Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic. -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Latest News Items

Ants make up collective minds on house moves -- Ants have been found to make up their minds collectively when it comes to moving to a new home. (7/23)

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RDF Applications with Prolog -- The second in Bijan Parsia's series on RDF and Prolog, this article explores "some of the nitty-gritty of working with RDF in Prolog using the SWI-Prolog system." (7/29)

IBM's fridge doesn't just hum, it knows the words -- An AP story on IBM's Pervasive Computing Division work on developing smart homes. ... "Imagine being paged with word that the milk in the refrigerator has spoiled. Imagine turning off the porch light at home while vacationing at the beach. In the future, when the words "home computer" take on new meaning, it might be possible. That future is on display now at an IBM lab, where researchers are testing new technology in a fully furnished living room, kitchen and garage. In the kitchen, a screen on the refrigerator tells what's inside - without opening the door. Digital stoves and microwaves cook automatically, following recipes downloaded from the Internet. (7/29)

Internet Application Workbook -- Internet Application Workbook by Philip Greenspun is on online textbook for the MIT course "Software Engineering for Internet Applications". The course is intended for upper level CS majors who know how to write a computer program and debug it. The most concise statement of the course goal is that "The student finishes knowing how to build amazon.com." (7/26)

Creative Evolutionary Systems -- Creative Evolutionary Systems edited by Peter Bentley, David Corne. "This book takes a fresh look at creativity, exploring what it is and how the actions of evolution can resemble it. Examples of novel evolved solutions are presented in a variety of creative disciplines." (7/25)

EC-01 Trading Agent Competition -- The 2001 Trading Agent Competition (TAC-01) is the second in a series of open-invitation events featuring software agents from all over the world competing in a challenging market game. This year's event will culminate at the Third ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, to be held 14-17 October 2001 in Tampa, Florida. (7/25)

Intellidimention semantic web page -- Intellidimention has a site that serves as a public demonstration of RDF Gateway and as a testing ground for practical applications of Semantic Web technologies and ideas. The site aggregates semi-structured information entered by users with information harvested from the Web. Users can edit classes and resources, create formatted queries (views), register sites to be crawled, and specify which sources of information they trust. (7/24)

AgenCom -- AgenCom provides an architectural framework for developing, deploying, and managing e-business applications. The architectural framework is based on n-tier distributed environment where any number of tiers of application logic and business services are separated into agents that communicate with each other across a network. (7/23)

Semantic Networks -- A draft of an article on Semantic Networks by John Sowa to appear in the Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science. It compares various network notations, including conceptual graphs, description logics, Petri nets, UML, and many others. (7/23)

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