Hampshire College (Amherst, MA): assistant prof in AI, CogSci, interactive multimedia.

Cambridge, MA: BS/MS/PhD AI developers for robotics, adaptive systems.

Lucent/Bell Labs (Murray Hill, NJ): researcher in numerical analysis, pattern recognition, modeling languages.

UArkansas (Fayetteville): fellows in AI, robotics, NN, agents, data mining.

UMichigan (Ann Arbor): profs in AI, DB, systems, etc.

UWisconsin (Madison): assistant prof in medical informatics, DB, AI.

Los Alamos Labs (NM): postdocs/GRAs in data mining, modeling.

San Mateo, CA: US BS/MS lead SE in contract AI R&D.

Palo Alto, CA: researcher in data mining, genomics, ML.

Queen Mary & Westfield College (London, UK): RA/postdoc in multi-agent systems, distributed AI.

USydney (Australia): BS SE for robotic vehicles.

Buyer's Index lists and searches over 10K mail order suppliers. . Cybermall.com covers selected premium malls, regional malls, specialty malls, and independent stores. . Visa Shopping Guide by Yahoo! is another guide to just about any category. . For PCs, software, and related items, check out Computer Shopper.com at . [Robin Nobles , BESTWEB, 20Nov98. net-hap.]

The eBay auction house is now listing more than 100K items/week, with more than 50K bids/hour. They run a cluster of more than 40 networked servers. [Bill McCurdy , rec.collecting.stamps.discuss, 29Nov98. Bill Park.]

Public Eye is a sort of Better Business Bureau for online shopping sites. Visit for company reports, or look for the Public Eye logo on certified sites. [Robin Nobles , BESTWEB, 20Nov98. net-hap.]

eWallet is a new advertising-supported service that makes it easier to order merchandise online. You download eWallet free from , enter your credit card billing and shipping info (kept on your own PC), and you're ready to just "swipe" or drag-and-drop your card at participating sites instead of having to type your name and card info each time. The data is sent encrypted, of course, so you have to supply a PIN. eWallet also offers a search function connected to leading portals and merchants. The program currently requires Windows 95 or 98. [Chris Gioia , net-hap, 25Nov98.]

Remember Firefly, the much-hyped MIT Media Lab spinoff that used clustering to identify books and movies you'd probably like? It was bought by Microsoft last April, for its privacy technology. Firefly-style clustering and personalization will soon be essential. People can't buy if they're swamped with irrelevant ads -- or even irrelevant news reports.

Sam Spade is a free anti-spam program that includes ping, nslookup, whois, IP block whois, dig, traceroute, finger, SMTP VRFY, web browser, keep-alive, DNS zone transfer, SMTP relay check, Usenet cancel check, website download, website search, and email header analysis. . For info on how to complain, see Phil Agre's article at . [Curt Davis , websitedaily, 14Nov98. net-hap.]

Web Poison is an interesting escalation of the war against spammers. It's a CGI script that generates pages of bogus email addresses plus recursive links back to itself. Any address harvester that ignores standard robot.txt privacy directives can thus be fed an infinite stream of bogus email addresses. Other Web spiders and users will not be affected. . [Bill Park , 18Nov98.]

Ben Kuipers and Bob Wray agree that Peter Norvig's AI text is great, but note that it has only two authors: Stuart Russell and Peter Norvig. (Not Stuart, Russell, and Norvig. 'Sorry.) . Robert Goldman says that Peter's "Paradigms of AI Programming" is another best-in-class book, "still the best book on advanced Common Lisp and bread-and-butter AI programming out there!" [, , and , 02Dec98.]

Good CS-related books for philosophers (and the general public)? There are many, including Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach" and (with Mitchell) "Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies," Minsky's "Society of Minds," Stork's "HAL'S Legacy," and books by Dennett, Chomsky, Fodor, Thagard, Lakoff, Johnson-Laird, etc. (None would be universally recommended by other philosophers, of course.) Seth Russell likes Chalmers' "The Conscious Mind" and Devlin's "The Language of Mathematics." Jeff Iverson suggests "The Emperor's New Mind: Concerning Computers, Minds, and the Laws of Physics," "After Thought: The Computer Challenge to Human Intelligence," "The Digital Phoenix: How Computers Are Changing Philosophy (Metaphilosophy)," and "Mind Matters: Exploring the World of Artificial Intelligence." David Newman suggests some older books: Shore's "The Sachertorte Algorithm," Schank's "The Cognitive Computer," Dreyfus' "What Computers Still Can't Do," or Haugeland's "Artificial Intelligence." [, , and , comp.ai.philosophy, 30Nov98.] (Check Amazon for reviews.)

-- Ken