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CSLI Calendar, 13 May 1998, vol. 13:33
C S L I C A L E N D A R O F P U B L I C E V E N T S
______________________________________________________________________
13 May 1998 Stanford Vol. 13, No. 33
______________________________________________________________________
A weekly publication of the
Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI)
Stanford University, Ventura Hall, Stanford, CA 94305-4115
____________
ACTIVITIES DURING 13 MAY TO 22 MAY 1998
WEDNESDAY, 13 MAY
12 noon Semantics Workshop
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:146
Elizabeth Traugott and Scott Schwenter
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
Abstract below
3:15pm ME297: Design Theory and Methodology Seminar
Creativity and Envisioneering(TM) in Design Teams
Andrew J. Milne
Mechanical Engineering Department, Design Division
Stanford University
http://cdr.stanford.edu/DD/Courses/me297/
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Cordura 100
Making Good Inferences with Missing Information and Very
Little Computation
Dan Goldstein
Stanford University.
Abstract below
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
The List Foundation: An Example Virtual Community
Craig Neumark and Nancy Melone
List Foundation
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 14 MAY
12 noon CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
On Actions, Causes, and Counterfactuals
Judea Pearl
UCLA, Computer Science
Abstract below
12 noon CTL: Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching
CERAS 204
Classroom Burn-Out: Experiencing It, Dealing With It, and
Learning From It
Prof. Christina Maslach
Psychology, University of California, Berkeley
http://www-ctl.stanford.edu/lectures/awtmain.html
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
Strategies for Seed Funding to a Successful Start-up
Steve Jurvetson
Managing Director, Venture Capital
Draper Fisher & Jurvetson
Abstract below
4:15pm AI-Vision-Robotics Division Colloquium
Gates 104
From Bayesian Networks to Actions, Causes, and
Counterfactuals
Judea Pearl
UCLA, Computer Science
Abstract below
4:15pm Frontiers of Neuroscience Seminars
Munzer Auditorium
Repulsive neuronal growth cone guidance
Dr. Alex Kolodkin
The Johns Hopkins University
Host: Dr. Barbara Barres
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/nbio/Spring98.html
4:15pm CS548: Distributed Systems Research Seminar
Gates B01
State Machines and Distributed Systems
Leslie Lamport
DEC SRC
Abstract below
7:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:146
Two Day Colloquium series: Day 1
Opacity = Turbidity + Myopia
Matt Goldrick and Paul Smolensky
Johns Hopkins University
Abstract below
FRIDAY, 15 MAY
12 noon Logic Lunch
Room 380:383N
Deconstructing Tarski's Semantics for Predicate Logic
or
Secret World of Decidable First-Order Logics
Johan van Benthem
Stanford and Amsterdam
Abstract below
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
Experience from the Design of Visio
Peter Mullen
Visio
Abstract below
3:15pm Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
David Fetherstonhaugh
3:15pm Philosophy Department Colloquium
Bldg. 90:92Q (Philosophy)
Feminist Internationalism: the Role of Religion
Martha Nussbaum
Prof of Phil and Law, University of Chicago
Co-Sponsored with the Philosophy Reading Group
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/general/colloqs.html
3:15pm Computer Science Database Seminar
Gates B-12
Disk Array Architectures
Walt Burkhard
Computer Science and Engineering UC San Diego
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
3:30pm Linguistics Department Colloquium
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:146
Two Day Colloquium series: Day 2
Optimality and the Definition of 'cause'
Paul Smolensky and Alan Penczek
Johns Hopkins University
Abstract below
MONDAY, 18 MAY
3:30pm Psychology Social Lab
Jordan Hall 420:100
Intransitive Choice: The Effects Of Incomplete
Information
Ran Kivetz
Stanford GSB
4:30pm Stanford Digital Libraries Seminar
Gates B08
Vicky Reich
Stanford Libraries
http://diglib.stanford.edu/diglib/seminars/seminars.html
8:00pm Communications Department Event
32nd Annual Carlos McClatchy Memorial Lecture
Annenberg Auditorium
James Fallows
author of "Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine
American Democracy"
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/communication/general/events/events.html
TUESDAY, 19 MAY
4:15pm Logic Seminar
Room 380:381T
to be announced
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
4:15pm CSLI Talk
Cordura 104
Modularity, Disunity and a New Synthesis: What Do
Philosophy and Cognitive Science Have to Say to One
Another?
Steven Horst
Wesleyan University
Abstract below
WEDNESDAY, 20 MAY
3:45pm Psychology Department Colloquium
Bldg. 420:050 (Jordan Hall)
Psychological Contributions to the Understanding of
Positive Human Health
Carol Ryff
University of Wisconsin
4:15pm Seminar on Computational Learning and Adaptation (SCLA)
Cordura 100
User Guidance for Performing Knowledge Discovery in
Databases
Rudi Studer
Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany (on
sabbatical leave with Computer Science Dept., Stanford
University
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
4:15pm EE380: Computer Systems Laboratory Colloquium
Gates B03 (NEC Auditorium)
Traffic Control and QoS Management In The Internet
Hui Zhang
CMU
Abstract below
THURSDAY, 21 MAY
11:00am International Computer Science Institute
Main Lecture Hall at ICSI, 1947 Center Street, Berkeley
Charging for QoS
Domenico Ferrari
Center for Research on the Applications of Telematics to
Organizations and Society (CRATOS) Universita' Cattolica,
Piacenza, Italy
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
12 noon CSLI CogLunch
Cordura Hall, Room 100
The Evolution of Inference
Brian Skyrms
UC Irvine, Philosophy
Abstract below
2:30pm International Computer Science Institute
Main Lecture Hall at ICSI, 1947 Center Street, Berkeley
Component Model Reflector - A Concept for Scalable Remote
Access and Synchronous Collaboration Under Java
Foundation Classes
Vladimir Minenko
ICSI, Networks Group
http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/talks/
4:00pm Xerox PARC Forum
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox PARC
Gunn High School Robotics Team
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum
4:15pm AI-Vision-Robotics Division Colloquium
Gates 104
To be announced
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/aicolloq/
4:15pm Frontiers of Neuroscience Seminars
Munzer Auditorium
What cyclic nucleotide-gated channels can tell us about
allosteric proteins
Dr. Jeffrey Karpen
University of Colorado
Host: Dr. Denis Baylor
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/nbio/Spring98.html
4:15pm CS548: Distributed Systems Research Seminar
Gates B01
Secure Multicasting
Suvo Mitra
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs548/
FRIDAY, 22 MAY
12 noon Logic Lunch
Room 380:383N
To be announced
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
12:30pm Seminar on People, Computers, and Design
Gates B03 (NEC classroom)
Communicating with Machines Using Speech, Gesture, and
Facial Expression
Justine Cassell
MIT Media Lab
http://hci.stanford.edu/html/body_cs547.html
1:00pm The Flow of Information:
A Conference in Honor of Fred Dretske
Cordura 100
Information below
3:15pm Cognitive Seminar
Jordan Hall 420:100
Lera Boroditsky
3:15pm Computer Science Database Seminar
Gates B-12
To be announced
http://www-db.stanford.edu/dbseminar/dbseminar.html
____________
ANNOUNCEMENT OF UPCOMING WORKSHOP
SEVENTH ANNUAL CSLI WORKSHOP ON
LOGIC, LANGUAGE AND COMPUTATION
29-31 May 1998
Cordura 100
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/llc/
The Workshop is organized by Johan van Benthem, Martina Faller, Rob
van Glabbeek, David Israel, and David Beaver.
This year's program reflected the usual lively mix of topics and
interests that CSLI was designed to bring together. It includes recent
developments in dynamic processing of linguistic and non-linguistic
information, as well as key techniques from mathematical logic that
underlie both formal proof and computation. The mix also includes
contributions by established researchers and by newcomers to the
field, in line with a long-standing tradition. Finally, some
contributions this year reflect the growing interactions with a
broader world, witness talks on logic teaching, as well as
presentations by representatives of industry and high performance
computing. We hope to broaden our 'circle of debate'.
For more information, contact faller@csli.stanford.edu (Martina
Faller) or check http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/llc/.
____________
CSLI PUBLICATIONS
Telephone (650) 723-1839
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/publications/
THE MEDIA EQUATION:
How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media
Like Real People and Places
by Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass
ISBN: 1-57586-053-8 (paperback)
1-57586-052-X (hardback)
Is now available in paperback.
A THEORY OF PREDICATES
by Farrell Ackerman and Gert Webelhuth
ISBN: 1-57586-086-4 (paperback)
1-57586-087-2 (hardback)
In this work two linguists from different theoretical paradigms
develop a new general theory of natural language predicates. This
theory is capable of addressing a broad range of issues concerning
(complex) predicates, many of which remain unresolved in previous
theoretical proposals. Grounded in empirical evidence from a wide
variety of genetically and geographically unrelated languages (German,
Hungarian, Fox, Nenets, Tzotzil, Malayalam, among others), this new
theory synthesizes conceptual and representational assumptions from
several different theoretical traditions. The authors focus on
cross-linguistically recurring patterns of predicate formation where
identical contentive notions (i.e., lexical semantic and
morphosyntactic information) are expressed by predicates consisting of
a single morphological word or by combinations of independent words
that need not form a single syntactic unit. They provide a detailed
implementation of their theory for German tense-aspect, passive,
causative, and verb-particle predicates. In addition, the authors
discuss extensions of these representative analyses to the same
predicate constructions in other languages. Beyond providing a
formalism for the analysis of language-particular predicates, they
demonstrate how the basic theoretical mechanisms they develop can be
employed to explain universal tendencies of predicate formation. For
this purpose, Ackerman and Webelhuth introduce the construct
'grammatical archetype' into linguistic theory, relating universal
patterns of predicate formation to language-particular patterns in a
principled fashion.
This book will be of interest to linguists and grammarians from any
generative, cognitive/functional, or traditional perspective. In
addition, it is accessible to interested philosophers,
psycholinguists, cognitive scientists, computational linguists,
anthropological linguists, and philologists.
ADVANCES IN MODAL LOGIC, Volume 1
edited by Marcus Kracht, Maarten de Rijke,
Heinrich Wansing, and Michael Zakharyaschev
ISBN: 1-57586-102-X (paperback)
1-57586-103-8 (hardback)
Modal logic originated in philosophy as the logic of necessity and
possibility. Currently, it has reached a high level of mathematical
sophistication and found many applications in a variety of
disciplines, including theoretical and applied computer science,
artificial intelligence, the foundations of mathematics, and natural
language syntax and semantics.
This volume is a collection of papers from the first conference
devoted exclusively to all aspects of modal logic. It offers an
up-to-date perspective on the field, with contributions covering its
proof theory, its applications in knowledge representation, computing
and mathematics, as well as its theoretical underpinnings. In
addition, this volume presents important new results on the
mathematics of modal logic, on its computational, semantic, and
proof-theoretical properties, and on its applications in Artificial
Intelligence, Philosophy, and Linguistics. Carefully edited and
covering the whole field, this book is indispensable for any advanced
student and researcher in non-classical logic and its applications.
COMPUTING NATURAL LANGUAGE
edited by Atocha Aliseda, Rob van Glabbeek, & Dag Westerst\aahl
ISBN: 1-57586-100-3 (paperback)
1-57586-101-1 (hardback)
This book pursues the recent increased interest in the interface of
logic, language, and computation, with applications to artificial
intelligence and machine learning. It contains a variety of
contributions to the logical and computational analysis of natural
language. A wide range of logical and computational tools are employed
and applied to such varied areas as context-dependency, linguistic
discourse, and formal grammar.
This volume is a collection of papers illustrating state-of-the-art
interdisciplinary research connecting logic, language, computation,
and AI. The papers in this volume deal with context-dependency from
philosophical, computational, and logical points of view. A logical
framework for combining dynamic discourse semantics and preferential
reasoning in AI is also presented. Other subjects include negative
polarity items in connection with affective predicates; Head-Driven
Phrase Structure Grammar from a perspective of type theory and
category theory; and an axiomatic theory of machine learning of
natural language, with applications to physics word problems.
____________
STANFORD SEMANTICS WORKSHOP
on Wednesday, 13 May 1998, 2:15pm
Margaret Jacks Hall 460:146
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/Linguistics/semgroup/
Invoking Scalarity: The Development of IN FACT
Elizabeth Traugott and Scott Schwenter
Department of Linguistics, Stanford University
We identify and analyze the discourse contexts in which the adverbial
_in fact_ was recruited in the history of English to pragmatic marker
status. As a pragmatic marker it invokes scalarity in two domains:
that of epistemic sentence adverb (in fact2, IPAdv) , and that of
rhetorical discourse marker (in fact 3, DM). The particular analysis
of _in fact_ leads to the formulation of general hypotheses about how
scalar meanings emerge from non-scalar sources, and also about the
diachronic relationships among scalar polysemies of the same lexeme.
____________
SEMINAR ON COMPUTATIONAL LEARNING AND ADAPTATION (SCLA)
on Wednesday, 13 May 1998, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
Cordura 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/cll/scla.html
Making Good Inferences with Missing Information
and Very Little Computation
Daniel Gray Goldstein
Engineering-Economic Systems & Operations Research
Stanford University
In contrast to those who seek more complicated ways to combine all
available information to make optimal inferences, I have investigated
what happens when one uses simple heuristics which neither use nor
combine all available information and also violate various axioms of
reasonableness, such as transitivity or the Archimedian axiom. These
heuristics, derived from human decision-making strategies, give
surprising results, and suggest some new directions one might take in
machine learning.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 13 May 1998, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/
The List Foundation
An Example Virtual Community
Nancy Melone, Craig Newmark
The List Foundation
http://www.listfoundation.org/
The List Foundation is a Bay Area virtual community that grew from
craigs-list. It provides useful resources to the local community,
including jobs, events, apartments, for sale items, and so on.
Communication is via a family of email lists and a web site.
Over the course of its evolution, the List Foundation has built a
community where people connect with each other, and has somehow built
a feeling of community mediated primarily by electronic means. This is
recently been complemented by starting a series of "block parties."
The plans of the List Foundation include expansion to other cities and
job mentoring and training.
Biographies: Nancy was bred and born in Berkeley, and raised in the
walnut orchards of Alamo. She returned to her roots and attended Cal,
graduating with both a bachelor's and a master's degree. She also
pursued Ph.D. studies at Cal. She has held a variety of positions in
industry, all dealing with emerging technology.
She has a passion (actually she has a lot of passion) for alpine
skiing, France, and cooking - not necessarily in that order.
Craig is a hardcore Java and Web programmer who grew up wearing a
plastic pocket protector and thick black glasses, taped together, the
full nerd cliche.
He started craigslist, the predecessor to listfoundation.org, in early
'95 as a means of better connecting to people by letting them know
about cool or useful events happening around San Francisco. It rapidly
grew and built a large community of people mostly in the new media
industry.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 14 May 1998, 12 noon
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Coglunch/
On Actions, Causes, and Counterfactuals
Judea Pearl
UCLA
http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html
Technical Reports R-218, R-248, R-236T, R-240, R-250
The talk will describe a mathematical theory of causation based on
modifiable structural equations -- a generalization of causal models
used in the physical, social, and biological sciences. In this theory,
world knowledge is represented as a collection of stable and
autonomous relationships called "mechanisms", and actions are treated
as local modifications of those relationships. The theory permits us
to: predict the ramifications of unanticipated eventualities, process
sentences in which actions appear as modalities (e.g., do(p),
"increase taxes", "make him laugh") comprehend sentences phrased
counterfactually (e.g., "B would have been different if A were true").
and compute probabilities of such sentences. Comparisons to the causal
theories of Simon (1953), Good (1961), Suppes (1970) and Lewis (1973)
will be provided, and solutions to long-standing problems in
statistics, epidemiology and economics will be demonstrated.
____________
XEROX PARC FORUM
on Thursday, 14 May 1998, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
George Pake Auditorium, Xerox
http://www.parc.xerox.com/ops/projects/forum/
Strategies for Seed Funding to a Successful Start-up
Steve Jurvetson
Managing Director, Venture Capital
Draper Fisher & Jurvetson
Have question about venture capital? Steve Jurvetson will address the
questions below, and any you may have:
What are the areas of high interest in information technology?
What makes a successful startup?
What characteristics do successful entrepreneurs share?
What do venture capitalists look for?
What does the VC company bring to the table other than funding?
What is the active role of the venture capitalist?
Mr Jurvetson will also share some concrete venture capital war
stories. He will discuss how Hotmail, the world's largest e-mail
provider, was built embracing Viral Marketing. Hotmail has grown a
subscriber base more rapidly than any company in the history of the
world - with over 14 million subscribers and adding over 80,000 new
subscribers per day.
Biography: Steve Jurvetson is a Managing Director of venture capital
firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson. He served on the Board of Directors of
Hotmail from its inception through the acquisition by Microsoft. He
currently serves on the Boards of Chili!Soft, Cognigine, FastParts,
Kana, Lightwave Microsystems, and Release Software. As a Consultant
with Bain & Company, Mr. Jurvetson developed executive marketing,
sales, engineering and business strategies for a wide range of
companies in the software, networking and semiconductor industries.
Previously, Mr.Jurvetson was an R&D Engineer at Hewlett-Packard, where
seven of his communications chip designs were fabricated. His prior
technical experience also includes computer and instrumentation
design, materials science research, and programming (in nine
languages) at HP's PC Division, the Center for Materials Research, and
Mostek. He has also worked in product marketing at Apple and NeXT.
At Stanford University, Steve finished his BSEE in 2.5 years and
graduated #1 in his class, as the Henry Ford Scholar. Mr. Jurvetson
also holds a MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford. He received
his MBA from the Stanford Business School, where he was an Arjay
Miller Scholar.
Draper Fisher Jurvetson is the leader in start-up venture capital,
having invested in over 150 high-tech companies and 40 Internet
companies. In the majority of cases, DFJ is the lead investor for a
company's first round of financing.
____________
AI-VISION-ROBOTICS DIVISION COLLOQUIUM
on Thursday, 14 May 1998, 4:15pm until 5:30pm
Gates 104
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/aicolloq/
From Bayesian Networks to Actions, Causes, and Counterfactuals
Judea Pearl
Computer Science Department
UCLA
http://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html
Technical Reports R-218, R-248, R-236T, R-240, R-250
Bayesian networks were introduced in the early 1980's to facilitate
the representation of probability functions. Today, they are steadily
giving way to a more flexible representation, called "modifiable
structural model", which permits us to compute probabilities not
merely for (conditional) events, but also for the effects of new
actions (e.g., P(B=true)|do(A=true))), and for counterfactual
sentences (e.g., "B would have been different if A were true"). The
talk will describe the mathematical foundations of modifiable
structural models, their axiomatic characterization, and their
relations to the causal theories of Simon (1953), Good (1961), Suppes
(1970) and Lewis (1973). Applications in AI, statistics, epidemiology,
law, and economics will be demonstrated.
____________
CS548: DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS RESEARCH SEMINAR
on Thursday, 14 May 1998, 4:15pm
Gates B01
http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs548/
State Machines and Distributed Systems
Leslie Lamport
DEC System Research Center
In the traditional approach to designing distributed systems, problems
of functionality, distribution, and fault-tolerance are considered all
together. Changing the functionality may require changing the
inter-site synchronization algorithms that provide consistency and
fault-tolerance.
In the state-machine approach, functionality is expressed by an
abstract state machine that executes a sequence of steps. A step
consists of accepting an input command, changing state, and generating
output. Synchronization and fault-tolerance are achieved by a general
algorithm that allows each nonfaulty site to execute the identical
sequence of state-machine steps, despite the failure of other sites
and the loss of some messages. The general algorithm is designed and
proved correct once; different systems are obtained by using different
state machines. It is much easier to design a state machine than a
distributed system.
General algorithms to implement any state machine in the presence of
arbitrary faults have been known for about ten years. These
algorithms are expensive in terms of time and communication bandwidth
requirements, and they are generally used only for life-critical
systems. This talk describes a much cheaper algorithm that tolerates
only benign (omission) failures. With this algorithm, the
state-machine approach leads to distributed systems having the
efficiency and fault-tolerance of systems designed by traditional ad
hoc methods, but that are easier to understand and modify and have
known (and proved) fault-tolerance properties.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
Two Day Colloquium series: Day 1
on Thursday, 14 May 1998, 7:30pm
Bldg 60:61H (next to Memorial Church)
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/colloq.html
Opacity = Turbidity + Myopia
Matt Goldrick and Paul Smolensky
Johns Hopkins University
An informal discussion of the prospects for analyzing 'opacity'
effects in phonology as the expected consequence under Optimality
Theory of 'turbid' representations in which structural PARSE
constraints are violated and constraints are 'myopic' with respect to
the difference between pronounced and unpronounced material. A
preliminary turbid analysis will be presented of Tunica
deletion-counter-bleeds-harmony opacity.
____________
LOGIC LUNCH
on Friday, 15 May 1998, 12 noon
Math Corner 380:383N
http://www-logic.stanford.edu/seminars.html
Deconstructing Tarski's Semantics for Predicate Logic
or
Secret World of Decidable First-Order Logics
Johan van Benthem
Stanford and Amsterdam
First-order predicate logic is the general-duty tool of modern
logic. Its syntax, semantics, and metatheory are well-known, and form
the backbone of standard textbooks. But a price has to be paid for
this broad applicability. This basic tool of the logician is
undecidable, contrary to what many founding fathers may have
expected. But is the price inevitable? Could things have gone
differently?
Returning to an earlier lunch presentation, we'll show how to analyse
'standard Tarski semantics' into a number of independent decisions,
the conjunction of which leads to undecidability. Other choices turn
out to generate a landscape of decidable 'predicate logics'. This
insight needs no more, essentially, than a fresh closer look at what
students naturally do when they show that certain predicate-logical
principles are 'valid'. We'll survey some of the current technical
theory in this area. We'll also discuss briefly what this
deconstruction means for the usual monolithic view of 'standard
logical systems'.
Literature
J. van Benthem, 1996, "Exploring Logical Dynamics", Chapter 9, CSLI
Publications, Stanford & Cambridge University Press.
M. Marx & Y. Venema, 1996, "Multi-Dimensional Modal Logic", Kluwer
Logic Library, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht.
____________
SEMINAR ON PEOPLE, COMPUTER, AND DESIGN
on Friday, 15 May 1998, 12:30-2:00pm
Gates B03 (NEC Classroom)
http://www-pcd.stanford.edu/seminar/
(SITN Channel E2)
Experience from the Design of Visio
Peter Mullen
Visio
http://www.visio.com/
Visio is a Microsoft Windows-based business drawing product designed
for non-computer professionals to create business diagrams and
technical drawings for their everyday work. The original premise for
the product was: there is an unsatisfied market need for this activity
and that ease-of-use is critical to satisfying this need. The product
has sold over 2 million copies worldwide in its 5 year life.
The presentation takes a practical look at creating and evolving a
shrink-wrapped software product by looking at the following topics:
1) The original Visio design goals: intuitive for the casual user,
familiar interface metaphors, reduced modality, layered
functionality, persisted relationships, and adherence to platform
standards.
2) How these goals were embodied in the product.
3) How the product has evolved since its introduction. In particular the
presentation will cover: investing in ease-of-use, business and
market pressures on design, and the pitfalls of listening to your
customers.
Biography: Peter Mullen is Vice President and General Manager for the
Visio Business Products Business Unit. Mullen joined Visio Corporation
in 1991 as the lead developer for Visio's flagship product, Visio 1.0,
and has continued to lead both the development and marketing teams
through subsequent releases.
Prior to joining Visio, Mullen co-founded Elseware Corporation, and
was a software developer at Aldus Corporation (since acquired by Adobe
Systems Incorporated). While at Aldus, Mullen worked on PageMaker and
Persuasion.
____________
LINGUISTICS DEPARTMENT COLLOQUIUM
Two Day Colloquium series: Day 2
on Friday, 15 May 1998, 3:30pm
Bldg 60:61H (next to Memorial Church)
http://www-linguistics.stanford.edu/colloq/colloq.html
Optimality and the Definition of 'cause'
Paul Smolensky and Alan Penczek
Departments of Cognitive Science and Philosophy,
Johns Hopkins University
Surprisingly complex logical conditions seem to be necessary to
determine which of two closely related properties of a causing event
is efficacious in producing an effect. In this talk we will examine
whether these conditions can be replaced with a single, simpler and
seemingly more intuitive condition, when Optimality Theory is used to
determine both (a) the distance to possible worlds and (b) which
property of the causing event 'best' accounts for the effect.
____________
CSLI TALK
on Tuesday, 19 May 1998, 4:15pm
Cordura Hall, Room 104
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Coglunch/
Modularity, Disunity and a New Synthesis:
What Do Philosophy and Cognitive Science
Have to Say to One Another?
Steven Horst
Wesleyan University
How should we view the relation between traditional philosophical
projects in epistemology, metaphysics and the philosophies of language
and mind on the one hand, and contemporary empirical investigations of
mind and language in cognitive science on the other? Are they engaged
in the same projects or different ones? Are they competing research
programmes or do they complement one another? Do developments in one
give us reason to fundamentally rethink what we are doing in another?
This talk will canvass several important ideas that lie at the
intersections of three disciplines: philosophy of mind, philosophy of
science and cognitive science --
* Is there a connection between the modularity of cognition and the
disunity of the sciences?
* Do contemporary views of cognition as an adaptive enterprise
realized through neural networks give us reason to reassess
Enlightenment philosophical views of explanation, metaphysics and
semantics based on paradigms drawn from logic and mathematics rather
than the natural sciences?
* Do recent analyses of the nature of scientific laws by
philosophers of science like Nancy Cartwright help resolve the
supposed problem that psychology is lacking in exceptionless laws?
* What implications might contemporary views of cognition have for
the view, now common in philosophy of mind, that we are faced with
a forced choice between REDUCING the mental to something else or
else ELIMINATING mental states?
Biography: Steven Horst is Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Wesleyan University in CT. This year he is an NEH Fellow and a
visiting scholar at Princeton University, and is visiting CSLI for the
month of May, while working on a book entitled "Mind and The World of
Nature". His first book, "Symbols Computation and Intentionality: A
Critique of the Computational Theory of Mind" was published by
University of California Press in 1996.
____________
EE380: COMPUTER SYSTEMS COLLOQUIUM
on Wednesday, 20 May 1998, 4:15pm to 5:30pm
NEC Auditorium (B03), Gates Computer Science Building
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee380/
Traffic Control and QoS Management In the Internet
Hui Zhang
Carnegie Mellon University
Due to the success of Internet, we see two important trends: first,
the Internet is involving into a global and commercial communication
infrastructure, second, the Internet technology is now the technical
basis for not only the Internet but also for most data communication
networks, both public and private.
These new developments are stretching the limits of the original
design of TCP/IP along all possible dimensions. In particular, the
best-effort service model and the end-system-only (cooperating TCP
sources) traffic management scheme are no longer adequate. New service
models and sophisticated resource management algorithms and protocols
have been developed. They include improvements to TCP algorithms
(Vegas, SACK, new Reno), router mechanisms for congestion management
(RED, Fair Queueing), service models, protocols, algorithms to support
end-to-end QoS on a per flow basis (intserv, RSVP, traffic control,
admission control), and more recently, service models and algorithms
to support QoS for traffic aggregates (diffserv, provisioning). In
this talk, I will discuss the fundamental issues and tradeoffs in
designing traffic control and QoS management algorithms for the
Internet. Throughout the talk, I will discuss the architectural
implications of the new algorithms/protocols/service models, including
their impact on the original important goals for Internet:
scalability, robustness, and heterogeneity.
Biography: Hui Zhang is an assistant professor at the School of
Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University. He received his
Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the University of California at
Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at CMU in 1995, he spent one year
at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a Post Doctoral
Fellow. Professor Hui Zhang has conducted research in the area of
resource management algorithms and protocols for wide-area
internetworks for the last 8 years. His research includes scheduling,
traffic characterization, admission control, routing, congestion
control, reliable multicasting algorithms, and real-time
protocols. Professor Zhang received the National Science Foundation
CAREER Award in 1996.
____________
CSLI COGLUNCH
on Thursday, 21 May 1998, 12 noon
Cordura Hall, Room 100
http://www-csli.stanford.edu/csli/Coglunch/
The Evolution of Inference
Brian Skyrms
UC Irvine, Philosophy
http://www.humanities.uci.edu/philosophy/skyrms/info.htm
I discuss the evolution of conventions of meaning in signaling games,
along the lines of the last chapter of my Evolution of the Social
Contract. Then I extend the model to account for the evolution of
"proto-truth functional" signals. Finally, I extend it a little more
to account for the evolution of a rudimentary "proto-truth functional"
inference.
____________
PHILOSOPHY CONFERENCE
The Flow of Information:
A Conference in Honor of
Fred Dretske
on Friday, 22 May 1998, afternoon
Cordura 100
http://www-philosophy.stanford.edu/general/dretske.html
Admission is free. Each paper will be followed by discussion and a
short break.
1:00pm John Perry, Stanford University
"The Chardonnay is in the Fridge"
2:00pm Dennis Stampe, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Some Remarks on Voluntary Action"
3:15pm Peter Godfrey-Smith, Stanford University
"Dretske's Program in Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind"
4:15pm Berent Enc, University of Wisconsin, Madison
"Indeterminacy of Function Attributions"
5:15pm Comments on the papers by Fred Dretske, and general discussion.
6:00pm Reception
For further information contact Jill Johnston
Attn: Dretske Conference
Dept. of Philosophy
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-2155
Phone: (650)723-2547 Fax: (650)723-0985
jillj@leland.stanford.edu
____________
END MATERIAL
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