There's some interesting related work here on REST (Representational State Transfer):
http://internet.conveyor.com/RESTwiki/moin.cgi
This is an architectural style for building web services, etc. that may be more appropriate for HTTP than how XML-RPC and SOAP are typically used. If I understand it, the claim is not that XML-RPC and SOAP are fundamentally flawed, but that they are often used in a way that doesn't take full advantage of the power of HTTP.
Re:On the origins of "Unix"... MULTICS and UNICS
on
Multics Scheduler
·
· Score: 1
Multics (MULTiplexed Interactive Computer System) was a Bell Labs project...
That's not entirely accurate. From the Multicians web site:
Multics (Multiplexed Information and Computing Service) is a timesharing operating system begun in 1965 and still in use today. The system was started as a joint project by MIT's Project MAC, Bell Telephone Laboratories, and General Electric Company's Large Computer Products Division. Prof. Fernando J. Corbató of MIT led the project. Bell Labs withdrew from the development effort in 1969, and in 1970 GE sold its computer business to Honeywell, which offered Multics as a commercial product and sold a few dozen systems.
judging from the telemetry log, i'm pretty sure that's the type of engine they use. high intelligence it ain't, but hey, it's better than doing everything manually the way nasa used to do it... but the term 'agent' is really ill-fitted to this application (not the least because 'agent' is one of the most widely abused terms in computer science today) - so the whole probe may be an autonomous agent in a sense that it has a concept of 'survival goals' and takes actions to make sure they are achieved, but it would be much clearer to call it an inference engine...
It's certainly more than an inference engine. It acts. Perhaps agent is a misused term, but this is an excellent use of the term. After all, this is a system can operate without human control for long periods, can diagnose and recover from failures in its own systems, and can carry out action in the real world, all while separated from human intervention by literally millions of miles. This machine comes closer to what you would expect out of a human "agent" than just about any other machine. That doesn't mean that it is intelligent, but it does qualify it as an agent.
May I suggest that people read the large collection of papers on the RAX web site at http://rax.arc.nasa.gov/
Additionally, they're only running the experiment now, after a lot of the useful stuff has been done, since they were afraid the AI would screw up and send the probe off somewhere random.
However, nothing like that happened. Of course, people are often worried about using untested technology in such situations, but that's one of the major points of this NASA program -- to test new technology, particularly technology that makes such missions cheaper in the long run.
Generally not a fan of huge LISP based AI's for robotics... they should keep things more embedded, and lower level, using C and assembly, esp. since they're using wimpy space-qualified processors.
The point of the RAX software, however, was to automate a lot of the tasks that ground controllers now perform manually: planning in detail, recovery from failure, conservation of resources, etc. If you want to do complicated things, you usually have to use more resources, regardless of whether you use LISP. If you succeeded in writing such software in C or assembly, you would probably find that it wasn't so much smaller, after all. These engineers weren't using some bloated, slow, half-baked version of LISP implemented as a quick hack. They were using the real thing, with all the tools necessary to optimize for use of time and space.
Re:Speaking of LISP, anyone know of OpenGL binding
on
NASA and AI Testing
·
· Score: 1
I found these through a search using google.com:
for Allegro Common Lisp: www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/mann/software-availa ble.html
Don't worry, everyone. MIT buildings are always referred to by number, no matter what they're named. No self-respecting nerd (at a school that has even trademarked the term "Nerd Pride") is going to refer the building as anything other than "building 75" (or whatever the right number is). "Gates Wing" or "Stata Center" will probably never be mentioned after the day the building opens.
Slashdot Mirror
There's some interesting related work here on REST (Representational State Transfer):
http://internet.conveyor.com/RESTwiki/moin.cgi
This is an architectural style for building web services, etc. that may be more appropriate for HTTP than how XML-RPC and SOAP are typically used. If I understand it, the claim is not that XML-RPC and SOAP are fundamentally flawed, but that they are often used in a way that doesn't take full advantage of the power of HTTP.
That's not entirely accurate. From the Multicians web site:
It's certainly more than an inference engine. It acts. Perhaps agent is a misused term, but this is an excellent use of the term. After all, this is a system can operate without human control for long periods, can diagnose and recover from failures in its own systems, and can carry out action in the real world, all while separated from human intervention by literally millions of miles. This machine comes closer to what you would expect out of a human "agent" than just about any other machine. That doesn't mean that it is intelligent, but it does qualify it as an agent.
May I suggest that people read the large collection of papers on
the RAX web site at http://rax.arc.nasa.gov/
However, nothing like that happened. Of course, people are often worried about using untested technology in such situations, but that's one of the major points of this NASA program -- to test new technology, particularly technology that makes such missions cheaper in the long run.
The point of the RAX software, however, was to automate a lot of the tasks that ground controllers now perform manually: planning in detail, recovery from failure, conservation of resources, etc. If you want to do complicated things, you usually have to use more resources, regardless of whether you use LISP. If you succeeded in writing such software in C or assembly, you would probably find that it wasn't so much smaller, after all. These engineers weren't using some bloated, slow, half-baked version of LISP implemented as a quick hack. They were using the real thing, with all the tools necessary to optimize for use of time and space.
I found these through a search using google.com:
a ble.html
for Allegro Common Lisp: www.neci.nj.nec.com/homepages/mann/software-avail
for GNU Common Lisp:
stat.umn.edu/~luke/www.html
Don't worry, everyone. MIT buildings are always referred to by number, no matter what they're named. No self-respecting nerd (at a school that has even trademarked the term "Nerd Pride") is going to refer the building as anything other than "building 75" (or whatever the right number is). "Gates Wing" or "Stata Center" will probably never be mentioned after the day the building opens.
How about a search box for the Open Directory Project like the ones you already have for Yahoo, etc? Open Directory Project