): postdoc in intelligent manufacturing.

Harlequin Ltd. (UK): developers in OOA/OOD, inference,
scheduling, OR, workflow, data mining, ML, and Web development.

Oxford Intelligent Machines Ltd. (OxIM; Oxford, UK):
SE in real-time systems and transputers for robotics.

UQueensland/DSTC (Australia): research scientists in DB
and workflow management.

The Hong Kong U. of Science and Technology (HKUST):
six CS faculty in algorithms, graphics, digital libraries, 
multimedia, HCI, NLP, and SE.


Peer review:

    Stanford's John R. Koza has filed a complaint about reviewing 
practices at the Evolutionary Computation Journal (ECJ),
the Int. Machine Learning Conference (MLC), and the Tools
for Artificial Intelligence (TAI) conference.  He's calling for
an independent arbitrator to investigate reviews that appear
to be plagiarized paraphrases of other reviews.  Koza cites 
detailed evidence of three or possibly more reviewers engaging in 
collusion in nine reviews of his papers.  Further, he is asking 
for an accounting of reviewing practice for perhaps 300 of the 375 
ECJ reviews over the journal's first three years.  Koza claims 
that peer review in genetic programming, evolutionary computation, 
and machine learning is "over-concentrated in a small group of 
like-minded people who had acquired a disproportionately and 
inappropriately large voice in the process" -- a "reviewing 
factory" -- and that some of these people are not on the journal's 
editorial review board, have never been acknowledge publicly,
and may be unqualified as reviewers.  He charges scientific 
misconduct, and implies that unresolved complaints have likely 
been responsible for a decline in numbers of submitted papers.  
For details, see <http://www.cris.com/~nrlgate/>.  Koza's request 
that reviewers be publicly thanked has met with resistance, 
perhaps because he is using overlapping reviewer lists and member 
specialties to identify individual reviewers.  He is calling for 
the alleged plagiarists to step forward, resign all journal
and conference positions, and renounce all reviewing activities 
for five years.  [<nrlgate@cris.com>, genetic-programming, 
9/21/96.  Bill Park.]

    Koza's complaint points to a much larger problem: sloppiness 
in peer review abetted by secrecy.  NSF certainly has some 
problems with peer review, but at least it has oversight 
committees that can take action if poor decisions are being made.  
(Or they could until recent budget delays and cuts.)  I don't know 
if problems are typically worse in journal and conference review, 
but I know there is unhappiness with the system.  We just haven't 
had anything better.

    The Web is changing that.  Anyone can publish their own work 
and to get reviews (and links) from others.  The time frame
for this is similar to in-house review, but the pool
of interested and qualified reviewers is much larger.
Such early publication is also of benefit to Science.
An author may seek advice privately, and that's fine.
Sometimes a reviewer will convey private comments, which is
also fine.  But I see no reason for secrecy to be the standard
for such reviews, any more than for theater, movie, book, 
restaurant, or sports reviews.  Do any of us put much faith
in anonymous reviews?

    Committee or solicited reviews are secret chiefly to protect 
the committee members.  Why?  Partly from unjustified anger
by "disgrantees," partly from justified anger over the unavoidable 
errors of even the most qualified reviewers.  One can also argue 
that fledgling researchers must be protected from devastating 
criticism -- public or private, fair or unfair -- by established 
scientists.  (I disagree, in general.)

    However, traditional review is also secret because
the review system sometimes has to be too hurried and superficial 
to bear close scrutiny.  Not always, but often enough that
the reviewing bodies want to keep their options open.  Reviews
may have to be done by whoever is available, even if they lack 
eminent qualifications for the task.  With all due respect
to the volunteers -- and they perform a great service, giving 
substantial time and effort -- often the selection of reviewers 
and the quality of their reviews are suspect.  This is tolerable 
because the really great papers or proposals generally get 
through; the really terrible ones are generally screened out;
and society is little concerned about which of the middling
ones win -- the decision may as well be based on writing skill,
or school reputation, or random chance.

    (Incidentally, it's nearly always pointless to dispute
any element of an NSF review.  Decisions are based more on
the enthusiasm of the reviewers than on any technical point,
and two levels of bureaucratic ambiguity obscure the basis of
any decision.  It takes nearly as much trouble and time to get 
reconsideration as to submit a new proposal meeting the reviewers' 
objections, and reconsideration seldom reverses a decision.  
Anyway, PIs aren't privy to all of the factors involved
in funding decisions, such as ethnic/gender/geographic
dispersion or simply lack of budget.  NSF's position is that
all decisions are made by NSF as a whole (unless there's
a convenient scapegoat); reviews are private advice to NSF,
are not the sole basis of any decision, and are only provided
to the PI as a courtesy, a means of improving future proposals, 
and because US government records are not secret unless
absolutely necessary.)

    Mailed reviews are generally done in isolation,
but panel reviews involve discussion.  In certain NSF 
competitions, this might be a couple of minutes of discussion 
followed by five minutes of writing reviews; all of the reviews 
will typically be brief but similar.  More substantial proposals 
get greater consideration and more independence in the reviews.  
Important, big $$$ decisions merit a higher level of debate -- 
perhaps even adversarial debate with assigned protagonists,
in order to stimulate deep analysis.  Internally, this is not
an anonymous process.

    Debate distributed across the net can be likened to such a 
meeting, and there is likewise no need for secrecy.  Only people 
who feel strongly need comment, and they should feel no fear
in stating their opinions -- nor guilt in recanting, if they
find themselves in error.  The real-time nature of the net 
encourages open debate, whereas secret deliberation better suits 
the written-once-and-for-all-by-a-supposed-authority nature
of traditional peer review.  It's time to change our way
of doing business.

    And now a simple news item: Javier Blasco is soliciting 
reviews for neural network books, to be published on his website.  
Write to <jblasco@ideafix.cps.unizar.es> for a review template.  
[c.ai.neural-nets, 9/16/96.]

					-- Ken


This program posts news to thousands of machines throughout
the entire civilized world.  You could disgrace yourself
in front of thousands if not millions of people everywhere.
Are you absolutely sure that you want to do this? [ny] y
[Nai-Chi Lee <ncl@philabs.research.philips.com>, 9/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 68
 IS                                            October 3, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Technology news.
 2>  Future technologies.
 3>  Research software.
 4>  Internet services.
 5>  Map servers.
 6>  Zip servers.
 7>  Alife simulations.
 8>  In memoriam -- Paul Erdos.
_________________________________________________________________

The infobahn is less like a highway and more like a landslide
of steaming bullshit on what could be a highway.  [Kathleen
J. Kramer <kk3z+@andrew.cmu.edu>, alt.music.pearl-jam, 1/5/95.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Technology news:

    President Clinton has signed the VA, HUD, and Independent 
Agencies Appropriations Act for FY'97, which provides a year
of funding for NSF, NASA, and several other agencies.  NSF gets 
almost $3.3B, which is 2% above FY'96.  Of that, $2.4B is for 
"research and related activities" -- up 5% from last year --
and $.6B is for education and human resources.  $50M, or almost 
half of the R&R increase, is for large-scale academic research 
instrumentation.  NSF salaries were funded at the requested level 
rather than the reduced amount that the House had passed.
[John C. Cherniavsky <jchernia@nsf.gov>, 9/26/96.]

    NEWS.COM from Digital Dispatch is "the first on-line, free, 
up-to-the-minute news source devoted entirely to technology."  
<http://www.news.com/>.  [Network News, 9/8/96.]  News Dispatch
is an accompanying electronic newsletter for breaking stories.  
Send a "subscribe news-dispatch your name" message to 
<listserve@dispatch.cnet.com>.  [net-hap, 9/4/96.]

    The New York Times Syndicate has redesigned its Computer News 
Daily site, <http://computernewsdaily.com>, and has added a search 
engine.  [Bill Adler <ir000069@interramp.com>, comp.programming, 
9/12/96.]

    The Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) keeps
large numbers of government technical reports (e.g., on
operations research).  You can get a bibliography of unclassified 
and classified documents for a few dollars (up to $35) by sending 
a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to Defense Technical 
Information Center, Attn: DTIC-RSM (Kelly D. Akers, FOIA Manager), 
8725 John J. Kingman Road, Suite 0944, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-
6128; 703-767-9194.  Supply keywords and their plurals.  [Michael 
Ravnitzky <mikerav@ix.netcom.com>, sci.op-research, 9/11/96.  
David Joslin.]  (Ravnitzky offered a form letter, which I can 
supply to any Computist who needs it.)

    IBM is introducing its OS/2 Warp Version 4 operating system 
for PCs, code named "Merlin."  The 3K largest corporate OS/2 users 
account for 25%-30% of IBM's $72B annual revenue.  [NYT, 9/25/96, 
C2.  EDUPAGE.]

    Ricoh is manufacturing 7K digital cameras per month,
and plans to increase that to 25K.  [Farcast.  NewtNews, 8/13/96.]

    The average number of sensors per vehicle has increased
from 19.6 in 1992 to 23.2 in 1995, and may reach 25.9 by 2002.
[Frost & Sullivan.  Farcast.  NewtNews, 8/13/96.]

    Britain is beginning commercial trials of Vocalyser,
a speech analysis system that measures alcohol or drug impairment.  
Bar patrons can call a 900 number (for about 8 pounds); police
can call in from their mobile phones.  Inventor Harb Hayre says 
Vocalyser is 99% accurate, and can distinguish alcohol-induced 
slurring from other speech defects.  [UK Sunday Times.
Lily Laws.]

    I've mentioned a $499 Kurzweil VOICE for Windows product
(in TCC 6.64) that recognizes continuous digits and 60K discrete 
words.  Elizabeth Hinkelman tells me there's a shareware version 
on <http://www.kurzweil.com>.  [<elizh@kurzweil.com>, 9/20/96.]


 2> Future technologies:

    Philips Electronics' corporate design department has been 
studying products that might be practical in 5-10 years.
"Super-smart cards," for instance.  You can see models
and rationale on <http://www-eu.philips.com/design/vof/>.  [Peter 
Fletcher <flecher@btinternet.com>, alt.technology.misc, 9/23/96.]

    Quantum computing is still impractical, but intriguing
in theory.  See the 4/12/96 issue of Science for an optimistic 
article.  A 64 quantum-bit ("qubit") processor would perform 
operations on all 64-bit numbers at once -- 2^64 operations.  
Error-correcting computations have now been devised, overcoming 
commonly cited obstacles; see Cira, Pellizzari, and Zoller's 
article in the 8/30/96 issue.  There's also an 8/23 article
by Seth Lloyd about using quantum computers to model interactions 
of large numbers of particles.  N electrons could be simulated 
with N qubits and O(N) operations, in time proportional to real 
time.  (A conventional computer would require memory and time 
proportional to 2^2N.)  The first known quantum algorithm was
for factoring large numbers.  Factoring a 100-digit number would 
require millions of quantum logical operations, but might be 
feasible.  Another algorithm, recently discovered, could find
a random list element in the square root of N steps, vs. N/2
on average for a conventional computer.  Particle simulation has 
an advantage in that it's tolerant of errors and noise.  A wide 
variety of atomic, molecular, and semiconductor quantum devices 
are available, and quantum simulation may soon be practical.  
Further, running a quantum computer in reverse might be
a shortcut to creating a mechanical micromanipulator.
The US military is taking this seriously enough to put $5M
into an institute for quantum information and computing (QUIC).  
[John K. Clark <johnkc@aol.com>, comp.theory, 9/17/96.]

    For information on evolvable hardware -- e.g., for genetic 
algorithms -- see <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/~monty/EHW.html>, 
<http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth/EHW_groups.html>, 
<http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/adrianth>, or 
<http://www.bioele.nuee.nagoya-u.ac.jp/wsc1/papers
/Evol_Elec.html>.  [Adrian Thompson <adrianth@cogs.susx.ac.uk>, 
comp.ai.genetic, 8/30/96.]

    CyberMedia Inc. and Phoenix Technologies are working on PCs 
that would heal themselves.  Diagnostic routines would identify 
corrupt driver software, etc., and other routines in the BIOS 
operating system would repair the damage.  Phoenix plans to 
license this to motherboard manufacturers early next year.
[IW, 9/23/96, p. 15.  EDUPAGE.]  (A related development
is smart networks that monitor CPU temperatures and vital signs, 
helping direct maintenance efforts.)

    Apple Fellow Donald Norman says we are seeing the dawn of 
computing's third generation.  Graphical user interfaces (GUIs) 
characterized the second generation, but so did increasing 
complexity.  The third generation will be embedded in the context 
of tasks to be accomplished.  [IW, 9/23/96, p. 48.  EDUPAGE.]

    (Edupage is written by John Gehl <gehl@educom.edu>
and Suzanne Douglas <douglas@educom.edu>.  Many of the news
items cover Canada or telecommunications, others are of general 
interest.  To subscribe, send a "subscribe edupage your name" 
message to <listproc@educom.unc.edu>.)

    The UK's Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
is charged with providing balanced and objective analysis
of science and technology-based issues.  Present and past
reports can be found on <http://www.parliament.uk/post/home.htm>.  
[James Porteous <ah688@freenet.toronto.on.ca>, inet-news, 
9/12/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS 6.34 digest this week):

AutoClass C 2.8: Bayesian clustering and classification system 
from NASA.

jaNet 1.0 beta 1: Java neural network toolkit.

Logical/Linear edge/line operator: image curve detector
from Iverson and Zucker.

Curvilinear structure detector from Carsten Steger.

TransPerfect: English <--> Chinese translation software.

New Zealand Digital Library: 30K CS technical reports
from 300 sites.

Advanced Relational Programming: database book by Cacace
and Lamperti.

Neuro-Dynamic Programming: book by Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis.

"The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical 
Journey into the Brain": Danny Yee's review of Churchland's 
connectionist book.


 4> Internet services:

    Web browsers can gain free access to Usenet newsgroups
through <http://www.zippo.com>.  [Loyola Joseph 
<mdsaaa97@giasmd01.vsnl.net.in>, inet-news, 6/30/96.]
(For random access, try the InReference search service
at <http://www.reference.com>.)

    AT&T is offering email/browser service free to its customers 
for a year, for 5 hours/month.  Extra hours are $2.50, or you
can get unlimited single-logon access for $19.95/month.
Non-AT&T customers can buy in in at $4.95/month for 3 hours.  
Windows or Mac.  1-800-587-4703 x1100.  [9/96.]

    The HotMail service will give you a free email account on 
their website, accessible with any browser or from other ISP's 
email accounts.  <http://www.hotmail.com>.   [Internet-on-a-Disk, 
9/96.]  (Free accounts for your kids, too.  It's a way of
drawing people to web-based advertising.)

    Juno also offers advertising-supported email accounts,
if you have a PC running Windows.  A local call (in most areas) 
lets you read or send mail.  No Web browsing, though.  
<http://www.juno.com/>.   [Internet-on-a-Disk, 9/96.]

    Instead of a fax or voice-mail machine, you can use the JFAX 
service.  Messages to your major-city JFAX Personal Telecom number 
are compressed and sent via Internet to your email box, where
JFAX software lets you decode it.  You can also have JFAX
convert outgoing email to fax.  <http://www.jfax.net>.
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 9/96.]

    Another email to Fax Gateway: <http://www.faxsav.com>.  
[Network News, 5/25/96.]

    Want your home page URL engraved on a bracelet, pendant,
pet's collar, or army dogtag?  (In case you pass out from
lack of Jolt cola...)  About $18 from <http://www.TST-MedHat.com
/~cwkagume/etag.htm>.  [<cwkagume@mlc.awinc.com>, 
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 7/14/96.  Bill Park.]


 5> Map servers:

    The MapQuest service has been expanded from US to worldwide 
coverage, with free zoom-in maps of over three million locations.  
US maps are tied in with a database of business locations,
so you can highlight all the Italian restaurants in a map area.  
<http://www.mapquest.com>.  [Liz Tompkins <nbnsoft@hotmail.com>, 
inet-news, 8/4/96.  net-hap.]  (MapQuest gets more than 2M hits 
per day, serving up more than 700 maps per minute.  It's among
the top 200 sites worldwide for daily traffic.  They've now tied 
it in with TripQuest, for planning travel routes.)

    MapBlast! will display any US street address, for inclusion
in your web page or emailing to others.  
<http://www.mapblast.com/mapblast>.  [Peter Monaco 
<monaco@nuancecom.com>, 5/31/96.  Lily Laws.]

    BigBook is adding street maps and VRML 3D simulations
of San Francisco to its yellow pages listings.  Other cities
by year-end.  [Newsweek, 8/12/96, p. 13.]

    Free geographic information system (GIS) software, demos, 
data, and reports can be found at <http://www.esri.com/>.  
[<jsenior@esri.com>, net-hap, 7/31/96.]

    Another good GIS site is GISLinx, <http://www.gislinx.com/>.  
[<info@gislinx.com>, net-hap, 8/7/96.]


 6> Zip servers:

    An excellent source for ZIPcode information is the National 
Address Server at <http://www.cedar.buffalo.edu/adserv.html>.  
[Donna Wair <wair@library.vanderbilt.edu>, CARR-L, 6/28/96.
net-hap.]

    You can also find ZIP codes and maps
at <http://tiger.census.gov/cgi-bin/gazetteer>.
[S. Stephenson <triptulp@ix.netcom.com>, CARR-L, 6/28/96.
net-hap.]

    Official Postal Service abbreviations can be found
on <http://www.usps.gov/ncsc/lookups/abbrev.html>.  [James 
Porteous <ah688@freenet.toronto.on.ca>, inet-news, 8/15/96.]

    If you want a full database of ZIP codes -- rather than
an online server -- check out <http://www.trisource.com/~kmh/>.  
You can download the database and unzip it to an Access .mdb file.  
[comp.databases.ms-access.  Ray Robinson 
<rsquared@norfolk.infi.net>, nicar-l, 7/24/96.  net-hap.]


 7> Alife simulations:

    Akio Utsugi has collected pointers to sites using
Java applets for NN and "artificial life" demonstrations.  
<http://www.aist.go.jp/NIBH/~b0616/Lab/Links.html>.  
[<b0616@nibh.go.jp>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 9/12/96.]

    Creatures is a new alife simulation game/environment from 
Millennium and Inscape.  There's a Creatures chat discussion every 
Friday.  See <www.inscape.com/creatures> for the archive.  
[Patrick Kearney <pkearney@inscape.com>, comp.ai.alife, 9/12/96.]

    Need cellular automata tools, or maybe an alife screen saver?  
Zooland is a browser interface to several alife collections, 
including EUnet Deutschland's FTP server and The Santa Fe 
Institute's Alife Online.  Access <http://alife.santafe.edu
/~joke/zooland/>, <http://www.krl.caltech.edu/~brown/alife
/zooland/>, <http://research.Germany.EU.net:8080/public/zooland/> 
(in Europe), or download the Zooland interface from 
<ftp://ftp.Germany.EU.net/pub/research/softcomp/Alife/zooland/>.  
[Joerg Heitkoetter <jh@Germany.eu.net>, comp.ai.genetic, 8/28/96.]

    SMB Digest from the Society for Mathematical Biology
is online at <gopher://gopher.nih.gov:70/11/res/SMBdigest>.
[Ray Mejia <ray@helix.nih.gov>, newjour, 7/25/96.]


 8> In memoriam -- Paul Erdos:

    Mathematician Paul Erdos, 83, died of a heart attack
in Warsaw on 9/20/96.  Erdos was the founder of discrete 
mathematics, an important field for computer science.
He had few possessions and maintained no home, instead moving
from meeting to meeting and staying with fellow mathematicians.  
[Newsweek, 10/7/96, p. 87.]  (One of Erdos' quirks was
a series of announced prize competitions that would far exceed
his ability to pay, should all of the mathematical discoveries 
have been made in his lifetime.  His insights helped so many 
mathematicians, who then gave him co-author credit in their 
papers, that mathematicians began tracking their "Erdos numbers": 
a measure of how close they had come to co-authoring a paper with 
someone who had co-authored with Erdos.  A remarkable person.)

					-- Ken


Life is not a problem to be solved
but a reality to be experienced.  -- Kierkegaard.
[John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
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Date: Tue 8 Oct 96 14:46:19-PDT
From: Ken Laws <LAWS@ai.sri.com>
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 69
 IS                                            October 8, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry news.
 2>  NN/OR/mathematics/graphics resources.
 3>  Security alerts.
 4>  Career jobs.
 5>  URL submission sites.
_________________________________________________________________

As a software development model, anarchy does not scale well.
-- Dave Welch.  [Bill Davidsen <davidsen@tmr.com>, 9/96.
Bill Park.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    'Sorry about that.  I must have done a "Save as text"
instead of "Save as text with line breaks."  This second
printing should be more readable.  Save the first one
as a memento of the time Ken Laws screwed up.  :-)


 1> Industry news:

    Congress and the President have signed off on funding of 
numerous cabinet departments and agencies.  Defense R&D was cut
by 2%.  The NIST Advanced Technology Program got $225M, despite
an earlier Senate vote of just $60M.  NIST also gets $268M for
its laboratory research programs.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
10/4/96.]

    An independent analysis of 30 House science bills found
that twice as many Democrats as Republicans voted in support
of science.  [Science Watch, Inc.  Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
10/4/96.]  (This lopsided result is considered surprising
and controversial.)

    Florida is planning to offer tax credits and a $15M cash 
incentive fund to boost its semiconductor industry.  The cash
will be used in matching grants at state universities.  
[Enterprise Florida.  WSJ, 10/2/96, F1.  EDUPAGE.]  (If you've
got a business plan that would create jobs and tax revenue,
talk to state agencies about creative financing.)

    Microsoft is giving its ActiveX file-linking technology
to the Open Group (Cambridge, MA), which should encourage more 
developers to build ActiveX modules for rapid construction of 
custom applications.  CORBA is a competing technology, backed by 
Oracle and Netscape.  [WSJ, 10/2/96, B1.  EDUPAGE.]  (Or one could 
use Frontier scripting, or Apple's solutions.  Pipes?  Shell 
scripts?  Unix is doomed, although it won't die out for decades.)

    Apple's System 7.5.5 Update will be the final System 7 release 
for the 16-bit Macs: the Plus, SE, Classic, Portable, PowerBook 
100, SE FDHD, SE/30, LC, II, IIx, and IIcx.  Future releases
will require 32-bit addressing.  [TidBITS, 9/9/96.]  (System 7.5.4 
was skipped, due to last-minute problems with a few Macs.)

    Netscape's next release of Navigator will include group 
collaboration, plus multimedia email and a Web page editor.
[BW, 10/7/96, p. 34.  EDUPAGE.]  (The groupware feature may be
an attack on Lotus Notes, although Notes has other features
such as database replication.)


 2> NN/OR/mathematics/graphics resources:

    The International Neural Network Society (INNS) is canceling 
its 1997 meeting in Boston (WCNN'97), and will instead co-sponsor 
the IEEE neural network conference in Houston (ICNN'97) on 6/9-12.  
Papers must be submitted by 11/15/96 (moved up from 1/15/97).  
<http://www.mindspring.com/~pci-inc/ICNN97>.  [Paolo Gaudiano 
<gaudiano@cns.bu.edu>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 10/3/96.]  (This
would seem to ease a split that took place several years ago.)

    Markus Roskothen has been looking for links to neural-network 
Java applets.  What he's found so far:  Collections of AI applets 
at <http://www.cyberus.ca/~rehan/JavaAI.html> and
<http://www-isis.ecs.soton.ac.uk/computing/neural/laboratory
/laboratory.html>; a very nice character recognition application 
at <http://www.hh.se/dep/cca/java/charrecog.html>; and a nice 
natural-gas application at <http://www.neuroinformatik.ruhr-
uni-bochum.de/ini/PEOPLE/loos>.  [<markro@ecst.csuchico.edu>, 
comp.ai.neural-nets, 9/25/96.]

    The S*i*ftware website offers notes on software for
data mining and knowledge discovery in databases,
including public-domain, research, and commercial systems.  
<http://info.gte.com/~kdd/siftware.html>.  [Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, 8/30/96.]

    Michael Trick has posted about 600 operations research (OR) 
links to <http://mat.gsia.cmu.edu/>.  [<trick+@andrew.cmu.edu>, 
sci.op-research, 9/8/96.  David Joslin.]

    Need to solve a tough integral?  The Integrator is
a Mathematica-based service from Wolfram Research,
hosted on an HP-supplied computer.  <http://www.integrals.com>.  
[Newsweek, 9/30/96, p. 12.]

    For a comprehensive list of 3D engines see
<http://www.cs.tu-berlin.de/%7Eki/engines.html>.
You can search by platform, source code availability, etc.
[Jerry Whitnell <jerry@fvc.com>, 
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 8/27/96.  Bill Park.]

    3DSite is a graphics "information hub" and market,
including a job board.  <http://www.3dsite.com>.  
[<dani@3dsite.com>, net-hap, 4/29/96.]

    To learn about progressive JPEG image format and tools, see 
<http://www.hkstar.com/~hyytep/jpeg.html>.  [<hyytep@hkstar.com>, 
net-hap, 7/29/96.]


 3> Security alerts:

    Possibly an urban legend, but there's a message circulating 
about a phone scam offering a free Corel Office Suite.  You're 
asked what kind of computer you have and when you'll be home to 
accept the shipment.  Guess what?  They show up when you're NOT 
home and ship out your hardware.  The best defense is to tell
them you don't have a computer.  [Lily Laws <llaws@nuancecom.com>, 
10/8/96.]  (Or you could coordinate with the police to catch 
thieves.)

    I previously mentioned scammers tricking people into calling 
809-area numbers in the Virgin Islands.  A variant on that
con game is a brief email message stating that "Unless you pay off 
your balance in full, you will be taken to court.  ...  Call
Mr. ... at +1 (809) ... if you wish to discuss the matter."  
Callers get a recorded message and a $25 phone charge.
[Matthew Dillon, best.com, 10/4/96.]  (And another variant
is a phone call saying that your CEO, or whoever might be 
traveling, is being held by the police in some far-away place.  
Anyone who returns the call is likely to get an incoherent 
response in broken English that delays recognition of the scam
and extends the call length.)


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.35 digest this week):

The MIT Media Laboratory and the Computer Museum (Boston):
lead software developer for The Virtual Fishtank alife simulation.

UNew Hampshire/CS: two faculty openings.

Iowa State U. (Ames): prof. in intelligent agents, robotics, 
computational biology, multimedia, or other experimental systems.

Virginia Tech (Blacksburg): two profs. in UI tools,
networked information, or problem-solving environments.

Clemson U. (Clemson, SC): ECE prof. in evolutionary computing
or in architectures, networks, etc.

Duke U./CS (Durham, NC): prof. of experimental systems.

North Carolina State U. (Raleigh): prof. of workflow management 
and data mining.

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA;
UIllinois Urbana-Champaign): MS/PhD sr. VR/visualization
research programmers.

NASA Ames/IMG (Mountain View): VR/visualization/robotics/AI 
programmer to develop remote robotic interfaces.

Metrica, Inc. (Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX): developers
for an intelligent robot, plus control and stereo vision research.

BGW (Golden, CO): MS/PhD sr. DSP engineer in adaptive signal 
processing, NN, FL, GA, and AI expert systems for stochastic 
system identification, spectral estimation, etc.

Metaphor Information Systems (Palo Alto): BS/MS/PhD handwriting 
and character recognition developer.

Empirical Media Corp. (Pittsburgh): research scientist in IR, 
filtering, ML, DB, and agent-based systems.

Thomson Technology Labs (Rockville, MD): BS research engineer
for IR/NLP.

UWestern Ontario (London, Ontario): two prof. of CS, one in SE.

UBern (Switzerland): 2-year postdoc in neuromorphic perception
via multisensor fusion.

UWaikato (NZ): postdoc in temporal logic programming.


 5> URL submission sites:

    I've been looking for ways to advertise our website, 
<http://www.computists.com>, and came up with the following -- 
mostly from Gleason Sackman's Net-Happenings list for the past
six months.  (Site counts are therefore probably out of date.)  
The "Postmaster" service is generally considered best for 
commercial website announcements, but charges a hefty fee.  
Submit-It! is one of the first and best of the free announcement 
services, but only serves the major directory services
and search engines.

101 A Internet Promotion Service <http://www.meer.net
/kwik-link/c/promote.htm>.  Submission to 50 directories.

1 2 3 RegisterMe! <http://www.123registerme.com>
-- submission to 100 sites, updated every 6 months.

@Submit! <http://www.uswebsites.com/forms/atsubmit.html>
-- free submission to over 30 search engines.

A1 Web Page Promotion Services <http://www.vir.com/~wyatt/>
-- searchable directory of 670 submission sites.

AAA Internet Search Engine & Directory Links 
<http://www.texasre.com/search> -- hundreds of submission links.

Absolute Submission <http://www.netcom.com/~altair2/link.html>.

Advertising Secrets of Successful Businesses 
<http://member.gnn.com/keinc/money.htm>
-- marketing tips and links.

AutoReg Auto Registration of Web Sites 
<http://members.aol.com/iexperts>.

Chuck's Free for All Link Page Submit Form 
<http://members.aol.com/meadowscd/freelink.htm>.

CNC Technology <http://www.peg.apc.org/~cnctech/>
-- Asia Pacific directory and publicity tips.

Commercial Directory <http://www.commercial-directory.com>
-- thousands of promotional links.  (Customers only?)

comp.infosystems.www.announce -- Usenet newsgroup
for site announcements.

Crafters Page <http://www.netwrx.net/swwood/crafters.htm>
-- promotional tips.

ENTITY Global Site Submission <http://www.i-studio.com/entity>
-- free submission to 125 sites.

FAQ: How to Announce your Web Site 
<http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html>.

Free For All Links 
<http://www.angel.co.uk/scottrav/links/links.htm>.

FreeLinks <http://www.mgroup.com/freelinks/>
-- lists free announcement sites.

Free Pointers for Your Home Page 
<http://www.islandnet.com/~vicky/pointers.html>.

Go Net-Wide <http://www.shout.net/~whitney/>
-- links to hundreds of submission sites.

HOW THE WEB WAS WON: A Self-Starter's Guide to Setting Up A Web 
Site <http://www.wolfchild.com/services/howdy/overview.htm>.

How to Create, Publish and Promote a Web Page 
<http://home.navisoft.com/greyhound/mw110/index.htm>
-- step-by-step instructions.

How to Promote Your Web Site 
<http://www.west.net/~solution/marketing/> -- marketing tips.

How to Publicize a Web Site over the Internet 
<http://www.tiac.net/users/samizdat/public.html>.

Instant Web Page Promoter <http://www.wforce.com/3b.htm>.

Internet Advertising and Promotion Resource Directory 
<http://www.anacom.com/submit.htm> -- submission to
over 200 advertising locations.

The Internet Confederacy <http://www.eze.com/confederacy.html>
-- submits to more than 27 search engines.

Internet Link Exchange 
<http://www.teleport.com/~mindseye/links.html>
-- thousands of places to list your website.

Internet Marketing Tips <http://www.cipco.com/~swd>
-- info and a submission form.

Internet Secretary <http://www.mnsinc.com/elegance/ss/main.htm>
-- submits to hundreds of search engines.

Launch-it! (From the America's Business Funding Directory page) 
<http://www.businessfinance.com/busres.htm> -- submits to
210 sites.

Launch Pad! <http://www.siteleader.com/launchpad>
-- submission to up to 500 sites.  (Fee-based.)

LINKER page <http://www.lehigh.edu/~lmk3/web/web.html>
-- web publicity tips, links, and email discussion list.

The Marketing Resource Center <http://www.dev-com.com/~cmg>  -- 
EXPOSE area has links to over 500 submission pages (directories 
and awards).  Also web tools, tutorials, and business software.

Netpost <http://www.netpost.com> -- tailored submissions,
for a fee.

Plug! <http://webzone1.co.uk/www/pcdoctor/plug.htm>.

Pointers to Pointers <http://www.homecom.com/global/pointers.html> 
-- pointers to announcement sites.

Postmaster <http://www.netcreations.com/postmaster/> -- 
submissions to 417 sites and 1337 editors of publications.
A "deep submission" option will submit each of your subpages 
individually.  (Only a few spiders will search your pages 
automatically, and they may take up to six months to get around to 
it.)

Promote Your Web Site <http://www.newimages/promote.htm>
-- announce at "over 10,000 locations."

Promoting Your Page <http://www.orst.edu:80/aw/stygui/propag.htm> 
-- self-promotion links and tips.

PROMOTE-IT <http://www.cam.org/~psarena/promote-it.html>
-- submission to 70 directories.

Publicizing Your Site <http://www.webcom.com/html/publicize.html>.

Response-Net <http://www.response-net.com/addurl.htm>
-- free submission to over 200 directories.

Search Mania! 
<http://www.ahoynet.com/~lexrex/phpl.cgi?blake/mania/index.html>
-- easy submission to over 50 sites.

Selong Submit Links Page 
<http://www.realitycom.com/bamboo/submit.htm>
-- list of submission pages.

SHOTGUN! <http://www.peachmedia.com/shotgun/>
-- submits to 58 major directories.

Site Promoter <http://www.mcn.org/b/sitepromoter/welcome.html>
-- advertising tips.

SubmitAll <http://www.hometeam.com/addurl/>
-- more comprehensive than Submit-It.

Submit It! <http://www.submit-it.com/> -- submits to Yahoo, 
Starting Point, WebCrawler, EINet Galaxy, Lycos, Harvest Broker, 
What's New Too! Infoseek, Whole Internet Catalog, Open Text Web 
Index, World Wide Web Worm, Apollo, Jump Station, New Rider's
WWW Yellow Pages, The YellowPages.com, Netcenter, NIKOS, Pronet, 
Project DA-CLOD, etc.  2-4 week delay.

Submit It! Web Promotion Tips
<http://www.submit-it.com/subopt.htm>.

Submit URL <http://www.ptw.com/~hayden/submit.html>
-- promotional resources.

Super Mega Link <http://www2.imm.com/~trogers/changes/ch1228.htm> 
-- free submission, search engines, etc.

SWWWAP! <http://www.swwwap.com/> -- target free ads
by site category, region, and time of day.

THE WEBLINK PUBLISHING PAGE 
<http://194.197.188.25/weblist/weblist.htm>.

WebMax <http://www.interlog.com/~photodsk/webmax/webmax.html>
-- free submissions to over 107 sites.

Web Point <http://www.nlnet.nf.ca/2/webpoint>.

Web Promotion <http://rampages.onramp.net/~cscanlan/Webpromo.html> 
-- submission site.

WEB SITE PROMOTION NEWSLETTER <http://www.meh.com/meh/>
-- tips plus links to free submission sites.

WebStep TOP 100 <http://www.mmgco.com/online/webstep.html>
-- list of 100 best submission sites.

Weekly Web Internet Services <http://users.aol.com/weeklyweb>
-- promotional resources and URL submittal form.

WordOut <http://www.opendoor.com/Excel/WordOut.html>
-- submission site.

wURLd Presence <http://www.ogi.com/wurld/>
-- another free registration service.

<http://web.idirect.com/~tormall/links.html>
-- over 1000 places to submit your web pages.

					-- Ken


The difference between an amateur and a professional
is that an amateur shows you ALL his pictures.  
[<webmaster@videonics.com>, 9/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 71
 IS                                           October 15, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Funding news.
 2>  Internet news.
 3>  Java and Web news.
 4>  Career jobs.
 5>  More on Seymour Cray.
_________________________________________________________________

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Business has grown to where I could use help in compiling
the jobs digests.  This would take about 4-8 hours each week,
at a student or clerical pay rate.  Age, nationality, and location 
are open.  Work could be done weekends or evenings, on your own 
computer.  AI training would be helpful but is not required:
you'd get on-the-job training, of practical use as well as
looking good on your resume.  I would supply a stream of job ads; 
you would edit headers, sort messages, throw out duplicates,
and extract a summary line for each good position announcement.  
Any questions could be marked for my attention, as I'd make
the final pass.  Chief requirements are dependability, interest
in the work, and availability for most of the year, plus
a reliable email connection.  Would any members (or their families 
or students) care to bid an hourly contract rate on the job?

    If this works out, I may be able to hire additional help
with scanning or condensing the news or with compiling links
for our website.


 1> Funding news:

    DARPA has a new program called the Advanced Simulation 
Technology Thrust, for modeling synthetic military forces
in simulated environments.  Relevant AI/agent technologies 
including multi-agent collaborative decision making, 
collaboration/communication between humans and agents, action 
selection and planning, behavioral "realism" (model effects of 
stress and other factors on performance), adaptation and learning, 
etc.  Proposals are due soon (!), approximately 30 days from the 
CBD announcement on 9/23/96.  See <http://www.darpa.mil/baa/ASTT> 
for the broad agency announcement (BAA).  [Booker 
<booker@mitre.org>, comp.ai, 10/9/96.]  (ARPA became DARPA
again in 2/96, under Title IX of the FY 96 Defense Authorization 
Act.  You might want to check <http://www.darpa.mil/baa/> 
occasionally to keep up with new research initiatives.)

    NSF/CISE is continuing its Experimental Systems initiative, 
for goal-oriented building, evaluating, and experimenting with
an intellectually challenging information processing system.  
$500K-$700K/year for 3-4 years.  Michael Foster <mfoster@nsf.gov>, 
MIPS, (703) 306-1936.  NSF/CISE also has three new collaborative 
initiatives:

1) Experimental Software Systems (ESS) will build on earlier, 
successful research that may have been conceptual or theoretical 
in nature, and support efforts to evaluate the most promising 
results; William Agresti <wagresti@nsf.gov>, CCR, (703) 306-1911.

2) Special Projects in Networking and Communications
(in collaboration with CS or social sciences), e.g., novel uses
of wireless communications, or work on the convergence
of computing, communications, and information; Darleen Fisher 
<dlfisher@nsf.gov>, NCRI, (703) 306-1949.

3) Challenges in Computer and Information Science and Engineering, 
with "support for research on a single problem that requires 
scientific advances across two or more sub-activities of CS
and engineering"; Robert Voigt <rvoigt@nsf.gov>, (703) 306-1900.

Participation from outside computer science is encouraged.
Awards are expected to be $250K-$600K/year over 2-4 years, but 
workshops and 12-18-month planning grants will also be considered.  
CISE is also prepared to jointly fund collaborative proposals 
submitted to other NSF directorates.  <www.cise.nsf.gov>.
[Robert Voigt <rvoigt@note1.nsf.gov>, ciselist, 10/8/96.]

    (Sounds like a great set of initiatives, breaking free of 
theoretical incrementalism to create entirely new applications.  
It was experimental research of this sort that gave us the 
Internet and then the Web.  Dare to dream projects that might not 
succeed: that's what NSF is for.  Just propose benefits that are 
worth the risk.  Lisp machines failed commercially, for instance, 
but were important research tools.  Ditto for expert systems,
with NIH rather than NSF support.  Now NSF is offering to support 
change-the-world software experiments, if you can line up 
collaborators in an application field.  This is better than
SBIR funding.  Go for it!)


 2> Internet news:

    34 research universities have agreed to work together
on Internet II, a fast network supported by member fees.
Current technology will be used, with as much participation
as possible by computer and communications companies.
Internet II will be gatewayed to the original Internet for
email and services from other sites.  [Chronicle of Higher Ed., 
10/11/96, A29.  EDUPAGE.]

    IBM has established a Lotus Notes-based Global Campus Network 
linking more than 30 universities in the US, Canada, and
Latin America.  Initial services include electronic application 
procedures and access to off-campus experts in various technical 
fields.  [WSJ, 10/10/96, B7.  EDUPAGE.]

    President Clinton has announced new initiatives for 
educational and library access to the Internet.  The research 
community will get $100M in FY'98 for a Next Generation Internet 
connecting over 100 universities and labs at speeds at least
100 times current capabilities.  A few sites will get speeds
10 times beyond that.  The funds will also cover research into
new network technologies.  $70M will come from the Defense budget, 
the other $30M from HPCC agency budgets.  Funding beyond one year 
has not been worked out.  Any relationship between this program 
and NSF's very-high-speed Network Backbone Service (vBNS) project 
is still under discussion.  Ditto for the Internet II project.  
[Rick Weingarten <rick@cra.org>, CRA Bulletin, 10/11/96.]

    DirecPC is a satellite-to-home Internet service from Hughes 
Electronics Corp.  The $699 21" dish system will be available from 
CompUSA outlets (starting in CA).  Speeds are at least 10 times 
telephone-based options, at $40-$130/month.  [WSJ, 10/10/96, B5.]

    Meanwhile, Rockwell says it will soon offer 56kbps modems
and chips.  US Robotics is rumored to be working on similar 
technology.  <http://www.rockwell.com:80/rockwell/whats_new
/pr960910.html>.  [Network News, 9/21/96.]  (That's slower than 
ISDN, ADSL/RADSL, or cable modem, of course, and you'd need 56kbs 
modems on both ends of a transmission.  I doubt that it will
catch on.)

    DreamWave (formerly Boston Online) is for discussion
and sharing of the hottest new products, tools, concepts, 
technologies, trends, and social issues on the Internet and WWW
-- search engines, personal news services, hypermedia mail,
global hypermedia groupware, privacy issues, etc.  Send
a "subscribe dreamwave" message to <majordomo@cybercom.net>,
or see <http://www.cybercom.net/~wmcguire/dreamwave.html> for
the archive.  [Wayne McGuire <wmcguire@cybercom.net>, NEW-LIST, 
10/6/96.]

    The Online Europe Development list is a moderated discussion 
for European Internet developers -- "the electronic counterpart
to Esther Dyson's annual High-Tech Forum in Europe, a meeting
of business people, thinkers and entrepreneurs."  It's been
active for about a year.  Contact <europe-on@isys.hu> or see 
<http://www.isys.hu/online-europe>.  [<steve@isys.hu>, net-hap, 
10/10/96.]

    A few sample articles from Esther Dyson's Release 1.0 
newsletter are available on the net.  See her 12/94 piece
on intellectual property rights and advertising-supported
channels at <http://www.edventure.com/release1/release11294
/release11294.html>.  [Robert D. Seidman <robert@clark.net>, 
ONLINE-L, 7/7/96.  net-hap.]  (Release 1.0 is $595/year in
the US and Canada; $650 elsewhere.  Roughly what I should be 
charging for the Communique.  The EDventure High-Tech Forum
is $2,900 extra.)

    I've previously mentioned C|NET's NEWS.COM service dedicated 
exclusively to technology news, esp. Internet/intranet, computing, 
and business news.  A weekly digest of highlights, News Dispatch, 
is available for a "subscribe news-dispatch your name" message
to <listserve@dispatch.cnet.com>.  "Think of News Dispatch
as your technology wake-up call."  NEWS.COM was announced with
a full-page in the S.F. Chronicle (9/4/96, D-10) commenting that 
InformationWeek, Computerworld, and PC Week "have all rejected
our advertising" -- presumably because C|Net is giving away
what they are trying to sell.  <http://www.news.com/>.  [Bill
Park <park@netcom.com>, 9/4/96.  Also Digital Dispatch, 9/4/96.]

    If you just want to chat with a support group, NERDNOSH
is a community of writers and readers gathered around a virtual 
campfire -- "a cyber-continuum of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales,"
or a lunchtime confab with friends (digested daily).  Send a 
"subscribe nerdnosh" message to <majordomo@story.nerdnosh.org>,
or see <http://www.corecom.net/reloj/Nerdnosh.html>
(or <http://www.netins.net/showcase/nerdnosh> for the archive).  
[Tim Bowden <urder@story.nerdnosh.org>, NEW-LIST, 10/11/96.]


 3> Java and Web news:

    The Java-COM discussion list has moved.  Send a "subscribe 
java-com your name" message to <listserv@listserv.msn.com>.  
Archives are on <http://microsoft.ease.lsoft.com/archives>.
[Rene Schuchter <a-renes@microsoft.com>, NEW-LIST, 9/12/96.]

    One way to speed up Web distribution is to cache Java software 
and multimedia files locally or on regional servers so that only 
updates need to be imported.  That's the idea behind Castanet, 
from Marimba Inc. (Palo Alto).  Cache updates can even be done
at night, prior to need.  [NYT, 10/7/96, C5.  EDUPAGE.]
Marimba was a 2/96, four-person spin-out from Sun's Java group, 
and is exciting the venture community with its "tech-mo" --
tech momentum.  Partners include Netscape, AT&T, MGM Interactive, 
Walt Disney Co., and HotWired.  Marimba recently tripled in size, 
and is planning 10 hires this year and 25 next year.  Their chief 
problem is that other companies may offer similar "repeater" 
products, which is why Marimba has filed for a patent on their 
distribution protocols.  There's a lot of demand for applications 
larger than can be implemented with applets that are downloaded 
every time they're needed.  Marimba is focusing on Java 
applications because there is no security risk in downloading
them to user's hard disks.  "We're basically spraying code
all over the place."  Other languages are planned, though.  
Marimba will keep its "tuner" or client software free, from 
<http://www.marimba.com>.  It will eventually charge for its 
"transmitter," "proxy," or "repeater" software, but will offer 
trial versions free for now.  [Jodi Mardesich, SJM, 10/7/96, 1E.]

    Intermind Corp. is offering a competing product, which
lets users set up automated retrieval of information they will 
want from specific websites.  [WSJ, 10/7/96, B9.  EDUPAGE.]
(And there are many shareware programs that let you monitor 
favorite websites for changes that you may want to download,
or to capture websites at night for off-line browsing during
the day.)

    This hasn't been a really high priority, but Web artists are 
bothered that their images are displayed in somewhat different 
colors on different PCs.  The World Wide Web Consortium has 
endorsed a Portable Networks Graphics specification for truer 
colors and faster downloading.  [IBD, 10/7/96, A8.  EDUPAGE.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.36 digest this week):

USC/Information Sciences Institute (Marina del Rey, CA): MS/PhD 
research staff (incl. programmers, project leaders) in intelligent 
information integration, KBS, object-oriented systems, distributed 
web applications, etc.  Large scale, "...should enjoy hacking
with a sense of the meta."

Washington U. (St. Louis): CS department chair.

Pittsburgh/CS: prof. of distributed or intelligent multimedia, 
HCI.

Northwestern U. (Evanston, IL): faculty in HCI and distributed 
multimedia, VR, etc.

Rice U. (Houston): faculty in AI, algorithms, languages,
graphics, DBMS, parallel systems, etc.

Communication Intelligence Corp. (CIC; Redwood Shores, CA):
MS character/handwriting recognition researcher.

Rockwell's Science Center (Thousand Oaks, CA): MS/PhD R&D 
engineers and programmers in HCI, VR, computer vision, speech 
recognition and synthesis, information filtering and presentation, 
etc.

New England company: principal engineer for pattern recognition 
and model matching.

Carnegie Group, Inc. (Pittsburgh): sr. R&D engineer
for military/government information filtering/retrieval,
text processing, fact extraction, etc.

US Army Artificial Intelligence Center Data Team (VA):
active SECRET DISCO clearance, for DB support of the Army (HQDA) 
Data Warehouse project.

UAlberta/CS (Edmonton): three profs. in AI, SE, DB, multimedia, 
graphics, or computer vision.

ULondon Queen Mary & Westfield College: AI postdoc in agent 
technology for communications.

UEssex (Colchester, UK): two sr. research officers to develop 
spoken language dialogue access to partially structured data. 

Cambridge, UK, company: developers (PhD AI researchers?)
for alife-based projects.

UStrathclyde (Scotland): lecturer in knowledge/information 
management, IR, electronic publishing, etc.

Ludwig-Maximilians University (Munich): MS/PhD RA to work on 
functional and constraint logic programming.

ATR Interpreting Telecommunications Laboratory (Kyoto): 
experienced R&D spoken-English language modeler.

Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST):
prof. of CS theory and algorithms.


 5> More on Seymour Cray:

    Stories about the late Seymour Cray, 71, can be found
on <http://pro.med.umn.edu/bmec/hoff/hoff_sc.html>.  One, which 
Tim Finin forwarded to me from Francis Lee <francis@v-one.com>
on EvangeList, tells how Steve Jobs was Cray's first and only 
walk-in customer.  It's said that Jobs showed up unannounced
at Cray headquarters in Mendota Heights, MN, and asked about 
buying a Cray.  He did get one, for designing the next generation 
of Macintosh.  Cray said that seemed reasonable, since he was 
using a Macintosh to design the next Cray!

    Another reminiscence is of Cray's first job after college.
An engineer there taught him to use intuition prior to 
computation.  "I thought, 'Wow, here's something new.'
So I put away my circular slide rule, and after that
I used intuition."  [Washington Post, 10/5/96.  EDUPAGE.]

					-- Ken


Nobody on his deathbed ever said:  "I wish I'd spent more time
at the office."  -- Peter Lynch, former manager of the Magellan 
Fund, who left his job at 46 (the age at which his father died)
to devote time to his family and his favorite Boston charities.  
[Money 1993.  QOTD, 9/1/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 70
 IS                                           October 10, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  HTML tutorials and style guides.
 2>  Web authoring tools.
 3>  Java, JavaScript, and CGI.
 4>  Graphic resources.
 5>  User-level tools.
 6>  Research software.
 7>  Journal calls.
 8>  In memoriam -- Seymour Cray.
_________________________________________________________________

These beetles were long considered to be very rare
because very few entomologists look for beetles
in the mountains, in winter, at night, during snow storms.
-- W.K. Purves, et al., "Life."
[Ari Halberstadt <ari@world.std.com>, 1/94.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    Bill Park asked me about webmaster resources,
so I've pulled a few leads from my files.  Once you know
what to look for, it's easy to find just about anything
on the web.


 1> HTML tutorials and style guides:

    "HTML Guide from InfoBON" offers training from beginning
HTML to advanced CGI and server-push animation.  
<http://www.cnw.com/~drclue/Formula_One.cgi/HTML/HTML.html>.  
[NetSurfer Digest.  Network News, 5/4/96.]

    HTML Reference Library 3.0 is a Windows HLP file about HTML 
syntax.  Available from ftp.swan.ac.uk/pub/in.coming/htmlib, 
<http://www.tucows.com/>, and other sites.  See also the HTMLib 
web site and its mailing list, at <http://subnet.virtual-pc.com
/~le387818/>.  [Stephen Le Hunte <cmlehunt@swansea.ac.uk>,
net-hap, 8/8/96.]

    Hundreds of links to HTML tutorials, backgrounds and icons, 
CGI scripts,
shareware, etc., can be found at The Ultimate Web Publisher's 
Guide, <http://dezines.com/site/>.  [Niel Daniels 
<nidan@mail.accent.net>, c.i.www.announce, 7/29/96.]

    inquiry.com provides free access to over 100K published,
full-text technical articles on software and networking: Java, 
Javascript, Visual Basic, C++, Delphi, HTML, VRML, SQL, etc.  
<http://www.inquiry.com/>, or see 
<http://www.wagners.com/inquiry.htm/> about adding this free 
service to your own website.  [Dave Wagner <davidw@ix.netcom.com>, 
alt.internet.services, 6/26/96.  net-hap.]

    Kevin Savetz is still compiling his "Unofficial
Internet Book List," now with more than 530 abstracts.  
<http://www.northcoast.com/savetz/booklist/>, or 
<ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet/news.answers/internet-services
/book-list> for a shorter version.  [savetz@northcoast.com>, 
alt.internet.services, 7/19/96.  net-hap.]

    Sun Microsystems offers a Web Style Guide and reference/link 
page, at <http://www.sun.com/styleguide/>.  [The Scout Report, 
7/19/96.]

    Creating a Successful Web Page is a step-by-step design
and advertising guide.  <http://www.hooked.net/~larrylin/web.htm.  
[Larry Lin <larrylin@hooked.net>, net-hap, 7/16/96.]

    Web Wonk: Tips for Writers and Designers.  
<http://www.dsiegel.com/tips/tips_home.html>.  [Network News, 
6/29/96.]

    Project Cool offers tips on what makes a site cool,
as in Glenn Davis' "Cool Site of the Day."  
<http://www.projectcool.com>.  [WEBster, 4/30/96.]

    Websites can be cool or clever, but what really works
to sell product?  Take a tour of successful sites on 
<http://www.samizdat.com/results.html>.  How-to articles and 
resource lists can be found on Resources for Doing Business, 
<http://www.samizdat.com/url.html>.  This includes free
page-creation services, publicity tips, Internet publications,
web tools, and innovative software.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 7/96.]


 2> Web authoring tools:

    Frontier Technologies is offering a free WYSIWYG
Web page editor that supports frames, tables, and forms.  
<http://www.frontiertech.com/products/dsgnintr.htm>.
[WEBster, 8/20/96.]

    Weblint 1.017 for checking HTML syntax has moved
to <http://www.cre.canon.co.uk/~neilb/weblint/>.  
[<neilb@cre.canon.co.uk>, net-hap, 7/8/96.]

    Website developers may find useful Windows, OS/2,
and Mac software at <http://www.cicerosoft.com/index.htm>, 
including web viewers, browsers, and Basic-to-C converters.  
[<O.Vinzent@cicerosoft.com>, net-hap, 7/19/96.]

    Internet Shareware and Web Authoring tools is a list of 
resources you can browse.  <http://www.teleport.com/~rongvang>.  
[<rongvang@teleport.com>, net-hap, 8/14/96.]

    There's a "one-stop shopping" site for internet resources, 
search engines, software (and helper apps), and web page 
resources, at <http://web.idirect.com/~klg/indexsea.html>.  
[Martin Slack <martins@markinor.co.za>, BESTWEB, 7/2/96.
net-hap.]

    Sean Carton's Cool Tool of the Day site offers
a new Internet or computer utility -- or game -- each day.  
<http://www.cooltool.com/>.  [Network News, 6/6/96.]


 3> Java, JavaScript, and CGI:

    The Gamelan site now lists over 2,300 Java resources, 
including a large collection of sample applets.  You'll want
a fast link and a browser that supports frames.  
<http://www.gamelan.com/>.  [Network News, 6/6/96.]

    TechWeb has tutorials about embedding Java applets
in your Web pages.  <http://techweb.cmp.com/products/techtools
/java/tutorial.html>.  [NetworkNews, 6/29/96.]

    3D graphics for finance is demonstrated by Robert's
Online Option Strategy Visualizer, a Java applet at 
<http://www.intrepid.com/~robertl/index.html>.  Best viewed
with Netscape 3.0.  [Robert Lum <robertl@intrepid.intrepid.com>, 
misc.invest.stocks, 7/5/96.  Bill Park.]

    The JavaScript Sourcebook can help you create interactive, 
multimedia Web pages without learning Java code.  
<http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/>.  [<jdemarra@wiley.com>,
net-hap, 8/1/96.]

    Clickables CGI WebPage Power offers Common Gateway Interface 
software for database search engines, shopping carts, ad banners, 
interactive forms, Web chat rooms, bulletin boards, classified 
ads, etc.  <http://www.clickables.com>.  [<rayc@sierra.net>,
net-hap, 7/30/96.]


 4> Graphic resources:

    Pam Bytes Free Web Graphics is a good source of buttons, 
backgrounds, banners, color-coordinated page sets, and links
to other resources.  <http://www.tgn.net/~pambytes>.
[Pam Gibson <ggrafx@tgn.net>, net-hap, 7/31/96.]

    Thousands of sites offer buttons, icons, clip art,
and other graphics for website creation.  The sites below
will each send you to hundreds of others:
<http://www.univ-tln.fr/help.html>, 
<http://www.cts.com/~netsales/herc/herccat.html>, 
<http://www.ceismc.gatech.edu/BusyT/>, 
<http://www.in.net/~kenroar/clipart.html>, 
<http://www.itec.sfsu.edu/multimedia/Clip-art.html>, 
<http://members.tripod.com/~stephenm/parody.htm>, 
<http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/1448/>, 
<http://www.infi.net/~rdralph/icons.
[Barbara L. Branch <bbranch@ns.net>, K12ADMIN, 7/18/96.  net-hap.]

    Also consider COREL's products for graphic designers.
COREL Gallery! is inexpensive, but the images are of fixed size.  
COREL 6.0 offers 25K images in the more flexible .CMX format.
Web Designer comes with 7,500 "Internet graphics" for $97,
and COREL's Office Companion has 15K graphics for $25.  [Ibid.]

    James D. Murray and William vanRyper's Encyclopedia
of Graphics File Formats, 2nd ed., is an integrated book, CD ROM, 
and WWW product covering over 100 image formats and many related 
resources.  O'Reilly & Associates (Sebastopol, CA), 707/829-0515, 
707/829-0104 Fax, <http://www.ora.com/>.
[Sara Winge <sara@ora.com>, net-hap, 5/29/96.]

    The Emerge website has a PDF Showcase that features 
interesting and innovative uses of Adobe Acrobat's portable 
document format.  <http://www.emrg.com/796showcase1.html>.  
[<kfoss@emrg.com>, net-hap, 7/21/96.]  (PDF gives better-looking 
pages than most other technologies, but you have to recompile
all of a PDF document if you change any of its pages.  HTML is 
ugly but easier to maintain, and adapts better to small screens
or CPU-limited browsers.)

    PowerPoint presentations can be displayed on a Web page
-- even on slow dial-up lines -- using the PointPlus plug-in.  
Download (with demos) from <http://home.netscape.com/comprod
/products/navigator/version_2.0/plugins/index.html>.
[Network News, 6/29/96.]


 5> User-level tools:

    Know someone who needs a web page?  "Sites that Offer
Free Web Pages" has moved its list to 
<http://members.tripod.com/~jpsp1/sites.html>.  Some of
the sites are only available to non-profit organizations.  
[<jpsp1@le.ac.uk>, net-hap, 5/14/96.]

    "connected." -- The Internet's Homepage -- claims to be
a good place to start browsing the net, plus a source of free 
image elements, background textures, and animations.  
<http://www.pcnet.com/~nherc/main.htm>.  [Nick <nherc@pcnet.com>, 
alt.online-service, 7/31/96.  net-hap.]

    Tool-Box offers a free point-and-click interface for building 
websites, including CGI and PERL for interactive email forms.  
<http://tool-box.com>.  [James Hurff <jhurff@resourcecenter.com>, 
alt.internet.guru, 7/23/96.  net-hap.]

    "HomeWork: An HTML Wizard" is another way to create
a home page without learning HTML.  It's Windows shareware,
from <http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win3/html/homewke.zip>.  
[Wouter Goede <goutier@euronet.nl>,
comp.archives.ms-windows.announce, 8/3/96.  net-hap.]

    Speed Surfer v2.0 is a Windows95 web accelerator
for Netscape Navigator.  It "learns your surfing tendencies,"
then loads web pages in the background during idle time.  Download 
<http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/inet/speed95.zip>
or <ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/inet/speed95.zip>.  
1.5MB.  [ViaSoft International <vmc@slip.net>,
comp.archives.ms-windows.announce, 7/13/96.]


 6> Research software (in our CRS 6.35 digest this week):

sGA.java 1.00: simple genetic algorithm implemented in Java.

The Interactive Simplex Tool: Java-based linear programming.
Also the NEOS Guide online book about optimization, with
case studies.

Neptune V1.0: expert-system information retrieval engine
with 10K-entry encyclopedia.

CLAIRE 1.0: functional/OOP language with rule-based inferencing.

Lisp code for a HERO ETW-18 robot, from Jay Michael.

India's Software Industry: 428-page book by Heeks.


 7> Journal calls:

    The J. of IWAR Intelligence Acquisition requests
information warfare papers for its first quarterly issue in the 
Spring of 1997.  12/15/96; William Church <wchurch@ricochet.net>.  
[sci.crypt.research, 10/3/96.]  (The journal is free
to qualified subscribers.)

    Intelligent Data Analysis is seeking articles in AI,
data visualization, fusion, mining, filtering, etc., using NN,
FL, ML, statistical pattern recognition, and knowledge filtering.  
A. Famili <famili@ai.iit.nrc.ca>, (613) 993-8554, (613) 952-7151 
Fax.  <http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ida>.
[comp.simulation, 10/2/96.]

    ALMA -- 'Scores of the Unfinished Thought' --
is a new scientific web-magazine about AI, expert systems,
neural networks, communication, and Internet culture.  See 
<http://www.diemme.it/~luigi/alma.html>.  Inputs are solicited
by Luigi Caputo <luigi@diemme.it>.  [<domen@biscredit.com>, 
comp.ai, 10/3/96.]

    Non-standard constraint processing; JETAI.  Dynamic,
fuzzy, hierarchical, partial constraint satisfaction,
meta-CSPs, relaxation of overconstrained problems, special
domains (e.g., continuous, time interval), approximate algorithms, 
etc.  10/31/96; Walter Hower <walter@cs.ucc.ie>, +353-21-90-3113 
Fax.  [comp.constraints, 9/16/96.  David Joslin.]

    Evolutionary computation in biochemistry and molecular 
biology; BioSystems.  2/28/97; David B. Fogel <dfogel
@natural-selection.com>.  [<fogel@sunshine.ucsd.edu>, 
comp.ai.genetic, 10/3/96.]

    AI and the changing face of health care; IEEE Expert.  
1/31/97; Erika Rogers <erika@cc.gatech.edu>, (404) 880-6952,
(404) 880-6963 Fax.  [comp.ai, 9/16/96.]

    Decision support for health care in a new information age; 
Decision Support Systems.  1/15/97; Olivia R. Liu Sheng 
<olivia@usthk.ust.hk>, +852-2358-7645, +852-2358-2421 Fax.  
<http://home.ust.hk/~olivia/dss.html>.  [Anindya Datta 
<adatta@loochi.bpa.arizona.edu>, dbworld, 9/23/96.]

    Data mining; J. of Intelligent Information Systems (JIIS).  
11/1/96; Jiawei Han <han@cs.sfu.ca>.  
<http://www.isse.gmu.edu/JIIS/>.  [dbworld, 7/9/96.]

    Synthesis, transformation, and analysis of logic programs;
J. of Logic Programming.  2/10/97; Yves Deville 
<jlpspis@info.ucl.ac.be>.  [Stephane Tonneau <st@info.ucl.ac.be>, 
comp.object.logic, 9/25/96.]

    Epistemological aspects of embodied AI
and artificial life; Cybernetics and Systems.
10/14/96; Erich Prem <erich@ai.univie.ac.at>.  
<http://www.ai.univie.ac.at/~erich/cascall.html>.
[comp.ai.alife, 10/3/96.]


 8> In memoriam -- Seymour Cray:

    Supercomputer architect Seymour Cray died this week,
after his car was forced off the road when another collided with 
oncoming traffic while passing.  Cray designed the Control Data 
6600 and 7600 before founding Cray Research to make the Cray 1.  
[CRA Bulletin, 10/9/96.]

					-- Ken


People are afraid that if they are satisfied with what
they have -- or who they are -- their lives will never improve.  
The paradox is, the more satisfied you are with who you are
and what you have, the easier it is to create abundance, 
confidence, and success.  [Joan Sotkin <joan@rfl.com>,
Resources for Living Newsletter, 10/2/96.  Mike Uschold.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 72
 IS                                           October 17, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Apple news.
 2>  Software development.
 3>  Research software.
 4>  Art, book, and journal calls.
 5>  Bibliographic and journal services.
_________________________________________________________________

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around,
and don't let anyone tell you any different.  -- Kurt Vonnegut.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 9/19/96.]


Goood Afternoon, Computists!


 1> Apple news:

    Motorola has announced a StarMax line of eight Mac clones for 
11/96 delivery, with PowerPC processors running at 160MHz-200MHz.  
Also a 5-year warranty.  They're expected to be cheaper than 
equivalent Macs and "solid performers."  <http://www.mot.com/GSS
/MCG/products/systems/ds/starmax/SMfamily.htm>.  [TidBITS, 
9/23/96.]  (Max, Macs... clever.)

    (Incidentally, Motorola says that their Chinese operations 
brought in more than $1B in 1995.  [Reuters.  NewtNews, 10/1/96.  
Bill Park])

    Apple and Sun say they will bridge Macintosh computers and 
Solaris enterprise servers so as to offer the Mac's multimedia 
strengths with the performance of Sun's Unix-based machines.  
Apple and Sun will also make QuickTime and OpenDoc interoperate 
with Java.  <http://product.info.apple.com/pr/press.releases
/1996/q4/960918.pr.rel.sun.html>.  [TidBITS, 9/23/96.]

    Apple and Netscape have also agreed to work together
to develop QuickTime-based audio and video conferencing over
the Internet.  [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 9/29/96, H2.]
(Bill Park says that the CD ROM mailed free with the 11/96 issue 
of MacWorld has some nice QuickTime VR demos.  The CD ROMs are
a real bargain, if they keep coming.)

    Apple has released QuickTime Plugin 1.1, bringing QuickTime VR 
functionality to Web browsers.  There's also an Apple Media Tool 
2.1 for QuickTime VR developers.  [iNews.  NewtNews, 9/24/96.]

    You can get Apple's 4.1MB System 7.5.5 Update from 
<ftp://download.info.apple.com/pub/System_7.5.5_Update/> or 
<http://support.info.apple.com/ftp/7.5.5.html>, or by ordering
the three floppies from 800/293-6617 for $13 (US customers).
This release is primarily bug fixes and updates to virtual memory, 
the SCSI Manager, and networking.  Several sources of crashes have 
been fixed, and both booting and application launch may be faster.  
If you download the disk images, you'll also need a utility such 
as ShrinkWrap from <<ftp://mirror.aol.com/pub/info-mac/disk
/shrink-wrap-201.hqx>.  Technical notes on the update can be found 
at <http://devworld.apple.com/dev/technotes/tn/tn1069.html>, 
<http://www.macintouch.com/>, and 
<http://www.oakland.edu/%7Elandau/sadmacs/system7.5.5.html>.  
[Geoff Duncan <geoff@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 9/23/96.]

    Apple's new DR2 developer release of MkLinux for non-PCI
Power Macs is said to be "beta quality," which is a significant 
improvement on DR1.  Geoff Duncan recommends the $20 CD ROM from 
Prime Time Freeware, <http://www.ptf.com/ptf/products/MKLP/>,
but you can opt for the massive download from 
<http://www.mklinux.apple.com/>.  [TidBITS, 9/30/96.]

    UserLand has released Frontier 4.1, an Internet-savvy 
Macintosh scripting environment.  The user interface and 
documentation have been upgraded, and it's still free.
You can download the full release or a 2.5MB updater from 
<http://www.scripting.com/frontier/>.  [TidBITS, 10/7/96.]

    Rumors continue to circulate about Apple possibly buying Be
or licensing the BeOS operating system, even though the technology 
is not backward-compatible with Apple's products.  Power Computing 
is also said to be preparing an early 1997 machine that can run 
MacOS from one hard disk and BeOS from another -- but not 
simultaneously.  The BeBox started from scratch, and so was able 
to develop a small, simple, fast operating system able to display, 
for instance, 4-8 videos and three graphic windows simultaneously 
-- with just two Power PC processors.  Video displays can even
be dragged around as they play.  The developer manual is only 700 
pages, vs. 24 [mostly thin] volumes for the Mac and maybe
a room full for Windows.  Only about 3,000 developer machines
have been made, though.  For more info, see  <http://www.be.com> 
or the comp.sys.be newsgroup.  One of the best rumor sites
is run by R.D. Novo of the Infinite Loop Rangers, 
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/AppleSauce>.  Or see Austin 360's news 
story "BeBox takes on computing Goliaths," 
<http://www.statesman.com/tech/technews/10oct/07/be7.htm>.
Other sites are BeYond <http://www.skip.adb.gu.se/beyond/>, 
BeFirst <http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/befirst/>,
and The Betoken Vault <http://www.cybercity.dk/users/ccc4485
/bezone/home.html>.  [Yomiuri Shimbun, 10/15/96.  Info-Mac Digest.  
Bill Park.]


 2> Software development:

    Metrowerks is now shipping CodeWarrior 10 for Mac OS.
This programming tool offers  new visual support for Java.  
[iNews.  NewtNews, 9/24/96.]  (Bill Parks notes that you can get
a good deal if you buy it at a conference such as MacWorld.
He got two $30 books and a year's subscription to MacTech.)

    Metrowerks' CodeWarrior PowerPlant C++ class library for Mac 
now has a "hands-on" tutorial on the PowerPlant Beginner's page, 
<http://www.netaccess.on.ca/~breakpt/html/powerplant.html>.  
[Darren King <breakpt@netaccess.on.ca>, 
comp.sys.mac.programmer.codewarrior, 9/19/96.  Bill Park.]

    Mac OS Students and Teachers (MOST) is a forum for
learning Mac programming.  <http://www.aimed.org/most>.  [Jens 
Malmgren <malmgren@euronet.nl>, think-c, 9/15/96.  Bill Park.]

    Mac programmers will appreciate the FAQ (frequently asked 
questions file) at <http://www.best.com/~ckt/faq/>.  An FTP-able 
archive of the HTML pages is <ftp://ftp.best.com/pub/ckt/faq.hqx>.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 7/20/96.]

    FutureBASIC is a discussion list for FutureBASIC
programming on the Mac.  Send a "subscribe futurebasic" message
to <listserv@associate.com>.  [Glen Stewart 
<postmaster@associate.com>, NEW-LIST, 10/1/96.]

    Q-Basic is an open, moderated discussion and code exchange for 
Q-Basic programmers.  Send a "subscribe your name email@address" 
message to <q-basic@juno.com>.  [Ted Behling <behling@juno.com>, 
NEW-LIST, 10/2/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS 6.36 digest this week):

Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA):
machine learning workbench for Unix.

FlexTool: software modules for intelligent systems.

LIKSE: local Internet keyword search engine.

Daily Notes for Windows: text note creation and retrieval 
software.

Servile Software expert system engines for help desks.

Braitenberg vehicles resources.

Rethinking Innateness: connectionist book by Elman, Bates, 
Johnson, Karmiloff-Smith, Parisi, and Plunkett.  "Study this book 
if you are interested in how minds emerge from developing brains."

Handbook of Neural Computation: book from Oxford U. Press.

Programming Perl (2nd ed.): book by Wall, Christiansen,
and Schwartz.

Teaching and Learning Formal Methods: book ed. by Dean,
Hinchey, and Limerick.


 4> Art, book, and journal calls:

    The Slate Gallery, from Slate magazine, features month-long 
exhibitions of original interactive-media art -- for pay!  Approx. 
100K visits/month.  <http://www.slate.com/SlateGallery
/96-09-25/SlateGallery.asp>.  Discuss proposed works with
David S. Bennahum <davidsol@panix.com>.  [MEME, 10/2/96.]

    Peter Fingar is co-authoring a book on Intelligent Agent 
Technology for Business, and would like to receive reports
or lessons that he can include.  <pfingar@digital.net>,
(813) 251-5531.  [DAI-List, 9/29/96.]

    Academic Press is introducing a new International Series
in Formal Methods, under series editor Michael G. Hinchey 
<hinchey@cis.njit.edu>.  "Formal methods" refers to mathematical 
techniques for the specification, analysis, design, 
implementation, and maintenance of software and hardware.  
<http://www.csis.ul.ie/hincheym/ap/main.html>.  Potential authors 
should contact Hinchey or Academic Press commissioning editor
Kate Brewin <kbrewin@apuk.co.uk>.  [comp.software-eng, 10/8/96.]  
(The first volume is "Teaching and Learning formal Methods,"
by Dean, Hinchey, and Limerick.  See the announcement in our
CRS digest this week.)

    Knowledge Engineering Review (KER), based in the UK,
is soliciting articles, tutorials, book and software reviews,
etc.  Contact North American associate editor Adele Howe 
<howe@cs.colostate.edu>, or see <http://www.cup.org
/Journals/JNLSCAT/ker/ker.html>.  [10/16/96.]

    IEEE Internet Computing is a new bimonthly "to help the 
engineer use the technologies and resources of the Internet."  
Topics include WWW, Java, system engineering, mobile agents, 
message protocols, engineering ontologies, web scaling, 
intelligent search, online catalogs, distributed document 
authoring, electronic design notebooks, electronic libraries, 
security, remote instruction, distributed project management, 
electronic commerce, and intranets.  Papers are solicited
by Charles Petrie <petrie@cdr.stanford.edu>.  
<http://www.computer.org/pubs/internet/>.
[Agostino Poggi <poggi@cm2.unipr.it>, DAI-List, 10/3/96.]

    Scaling the Internet; IEEE Internet Computing.  11/15/96; 
Frank Maurer <maurer@informatik.uni-kl.de>.  [Ibid.]

    Internet project coordination; IEEE Internet Computing.  
1/15/97; Miro Benda <miro@atc.boeing.com>.  [Ibid.]

    Agents; IEEE Internet Computing.  3/15/97;
Munindar Singh <singh@ncsu.edu>.  [Ibid.]

    Intranets; IEEE Internet Computing.  5/15/97;
William C. Regli <regli@cme.nist.gov>.  [Ibid.]

    Internet economics; IEEE Internet Computing.  7/15/97;
Charles Petrie <petrie@cdr.stanford.edu>.  [Ibid.]

    Information organization and retrieval methods on the 
Internet; The Public-Access Computer Systems Review.  Pat Ensor 
<plensor@uh.edu>.  <http://info.lib.uh.edu/pacsrev.html>.  
[IRLIST, 10/7/96.]

    Interacting with computers; Human Computer Interaction
and Information Retrieval.  1/30/97; Chris Johnson 
<johnson@dcs.gla.ac.uk>.  [IRLIST, 10/7/96.]

    Methods in researching online;
J. of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC).  11/1/96.  
<http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/vol2/issue1/cfp.html>.  
[<tracihon@castor.usc.edu>, sci.anthropology, 10/6/96.]

    Computer processes for virtual organizations;
J. of Computer-Mediated Communication (JCMC) and Organization 
Science.  3/1/97.  <http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/oscfp.html>.  
[<tracihon@castor.usc.edu>, sci.anthropology, 10/6/96.]

    Social informatics; J. of the American Society for
Information Science (JASIS), early 1998.  1/15/97; Carol Anne Hert 
<chert@indiana.edu>, (812) 855-9763, (812) 855-6166 Fax.  
<http://www-slis.lib.indiana.edu/SI/cfp-sijasis.html>.
[IRLIST, 10/7/96.]

    Distributed AI in medicine over the World Wide Web:
Artificial Intelligence in Medicine, mid-1998.  3/30/96;
Marco Ramoni <m.ramoni@open.ac.uk>, +44 (1908) 655721, +44 (1908) 
653169 Fax.  <http://kmi.open.ac.uk/"marco/projects/wai/aimj>.  
[dbworld, 10/15/96.]

    Learning in games; Games and Economic Behavior, 5/98.  
1/31/97; David K. Levine <dlevine@ucla.edu>.  [sci.econ.research, 
10/3/96.]

    Radial basis functions networks; Neurocomputing.  12/15/96;
V. David Sanchez A. <dsanchez@scis.nova.edu>, +1 (954) 723-2744 
Fax.  [DeLiang Wang <dwang@cis.ohio-state.edu>, connectionists, 
10/14/96.]

    Computational finance; Algorithmica, 6/30/98.  6/1/97;
Ming Y. Kao <kao@kao.cs.duke.edu>.  [misc.invest, 10/11/96.]

    Software component maintenance and reuse through evolutionary 
programming technology; Int. J. of Applied Software Technology 
(IJAST).  12/14/96; David C. Rine <drine@cne.gmu.edu>,
703-993-1530, 703-993-3729 Fax.  [<iapc@acm.org>,
comp.dcom.net-management, 10/11/96.]


 5> Bibliographic and journal services:

    You can get free searches of 100K published technical articles 
at <http://www.inquiry.com/>.  Also technical forums and online 
expertise.  [<dave@wagners.com>, c.i.www.announce, 3/14/96.]

    The Computer Science Bibliography Collection
at UKarlsruhe offers several forms-based search interfaces
to its 570K references and 20K online publications.
The AI database includes nearly 15K journal articles,
10K conference papers, and 5K technical reports.
The site also links to 1,600 other bibliographic sites.  
<http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/index.html>.  [Alf-
Christian Achilles <liinwwwa@ira.uka.de>, comp.doc.techreports, 
8/26/96.]

    The Association of American University Presses (AAUP)
Online Catalog and Bookstore offers searchable descriptions
of more than 400 scholarly journals and 65K titles.  
<http://aaup.princeton.edu> or gopher
to press-gopher.uchicago.edu.  <aaupco@ix.netcom.com>.
[Scott P. Kerlin <spkerlin@flash.lakeheadu.ca>, AERA-GSL,
12/8/95.  net-hap.]

    The Online Magazine Directory is at <http://www.web-search.com
/magazine.html>.  [<webmaster@web-search.com>, net-hap, 2/13/96.]

    Ecola's Newsstand has pointers to over 800 English-language 
periodicals worldwide.  <http://www.ecoa.com/news/>,
or <http://www.ecola.com/ez/tradepub.htm> for computer trade 
publications.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 1/17/96.]

    Other Internet magazine sources include ZD Net, 
<http://www.zdnet.com/home/filters/main.html>; Electronic 
magazines, <http://www.abc.hu/unix/magazines.html>; E-ZINE LIST, 
<http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/index.html>; PATHFINDER, 
<http://pathfinder.com/@@qr8ij3OyvgIAQNCz/pathfinder/about.html>; 
and <http://www.dorsai.org/~tnellen/zines.html>.  [Mike Schelling 
<mas0417@ix.netcom.com>, BESTWEB, 8/14/96.  net-hap.]

    MediaFinder offers a searchable database of newsletters, 
magazines, journals, and catalogs in 265 subject categories.
This includes the Oxbridge Directory of Newsletters, the National 
Directory of Catalogs, and the 24K-entry National Directory
of Magazines, 15K-entry National Directory of Mailing Lists,
and 85K-entry Standard Periodical Directory.  
<http://www.mediafinder.com>.  [Liz W. Tompkins, inet-news, 
3/9/96.]

					-- Ken


Contentment is not the fulfillment of what you want,
but the realization of how much you already have.
[Barbara Sherman <serene1@netzone.com>, 10/96.]

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 73
 IS                                           October 22, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry news.
 2>  Internet news.
 3>  Education.
 4>  Career jobs.
 5>  Personal advice.
 6>  Feng Shui and mysticism.
_________________________________________________________________

Nothing that results from human progress is achieved
with unanimous consent.  And those who are enlightened
before the others are condemned to pursue that light available
in spite of the others.  -- Christopher Columbus.
[Bill Dorsey <dorsey@lila.com>, 12/93.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:
  
    Lucent Technologies is distributing an early version
of its Inferno network operating system, which can link Websites 
into the phone network.  Developers can download the Inferno 
programming language (Limbo) and other tools and beta applications 
for Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0, IRIX 5.3, Solaris 2.5, and
the Plan 9 operating system.  A commercial release is planned
by the end of 1996. <http://www.lucent.com/inferno>.
[WEBster, 9/17/96.]

    Microsoft has announced its Windows CE operating system,
"an open, scalable Windows platform for a broad range of 
communications, entertainment, and mobile computing devices."  
Applications will be appearing at the 11/96 Comdex trade show,
for devices from HP, NEC, Compaq, Casio, and Philips.  
<http://www.microsoft.com/Windows/WindowsCE/qna.htm>.
[NewtNews, 9/24/96.]  (Apple responds that it's already
shipping 2nd-generation Newtons with over 200 applications.
Task-specific hardware platforms are being developed, and
Newtons based on the StrongArm processor will be announced
in a few weeks.)

    Apple's Newton MessagePad currently has about 29% of the 
personal digital assistant (PDA) market, selling through 1,200 
retail outlets and catalogs.  U.S. Robotics' (Palm division)
Pilot PDA has a 60% market share.  (The Pilot has only been 
available for a few months, so this number may be as temporary
as it is impressive.)  The Pilot lacks Newton's communications 
capabilities and 3rd-party software, but is smaller, less 
expensive, and works very well.  [PC Data.  NewtNews, 10/1/96.]


 2> Internet news:

    Iran is trying to centralize all access to the Internet
in order to maintain a certain level of decency, and to ban
sites of the Mujahedeen Khalq and other opposition groups,
the B'ahai religion, and any Western propaganda.
[NYT, 10/8/96, A4.  EDUPAGE.]

    Burma has gone even further, outlawing the unauthorized 
possession of a computer with networking capability.  Anyone
who evades the law or who sends or received information about 
state security, the economy, or national culture will be subject 
to 7-15 years in prison.  [Financial Times, 10/5/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    CompuServe has modified its membership license to say that
it and its contractors have "a non-exclusive, paid-up, perpetual 
and worldwide right to copy, distribute, display, perform, 
publish, translate, adapt, modify and otherwise use in connection 
with CompuServe's business (and that of CompuServe's designated 
licensees, transferees, designees and contractors)" any files, 
software, or information you post to their service areas.
This may be intended to permit conversion to HTML and other
Web formats, but it claims much more.  Publishers of the NetNotify 
e-zine have decided to no longer distribute their publication
via CompuServe file libraries.  [<74777.2670@compuserve.com>,
net-hap, 10/11/96.]  (If CompuServe decides that it is in the 
publishing business, does it have royalty-free rights to all 
posted material?  Could it edit your material at will?  Insert
its own paid advertising on every screen?)

    CompuServe also has a restriction on "adult" software,
so Dave Morris' AIVR Corp. has moved its new Girlfriend Donna
"AI game" demo to a different ISP.  AIVR is selling a $59.96
CD ROM with full-motion video of a sexy model responding to
your conversational inputs.  <http://www.aivr.com>.  [Dave
Morris <71334.1136@compuserve.com>, aivr-adultlist, 10/1/96.]

    Prodigy is abandoning its proprietary online service
in favor of being an value-added Internet service provider (ISP), 
or route to the Web.  A $100M ad campaign will firm up its
new image.  [WSJ, 10/17/96, B11.  EDUPAGE.]  (Let's see...
$100M divided by a few million users is how much per user?)

    digital-culture is a new list for critical debate about 
technological issues.  Send a "join digital-culture your name" 
message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  [<digital-culture-request
@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-lists, 9/27/97.]


 3> Education:

    California will start its own Internet-based college program, 
rather than participate in the Western Governors' "virtual 
university" project.  "California is uniquely positioned
to become a world leader in the development and distribution
of college-level software and courses."  The CA plan will leave 
accreditation and control to the participating universities.
"We do feel that faculty should be in charge."  [Chronicle of
Higher Ed. Academe Today, 10/3/96 and 10/11/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    NSF's Third International Math and Science Study finds US 
standards unfocused and aimed at the lowest common denominator.  
"A Splintered Vision: An Investigation of U.S. Science and Math 
Education" notes that US textbooks, which cover far more topics 
than is typical in other countries, are "a mile wide and an inch 
deep" -- emphasizing the least demanding topics.  [Robert L. Park, 
WHAT'S NEW, 10/18/96.]

    Want to influence US science policy?  APS and AIP
are sponsoring 1-year congressional science fellowships,
usually running September through August.  $45K plus relocation 
and benefits.  <http://www.aps.org/public_affairs/fellow.html>.  
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 10/18/96.]

    The open peer-reviewed J. of Interactive Media in Education 
(JIME) is now on the Web.  <http://www-jime.open.ac.uk/jime/>.  
[<S.Buckingham.Shum@open.ac.uk>, epub_announce, 9/2/96.]

    Steve McCarty's "The Internet for Educator Development" is an 
article about how to hold an academic conference entirely online.  
<http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/index.html>.  
[<steve_mc@ws0.kagawa-jc.ac.jp>, neteach-l, 10/14/96.  net-hap.]


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.37 digest this week):

Kansas State U./CIS (Manhattan, KS): prof. of
data/knowledge-base systems.

UC Irvine: prof. of DB, digital libraries, HCI, IR, multimedia, 
visualization, or communications.

SUNY Stony Brook (NY): two faculty in GUI, visualization, 
multimedia, logic programming, DB, networks, etc.

Siemens Corporate Research (Princeton, NJ): R&D personnel
in ML, AI/ES, adaptive signal processing, fuzzy logic,
user agents, NN, and intelligent control.

Lucent Technologies Bell Laboratories/Advanced Decision Support 
System group (Holmdel NJ): MS/PhD researchers in CS, OR, or 
industrial engineering.

Apple Computer (Cupertino, CA): information access researchers
-- collaborative systems, filtering, indexing, browsing, 
summarization, clustering, visualization, etc.

GE Corporate R&D Information Technology Laboratory (Schenectady, 
NY): MS/PhD researchers in computational linguistics, NLP, and IR.

Franz Inc. (Berkeley, CA): director of [AI/KR/CAD/agent] 
engineering; also several Lisp developers.

Defense company (NJ): US MS sr. member of technical staff
for AI/expert systems R&D.

UEast Anglia (Norwich, UK): RA for automatic segmentation
of speech.

The British Library R&D Department (Lancaster): RA
in concept-based abstracting.

Ubilab (Zurich): PhD multimedia-IR researcher.

Telenor R&D (Norway): Norwegian speech synthesis researcher.


 5> Personal advice:

    The Ideas list is for discussion of the life-changing ideas 
(other than religion) in motivational or self-help tapes and books 
-- Alessandra, Brown, Canfield, Robbins, Waitley, Ziglar, 
Unlimited Power, Think and Grow Rich, Chicken Soup for the Soul, 
etc.  Send a "subscribe ideas" or "subscribe ideas-digest"
message to <majordomo@esosoft.com>.  R. Marshall <owner-ideas
@esosoft.com>.  [<roma@ix.gen.com>, NEW-LIST, 9/22/96.]

    Success Express Journal (SEJ) will "boldly communicate only 
the most positive and uplifting stories, lessons and articles" to 
"assist people in making one small positive change every morning, 
that after a long period of time will have a massive and positive 
effect on their lives."  Weekly.  Send a "subscribe sej"
subject line and message to <maiser@ten31.com>.  Send a
"subscribe sej-talk" command to join the associated
SEJ-TALK unmoderated discussion group.  Kaizen Technologies 
<sej@success.ie>.  [Ron M. <roma@ix.gen.com>, NEW-LIST, 9/8/96.]

    How do you get people to work well together?
Ask them what they would need in order to work well together.  
They'll come up with something, and develop a collective sense
of responsibility.  You might also redesign jobs, office layout, 
and group rewards.  If you truly want to create a collaborative 
culture, it will happen.  [Ann Majchrzak and Qianwei Wang,
Harvard Business Review, 9/96, p. 92.  NewtNews, 10/1/96.]


 6> Feng Shui and mysticism:

    Rearranging home or office layout is a delicate design task,
with seemingly trivial details often having psychological
impacts.  Whether desks face inward or have a view, for instance, 
affects whether people work as drones or have a visionary outlook.
Look around you; does your view dominate the room, or do you
feel dominated, threatened, or isolated?  Desk placement
relative to doors and windows determines whether you can 
concentrate peacefully or have to keep looking up to see
who's entering your territory.  Location relative to plants, 
filing cabinets, photocopiers, coffee makers, and mirrors
can affect your energy and stress levels.  Colors and shapes
also have their effects.  Such design elements would be
considered by a Feng Shui practitioner, following comfort 
heuristics developed over thousands of years.  Take a look at 
Master Lam Kam Chuen's "Feng Shui Handbook: How to Create
a Healthier Living and Working Environment" (Henry Holt
and Company, NY, 1996, 160 pp.) before you dismiss the idea.
It's a beautifully designed book, with color illustrations on 
nearly every page.  More importantly, it will sensitize you to 
psychological factors that have been affecting you subconsciously 
-- subtle factors, but strong enough to drain your energy and 
initiative, or to spark fights with your coworkers.
The blissful peace of an Oriental garden or temple is no accident.  
Feng Shui can help you harmonize the physical patterns
of your life, and that's a start on creating confidence
and your own good fortune.

    "I never said it was possible.  I only said it was true."
-- Charles Richet, Nobel Laureate in Physiology.
[AWAD, 10/15/96.]

    Deeper levels of Feng Shui are tied to astrology and an 
esoteric theory of chi lines in the Earth.  I have no knowledge
of the training, and no opinion as to whether the techniques 
produce useful results.  (When ignorant, have no opinion.
It seems such a simple principle, but people have trouble with it.  
I'm not agnostic about astrology, though; numerous studies of 
major systems have found them uncorrelated with any measures of 
success.)  Anyway, I'm sure that one champion of Science
who would question Feng Shui theory is James "The Amazing" Randi.  
His James Randi Educational Foundation (Fort Lauderdale, FL)
is now offering $742K -- perhaps soon $1M -- for the first 
conclusive demonstration of any paranormal phenomenon.
(You can make your own pledge if you wish, in $1K increments.  
Contact <randi-hotline-request@ssr.com>.)  The foundation is 
prepared to pay in 7 days, so contestants don't have to handle 
collection from 200 donors.  Even so, psychics have expressed 
objections:  "I can't afford to be in a higher tax bracket."
"I'm already rich."  "I don't want the money; I'm totally 
spiritual."  "You wouldn't pay me the money, anyway."  "It's all
a lie; there is no prize."  "It's a trap by the CIA to identify 
and murder me."  "The prize comes from the CIA (or from
the communists)."  "God told me not to get into it."  "If I win, 
you'll have me killed to save the money."  "You'll put out 
negative vibes to inhibit my powers."  "Since you're a trickster, 
you'll fool me somehow."  "It's too much money."  "It's not
enough money."  "I want the money in a pile, in cash, (or a 
certified check) before I try."  Etc.  <http://www.randi.org>.  
[randi-hotline, 10/16/96.]

    Although I respect Randi, I think the skeptics are too 
trusting of current scientific consensus.  Science advances
by testing hypotheses, but the hypotheses often come from outside.  
Physicists have been particularly willing to consider strange 
hypotheses, from whatever source.  One theory of particle physics 
suggests that antimatter is just matter moving backward through 
time.  (Photons are their own anti-particles, so they can be 
moving both ways at once.)

    I've just been reading a 1975 book, Fritjof Capra's
"The Tao of Physics," which suggests that modern cosmology
is similar to Hindu/Buddhist/Taoist conceptions of the universe, 
and that energy packets in quantum field space may possibly be 
identified with Oriental notions of "chi."  Cool, but it's
pretty much just hand waving and poetic license.  (Sometimes
chi just means self-confidence, or goal-directed behavior,
or "life force," or metabolic energy.  Science needs a consistent 
vocabulary; mysticism does not.)

    Randi lives in a world of fools (such as myself?) and frauds, 
and may be too quick to categorize non-science as nonsense.
I'm hoping there's more to existence than Science has yet studied.  
In particular, I'd like to know whether the visions and healing 
anecdotes in Dan Millman's "Peaceful Warrior" books are factual.  
Medieval medicine has been looted for whatever good it contained, 
and the remainder can rightly be discarded as ignorance.
(With exceptions.  Just recently it's been reported that babies 
with cystic fibrosis have skin that tastes salty -- a diagnostic 
technique that had fallen into disuse.)  Chinese and shamanistic 
mind-body medicine have not been subjected to the same sifting, 
and may have valid untested elements.  That they look like 
hypnotism or medieval European medicine is not sufficient grounds 
for rejection.  I'm pleased that NIH is putting some money
into studying acupuncture and the like, although Randi
and other skeptics are right to question whether the studies
are scientifically valid.

					-- Ken


In order to punish me for my contempt for authority
God made me an authority myself.  -- Albert Einstein.
[Richard M. Hartman <hartman@alphoid.romoidoy.com>, 10/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 74
 IS                                           October 24, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Electronic commerce.
 2>  Online news.
 3>  Electronic publishing.
 4>  Research software.
 5>  Internet guides.
 6>  Hardware/software reviews.
 7>  Business services.
 8>  Misc.
_________________________________________________________________

Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over
if you just sit there.  -- Will Rogers.
[Christopher Harper <harperc@is.nyu.edu>, 10/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Electronic commerce:

    CyberCash (Orlando, FL) is introducing CyberCoin,
an electronic payment mechanism for charges of 25 cents to $10.  
Consumers can download a free Internet Wallet from 
<http://www.cybercash.com>.  The wallet software can accept
$20-$80 cash transfers from participating banks -- currently
First Union, First USA Paymentech, First Data Corporation,
and Michigan National Bank -- or from any major credit card.  
Payments for goods are then sent via the CyberCash server.  
[WEBster, 10/1/96.]

    Canadian sales via Internet have already reached $400M/year, 
and are expected to be $600M by the year 2000 and $1.4T by 2010.  
[Jupiter Communications.  Toronto Star, 9/25/96, C11.  EDUPAGE.]

    E.COMMERCE TODAY bills itself as "The Newsletter of
Internet-Based Electronic Commerce and Business Strategy."  
Emailed news about banking and investment, law, government, 
software, etc.  Send a "Subscribe E.C TODAY your name 
your@email.address" subject line to Robert Vinet 
<vnetwork@nbnet.nb.ca>.  [NEW-LIST, 9/5/96.]

    Classified Connection is a "swap meet" where Macintosh users 
can buy and sell Mac products.  <http://www.macintoshos.com>.  
[Brent Crandall <macos@macintoshos.com>, Mac*Chat, 8/16/96.]


 2> Online news:

    ClariNet Communications (San Jose) can now deliver
news streams to your Netscape Inbox Direct email account.
You get a ClariAlert email message once or twice a day --
your choice -- with highlights selected from 2K stories each day.  
Netscape can then access the ClariNet e.News pages from your
local Usenet server, sometimes including pictures and graphics.  
"Granular filtering" helps customize your news stream.  
CEO/publisher Brad Templeton says that Usenet distribution
works better than a Web server for such high-volume services,
as was demonstrated by the busy Olympic Games websites.
Plus, Netscape Navigator's newsreader will remember which
groups you've subscribed to and what you've read, limiting 
displayed headlines to those since your last reading.  Sign up
at <http://www.alert.clari.net> or <http://www.clari.net>.  
[WEBster, 10/15/96.]  (ClariAlert?  Who thinks up such names?  
ClariNet must be doing something right, though; they claim
1.5M licensed readers for their 500 newsgroups.  I presume that 
counts everyone at a university if the university subscribes.)

    AnchorDesk provides ZD Net's "insider analysis" of
important computer news, via email alerts to website articles 
(with lab results, commentaries, discussion groups, and links
to related stories).  <http://www.anchordesk.com>.  Jesse Berst 
<jesse@jesseberst.com>, Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.  
[<info@anchordesk.com>, newjour, 8/28/96.]

    NBNews is a new email "news wire" service, similar to 
[defunct, I think] INET-News, for $49.95/year.  All site reviews 
by Liz W. Tompkins and James Porteous will be copyright-free.
The archive is currently at 
<http://www.helsinki.fi/valttdk/lists/inet-news/>.  
[<liz@kersur.net>, net-hap, 10/4/96.]

    Fox News online offers 24-hour news coverage, a search engine, 
and sections on business, health, sports, technology, etc.
You can even listen to the news via streaming RealAudio.  
<http://www.foxnews.com/>.  [<stamer@erols.com>, gsunet-l, 
10/14/96.  net-hap.]

    Macintosh Daily Journal (MDJ) is an Internet daily with news, 
analysis, and commentary -- free in beta test for 500 subscribers.  
setext or Adobe Acrobat format.  <http://www.gcsf.com/>.  
[TidBITS, 8/19/96.]

    ShareTheNews is an HTML-format Mac newsletter.  Download 
ShareTheNews6/96.sit from <http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/sharethemac
/STN.html>, or get /info-mac/per/news/share-the-news-96-06.hqx 
from any info-mac mirror.  221KB.  [Marco Almeida Carrico 
<alm.carrico@mail.telepac.pt>, 8/9/96.  Bill Park.]


 3> Electronic publishing:

    Que's Digital Bookshelf offers 30 online books about WWW,
web publishing, web programming, web servers, and networking,
for searching or browsing.  Sams Publishing offers 15 on web site 
construction, Java, Javascript, Netscape 3.0, etc.  These are
part of Macmillan Computer Publishing Online Books, 
<http://www.mcp.com/3316680954417/mcp/online_books/>.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 9/26/96.]

    McGraw-Hill is planning a 1997 series of peer-reviewed
e-journals, called McGraw-Hill Science Online.  [Financial Times, 
10/17/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    National Academy Press has put more than 1K health,
science, and technology books online, at <http://www.nap.edu>.  
Another 4K books will be posted during the coming year.  
[<mgriskey@nas.edu>, net-hap, 9/27/96.]  (Proof, I think,
that people really don't want to read book from theirs computer 
screens.)

    Sixteen US DOD Information Analysis Centers are
charged with analyzing and disseminating scientific
and technical information.  You can read their newsletters
from <http://www.wl.wpafb.af.mil/library/iacnews.htm>.
[Scout Report, 10/11/96.]

    John Labovitz's E-Zine List now tracks 1,336 electronic 'zines 
in over 40 categories (including "computer" and "software").  
"Zines are generally produced by one person or a small group
of people, done often for fun or personal reasons, and tend
to be irreverent, bizarre, and/or esoteric."  
<http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/>.  [Mike Schelling 
<schelling-m@smtpgw.nctsw.navy.mil>, gsunet-l, 9/28/96.  net-hap.]

    On the Internet, no one knows you're sneaking a peek
at the National Enquirer: <http://www.nationalenquirer.com/>.  
[Donna Wair <wair@library.vanderbilt.edu>, gsunet-l, 9/26/96.  
net-hap.]

    Imagecopy is a list about protection of images
via digital watermarking and other schemes.
<http://i-site.on.ca/forum/Imagecopy>.  [Venanzio Jelenic 
<venanzio@i-site.on.ca>, net=hap, 10/3/96.]

    If you'd like to publish an online or hardcopy magazine,
check out the resources at TheMag@zineChannel, 
<http://www.magazinechannel.com>.  General publishing, design
and layout, editorial/journalism, circulation/promotion, 
production and web publishing, research tools, etc.
[Liz W. Tompkins <liz@kersur.net>, inet-news, 8/1/96.]


 4> Research software (in our CRS 6.37 digest this week):

ART*Enterprise 2.0: Web-enabled rule/CBR expert system 
environment.

Gazelle Applet Developer beta: Oberon compiler for PCs, Macs,
and Juice plug-ins.

jaNet sources: Java neural network toolkit code.

IRIS 2.07: Java knowledge-based GIS/visual data mapping
and exploration applet.

Truck-backer-upper Java applet from Tobias Blickle.

CyberHub Client beta: VRML 3D browser plug-in for Netscape 
Navigator.

SSEYO Koan X beta: free "drag 'n' mix" PC music synthesis plug-in.

ants_a_i: AI simulation of an ant nest.

The Electrotonic Workbench: simulation of biological neurons.

Fuzzy logic processor resource list from John Emerick.

Gigabit Network Kits: NSF-sponsored open research platform
for distributed/HPC systems researchers.

MPI V1.1 Validation Suite: DARPA-sponsored message passing 
interface test case suite from Intel.

PCx beta 2.0: interior-point code for linear programming.

HIPR: Hypertext image processing teaching materials.

Secrets Of The Super Net Searchers: 350-page book by Reva Basch.

"Modeling Nature: Cellular Automata Simulations with Mathematica": 
book by Richard Gaylord.


 5> Internet guides:

    TechKnow Times is a free newsletter about "tomorrow's 
technology" on the Internet and Web.  Send a "subscribe" message 
to <techknow-request@techknowtimes.com>, or see back issues at 
<http://www.TechKnowTimes.com> or <http://www.techknowtimes.com>.  
<webmaster@knowledgetech.com>.  You can get the most recent issue 
via a blank message to <current-issue@knowledgetech.com>.
[Thom Byxbe <byxbe@content.net>, NEW-LIST, 9/25/96.]

    Internet Voyager uses a five star rating system for
Web products and services.  Some of the hardcopy articles
are reprinted on <http://www.internetvoyager.com>.
[Donald L. Nicholas <subs@bluedolphin.com>, newjour, 10/7/96.]

    "Your WebScout" offers links to computer software pages
and newsletters (plus 21 other topics).  
<http://www.webcom.com/webscout/>.
[Adam Thyer <prom@webcom.com>, alt.comp.virus, 8/24/96.]

    You can speed up your web browsing by using an off-line
web agent to download pages you'd like to see.  TechWeb's
review of the top seven agents can be found on 
<http://www.techweb.com/tools/agents/agents.html>.
[Network News, 9/21/96.]


 6> Hardware/software reviews:

    Web Fanatic "covers the hottest new Internet software
and hardware, in a unique and exuberant style."  It's a column
by Wes Thomas, formerly of the Web Addict column for Web Review 
magazine.  <http://www.cobb.com/webfan/>.  [NetWIRE, 9/3/96.]

    PC Update Magazine is now on the Web, for free,
at <http://www.global-press.co.uk/pcu>.  (It started on
Microsoft Network in 8/95.)  Continuous news updating, chiefly
for a UK audience.  [<pcu_frmmgr@msn.com>, newjour, 9/3/96.]

    Computerist Magazine covers PC and Mac computing news
and software releases.  Planet 3 Productions also offers
a free clinic for help with problems.  [Internet-on-a-Disk, 7/96.]

    Read Me First is a monthly magazine of Mac software/shareware 
and hardware reviews.  <http://www.spiritone.com/~dbudin/>.  
[David Budin <dbudin@spiritone.com>, 8/18/96.  Bill Park.]

    MacCom is an email magazine of reviews for Mac shareware, 
freeware, commercial software, hardware, books, etc.
MacCom Online Ads offer commercial deals (MacCom Marketplace)
and non-commercial classifieds (MacCom EconoAds), plus jobs 
announcements.  You can even win prizes in sponsored contests.  
Send a "SUBSCRIBE MC" subject line to Aaron <fivestarti@aol.com>, 
or sign up at <http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/3441
/maccom.html>.  [NEW-LIST, 8/25/96.  Also BESTWEB, 9/28/96.]

    Update Weekly.Mac is the new name of Macintosh Software
Update Report, a publication from LEVEL 6 Computing that
tracks current Mac software and update versions.  An advertising-
supported version is now free, or you can get an ad-free
expanded service for $49/year.  (MSUR was formerly $150/year.)  
LEVEL 6 Computing <http://www.webcom.com/level6/>, 818/888-0675, 
818/888-5635 Fax.  [TidBITS, 8/26/96.]

    The Benchin' Software Review site offers product categories 
sorted by user rating, across all platforms.  You can add
your own reviews, after registering your name (for free).  
<http://www.benchin.com>.  Software vendors can update listings 
and add links to their own websites, with permission from
Todd Ganovski <tganovski@benchin.com>.  [Wes Wasson 
<wwasson@asdsoft.com>, MacWay.  Chuck Morefield, 8/4/96.]


 7> Business services:

    "A Business Researcher's Interests" is a WWW resource 
directory for IS managers and business organization researchers.  
Full-text papers, magazines and journals, case studies,
tools, jobs and resume pages, etc.  "A virtual clearinghouse
for information technology leaders."  
<http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/interest.html>.
[Yogesh Malhotra <malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu>, 8/30/96.]

    Don Felice has an interesting business.  He goes to the major 
computer conferences and will sell you his observations for 
$500/year.  Some of his recent notes:  "Only 4% of US housholds 
have at least one Internet user." -- Dale Dougherty, Songline 
Studios.  "More than 13 reuses are required to recover the cost
of developing a reusable component."  -- Dr. George Schussel, DCI.  
Conference Analysis newsletter, Giga Information Group (Cambridge, 
MA), <http://www.gigaweb.com/>.  [Bill Park, <park@netcom.com>, 
8/29/96.]

    Need to raise funds for a nonprofit organization?  FundUK
is a discussion list about [primarily British] fund raising
issues and practices, including direct marketing, trading, events, 
tax-efficient giving, street collections, corporate, statutory, 
trusts, capital appeals, and affinity schemes.  Send a
"subscribe funduk" message to <funduk-request@lists.dircon.co.uk>.  
[Howard Lake <hlake@fundraising.co.uk>, NEW-LIST, 9/2/96.]


 8> Misc.:

    In TCC 6.72, I mentioned McCarty's how-to article for online 
conferences.  (It's a review of such a conference, written for
The Language Teacher.)  The article has been moved to an archive 
page, <http://langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt/pub/tlt/96/sept
/internet.html>.

    Want a 1978 copy of the Restriction Language Manual of
the Linguistic String Project of NYU?  It's a 300-page loose leaf 
notebook about a syntactic approach to parsing natural language.  
Mykel Board is looking for anyone wanting his copy.  Mention
Item 00441 to <mykelb@ix.netcom.com>.  [comp.ai, 10/13/96.]

    Beware Lance Chambers' "Practical Handbook of Genetic 
Algorithms. Volume 1: Applications" (CRC Press, 1995, $70).  
According to a couple of reports, the accompanying disk has
some problems.  Although it's a PC-format disk, all the files
are stuffed Mac binaries (with corrupted resource forks).
Even if you get the binaries extracted, they're buggy and
can crash your system -- and the Pascal source code for 
Codewarrior may not compile.  [Andy Nicoll and Rajarishi Sinha 
<rsinha+@andrew.cmu.edu>, comp.ai.genetic, 10/11/96.]

    If you want publicity for your stock market analysis software, 
try winning the Investment Simulation Competition (ISC) from
The Strategic Investment Society (SIS) and the Internet 
Association (CUIA) of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
It's open to anyone on the Internet -- not software entrants -- 
and is starting 10/28/96.  Each participant gets a simulated
HK$1M to invest in the Hong Kong stock market.  The top
six winners will get cash prizes totaling HK$5,000.  
<http://www.prochina.com.hk/invest/>, or contact <cuia-mkt
@cuhk.edu.hk>.  [<s957843@mailserv.cuhk.edu.hk>, hk.general, 
10/15/96.]

					-- Ken


You may have noticed some mistakes in this issue.
This is because we try to have something for everyone,
and some people are always looking for mistakes.
[TCU Band's, Froghorn newsletter.
Dan Galvin <dan-galvin@tamu.edu>, TFTD, 10/20/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 75
 IS                                           October 29, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry news.
 2>  Java.
 3>  Career jobs.
 4>  Ephemeral opportunities.
 5>  Mathematics.
 6>  Genetic algorithms.
 7>  Entertainment.
_________________________________________________________________

Swing hard, in case they throw the ball where you're swinging.
-- Duke Snider.  [AWAD, 10/3/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Industry news:

    AT&T's new president and heir apparent, John R. Walter,
lacks telecommunications experience (and was a surprise
"dark horse" and disappointment to analysts).  Walter was
chairman of R.R. Donnelley & Sons, and helped recast it from
a traditional printing company into a digital information 
provider.  [NYT, 10/24/96, A1.  EDUPAGE.]  (Guess what market
AT&T would like to enter.  Might be a good place to look
for work.)

    AOL has contracted with BBN to convert the service to
TCP/IP (Internet) form and to add at least 70K modems/year
for five years.  AOL currently has 170K modems.  [WSJ, 10/18/96, 
A13A.  EDUPAGE.]

    There's growing interest again in the personal digital 
assistant (PDA) market, for units that act as pagers and wireless 
phones, do voice recognition, surf the Web, or walk the dog for 
you.  To monitor this field, send a "subscribe newt_news" message 
to <majordomo@tristero.io.com>.  There's also a new PDA page
at <http://www.pdapage.com>.  Or you could attend the Hand-held
& PDA Expo and Forum (San Mateo, CA) on 12/4-12/6/96; 
<info@wmsltd.com>.  [NewtNews, 10/15/96.  Bill Park.]

    Info on speech recognition on the Newton is available from 
Motorola's Lexicus division as <http://www.mot.com/MIMS/lexicus
/press/releases/Sept_9_96.html> or <http://www.mot.com/MIMS
/lexicus/speech/index.html>.  The code is said to take 12KB
(plus vocabulary space), is language-independent, requires only 
two repetitions per command word or phrase, and has a recognition 
accuracy of 96% in noisy environments and 99.8% otherwise.  
Processing overlaps input, with recognition from a 10-word 
vocabulary in less than .8 seconds.  [NewtNews, 10/15/96.]

    ("The best use of a Newton comes from a random web page:
'The Newton Message Pad PDA is a major babe magnet.'"
-- Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 10/11/96.)

    The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents
is seeking technology proposals for PDAs, personal travel 
assistance, audio-visual entertainment, and other agent systems.  
<http://www.cselt.stet.it/fipa/tokyo/cfp1.htm>.
[UMBC AgentNews Webletter, 10/14/96.]

    I previously reported a Gartner Group estimate that it costs 
about $13K/year to maintain a networked Windows PC.  The details: 
$2,730 (21%) for amortized hardware and software (including wires, 
hubs, routers, and servers); $3,510 (27%) for technical support; 
$1,170 (9%) for system administration; and $5,590 (43%)
for user "futzing" with the machine -- installing software,
organizing files, waiting for networked resources, playing games, 
or unproductively surfing the Net.  [Forbes, 10/21/96, p. 280.  
EDUPAGE.]  (Clearly we need to futz faster.  Maybe a special
co-processor?)


 2> Java:

    Corel is planning to market a Java-based Pocket Network 
Computer (PNC) with built-in modem, for about $500.  [PC Week, 
10/14/96, p. 144.  Mark Moore and John Dodge, NewtNews, 10/22/96.]

    Sun plans to sell a diskless "network computer"
(by next summer?) based on its own picoJava chip.  The chip
is suitable for peripherals, cell phones, and pagers, but can't 
run compiled binary code (for CPUs).  For Java, it reduces code 
size by a factor of three and increases execution speed up to 20x.  
[IW, 10/14/96, p. 32.  NewtNews, 10/22/96.]

    Bill Park notes that "NewtonScript and Java are both
object-oriented languages that compile to a processor-independent 
byte code and run in an interpretive mode with automatic garbage 
collection.  NewtonScript has an unusual inheritance method 
different from C++, but supports persistent objects (which Java 
does not).  Java has a number of features intended to enhance 
security, prevent viruses, etc., while NewtonScript has none.
It will be very painful for developers if Apple tries to replace 
NewtonScript with Java.  On the other hand, it's kind of ludicrous 
to implement one platform-independent language (Java) in another 
(NewtonScript), not to mention inefficient in space and speed
in a cramped PDA."  [<park@netcom.com>, 10/24/96.]

    Although Java is touted as a secure language, the lack of
a formal description of Java's type prevents proof of correctness 
of the run-time system's type verifier.  Indeed, David Hopwood
has shown that a subclass of any nonfinal class can be constructed 
without security checks.  Developers must create applets
too weak to do any damage.  [Michael Shoffner and Merlin Hughes, 
Dr. Dobb's Journal, 11/96, pp. 38.  Bill Park.]

    Natural Intelligence has announced an upgrade to their
Roaster 2.3 Java development environment. <http://www.roaster.com> 
[Farcast.  NewtNews, 10/22/96.]


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest this week):

UPennsylvania (Philadelphia): CIS faculty, including DB,
real-time, robotics, vision, graphics, NLP, logic,
distributed systems, algorithms, etc.

Thomson Technology Services Group (Rockville, MD):
BS NLP/IR research engineer.

AT&T Labs (NJ): MS/PhD research to work on browsing
large speech databases.

Hitachi America, Ltd. (Santa Clara, CA): PhD researchers in DB, 
data analysis, data mining, visualization, etc.

Associative Computing, Inc. (San Jose, CA): MS AI engineer
for ML, planning, CBR, and KR in intelligent-agent R&D.

Redwood Shores company (CA): handwriting/character recognition 
scientist.

Xinotech (MN): BS/MS/PhD jobs in compilers, DB,
and automatic source code translation.

CA company: PhD sr. principal engineer/scientist
for intelligent systems (AI, ES, NN).

Eloquent Technology, Inc. (Ithaca, NY): several jobs
in rule-based multilanguage text-to-speech synthesis.

UWaterloo Speech Processing Laboratory (Ontario): postdocs,
RAs, or GRAs in multilingual speech recognition.

Forum Technology and the Defence Research Agency (Malvern, UK):
BS to work in large-vocabulary speech recognition.

Chalmers U. of Technology (Gothenburg, Sweden): asst. prof.
or PhD student in discrete optimization/OR to work on airline
crew scheduling.


 4> Ephemeral opportunities:

    Jeffrey Blessing of the Milwaukee School of Engineering
wishes to sell a Symbolics 3600 Lisp Machine and 1993 software.  
The highest bid over $1K gets it.  <blessing@msoe.edu>,
(414) 277-7194.  [comp.ai, 10/21/96.  David Joslin.]

    The J. of Intelligent Information Systems (JIIS) special issue 
on data mining has extended its deadline to 11/7/96, if you send 
an abstract by 11/1/96 to Jiawei Han <han@cs.sfu.ca>.  [dbworld, 
10/24/96.]

    International Aerial Robotics Competition rules,
pictures, videos, and other information can be found on 
<http://avdil.gtri.gatech.edu/AUVS/IARCLaunchPoint.html>.  
[<Robert.Michelson@gtri.gatech.edu>, net-hap, 9/27/96.]

    The WinEDA Online Engineering Conference claims to be
"the first fully online conference and exhibit" -- free at 
<http://www.wedasite.com> through 11/96.  [Stan Baker 
<sbaker@best.com>, net-hap, 10/18/96.]


 5> Mathematics:

    Ask Dr. Math gets about 40 questions/day from school kids
and others.  <http://forum.swarthmore.edu/dr.math/>.
If you'd like to take a shift, see 
<http://forum.swarthmore.edu/dr.math/office_help/>.  [Stephen 
Weimar <dr.math-admin@forum.swarthmore.edu>, net-hap, 10/9/96.]

    mathqa is a filtered version of the Usenet sci.math newsgroup, 
retaining only postings with mathematical content, website 
pointers,and conference announcements.  (No software.)
About 35 messages per day, with responses directed back
to sci.math.  Send a "subscribe mathqa" message to 
<ajordomo@lists.oulu.fi>.  [Nick Halloway <snowe@rain.org>,
NEW-LIST, 9/20/96.]  (Volunteers should do this for
the AI or CS newsgroups ...)

    The FAQs for linear and nonlinear programming are moving
to <http://www.mcs.anl.gov/home/otc/Guide/faq/>, where Robert 
Fourer is taking over their maintenance.  [John W. Gregory 
<ashbury@skypoint.com>, sci.op-research, 10/4/96.  David Joslin.]

    OR/MS Today, a bimonthly for members of the Institute
for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS),
can be retrieved from <http://lionhrtpub.com/ORMS.html>.  
[<lpi@lionhrtpub.com>, newjour, 9/18/96.]

    The peer-reviewed J. of Statistical Software and its code
-- maintained by the authors -- are free on the UCLA Statistics 
Webserver, <http://www.stat.ucla.edu/journals/jss/>.  Some 
articles will have interactive demos, and there's a chat room
for discussing statistical software.  Documented and reviewed 
datasets may also be available.  [David Nichols 
<nichols@spss.com>, comp.soft-sys.stat.spss, 9/10/96.]

    Students can get the $995 SYSTAT Graduate Pack from SPSS for 
under $200, with data management, exploratory data analysis (EDA), 
confirmatory analysis, predictive modeling, and over 70 types
of graphs and charts.  For Mac or Windows 3.1/95.  Contact info 
and demos: <http://www.spss.com>.  [Educom Update, 10/15/96.]


 6> Genetic algorithms:

    There's a good article about genetic programming
in Scientific American, 10/96, p. 48.  Incidentally,
if you're planning to use genetic algorithms you should look into 
John Koza's US patents.  Sean Luke says they're numbers 4,935,877, 
5,136,686 (symbolic regression), 5,148,513 (co-evolution), 
5,343,554 (automatically defined functions), and 5,390,282.  
[<seanl@carmi.cs.umd.edu>, comp.ai.alife, 10/18/96.]  Koza also 
has a pending patent for circuit design via genetic algorithms; 
Craig Shaefer has two patents on GA; and various applications
have been patented.  Holland's two patents are on classifier 
systems, not GA.  [Bill Punch <punch@cps.msu.edu>,
genetic-programming, 10/20/96.  Bill Park.]

    (If you're working in a different field, you should know
the relevant patents there.  The SciAm article notes that 
decreased government research funding is one of the driving
forces behind increased patenting.  Koza's patents are said
to be particularly algorithmic.  If they are so much so that
they interfere with scientific research, they might well be 
unenforceable.  The real danger may be to the free exchange
of information, over time scales less than that required for 
obtaining patents.)

    Artificial Painter is a genetic algorithm for creating
"alife art movies."  Single-neuron recordings are taken
from animats with neural-network control systems, and these
are somehow combined and evolved into artistic pictures
using user-guided genetic algorithms.  Movies in MPEG and AVI 
formats can be seen at <http://www.daimi.aau.dk/~hhl/ap.html>.  
[Henrik Hautop Lund <hhl@daimi.aau.dk>, comp.ai.alife, 10/8/96.]


 7> Entertainment:

    Researchers may want to see the 9/96 issue of the Annals
of Improbable Research (AIR) for E. Robert Schulman's
"How to Write a Scientific Paper."  "We (meaning I) present 
observations on the scientific publishing process which
(meaning that) are important and timely in that unless I have
more published papers soon, I will never get another job."
[mini-AIR, 9/96.]  (AIR is $23/year (US) from <air@improb.com>, 
617-661-0927 Fax.  For mini-AIR, send a "subscribe mini-air
your name" message to <listproc@air.harvard.edu>.)

    XYZZYnews is a bimonthly web magazine about interactive 
fiction, esp. text-based adventure games -- new or old.  
<http://www.users.interport.net/~eileen/design/xyzzynews.html>. 
Eileen Mullin <eileen@interport.net>.  [Kevin Maurer 
<kmaurer@seas.upenn.edu>, newjour, 8/16/96.]

    If you've got time for a battlefield simulation,
try Sierra On-Line's CD-based "Robert E. Lee: Civil War General."  
You oppose the Yankee computer with infantry, cavalry, and 
artillery, and must allow for terrain, morale, and weapon supply.  
Battles are enlivened with video re-enactments.  "You won't be 
rewriting history on your first day."  $55 from 1-800-757-7707.  
[Newsweek, 9/30/96, p. 12.]  (Sounds a lot like one of
the Avalon Hill board games.)

    The World Othello Computer competition has just finished.
For info, telnet to faust.uni-paderborn.de 5000.  [Louis Geoffroy 
<bigjeff@cam.org>, comp.ai.games, 10/7/96.]  (Log in as "guest",
I think.  There's also an Othello website at
<http://www.uni-paderborn.de/fachbereich/AG/agklbue/staff/igor
/othello/>, but it needs Java and it crashed my system.)

    FreePlay is a free biweekly newsletter about Internet 
multiplayer games.  Send a "subscribe freeplay" message
to <majordomo@marit.cypronet.com>.  
<http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/4874/>.  
<freeplay@hotmail.com>.  [<mshnayer@genre.com>, newjour, 9/27/96.]

    Need some cool games for your Mac or PC?  Here's a list
of info links from Red Herring magazine (9/96, p. 150):
Red Herring Games, <http://www.herring.com/games>;
Duke Nukem 3D (PC only), <http://www.3drealms.com>;
Descent, <http://www.macplay.com>;
Marathon 2: Durandal, <http://www.bungie.com>;
Terminal Velocity (PC), <http://www.3drealms.com>;
PegLeg (Mac), <http://www.changeling.com>;
Swoop (Mac), <http://www.ambrosiasw.com>;
Warcraft II, <http://www.blizzard.com>; and
ZPC (PowerMac), <http://www.gtinteractive.com>.
[NewtNews, 10/1/96.  Bill Park.]  (Bill notes that
the new 64-bit Nintendo games appear to be winners,
if you can afford a separate game processor.  Sharp,
full-screen, video-rate, personal-viewpoint, 3D graphics.  
BlockBusters in Menlo Park is renting the games for
about $16 for three nights.)

					-- Ken


Obviously, where art has it over life is in the matter of editing.  
Life can be seen to suffer from a drastic lack of editing.
It stops too quick, or else it goes on too long.  Worse,
its pacing is erratic.  Some chapters are little more than
a few sentences in length, while others stretch into volumes.  
Life, for all its raw talent, has little sense of structure.
It creates amazing textures, but it can't be counted on for
snappy beginnings or good endings either.  Indeed, in many cases 
no ending is provided at all.  -- Larry McMurtry, "Film Flam."  
[TFTD, 10/21/96.]

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 76
 IS                                           October 31, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Apple slices.
 2>  Electronic publishing.
 3>  Research software.
 4>  Linguistics.
 5>  Information retrieval.
 6>  Personal finance.
_________________________________________________________________

Historically, high-tech phenomena have been bounded by
what is possible: by what the technology can do.
The Internet is in the odd situation of being bounded by
what is interesting: by what its users are willing to do.
-- Brian K. Reid.  [Seminar notice, 10/25/96.  Bill Park.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Apple slices:

    George Wagner did a count of CD ROMS in the Educorp 
educational software catalog.  863 worked on Macs;
only 828 were for the DOS/Windows/Windows 95 platforms.
All but 6 of the 117 for Windows 95 were also available for
DOS or Windows.  [<g.wagner@sylvania.sev.org>, MacWay, 10/15/95.]

    Jim Trudeau's "The Programming Starter Kit for the Macintosh" 
(Hayden Books) is selling as well as any guide to Java.  
Metrowerks hasn't had a downturn since the debut of the Power PC 
platform.  [Paulina Borsook <http://www.transaction.net/people
/paulina.html>, Upside, 11/96.  DaveNet, 10/12/96.]

    Motorola's new StarMax Mac clones have an unofficial home page 
at <http://www.earthlink.net/~zubin/StarMax/index.html>.  
[<zubin@earthlink.net>, MacWay, 10/15/96.]

    Oliver Dueck is also putting up web information about Mac OS 
computers, esp. the Performa 6400, Motorola StarMax 3000, and
the Power Computing clones.  <http://www.awesome.holowww.com
/buying-a-mac/>.  [<odueck@pobox.com>, MacWay, 10/16/96.]

    "Apple's new management wants to revamp its reputation as
a 500-pound gorilla with epilepsy: a large, dangerous,
semi-intelligent organism inclined to fits and disorganization. 
... If Gil and Heidi can find that balance, there is hope.
Small developers know that the cost of entry into the Mac 
marketplace is far lower than into Wintel's, and that in all 
niches of the Wintel marketplace, especially the interesting ones, 
they will have to go up against Microsoft."  [Paulina Borsook 
<http://www.transaction.net/people/paulina.html>, Upside, 11/96.  
DaveNet, 10/12/96.]

    "Our stuff rolls forward; Apple is focused on its own 
problems.  The world looks less and less to Apple to solve
the problems in the Macintosh world, and that feels right."
[Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, DaveNet, 10/12/96.]


 2> Electronic publishing:

    Wired Ventures, Inc. is having trouble with its planned 
initial public offering (IPO).  The market is no longer throwing 
money at Internet companies, and Wired's prospectus is said
not to propose a sound growth path.  The company claims to be 
worth about $293M, or about 12 times annual revenues.  (That's 
down from a claimed $447M in 6/96.)  Wired Magazine is profitable, 
but their online ventures are not.  [U.S. News & World Report, 
10/21/96, p. 68.  EDUPAGE.]

    The weekly Web Review is back again, after a hiatus
for financial reasons.  It's a high-quality online publication, 
but only 700 people said they'd be willing to pay $19.95 for
six months.  Miller Freeman is now sponsoring it, to advertise 
their Web Techniques magazine <http://www.webtechniques.com>
and Web Design and Development Conference <http://www.web96.com>.  
Web Review will therefore focus on Web professionals and their 
leading-edge trends, techniques, and technologies.  
<http://www.webreview.com>.  [David Sims <wreview@wfi.com>, 
9/24/96.  Bill Park.]

    WorldFlash News Ticker is a new Windows 95 Internet 
information agent, similar to PointCast.  You get scrolling stock 
quotes, news headlines, incoming email headers, and local weather 
updates in a separate window, supported by advertising.  Click on 
the headlines to tap more than two dozen US and international news 
sources.  Download from <http://www.scroller.com>.  [Ken Shapiro 
<kensh@well.com>, comp.os.ms-windows.apps.winsock.mail, 9/29/96.  
net-hap.]

    Some the the emailed HTML and setext newsletters are
switching to a system called Intermind Communicator.
You download a 1MB plug-in -- currently for Windows 95 and NT, 
soon for 3.1 and Mac -- that needs 15MB of disk space, then 
another small "hyperconnector" file for each subscription news 
service.  Your browser will check the news site at specified 
intervals, notifying you of any new material.  You pull in
the information you want instead of having it shoved at you via 
email or broadcast via the Web.  Much easier for the publisher, 
and with easy HTML links for sponsor's ads.  The chief drawback
is that this is version 1.0 software, and has problems with
files over 15KB.  For more info, see 
<http://www.news.com/Perspectives/ds/ds10_8_96.html>, 
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-349.html>,
or <http://www.intermind.com>.  [David Strom <david@strom.com>, 
Web Informant, 10/18/96.]

    A committee from the Consortium of College & University
Media Centers has developed "fair use" guidelines for professors 
and students creating CD-ROM and multimedia projects.
The guidelines limit use of copyrighted material -- e.g., 10%
or 30 seconds of a musical work, whichever is less -- and the 
number of copies that can be created.  For distance education, 
access must be limited to enrolled students.  Academic and 
industry support is now being sought.  [Chronicle of Higher Ed., 
10/25/96, A28.  EDUPAGE.]

    The "Database Investment and Intellectual Property Antipiracy 
Act of 1996," H.R.3531, has so far had no debates, no hearings, 
and no votes -- yet the Clinton administration is adding its 
provisions to a "Draft Treaty on Intellectual Property in Respect 
to Databases" to be taken up in Geneva in 12/96.  The treaty
would create a new form of intellectual property protection
for compilations of information, "ending the policy of full
and open exchange of scientific data."  The policy is opposed by
the Association of American Universities, the National Academy
of Sciences, and the Association of Research Libraries.
[Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 10/25/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS 6.38 digest this week):

Data Natural: NL DB/knowledge-base system.

Trajan 2.0: shareware/commercial NN simulation package.

TDL, fSC-net, MPIL: NN, fuzzy, and instance-based
machine learning for Windows.

MProbe: software for determining the local shape
of a nonlinear function.

Blocks world demo applet of cooperative agents, from Andrzej 
Bieszczad.

3D vehicle simulator for Linux and X windows, from Robin Edwards.

EUODHILOS-II: proof-construction assistant.

Mercury and lambda-Prolog logic programming languages.

Comments on Lisp systems for Windows 95.

AMAZON 2.0: "business logic programming" tool for WWW access
to legacy databases.

Majordomo 1.94: Perl-based mailing list manager with spam filters.

Links to Chinese-language software for PCs.

LINK: discrete computation and visualization, esp. graphs
and hypergraphs.

PDEase2D Release 3.0: Macsyma finite element software for Windows.

Signal and Image Processing with Neural Networks: 1994 book
by T. Masters, with 1D and 2D Gabor and wavelet transform code.

ALIFE V conference review.


 4> Linguistics:

    The Assoc. for Computational Linguistics offers
over 1,400 pointers on its ACL NLP/CL Universe web page, 
<http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~acl>.  For instance, one 
comprehensive list is "WWW Information on Computational 
Linguistics and Language Technology,"
<http://www.coli.uni-sb.de/~hansu/clwebinfo.html>,
from Hans Uszkoreit <uszkoreit@coli.uni-sb.de>.  To get
the ACL NLP/CL Universe newsletter, send a "help" message
to <majordomo@cs.columbia.edu>.  [Dragomir R. Radev 
<radev@cs.columbia.edu>, comp.ai.nat-lang, 8/1/96.]

    Nihongo-computing is an unmoderated list about Japanese-
language capability on computers.  Send a "subscribe
nihongo-computing" message to <majordomo@msdi.co.jp>.
[Hiroshi Hasebe  hhasebe@msdi.co.jp>, NEW-LIST, 9/21/96.]

    The Int. J. of Bilingualism (IJB) publishes original research 
on the linguistic, psychological, neurological, and social issues 
of language contact.  <http:wwwncl.ac.uk/~nspeech/resijb/htm>.  
Contributions (and books for review) are solicited by
Li Wei <li.wei@newcastle.ac.uk> and Nick Miller 
<nicholas.miller@ncl.ac.uk>, +44 191 222 6518.  4/97 first issue.  
[Linguist, 8/30/96.  Joseph Raben.]

    "paramind" is a mailing list for discussing computer-generated 
writing, especially the poetic theory of "telical exhaustion
of the interaction of words" (as in the ParaMind brainstorming 
software).  For example, "easily created related-word chains
can be indexed into patterns quickly, and pull up all manners
of cross-references for logical idea expansion."
Contact <paramind-digest-request@eskimo.com> or see 
<http://www.eskimo.com/~telical/parathry.html>.  [Robert Pearson 
<telical@soundcity.net>, comp.ai.nat-lang, 10/4/96.]


 5> Information retrieval:

    Inference Find (InFind) is a parallel Internet search engine 
that merges the results, removes redundancies, and clusters the 
hits into understandable groupings according to user preference.  
<http://m5.inference.com/ifind/>, from Inference Corp. 
<http://www.inference.com/>.  [UMBC AgentNews Webletter, 
10/14/96.]

    The LEXIS-NEXIS information service for the legal field
and others now offers over 1B documents online.  [iNews.  
NewtNews, 10/15/96.]  (WWW still has only about 56M,
last I heard.  And a few of those pages are junk.)

    Want to know what people are really searching for on the net?  
Magellan Voyeur is a service that displays -- anonymously -- 
search terms that people are sending out to the Web.  Updated 
every 20 seconds.  <http://voyeur.mckinley.com/voyeur.cgi>.  
[Steven Levy, Newsweek, 10/28/96, p. 88.]

    InfoSpace AccuMail claims to be "the largest, 100% accurate, 
most integrated" email directory.  InfoSpace also offers 
searchable business, fax, home page, and toll-free number 
directories.  <http://www.accumail.com/>.  [Liz Tompkins,
inet-news, 8/14/96.]

    Perhaps the most detailed and scalable WWW mapping function 
comes from Pacific Bell, at <http://www.athand.com>.  It's tied to 
their merchant/service listings, plus lots of advertising.  
There's also entertainment/reference material from 14 publishers.  
[WEBster, 10/15/96.]

    Need a quotation?  The search engine at 
<http://www.starlingtech.com/quotes/> has ten databases
you can search.  Other online sources are LoQtus 
<http://pubweb.ucdavis.edu/Documents/Quotations/homepage.html>, 
Favorite Quotes <http://www.catalog.com/media/sd/quote.html>, 
Professional Robins' Quotes by Famous People 
<http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/quotes.html>,
and Columbia University's Bartlett's Familiar Quotations 
<http://www.columbia.edu/~svl2/bartlett/>.  Also the
Quote of the Week archive and links at 
<http://fiction.isdn.uiuc.edu/quotes/>.  
[<webmaster@videonics.com>.  Bill Park.]

    Argos is a search engine for scholarly sites about
the ancient world.  The philosophy professor who
put it together would like to see other scholars do the same.  
<http://argos.evansville.edu/>.  [Chronicle of Higher Ed., 
10/18/96, A23.  EDUPAGE.]

    Snow-Bound Booksellers will help you search for rare
and out-of-print books.  <http://www.tp.net/tp/users
/books!/books!.htm>.  [<books!@tp.net>, net-hap, 10/17/96.]

    The San Francisco Fine Arts Museum Thinker Imagebase now has 
over 60K digitized images on display.  There's not much background 
info posted about the images, though.  <http://www.thinker.org/>.  
[The Scout Report, 10/4/96.]

    Review of Information Science (RIS) is a free,
peer-reviewed, quarterly e-journal from the Hochschulverband
fuer Informationswissenschaft (University Association for 
Information Science).  <http://www.inf-wiss.uni-konstanz.de/RIS>.  
[<Elisabeth.Frisch@uni-konstanz.de>, newjour, 8/23/96.]

    Biologists David and Wayne Maddison began a Tree of Life 
project two years ago -- without a grant -- to create a Web 
hierarchy cataloging every species on Earth.  They now have
more than a thousand pages of information updated by 200 
contributors.  Many of the tree branches still lack information, 
but the tree itself incorporates several alternative structures 
(with information on the merits of the different paths).  
<http://phylogeny.arizona.edu/tree/phylogeny.html>.
[Greg Goebel <gvg@lvld.hp.com>, Vectors, 10/6/96.  sci.astro.]

    Need info you can't find on the Web?  "BOB, The Human Search 
Engine" will combine online searches with other forms of 
information research.  The catch is that BOB only chooses
one question per week to research for free.  
<http://www.adline.de> or <info@adline.de>.  [EDUPAGE, 10/20/96.]  
(Gerd Meissner operates the service in Germany, but US customers 
are welcome.)


 6> Personal finance:

    FTHB is a discussion list for first-time home buyers
and for real estate professionals who wish to help with legal 
issues, contracts, negotiations, Realtors, how-to's, etc.
Send a "sub fthb your@email.address" message to Kim Casey 
<azhomes@netzone.com>.  [NEW-LIST, 10/13/96.]  (Emphasizing
AZ homes, I suspect, but useful elsewhere.)

    Some more phone scams to avoid:  If your company uses
a PBX (internal switchboard), never transfer anyone to
an outside operator -- your company gets billed for their call, 
which may be several hours to an overseas number.
(These new 809 numbers, for instance, can charge $25/minute.)  
Also, beware of any "telephone man" asking you to call
10288 (ATT) so that he can check your line.  Ditto for
extensions 90 or 900, which connect to the outside operator.
In some instances, phone phreaks can even seize your outgoing line 
if you hang up on a "dead silence" call -- it's safer to put
the call on hold and let it disconnect from the incoming side.  
[Network News, 9/21/96.]

    FraudNews is an online newsletter alerting people
to such schemes.  Send a "join fraudnews" message to 
<newscaster@silverquick.com>.  Discussion groups are
also available, called fraud-discuss and fraudMLM-discuss.
[Mark Taylor <themet@mindspring.com>.  Robert Wray, 10/9/96.]

					-- Ken


The Sufis advise us to speak only after our words have managed
to pass through three gates.  At the first gate, we ask ourselves, 
"Are these words true?"  If so, we let them pass on; if not,
back they go.  At the second gate, we ask, "Are they necessary?"  
At the last gate, we ask, "Are they kind?"  -- Eknath Easwaran.  
[Kathleen Magone <magone@selway.umt.edu>, QOTD, 10/7/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 79
 IS                                          November 12, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Microsoft news.
 2>  Processor news.
 3>  Projects.
 4>  Internet tutorials.
 5>  Career jobs.
 6>  Networked 'bots.
 7>  Computists' news.
_________________________________________________________________

When I am working on a problem, I never think about beauty.
I think only of how to solve the problem.  But when I have 
finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong.
-- R. Buckminster Fuller.  [John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]


Goood Morning, Computists!


Microsoft news:

    Microsoft's stock surged $7.50 over two days, closing 11/6/96 
at $144.50.  Bill Gates, with 141M shares (23.7% of the company's 
stock), is now worth $20.4B.  His fortune has increased by about 
$2B/year over the past decade.  Each one-cent gain in the stock 
value increases his fortune by $1.4M.  [Seattle Times.  SJM, 
11/7/96, C1.]

    Microsoft is hiring somewhat older workers now, and their 
fresh-out-of-college workforce is aging.  Average age is 34, with 
more than half in their 30s.  The percentage of single employees 
dropped from 49% last year to 40% this year, with the percentage 
of married employees with children increasing from 28% to 35%.  
Employees are still expected to work long hours, but the company 
has been making concessions to child card and outside activities.  
Many workers now leave early -- 5:30 or 6pm -- and either return 
later or work at home via company-issued laptops.  The effect
of pregnancy on careers is still a major issue.  [Seattle Times.  
SJM, 11/6/96, 8C.]

    Microsoft has released a new Internet Explorer browser for 
Macintosh.  Download for free from <http://www.microsoft.com/ie/>.  
Incidentally, Apple claims that its market share of computers 
accessing the Internet is 25%.  [Reuters.  
clari.tw.computers.apple, 11/6/96.  Bill Park.]


Processor news:

    Exponential Technology has announced a 533MHz PowerPC-family 
microprocessor,  the Exponential X704.  The chips are expected to 
sell for $1K in volume.  [iNews.  NewtNews, 10/31/96.  Bill Park.]

    Yale Patt says we're heading toward 100M transistors/chip
by the turn of the century, and 1B not long after.  Producing
an efficient uniprocessor of that complexity is a challenge.  
[Seminar announcement, 11/11/96.  Bill Park.]  (Stanford,
HP Aud. B01, 11/13/96, 4:15.)

    Nonuniform memory access (NUMA) technology lets Sequent's 
newest computers crunch numbers at six times current speeds.
NUMA is faster than massively parallel processing, permitting
up to 252 Pentium Pro processors in parallel (vs. 16 to 30
for most other multiprocessors).  The Sequent machines initially
will start at about $250K, far below equivalent mainframe costs.  
[WSJ, 11/4/96, B6.  EDUPAGE.]

    South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd has announced
a prototype 1Gb dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chip.
It could store 16 hours of audio, or 50K pages of single-spaced 
typewritten text.  An entire CD ROM could be read in for super-
fast access, with 360MB to spare.  Commercial use is expected
by at least 2003.  NEC and Hitachi Ltd also claim 1Gb DRAMs.  
[Reuters.  clari.world.asia.koreas, 11/5/96.  Bill Park.]
(Great for searching large amounts of text, or large databases.)

    After nine years of development, Tera Computer Co. (Seattle) 
says it has a gallium arsenide microprocessor that can juggle
128 execution threads in an on-chip queue -- able to keep a 
supercomputer at peak speed 95% of the time, vs. a typical 10%-15% 
due to data waits within threads.  Tera also claims there's no 
coordination overhead, so 256 chips can do 256 times as much work 
-- possibly 256 gigaflops.  David Cutler, Microsoft's OS 
development manager, has invested in Tera and is on its board.
He sees a need for multithreading hardware in desktop systems 
within the next five years.  (He led development of the 
multithreading Windows NT.)  Tera survived for eight years
on $18M from the Pentagon, but now has $17M from an IPO and
a private stock placement.  The company is planning to start with
a 16-processor system for $12M, scale up to 256 processors,
and then win big when petaflop machines are needed.  (Gallium 
arsenide is inherently at least five times faster than silicon, 
although more trouble to manufacture.)  The company is led by 
founder Burton Smith, 55.  Some analysts are impressed with
his approach; others favor the economics of mainstream silicon 
microprocessors.  A Pentium Pro can already perform better than 
the $18M Cray-1, at 0.01% of the cost.  The $110M 3Tflop 
supercomputer that LANL is buying will use 3,072 chips
developed by MIPS for SGI workstations.  [BW, 11/11/96, p. 73.]

    Nintendo's new N64 game machine includes a 93.75MHz SGI MIPS 
CPU; a dual-processor "Reality Engine" for video/audio/polygons 
and for texturing; a 250-MHz "Rambus" able to transfer 4.5Gbps; 
four controller ports that can handle 56Kbps of user or modem 
input; and an expansion port capable of supporting a 64MB disk 
drive (among other uses).  [Wired, 11/96.  NewtNews, 11/5/96.]  
(Bill Park says this could make a good "network computer"
with VR stereo rendering.)


Projects:

    Positional sound in virtual worlds?  Mark Leavy of Intel 
Architecture Labs will host a chat on RSX, Intel's Realistic
Sound Experience, at 2pm Pacific Time on 11/15/96.  Visit the 
Intel Boardwalk auditorium by downloading the Boardwalk software 
from <http://connectedpc.com/iaweb/boardwalk> and connecting
to Boardwalk.intel.com. [Rob Armstrong 
<rharmstr@ccmail.jf3.jf.intel.com>, net-hap, 11/5/96.]

    Vision researchers at Edinburgh University are offering
to compile CV-online: "The Evolving, Distributed, Non-Proprietary, 
On-Line Compendium of Computer Vision."  It's to be an up-to-date 
hypertext archive of notes on 500 or more topics, available
to everyone at virtually no expense.  Notes may include tutorials 
(of 2000 words), comparisons and alternative tutorials, 
criticisms, examples, implementations, expansions into subtopics, 
and suggestions.  It's hoped that a few thousand authors will 
contribute.  <http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/daidb/staff/personal_pages
/rbf/CVonline/CVentry.htm>.  See also the glossary at
<http://cns-web.bu.edu/pub/laliden/WWW/Visionary/Visionary.html>.  
[Robert Fisher <rbf@dai.ed.ac.uk>, Vision-List, 10/17/96.]

    ("Our experience is that, for most authors of computer vision 
books, the process of writing is intellectually rewarding, but
not particularly financially rewarding, resulting generally in
a few thousand dollars of royalties for a thousand hours of work.  
If you want to make money, there are more effective methods."
-- Robert Fisher, 10/96.)


Internet tutorials:

    ROADMAP96 is a 6-week course in Internet/Web use.
Send a "subscribe roadmap96 your name" message to 
<listserv@lists.internic.net>.  Any missed issues can be
retrieved by email.  [Matt Alberts <mda@weeklyb.com>, wbi, 
11/3/96.  net-hap.]

    Sheila Creth, University Librarian at the U. of Iowa 
Libraries, is leading a 3-week discussion of reference services
in cyberspace, starting 11/11/96.  Send a "join nls-forum
your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  See also 
<http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/follett/creth/paper.html> for the text
of her Follett Lecture about networked learner support.  [Sarah 
Ashton <s.j.ashton@sheffield.ac.uk>, wwwedu, 11/4/96.  net-hap.]

    Engineering Information Village has launched its first free 
online lecture and discussion, "Exploiting the Net: Finding and 
Using Technical Resources on the Internet" by Shari Worthington,  
editor of Science & Engineering Network News 
<http://www.senn.com>, executive director of the MacSciTech 
Association, and a director of the WPI Venture Forum.  Open to
the public.  The lecture was posted 11/7/96, and will be discussed 
via chat on 11/15/96 from 2:00 to 4:00pm EST.  Ei Village 
<http://www.ei.org> ("Lecture").  [Dan Gonneau <dgonneau@ei.org>, 
net-hap, 11/8/96.]


Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.40 digest this week):

Colorado School of Mines (Golden): two profs. in AI, 
visualization, HPC.

Penn State/ARL/IS (State College): sr. researcher
in distributed intelligent control, simulation, or AI.

UIllinois at Urbana-Champaign/LIS: sr. faculty
in digital library R&D.

Oakland U. (Rochester, MI): SE and CS profs. (AI, KBS,
dist. systems, etc.).

Rutgers U. (Newark, NJ): two CogSci profs.
(connectionist modeling, HCI, learning systems).

Eastern Connecticut State U. (Willimantic): prof. of AI or DB.

UKansas (Lawrence): prof. of computer engineering
(agents, OOP, DB).

UTexas-Pan American (Edinburg): dean of CS&E.

IBM TJW Research Center (Westchester, NY): postdoctoral
fellowship in math/CS.

GTE labs: MS/PhD R&D in interactive distributed systems, 
intelligent agents, e-commerce, digital libraries, etc.

RAF, Inc. (Redmond, WA): MS/PhD SE in pattern recognition.

BHASHA, Inc. (Wayne, PA): BS/MS/PhD SEs for symbolic math,
CLP, NLP, etc.

Kaman Sciences Corp. (Colorado Springs): MS/PhD AI/NN researcher.

Atlanta, GA: MS/PhD research scientist in dynamic systems,
info theory, image/signal processing, NN, modeling.

Lexicus (Palo Alto): BS/MS GUI engineer for PDA speech
and [Chinese?] handwriting recognition.

Panasonic Technologies, Inc. (Santa Barbara, CA): postdoc
for HMM modeling/recognition of telephone speech.

Defence Research Agency/SRU (UK): BS/MS/PhD R&D
in speech technologies.

Graz U. of Technology (Austria): postdoc in approximate 
algorithms.

UZurich/AI Lab (Switzerland): postdoc in NN for robotic 
vision/navigation.


Networked 'bots:

    The FRED conversational program has been asked its opinions
of Clinton and Dole.  See the Robitron site at 
<http://www.fringeware.com/usr/robitron/>.  [R. Glen Garner 
<robitron@postoffice.worldnet.att.net>, comp.ai, 11/7/96.]

    Roger Espel Llima has developed a simple Tetris player
for X windows that bases decisions on the total stack height, 
number of holes, length of the border between bricks and
the empty positions, depth at which the current piece is being 
dropped, depth and number of places where a long piece would be 
needed, and an ad hoc estimate of how hard some holes are to fill.  
His first version kept the game going for only 400 lines, but 
coefficient tweaking brought that up to an average 10K lines.  
Then he used "a genetic algorithm hogging the CPUs
of a whole bunch of Sparcs" to reach an average of 50K lines,
with a max so far of 207K.  The code is on 
<http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/espel/index.html>
and <ftp://quatramaran.ens.fr/pub/orabidoo/>.  
[<espel@goelette.ens.fr>, comp.ai.games, 11/8/96.]

    Online combat games such as Duke Nukem and Quake
are reportedly seeing "bots" logged in for some action.
A Quake example is on <http://www.ens.fr/~cridlig/bot/index.html>.  
It's a simple critter: it moves randomly except that it dodges 
when shot at and it goes directly towards the pack dropped by
any player it kills.  But such a player has instantaneous reaction 
time, especially since it has access to player maps and object 
positions even before they're rendered on-screen by the client 
machine.  A 'bot using an instantaneous weapon such as a shotgun 
or lightning gun simply never ever misses.  This has led to
man-machine hybrids, where someone puts a 'bot between his client 
and the game server.  He can then play a normal game, but fire
at anyone with perfect accuracy.   [Greg Titus 
<toon@omnigroup.com>, comp.ai.games, 11/4/96.]  Note that
such 'bots can cheat by seeing player and weapon locations
through walls.  Rogue-o-Matic couldn't cheat since the server
was only sending ASCII maps.  Netrek "borgs" were enough of
a problem four years ago that encrypted-packet executables -- 
"RSAed and Blessed Clients" -- were distributed in an attempt
to thwart hacking.  Players also learned to clique in trusted 
groups playing on private servers.  [Scott Le Grand 
<legrand@tesla.mbi.ucla.edu>, ibid.]
(A good domain for a non-verbal Turing test?  :-)

    Novelist Jeff Gerke is looking for ideas on his new
near-future story about 'bots on the Internet "getting loose"
and attacking Web servers and critical systems.  He's interested 
in how the Internet security community might deal with such
a threat.  <jgerke@airmail.net>.  [comp.security.misc, 11/8/96.]  
(Fiction, of course, but information warfare includes such 
approaches.  "To err is human; to really fuck things up requires 
the root password."  [Stephan Neuhaus <neuhaus@dfki.uni-sb.de>, 
10/96.])

    "The Ayin" is an online novel about a Stanford experiment
with a self-replicating, self-enhancing, software-driven
neural network -- based on viral coding -- breaking onto the Net 
and becoming conscious...  <http://members.gnn.com/Jxyna/Ayin>.  
[<jxyna@gnn.com>, comp.theory.cell-automata, 11/7/96.]


Computists' news:

    John K. Myers is starting DragonLord Animation Studios,
a division of his DragonLord Enterprises, Inc.  (DragonLord 
Software is another such division.)  He and his associates
will be making high-art television commercials and animation-based 
convention presentations.  <dlord@dragonlord.com>, (972) 517-1134, 
(972) 517-3928 Fax.  [11/8/96.]  (Please, folks, let's keep our 
own membership in mind when outsourcing projects.  Computists have 
the best chance of succeeding if we use each other's strengths.)

    Jiancheng Qiu is in his final PhD year at ULuton (UK), 
finishing a thesis on "Mobile Robot Navigation and Control
Based on Fuzzy Logic Control and Genetic Algorithm."
He's also interested in real-time systems, image processing,
and VR.  [<jiancheng.qiu@luton.ac.uk>, 11/8/96.]
(And yes, I have heard of Computists getting jobs through
such announcements here.  It doesn't hurt to ask.)

    Kim W. Tracy of the Lucent Technologies/Bell Labs
Advanced Technology Center has finished a new book,
"Object-Oriented Artificial Intelligence, Using C++."
It's available from Freeman's Computer Science Press
(ISBN: 0-7167-8294-4) or from <http://www.amazon.com>.
Despite the "painful experience," Kim is considering
doing another.  [<tracy@ctc.ih.lucent.com>, 11/5/96.]

					-- Ken


You are never given a wish without also being given the power
to make it true.  You may have to work for it, however.
-- Richard Bach.  [AWAD, 11/5/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
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Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 78
 IS                                           November 7, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Software industry news.
 2>  Speech recognition.
 3>  Research software.
 4>  Job services.
 5>  Entrepreneurship.
 6>  Applied jobs.
_________________________________________________________________

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted
by the person you become.  -- Jim Rohn.
[Randy Brown <rbrown@mveca3.mveca.ohio.gov>, 10/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I've run short of  time this week, what with studying
ballot issues and other really important activities like
keeping up with Star Trek: Voyager.  I'll fill out this issue
with the table of contents from this week's Computists'
Applied Jobs (CAJ) digest.  CAJ is free to anyone.
It covers student positions, non-AI CS faculty openings,
and other job ads that didn't quite make it into Tuesday's
CCJ digest.  Let me know if you'd like to sign up for it.


 1> Software industry news:

    Analyst Mark R. Anderson says there's been a fundamental shift 
this week in the software business.  (Also in telecom, where he 
feels that AT&T's choice of a new CEO marks it as a declining 
company over the next decade.  Other telecom and cable companies 
aren't doing much better, so the software industry may be taking 
over as the next big power.)  Microsoft reported record profits 
for the quarter, with earnings up 23% and revenues up 14% over
its best-ever quarterly jump of a year ago (during the Windows 95 
upgrade).  This is in an exceedingly healthy PC industry, where 
even IBM reported 25% quarterly growth in PC sales.  Apple is 
about the only company not doing very well, although it did post
a small (and unexpected) profit for the quarter.  Further, 
Microsoft made its record profits while continuing to spend 
$2.1B/year on R&D, and while not yet receiving revenues on its 
Internet ventures.  And the company is deferring $91M in revenues 
on OS and suite sales.  So Anderson sees a company with $500M to 
$1B "in the sock drawer," continuing R&D investment, and five 
markets of $1B-$2B each soon to develop (over 12-24 months)
in online broadcasting, financial services, travel, and other
Web-based business infrastructure.  Anderson also believes that 
Microsoft has "won the browser war" with its planned integration 
of browsing into its operating system.  (Netscape is moving on to 
more advanced "communicator" interfaces, and will continue to make 
money selling intranet servers.  It might also move into directory 
services.)  CompuServe is history, and AOL is struggling for 
survival.  And, of course, Microsoft still owns the leading 
operating system and application suites.  In short, don't bet 
against Microsoft.  "Yesterday the telecoms were king.  Tomorrow, 
the software companies will be king."  [<markrander@aol.com>,
SNS, 10/23/96.]

    (Anderson claims near-perfect accuracy since 6/95
for predictions in his Strategic News Service newsletter.
Well, OK, perfect accuracy, for those predictions that
have matured.  But he doesn't expect that record to hold.
The newsletter is $195/year, or $97.50 for students,
$195 for up to 5 teachers, or $495 for a small company.)

    Compaq Computer has introduced its first line of Intel-based 
workstation-class computers, at $4,300-$10,200.  The machines
use Windows NT rather than Unix.  [NYT, 10/30/96, C4.  EDUPAGE.]  
Mark R. Anderson notes that clustering, fault tolerance, and 
symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) are all becoming "mainstream."  
Compaq intends to take over the workstation market from Sun,
HP, and SGI.  (They hired workstation expert Mark Canepa from HP, 
but Sun hired him away again two weeks later.)  Compaq Sr. VP
John Rose is quoted as saying "In East Texas, we refer to it as 
harvesting watermelons.  Even with your eyes shut in the dark
you could find them."  [SNS, 10/30/96.]


 2> Speech recognition:

    Charles Hemphill of Texas Instruments (Dallas) has developed 
Speech Aware Multimedia (SAM), a speaker-independent, continuous-
speech, voice-activated interface for multimedia projects under 
Windows 95 or Unix.  You can use it with Netscape to jump to pages 
by reading the words in link labels.  "Smart Pages" offer natural 
language capabilities, and a Java speech Application Program 
Interface (API) can be used for local interactive processing.
TI has also developed versions for Japanese and Spanish.
[PR Newswire.  Steve Papa <stevep@inktomi.com>, 9/30/96.
Lily Laws.]  (One use is mouseless Web browsing via your TV set.  
This sort of thing is called "convergence," which Mark R. Anderson 
says will be won by the software companies rather than the 
telecom, cable, broadcast, or news companies.)

    Nuance Communications/SRI Consulting (Menlo Park, CA) --
where my wife works -- has won a Best Application of the Year 
award at the Voice Europe conference in London.  The application 
was their telephone-based speech recognition interface for
Charles Schwab, providing speaker-independent navigation
through stock transactions and information databases.
Nuance also has three UK clients, and has attracted a great deal 
of interest from the show.  [<llaws@nuancecom.com>, 10/17/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS 6.39 digest this week):

QwikNet v1.1: NN simulator for Windows.

Frankfurt U. cellular neural network (CNN) simulation package.

Comments on Brainmaker, Predict, and NeuroGenetic Optimizer.

Differential Evolution: C/Java/MATLAB GA for parameter 
optimization and filter design.

SOM_PAK and LVQPAK: self-organizing map package.

PolyAnalyst: data mining package.

VRCreator: VRML development environment from VREAM, Inc.

SketchUp 2.0: PC demo of object recognition by shape.

SGI MLC++ 2.0: C++ source/object machine learning library.

PROMULA FORTRAN-to-C translator.  (Also COBOL, PASCAL, BASIC.)

Juice: Java-to-C translator for applications code.

PiLLoW 1.0beta: HTML/HTTP library for logic programming/CLP 
systems.

Mathematical Programming Glossary, from Harvey Greenberg.

Bavarian Archive for Speech Signals (BAS), from UMunich.

Automatic Performance Prediction of Parallel Programs:
book by Thomas Fahringer.

WebMaster in a Nutshell: book from O'Reilly.

Discount on Scott Robert Ladd's "Genetic Algorithms in C++,"
"C++ Cellular Automata & Simulations," and other C++ books.

Managing Your First Years in Industry: book by David J. Wells.  
(First chapter free online.)


 4> Job services:

    The FISC list of cognitive science job ads -- chiefly
for Europe -- now has an archive at <http://www.univ-rennes1.fr
/LISTES/fisc@univ-lille3.fr/arc/maillist.html>.  [Damien Raczy 
<raczy@univ-lille3.fr>, 8/30/96.]

    Boldface Jobs is a new listing of positions and candidates 
throughout the US, plus a comprehensive database of employment 
agencies, executive recruiters, personnel organizations, 
university placement offices, and major corporations. These
lists can be sorted by location, specialty, and other criteria.  
<http://www.boldfacejobs.com>.  [WEBster, 8/6/96.]  (Fee-based, 
but possibly offering a trial period.)

    The Software Jobs Home Page offers job openings,
technology-specific newsletters, and other career resources.  
<http://www.softwarejobs.com>; <adassoc@netcom.com>, 413-253-0600, 
413-253-3535 Fax.  [Dan Canale <swjobs@rmc1.crocker.com>, m.j.o, 
8/7/96.]

    The EE/CS Mother Site is a categorized listing of
more than 500 good EE/CS websites, including 330 companies.  
<http://www-ee.stanford.edu/soe/ieee/eesites.html>.
[Nabeel Robert Ibrahim <ibrahim@leland.stanford.edu>,
comp.ai, 8/31/96.]  (Might be good for job hunting.)

    The TechJobs SuperSite features thousands of jobs and a 
directory of 1,500 technology companies.  <http://SuperSite.Net> 
or <http://SuperSite.Net/TechJobs/>.  [Aaron Cohn 
<aacohn@supersite.net>, misc.entrepreneurs, 8/16/96.]
(They were getting 30K hits/day back in August.)

    Net-Temps Inc. claims over 15K searchable job openings:
"Every Job on the World Wide Web."  <http://www.net-temps.com>.  
[m.j.o, 8/7/96.]


 5> Entrepreneurship:

    Big Dreams is a Mac newsletter on business and personal 
development topics.  <http://www.wimsey.com/~duncans/BigDreams>, 
or see an archived issue at art/zine/big-dreams-v3-06.hqx on any 
info-mac mirror.  [Duncan Stickings <duncans@wimsey.com>, 8/22/96.  
Bill Park.]

    Intrepreneurs -- a monthly newsletter from the
Internet Entrepreneurs Association (IESS) -- is free for
a "subscribe iesslist your@email.address" message
to <majordomo@ix.entrepreneurs.net>.  The association
is also starting an IESS Digest of Entrepreneurial Tips;
contact <info@iess.entrepreneurs.net>.  For help in
setting up a website or Internet business, write to 
<presence@iess.entrepreneurs.net>, or to 
<freeweb@iess.entrepreneurs.net> for a free trial offer.
[Ron Ehrens <ron@kaiwan.com>, net-hap, 9/13/96.]

    Career Consulting Corner is an advertising-supported monthly 
about home business opportunities (software to pet breeding), 
career tips, mid-life scholarships, etc.  Send a "SUBSCRIBE" 
subject line to <career35@earthlink.net>.  [<softree@web.net>, 
9/15/96.]

    Entrepreneur Magazine wants to help you start your
own business.  See their Small Business Square at 
<http://www.entrepreneurmag.com> for news, articles, tips, 
resources, books, software, and chat rooms, plus links to
Business Start-Ups Magazine and Entrepreneur International.  
[WEBster, 10/15/96.]

    General Magic has created a new Web site devoted to Small 
Office Home Office (SOHO) users, at <http://www.sohosofar.com>. 
[iNews.  NewtNews, 10/22/96.]

    If you need to accept credit cards over the net, you may want 
to sign up with <http://www.charge.com/>.  No application fee;
95% approval rate.  [<david@danzig.com>, net-hap, 10/4/95.]
(I don't know their setup fee and monthly charges.
My bank arranged merchant status for Computists International,
so Computists have a convenient payment option.)

    A good discussion of Internet business can be found
on <http://www.popco.com/hypernet/inet-marketing>.
[Internet-on-a-Disk, 10/28/95.]  (The list closed in 6/96,
but there's still a searchable archive and pointers to several 
successor lists.)

    Online Law, ed. by Thomas Smedinghoff, is a new book for 
marketers, developers, and entrepreneurs.  Chapters 8 through 18 
cover copyrights, trademarks, and patents.  "A gem."  $34.95 from 
Addison-Wesley.  [Michael Erbschloe <74172.3626@compuserve.com>, 
WEBster, 8/19/96.]  (Much cheaper than a seminar.)

    Info on searching and registering trademarks can be found
on the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website, as 
<http://www.uspto.gov/web/trad_reg_info/basic_facts.html>.
[Scout Report, 8/11/95.]

    Cyberlawyer is an online law office, using encrypted sessions.  
$24.95 for one query to a licensed attorney; no charge for 
referrals to other attorneys.  <http://www.cyberlawyer.com/>.  
[WEBster, 10/17/95.]

    The International Trade Desk lists mostly
free government information covering trade leads
and financing sources for small and medium-sized businesses.  
<http://users.aol.com/tradedesk/trade.html>.
[<jrmeenan@aol.com>, net-hap, 10/5/95.]

    For information on just about anything, visit the Boston 
Public Library at <http://www.ll.mit.edu/Links/metroboston.html>.  
[Kelly Clark <aandc@usa1.com>, Mac*Chat, 9/22/95.]

    If you need help with almost anything, or an expert witness
or speaker, ask for a free referral from National Consultant 
Referrals, Inc., <kline@referrals.com>, 800/221-3104, 619/552-0854 
Fax.  <http://www.referrals.com/>.  [Carl Kline, 11/1/95.]
(Or get yourself listed, if you have expertise to offer.
There's also a consulting tools discussion group.)

    Rent A Geek can put you in touch with freelance computer 
consultants and consulting companies.  Searchable database.  
<http://www.rentageek.com>.  [Kathleen E. Dodge 
<yu134389@yorku.ca>, c.i..www.authoring.html, 8/9/96.]

    BA-BIZWOMEN is a mailing (or "networking") list for
business and professional women in the San Francisco Bay Area.  
<http://www.women-online.com/lists/>, or write to Amy Goodloe 
<agoodloe@women-online.com>.  [net-hap, 5/14/96.]


 6> Applied jobs (in our CAJ 6.39 digest this week):

    [Remember, anyone can sign up for CAJ -- individually
or for bboards and other redistributions.  Tell your friends
to contact <laws@computists.com> for this free service.]

Rochester Inst. of Technology (NY): MS/PhD CS faculty.

UNorth Dakota (Grand Forks): two profs., one in HCI.

UDenver: prof. of OS, networks, or systems.

USouth Florida/CSE (Tampa): faculty in DB, networks, 
architectures, and multimedia systems.

XSoft (Palo Alto): software engineer for advanced text analysis.

Boeing Defense & Space Group/Helicopters (Philadelphia): MS 
advanced technologist for AI, NN, OOP, image processing, and GUI.

BFGoodrich Co./ATG (Brecksville, OH): BS/MS information specialist 
for chemical virtual library/IR.

Novato company (CA): knowledge base authors for CBR help desk.

Omaha company (NE): MS AI/OR knowledge engineer
for Oracle/Teradata systems.

DragonLord Software (Dallas): BS/MS telecom AI/expert system 
coder.

UGeorgia (Athens): GRA in computer vision for optimizing
lumber yields.

GA company: BS/MS MTS for signal processing, simulation, DB,
or technical analysis tools.

Scientific Systems (Boston, MA): PhD in radar/IR image analysis 
and pattern recognition (ATR); also an MS in control, system 
identification, and signal/image processing.

SportsMEDIA Technology Corp. (Durham, NC): PhD in graphics
for Superbowl; also an MS in automata theory, complexity,
DB, networking, SE, and graphics.

Brightware Corp. (DC, NJ, NY, NC): MS/PhD Lisp/AI developers.

Terran Systems (Santa Clara): sr. SE in OOP/OODB, GUI,
or expert systems.

UK software house (Cambridge, Edinburgh or Manchester):
developers for adaptive systems (OOP, inference, scheduling, 
workflow, OR, ML, Web).

Sharp Laboratories of Europe Ltd. (Oxford, UK): BS SE for WWW, 
compilers, compression, etc.

USheffield (UK): UK/EU PhD studentship in recognition of
impaired speech.

UPaderborn's Heinz Nixdorf Inst. (Germany): graduate scholarships 
in NN, fuzzy systems, VR, parallel computing, etc., for 
manufacturing.

GMD-IPSI (Darmstadt, Germany): PhD in distributed multimedia 
information systems.

					-- Ken


What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first
to do with diligence.  -- Samuel Johnson.  [AWAD, 10/27/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 80
 IS                                          November 14, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Funding news.
 2>  Industry news.
 3>  Research software.
 4>  Personal/portable computing.
_________________________________________________________________

All great ideas start as heresy and end as dogma.
-- The great prophet Anon.
[Dave Kirby <dave@dkirby.demon.co.uk>, 10/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


 1> Funding news:

    DARPA has issued a Broad Area Announcement in Collaboration, 
Visualization, and Information Management (CVIM), BAA 97-09.
The research is to enhance team collaboration through shared 
information spaces or to advance networked systems for multimedia 
and multimodal information.  This extends current efforts to build 
collaboration middleware and digital libraries.  The first thrust, 
covering Intelligent Collaboration and Visualization (IC&V),
is to develop "generation-after-next" collaboration middleware
and tools to gather problem solvers across time and space,
marshal task-oriented information resources, and enhance 
collaboration.  It includes Tools for Sharing Meaning
(metadata for self-describing resources; managing personal
and shared information; mapping semantics across domains
and languages; indexing and reviewing collaborative sessions; 
capture of process rules and constraints; and real-time discovery 
of relevant collaborators and information) and Tools for Sharing 
Views (e.g., differing map overlays; animation and visualization; 
and multimedia annotations).  "Innovative proposals that fall 
outside these specific areas may be of interest."  Contact
Dr. Kevin Mills.  The second thrust, Information Management (IM), 
covers "scalable, interoperable middleware" for managing 
exponentially growing networked information resources,
identifying task-relevant materials, and organizing information 
for exploitation.  It includes Analysis Environments (acquisition 
and correlation of multimedia and complex information resources 
across disciplines and languages, exploiting semantic content, 
visualization, filtering, search, and retrieval) and scalable, 
secure, interoperable Information Repositories (registration & 
security of information resources, access controls, and rights 
management; automatic classification and federation; distributed 
service assurance; and exploitation of high bandwidth).
A third thrust is a CVIM Integration Testbed for DoD evaluation
of promising technologies.  Innovative evaluation means are 
sought, especially for joint service activities, collaborative
air campaign planning, command and control, intelligence analysis 
-- even when team members are disconnected for substantial 
periods.  Also of interest are areas such as software, network 
engineering, and the design of complex systems.  Proposals for 
revolutionary advances are due 2/26/97.  Partnering arrangements 
among academic, industrial, and non-profit research organizations 
are strongly encouraged.  A briefing for DARPA BAA 97-09 will be 
held on 11/18/96 in Arlington, VA.  Proposers are strongly 
encouraged to submit brief proposal abstracts by 12/23/96.
Be sure to get the BAA 97-09 Proposer Information pamphlet,
from <http://www.ito.darpa.mil/Solicitations.html> or the 
following address.  Point of contact (POC) for the BAA and
thrusts 2 and 3 is Dr. Ronald Larsen <baa9709@darpa.mil>, 
DARPA/ITO, ATTN: BAA 97-09, 3701 N. Fairfax Drive, Arlington,
VA 22203-1714; (703) 522-7161 Fax.  
<http://www.ito.darpa.mil/Solicitations/CBD_9709.html>.
[CBD, 11/5/96.  Paul Evan Peters <paul@cni.org>, IRLIST Digest, 
11/12/96.]  (An attendee list for the briefing will be available 
afterwards from <http://www.ito.darpa.mil/Solicitations> or from 
the POC.  Use that to find industrial partners with whom you
might collaborate.  I don't see a restriction as to nationality.)

    The US Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM) 
Acquisition Center (AMSTA-AQ-DS) is seeking academic, industrial, 
agency, and professional society affiliates and partners
for real-time embedded software engineering projects
in its new next-generation software engineering lab.
Three-page statements of capabilities are requested.
Contact TACOM, Attn: AMSTA-TR-R/ms 264 (Coryne Forest), Warren,
MI 48397-5000.  [SOFTSHARE/CNS Order Number: 961030-0250PROCURE, 
cnscbd, 11/3/96.]

    DARPA and NSF are funding a common compiler infrastructure
to allow compiler researchers to make fair comparisons with the 
work of others, without reimplementing previous work, and to 
concentrate on their own specialties.  A Birds of a Feather (BOF) 
meeting will be held at Supercomputing '96 on 11/20/96, with 
descriptions of components by Jack Davidson and Monica Lam.  
Lauren L. Smith <llsmith@super.org>, (301) 688-9513.  
[comp.parallel, 11/1/96.]

    Recent NSF staff appointments: Bruce Barnes to deputy director 
for Computer and Computation Research (CCR), (703) 306-1910; 
William W. Agresti to program director (PD) for the CCR 
Experimental Software Systems Program 306-1911; John B. Hunt
to acting assistant director for the Mathematical and Physical 
Sciences Directorate, 306-1800; and Thomas H. Howell to PD for 
Computer Science in the Teacher and Faculty Development Section, 
Div. of Undergraduate Education, 306-1669.  [NSF Bulletin, 11/96.]

    The Microsoft 1997 Instructional Grant Program has
a 12/1/96 deadline.  CS, engineering, math, science, and business 
college/university faculty are invited to apply for free licenses 
for Microsoft software.  Curriculum resources incorporating 
Microsoft's technologies are then be shared through the Microsoft 
Academic Cooperative Website.  Available software includes 
FrontPage; Windows 95; Windows NT Workstation; professional 
editions of Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual FoxPro, Visual J++ 
and Office; etc.  <http://msdeved.isu.edu/ms/>.  [Educom Update, 
11/1/96.]


 2> Industry news:

    British Telecommunications (BT) is about to buy MCI for 
something like $21B, but will allow MCI to function independently.  
[Washington Post, 11/2/96. EDUPAGE.]  The merged company will be 
called Concert, and starts life with $35B-$42B in revenues and 
$12.3B in cash flow from 43M customers in 70 countries.  Expect 
global mergers by 2005 to create three more telecom behemoths
in South America, Asia, and elsewhere.  [Mark R. Anderson, SNS, 
11/3/96.]

    MCI is said to carry 90% of all US Internet traffic.
The company is considering priority or usage-based pricing 
policies instead of its current flat rate.  "Flat-rate methods 
stimulate market development.  Where usage is growing, one needs 
to price according to use."  Priority pricing would encourage 
real-time videoconferencing , 3-D graphics and Internet voice 
calling.  [EETimes, 10/29/96.  NewtNews, 11/5/96.  Bill Park.]

    tel IT Communications Inc. (Vancouver) is (was?) seeking
10K beta users at 100 companies for its Internet phone system.  
<http://www.telit.com>.  [Roland Haynes <rhaynes@microdigit.com>, 
net-hap, 10/13/96.]

    Windows 95 fever is cooling in Japan, but Internet fever 
pushed US-to-Japan PC shipments to 3.4M units, 39% above last 
year.  [SJM, 11/7/96, C1.]

    A UIllinois study of interactions between scientists found 
that email can "turn science into shift work," with global teams 
passing data to follow the sun.  One recent research paper claimed 
398 authors from 34 institutions.  [Technology Review, 10/96,
p. 42.  NewtNews.  Bill Park.]

    Electronic whiteboards use standard markers but can capture
or transmit your drawings via computer.  MicroTouch Systems has 
introduced "Ibid," a $500 unit competing with other whiteboards
at about $2K.  [IBD, 10/9/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]

    World electronics production will top $1.2T by the year 2000, 
up from $750B last year.  [Jim Eastlake, Dataquest.  SJM, 11/6/96, 
8C.]

    The typical auto has 10-15 processors; high-end cars
may have 80.  An engine controller can have 100K lines of code, 
according to a Bosh VP.  William Powers, VP of research at Ford, 
says "Today, if you change a line of code, you're looking at the 
potential for some major problems.  Hardware is very predictable, 
very repeatable.  Software is in much more of a transient state."  
[EE Times, 10/28/96, p. 1.  Daniel P.B. Smith 
<dpbsmith@world.std.com>, RISKS Digest, 11/5/96.]


 3> Research software (in our CRS 6.40 digest this week):

NLP tools, including word stemming, from Dan Melamed.

Palimpsest: Mac hypertext information/document manager
for scholars.

JavaScripts for teaching branch and bound and dynamic programming.

Matlab to C++ compiler.

Hypermedia Image Processing Reference (HIPR): online tutorial
from UEdinburgh.

Creatures: alife/cogsci simulation.  (European/Australian 
release.)

sonicWORX Studio: neural-based music post-production software.

RubikSolver: Mac shareware for simulating/solving Rubik's Cube.

HoldemMaster: Texas Hold'em Poker simulator/analyzer for Mac.

Organic Art screensaver from William Latham.

Common Lisp Web Server, free from MIT AI Lab.

SiteMarker 1.0: Mac/Navigator tool for compiling and publishing 
URL catalogs.

Spam Hater: Windows email helper for identifying
and responding to spam sources.

The Theory of Relational Databases: book by David Maier.  
(Microfiche reprints.)


 4> Personal/portable computing:

    Motorola's new StarTAC cellular phone weighs less than
an audio CD.  $1K-$2K.  [NewtNews, 11/5/96.  Bill Park.]

    The teraflop CRAY T3E-900 will be available in Spring '97 
starting at $500K.  [NYT, 11/12/96, A18.  EDUPAGE.]
(Not portable, but that's less than many houses in
the Palo Alto area.  Incredible.  Did I get it right?)

    Apple has licensed its Newton technology to Schlumberger, 
Harris, Digital Ocean, and other information companies,
and applications optimized for the MessagePad 2000 have
just been announced by AllPen, Holosoft, Knowledge Revolution, 
Netstrategy, PelicanWare, Physix, Point-of-Care, Qualcomm, 
Sunburst, and Wright Strategies.  Other third-party developers 
include Ascribe, Balcones, Bear River, Business Brothers, Callahan 
Roach, Catamount Software, CHS Systems, Claris Corp., Compower, 
Comprehensive Health Services, Concierge, Cyclops Computer 
Solutions, 3S Datacom, Dayna, DreamSoft, Dragon Systems, ETE,
Ex Machina, Farallon, Fastline, Fetch Software, Gaia Software, 
Geoide Systems, Greenleaf Medical Systems, Green Mountain, GTE 
Telephone Operations, HealthCare Com., INS, Jay Klein Productions, 
Joey Technologies, KPMG, Landware, Lotus, LunaTech, MAR Software, 
Morgan Media, Nomadic Tech., Now Software, NS Basic, Paragone,
PDA Construction, PDA Dimensions, Pen Vision, Personal Power 
Technologies (Pennon Systems), Phamis, PICA, Planet Computing, 
Power Media, Pythia, Radio Mail, Real World Solutions, Revelar, 
Rindle & Partner, RiverRun, Shana, SilverWARE, Simione Company, 
Socket Communications, Softcare Clinical Informatics, Stand Alone, 
Steton Technology, Tactile Systems, TBS Systems, Teamsoft, True 
North, US Robotics/Megahertz, WalletWare, and Wynd Communications.  
[Apple.  NewtNews, 11/5/96.]

    (MessagePads and Apple's other "user-centric information 
appliances" are now called "hand-helds" or "handhelds," not PDAs.)

    Over 1,700 Newton software packages -- in Mac and PC formats
-- are included in the 620MB 6th "Totally Incomplete PDA CD-ROM 
for Newton" from AMUG CD, Inc.  $29 plus S/H, from 
<http://www.amug.org/amug/store/order.html> or <sales@amug.org>, 
(602) 553.0066.  [NewtNews, 11/5/96.]

    A new online magazine called "HotPocket" is looking
for authors to write about pocket/handheld computers.
[Jude <jude@aol2.com>, comp.sys.newton.misc.  NewtNews, 11/5/96.]

    Ever wish you had an extra hand for your mouse?  Biocontrol 
Systems has a "Biomuse" interface that can control a computer by 
tensing muscles to create EMG signals.  Electrooculographic (EOG) 
signals can also be used for eye tracking.  [Hugh S. Lusted
and R. Benjamin Knapp, SciAm, 10/96, p. 82.  NewtNews.]

    NEC has a new palm-sized fingerprint digitizer that can take 
prints at a crime scene and radio the data to a central computer.  
The SF Police Dept. will be testing eight units next May.
[BW, 11/11/96, p. 74.]

    (Incidentally, San Francisco now monitors several major 
intersections with automated tracking cameras.  Hundreds of 
drivers have been fined for failing to stop.)

    Nikon's new CoolPix 300 digital camera (for $1K) includes
a pen-based operating system so that you can make handwritten
and audio notes about your snapshots.  The camera stores 125 
images (640x480).  [MacUser, 12/96.  NewtNews, 11/5/96.]
(Bill Park notes that this may be good for insurance appraisers, 
environmental assessment, and other field work.  House inspection 
comes to mind, and maybe sports reporting if the resolution
were better.  Also visual records for medical and forensic use.  
But such people already use tape recorders to keep notes,
so the real advance may be just cheap digital images
that are easy to incorporate in printed or electronic reports.  
Combining the camera and notepad is a convenience, not
a great leap forward.  It would be better if they were separate
but talked to each other.)

    IBM's Tom Zimmerman has developed a "personal area network" 
(PAN) that transmit or receives information on low-frequency 
currents through your body.  Information can be exchanged with 
pagers, cellular phones, palm-top computers, or anyone you touch.  
A 2400-baud touch-plate interface can be built for about $20
(and works even through shoe soles); faster data rates should
also be possible.  Zimmerman likes to speak of "contagious 
information," spreading by proximity.  He suggests that a nearly 
empty milk jug could signal the refrigerator, which signals the 
house, which downloads a shopping list to your shoe as you walk 
out the door.  Your shoe, of course, tells your wrist watch, which 
beeps you when you're near any store that sells milk.  Software 
for such systems has been in development at Xerox PARC, where Mark 
Weiser's group uses infrared transmissions.  [Janet Rae-Dupree, 
SJM, 10/21/96, E1.]  (I get the same information services
from my wife. :-)

					-- Ken


Netscape co-founder and programming whiz Marc Andreessen
admitted on the Charlie Rose TV show that his home PC
crashes regularly; that he hasn't been able to get his printer
or CD-ROM drive to work; and that he has not yet figured out
how to program his VCR.  We feel his pain.  -- Computerworld, 
10/21/96, p. 138.  [<jrreber@pobox.com>.  Tim Finin.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 82
 IS                                          November 21, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry and Comdex news.
 2>  Microsoft news.
 3>  Safe computing.
 4>  Research software.
 5>  Entrepreneurialism.
_________________________________________________________________

Software is the difference between hardware and reality.
[Jerry Heyman <jerry@arlut.utexas.edu>, 11/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!


Industry and Comdex news:

    Robotics news: Russia's Mars program is probably ended for
at least a decade, following Sunday's launch failure of its Mars 
probe.  The country simply doesn't have the money to continue.  
The US an 19 European nations had more than a ton of scientific 
instruments aboard the 6.7-ton probe.  [LA Times.  SJM, 11/18/96, 
12A.]

    Greg Aharonian reports that the top software patent categories 
for the first half of 1996 were networking (919) and image 
processing (528), with network software nearly 25% of all new 
software patents.  There were 3966 software patents in the first
6 months, and likely 8100 for the year -- almost as many as in 
1992-4 combined.  Companies developing Internet commerce or 
entertainment software should "expect to be sued at least once."  
(The number of active software patents will soon top 20K,
or even 50K, mostly held in the US and Japan.  Aharonian considers 
the bulk of these to be non-novel, and hence unenforceable.)  
Another trend is that Microsoft is moving up rapidly, from 24th 
last year to 12th in the first half of this year.  Top awardees 
include IBM (313), ATT (114), Canon, Hitachi, Motorola, Xerox 
(80), Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, NEC, Matsushita, Toshiba, Microsoft 
(46), HP, GE, US Government, DEC, Apple (37), Ford, Siemens Honda, 
Sony, Ericsson, and Intel (26).  Selected categories include
GUI (289), signal processing (232), databases (193),
finance (117), entertainment (115), pattern recognition (72), 
distributed processing (64), OOP (63), character recognition (60), 
speech recognition (55), robotics (52), music (49), algorithms 
(48), AI (47), NN (43), games (39), natural language analysis 
(35), education (30), fuzzy logic (27), simulation (20),
and virtual reality (18).  [<srctran@world.std.com>, PATNEWS, 
11/12/96.]

    MicroVision (Seattle) is developing a "heads-up" virtual 
reality display that uses a low-power laser to paint an image 
directly on your retina.  Current images appear to be "strangely 
solid, yet translucent," hanging several feet in front of the 
viewer, and can be made to overlay a physical scene.  Working 
systems for military and medical use, costing $5K-$50K,
should be ready in about 18 months.  [SJM, 11/19/96, 1C.]

    About 210K people are attending Comdex this week.  (The second 
largest US trade show, for sporting goods, draws only 77K people.)  
2,100 companies are paying $44.95 per square foot to exhibit -- 
plus employee expenses, literature, freebies, parties, and other 
costs -- for 1.35M square feet of display space.  Booth space 
costs twice as much as for other shows, but exhibitors get three 
times as many visitors.  It's not a fun event, what with traffic 
meltdowns, men's-room lines, three-hour waits for restaurant 
tables, and jacked up rates for rooms.  Yet companies often spend 
$200K to attend, and Adobe is spending several times that.  Only
a few large companies such as Oracle and Sun can skip Comdex 
without fear of starting rumors.  [SJM, 11/18/96, 1A.]

    Comdex distributes about 5 tons of press kits each day, 
containing literature from 1,500 companies.  Most of it goes
right to the trash, after reporters rifle through for any 
freebies.  [SJM, 11/19/96, 1C.]

    Intel's Andy Grove predicts that desktop machines of 15 years 
from now will contain 1B transistors (currently 5.5M) and execute 
100B instructions/second (up from 400M).  It's not clear what will 
keep consumers buying new machines every few years.  [Mike 
Langberg et al., SJM, 11/19/96, 1C.]

  "For the many critics who think the Mac is doomed to become
the Amiga of the '90s, remember what the Viet Cong, driven by 
fierce attachment to their home platform and their spirit of 
independence, were able to do to France and the United States.  
Passion can often accomplish what mere business interest cannot.  
And the motivating force of Apple's developers has far more
to do with passion than it does with business."  -- Paulina 
Borsook, Upside, 11/96.  [DaveNet, 10/12/96.]  (And yet I'm 
finding less and less reason to be passionate about the Mac.)


Microsoft news:

    HPC no longer means just High Performance Computing.  
Microsoft is using the acronym for hand-held PCs, formerly
known as PDAs.  HPCs run Windows CE, a Windows 95 lookalike.
More than 60 (90?) companies will soon offer such devices, 
software, and add-ons.  HPCs typically have 2MB RAM, 4MB ROM, 
infrared connectivity, and ports for peripherals.  They also
turn on and off instantly.  Prices start at $500, plus peripherals 
and other options.  [SJM, 11/18/96.]

    Companies doing real-time data acquisition, monitoring,
and computer control are finding it difficult to port their 
software from DOS, Windows 3.1, or Windows 95 to stable,
secure, networkable, multiprocessor, multithreaded, preemptive 
multiprocessing, GUI-equipped operating systems such as Unix, 
Windows NT, the NeXT OS, and the Be OS.  Customers want the 
increased stability, since rebooting Windows several times a day 
can be a real pain in the acq, but that stability comes from 
keeping user processes out of the OS address space.  Real-time 
software can slow down by a factor of 100 if it's forced to go 
through the OS.  Developers are needed who can write tight code 
for the more complex environments.  [Personal Engineering
& Instrumentation News, 11/96, p. 33.  Bill Park.]

    Interval Research (Palo Alto), financed by Microsoft
co-founder Paul Allen, is spinning off three companies to market 
girl-oriented software (Purple Moon), children's real-time
video editing (Ogopogo Studies), and publisher's e-commerce 
software (Carnelian Inc.).  Interval's other projects are still
under wraps.  [WSJ, 11/13/96, A3.  EDUPAGE.]

    Bill Gates says that a significant portion of Microsoft's 
$2B/year research budget is aimed at getting your computer
to recognize you, respond to your voice and gestures, and talk 
back in whatever voice signature you choose.  [Reuters, 11/5/96.  
Lily Laws.]

    Microsoft's new Office 97 suite is "the first time technology 
from our research group is in a shipping product," according
to Gates.  [Infoworld.  Richard Fritzson, 11/20/96.]

    MSOFT is the "Everything Microsoft" list, for both
business news and technical or software announcements.
Send a "SUBSCRIBE MSOFT" subject line to Patrick Grote 
<msoft@inlink.com>.  [NEW-LIST, 10/28/96.]


Safe computing:

    IBM's NN-based virus detector has been exceptionally 
successful.  It examines computer code in three-byte sequences, 
looking for "virus particles."  Operating on "millions
of desktops," it has encountered three false positives --
all security programs that resembled virus code -- and about
six previously unknown boot viruses.  [Forbes, 11/18/96, p. 252.  
EDUPAGE.]

    CTDNews reports that several ergonomic keyboards studied -- 
including Microsoft and Apple units -- do not reduce injuries
or increase performance.  [IBD, 10/23/96, A6.  EDUPAGE.]
(Sit properly, keep your fingers bent, stretch frequently,
and don't keep any muscle tense for more than three minutes
at a time.  Repetitive small motions cause problems, so work
in a few larger finger motions or stretches.)

    HP's hardware encryption scheme apparently has enough
support to become reality, as an International Cryptography 
Framework (ICF) tentatively supported by the US, France,
and Britain.  The hardware is to include levels of "scrambling" 
security than can only be turned on with country-specific hardware 
or software modules.  Encryption security can then be dealt with 
at a policy level instead of through hardware export controls.  
The current US administration says it has no plans to limit 
domestic encryption strength.  Supporting companies -- including 
Intel, Microsoft, and Netscape -- plan to use open encryption 
algorithms with no known "back door" access for law enforcement 
agencies.  [Rory J. O'Connor, SJM, 11/19/96, 1C.]


Research software (in our CRS 6.42 digest this week):

Logtalk 1.4: free object-oriented extension to Prolog.

PSfrag 3.0: EPS graphics package with LaTeX text/equation 
overlays.

GIB: bridge-playing program (binaries) from Matthew L. Ginsberg.

ZooLife for Windows: alife simulation.

CFS: genetic classifier system.

Drone 1.0: testbed for running simulation jobs.

ANN v1.10: NN construction and evaluation system.

Fuzzy Systems Toolbox (FSTB): MATLAB/SIMULINK toolbox
of 160 files.

Simple fuzzy logic 3D maze generator from <grog@fred.net>.

Simple genetic programming maze-running demo from Neil Arrowsmith.

GAlib 2.4.1: C++ objects for genetic algorithms.
(Also, a GAlib mailing list.)

"Advances in Genetic Programming: Volume II": book by Angeline
and Kinnear.

Implementing lexically-scoped macros for Scheme, Java, etc.:
MS thesis from Stephen Carl.

Programming Python: book from O'Reilly about the Python
object-oriented scripting language.


Entrepreneurialism:

    Entrepreneurial wealth in Silicon Valley is going up by
50%-100%/year, with the personal wealth of SV employees, 
shareholders and founders increasing by about $75B-$100B over
the past 7 years.  Yet little of that goes to charity, despite
tax incentives that allow a donation of appreciated stock for
as little as 1/5 its value.  (Someone in the top tax bracket
would have to pay $35 in capital gains tax to cash in $100
in founder's stock, plus $45 in state and federal taxes
on the income.  Such charges are avoided if the stock is given
to charity.)  Other alternatives include starting a charitable 
gift fund, remainder trust, or foundation.  Each gives an 
immediate tax deduction for funds that are committed to eventual 
charitable use.  Entrepreneurs haven't been using these vehicles 
because they are young, frugal, busy, nervous about "paper 
profits," and worried that selling stock would show lack of
faith in their companies.  [James J. Mitchell, SJM, 11/17/96.]

    Venture capital investments in Silicon Valley and nationwide 
are slowing in the 3rd quarter -- as they usually do -- but it's 
going to be a record year.  VCs claim there just aren't enough 
good opportunities to invest in.  Competition is hot, especially 
competition for experienced high-tech executives.  (Sometimes 
they'll even put a freelance executive on payroll -- as an 
"entrepreneur in residence" -- while he/she figures out what
kind of business to start.)  SV investment dropped from $761M
in the 2nd quarter to $459M in the 3rd.  Almost 40% of that
is for software-related companies, the only sector which did not 
slack off.  For a complete list of nationwide investments, see 
<http://www.sjmercury.com/business/venture>.  The venture industry 
is both growing and consolidating, with 51% of the capital now 
managed by the largest 10% of venture firms.  The US has 700 VC 
firms, up from 550 in 1993.  125 are based in the Bay Area.
About half of US venture capital comes from SV and Boston, but 
other areas -- especially San Diego, and also Asia -- are seeing 
increases.  Many VC firms are specializing, such as Hummer Winblad 
Venture Partners (Emeryville, CA) and Sippl Macdonald Ventures 
(Menlo Park) in software or Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Beyers 
(Menlo Park) with their Java Fund.  Individual investors 
("business angels") are more active now, and many corporations
are setting up venture capital divisions.  Ann Winblad estimates 
that five times as many software businesses are being funded
as the market can support -- or as can be staffed with quality 
employees -- which may lead to another recession in venture 
funding.  [Ricardo Sandoval and Steve Kaufman, SJM, 11/18/96, 1E.]

   (Way Ting, 47, left SGI this year to start Pictra Inc.,
a company helping people post family pictures on their websites.  
He's gotten $2.2M in VC funding, employs 14, and expects to turn
a profit next year and to go public with a $20M business in 1998.  
He was approached by VCs even before he knew he wanted to be
an entrepreneur.)

    Temp agencies say that average pay rate is up because more 
high-tech people are choosing to temp.  An industrial worker may 
get $7/hour, while technical jobs may pay $22/hour.  [Dow Jones.  
SJM, 11/9/96, 1C.]

    The typical US millionaire -- of which there are about
3.5M -- is a 57-year-old man, married, with three kids.
He's self-employed in a "dull-normal" business such as welding, 
plumbing, paving, or pest control, and works 45-55 hours/week.  
His household net worth is $3.7M, including a $320K house,
and he invests 20% after taxes from an annual income of $247K.
His charge cards are MasterCard, Visa, and Sears, and he wears 
inexpensive suits and drives a Ford.  (Six out of seven
luxury car buyers are not millionaires -- just high-income,
low-net-worth people.)  His adult children, in all probability, 
will not be so frugal.  "The more you give them, the more they 
spend."  It's often best for the kids not to tell them that
you've got money.   So says author Thomas J. Stanley, who has 
himself become a millionaire by following his subjects' examples.  
["The Millionaire Next Door."  SJM, 11/20/96, 1C.]  (I don't
know if that 3.5M includes the wives.  'Sorry about the sexism.)

    Need to know just how much Bill Gates' Microsoft stock
is worth?  Check the Bill Gates Personal Wealth Clock at 
<http://www.webho.com/WealthClock>.  The display also gives
Bill Gates' wealth divided by the current US population,
showing "your personal contribution" to be about $77.
An international version of the clock is under development.  
[Philip Greenspun.  Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 11/13/96.]
(Don't think of Gates as grabbing your share of the pie,
but as enlarging the pie for everyone.  That's what 
entrepreneurialism is about.)

					-- Ken


Love your kids, live life, have fun, be happy.  [Brent R. Hunt 
Jr., 11/96.]

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 81
 IS                                          November 19, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Funding/tech news.
 2>  Education and society.
 3>  Java and VR worlds.
 4>  Privacy and security.
 5>  Career jobs.
 6>  Journal calls.
 7>  Career topics.
_________________________________________________________________

"Alas! Alas! Small things overcome great ones, the Nile rat
kills the crocodile, the swordfish kills the whale, the book
will kill the edifice."  These are the mysterious words uttered
by Dom Claude in Victor Hugo's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame"
as he looks sadly from a printed book to the cathedral.
The narrator himself provides the interpretation: "Printing
will kill architecture" as a "book is soon made, costs but little, 
and can go so far."  -- Mohan Sodhi <mohan_sodhi@sdt.com>,
OR/MS Today Online Edition, 10/96.


Goood Morning, Computists!


Funding/tech news:

    The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR)
is sponsoring paid summer research opportunities at eight Air 
Force R&D labs, 5/15/97-9/30/97, with a possible 1-year follow-on 
research grant at your institution.  Faculty participants must be 
US citizens; graduate students may also be US permanent residents.  
For a brochure and application contact RDL-AFOSR Summer Research 
Program <afosr@rdl.com>, 1-800-677-1363 x300, x333 Fax.
[Gem Naivar <gem@cs.utexas.edu>, utcs.grad, 11/13/96.]

    UC San Diego's Supercomputer Center will be the first to test 
the new scalable, multithreaded processor chip from Tera Computer 
Co. (Seattle).  SDSC has a $4.2M NSF award for the acquisition
and evaluation.  Tera's chief scientist, Burton Smith, says
that most of the big computing challenges of today can't be 
distributed, making the Tera MTA's scalar architecture the best 
way to go.  Average performance should improve as more processes 
are run, since any process waiting for data can be be put
on hold without reducing throughput.  <http://www.tera.com>.  
[Daniel Pouzzner <douzzer.mit.edu>, comp.sys.super, 11/11/96.]  
(US scientists can get NSF-paid CPU time at the various 
supercomputer centers.)

    The European Research and Development Database (ERD),
2nd ed., is a guide to scientific organizations and individuals
in 39 European countries.  ERD won the European Information 
Association's 1995 award for best electronic information source.  
The organizational data (only) is available for a free one month 
trial at the Bowker-Saur website, <http://www.bowker-saur.co.uk
/service/>.  [Mary Watson <mwatson@grits.valdosta.peachnet.edu>, 
grants-l, 10/11/96.]  (Good resource for job hunters?)

    An opportunity for fame and fortune:  The Int. J. of 
Forecasting is conducting a competition among forecasting
methods for 3003 actual time series from economic, demographic,
and business domains.  AI and machine learning methods are of 
particular interest.  The data will be available in late 11/96, 
with forecasts due in 3/97.  Contact Fred Collopy 
<flc2@po.cwru.edu>, Weatherhead School of Management, Case
Western Reserve U., Cleveland, OH 44106; (216) 368-2144,
(216) 368-4776 Fax.  [comp.ai, 11/15/96.  David Joslin.]

    The US has something like $715B in consumer goods "gathering 
dust" on warehouse shelves.  Better forecasting could reduce 
overage by about a quarter, saving $179B/year.  That's the driving 
force behind collaborative forecasting and replenishment (CFAR), 
where retailers and manufacturers share information to predict 
consumer demand more accurately.  [BW, 10/21/96, p. 140.  
NewtNews.] 


Education and society:

    Harvard Business School has completed an $11M conversion
to a Web-based MBA program, including multimedia content and
links to corporate sites.  [Chronicle of Higher Ed., 11/15/96, 
A29.  EDUPAGE.]

    Quality Dynamics Inc. predicts that half of all corporate 
training will be delivered via technology by the year 2000.
The Gartner Group projects a $12B/year market in just two years 
(after increasing 10%/year), within the $50B corporate continuing 
education market.  [IW, 11/4/96, p. 32.  EDUPAGE.]

    Interversity is for discussion of networked or
non-institutional education.  Send a "subscribe interversity
your name" message to <macjordomo@dewey.lc.missouri.edu>,
or see <http://www.missouri.edu/~rhetnet/interversity/>.
[Eric Crump <wleric@showme.missouri.edu>, NEW-LIST, 10/22/96.]

    MISQ Discovery is intended to explore new modes of
knowledge creation and dissemination, including experimental 
cooperative groups.  It's an online counterpart (or counterpoint) 
to the peer-reviewed MIS Quarterly.  
<http://www.misq.org/discovery/about.html>.  [newjour, 10/19/96.]

    Corporate "whales" are on their way out, according to
Harry S. Dent Jr.  They'll be replaced by diffused, agile firms 
operating like schools of minnows.  People dealing directly
with customers will have authority to make decisions on their own.  
"There will be no mindless, meaningless jobs -- instead,
everyone will make important decisions related to the business's 
well-being."  ["Job Shock," St. Martin's Press, 1996.  NewtNews, 
10/29/96.]  (Everyone?  90% of the populace are in the bottom 90%.  
Any one company may be able to hire competent people for their 
line functions, but they can't all do so.  Bureaucracies are 
assembly lines for the service sector, and are both efficient
and necessary when you can't hire competent help.  Unless training 
solves all our problems, our only out is to reduce human contact 
via automation (and then find some way to support the unemployed 
masses).  Only good jobs will remain, but enormous salaries
will be needed to entice and motivate the staff.  And that means 
that [AI-based?] automation will soon move in...)

    "know-org" is a list for research and scholarship
in organizational learning and knowledge management.  Send
a "join know-org your name" message to <mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk>.  
[<know-org-request@mailbase.ac.uk>, new-list, 11/7/96.]

    Future Cities is a new list for discussion of population 
growth, cities built anew, and emerging city-states.  Send
a "subscribe" message to <Ftr_Cities-request@websightz.com>.  
[Franklin Wayne Poley <culturex@vcn.bc.ca>, NEW-LIST, 11/4/96.]


Java and VR worlds:

    Apple has announced a free developer beta of Mac OS Runtime 
for Java (MRJ) with high-level application programming interface 
(API) and a lower-level invocation API to load Java class 
libraries, create Java objects, and call Java methods or code
from C/C++ and Apple Applet Runner (in order to build hybrid
Mac OS-Java applications).  Apple is also running a Macintosh 
Runtime for Java Coding Contest, for Java applets to be shown off 
at the Macworld conference.  The beta can be found at Apple's 
development area, <http://www.devtools.apple.com/mrj/>.  Other 
operating system enhancements for Java will be announced in 7/97, 
following the "Harmony" OS 7.5.6 release in 1/97.  [WEBster, 
11/12/96.]

    Oracle claims to have a "Developer/2000 for the Web" software 
tool for converting existing code into the Java code needed
by diskless network computers.  It may be available in 2/97.  
[WSJ, 11/4/96, B6.  EDUPAGE.]

    vworlds-biz mailing list is for developers of VR/MUD-based 
businesses.  Over 300 members so far.  See the "mail list" section 
of <http://www.maddog.com>.  [Frank Crowell <frankc@netcom.com>, 
comp.ai.games, 10/22/96.]  (Another keyword for virtual worlds
is Location Based Entertainment (LBE).)

    For Java games on the Internet, connect to 
<http://www.focusmm.co.uk/java/index.html>.  Netscape Navigator 
3.x is recommended.  [<focusmm@aol.com>, net-hap, 8/19/96.]

    HuskyLabs has created a Java interface to MOO,
introducing room views and multimedia displays to a previously 
text-only world.  Fully compatible with standard moocode.
Jump to the CrabHouse from <http://www.sunspot.net/>, or telnet
to www.sunspot.net 8888 and type: @request playername for 
me@my.email.address.  [David Carter <obvious@northcoast.com>,
net-hap, 8/23/96.]

    AICore is a MOO virtual community dedicated to the study
and implementation of AI systems.  One particular interest
is defeasible logic graphs (with links to related sites),
but the larger goal is to create virtual research and teaching 
environments.  Newbies are welcome, and are directed to the survey 
of AI related web documents archived in The WWW Virtual Library: 
Artificial Intelligence.  <http://aisun2.ai.uga.edu:2357>
or <telnet://aisun2.ai.uga.edu:2357>.  [Michael Swift 
<swift@flake.org>, comp.ai, 10/31/96.  David Joslin.]


Privacy and security:

    The Computer Security Institute (CSI) has published
a "Manager's Guide to Cyberspace Attacks and Countermeasures,"
in which Dorothy Denning covers "every known form of electronic 
threat."  $10 to nonmembers.  <http://www.gocsi.com/>.
[IW, 10/28/96.  EDUPAGE.]

    Scientists at Princeton U. and Bellcore say they can crack 
virtually any chip-based public-key encryption system by 
irradiating the chip and studying its errors.  Others at
the Weizmann Institute have deciphered a 56-bit DES key.
[Science Magazine, 11/1/96, p. 716.  EDUPAGE.]  (Studying
a system by selective damage has long been used in both 
cryptography and medicine.  Another way to probe chip function
is to study the timing of current draw on each pin.  Building 
multiple, differing encoders into the chip can complicate such 
strategies.  [Vadim Antonov <avg@pluris.com>, Risks Digest, 
11/5/96.])

    If you want private files in your website directory,
be sure to include an index.html (or index.htm) file.
Otherwise people can get a full directory hotlist by
stripping off the filename from any URL.  If you see
a ".../survey/surveyform.htm", for instance, there's
a good chance anyone can access the current survey results
unless the webmaster has created a .html file.  [John R. LoVerso 
<j.loverso@opengroup.org>, RISKS Digest, 11/5/96.]

    (To get the RISKS Digest, read comp.risks or send
a "subscribe" message to <risks-request@csl.sri.com>.
Archives are on <ftp://ftp.sri.com/risks>.)

    A federal district judge  has ruled that America Online may 
block unsolicited mail to AOL subscribers.  AOL is not a public 
forum and may enforce its own restrictions on speech and behavior.  
[Washington Post, 11/5/96, C01.  EDUPAGE.]

    A Scottish court will consider the difficult issue of whether 
it is a copyright violation for one website to include the content 
of another by reference, via URL.  The specific issue is whether 
the Shetland News (of the 24K-resident Shetland Isles) can link
to content on the Shetland Times' site.  [BNA Daily Report
for Executives, 11/1/96, A13.  EDUPAGE.]


Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.41 digest this week):

Northwestern U. (Evanston, IL): profs. in HCI, AI, VR, hypermedia.

Mills College (Oakland, CA): prof. of distributed computing, etc.

Duke U. (Durham, NC): prof. in experimental systems.

UPittsburgh/Medical Informatics: pre/postdoc training
in medical AI.

UOregon (Eugene): prof. of descriptive or psycholinguistics.

UToronto: MS/PhD research scientist for intelligent scheduling. 

Sharp Labs (Oxford): programmer for R&D in intelligent Internet 
agents.

Uppsala U. (Sweden): postdoc in computational linguistics.

Utrecht U. (Netherlands): postdoc in genetic and constraint 
algorithms.

JSTC/Kawato Dynamic Brain Project (Kyoto): 4/97 postdoc
in human/robotic sensory-motor learning.

UQueensland/Math (Australia): 1/97 RA in dynamical systems theory.


Journal calls:
                  
    Applications of machine learning and the knowledge discovery 
process; Machine Learning.  3/4/97; Ronny Kohavi <ronnyk@sgi.com>, 
415-933-3126.  [dbworld, 11/4/96.]

    Human computer interaction and information retrieval; 
Interacting with Computers.  1/30/97; Chris Johnson 
<johnson@dcs.gla.ac.uk>.  Referees are also sought, by 12/1/96.  
<http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/intcom>.  [IRLIST Digest, 11/4/96.]

    Traveling salesman problem; Computers & Operations Research.  
1/97; Abraham Punnen <punnen@or.csd.unbsj.ca>.  [sci.op-research, 
11/3/96.]

    Integrated architectures for robot control and programming; 
the Int. J. of Robotics Research, Spring 1988.  3/15/97;
Eve Coste-Maniere <eve.coste_maniere@sophia.inria.fr>,
+33 4 93 65 76 26, +33 4 93 65 78 45 Fax.  
<http://www.inria.fr/icare/IJRR>.  [<Paul.Freedman@crim.ca>, 
comp.robotics.research, 11/7/96.]

    Scheduling; Evolutionary Computation.  9/1/97; David Montana 
<dmontana@bbn.com>, (617) 873-2719, (617) 873-2616 Fax.  
<http://asd.bbn.com/papers/EVCO/evco.htm>.  [GA-List, 11/14/96.  
Bill Park.]


Career topics:

    Knowledge workers are learning to seek equity in the companies 
they work for, as salary only makes sense when contribution 
relates to time spent.  A sports agent suggests these tips:
know who you're dealing with; know what you're worth
(or "act like the MVP that you are"); know what you want
before you ask; be tough (but honest); become a free agent;
and know that every negotiation  will lead to another,
and another, and another.  [Eric Matson, Fast Company,
10/96, p. 90.  NewtNews.]

    Shatter the Glass Ceiling is a new, free webzine for working 
women, from a woman-owned/operated website consulting and service 
business called The Glass Ceiling.  "Some of our best friends
are men, but the internet has been dominated by men for too long."  
<http://www.acsinc.net/glass/index.htm>.  [Judith Lewis 
<jlewis@acsinc.net>, newjour, 9/1/96.]

    "witch," or Women in (the) Computing History,
is an "oral history" mailing list for women's stories.
Send a "subscribe" subject line to <witch-request@niestu.com>.  
[Donna <donna.s@niestu.com>, NEW-LIST, 10/3/96.]

    The Afro-techies list is for women of African descent
who are technically inclined, for both system support
and personal networking.  Send a "subscribe" subject line
to <afro-techies-request@persephone.hampshire.edu>.
[Michelle Murrain <mmurrain@hampshire.edu>, NEW-LIST, 11/4/96.]

    On NetProCon, professional consultants can discuss marketing, 
advertising, selling, retainers, billing rates, proposals, 
contracts, etc., and can find software, training, seminars, 
conferences, books, newsletters, articles, and perhaps business 
opportunities.  <http://www.netprocon.com>.  
[<joebuz@netprocon.com>, net-hap, 10/19/96.]

					-- Ken


Sweep first before your own door, before you sweep the doorsteps 
of your neighbors.  [TFTD, 11/15/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 77
 IS                                           November 5, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Funding news.
 2>  Career advice.
 3>  Career jobs.
 4>  Book and journal calls.
 5>  AI and science news.
_________________________________________________________________

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where
there is no path and leave a trail.  -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.  
[AWAD, 10/31/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    My wife just won a pumpkin pie baking contest at work.  
Contestants had to start with raw pumpkin.  It's a nice seasonal 
event.  I helped: I turned off the oven when she told me to. :-)

    (Lily and I grew the pumpkins.  Little ones this year,
not the 70-150 pounders of previous years.  The world record
is now over 1000 pounds.  Gardening tips and recipes can be
found on Usenet and the Web, of course.)


 1> Funding news:

    The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) wishes
to sponsor research supporting Air Force Global Awareness;
Dynamic Planning and Execution Control; Global Mobility in War
and Peace; Projection of Lethal and Sublethal Power; Space 
Operations; and People, as discussed in the New World Vistas 
reports.  These six areas are further broken into 41 science
and technology subareas, plus basic research topics.  See
Research Interests and Broad Agency Announcement (97-1).
[Kathy Adams <kathya@eecs.umich.edu>, umich.engin.cseg, 10/28/96.]  
(Probably on the AFOSR web page, if your dept. or sponsored 
research office hasn't received it.)

    The Cornell Theory Center has announced its 1997 
Supercomputing Program for Undergraduate Research (SPUR),
pending NSF REU funding.  Topics often include visualization,
in areas such as chemistry, solar convection, pollution control, 
fractals, and population modeling.  
<http://www.tc.cornell.edu/Edu/SPUR>.  2/28/97 deadline; Jeanne
C. Butler <spur@tc.cornell.edu>, 607/254-8813, 607/254-8888 Fax.  
[<jeanne@tc.cornell.edu>, net-hap, 10/28/96]  (Actually, the 
announcement was for "Undregraduate Reserach."  Whatever. :-)

    NSF has a new program guideline, NSF 97-5, for its
Engineering Research Centers.  Thrre or four new centers
are planned this year, with funding for 5-10 years.  First-year 
support is $1.5M-$2M.  "Activity within ERCs lies at the
interface between the discovery-driven culture of science
and the innovation-driven culture of engineering."  An ERC must 
have a guiding vision, a synergy of perspectives, a strategic plan 
of team research and education (including outreach), a partnership 
with industry, and a long-term plan for self-sufficiency.  Notices 
of intent are due 12/5/96; preproposals 3/7/97; and full proposals 
9/10/97; for awards in 3/98.  [stsful, 11/2/96.  uwisc.nsfdoc.]  
(An ERC is a substantial operation that requires a full-time 
director.  NSF has also funded scientific research centers
that need only half-time leadership from a department head
or other scientist.)

    NSF will soon have a new cross-disciplinary initiative
in Learning and Intelligent Systems, with first-year funding
just over $20M.  An announcement will be posted to 
<http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/LIS/index.htm>.  [Paul J. Werbos 
<pwerbos@nsf.gov>, comp.ai.fuzzy, 10/18/96.]

    NSF has a new program for Methods and Models for Integrated 
Assessment (MMIA), for fundamental research into models and 
methodologies that will "integrate or couple multiple-component 
systems."  2/14/97 deadline.  Get publication NSF 96-154
from stis.nsf.gov.  [Kathy Adams <kathya@eecs.umich.edu>, 
umich.engin.cseg, 10/28/96.]

    Other new NSF program guidelines: Program for Women
and Girls in Science, Engineering and Mathematics (NSF 96-131); 
NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellowships in Science and Engineering
(NSF 96-149); and Summer Programs in Japan and Korea (NSF 96-151).  
See <http://www.nsf.gov/>, FTP from stis.nsf.gov, or send a
"get nsf96131.txt" message to <stisserve@nsf.gov>.  Printed
copies are free from <pubs@nsf.gov>.  [grants, 10/28/96.]

    Juris Hartmanis of NSF's Computer and Information Science
and Engineering directorate (CISE) says that better search 
mechanisms are needed to make the Internet useful for research.  
He suggests that a record of the number of times a document is 
"hit" (found or retrieved) could be used to improve searches.  
[BNA Daily Report for Executives, 10/24/96, A31.  EDUPAGE.]
(Or maybe we just need research-oriented reporting, such as
TCC and online digests provide.  Would NSF be willing to provide 
financial support?  The answer used to be no, but I think that's 
changed.)

    The US Small Business Administration (SBA) is sponsoring
an online matchmaking service for private "angel" investors.  
Businesses will pay a fee to be listed on the Angel Capital 
Electronic Network (AceNet) from UTexas Austin's Capital Network 
and MIT's Technology Capital Network.  [WSJ, 10/28/96, B2.  
EDUPAGE.]


 2> Career advice:

    The average US civilian-sector 1997 salary increase
is expected to be about 2.9%.  Networking and computer
specialists can expect 7%.  [Farcast.  NewtNews, 10/1/96.]

    Consulting-tools is a discussion group and announcement
list for approximately 700 consultants (in all areas).
Send a "subscribe your_email_address" message to Carl Kline 
<kline@referrals.com>, National Consultant Referrals, Inc. 
<http://referrals.com>.  [net-hap, 10/2/96.]

    About Work offers anecdotes, tips, and support for anyone
who works for a living (or wants to).  <http://www.aboutwork.com>.  
[Geoffrey Kleinman <geoff@kleinman.com>, The Kleinman Report, 
10/13/96.  net-hap.]

    The Annals of Improbable Research (AIR) staff have been 
searching for counter examples to Leon Lederman's lament: 
"Scientists fall in love.  But when was the last time you saw
a physicist on TV galloping off into the sunset with a beautiful 
woman?"  Two notable examples are "War of the Worlds," where
Gene Barry saves the world from Martians and gets the girl
(in the "sunset" of the invasion), and The X-Files episode
"War of the Coprophages," where an AI scientist galloped off into 
the sunset with a beautiful woman called Bambi.  [mini-AIR, 9/96.]


 3> Career jobs (in our CCJ digest 6.39 this week):

UNebraska/CSE (Lincoln): department chair,
possibly in image understanding, multimedia,
human-centered systems, or communications/security.

UNew Hampshire (Durham): prof. of distributed computing, 
constraint computing, algorithms, scientific databases, 
visualization, etc.

UPennsylvania (Philadelphia): faculty in experimental
and theoretical robotics, NLP, distributed systems,
logic and computation, etc.

CMU (Pittsburgh): BS research programmer for information agents.

Ohio State U. (Columbus): jr./sr. CIS faculty, in AI, DB, 
graphics, HCI, distributed systems, SE, etc.

UNew Mexico (Albuquerque): three CS faculty in adaptive systems, 
automated reasoning, computer-mediated communications, HCI, 
intelligent systems, etc.

Brown U. (Providence): CS prof., esp. theoretical/analytical AI, 
algorithms, graphics, DB, logic programming, SE, etc., with 
applications.

Princeton U. (NJ): CS prof., esp. in experimental areas.

Kestrel Institute (Palo Alto, CA): MS/PhD scientists in formal
and KBS methods for scheduling and DB/software development.

AT&T Bell Labs (Florham Park, NJ): BS/MS research programmer
for ML, IR, pattern recognition, NN, or AI.

NEC Research Institute/CS (Princeton, NJ): PhD scientist
in distributed computing (DB, networks, agents).

Unisys (Blue Bell, PA): MS/PhD spoken language developer.

Microsoft/ITG (Redmond, WA): program manager for IR R&D
(agents, ActiveX interfaces, distributed indexing, NL, etc.).

National Digital Library Federation (DC): program director.

Vancouver company: AI/OR scientist for approximate algorithms
in manpower scheduling.

UBirmingham (UK): AI lecturer.

CHOROCHRONOS (European Community): doctoral/postdoc support
for about 20 researchers in spatial and temporal DB.
(Includes Iceland, Lichtenstein, Norway, and Israel.)

France Telecom R&D Center (Lannion): two AI/NLP researchers
in spoken/multimedia dialogue.

UKoblenz-Landau/AI (Germany): postdoc in disjunctive logic 
programming.

Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI; Amsterdam): 
jr./sr. researchers in data mining, image DB, and distributed 
architectures.

Norwegian U. of Science and Technology (NTNU; Trondheim):
postdoc in heterogeneous documents and cooperative agents.


 4> Book and journal calls:

    Michael Prolman, the West Coast acquisitions editor
for Macmillan's Que imprint, is looking for authors/books for
new Internet technologies.  At the moment, he's particularly 
interested in tutorials for Marimba developers.  
<mrp@sapphire.com>.  [10/22/96.]
(Someone I met at an introductory qigong class.)

    The J. of MUD Research is a refereed e-journal
for psychological, anthropological, and sociological academic 
papers and comments.  Also book reviews, etc.  Contributions
are solicited.  <http://journal.tinymush.org/~jomr>
or <http://journal.mudsite.com/~jomr>.  [Alan Schwartz 
<editor@journal.tinymush.org>, sci.psychology.announce, 9/5/96.]

    Natural language generation; Computational Linguistics.  
2/1/97; Barbara Di Eugenio <dieugeni@linc.cis.upenn.edu>.  
<ftp://ftp.cs.columbia.edu/acl-l/Styfiles/CLstyle
/submission-instructs.Z>.  [comp.ai, 10/15/96.]

    Extended finite state models of language;
J. of Natural Language Engineering.  12/31/96; Andras Kornai 
<kornai@almaden.ibm.com>.  [comp.theory.info-retrieval, 10/17/96.]

    Data mining for financial applications; NeuroVe$t Journal, 
5/97.  1/15/97; <72672.261@compuserve.com>.  
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/ftpub/call.htm>.  
[<rbcaldwell@delphi.com>, comp.ai.fuzzy, 10/19/96.]

    Neural networks; J. of the Brazilian Computer Society (JBCS), 
7/97.  1/20/97; Germano Crispim Vasconcelos <gcv@di.ufpe.br>,
+55 81 2718438 Fax.  [connectionists, 10/21/96.]

    Evolutionary computation; J. of Theoretical Computing Science.  
4/1/97; A.E. Gusz Eiben <gusz@wi.leidenuniv.nl>, +31-(0)71-
5277060, +31-(0)71-5276985 Fax.  [comp.ai.alife, 10/17/96.]

    Computational learning theory; Algorithmica, Fall '97.  
1/31/97; Peter Auer and Wolfgang Maass <silt@igi.tu-graz.ac.at>.  
<http://www.cis.tu-graz.ac.at/igi/pauer/silt.html>.  
[<pauer@igi.tu-graz.ac.at>, connectionists, 10/31/96.]

    Intelligent electronic systems; Engineering Applications
of AI.  Papers must also be submitted to the Int. Conf. on 
Conventional and Knowledge-Based Intelligent Electronic Systems, 
Adelaide, 5/21/97.  11/15/96; Clarence W. de Silva 
<desilva@mech.ubc.ca>, 604-822-2403 Fax.  [comp.ai.fuzzy, 
11/1/96.]

    Workflow and Process Management; J. of Intelligent Information 
Systems (JIIS).  4/1/97; Marek Rusinkiewicz <marek@uh.edu>.  
<http://www.cs.uh.edu/~marek/cfp-wf.html>.  [dbworld, 10/30/96.]

    "Processors of the Future: How to use a Billion Transistors": 
IEEE Computer, 9/97.  Both technical articles and visionary 
essays.  2/1/97; Doug Burger <dburger@cs.wisc.edu>.  
<http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~galileo/billion>.  [comp.parallel, 
10/17/96.]

    Hardware/software codesign for embedded systems;
IEE Proceedings on Computers and Digital Techniques, 11/97.  
3/17/97; James Harrison <james@hplb.hpl.hp.com>.  [Tony Hirst 
<a.j.hirst@open.ac.uk>, ga-list, 10/28/96.  Bill Park.]


 5> AI and science news:

    Australian Artifical Intelligence Institute Technical Notes
is an e-journal of recent work at AAII.  "Frequently
unpolished, preliminary thoughts or results, occasionally
on highly specialised topics."  <http://www.aaii.oz.au
/research/techreports/>.  [newjour, 9/24/96.]

    The Bayesian Network Interchange Format helps researchers 
evaluate or collaborate on belief networks and Bayesian network 
tools.  <http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/dtg
/bnformat/default.htm>.  [UMBC AgentNews Webletter, 10/14/96.]

    Internet standards for interchange calendaring
and scheduling data are the subject of 
<http://www.ontime.com/press/openstds/neutrlpr.htm>.
[UMBC AgentNews Webletter, 10/14/96.]

    The UMBC AgentNews webletter is updated monthly
at <http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agents/agentnews/1996/13/>.
[Timothy Finin <finin@cs.umbc.edu>, 10/15/96.]

    BISC-DBM is a database mining interest group from
the Berkeley Initiative in Soft Computing (BISC).  To join, 
contact Lawrence Mazlack <mazlack@uc.edu>.  [dbworld, 8/29/96.]

    Online Virtual Reality is a compliation of VR/VRML links
and information.  <http://www.imaginative.com/VResources>.
[Zach Nelson <znelson@xspot.com>, net-hap, 6/26/96.]

    NanoNews Update is a Nanothinc website weekly news section 
covering nanotechnology and related topics.  
<http://www.nanothinc.com/News/0923/0923_news.html>.  [Tess
Mercer <tess@nanothinc.com>, comp.ai, 9/23/96.  David Joslin.]

    The Martian Chronicle isJPL's Mars Exploration newsletter.  
Past and current issues are at <http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
/mars/MARTIANCHRONICLE/>.  [James Porteous 
<ah688@freenet.toronto.on.ca>, inet-news, 8/8/96.  newjour.]

    Scientific Computing & Automation magazine is a monthly 
publication to 72K scientists and engineers.  
<http://www.scamag.com/>.  [<1wolff@gordon.cahners.com>,
net-hap, 9/28/96.]

    There's an interesting WWW science site from
The Next Step TV show, at <http://www.injersey.com/Media/IonSci/>.  
For more about the show, see <http://www.nextstep.com/>.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 8/26/96.]

					-- Ken


I never, ever say "I can't" about anything.  I might say
"I don't have the authority to make that decision" or
"Building A is too heavy for me to lift" or
"I will need training before I pilot that space shuttle."
-- Mike Huber.  [Techwr-L.  TFTD, 10/16/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 83
 IS                                           December 3, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  NSF funding news.
 2>  Career jobs.
 3>  Projects and urgent notices.
 4>  Artificial life.
_________________________________________________________________

The trouble with doing nothing is that you never know
when you are finished.  [AWAD, 11/22/96.]

The trouble with doing nothing is that
it takes all day to do it.  -- KIL, 11/22/96.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    All caught up with your work?  Me neither.  Our CCJ
and CAJ jobs digests are particularly full this week,
due to the Thanksgiving break.  I'd like to thank Brian
"Captain" Murfin, <captain@armadillo.net>, for helping me edit
and sort the jobs announcements.  We'll see more of his editing 
work in coming months.


 1> NSF funding news:

    NSF has a new interdisciplinary initiative in Learning
and Intelligent Systems (NSF 97-18).  Pre-proposals
are due 2/7/97.  <http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/lis/home.htm>
or <http://www.ehr.nsf.gov/lis/Project.htm>.  Barbara Blaustein 
<bblauste@nsf.gov>, 703-306-1926, 703-306-0599 Fax.  [IRLIST, 
11/26/96.]

    NSF has updated its NSF 95-112 brochure for Grant 
Opportunities for Academic Liaison with Industry (GOALI).
This program supports partnerships for faculty and student jobs
in industry and industry-related jobs in academe.  Support
can be through a new grant or a supplement to an existing grant.  
Various NSF directorates have their own GOALI initiatives, 
including programs for graduate students, postdocs, and 
minorities.  More than $19M should be available this year.  
[stsful-l, 11/27/96.]

    NSF's Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program --
formerly Academic Research Infrastructure (ARI) --
supports acquisition or development of instrumentation for 
research/training in all fields of science and engineering.  
(Maintenance and technical support are also covered.)  
Instrumentation could include computer systems, advanced 
workstation clusters, networks, etc.  Proposals are due 2/20/97, 
for awards of $100K-$2M (or sometimes less, for non-PhD schools
or for the social sciences).  Announcement NSF 97-24 is available 
as <http://www.nsf.gov/od/osti/mri/mriintro.htm>, or in printed 
form in another month.  <mri@nsf.gov>, 703/306-1040, 703/306-0129 
Fax.  [Barbara Blaustein <bblauste@nsf.gov>, dbworld, 11/25/96.]  
(Avoid "umbrella" proposals seeking various equipment for 
unrelated projects -- it's better to have a separate proposal
for each.  What really gets NSF's juices flowing is collaborative 
work between different projects, departments, schools, or with 
industry.  As long as there's collaboration, you can ask for
a single shared resource or for individual equipment.)

    DARPA and NSF/CCR are extending last year's basic research 
initiative in Evolutionary Development of Complex Software Systems 
(EDCS), as part of DARPA's broader EDCS program (defined by
ARPA BAA 95-40).  1/10/97 deadline.  Frank Anger, NSF Software 
Engineering and Languages Program, (703) 306-1911.  [NSF Bulletin, 
12/96.]

    Research Planning Grants and Career Advancement Awards
for Women Scientists and Engineers (RPG/CAA) -- NSF 93-130 --
has a 1/15/97 deadline.  Alvin Thaler, (703) 306-1880.
(Planning grants are small awards for developing a full proposal.  
Brochures may be ordered from <pubs@nsf.gov>, (703) 306-1130,
or downloaded from <http://www.nsf.gov>.)

    1/15/97 target dates include: Decision, Risk, and Management 
Science, NSF 94-64; Human Cognition and Perception, NSF 94-64;
and Linguistics, NSF 94-64.

    NATO Postdoctoral Fellowships in Science and Engineering
have a tentative deadline of 1/17/97.  See NSF brochure 96-149.  
Carolyn Piper, (703) 306-1696.

    NSF's Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program
-- NSF 96-3 -- has a 1/17/97 deadline.  Darryl Gorman,
(703) 306-1391.

    Another recently updated document is CISE Postdoctoral 
Research Associates in Computational Science and Engineering
& Experimental Computer Science (NSF 96-119).  See 
<http://www.nsf.gov/>, FTP from stis.nsf.gov, or send a "get 
nsf96119.txt" message to <stisserve@nsf.gov>.  [grants, 12/2/96.]


 2> Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.42 digest this week):

Vanderbilt U. (Nashville, TN): faculty in AI
and experimental systems.

NCSU (Raleigh): prof. in intelligent agents, interfaces, 
interactive animation.

NCSU (Raleigh): prof. in workflow, data mining,
or distributed systems.

UMichigan/IE (Ann Arbor): prof. in group decision support
or data structures for analysis of complex systems.

UMissouri (St. Louis): MS/PhD visiting faculty.  (Immediate.)

Oregon Graduate Institute (Portland): postdoc in medical 
informatics.

AT&T Labs (Murray Hill, NJ): research programmer in ML,
IR, pattern recognition, NN, NLP, AI.

MITRE Corp. (Bedford, MA): MS/PhD R&D in data mining and OODBMS.

San Jose start-up: two SEs in AI/expert systems, NN, fuzzy logic.

Indianapolis, IN: SE in NLP for adaptive learning
of Asian languages.

Unisys (Blue Bell, PA): AI/NLP spoken language developer.

Empirical Media Corp. (Pittsburgh, PA): researchers
in agent-based filtering, ML, etc.

Brightware Co. (Novato, CA): research programmers in AI,
expert systems, NLP.

TRADOS (Stuttgart, Brussels, and Alexandria VA):
SEs for language translation tools.

UOttawa: two postdocs in text summarization
and information browsing.

City U. (London): MS/PhD research in agents
and computational logic.

DRA (Malvern, UK): military AI/distributed computing R&D,
war games.

Ecole Normale Superieure (Lyon, France): two CS faculty.

UQueensland/NN Lab (Australia): postdoc in NN
generalization performance.

USydney/Neuromorphic Systems (Australia): 15 postdocs
in neural/sensory modeling, ML, etc.

Victoria U. (Wellington, NZ): lectureship in SE/DB, AI,
and distributed systems.


 3> Projects and urgent notices:

    Tim Crawford of King's College, London, would like to know of 
any work on musical similarity -- harmony, rhythm, melody, motif, 
etc. -- for information retrieval.  His music department is 
currently using the Unix-based HUMDRUM package for analysis of 
symbolic music.  [<t.crawford@kcl.ac.uk>, comp.music.research, 
11/13/96.]

    Project Gutenberg is in need of contributions, to continue
its mission of bringing public-domain literature to the net.
U. Illinois and Benedictine U. were previously supporting
the effort.  <http://www.promo.net/pg/nl/pgny_nov96.html>.
[Susan Klopfer <sklopfer@vanatech.com>, inet-news, 11/22/96.]

    CMU is adding new MS and PhD programs in Language 
Technologies, in their CS Language Technologies Institute.  
Specialties include computational linguistics, machine 
translation, speech understanding, and information retrieval.  
Apply by 2/1/97.  <ltp@cs.cmu.edu>, <http://www.lti.cs.cmu.edu/>.  
[Jennifer S. Potter <jspotter+@cs.cmu.edu>, comp.ai, 11/22/96.  
David Joslin.]

    Claris Emailer 1.1 for the Mac is currently free (ERP $49.95) 
at <http://www.claris.com/products/claris/emailer/enquirer/>, 
until version 2.0 becomes available early in 1997.  [Idealist, 
11/18/96.]

    Retrieve It! 2.0 for Mac searches files and disks
for keyword strings.  $20 + shipping (regularly $40) from 
<http://www.mvpsolutions.com/clear.html>, with free upgrade to 
version 2.5 when released.  (2.5 will be able to search
Internet sources also.)  Matt Pallakoff <matt@mvpsolutions.com>, 
1-800-856-9800 (ask for part# 22277).  [Idealist, 11/18/96.]

    (For monthly notification of Mac OS bargains from 
manufacturers, send a "subscribe idealist" message to 
<listmanager@sonic.net>.)


 4> Artificial life:

    comp.ai.alife and comp.ai.games have been a-buzz with 
discussion of the "Creatures" product from Millennium Interactive 
Ltd.  (It will be released in the US on 1/28/97.)  Inventor
and lead programmer Steve Grand claims that "norns" are a true 
artificial life form, acting entirely from low-level genetic
and cognitive principles rather than programming.  They do live
in a world of identified objects rather than raw bitmap 
perceptions, but nearly every other aspect of the simulation
is due to random genetics plus whatever training you provide.  
Imagine small children living (vertically) on your computer screen 
and you'll have some idea of the experience.  You can give the 
norns objects and teach them the object names.  Soon the creatures 
will start bringing you objects or interacting in other ways.  
Once you get some norns started, they can also train each other.  
Norns are not bright and do forget easily, but a bit of culture 
gets passed along.  Most of their appearance and behavior is 
genetically determined, though, and each norn is a unique genetic 
sample.  If you have a norn you'd rather not raise, the developers 
urge you to find someone else who would like it.  (They give 
instructions for euthanasia, but discourage the practice.)
A biochemical model of the creature's drives and needs gives 
diffuse feedback to a neural-network brain (consisting of several 
subsystems, including neural short-term and long-term episodic
and relationship memories).  There's also a chemical model 
controlling the digestive, reproductive, and immune systems.  
These components are all genetically determined, by a mutable
and variable-length genome.  Even the developers do not know
what may evolve as thousand of user/owners create thousands of 
generations of norns.  Grand says he wants you to believe your 
norns are alive not because he has fooled you but because he has 
convinced you.  [<stepheng@millennium.co.uk>, comp.ai.alife, 
11/20/96.]  (For additional info, see 
<http://www.inscape.com/creatures>.)

    Reasonably comprehensive details will be published at Agents 
'97 (Marina Del Rey) in 2/97.  Only the Creatures implementation 
will be kept secret.  First-generation creatures have about 1000 
neurons.  Most neurons have 1, 2, or 3 synapses; certain brain 
regions have 256.  Different hormonal mechanisms operate in 
different regions.  The internals are intended to model
biological genes, so brain genes describe lobe functions
and broad interconnections rather than individual neurons.
Nearly all of the learning is unsupervised, except for
the user's choice of what training examples to present.
The user is just another virtual object to the creature,
with no special privileges.  A few instincts are coded in 
genetically (and therefore mutably), in the form of neural 
training before birth or during sleep/dreaming.  These can by 
overridden by experience.  Biological drives -- hunger, boredom, 
etc. -- are modeled biochemically, as are the control processes 
for synapse atrophy and dendritic reconnection.  Sensory inputs 
are at a high semantic level, such as "It is an xxx,"
"It is moving this fast towards me," "It has made a noise,"
or "I am close to a wall," but the neural networks are not given
a priori clues to interpreting such information.  Coordination of 
body actions (e.g., different walking gaits) is also handled at
a high semantic level, although the body movements are genetically 
encoded and can by overridden by neural actions.  Senescence genes 
are present, so new or modified behaviors may develop as the 
creatures get older.  All of the details may change as the Norn 
race evolves.  [Stephen Grand <stepheng@millennium.co.uk>, 
comp.ai.alife, 11/25/96.]  (Grand says that Creatures is
"selling like hot cakes.")

    For more on the internal structure of Creatures,
download Dave Cliff's Sussex U. paper, 
<ftp://ftp.cogs.susx.ac.uk/pub/reports/csrp/csrp434.ps.Z>.
[Tim Chapman.  Tristan Colgate <lpyjtjc@psyc.nott.ac.uk>, 
comp.ai.alife, 11/23/96.]

    For other AI "creatures," see the collection of "chatterbot" 
links at <http://www.student.toplinks.com/hp/sjlaven/>.
[Craig Reynolds <craig@studio.sgi.com>, comp.ai.alife, 11/26/96.]

    Finn Dag Buo of UKarlsruhe claims to have a robust 
connectionist system for learning to parse spontaneous speech.  
His FeasPar system was trained with transcribed sentences from
the English Spontaneous Scheduling Task -- which contains
speech recognition errors -- using very little human effort,
and performed better than a good symbolic parser developed
with two years of effort.  When used with the JANUS
speech-to-speech translation system, FeasPar gave 60.5% 
performance (after two weeks of lexicon/data preparation)
vs. 60.8% with a human-developed GLR* parser.  Buo's
120-page thesis and three related papers are available at 
<http://werner.ira.uka.de/ISL.speech.publications.html>.  
[<finndag@ira.uka.de>, connectionists, 11/7/96.]

    A recent study found that diploid genotypes have
the same advantage for alife/genetic algorithms as for
biological evolution: greater population variability,
buffering against changes, and good results for both average
and peak fitness.  <http://kant.irmkant.rm.cnr.it/gral.html>
or FTP calabretta.diploidy.ps.Z from cd pub/raffaele on 
gracco.irmkant.rm.cnr.it, or wait for the paper by Calabretta, 
Galbiati, Nolfi, and Parisi in Neural Processing Letters.  
[Raffaele Calabretta <raffaele@caio.irmkant.rm.cnr.it>, 
connectionists, 11/21/96.]  (Since the cost is small,
what about triploid genotypes?)

    The Software Agents mailing list -- serving 1350 subscribers
-- has moved from Sun to UMBC.  Send a "subscribe agents" or 
"subscribe agents-digest" message to <majordomo@cs.umbc.edu>.
For more information, see the FAQ
<http://www.ee.mcgill.ca/~belmarc/agent_faq.html>, browse the 
hypermail archive <http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentslist/archive>
or visit the list's web page <http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentslist>.  
[Tim Finin <finin@cs.umbc.edu>, comp.ai, 11/3/96.  David Joslin.]

    George Leidolf suggests that it would be great to have 
"artificial intelligence" agents to recognize spam and
get-rich-quick schemes and actively track down the posters.
A predatory lifeform with interesting possibilities.  :-) 
[<saucy@bradley.edu>, comp.ai.alife, 11/20/96.]

					-- Ken


There is no reason to suppose that most human beings
are engaged in maximizing anything unless it be unhappiness,
and even this with incomplete success.  -- Ronald Coase, Nobel 
Laureate in Economics, in "The Firm, the Market, and the Law."  
[J.P. Palmer <jpalmer@julian.uwo.ca>, QOTD, 11/17/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 84
 IS                                           December 5, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Funding news.
 2>  New architectures.
 3>  Industry news.
 4>  Input/translation technologies.
 5>  Research software.
 6>  Fuzzy systems.
 7>  Genetic algorithms.
 8>  Neural networks.
_________________________________________________________________

We can never have enough of that which we really do not want.
-- Eric Hoffer.  [John Winokur, "Zen to Go."]


Goood Morning, Computists!

 1> Funding news:

    DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) 
consolidates the modeling and simulation efforts of LLNL,
LANL, and Sandia National Laboratory, particularly with
regard to nuclear stockpile management.  The labs form alliances 
and Centers of Excellence with universities, for work on key 
multidisciplinary research.  One of the goals is to "accelerate 
advances in critical basic sciences, mathematics and computer 
science areas, in computational science and engineering, in high 
performance computing systems and in problem solving environments" 
supporting long-term ASCI objectives.  This is done through 
academic strategic alliance centers (over 5-10 years), strategic 
investigations, and individual collaborations, with all work 
unclassified and publishable.  For instance, a center might 
address scientific data management, visualization, or software 
tools for terascale computing environments.  At least five such 
centers are expected to be started in FY 97 and FY 98, funded
for $1.5M to $2M per center for the first year (growing to
$4M-$5M/year).  Strategic investigations will be funded at
$100K-$400K/year, for a total of $3M in FY 97.  Individual 
collaborations are to be funded at $50K-$100K out of laboratory 
ASCI programmatic funds.  <http://www.llnl.gov/asci-alliances>.

    LLNL has issued an ASCI Centers Request For Expression of 
Interest and Preliminary Proposals, due 1/9/97.  Preliminary 
proposals should focus on how existing research efforts
integrate with implementation of an Alliance Center of Excellence.  
Final proposals are due 3/18/97.  Technical queries may be sent
to Dona Crawford <dona@california.sandia.gov>, Dick Watson 
<dwatson@llnl.gov>, or Ann Hayes <ahh@lanl.gov>; business
and proposal queries to Lynn Rippe <alliances@llnl.gov>,
(510) 423-2176.  [Merrell Patrick <mpatrick@nsf.gov>, 11/25/96.]

    A GAO report found research costs at public colleges
and universities up 157% from 1980 to 1994, the fastest-growing 
contributor to a 234% tuition increase.  State appropriations were 
declining during this time, while household income rose only 82%.  
Indirect cost recovery on grants has been capped at 26% since 
1991, further driving up tuition.  [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW, 
11/22/96.]  (I'm not convinced that government funding of research 
and infrastructure is superior to industry investment, or to 
"venture funding" or tenure perks by the universities themselves.  
It's OK for the government to grease the skids where profit motive 
is lacking, or where the government itself needs a service,
but easy overhead money only encourages growth of overhead.
The cost of research goes up because we expect it to, more often 
than because there is no way to do research inexpensively.
The same thing happens to business costs or to lifestyle costs
if money seems easily available.)


 2> New architectures:

    Two UTokyo researchers have built a supercomputer
for simulating star cluster dynamics with up to 32K bodies.
Their "gravity pipe" uses 1,692 copies of a custom chip, at
a cost of just $1.5M over two years.  [Popular Science, 12/96,
p. 32.  EDUPAGE.]

    For a somewhat bizarre analog processor, see Jonathan Mills' 
"The Continuous Retina: Image Processing with a Single-Sensor 
Artificial Neural Field Network" in Proc. 1996 Int. Conf. on 
Neural Networks.  Mill's chip solves the diffusion equation 
(Laplacian) using charge gradient in a conductive sheet
(n-well inside a diode guard ring), sampled to generate
a current input to piecewise-linear functions stored as digitally 
reconfigurable continuous-valued logic functions (similar to
fuzzy logic).  Only the latter functions employ transistors,
on about 1/3 of the chip.  The chip can be used as a silicon 
retina or for any physical computation modeled by diffusion -- 
including certain neural networks (without neurons!).  Although 
not efficient for all problems, the programmable processors are 
universal in a theoretical sense.  [<jwmills@cs.indiana.edu>, 
comp.arch, 11/27/96.]

   ("Inside every digital circuit, there's an analog signal 
screaming to get out."  -- Al Kovalick, Hewlett-Packard.)

    Moshe Sipper has a new page on "Cellular Programming: 
Evolution of Parallel Cellular Machines."  
<http://lslwww.epfl.ch/~moshes/cp.html>.  
[<moshes@lslsun7.epfl.ch>, comp.theory.cell-automata, 11/22/96.] 


 3> Industry news:

    Science Applications International Corp. (SAIC) is acquiring 
Bellcore, for about $700M.  [WSJ, 11/22/96, B6.  EDUPAGE.]

    Columnist Don Crabb quotes a venture capitalist saying
that Windows CE (WinCE) devices will fail to attract buyers.  
People don't want small general-purpose computers.  "As Apple
has proven with the Newton OS and U.S. Robotics with their
Pilot PDAs, you have to have these devices very clearly defined 
and articulated.  And porting Windows to them, is neither.
In a year, Windows CE will be yet another dead PDA format."  
[NewtNews, 11/26/96.  Bill Park.]  (Wired magazine apparently 
agrees.  I heard that they've moved WinCE to their "Not Hot" 
category.)

    Mac clone maker Power Computing has licensed BeOS
from Jean-Louis Gassee's Be, Inc., to ship with MacOS on
every computer (exclusive until 4/97).  BeOS has previously
been available only at <http://www.be.com/>.  Switching between 
MacOS and BeOS will require a full boot, possibly taking several 
minutes.  (A MacOS emulator is needed, and would allow cutting
and pasting between processes in different OS windows.)  BeOS
is said to be fast and robust -- a worthy competitor for Windows 
NT -- and has multithreading, preemptive multiprocessing,
and an integrated object-oriented OS/application architecture.  
There's almost no software for it yet, and this give-away
by Power Computing will help break the chicken/egg problem.
(It also puts pressure on Apple to acquire BeOS or to come out 
with an alternative.  If Apple doesn't buy Be, one of several 
competitors might.)  Over 1K developers are working on
number-crunching applications in graphic design, rendering, 
animation, music synthesis, speech and image processing,
video editing, 3D virtual worlds, and high-bandwidth network 
servers.  Gassee' was pleased by a comment that his Be Box
was "just a poor man's Silicon Graphics" after Be licensed
SGI's OpenGL industry-standard 3D application programming 
interface (API), to be integrated into BeOS.  [Bill Park 
<park@netcom.com>, based on Reuters and clari.tw.computers.apple, 
11/26/96.]

    Ike Nassi, the head of Apple's OS division, has resigned
to pursue other interests.  [NewtNews, 11/26/96.  Bill Park.]  
(It's generally agreed that Copland (intended as MacOS 8) is dead, 
with pieces to be released as upgrades for MacOS 7.  Apple's
next hope is Gershwin, to incorporate many of the same features
as BeOS.  It's still a long way from release.)


 4> Input/translation technologies:

    Handwriter Manta is a pen input device for Windows.
$250 from Communication Intelligence Corp., <http://www.cic.com>, 
(888) 832-0242.  [Mobile Computing and Communications, 11/96.  
NewtNews.]

    The pen computer market is now $1B/year.  
<http://www.pencomputing.com>.  [Pen Computing, 9/96.  NewtNews.]

    Acer plans to license the "WisdomPen" Chinese Handwriting 
Recognition System from Motorola's Lexicus Division, for the 
Taiwanese market.  Lexicus has also announced software able to 
recognize continuous Chinese speech.  [iNews.  NewtNews, 11/12/96 
and 11/19/96.]

    Apple has released their Mac OS Cantonese Dictation Kit 1.0.  
<http://www.asia.apple.com>. [iNews.  NewtNews, 11/12/96.]

    Voice Pilot is a speech recognition system able to transcribe 
dictation (e.g., online chat) at 140 wpm, and to translate to 
other languages.  Available mid-1997 on OS/2, then Windows,
for $200-$300.  Developed by Voice Pilot Technologies and IBM.  
Rolph Rudestam, 909-585-6122.  [Patrick McKenna, 
clari.tw.computers.pc.software, 11/21/96.  Bill Park.]

    Kamejima Co. Ltd. (Tokyo) now offers E-J Bank and J-E Bank 
Japanese translation software, for 50K yen.  The Windows 95/NT 
packages have a 500K-word dictionary and 7K grammar rules.  
<query@kamejima.co.jp>, +81-3-3798-4838, +81-3-3798-4839 Fax.  
[Martyn Williams, clari.tw.computers.pc.software, 11/21/96.
Bill Park.]


 5> Research software (in our CRS 6.42 digest this week):

Gamelan Java applets for GA, GP, CA, TSP, SOM, NN, and ML.

SSS and AGABIL: experimental GA/ML C code.

AISearch II: C++ library of AI search algorithms.

Net++ 1.1: NN simulator for Windows.

ainet122: NN DLL development kit for Win 95.

RIPPER: noise-tolerant rule-learning system, adapted for
text classification.

dtSearch v4.1: full-text search with stemming, phonetics, 
proximity, etc.

Data Natural (dn60): NL data storage/retrieval based on
cognitive simulation.

PROGRES: graph-rewriting visual DB programming language.

MAULE Machine 1.0: extensible JavaScript  programmable calculator.

Slice5: data visualization tool.

TerrainMap 2.0: 3D surface models from points, grids, or contours.

Windmill: data acquisition and control software demos.

Thinking Logs Module 1 - Lite (TLM1-Lite): NN demo for 
petrophysics.

CLP(FD) VLSI multilayer channel router (benchmark).

Berkeley Logo 3.4: bug-fix upgrade.

4i2i FEC: C++ library for Reed-Solomon error-correcting
block encoding.

PERENTIE: ActiveX Web database server.


 6> Fuzzy systems:

    A famous result by Daniel Elkan showed that the two equivalent 
logical expressions NOT (A AND NOT B) and B OR (NOT A AND NOT B) 
give differing results under Zadeh max-min fuzzy logic.  The same 
is true of Lukasiewicz logic and probabilistic logic.  Elkan's 
contradiction is resolved in a paper by James J. Buckley and 
William Siler, soon to be available.  The key is to define A AND B 
= A*B + r*sa*sb and A OR B = A + B - A*B - r*sa*sb, where r 
between -1 and +1 represents prior association between A and B,
sa = sqrt(A(1-A)), and sb = sqrt(B(1-B)).  
[<williamsiler@delphi.com>, comp.ai.fuzzy, 10/25/96.]

    Inform Software Corp. is offering a fuzzy logic Internet 
server for their fuzzyTECH development system demos, benchmarks, 
and literature, and for links to other fuzzy-logic and neurofuzzy 
design resources (e.g., Intel's fuzzy application book, Motorola's 
new fuzzy-instruction enhanced microcontrollers, and Wonderware's 
new InTouch FuzzyModule).  <http://www.fuzzytech.com>.  
[Christiane Melcher <inform-ac@msn.com>, comp.ai.fuzzy, 11/22/96.]

    Aptronix, Inc. has a demo of fuzzy logic in Java
at <http://www.aptronix.com/fuzzynet/applnote/java.htm>.  
[<fuzzynet@aptronix.com>, comp.ai.fuzzy, 11/23/96.]


 7> Genetic algorithms:

    There's a comp.ai.genetic FAQ called "The Hitch-Hiker's
Guide to Evolutionary Computation," at rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet
/news.answers/ai-faq/genetic/.  For genetic algorithms in GIS, 
check out <http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/geocomputation.html>
or Tim Duncan's page on vehicle routing, at 
<http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~timd/vehicle>.  A good source on 
genetic programming is Jaime Fernandez's "Genetic Programming 
Notebook" at http://metricanet.com/~jjf/gp/index.html>.  
[<Bill.Thoen@gisnet.com>, comp.infosystems.gis, 11/19/96.]

    Nova Genetica has added 300 new links to genetic algorithm 
resources.  A search utility will soon be implemented.  
<http://www.NovaGenetica.com>.  [Darin R. Molnar 
<molnard@novagenetica.com>, comp.ai, 11/21/96.]


 8> Neural networks:

    Thomas G. Dietterich's "Statistical Tests for Comparing 
Supervised Classification Learning Algorithms" compares five
tests of learning algorithms.  He concludes that McNemar's test
is best for algorithms executed only once (e.g., because of time 
or cost constraints); a new 5x2cv test of 5 iterations of 2-fold 
cross-validation is slightly more powerful for repeated trainings.  
<ftp://ftp.cs.orst.edu/pub/tgd/papers/stats.ps.gz>.  
[<tgd@chert.cs.orst.edu>, connectionists, 10/16/96.]

    Don't forget the comp.ai.neural-nets FAQ, with seven sections 
covering Intro, Learning, Generalization, Books (& data),
Free Software, Commercial Software, and Hardware.  
<ftp://ftp.sas.com/pub/neural/FAQ.html>, or browse 
/pub/usenet/news.answers/ai-faq/neural-nets on rtfm.mit.edu.  
[Warren Sarle <saswss@unx.sas.com>, comp.ai.neural-nets, 
11/22/96.]

    Bob Massey offers an interactive NN demo based on maximizing 
entropy.  <http://www.csn.net/~pidmass>.  [<rmassey@orci.com>, 
comp.theory, 11/22/96.]

    Here's a useful application:  NeuroDiet 1.0 asks you
to enter the foods you eat each day and any medical symptoms
you experience.  It trains a neural network and can then advise 
you on how your health depends on the foods you eat.  (Are you 
getting headaches from eating peanuts?  Red wine?  Aged cheese?  
Something like this could also track weather factors and
pollen-related allergies.)  NeuroDiet is Windows 95 shareware
from Stephen Wolstenholme <steve@tropheus.demon.co.uk>,
on <http://www.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/food/ndiet10.zip>
or <ftp://ftp.simtel.net/pub/simtelnet/win95/food/ndiet10.zip>.  
[comp.archives.ms-windows.announce, 10/9/96.]

					-- Ken


Yes, I seem to have contracted some attention-deficit disorder 
and, hey, how about them Skins, huh?  So, I won't be able to,
yes, could I help you?  No, no, I'll be sticking with Sprint,
but thank you for calling.  [LOTD, 9/19/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 85
 IS                                          December 10, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Funding news.
 2>  Privacy and security.
 3>  Robots and intelligent agents.
 4>  Career jobs.
 5>  Journal calls.
 6>  Shareware archives.
 7>  Offers and seasonal news.
_________________________________________________________________

Warning: Dates in Calendar are closer than they appear.


Goood Morning, Computists!

    To clear up a minor confusion: the Brian "Captain" Murfin
of Austin, TX, who is now helping edit our CAJ digests is not
the Dr. Brian Murfin of Queens College or NYU who has written 
about computer-mediated communication and multicultural science.  
They are homonyms.


 1> Funding news:

    NSF funds about 30% of the 30K proposals it receives
each year.  (That includes small grants in special competitions, 
which have a higher award rate.)  NSF is currently revising its 
merit review criteria, and would like feedback from the research 
community.  See <http://www.nsf.gov> for a summary and the full 
NSB Task Force report, NSF strategic plan, etc.  Comments are
due 1/31/97.  [Neal Lane.  grants, 12/4/96.]

    The Office of Naval Research (ONR) sponsors a postdoctoral 
fellowship program at several naval R&D centers and laboratories.  
You must be a US citizen eligible for DoD security clearance.  
Deadlines occur 1/1, 4/1, 7/1, and 10/1 each year.
[Gem Naivar, utcs.grad, 12/3/96.]  (For details, see 
<http://web.fie.com/htdoc/fed/onr/any/edu/prog/any/onrpgaju.htm>.  
Other opportunities, including the Women Postdoctoral Science 
Scholars Program, Summer Faculty Research Program, and Faculty 
Sabbatical Leave Program are listed on <http://web.fie.com
/htdoc/fed/onr/any/edu/menu/any/onrmnsp.htm#corporate>.)

    FEDIX Opportunity Alert!!! is a free email-based alerting 
service for federal research and education funding opportunities.  
More than 16K people have signed up.  Just connect to 
<http://www.fie.com/> and select keywords of interest.
[Peter Shiner <shinerp@fie.com>, net-hap, 9/19/96.]

    Amanda Spink of the School of Library and Information
Sciences at UNorth Texas is seeking a co-principal investigator 
for a major NSF grant proposal in IR/HCI systems design.  
<spink@lis.admin.unt.edu>, (817) 565-2187, (817) 565-3101 Fax.  
[IR-List, 12/3/96.]

    If you're laid off in the Los Angeles area, check with USC
for free training or fellowships in multimedia tools.  
<http://www.usc.edu/dept/imsc>.  [<Jon_Mendel@lamg.com>,
la.jobs, 11/28/96.]


 2> Privacy and security:

    President Clinton is transferring encryption export policy 
from the US State Dept. to the Commerce Dept.  One section of
the order prohibits "the export of assistance (including training) 
to foreign persons," which could prevent encryption discussions
in classes containing foreign students.  The White House denies 
any intent to change policy, but policy was previously unclear
and will now depend on "new players" in the Commerce Dept.  
[Chronicle of Higher Ed., 11/29/96, A24.  EDUPAGE.]

    The WheelGroup (San Antonio) offers a NetRanger program
that scans network traffic for furtive attacks or "signatures
of misuse."  Military organizations are particularly interested
in such capabilities.  [Red Herring, 12/96, p. 12.  NewtNews.]

    A recent survey of 200 companies from the Fortune 1,000
found that 48% had computer break-ins the the preceding 12 months, 
with typical losses (84%) exceeding $50K per incident and frequent 
losses (41%) exceeding $500K per incident.  [WSJ, 11/21/96, B4.  
EDUPAGE.]


 3> Robots and intelligent agents:

    Info on commercial security guard robots can be found
at <http://www.cybermotion.com> and <http://www.aston.ac.uk
/~batong/Neutronics/>.  [Lee Kent Hempfling <lkh@cei.net>, 
comp.robotics.research, 11/5/96.]

    URLs of 80 Japanese institutes investigating robotics have 
been collected at <http://www.gmd.de/People/Uwe.Zimmer/Lists
/Robotics.in.Japan.html>.  There's also some data on researchers 
and projects, including agriculture, alife, biology, building 
constructions, cognition, control, cooperation, evolutionary 
techniques, humanoids, man-machine interfaces, mechatronics, 
medical robotics, mobile robots, NN, space robotics, 
teleoperation, underwater robotics, and vision.  [Uwe R. Zimmer 
<uwe.zimmer@gmd.de>, comp.robotics.research, 11/15/96.]

    There's a new home page at the German Aerospace Research 
Establishment, Institute of Robotics and System Dynamics:
see <http://www.op.dlr.de/FF-DR-RS/> and <http://www.op.dlr.de
/FF-DR-RS/LEARNING/>.  [Patrick van der Smagt <smagt@dlr.de>, 
comp.ai.neural-nets, 11/29/96.]

    EE Toolbox 9.0 and the first EE Virtual Conference
have been updated, at <http://www.eetoolbox.com/> and 
<http://www.cera2.com/>.  These EE design sites include Java,
OOP, and other language topics, plus an  AI/fuzzy logic virtual 
conference at <http://www.cera2.com/ai.htm>.  [Nina Pinto 
<ninapint@ix.netcom.com>, comp.ai, 9/16/96.  David Joslin.]

    The latest IBM Systems Journal carries articles from MIT's 
Media Lab about Internet possibilities, text database navigation, 
instructable agents, personal area networks, and wearable 
computers.  See <http://nif.www.media.mit.edu/pubs.html>
for many of the articles.  Another good read of the past few 
months is the 50th anniversary issue of ACM Computing Surveys, 
with tutorials on over 30 topics  [David Scott Lewis 
<d.s.lewis@ieee.org>, comp.ai, 11/25/96.  David Joslin.]

    The 10/96 issue of BT Technical Journal is a special issue
on intelligent software systems, including agent technologies 
(mostly from BT's Software Agents Research Programme in Ipswich).  
Some of the papers can be seen at <http://www.labs.bt.com>.  
[David Scott Lewis <d.s.lewis@ieee.org>, comp.ai, 12/4/96.]

    A draft "Cognitive Science" article for the "Encyclopedia
of Computer Science, 4th ed." (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1998)
-- plus an additional bibliography -- is available at 
<http://www.cs.buffalo.edu/pub/WWW/faculty/rapaport/Papers/cogsci.
ps>.  This is an update of William J. Rapaport's 1993 overview 
article.  Contact the author if you need a non-PostScript version.  
[<rapaport@cs.buffalo.edu>, comp.ai, 10/30/96, David Joslin.]

    A paper has been prepared to detail the "massive amount
of information" about robotics, intelligence, and motor function 
in the 11/20/96 Discovery Channel UltraScience broadcast regarding 
"Androids, Science Fact or Science Fiction."  See the Special 
Report Section of <http://www.aston.ac.uk/~batong/Neutronics/>.  
[Lee Kent Hempfling <lkh@mail.cei.net>, comp.ai, 11/23/96.
David Joslin.]

    For a look at the world "when brains are downloaded
into receptacles and machines become better than humans"
-- in the 21st Century! -- see Gregory Paul and Earl Cox's
new book, " Beyond Humanity: CyberEvolution and Future Minds."  
Scientific, sociological, and theological issues.  Three sample 
chapters can be downloaded from <http://www.charlesriver.com>.  
ISBN 1-886801-21-5, $20.95, from <chrivmedia@aol.com>,
1-800-382-8505, 1-703-661-1501 Fax.  [comp.ai, 11/11/96.
David Joslin.]  ("Cybernetics... And the Reverse Engineering of 
God."  "The most significant evolutionary developments since the 
origin of life itself."  I wonder what kind of books and press 
releases the robots will write.)


 4> Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.43 digest this week):

UC Irvine: profs. in HCI, agents, IR, AI, DB,
digital libraries, etc.

UC Santa Barbara: profs. in experimental CS, multimedia, 
networking, etc.

UMass (Amherst): profs. in systems, DB, IR, etc.
Also research scientists, postdocs, and research fellows.

Cal Poly (San Luis Obispo): visiting prof. in AI, SE, etc.

Argonne National Lab (IL): postdocs and scientists
in HPC visualization, VR, collaborative tools, etc.

Atlanta: MS/PhD researchers in AI, ML, CBR, data mining.
Also KDD/KBS project lead/manager.

Carnegie Group (Pittsburgh): MS/PhD sr. engineer
in informatics/agents.

Information Resources, Inc. (Chicago): SE in AI,
expert systems, RBS, NLS, NN.

Siemens Nixdorf (Boston, MA): MBA/MS/PhD in AI, NN
for financial modeling.

Nonlinear Prediction Systems (Portland): MS/PhD researchers
in NN, ML, and data mining for finance.

MITRE Corp. (Bedford, MA): BS/MS/PhD AI developers for CAI.

Menlo Park (CA): BS/MS/PhD in speech/pattern recognition.

Dalhousie U. (Burlington, Ontario): Dean of CS.

USheffield (UK): postdoc in speech recognition.

Canon Research Centre (Guildford, UK): researchers
in speech/pattern recognition.

ILOG S.A. (Gentilly, France): PhD SE in constraint programming.

GMD (Sankt Augustin, Germany): postdocs in ML/data mining.
(12/15/96 deadline.)

Microsoft Research Inst. (Sydney, AU): two researchers in NLP.

Hong Kong Baptist U.: CS chairman/profs. in pattern recognition, 
AI, etc.


 5> Journal calls:

    Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining is a new journal
from Kluwer Academic Publishers.  Visit 
<http://www.research.microsoft.com/research/datamine>
for author instructions or a free sample issue.  
<datamine@microsoft.com>.  [Usama Fayyad <fayyad@microsoft.com>, 
dbworld, 11/17/96.]  (The 3/97 first issue is now available.)

    (RPI has a new web page for its course in Knowledge
Discovery and Data Mining.  <ttp://www.rpi.edu/~vanepa2/>.
[Amy Van Epps <vanepa@rpi.edu>, comp.ai, 11/13/96.
David Joslin.])

    Distributed intelligent systems; Intelligent Automation
and Soft Computing, 10/97.  12/10/96; Mohamed Kamel 
<kamel@mage.eece.unm.edu>.  [DAI-List, 11/15/96.]

    Approximate reasoning in scheduling; Int. J. of
Approximate Reasoning, early 1998.  2/28/97; Wolfgang Slany 
<ars97@dbai.tuwien.ac.at>, +43-1-58801-6123, +43-1-5055304 Fax.  
<http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/events/ars-si-ijar.html>.  
[comp.simulation, 11/25/96.]  (There's an associated 2/11/97 
workshop, <http://www.dbai.tuwien.ac.at/events/ars97.html>.)

    Feature transformation and subset selection; IEEE Expert.  
4/30/96; Liu Huan <liuh@iscs.nus.sg>.  [dbworld, 11/26/96.]

    Multiagent learning; Machine Learning Journal (MLJ),
1/1/98.  2/1/97; Gerhard Weiss <weissg@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>.  
<http://www7.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~weissg/si-mlj>.
[DAI-List, 11/25/96.]

    Evolutionary learning; Applied Intelligence, early 1998.  
1/31/97; Don Potter <potter@pollux.cs.uga.edu> or Xin Yao 
<xin@dolphin.cs.adfa.oz.au>, comp.ai, 12/3/96.]

    Parallel and distributed data structures; J. of Parallel
and Distributed Computing.  3/15/97; Sajal Das <das@cs.unt.edu>, 
(817) 565-4256, (817) 565-2799 Fax.  [comp.parallel, 21/1/96.]


 6> Shareware archives:

    The Directory of Win95 Sites is just one of the Windows95 
resources at <http://www.win95.com>.  You can also search for 
software or ask for help on the Help Desk WebBoard.  [Justin 
Higgins <webmaster@win95.com>, c.i.www.announce, 7/29/96.]

    Stream International's website helps you browse over 1,200 
software titles.  The site also offers free and fee-based support 
for over 100 popular applications.  <http://www.stream.com>.  
[WEBster, 10/15/96.]

    C|Net has added a games section to its website, with news, 
reviews, tips, and software.  <http://www.gamecenter.com>.
[SJM, 11/17/96, 7F.]

    C|Net is extending its shareware.com search service with
a new DOWNLOAD.COM search engine interface for freeware and 
shareware.  <http://www.download.com/>.  [Network News, 10/31/96.]  
(I've tried it, and not had much luck.  For Mac software, anyway, 
the more comprehensive indexes such as Hotbot often work better.  
C|Net is good for common packages because it indicates which 
servers are likely to work best for you.)

    Read Me First offers occasional Mac software reviews.
Also hardware reviews and links to shareware sites, etc.  
<http://www.spiritone.com/~dbudin/>.  [John Gamble 
<jgamble@midusa.net>, newjour, 10/27/96.]


 7> Offers and seasonal news:

    If you've got time this month for reading, 
<http://sigart.acm.org/bulletin/> has a list of review books 
available from the ACM SIGART Bulletin.  [Marie A. Bienkowski 
<bienk@erg.sri.com>, comp.ai, 12/3/96.  David Joslin.]

    Neural-network book reviews are solicited by Javier Blasco, 
for posting on a web page.  Ask <jblasco@ideafix.cps.unizar.es> 
for the template.  [comp.ai.neural-nets, 11/11/96.]

    R. Killion is selling many used AI and robotics books for 
about $10-$15 each.  <http://www.primenet.com/~killion/>.  
[<killion@primenet.com>, comp.robotics.misc, 12/1/96.]

    MacSciTech is offering membership and a $59 data-
acquisition/analysis CD ROM for just $19 (or $50 outside
the US and Canada) through 12/31/96.  That includes
the SciTech Journal, covering Mac data acquisition, math, 
statistics, graphing, imaging, visualization, etc.  
<http://www.macscitech.org/>, 508 795 1636 Fax.  
[<scitechmac@aol.com>, MacWay, 11/26/96.  Chuck Morefield.]

    Infoseek's listing of holiday gift and shopping links
is at <http://204.183.199.77/>.  [Mike Guertin 
<mguert@sun1.uconect.net>, BESTWEB, 11/22/96.]

    Buyer's Index can search over 3K mail-order catalogs
and WWW sites by keyword.  <http://www.buyersindex.com>.
[Entente Projects, Inc. <vab_chicago@msn.com>, Gsunet-l,
11/10/96.  net-hap.]

    Over 8000 educational CD ROMs and videos can be ordered
from <http://www.totalmarketing.com> #92151.  [Chris Dion 
Yarbrough <a007859t@bcfreenet.seflin.lib.fl.us>, net-hap, 
11/18/96.]

    For C|NET's report on the hottest new products at Fall Comdex, 
see <http://www.cnet.com/Content/Reviews/Hot/contents.html?nd>.  
[Network News, 11/23/96.]

    Computer ESP indexes 268K prices on 50K products
from computer cyberstores.  Free.  The site now includes search 
agents, bboards, and chat forums with and without Java/JavaScript.  
<http://www.uvision.com>.  [Eric Ward's NetWIRE 
<netpost@netpost.com>, 11/11/96.]

    Consumer questions?  (Including computer topics.)
If you can't find an answer at <http://www.findout.com>,
the FINDOUT staff will research it for free.  [Scott Rogers 
<rogers@findout.com>, net-hap, 11/18/96.]

    The "Peace in all languages" page is 
<http://www.universe.digex.net/~kkhan/peace_page.html>.
[Rowan Brownlee <rowan@magna.com.au>, BESTWEB, 11/18/96.]

    "Merry Christmas" in 100 languages can be found
at <http://www.christmas.com>.  [Jan Helene Moore 
<janmoore@tenet.edu>, LM_NET, 11/25/96.  net-hap.]

					-- Ken


Do all the good you can, by all the means you can,
in all the ways you can, in all the places you can,
to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.
-- John Wesley (1703-91), founder of Methodism.
[Reginald Aubry, QOTD, 10/31/96.]

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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 86
 IS                                          December 12, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry news.
 2>  Goods and services.
 3>  Software information.
 4>  Research software.
 5>  Shareware archives.
_________________________________________________________________

Support the strong, give courage to the timid,
remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.
-- Whitney M. Young.  [AWAD, 1/4/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I'm spending some extra time this month compiling gift
and software sources for the holiday season.  If my suggestions 
inspire you, search engines can pull up alternative sources.  
Enjoy.

    A gift membership in Computists International -- available
on a few hours' notice! -- would be welcomed by any techie.
The Communique keeps on giving, and giving, and giving.  Fantastic 
leverage.  Fees are listed on <http://www.computists.com>.  
Remember, there's no extra charge for our weekly CCJ, CAJ,
and CRS digests.  (CAJ and CRS are free even to non-members.)  
Help spread the word!


Industry news:

    Large companies providing Web content are finding that
only 20%-30% of their expenses are covered by new revenues.  
Microsoft expects to lose money on Internet services for several 
years.  The president of Forrester Research suggests that
"If only companies with the financial power of Microsoft can
make it in the content business, then we're years away from
a viable Internet economy."  [WSJ, 11/15/96, B9.  EDUPAGE.]  
(Wrong spin.  Little guys can prosper where the big guys can't, 
because we can operate in fragmented markets selling to elite 
audiences.)

    Microsoft has acquired WebForOne and Boulevard --
low-end and high-end Mac web servers -- from ResNova 
<http://www.resnova.com/>, a small Berkeley software company.  
Microsoft also acquired the 5-member development team.  This
move continues the trend of Microsoft hiring some of the best
Mac programming talent.  [Dave Winer <dwiner@well.com>, Davenet, 
11/24/96.]

    WebSTAR 2.0, the leading Mac webserver, has improved speed, 
security, Java and CGI capabilities, and plug-ins.  Upgrades from 
1.0 are $149 (or $99 educational) through 12/31/96; new copies
are $499.  <http://store5.starnine.com/upgrade/upgrade.html>
or <http://www.starnine.com/webstar/webstar.html>.  See also the 
new website utilities at <http://www.opendoor.com/wsupgrade.html>.  
[Adam C. Engst <ace@tidbits.com>, TidBITS, 11/25/96.]
(Shareware webservers are available for as little as $10,
but I tend to recommend software with "momentum": reputation, 
support, and a health R&D budget.)

    Advertiser-sponsored freeware may become a trend,
as advertisers tire of banner ads on websites.  An example
is Tim Constantine's CrazyDice 1.1 luck & strategy game
for multiple players.  <http://home.earthlink.net/~TimConstan>.  
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com> and NewtNews, 11/26/96.]
(For biggest bucks, write a game around the advertising.
That's what movie studios do with new family film releases.)


Goods and services:

    One source of sauces, spices, salsas, and sweets is
the Twin Peaks Gourmet Trading Post, <http://tpeaks.com>.  
[TourBus, 9/11/96.  net-hap.]

    Internet Mall offers over 11K blurbs about online products
and companies, at <http://www.internet-mall.com/>.  You can
also get the list by FTP from pub/Gu/Guides on ftp.netcom.com,
by gopher to  peg.cwis.uci.edu:7000 (Peg/Internet Guides),
or by posting a "send mall" subject line to Dave Taylor 
<taylor@netcom.com>.  [net-hap, 6/27/96.]  (Taylor sends out
an update digest every month or so.  More people read
the current announcements than browse the full list.)

    Apollo is a Java-based search interface for goods, services, 
jobs, and personal classifieds.  <http://apollo.co.uk/>.  
[<chris@apollo.co.uk>, net-hap, 6/19/96.]

    For mail-order games software, see Chip & Bits Online 
<http://www.cdmag.com/cgi-bin/order.cbi_home>.
[Victor Tobias <cddvgt@mozcom.com>, BESTWEB, 8/20/96.]

    Product Search offers a single interface for major
computer stores.  <http://www.productsearch.com>.  
[<jennifer@server.webbiz.com>, net-hap, 8/4/96.]


Software information:

    BrowserWatch reports news, information, and data about 
browsers and plug-ins.  <http://browserwatch.iworld.com>.  
[<tristan@iworld.com>, net-hap, 11/18/96.]

    Update versions of 300 popular Mac programs are listed
on MacMedic, <http://members.aol.com/macmedics/version.html>.  
[<kchristensen@csus.edu>, net-hap, 10/22/96.]

    Catch-UP is a free Web-based service that recommends
upgrades for over 500 Windows shareware/freeware products.  
<http://www.manageable.com/>.  [Nate Saal <NateS@manageable.com>, 
c.i.www.announce, 11/26/96.  net-hap.]

    You can get email notifications of updates to your antivirus 
software by registering with <http://www.hitchhikers.net
/up-form.shtml>.  [<stamer@radix.net>, inet-news, 11/5/96.]

    The EliaShim "Intelligent Computer Security and Anti Virus" 
website is dedicated to tracking virus information and providing 
solutions.  Free software includes the ViruSafe-WEB plug-in.  
<http://www.virusafe.com>.  [Susan Klopfer 
<sklopfer@vanatech.com>, inet-news, 11/23/96.]

    CompInfo links to the online support pages of computer
and software manufacturers, giving easy access to
tips and FAQs, drivers and other downloadable software.  
<http://www.compinfo.co.uk/supportx.htm>.  [<mike@compinfo.co.uk>, 
net-hap, 9/11/96.]

    Tech Locator is a comprehensive directory of information
about 7K computing products and 1,100 companies (stock price, 
contact info, tech support, etc.).  <http://www.techlocator.com>.  
See also the ZD Net Web site, <http://www.zdnet.com>,
for other technology info.  [Network News, 5/25/96.]

    Over 2,100 computer and semiconductor companies' websites 
worldwide are listed on <http://www.best.com/~mentorms
/s1_compi.htm>.  [<mentorms@best.com>, net-hap, 8/28/96.]

    Kim's Komando Klinic, <http://www.komando.com/>, lists 
hundreds of software and hardware companies, cool sites,
and learning tips.  See also the Virtual Reality Site, 
<http://www.virtus.com/vrmlsite.html>.  [Mitzie Clark 
<litlm@rpa.net>, BESTWEB, 10/1/96.]


Research software (in our CRS 6.43 digest this week):

BOPPERS 1.01: GA alife software from 1992.

Primordial Life 3.1: Internet-based distributed alife environment.

Fuzzy Logic SC 1.0: OLE environment for fuzzy control 
applications.

Fide 2.0: fuzzy-inference development environment.

Trajan 2.0 Shareware Neural Network package: now just $75.

POWERSIM SOLVER 1.0 Alpha: analysis and optimization
for POWERSIM models.

ESC 1.0: shareware DOS inference engine.

INTELLECT, Access ELF, English Wizard: NL interfaces to databases.

JBL-Smaart: sound system optimization and acoustic measurement.

Sonata-Pro: interactive MIDI device for music training.

PROSONIQ PANDORA Music Decomposition Series: mono/stereo 
instrumental/vocal mix separator.

bomb v1.13: interactive visual/audio stimulation using cellular 
automata, reaction diffusion, and iterated function.

TechExplorer: TeX/LaTeX Netscape plug-in reader for Windows.
(Also comments on Mathematica as an interactive LaTeX system.)

Recent IDSS Books.

A First Course in Database Systems: course materials by Ullman
and Widom.  (Beta test.)

Database Management Systems (2nd beta ed.): book and software
by Ramakrishnan.

Database System Concepts (3rd ed.): book by Silberschatz,
Korth, and Sudarshan.

Nonlinear Financial Forecasting: INFFC conference proceedings.


Shareware archives:

    CNET's DOWNLOAD.COM server accesses over 200K files
for PC and Mac.  Their front page shows top picks
and most popular downloads.  To get you started, there's
a beginner's guide to downloading and a "toolkit" section
that recommends packages of utilities.  
<http://www.download.com/>.  For an email newsletter
about new releases and bug fixes, send a "subscribe download-
dispatch your name" message to <listserv@dispatch.cnet.com>.  
[Download Dispatch, 10/27/96.  net-hap.]

    CNET also offers reviews -- even comparative reviews --
of hardware, software, and CD ROMs.  <http://www.cnet.com
/Content/Reviews/>.  [TourBus, 9/11/96. net-hap.]

    Tucows Software Repository offers Windows and Mac freeware
and commercial software, with descriptions and ratings
(1-5 golden cows).  Topics include HTML editors, Java 
applications, diagnostic tools, video conferencing, stock quotes, 
networking tools, etc.  Links to mirror sites help reduce
download times.  <http://tucows.hunterlink.net.au/mirror.html>.  
[Scout Report, 10/18/96.]

    The Garbo site at UVaasa (Finland) archives high-quality 
software for education and science (including AI, NN, linguistics, 
math, statistics, and astronomy), plus general utilities and 
programming resources.  Mostly MS DOS, but with some programs
for Windows 3.x, Mac, and Unix.  <ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi>
and http://garbo.uwasa.fi>.  [Timo Salmi <ts@reimari.uwasa.fi>, 
comp.archives.msdos.d, 10/19/96.]  (Also available on CD ROM.)

    MacInSearch is a search engine for Macintosh web sites,
mostly for software companies, education, and science.  
<http://macinsearch.com/>.  [<dtiberio@pb.net>, net-hap, 7/9/96.]

    Macware Revue/MacWare.Com offers Macintosh shareware
and freeware reviews and other Apple/Mac news.  
<http://www.macware.com>.  [Bill Moore <editor@macware.com>, 
c.i.www.announce, 10/10/96.  net-hap.]

    Filez searches 60M entries on thousands of servers
to find software for PCs, Mac, Amiga, Atari, Acorn, Newton,
or Unix.  Also fonts, graphics, sounds, and MIDI.  
<http://www.filez.com>.  [Michael Robertson <michael@filez.com>, 
comp.os.os2.announce, 8/1/96.]

    The NTIS Computer Products Web Site at the Federal Computer 
Products Center (FCPC) describes 1,200 data files, CD ROMs,
and software products developed for the US government since 1990.  
<http://www.ntis.gov/fcpc>.  [<MSmith@ntis.fedworld.gov>, IRLIST, 
11/4/96.]

    Nerd's Heaven is an annotated directory of dozens of software 
repositories.  <http://boole.stanford.edu/nerdsheaven.html>.  
[Scout Report, 7/5/96.]

    Windows'95.com offers shareware and demo software
for Windows 95/NT, via Internet or on a CD ROM from InfoMagic.  
<http://www.infomagic.com/infomagic/2win95.html>.  
[<len@infomagic.com>, net-hap, 8/13/96.]
(Said to get 2M hits/day.)

    The Software Sharing Resource Library searches
(and mirrors) 30 of the most popular FTP sites, for DOS, Windows, 
and Mac software.  Over 400K other software distribution or 
support sites are also linked, via a categorized World Catalog.  
<http://ssrl.rtp.com:443/>.  [Eric L. Beser <beser@ssrl.rtp.com>, 
c.i.www.announce, 9/3/96.  net-hap.]

    Infomatique! collects all sources of downloadable free, 
evaluation, beta and time-limited software, plus email-related 
utilities.  <http://infomatique.iol.ie/SOFTWARE/Default.htm>
or <http://infomatique.iol.ie/SOFTWARE/PUBLISH/SO00008.HTM>.  
[<WilliamM@infomatique.iol.ie>, net-hap, 11/13/96.]

    Software Age searches over 2K products from 700
software developers, with links to trade groups, exhibitions,
and other industry information.  Listings are free.  
<http://www.softwareage.com>.  [George H. Heilborn 
<ghhco@haven.ios.com>, net-hap, 10/9/96.]

    Freeware Favorites reviews Windows freeware and shows
a screenshot from each program.  <http://www.execpc.com
/webdesigns/frefavmn.html>.  [Jeff Oien <jeffo@execpc.com>,
net-hap, 10/31/96.]

    Inquiring Minds searches computer-oriented magazines
and product literature.  <http://www.inquiry.com/pages
/search_db_new.html>.  [Susan Klopfer <sklopfer@vanatech.com>, 
inet-news, 11/15/96.]

    PC World Online offers shareware, freeware, and demo
software, each with a mini review.  <http://www.pcworld.com/sw>.  
[<scott_danish@pcworld.com>, net-hap, 8/30/96.]

    CyberHouse offers the latest Windows 95/NT shareware.  
<http://web.idirect.com/~mounir/software.html>.  
[<http://web.idirect.com/~mounir/software.html>, net-hap, 9/9/96.]

    The Clicked Shareware Gallery is another source
of PC software.  <http://www.clicked.com/shareware/>.
[Network News, 9/14/96.]

    Encryption, compression, and archiving utilities are
among the shareware and freeware at Soft Concepts, 
<http://web.ukonline.co.uk/members/a.mccann/index.htm>.  
[<a.mccann@ukonline.co.uk>, net-hap, 10/4/96.]

    The Essential Win95 Software Page lists the best
shareware utilities for Windows 95.  
<http://www.isu.edu/~deckrobe/software.html>.  
[<rdecker@nicoh.com>, net-hap, 10/9/96.]

    The Academic Products Digest links to academic
licensing info from major software manufacturers.  
<http://www.gy.com/esd/ac.htm>.
[<info@gy.com>, net-hap, 10/9/96.]

    Virtual Shareware offers links to the most popular
Windows and Mac shareware and freeware.  
<http://www.dreamscape.com/frankvad/shareware.html>.  
[<frankvad@dreamscape.com>, net-hap, 10/10/96.]

    Windows 95 shareware, freeware, and web-building
resources can be found at Hyperspot, 
<http://www.hemi.com/~programr/hyperspot/>.  
[<genius@mariahcarey.org>, net-hap, 10/31/96.]

    Henk's Windows 95 Freeware Page offers utilities, 
screensavers, and other freeware.  
<http://hjh.simplenet.com/freew1.htm>.  [<hjh@usa.net>,
net-hap, 11/11/96.]

    Another Windows 95 links and resources page is 
<http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Heights/1094/>.
[Richard Hay <rhay@newage.it>, net-hap, 11/25/96.]

    100 Shareware Links is a list of... guess what?  
<http://www.mamsofco.com/100sl/>.  [<mguert@sun1.uconect.net>, 
BESTWEB, 11/27/96.]

    Useless Software is a collection of anti-productivity 
programs.  <http://www.nwlink.com/~tribble/useless.html>.
[<a-lonnif@microsoft.com>, net-hap, 10/21/96.]

					-- Ken


I don't like videos.  There's something squalid about
a video store.  The people look furtive, like drug addicts,
as they take them out in stacks of four or five.  It's like
people who drink alone.  It's one thing to drink at a party, 
another to drink alone.  One thing to go to an assembly hall
and watch big illusions, another thing to take them home
in a little can.  -- John Updike, "ShopTalk," 3/8/96.
[Varda Reisner Bruhin <varda@varda.org>, QOTD, 7/29/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
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and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 87
 IS                                          December 17, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Internet/Web news.
 2>  Online resources.
 3>  Career jobs.
 4>  Movies and games.
 5>  Online bookstores.
 6>  In memoriam -- Thomas Kuhn.
_________________________________________________________________

The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or
daytime television.  [TFTD, 12/6/96.]


Goood Afternoon, Computists!

    Yesterday was my half-birthday, the big 46.50.  Any excuse
for a celebration!

    Unfortunately, I've caught an intestinal flu.  I'll try to get 
our 88th issue out by Friday, then take a two-week vacation before 
starting Volume 7.  (Meaning, of course, that I'll be working on 
our website and on email and news items, getting a running start 
on the new year...)


Internet/Web news:

    After Dark Online 1.0 for Windows 95 is a free Internet news 
delivery service that provides "channels" (or "information-based 
screen savers") of clickable news stories, stock quotes, sports 
scores, and feature articles.  Sources include DBC Financial News, 
Sports Illustrated Online, USA Today, and the WSJ Interactive 
Edition.  <http://search.shareware.com/code/engine/File?archive
=cnet-afterdarkpc&file=afterdark_pc%2fSe tupOL%2eEXE&size=2060840> 
or <ftp://ftp.download.com/pub/afterdark_pc/Se>.
[Tim Miranda <dreamwave@cybercom.net>, net-hap, 10/11/96.]

    (The first address is a result field from a search engine 
query.  Quite a few of these ugly URLs have been showing up 
lately, and I don't trust them to be stable.)

    Over 200 websites now use Apple's meta content format (MCF) 
description, allowing Mac and Windows users to "fly through" the 
site's contents.  MCF will also help developers access distributed 
databases.  Download Apple's HotSauce (formerly Project X) plug-in 
from <http://mcf.research.apple.com/hs/download.html> to browse 
the sites listed in <http://mcf.research.apple.com/hs/sites.html>.  
[Network News, 11/23/96.]

      Apple's MCF is a simple, text-based format that defines 
objects and their properties.  There are no restrictions
on what properties are described for each object, nor are there 
requirements that all properties be described or that all 
relationships between objects be included.  It's like HTML
in that respect: any tags that a browser doesn't recognize will be 
ignored.  HotSauce knows about parent/child relationships between 
objects, and where things might appear in a 3D fly-by, but not 
much else.  See <http://applenet.apple.com/hotsauce/text/mcf.html> 
for details, or <http://www.w3.org/pub/WWW/MarkUp/Wilbur/> for 
similar "meta" capabilities in HTML.  Other MCF tags will be 
defined later, as programmers invent useful "header" information 
for files and datasets.  It will be up to the owners of the 
datasets to supply the tag info, just as mailers now supply 
message headers.  MCF's inventor, Apple's R.V. Guha, is working
to have MCF declared an IETF standard.  [Matt Deatherage 
<mattd@gcsf.com>, MDJ.  TidBITS, 11/25/96.]

    Virage is offering a demo of their image lookup function,
on <http://www.virage.com>.  The software tags each image with
a 1KB feature vector based on shapes, textures, and colors.  
[Forbes, 12/2/96, p. 240.  EDUPAGE.]

    Microsoft has introduced a Java Virtual Machine
for Windows 3.1, plus an online gallery for Java code.  
<http://www.news.com/News/Item/0%2C4%2C5122%2C00.html?nd>.  
[Network News, 11/16/96.]

    Plugged In! provides a complete guide to browser plug-ins 
available for Macintosh.  Plug-ins provide 3D/VR, animation,
music and sound, speech, video, etc.  
<http://www.rsphere.com/plugged/Plugged_In!.html>.
[Rhythmic Sphere, Inc. <info@rsphere.com>, net-hap, 11/6/96.]

    If you're looking for Mac software or accessories
for Christmas, check the special 12/12/96 issue of TidBITS
for recommendations and sometimes discounts.  For instance,
it suggests two excellent HTML reference books: Dean Scharf's 
"HTML Visual Quick Reference" (Que), and Elizabeth Castro's
"HTML Visual Quickstart Guide" (Peachpit Press).  Both are under 
200 pages and under $17.  A score of HTML books are in print,
but most are much longer and more expensive.  
<http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-358.html>
or <ftp://ftp.tidbits.com/pub/tidbits/issues/1996
/TidBITS#358_12-Dec-96.etx>.  (HTML tutorials and
reference works can be found on the Web, of course.
The subject is really not very complex.)

    HotWired Network's Webmonkey service offers HTML tutorials, 
critiques of new browsers and plug-ins, demos of new technologies, 
and the interactive advice column Geek Talk.  
<http://www.webmonkey.com>.  HotWired also offers a Packet 
service, with daily Net-related columns by Ned Brainard,
Michael Schrage, Simson Garfinkel, Andrew Leonard, and on Fridays 
a 30-minute RealAudio interview program.  <http://www.packet.com>.  
[<announce-info@hotwired.com>, net-hap, 8/16/96.]

    Quicksite is a web editing tool from DeltaPoint.  You can
get a free 30-day demo copy from <http://www.deltapoint.com>.  
[WEBster, 10/15/96.]

    Q&D Software Development offers its WebForms, WebMania, and 
Bookmark Magician as Windows shareware, at <http://www.q-d.com>.  
[<dversch@q-d.com>, net-hap, 10/3/96.]

    Need to implement your own database server?  AVS is a new 
mailing list about the Unix version of Digital's "AltaVista
for Intranets" search software and the AltaVista Software 
Developer's Kit.  Send a "subscribe avs your_email_address" 
message to <majordomo@lists.uoregon.edu>.  [Joe St Sauver 
<joe@decoy.uoregon.edu>, comp.infosystems.www.misc, 10/15/96.  
net-hap.]  (Questions about obtaining AltaVista software should
go to <products.altavista@pa.dec.com>.)

    The OakNet News is a free web magazine for website owners
and developers.  <http://www.oaknetpub.com/oaknetnews/>.  Sign up 
with Phil Tanny <editor@oaknetpub.com> for the emailed newsletter 
version.  [c.i.www.browsers.misc, 10/12/96.  net-hap.]


Online resources:

    iGuide Net Reviews -- formerly inSites -- reviews over
25K websites.  <http://www.iguide.com/insites/>.  
[<brichter@newscorp.com>, net-hap, 5/9/96.]

    For links to cooking/food sites via major search engines,
see <http://www.pebbs.com/megabites/srchdir.html>.  
[<suzanne@intrepid.axess.com>, net-hap, 8/30/96.]

    The Edinburgh Engineering Virtual Library (EEVL) is
a gateway to over 1,300 engineering resources, esp. those in
the UK.  <http://www.eevl.ac.uk/> or <eevl@icbl.hw.ac.uk>.
[Roddy MacLeod <ramacleod@hw.ac.uk>, c.i.www.announce, 9/17/96.]

    Other eLib projects include biz/ed for business education
on the Internet <http://www.bizednet.bris.ac.uk:8080/>;
OMNI, the Organizing Medical Networked Information, 
<http://omni.ac.uk/>; and SOSIG, the Social Science Information 
Gateway, <http://sosig.ac.uk/>.  See the eLib HomePage at 
<http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/elib/>.  [Scout Report, 9/20/96.]

    Research resources for graduate students -- scholarly 
reference sources, search engines, methodology tutorials, etc.
-- have been compiled on <http://www.tgsa.com/altpages
/rbutters.html>.  [Robert S. Butters <rbutters@naplesnet.com>, 
net-hap, 11/19/96.]


Career jobs (in our CCJ 6.44 digest this week):

Penn State (University Park): CS&E department head.

Yale U. (New Haven, CT): profs. in HCI, databases, visualization, 
digital libraries, computational biology, etc.

Brandeis U. (Waltham, MA): prof. in HCI, distributed systems, 
databases, visualization, etc.

Kent State U. (Kent, OH): profs. in distributed DB/OS, 
visualization, etc.

UFlorida (Gainesville): profs in data mining, distributed DB, 
heterogeneous IS, etc.

UCentral Florida (Orlando): prof. in NLP, IR, learning systems, 
etc.

UTexas Pan Am. (Edinburg): prof. in AI, IR, OOP,
interactive systems.

Northwestern U. (Evanston, IL): profs. in HCI,
distributed systems, hypermedia DB, VR, etc.

Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta): profs. in 
interdisciplinary research.

MITRE (Reston, VA): technical manager in IR, NLP, HCI, KBS, 
digital libraries, DB systems.

Charles River Analytics (Cambridge, MA): research engineer
in AI, agents, HCI, cognitive engineering.

MA: quantitative analyst in data mining, NN, FL.

Daptyx, Inc. (Cupertino, CA): lead SE in adaptive technology,
AI, ML, IR.

US Dept. of Agriculture (Grand Forks, ND) : postdoc RA
in FL, NN, chaos, cog.sci for nutrition analysis.

UCambridge/Isaac Newton Institute (UK): 6-month fellowship
in NN, ML.

Hampshire, UK: sr. SE in neural computing, speech recognition.

Robert Gordon U. (Aberdeen, Scotland): RA/GRA research in IR.  
(12/20/96 deadline.)

Ecole des Mines de Nantes (France): researcher in motion-control, 
animation and VR.

UUlm (Germany): RA in KR for autonomous vehicles.

Ubilab (Zurich, Switzerland): researcher in IS, DB, IR, KB, 
distributed systems.

Griffithe U. (Brisbane, Australia): postdoc in constraint DBs.


Movies and games:

    DreamWorks SGK, a Hollywood studio, is getting $300M from 
South Korean investor Miky Lee.  Other Korean groups are also 
investing in Hollywood.  (The profit from Jurassic Park alone 
would be equivalent to exporting 60K Hyundais.)  DreamWorks also 
has $492M from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.  [Evelyn Iritani, 
LA Times.  SJM, 8/25/96, 1E.]

    Like the spaceships and aliens on Babylon 5?  NewTek is
now shipping their 3D animation system: LightWave 3D
for Power Macintosh. [iNews.  NewtNews, 8/13/96.  Bill Park.]

    Early tests of networked games with chat capabilities indicate 
that they're highly addictive.  (My kids love killing each other 
in networked Marathon.)  A hand of bridge or a game of checkers 
may stretch to an hour, but that's OK.  Some games -- including
a multiplayer Asteroids -- lend themselves to nightly tournaments 
with a player hierarchy that is constantly tested.  "It was
a chance to blow them up, but it's become a community."
Gamers log on every day, or for 15-hour binges (on the free
beta version).  [Jennifer Tanaka, Newsweek, 8/12/96, p. 58.]

    If you've developed a net game, Random Access, Inc.,
wants to hear from your.  Contact <root@junior.randomc.com>,
(800) 910-1190 or (770) 804-1190.  [Team One <team1@randomc.com>, 
net-hap, 7/29/96.]


Online bookstores:

    The world's largest bookstore is <http://www.amazon.com>.  
[Mac*Chat, 2/21/96.]

    "365 Days of Amazon Book Reviews" is free Windows software 
that offers a book review and up to 30% discount every time
you start your computer.  <http://www.visionx.com>.
[Michael Ricci <mricci@visionx.com>, net-hap, 10/9/96.]

    The Ecola Bookstore Guide lists over 300 local retail 
booksellers  with active websites, plus a guide to technical and 
university bookstores online.  <http://www.ecola.com/books/>.  
[<web@ecola.com>, net-hap, 9/24/96.]

    Or try Book Web, for info from the American Booksellers 
Association.  <http://www.ambook.org/>.  [Victor Tobias 
<cddvgt@mozcom.com>, BESTWEB, 8/20/96.]

    For women's bookstores -- or feminists' bookstores --
check the list at <http://www.igc.apc.org/women/bookstores/>.  
[Scott P. Kerlin <spkerlin@flash.lakeheadu.ca>, AERA-GSL, 12/8/95.  
net-hap.]

    Strategies for obtaining books are listed by librarian 
Marylaine Block, in Book Bytes <http://www.sau.edu/cwis/internet
/wild/Refdesk/Howgood/Bookbyte/getbooks/getbooks.htm>.  
[<mblock@saunix.sau.edu>, net-hap, 10/18/96.]  (Interlibrary loan 
can get almost anything, in a few days to weeks.  And humor books 
are likely to turn up at remainder houses or remainder tables
in bookstores, since they often go out of print quickly.)

    Over 200 free online editions of computer and Internet books 
can be found in the Online Electronic Publishing Collection,
at <http://home.earthlink.net/~jlutgen/cirob.html>.  
[<jlutgen@earthlink.net>, net-hap, 11/18/96.]

    The Alexandria Virtual Library Web Site provides free
online reading and searching of current computer and
business books, available in hardcopy from online booksellers.  
<http://www.alexandria-home.com>.  [Chas. Cooper 
<chas_cooper@mindspring.com>, net-hap, 11/4/96.]
(The site also hosts a book discussion group.)

    Sandcat Inc. specializes in elegant, unique,
or hard-to-find books, plus other one-of-a-kind merchandise
(e.g., from estate sales).  <http://www.fishnet.net/~sandcat>.  
[<sandcat@fishnet.net>, net-hap, 7/31/96.]

    Blake's Books offers used and out-of-print scholarly books, 
plus special library services. Over 40 online catalogs and
a searchable database.  <http://www.blakesbooks.com/>.  
[<cindy@blakesbooks.com>, net-hap, 11/27/96.]

    Bookfinders International offers free search for
out-of-print books, plus antiquarian lists that you can browse.  
100K UK titles.  <http://www.bookfinders.co.uk/bookfinders/>.  
[<bookfinders@bookfinders.co.uk>, net-hap, 7/28/96.]

    Book Express Inc. lists 1.8M titles in print, 900K titles
out of print.  Search by ISDN, grade or age level, etc.  
<http://members.tripod.com/~bookex/index.html>.  
[<bookexpress@flinet.com>, net-hap, 8/596.]

    When you use Advanced Book Exchange (ABE) to search for
out-of-print books, you can store a search to be run every day 
until a match is found.  <http://www.abebooks.com>.  
[<abe@abebooks.com>, net-hap, 8/5/96.]

    Booksearch Online can add you to the antiquarian Books Wanted 
or For Sale lists, for a modest fee.  Database searches are free.  
<http://www.bksearch.com>.  [<SRPPress@aol.com>, net-hap, 
9/24/96.]

    Other out-of-print book sites and dealers are listed on 
Bibliophile Bookshelf, <http://www.auldbooks.com/biblio>.
[Errol Porter <portere@gov.on.ca>, net-hap, 3/4/96.]


In memoriam -- Thomas Kuhn:

    Thomas Kuhn, author of "The Structure of Scientific 
Revolutions" and the coiner of "paradigm shift," died on 6/17/96.  
His passing was noted only in the NYT and The Boston Globe.
Like Karl Popper, "Dr. Kuhn changed forever the way we think
about the nature and production of organized knowledge.
What more, one wonders, do you have to do to get an obituary
in the Los Angeles Times?"  [John Naughton, Observer, 6/96.
Terry Labach, QOTD, 11/27/96.]

					-- Ken


We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge
and power.  We have to close the distance between
the push-button order and the human act.  We have to touch people.  
-- Jacob Bronowski, "The Ascent of Man."
[Gordon Joly <gordo@dircon.co.uk>, QOTD, 12/3/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
may make copies for backup, direct mentoring, or recruiting,
and may extract occasional articles if attribution is given.
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_________________________________________________________________

 AI                                             Vol. 6, No. 88
 IS                                          December 20, 1996
 CS       THE COMPUTISTS' COMMUNIQUE


 1>  Industry news.
 2>  Research software.
 3>  Free stuff.
 4>  Games and entertainments.
_________________________________________________________________

Live your life as an exclamation, not an explanation.
[AWAD, 12/12/96.]


Goood Morning, Computists!

    I'm back on my seat, after a short bout with flu.
Thank you for your patience (and your best wishes).
This concludes Volume 6 of the Communique; look for Volume 7
to begin on 1/7/97.  Happy holidays!


 1> Industry news:

    IBM will devote 20% of its $5B R&D budget this year to 
Internet products.  [Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 12/12/96,
F5.  EDUPAGE.]

    Microsoft plans to triple its basic research budget in 1997, 
to create the world's largest computer science laboratory
within the next two years.  The investment could cost $330M
over five years.  This is reportedly a symbolic statement,
in part, about national scientific research priorities.
Other computer giants have been cutting fundamental research,
in favor of product-oriented R&D.  [SJM, 12/10/96, 1C.
Article B651 on Mercury Center.]

    Microsoft hires about 200 "nerd kamikazes" every month, from 
15K resumes.  [Newsweek, 12/2/96, p. 57.]  (Big article about "The 
Microsoft Century.")

    Apple is promising to release a "road map" to its new 
operating system plans by 1/7/97, perhaps clarifying Apple's 
timetable for memory protection, multithreading, pre-emptive 
multitasking, and symmetrical multiprocessing.  Chairman Gilbert 
Amilio is admitting -- loaded word, choose your own -- that
the current OS is far too complex, what with patches on patches
on patches.  The Byzantine software has been compared to the 
Winchester Mystery House, and is of about the same complexity as 
the software running the US phone system.  Inside every Mac.  
[Mike Langberg, SJM, 12/16/96, 1E.]  (Can we get Winchester 
Mystery House Inside stickers?  :-)

    Tech stocks have been "rebounding," and strong growth is 
likely to continue for several months.  There is widespread 
agreement that the US stock market is due for a correction,
or bull market.  If that happens in the coming year, volatile 
high-tech stocks may fall 50% more than other sectors (as
measured by leading indexes).  Quality high-tech stocks with
good fundamentals will recover and do well over the long term.  
[Steve Kaufman, SJM, 12/11/96, 1C.]

    Silicon Valley start-ups are suffering from a shortage of 
middle managers.  Such positions are critical to young companies.  
This is the imbalance in supply and demand in 20 years.  Silicon 
Valley saw 177 first-round venture deals and 295 later-stage deals 
in the first three quarters of 1996 (up from 128 and 197 in 1995).  
A company with mediocre technology will survive better than one 
with mediocre management.  "Management, not technology, builds 
companies."  At lower ranks, companies are willing to hire and 
then train, but upper-middle positions "dealing with controlled 
chaos" are going begging, due to the need for industry-specific 
expertise.  (Hence the current high rate of corporate 
acquisitions, since that nets a management team as well as a 
product.)  The booming SV economy is helping to fund recruitment 
of good personnel.  VPs are being offered $110K-$120K salaries, 
plus stock options worth 1%-2% of the company.  Senior engineers 
may get $80K-$100K and 1.25% down to 0.5% options (for later
sign-ups).  Yet "sweetening the compensation package doesn't work, 
because other companies are offering the same thing."  And after 
reaching 50 employees, stock offerings must be sharply curtailed.  
Most experienced managers and engineers are already profiting
from their stock holdings and vesting options, which makes them 
less likely to leave a secure job.  And if the venture business 
sours, those stock options are going to make life difficult
for the start-ups.  Life is already difficult enough, what with
a high-pressure culture that makes it hard to recruit from Austin, 
Boston, or the rest of the world.  Competition in computer markets 
is so strong that start-up companies can't risk management 
mistakes.  That means they can't hire inexperienced people and 
push them quickly up the ranks.  Venture capitalists are working 
with about 40 experienced headhunters, but are limiting most of 
their search effort to the Valley.   [Steve Kaufman, SJM, 
12/16/96, 1E.]

    Lockheed is hiring, for big new government jobs.  
<http://www.lmsc.lockheed.com/jobs/staffing.htm>.
[Bill Park <park@netcom.com>, 12/10/96.]
("Sooner or later, everyone becomes a part of Lockheed Martin."  
[Donald.P.McKay@lmco.com, 7/96.])

    Caltech graduate Bill Gross, 38, had so many business ideas 
that he ceded management of his Knowledge Adventures company
and started the Idealab incubator in Pasadena, for Internet-
related businesses.  That was 9 month ago, and he's currently 
nursing 18 start-ups.  Idealab provides $50K-$250K in seed 
capital, in return for up to 49% equity.  But its main 
contribution is expertise from Gross and other investors -- 
including Steven Spielberg, actor Michael Douglas, and Compaq 
chairman Ben Rosen -- and big-thinking advisors.  Plus help
from top-quality in-house programmers.  (Now there's an 
interesting job idea.)  Idealab also provides payroll and office 
services, of course.  Incubators are great for start-ups that
only need $100K or so -- below the threshold for large venture 
capital funds.  Low-level funding typically comes from "angels," 
often newly wealthy entrepreneurs looking for good uses for their 
money.  Other sources include new kinds of venture capital funds 
"sprouting like weeds," such as Media Technology Ventures
(Los Angeles and Bay Area) with $50M from corporate investors.  
The limiting factor now is not capital but vision (and 
management).  "The leverage of a small number of great people
is huge. ... Even half an hour with Spielberg could give an 
Internet game company a big leg up."  However, we may be seeing 
Darwinian venture management: fund many companies in the hope
that a few will succeed and pay for failure by most.  That's
hard on the start-ups.  [<Jonathan.Weber@latimes.com>, LA Times.  
SJM, 12/16/96, 5E.]

    If you want to hobnob with SV VCs, frequent Buck's
in Woodside (near Sand Hill Road, where most of them have 
offices).  Hot tea and oatmeal is a popular SV breakfast;
cereal and granola also do well.  (Don't order from the gag jar
of pickled iguanas.)  Deals really do happen by chance,
if you're able to participate in all the talk about A players
and B players.  [Mike Cassidy <mcassidy@sjmercury.com>, SJM, 
11/28/96, 1E.]

    Information technology gurus can only ride a hot technology 
for 18-24 months before they must move on to something else.
Such ephemeral expertise puts them in the same league as 
professional athletes, and many are beginning to charge 
accordingly: $500K/year and up.  [Cheryl Currid, IW, 11/4/96,
p. 122.  NewtNews.  Bill Park.]

    Stanford's Technology Ventures Co-op (TVC) Program combines 
paid summer work at a hot start-up with a 3-quarter sequence
of courses.  All engineering majors are encouraged to apply.
See <http://soe.stanford.edu/ieem/tvc> for details, or read about 
ten 1996 TVC Fellows on <http://www.sjmercury.com/business
/mit1130.htm>.  An informational meeting will be held 1/9/97
and 1/15/97, 5-6pm in 102 Thornton Hall.  Applications are due 
1/31/97.  [Thomas H. Byers <tbyers@leland.stanford.edu>, bases, 
12/13/96.  Bill Park.]


 2> Research software (in our CRS 6.44 digest this week):

Little Ricci 2. Model LR2: broadly hyped NN learning robot 
("noid") from Neutronics Technologies.

AGAR: genetic algorithm program.

AI~ARENA: alife environment.

Cocoa (preview): interactive website/alife editor for kids,
free from Apple.

WebForms 2.5b: editor for CGI and Perl scripts and forms.

Jupiter Saves the Universe!: arcade game written in Java.

Visualize!: Java applet for interactive 2D and 3D graphs.

ART*Enterprise 2.0 beta: expert systems development tool.

MPL and CPLEX: constraint optimization packages.
(Free student versions.)

xldlas v0.70: statistics package, with NN and GA.

PLOTTER: shareware plotting and analysis for MS DOS.

Code.Spell (beta): Windows spelling checker for C, C++,
Java, VB, Pascal, Delphi, and other ASCII source code.

DN2: DOS/Windows intelligent "self-relating" free-format
NL DB system.

ESPERANT: natural-language interface for SQL databases.

Platina WWW: NN-based speech recognition system.

Kanji Plug-In: Eudora Mac plug-in for Japanese/English email.

NSR MT System European Languages Kit v1.1: PC/Mac 
batch/interactive multimedia system for translating between 
Russian and English, French, German, or Chinese.

Fuzzy Logic and NeuroFuzzy Applications in Business and Finance: 
book by Altrock.

Evolutionary Programming V: conf. proc. ed. by Fogel,
Angeline, and Back.

>From Animals to Animats 4: conf. proc. on Simulation
of Adaptive Behavior.


 3> Free stuff:

    You may still be able to get a free beta account on the 
Web/newsgroup/newswire filtering service from Empirical Media 
Corporation.  You enter topics of interest, then give feedback
on the pages retrieved.  Requires Netscape 3.0 or Internet 
Explorer 3.0.  <http://friends.wisewire.com>.  [Don Kosak 
<dkosak@empirical.com>, c.i.www.misc, 12/10/96.]  (Their AI
topic starts out as essentially just a slow newsreader for 
comp.ai.  I presume it gets better with feedback training.)

    Free CD's, mugs, T-shirts, posters, stickers, health and 
beauty aids, Internet games (with prizes), software, classifieds, 
etc., can be found at <http://users.aol.com/freeadz/free.htm>.  
[<freeadz@aol.com>, net-hap, 7/18/96.]  (It's all advertising-
related, of course.  You have to register your address,
or maybe fill out a survey.)

    The Free Stuff Directory offers hundreds of links.  
<http://www.pebbs.com/megabites/freestuff.html>.  
[<suzanne@intrepid.axess.com>, net-hap, 10/28/96.]

    Tabitha's FreeStuff and More hyperconnector will send you 
announcements of freebies you can get via Web participation.  
<http://www.freestuff.pair.com>.  [Tabitha Keatts 
<tabithak@usa.pipeline.com>, net-hap, 5/30/96.]

    FreeWeb offers a search engine for freebies.  
<http://freeweb.com/freeweb>.  [<cy@freeweb.com>, net-hap, 
5/29/96.]

    ShopFree will register you for a gift drawing if you
point them to a new freebie listing.  <http://www.shopfree.com>.  
[<gene@shopfree.com>, net-hap, 10/16/96.]

    Freebies 'R Us: <http://www.netforward.com/poboxes/?freebies>.  
[<freebies@poboxes.com>, net-hap, 7/27/96.]

    SurfCitys Freebies: 
<http://www.bright.net/~booters/lotsfree.htm>.  
[<booters@bright.net>, net-hap, 12/2/96.]

    Coupon Connection lets you select and print your own
grocery coupons.  <http://www.klimenko.com/cconnect/>.  
[<gitarman@hooked.net>, net-hap, 8/13/96.]


 4> Games and entertainments:

    An extensive list of games, contests, quizes, surveys, 
scavenger hunts, and other happening on the Web can be found
at <http://www3.catalogue.com/contest>.  [WEBster, 8/22/96.]

    PC and Mac shareware games are available from 
<http://games.mgweb.com>.  Also discussion groups,
live chat, and contests with prizes.  [<paladine@mgweb.com>,
net-hap, 9/2/96.]

    PBeM Server can be used to play games by mail.
Send a "help" subject line to <pbmserv@vtsu.prc.com>.  
[<KurtYeager@aol.com>, BESTWEB, 8/28/96.]

    Play4Prizes offers several word games.  
<http://www.play4prizes.com/>.  [Robin Nobles 
<smslady@netdoor.com>, BESTWEB, 11/15/96.]

    The Bingo Zone gives out a cash prize every thirty minutes.  
<http://www.bingozone.com/>.  [Ibid.]

    The BrainTainment Center offers tests for IQ, creativity, 
common sense, and booksmarts, plus a ThinkFast interactive game.  
<http://www.brain.com/>.  [Ibid.]

    BattleTech from Virtual World puts you at the controls
of a 30-foot walking tank.  <http://www.virtualworld.com
/BattleTech/BattleTech.html>.  [Web Scout.  Donna Wair 
<wair@library.vanderbilt.edu>, gsunet-l, 11/11/96.]

    NUKE is a Web-based newsletter for video and computer gaming 
enthusiasts.  The site supports VDOLive streaming video, 
RealAudio, on-line chats, custom JAVA and ActiveX applets, etc.  
<http://www.nuke.com/>.  [Ibid.]

    Connect Four is a 4-in-a-row game against a computer opponent.  
<http://csugrad.cs.vt.edu/htbin/Connect4.perl>.  [Ibid.]

    GameWeb is a search engine for gamers.  
<http://kmsinn.com/gameweb/index.html>.  [Ibid.]

    IS THAT A FACT? is Pathfinder's live online quiz show,
with prizes.  <http://pathfinder.com/@@Eyi5vQYAMT7DBmPV
/pathfinder/fact/>.  [Ibid.]  (You have to register and then
wait in a chat room before you can compete, unless you play
the off-line version.  Shockwave required.)

    Play Blackjack is a game page (with prizes) at 
<http://blackjack8.ua.com/welcome.mhtml>.  [Ibid.]

    Web-a-Sketch is in the spirit of a Web-based Etch-a-Sketch 
clone, although you click on line endpoints instead of working
X-Y controls.  <http://www.digitalstuff.com/web-a-sketch/>.  
[Ibid.]  (Very slow.)

    BMG Classic World is a good place to find classical music.  
<http://www.classicalmus.com/>.  [Victor Tobias 
<cddvgt@mozcom.com>, BESTWEB, 8/20/96.]

    Origami is good fun for your kid's Winter Break.
Here are some graphics-heavy sites collected by Karen Carroll: 
Origami Links, <http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~adehman
/origami.html>; Doug Philip's Origami Page, 
<http://www.pgh.net/~dwp/Origami.html>;
Origami WWW Pages, <http://www.contra.org/fun/origami_www.html>; 
Origami Resources, <http://www.contra.org/fun/origami.html>; 
Joseph Wu's Origami Page, <http://www.datt.co.jp/Origami/>;
Sandra Wambold's Origami Page,
<http://www.chemistry.ohio-state.edu/~wambold/origami.html>;
and Origami USA, <http://www.nol.net/~barber/origami
/comp_model2.html>.  [<carroll@mwci.net>, BESTWEB, 11/25/96.]

    Don's Incredible Maze Server generates a new maze
with each visit.  Print them out for paper-and-pencil use.  
<http://www.neta.com/~dodson/maze.html>.  [Robin Nobles 
<smslady@netdoor.com>, BESTWEB, 11/15/96.]

    Handwriting and You is a site about handwriting analysis.  
<http://www.hy.com/>.  [Ibid.]  (Keep an open mind;
there are elements of truth to it.)

    Other arts, crafts, and hobbies can be found with
the search engines at <http://www.craftsearch.com>
and <http://www.hobbysearch.com>.  [<angus@mmainc.com>,
net-hap, 11/14/96.]

    For holiday recipes, try the Yum Yum search engine
at <http://www.yumyum.com/>.  Cinnamon toast, cinnamon
French toast, ...  [Donna Wair <wair@library.vanderbilt.edu>, 
gsunet-l, 11/13/96.  net-hap.]

					-- Ken


God respects us when we work and loves us when we sing.
[AWAD, 11/8/96.]

_________________________________________________________________
ISSN 1084-015X.  Publisher/Editor:  Dr. Kenneth I. Laws,
4064 Sutherland Drive, Palo Alto, CA 94303; (415) 493-7390.
Internet:  laws@ai.sri.com  (courtesy of SRI International).
---> Visit our new website, http://www.computists.com. <---
Copyright (C) 1996 by Kenneth I. Laws.  Computists' Communique
is a service to members of Computists International.  Members
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