Newsgroups: comp.archives.admin Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!ox.com!yale.edu!think.com!linus!linus!linus!mbunix!eachus From: eachus@largo.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) Subject: Re: building an interstate (data) highway with no roadmaps In-Reply-To: rhys@cs.uq.oz.au's message of 19 Jun 91 01:54:53 GMT Message-ID: Sender: news@linus.mitre.org (News Service) Nntp-Posting-Host: largo.mitre.org Organization: The Mitre Corp., Bedford, MA. References: <9106171612.AA01441@mazatzal.merit.edu> <2013@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> Date: 19 Jun 91 10:27:31 In article <2013@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au> rhys@cs.uq.oz.au (Rhys Weatherley) writes: > I agree that something like this is needed, but how is it going to be > organised? There's a big difference between books and computer programs... We're violently agreeing. Anyone can do the repository bit, it is organizing a software collection in a meaningful way that will be the tough job. Ed Vielmetti is trying to do one part of the job, but I am saying that the real need is for the other $150 (or whatever) worth of work on that Library of Congress card. > Maybe it's time we retrained programmers to write programs to perform > a single task, not control the world! :-) We used to joke that every program in the MIT AI lab grew until it could be used to read mail. Now we know they don't stop there... > We'll come up with something eventually, but I don't think it will fit > into the library/archive framework we are used to: there's so much > more information in computing than humans are used to. It will have > to be something new. Any ideas? Some ideas, but this is in the class of very hard problems. Even if you have a database program which is designed only to be a fancy phone dialer, it may implement an algorithm which is what I am looking for for my radar application. Or I may not want the program, but I am looking for the Minneapolis telephone directory which is provided with this program, and I'll also need the program so I can use it... It seems to me that we will need an indexing scheme that looks hierarchical to the user, but which is actually implemented with fuzzy logic. When I go looking for a database program it would originally exclude the phone dialer programs, but when I get to database programs with data on addresses in Minnesota, the example I used above is now back in. -- Robert I. Eachus with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; use STANDARD_DISCLAIMER; function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...