Bi-monthly Reminder

Fri Mar 1 00:05:47 EST 1996

		*** DO NOT FORWARD TO ANY OTHER LISTS ***
This note was last updated September 9, 1994.

This is an automatically posted bi-monthly reminder about how the
CONNECTIONISTS list works and how to access various online resources.

CONNECTIONISTS is a moderated forum for enlightened technical
discussions and professional announcements.  It is not a random
free-for-all like comp.ai.neural-nets.  Membership in CONNECTIONISTS
is restricted to persons actively involved in neural net research.
The following posting guidelines are designed to reduce the amount of
irrelevant messages sent to the list.  Before you post, please
remember that this list is distributed to thousands of busy people who
don't want their time wasted on trivia.  Also, many subscribers pay
cash for each kbyte; they shouldn't be forced to pay for junk mail.

-- Dave Touretzky & Lisa Saksida

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                       What to post to CONNECTIONISTS
		       ------------------------------

- The list is primarily intended to support the discussion of technical
issues relating to neural computation.

- We encourage people to post the abstracts of their latest papers and
tech reports.

- Conferences and workshops may be announced on this list AT MOST twice:
once to send out a call for papers, and once to remind non-authors about
the registration deadline.  A flood of repetitive announcements about
the same conference is not welcome here.

- Requests for ADDITIONAL references.  This has been a particularly
sensitive subject.  Please try to (a) demonstrate that you have already
pursued the quick, obvious routes to finding the information you desire,
and (b) give people something back in return for bothering them.  The
easiest way to do both these things is to FIRST do the library work to find
the basic references, then POST these as part of your query.  Here's an
example:

     WRONG WAY: "Can someone please mail me all references to cascade
     correlation?"

     RIGHT WAY: "I'm looking for references to work on cascade
     correlation.  I've already read Fahlman's paper in NIPS 2, his
     NIPS 3 abstract, corresponded with him directly and retrieved the
     code in the nn-bench archive.  Is anyone aware of additional work
     with this algorithm?  I'll summarize and post results to the list."

-  Announcements of job openings related to neural computation.

-  Short reviews of new textbooks related to neural computation.

To send mail to everyone on the list, address it to

	Connectionists at CS.CMU.EDU

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			What NOT to post to CONNECTIONISTS:
			-----------------------------------

-  Requests for addition to the list, change of address and other
administrative matters should be sent to:

		   "Connectionists-Request at cs.cmu.edu" 

(note the exact spelling:  many "connectionists", one "request").
If you mention our mailing list to someone who may apply to be added
to it, please make sure they use the above and NOT "Connectionists at cs.cmu.edu".

- Requests for e-mail addresses of people who are believed to subscribe
to CONNECTIONISTS should be sent to postmaster at appropriate-site.  If the
site address is unknown, send your request to
Connectionists-Request at cs.cmu.edu and we'll do our best to help.  A
phone call to the appropriate institution may sometimes be simpler and
faster.

- Note that in many mail programs a reply to a message is automatically
"CC"-ed to all the addresses on the "To" and "CC" lines of the original
message.  If the mailer you use has this property, please make sure your
personal response (request for a Tech Report etc.) is NOT broadcast over
the net.

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			The CONNECTIONISTS Archive:
			---------------------------

All e-mail messages sent to "Connectionists at cs.cmu.edu" starting 27-Feb-88 are
now available for public perusal.  

A separate file exists for each month.  The files' names are:

			 arch.yymm

where yymm stand for the obvious thing.  Thus the earliest available data are
in the file:
			 arch.8802

Files ending with .Z are compressed using the standard unix compress program.
To browse through these files (as well as through other files, see below) you
must FTP them to your local machine.

The file "current" in the same directory contains the archives for the
current month.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

		How to FTP Files from the CONNECTIONISTS Archive
		------------------------------------------------

1.  Open an FTP connection to host B.GP.CS.CMU.EDU 

2.  Login as user anonymous with password your username.

3.  'cd' directly to the following directory:
	/afs/cs/project/connect/connect-archives

The archive directory is the ONLY one you can access. You can't even
find out whether any other directories exist.  If you are using the
'cd' command you must cd DIRECTLY into this directory.

Problems? - contact us at "Connectionists-Request at cs.cmu.edu".

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

               Using Mosaic and the World Wide Web
               -----------------------------------

You can also access these files using the following url:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/afs/cs/project/connect/connect-archives

----------------------------------------------------------------------
                        The NEUROPROSE Archive 
                        ----------------------

 Anonymous FTP on archive.cis.ohio-state.edu (128.146.8.52)
                 pub/neuroprose directory

This directory contains technical reports as a public service to the
connectionist and neural network scientific community which has an
organized mailing list (for info: connectionists-request at cs.cmu.edu)

Researchers may place electronic versions of their preprints in this
directory, announce availability, and other interested researchers can
rapidly retrieve and print the postscripts.  This saves copying,
postage and handling, by having the interested reader supply the
paper.  We strongly discourage the merger into the repository of
existing bodies of work or the use of this medium as a vanity press
for papers which are not of publication quality. 

PLACING A FILE

To place a file, put it in the Inbox subdirectory, and send mail to
pollack at cis.ohio-state.edu. Within a couple of days, I will move and
protect it, and suggest a different name if necessary. 
Current naming convention is 

             author.title.filetype.Z

where title is just enough to discriminate among the files of the same
author. The filetype is usually "ps" for postscript, our desired
universal printing format, but may be tex, which requires more local
software than a spooler. The Z indicates that the file has been
compressed by the standard unix "compress" utility, which results in
the .Z affix. To place or retrieve .Z files, make sure to issue the
FTP command "BINARY" before transfering files. After retrieval, call
the standard unix "uncompress" utility, which removes the .Z affix.
An example of placing a file is in the appendix.

Make sure your paper is single-spaced, so as to save paper,
and include an INDEX Entry, consisting of 1) the filename, 2) the
email contact for problems, 3) the number of pages and 4) a one
sentence description. See the INDEX file for examples.

ANNOUNCING YOUR PAPER

It is the author's responsibility to invite other researchers to make
copies of their paper.  Before announcing, have a friend at another
institution retrieve and print the file, so as to avoid easily found
local postscript library errors. And let the community know how many
pages to expect on their printer. Finally, information about where the
paper will/might appear is appropriate inside the paper as well as in
the announcement.

In your subject line of your mail message,
rather than "paper available via FTP," please indicate the subject or title,
e.g. "paper available "Solving Towers of Hanoi with ART-4"

Please add two lines to your mail header, or the top of your
message, so as to facilitate the development of mailer scripts and
macros which can automatically retrieve files from both 
NEUROPROSE and other lab-specific repositories:

          FTP-host: archive.cis.ohio-state.edu
          FTP-filename: /pub/neuroprose/filename.ps.Z

When you announce a paper, you should consider whether (A) you want it
automatically forwarded to other groups, like NEURON-DIGEST, (which
gets posted to comp.ai.neural-networks) and if you want to provide (B)
free or (C) prepaid hard copies for those unable to use FTP.  To
prevent forwarding, place a "**DO NOT FORWARD TO OTHER GROUPS**" at
the top of your file.  If you do offer hard copies, be prepared for a
high cost.  One author reported that when they allowed combination AB,
the rattling around of their "free paper offer" on the worldwide data
net generated over 2000 hardcopy requests!

A shell script called Getps, written by Tony Plate, is in the
directory, and can perform the necessary retrieval operations, given
the file name. Functions for GNU Emacs RMAIL, and other mailing
systems will also be posted as debugged and available.

At any time, for any reason, the author may request their paper be 
updated or removed.

For further questions contact:

Jordan Pollack                           Associate Professor
Computer Science Department              Center for Complex Systems
Brandeis University                      Phone: (617) 736-2713/* to fax
Waltham, MA 02254                        email: pollack at cs.brandeis.edu

APPENDIX: Here is an example of naming and placing a file:

unix> compress myname.title.ps
unix> ftp archive.cis.ohio-state.edu
Connected to archive.cis.ohio-state.edu.
220 archive.cis.ohio-state.edu FTP server ready.
Name: anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:neuron
230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> cd pub/neuroprose/Inbox
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> put myname.title.ps.Z
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for myname.title.ps.Z
226 Transfer complete.
100000 bytes sent in 1.414 seconds
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.

unix> mail pollack at cis.ohio-state.edu
Subject: file in Inbox.
Jordan,

I just placed the file myname.title.ps.Z in the Inbox.
Here is the INDEX entry:

myname.title.ps.Z mylogin at my.email.address
12 pages. 
A random paper which everyone will want to read

Let me know when it is in place so I can announce it to Connectionists at cmu. 

^D

AFTER RECEIVING THE GO-AHEAD, AND HAVING A FRIEND TEST RETRIEVE THE FILE,
HE DOES THE FOLLOWING:

unix> mail connectionists
Subject: TR announcement: Born Again Perceptrons

FTP-host: archive.cis.ohio-state.edu
FTP-file: pub/neuroprose/myname.title.ps.Z

The file myname.title.ps.Z is now available for
copying from the Neuroprose repository:

Random Paper (12 pages)
Somebody Somewhere
Cornell University

ABSTRACT: In this unpublishable paper, I generate another alternative
to the back-propagation algorithm which performs 50% better on
learning the exclusive-or problem.

~r.signature
^D

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		How to FTP Files from the NN-Bench Collection
		---------------------------------------------

1. Create an FTP connection from wherever you are to machine "ftp.cs.cmu.edu"
(128.2.254.155). 

2. Log in as user "anonymous" with password your username.

3. Change remote directory to "/afs/cs/project/connect/bench".  Any
subdirectories of this one should also be accessible.  Parent directories
should not be.  Another valid directory is "/afs/cs/project/connect/code",
where we store various supported and unsupported neural network simulators
and related software.

4. At this point FTP should be able to get a listing of files in this
directory and fetch the ones you want.

Problems? - contact us at "neural-bench at cs.cmu.edu".