Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!FC01@USC-ECL From: FC01%USC-ECL@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.ai Subject: Re: Lisp Books, Nondeterminism, Japanese Effort Message-ID: <3601@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Fri, 29-Jul-83 11:38:00 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.3601 Posted: Fri Jul 29 11:38:00 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 1-Aug-83 11:20:27 EDT Lines: 42 Lots of things to talk about today, A good lisp book for the beginner: The LISP 1.6 Primer. It really explains what's going down, and even has exercises with answers. It is not specific to any particular lisp of today (since it is quite old) and therefore gives the general knowledge necessary to use any lisp (with a little help from the manual). Nondeterministic production systems: Lots of work has been done. The fact is that a production system is built under the assumption that there is a single global database. The tree version of a production system doesn't meet this requirement. On the other hand, there are many models of what you speak of. The Petri-net model treats such things nondeterministically by selecting one or the other (assuming their results prevent each other from occuring) seemingly at random. Of course, unless you have a real parallel processor the results you get will be deterministic. I refer you to any good book on Petri-nets (Peterson is pretty good). Tree structured algorithms in general have this property, therefore any breadth-first search will try to do both forks of the tree at once. Other examples of theorem provers doing this are relatively common (not to mention most multiprocess operating systems based on forks). %th generation computers: There is a lot of work on the same basic idea as 5th generation computers (a 5th generation computer by any other name sounds better). From what I have been able to gather from reading all the info from ICOT (the Japanese project directorate) they are trying to do the project by getting foreign experts to come and tell them how. They anounce their project, say they're going to lead the world, and wait for the egos of other scientists to bring them there to show them how to really do it. The papers I've read show a few good researchers with real good ideas but little in the way of knowing how to get them working. On the other hand, data flow, speech understanding, systolic arrays, microcomputer interfaces to 'supercomputers' and high BW communications are all operational to some degree in the US, and are being improved on a daily basis. I would therefore say that unless we show them how, we will be the leaders in this field, not they. ***The last article was strictly my opinion-- no reflection on anyone else*** Fred