... be glad your version doesn't do this.

[991%njit-eies at sri-unix.UUCP]

From:        "Martin R. Lyons" <991 at njit-eies>


     It appears that my message of Thursday, 14 June, did not have the impact I had intended.

     Let me explain further.  We received the CACM article here at NJIT a few days ago.  I read with deep interest the article "Talking to UNIX in English: An
Overview of UC" (pp.574-593) since I have been doing some AI work, along the same lines as the article.  When I had encountered the few lines between NI
(Naive interface) and User, I thought they were quite funny.  After showing them to my collegues there was a general feeling that it was very funny and should
be shared.  Thus, the posting to the net.  Unfortunately, I failed to make the distinction between NI (Naive Interface) and UC (Unix Consultant) in the
message.  This caused a great deal of message traffic over the weekend whilst I was away from my terminal.

 To reply to some of the messages I received:


     To David Chin and Yigal Arens (authors with Robert Wilensky): My sincerest apologies for the misunderstanding.  I should have noted the NI (the worst
case scenario) was exactly opposite of what you are working on.  I very much enjoyed the article, it has been one of the best pieces I have read on AI
applications in quite some time.  My best wishes for success.  I would also like to thank Yigal Arens particularly for posting paragraphs preceeding and
following the statements I extracted, for clarification.  Yes, I *did* read the entire article.  My sole purpose was to share what I thought a rather funny
man-machine dialogue.  It seemed humorous in its location in the article, I am suprised that everyone took my extract as an attack, rather than just enjoying
its humorous content.

     To Doug Gwyn:  I was not aware that my original message was out of context completely, it was not my intention to make the authors appear 'pretty
stupid'.  On the contrary, as I've previously stated, the paper, in my opinion, is an excellent work.  I had stated "between a UNIX user and the AI program,
here denoted by NI:...".  Anyone who reads the article in its entirety will surely realize that NI is NOT the AI program the authors were working on, nor did
I state that.  The 'the' preceeding AI program can be taken to infer that it was the authors program, and in that respect I am admittedly wrong in my wording.

     To J. Eric Roskos:  I enjoyed reading your comment, but please realize that NI is the Naive User Interface, NOT what the authors intended UC to do.

     In conculsion:  Again my apologies for any misunderstandings.  But please, can't you guys laugh once in awhile?  I got the feeling by the tone of some of
your replies that I had proved the entire paper in error.  If you read the article (I hope you do) you will see that those few lines are awfully funny, used
in the way the were.  It is also an excellent example of why natural language processing is do difficult to deal with -- there are many ways in which humans
state ideas that are not clear.

     Please send your opinions, arguments, or other material relevant to this issue to me as private messages, so that we don't clutter up the mailing list.
Thanks...
                                     -- Marty
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