0010 er

through a field trial at USC Dental Schoolby Kate /ABore

100 Dentistry students and 40 Dental Hygienestudents participated last month in the field trial of anew version of 1St's ADE (Advanced DistanceEducation) system. Developed by Lewis Johnson,RajaJam Ganeshan and Erin Shaw, the ADE systemincorporates a pedagogical agent with case-basedsimulation exercises for training health professionals.The software is built in Java and designed to work in aWeb browser environment. Engineeringundergraduate Andrew Marshall helped in developingthe agent persona, a 2D animated character namedAdele. The original version of the software was built toteach diagnostic strategies and procedures to medicalstudents.

learning techniques n modeling human learners.Adele was given a new look complete with dentalsmock, safety glasses and mask.

Dr. Roseann Mulligan of the School of Dentistryauthored the case that was used In the simulation forthe field trial. She was assisted by Jennifer Herbert andJohn Morzov, 4"" year students from the School ofDentistry, and Kristine Choulakian, a Gerontology gradstudent.

Building cases for the medk:al simulations createdearlier in the ADE development process had convincedthe ISf research team that authoring tools wereessential additions to the system. New authoring toolswere designed for the new version by RajaramGaneshan and built by Ganeshan and Ami Adler. anundergraduate student researcher who also assistedwith the development of case-plan modifications for thenew version.

The version built for the School of Dentistry wassponsored by the USC Health ManagementConsortium, including the Andrus School ofGerontology. The School of Gerontology took an activerole in supporting the development of the dentistryversion, which was designed to facilitate a course inclinical decision-making in geriatrk: dentistry. MarBHenke, Program Manager for the Andrus Center'sMultimedia learning program, coordinated the effortsof the Consortium's team.

For the new version,changes and additions tothe interface were designedby Andrew Marshal andKate LaBore and built byAndrew Marshall.Contributions to theinterface were also made byAnna Romero, anotherstudent researcher at ISI.New user-help featureswere designed and built byChon Vi, a graduateresearcher who is interestedin the use of machine

Dynamic Domain Inc, by Yigal Arens

The case for the field trial ~ put onto one of theprojecfs Sun machines. Client machines at theComputer learning Center at the School of Dentistrywere prepared for the trial by Alexander Bucur,Technical Director for the Andrus Center's Multimedia

I Learning division.: Bucur also did some of

the pre-trial testing.Students were also

I able to access thesystem on the

i computers in theSchool of Dentistry

I library.

The field trial took placebetween April 6 andApril 15. Students filledout a brief initial surveydesigned to gain an

Babies, Ph.D., etc.

by the editor-

1St> Tidbits

A review of "The Matrix"

iD

keep asking questions to Adele withoutgetting her angry! I also like thequestions [quizzes] in between, it makesyou think more and it is challenging."

understanding of their computerliteracy. After completing the simulation ' 1 would rather

exerci~e, students completed an learn my mistakesextensive post-test survey form. ChonVi is currently analyzing the resulting on the computerdata. Preliminary results seem to than on a real "1 really enjoyed working through practiceconfirm what the research team has cases because if I make a mistake on thet. t "seen in ear1ier field trials of the ADE pa len ... computer there are really nosystem. The data are strongly bimodal consequences to the patient. I wouldand suggest that some users find the rather learn my mistakes on the computeragent-assisted, case-based simulations useful, easy to than on a real patient. I think this program is reallywork and helpful In understanding the concepts and helpful to students who are just leaming how to take aprocedures focused on by the author, while others medical history and how to interpret it correctly.-found the exercise lengthy (and slow), the case-planordering too restrictive and the multi-window interfaceconfusing. Those with limited computer experience,not surprisingly, had the most difficulty.

"Thank you very much for aI the peop!time to set up this program.-

to spend thE

The development team got excellent feedback frommany of the students. There is no question that theresults of the field trial wi! be extremely useful to us inplanning future refinements of the ADEimplementation.

Here are some of the comments studentthe software:

had about

Dynamic Domain,in the makinghv Yi!?,al Arens

Inc., A Company"I really enjoyed using this whole program because ittaught me to k>ok at the patient as a whole living systeminstead of just concentrating on their teeth and gums.The program let me go through the steps of learningthe patient through the data collection and how veryimportant this step is in diagnosing.-

"It was wonderful to see and examine the actual patient.I felt like I was really talking [to) and feeling my patient. Itwas also nice to see a helper to be there for me. Thisprogram will be very helpful to train the student to be abetter health professional due to exercising the~lete A-Z examination with an actual patient, whereother traditional computer programs only have writtendescriptions."

We here at ISI often talk about technology transfer, butmuch less frequently do we do anything about it. Assome of you have surely already heard, Craig, Steveand I have decided to get serious about transferring ourtechnology to the outside world. And we're doing it thehard way, by commercializing it ourselves. This issomething we had been discussing on and off for along time, but we began acting on it only late last year.There are others in the division who are also interestedin, or already pursuing, such an endeavor, aoo Ithought they, as well as everyone else would beinterested in hearing a bit about our experiences.."I don't like how I have to follow only one order set

"The flow needs to be made much more flexible.- "Tt.mandatory sequence of events is too strict.-

Ie

~he program was slow and too complex." "It was kindof difficult to keep going to different windows."

NameOur company was incorporated in early January, and iscalled Dynamic Domain, I~. We had a hell of a timecoming up with a name, because we wanted to register~ ~ an Internet domain name ~ well. There are nowmore than 3 million Internet domain names alreadyregistered, and I challenge you folks to think of a wordor combination of words that is not yet owned bysomeone else. It took us months.

"I did not like the concept of this system. Practicingcases over the internet d never replace actual clinicalexperience, and thus I strongly dislike the idea.", like the concept, but for me it was very hard, since Ia'n not that famftiar with computers...On the otherhand, I like the fact that I can go back and forth and

3The InSiDer

development (defined roughly by the amount of fundsInvested in it) and they stay around during that periodand then leave. Obviously, some are good and someare not, and we have no Idea who is which. This iswhere connections come into play, and we ask friendsand relatives to introduce us to people they know orhave heard about from their friends. We also figure it isreasonable to assume that if a potential investorIntroduces us to a CEO or marketing type, theyprobably think they are decent.

We almost settled on a CEO for our company, but dueto some factors beyond our control its stiH a little up inthe air. The person is nevertheless helping us out a lot.The value of real world experience cannot beoverestimated.

LicensingThe first big problem we had to tackle once we decidedto get serious about a company was licensing thetechnology from USC. The fact is that no part of thesystems that we've been working on at these years(SIMS. Ariadne and Theseus) actually belongs to us.We don't even own the thoughts we've had aboutthem. As It turns out, being a USC employee meansthat everything we think about or create at IS! is USCproperty. USC is willing to let us make use of thesoftware and ideas we have created, but there's a priceto pay. What is that price? After months of negotiations,we settled on USC getting an equity stake in thecompany of approximately 10 percent.

And what about the other contributors to the research,you ask? All the other researchers, programmers andstudents who've pa~ipated in the work? Well, USCmay not be just a bunch of bad guys fighting to takestock away from struggling entrepreneurs. A part ofUSC's shares in the company gets redistributed amongthe other author-inventor-developers in our group. Allof whom have to be tracked down; their relativecontribution to the work over the years has to bedetermined; they aI have to agree to the division ofshares between them; and they aM have to sign astatement declaring so. There go another few weeks ofour precious time...

FinancingStill looking. Anybody have money they want to invest?@

We understand that the licensing arrangement wereached wiI probably be used ~ a model for others inour situation. If you would like to hear more details,come and talk to Craig, Steve or me. Founder Participation

Until now, we've done aI our work on starting thecompany on evenings, weekends and vacation time.Everyone we talk to stresses how important I: Eo for theinventors to contribute substantially to the companyduring the initial phase after its establishment. Mostpotential investors want to hear that all or most of us willleave IS! aM move to the company full-time. We haveto be there until others understand the technology aswefl ~ we do. However, we don't want to leave IS! atthis point, and would rather find a way to split our time.We are hoping that IS! works out a policy that aJk>ws usto do this, and we are working with our management toarrange it.

Business PlanLicensing, while time consuming, is only a smaI part ofwhat needs to be done to get a company going. Thehardest part, we discovered quickly, is figuring out whatthe company wi actually do. We ~ know that thetechnology we develop at IS! is cutting edge and veryexciting. Potential investors come and look at it, andthey get excited too. That excitement only lasts solong-after which they want to know what the productwe envision is. who will be willing to pay money for it,and how much. And they expect us to be reallyspecific, the bastards! Being researchers at heart, wehad never thought in those teRnS. Finding people whowere better versed than us in the business andmarketing world thus moved up high on our to do list. Wish Us Luck!

We'll have to figure out our level of participation within acouple of months. Licensing wi be complete in earlyMay, and at that point we can actually start doing thingscommercially. As you "BY know, the odds of a start-upsucceeding are very small. Only one in twenty ends upmaking real money and only one, period, is Microsoft.

ManagementAs it turns out, there are a lot of people out there whowork with srnaB software startups for a living. I mean,they have their favorite period in the company's

The InSiDer4

Obviously. we think our stuff is good, but we'll have toconvince the rest of the world of that. We'll need at theluck and encouragement we can get!

New Faces in ISDWe are pleased to announce ISO's new arrivals:

Am; Adler

Ami is a GRA, whosework is supervised byLewis J ohnsan. He isin room 950.

Eneko Agirre

Some Spanish speakerscan notice the flNV1Y

spelling of my familyname, Agirre, which theymight think should be

spelled Aguirre. Thereason is that it is a

Basque family name, andfollows the Basque spelling. These things confusepeople, so I will try to explain shortly. The BasqueCountry, as an ethno-cultural entity, is partitioned intwo regions (southern and northern) that belong totwo different states, Spain and France. I come fromthe southern part, and I am therefore a bilingualBasque and Spanish speaker. Basque has an intriguingorigin, as nobody manages to tie it to any languagefamily in the world: if you consult large familygroups in an encyclopedia, Basque stands isolated, mits own. Surprising fact, for a speaker community ofless than me million speakers. I should also notethat not all Basques speak Basque. I'm unsure aboutthe exact numbers, as they are constantly growing,but I would say it's about 30% of Basque speakers.

A Few Final CommentsAs we were tackling the various issues mentionedabove, we discovered some facts that are worth noting:

licensing and Da~rs: For some reason USC, like otheruniversities, pursues their IP (intellectual property)rights with regard to software, but not books and otherpublications. A USC copyright notice must appear 0 nevery file created at the university, but not on a paper orbook written here! Those are owned entirely by theirauthors. Why? Near as I can tell, because that's the wayit's been, that's why.

Inventions and reoistering them: All DARPA contractsrequire that we go through the process of declaring"inventions" created under them. I've had to fill outforms about this in the past, and have always just saidthere were no inventions-thinking they were askingabout mousetraps or something of that sort. Not so.Any new software technique can count ~ an inventionand USC is going to start insisting that we be morecareful about declaring these.

Patents: Inventions can be patented, if they meetcertain criteria. Not many of us here bother; again,probably because you-like me-have never reallythought in these terms. Software patents are a murkyissue, but investors really like things that are patented.What complicates matters is that if you publishinformation about an invention before filing for a patent,you immediately lose the right to patent it in someforeign countries. You lose the patent rights in the US ifyou don't file the patent application within one year ofpublication. On the other hand, software patents areapparently rather difficult to enforce.

Imoortance in recruiting: The question of whether an ISIemployee can license technology and participate in astart-up is now brought up very frequently in jobinterviews. Obviously, not everyone is going to bedoing it, but people want to make sure they're joining aplace where they can. We hope that our experience willhelp make ISI a more attractive place for such folks.

!: "

2. Which of the following characters Is notualid for use in an mS-DOS filename: thedollar sign, the percent sign, or the plus

sfg n1

Well. sorry about the longish explanation... I wasinvited by Eduard Hovy. and I will stick around forfour months. I am a lecturer on Computer Science atthe Basque Country University in Donostia (also

~.;

5The InSiDer

Lauri Grierknown as San Sebastian). I just finished my Ph.D. onJanuary which was about word sense disambiguationand knowledge acquisition from dictionaries (mainlyhierarchies). I work in a research team on NaturalLanguage Processing (focusing mainly on Basque) thatcomprises around 20 people, both computerscientists and linguists (we do not havecomputational linguistics curricula in the Basque

Coootry).

The objective of my stay here is to furtherresearch m the problem of word sensedisambiguation, and the contribution that ontologiescan offer to solve this problem. FIIY"f enough, wordsense disambiguation is necessary if we want toautomate ontology building, so this looks rathercircular. Finding ways to break this circle would be agreat outcome of my visit.

My ~me is lauri Grierand I have only recentlyjoined the team here atISI. Over the pastshort month I havelearned how little Iknow about computersand the computerindustry! It is exciting to have something new tolearn and experience. I have spent the past 15 years(approximately) working in various types ofbusinesses. It seemed that my strongest abilitieslay in organizing and assisting other people, so thatis what most of my time was spent doing. Mostrecently, I worked in the commercial real estateindustry as an Executive Secretary to theController. While I really enjoyed working with him,I couldn't pass up the opportunity to increase myexperience and knowledge by accepting the positionhere at ISI.

Nicolas Chauvot

I'm coming from Paris(www.paris.org), France(www.france.org). Igraduated from EcoleCentrale Paris (www.ecp.fr)and hence I am a"centralienN(www.centraliens.fr), whichis important, for it givesyou another URL.

I was born and raised in Utah (with a brief two yearstint in Virginia as my Father played PressSecretary to th£ Utah Congrt;SSman). I enjoyedgrowing up in Utah, but always felt an immensefascination with California. My family cam£ toCalifornia on vacation when I was 5 and I neverwanted to live anywhere else. However, I seem to bethe only -big city- fan in my family. All still resid£in Utah and with 4 brothers, 2 sisters and 22 niecesand nephews, I have been mown to ~ke frequentweekend treks to the Rocky Mol.-tains.I studied AI at LIP6 (www.lip6.fr) for one year and

At this time I am working for PSA-Peugeot-Citroen(www.pso.fr) os a visitor at ISI (you know it :-), inMilind Tambe's team (www.isi.edu/soor/tambe) onthe TeomCore project (www.isi.edu/teamcore). I'vebeen using LINUX (www.linux.org) for some timenow, for it's an incredible tool to practice and learnand is a lot of foo (www.extremelinux.org). I'll beglad to help you with it if I can. In the reol world, Itry not to stop playing basketball (www.ffbb.fr) fortoo long and visit os many different coootries ospossible (no reference sorry)... Concerning my photoon the side, don't laugh, I look even dumber in thephoto booth ;).

I spent four years at Brigham Yomg University inProvo, Utah, majoring in English as I have alwaysloved literature. Which explains the hours I nowspend in antique stores looking for 17th and 18thcentury books. My Father recently retired after 25years as an Administrator in the athleticdepartment at BYU, so the university environmenthere at ISI feels very familiar.

I finally made my dream come true and moved toSouthern California in 1989. My first home was inthe Inland Empire and I soon wondered why I left

The InSiDer 6

Utah. However, when I moved to Hermosa Beach in1991, I renewed my love for the Southern Californiasun and beaches. I have been in the South Bay eversince.

5) Interesting events in your life: travelling in southeast Asia & Europe. Army service and working atISI.

In 1996 I happened upon a nearly perfect gentlemanat church. We were married the following year andI now believe in happy endings! My husband, Ken,owns a vacuum and sewing machine store/repair shopin Redondo Beach, plays classical guitar, has abeautiful 16-year-old daughter and keeps me hoppingall the time. We bought our first home last year inTorrance and are having a lot of fun -nesting".

jose-Luis Izkara

I was born in Bilbao, Spain,25 years ago. Bilbao is ~of the largest cities in theBasque C~try, which is«\e of the most beautifulregions in Spain.

Some of my favorite things are playing the piano orteaching piano lessons, reading, watching old movies,watching the Dodgers, French Impressionists,antiques, .surfing the net., spending time with myfamily and, of course, shopping.

I completed my studies in -~ --

Engineering at the University of the Basque Coootry(W)e year ago and I received a 9~t by the BasqueCountry Government to come here for a period of sixmonths. And here I am.

I have really enjoyed my first month here and I amlooking forward to a long and beneficial stay at ISI(hopefully beneficial to both ISI and myself).

My hobbies are football (soccer here), sports ingeneral, music, traveling, and having a drink with myfriends. The Athletic of Bilbao is known to be thebest football team in the world and one. of theoldest in the world. I like Spanish and Italian food,and my favorite dish is the Spanish omelette.Hyunckchul lung

The most interesting event in my life was the day Imet my girlfriend. She is a bea~tiful. person and Ilove her very much. She is in Bilbao now and I missher.

My work here is focused on inmersive PC trainingagents. I still don't know much about it, but itsounds fine.

I. 1) My backgro~d: Iwas born in Seoul,

i Korea in 1971. I g~tB.S. & M.S. InComputer ScienceDept, at SeoulI"-btional University.Last fall I came to the

f United States

entering a Ph.D.program in Computer

Science at USC. I'm working on TEAMCORE projectwith Dr. Tambe as my advisor.Z) Research Interests: multi-agent conflictresolution in a team3) Hobbies: hiking. travelling and listening to musicin a dark room4) Favorite foods: all kinds of foods except fish

s~

7The InSiDer

Young-jun Kim <I> I would rather receive an order of chilicheese fries than a dozen roses.<9> It took me a month to convince my mom thatI wasn't dating Mark McGwire.CD I got in a car accident on my first day atIS!.

If something in particular sparks your interestdrop by and rll tell you all about it =)

Davia Pynattath . . .

Research Interests:

Perception (PerceptoolLearning)Hobbies: Nothing but

livingFavorite foods: AllKorean Foods.Anything you want towrite: . A II our dreams

can come true -- if we

have the courage to pursue them."- Walt Disney -

Fanny Mak

Things you might wont

to know about me (but

don't .,. which is whyyou're reading this... =)

I gre.w ~ in Johnstown,NY, a small upstate. townwhich has a population ofalmost 9,000, and whichis most famous for *not* .

be.ing the. site. of the.se.mi-famous JohnstownFlood (which took place. inJohnstown, PA).Howe.ve.r, it doe.s have. its own exit on the. NY State.Thruway, making leaving that much easier when itwas time. for college.. I graduate.d from MIT in 1992with S.B.'s in e.le.ctrical engineering and computerscience.. I then worke.d at the. Tufts Me.dical Schoolon computer interfaces using eye. tracking fordisable.d users without any othe.r modes of input.After a year, the. grant move.d to a differentinstitution and forgot to take. us researchers withit, so I moved on to graduate. school at the.University of Michigan instead. There, I workedwith Michae.l We.llman on a probabilistic frame.workfor plan re.cognition, with a digression intostochastic grammars.

I defended my thesis ("Probabilistic Grammars forPlan Recognition") in January, 1999, and be9Qn workas a research scientist at ISI in December, 1998.Since time travel was not a viable option at thetime, my first two months here required an overlapof the two efforts, a challenging experience to saythe least (Public Service Amouncement: Kids, stayin school). I'm currently working on the TEAMCOREproject with Milind Tambe. We are developing a

general-purpose infrastructure for programming

CD I can writebackwards (you know...so if you put it in frontof a mirror... it reads - -- - -the -right- way) fluently.<z> rve been at TV severol times (evenAmerica's Most Wanted) and have had a loaded 9'ft~t£d at me.GI I was a pixie and Mulan in Disney's lightMagic and Mulan parades, respectively.@ Besides being a project assistant in Div 3... Itutor Math, English, and Biology. (Oh yeah... did Itell you I have a B.S. in Biological Sciences?!)<S> When I was visiting Vancouver. BC... someonebroke into my rented J up Cherokee and only tookthe cigarette lighter and a US quarter that I left atthe passenger's seat.<&> I was there during the OJ Simpson high-speed chase - he (well his driver) and one police

vehicle cut me off. (Of course I didn't know it wasOJ until I went home several hours later and sow iton the news.)(1) rm a snowboarder. (Well... sort-of... I stillcan't get off the lifts w/o falling on my butt.)

The InSiDer 8

team-level activity, with a particular applicationusing a team of agents developed by differentresearchers across the COl'ltry.

than keyword based. My part in the project is therepresentation of the user's information need. Mywork here, supervised by Eduard Hovy, investigatesthe use of ontological knowledge for creating better

queries.Since moving to LA, I feel like I spend most of mytime trying to figure out ways to survive without adriver's license. I've held out so for, but myresistance is cracking. My more enjoyable pursuitsinclude playing the flute less frequently than Ishould, playing any sport I can fit into my schedule,rooting for Philadelphia sports teams, watchingmovies made with ~der $50 million budget, tryingto become as well-read as my mother, and trying notto spend all of my money at used CD stores.

Personal stuff: jiu- jitsu, squash, volleyball (There isa tradition of playing volleyball during the lunch atthe research institute in Nijmegen), and I play in arole playing game. All this entertainment done at anon-competition level. I enjoy the f~ of playing, notthe winning. On holidays, I like to travel with a

backpack.

AndrewScholerJoep Simons

Andrew is working withJeff Rickel in room 950.. I was born in a Dutch

city coiled Nijmegen,roughly 27 years ago. Afew years after I wasborn, my parents movedto a small village 30kms away, calledNistelrode, and I spent

- - my youth there. I wentbock to Nijme.ge.n to

study cognitive science. In the begiMing of my studymy main interest was more oriented towardscognitive psychology. later, it shifted more towardsAI. I was begiMing to get tired of living my life inan area of 30 kin so I tried to get a graduationproject abroad. After a few failures, I moooge.d toget to Saorbruecken, Germany. It turned out to be. agreat time. The institute was great, the beer wasfine, and the inspiration and motivation, given byTony Jameson, was even greater.

ISO win go to its 3rd bi-annual retreat in November1999. This time, forget about Lake Arrowhead and themountains, we are going to the beach! The retreat willtake place in San Diego, at the Catamaran Resort Hotel,which is famous for its beautiful and secluded locationon the shores of Mission Bay. As usual, the divisionretreat wta be a perfect opportunity for everybody tointroduce their work, meet new people from otherprojects (which hopefully will eliminate many ISD'erswondering "who is that person walking down thehall?"), and of course, a chance to have fun together.I returned to Nijmegen in March 1995 after a stay

of 15 months. Although the time in Germany wasgreat, I had enough of staying abroad for themoment. I took a job as a scientific programmer atthe ooiversity. After that I switched to a Ph.D.project on information filtering. This project aimsat improving Information filtering results by using arepresentation of document and user which is deeper

Poster sessions and discussions are included in theagenda. The retreat will most likely be scheduled forThursday, November 11 through Friday, November 12,arxt if you wouldn't be satisfied with 2 days at theCatamaran, you can continue to enjoy your weekend atthe resort and bring your families. Could be a perfectexcuse to go to legoland!

The InSiDer 9

Back to ISO...

Tanya Schenk is back! After spending twosemesters in Hawaii, pursuing her studies in politicalscience, Tanya realized that she missed IS! so much,she had to come back. She wi be providingadministrative support part-time during the summeruntil she comes up with another adventurous idea. Inthe meantime, she will be working on her Master'sthesis.

New Babies @ISD:

Allison Margaret Blythe was born on January 24,around 7 PM, weighing in at 7 lb. This baby gir1 is thefirst child of the proud parents, Kathy and JamesBlythe. Congratulations!

r~'Ram Tambe, a big bouncing baby boy, was born onFebruary 28, weighing in at 9 Ibs and 3oz and 22inches. Congratulations to Milind, Sharada and RJTarnbe!

Upcominq ISI AI Seminars:

Please see the Af1ificial Intelligence Seminar SeriesWeb page for the most up-to-date schedule at:http://www.isi.edu/divisions/div3/AI_seminar.html

New Ph.D.ls at ISD

Marcelo Tallis successfully defended his thesis on"A Script-Based Approach to Modifying Knowledge-Based Systems-. Marcelo plans to stay at ISO for a fewmore months over the summer extending this work andintegrating it further with the next generation ofEXPECT KA tools before he moves on to a new job.Congratulations!

May 21, 1999 - Van Jin, USC

title - -mo-

May 26, 1999 - Patrick Hanks,Oxford University Press

All Erdem passed his thesis defense on ~askOrientation and Tailoring of Interactive SoftwareExplanations.. He gave a cogent presentation of hiswork. and fielded questions from his committee withauthority and aplomb. Congratulations!

-- -Mapping Syntax onto Semantics.A Lexicographical Approach"

Leavinq ISO...In case you have been looking for Theresa Coxrecently and could not find her, she is hiding on the 6thfloor in the Business Office, disguised ~ a FinancialAnalyst. That's her new position at IS! since February1 st. Theresa is still working part-time for ISO, whiletransferring her knowledge to Lauri Grier, the Division'snew Administrative Coordinator.

Appliances at ISD KitchenNewYou probably already noticed that the old toaster in thewestside kitchen was replaced by a new one. For thoseof you who use the toaster oven please be kind andclean up after everyuse. For everyone'ssafety it would be agood idea to wait foryour food rather thenleave it unattended.

Pedro Szekely and Martin Frank moved to theEnterprise Integration Systems Divison, taking withthem the Mastermind project. Pedro is spending mostof his time ~ project leader for the Dealmaker project,but continues to oversee Mastermind. Martincontinues to work on Mastermind, but is also becominginvolved in DeaJrnaker and other projects. Martin willstill be working with ISO 33% of his time on "active

templates".

There is also a new.spacesaver- can-opener for your use ( it also has a bottle opener andknife sharpening feature) in the kitchen. Please clean itafter each use.

10The InSiDer

Soccer Anyone? Fro~ the u~ ,aMY Survey:There is a group of ISlers who regularly get together toplay pickup soccer games on Fridays at noon (12:00P.M. to 1 :30 P.M.). If you would like to play with us,please send ernail to Pedro Szekely <szekely> and hewin add you to the mailing list. It is a lot of fun, and theskill level is not important (the games are very friendly.)

inI nte((;gen c eArt;f;c;a(Ho((ywood

The topic of artificial intelligence is as hot as everin Hollywood these days. A new futuristic actionthriller NThe Matrix" is just about every aspect ofthe research done at the Intelligent SystemsDivision: agents, virtual reality, machine leaming,robots, knowledge acquisition, and even the ability ofa computerized intelligence to leave a human beingNspeechlessN, that is without his natural kJnguage(the scene when the computer programmer getsarrested by the evil Matrix agents and demands tomake a phone call to authorities, only to find hismouth disappearing from his face! And he thoughtit was just a dream... ). And of course, all thosethrilling things would not be thrilling without thegrim consequences of "playing with the fire" -- the

artificial mind enjoying its autonomy and taking overthe minds of the whole human race, while using theirbodies as a source of energy (justlike we usebatteries). Pretty scary, considering the fact thatthe advances in computer science research aremaking machines more and more intelligent, enablingcomputers to make decisions on their own, translatelanguages, teach and do lots of other things not onlyas well as humans, but even better. (Our only hopeis that these intelligent machines will never havehuman mood swings:)

Anfwerf for the'Trivia Quef+ionf

COM~u"er

1. CPIM-86 and UCS/>-Pafca(2.. .IIe p(Uf fign). PAlW¥. 9 o'c(ocl(

"The Matrix", with its switches between the mind invirtual reality, and the body in the reality that doesnot really exist anymore, combined with the amazingnew visual effects technology of Hong Kongfilmmakers, goorantees to keep you glued to YOtX'seat for 2 hours and 10 minutes. However, youmight never be able to trust that imocent gray box

again...