Wilbur-and-O http://www.lassila.org/blog/ Ora Lassila's blog about Common Lisp, Semantic Web, and Wilbur]]> 2008-07-25T09:46:20-05:00 Fulbright no more... http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2008/07/fulbright_no_mo.html Over the past year, we have had Mr. Mikko Perttunen from the University of Oulu visiting my group. Mikko is being funded by the Fulbright Program. He is now returning to Finland to continue his studies.

It has been an interesting year, with many interesting discussions on context-awareness, Semantic Web, pervasive computing, etc. Mikko's work on "audio contexts" is quite cool. We have an upcoming paper in UBICOMM 2008.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2008-07-25T09:46:20-05:00 Name Conflict http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2008/05/name_conflict.html After blogging about Piglet and mentioning my Python "wrapper" for Piglet, dubbed "pyglet", many people noted that the name is already taken. Thank you everyone for letting me know.

I hate picking names...

For now, I am renaming the Python wrapper "piglet" as well. We'll see how confusing that will be.

Some people also wrote to me about other RDF triple stores and toolkits written in Python. I should note that I am not implementing yet-another-Python-RDF-toolkit. Instead, I wrote a Python interface to the Piglet library (libpiglet) to allow us to start using it with our existing Python software. I think of it as an interim solution.

]]> Wilbur ora 2008-05-10T09:57:19-05:00 Piglet http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2008/05/piglet_1.html For some time now I have been working on "Piglet", a small RDF triple store written in C++, incorporating all those things we learned from building Wilbur first in Common Lisp and subsequently in Python. So far, I have a version ready that replicates functionality of the lowest layers of Wilbur. Piglet makes heavy use of SQLite3.

Piglet can be used as the back end for programs built on Wilbur. It merely replaces the parser (Piglet makes use of Raptor for this purpose) and the layers under the RDF++ reasoner and WilburQL path query engine. Eventually Piglet will have its own implementation of the path query language.

Right now, I am working on adapting Piglet for use as a Python extension module (working title: "Pyglet").

]]> Wilbur ora 2008-05-02T09:47:00-05:00 Switching to SBCL http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2008/04/switching_to_sb_1.html After developing on OpenMCL (and also Allegro) for a long time, I recently decided to switch to SBCL. My development machine (MacBook Pro) is still running MacOS 10.4.xx, and I just got tired of having to deal with the "32-bit or 64-bit" question. So I built a version of SBCL with multithreading enabled. It seems to work nicely, and I can now run all those things I like (MySQL client libraries, SQLite3, and Portable Allegroserve -- this is the one that needs the threads) without the aforementioned problem.

I am starting to like SBCL. I use Slime with Emacs (I switched from ILisp), and debugging etc. works reasonably well. SBCL is very fussy about the "purity" of the language, though (and I thought I was a perfectionist when it comes to how to write CL code -- little did I know...).

]]> Common Lisp ora 2008-04-29T14:27:25-05:00 Internship http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2008/03/internship_1.html My current project (called "Virpi") focuses on using rich information and Semantic Web representations/technologies to support the generation of speech and dialogue -based user interfaces. The project merges our long-standing efforts in the Semantic Web area and in the area of speech and natural language processing.

We could hire at least one more intern for this summer. Send me an email (ora dot lassila at nokia dot com) if you are interested, know Semantic Web technologies, can write code, and could work in Cambridge (Massachusetts) this summer...

]]> Semantic Web ora 2008-03-28T11:44:46-05:00 Snowstorm http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2007/12/snowstorm_1.html Yesterday we had a snowstorm in the Boston area, with 1-2 inch accumulation of snow per hour over several hours. Schools closed early, and everyone tried to get home earlier than normally. Myself included. I left work (at Kendall Square in Cambridge) around 2 pm. I got home in Southern New Hampshire (58 miles away) 6 hours and 45 minutes later. You do the math...

Traffic in Cambridge was in complete standstill, and it took me 3 and a half hours just to get out of Cambridge (that's about 9 miles). Scenery on the freeways that I took (Rt 2, I-95, Rt 3) was just like from one of those end-of-the-world-all-infrastructure-collapses movies, with the roads littered with abandoned cars. People abandoned their vehicles in the middle of the road on multi-lane freeways.

I think had I not learned to drive in Finland I probably would not have made it home.

We are expecting another storm starting Saturday night...

]]> ora 2007-12-14T20:57:44-05:00 Disappointed, rather than anything else... http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2007/11/disappointed_ra.html My friend Jim Hendler is pissed off because of something Clay Shirky wrote a long time ago and other people keep quoting. Stuff keeps getting attributed to Jim, Tim B-L, and me that we never said (something to the effect that Semantic Web would be about an idealistically organized world, a small number of "official" top-level ontologies, etc.). We have been, in fact, promoting the opposite.

Shirky's naïve, uniformed and downright erroneous interpretation of the Semantic Web keeps popping up. I just feel it is time to put it to rest. In the past, I have already commented on it (in a blog article that was really about something else) so I won't do it anymore.

I am just mostly disappointed now. I was pissed off like Jim is now, but what disappoints me is that people would rely on hearsay. If you want to quote me, or attribute some ideas to me, read what I have written and published.

Notice that the Artificial Intelligence community had some perhaps idealistic (and unrealistic) ideas and dreams in the past (some decades ago, mind you). Not only do I believe that idealism is warranted, sometimes, to inspire people to develop new things, but the AI community has also progressed from those ideas. We have learned many things, just like (I hope) other research communities do. I am disappointed about (and offended by) the idea that we would still be dwelling in the past.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2007-11-22T08:33:52-05:00 Project completed http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2007/11/project_complet_1.html Earlier today, I defended my doctoral dissertation, titled "Programming Semantic Web Applications: A Synthesis of Knowledge Representation and Semi-structured Data", at the Helsinki University of Technology. My opponent was professor Lynn Stein from Olin College of Engineering. Official "master of ceremonies" of the event was my thesis advisor, professor Markku Syrjänen.

2007-11-29: The thesis is now available electronically.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2007-11-06T17:32:53-05:00 MacOS X and x86_64 http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2007/09/macos_x_and_x86.html I am writing this mostly to just document what I did last night, but given how much I struggled, perhaps someone else will find this information useful.

For a long time, my Common Lisp development environment has been OpenMCL with CL-SQL and Portable AllegroServe installed. I tend to use MySQL through CL-SQL, sometimes also SQLite. This environment has been stable and has worked well for me. Recently, however, I switched to an Intel-based MacBook Pro (with a 2.33 GHz Intel Core Duo), requiring me to rethink my development tools.

I really like OpenMCL, having been a user of first CCL back in 1988 or so, then MCL, and now the open source version. There is now a beta version of OpenMCL for Intel-based Macs. It is, however, a 64-bit application ("-arch x86_64"). Funny enough, all the libraries that come with MacOS X 10.4.10, more or less, are 32-bit versions ("-arch i386"), and cannot be used with OpenMCL. Now what...?

]]> Common Lisp ora 2007-09-06T20:43:53-05:00 Keynotes http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2007/06/keynotes.html I recently gave a couple of somewhat similarly-themed keynote talks:

I am getting more and more interested in issues broader than the Semantic Web, such as usability, nature of personal computing, etc. Of course, the Semantic Web supports these as an enabling technology.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2007-06-18T12:04:56-05:00 Semantic Web Soul Searching http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2007/03/semantic_web_so_1.html The following anecdote may seem completely off topic but bear with me: One of my cousins' kids was participating in the -- get this -- Finnish version of the "American Idol" TV-show/competition. He was actually a finalist, and we are all quite excited about this, of course. So the other day, I surfed onto the Web site of Finnish channel 3 to find out what's going on with the competition. What a horrible Web site, really an example of how Bad Design (I suppose) can lead to Bad Usability. I spent more time trying to figure out how to use the site rather than actually reading/consuming the content I was interested in; at the end, I was left with a feeling that I didn't actually find what I wanted.

Seemingly on a different topic, I just read Dave Beckett's blog entry titled "semantic web is webby data", where Dave claims -- I am paraphrasing -- that the Semantic Web is merely a Web-compatible way to link data. This made me give some more thought to what I -- today -- think the Semantic Web really is.

I agree with Dave that the Semantic Web is a way to link data using (or -- compatible with) Web technologies. But I don't think that's all. So what then?

]]> Semantic Web ora 2007-03-19T08:24:47-05:00 Futureproofing http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2006/12/futureproofing_1.html Mark Baker says this about validation:

A good rule of thumb in document design is to avoid making assumptions about what won’t be there in the future, and a rule of thumb for software is to defer checking extension fields or values until you can’t any longer.

I like that principle. He goes on to describe what I have always hoped the Semantic Web would help us do:

On the Web, you need to be able to process messages from the future.

Hmm... Messages from the future. I wonder if that is like antimatter, which, according to one interpretation, is just matter travelling backwards in time.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2006-12-13T06:11:52-05:00 Semantics 2006 http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2006/11/semantics_2006_1.html I gave a keynote yesterday at Semantics 2006 in Vienna, Austria, together with Jim Hendler, and participated in a panel discussion. I also gave an interview for the Austrian Radio.

I really enjoyed Prof. Frank Leymann's talk on Web services. I wish more people could present complex topics with such clarity.

Afterwards, I saw some nice demos, including GoPubMed (from Transinsight and TU-Dresden), IkeWiki and Semantic MediaWiki.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2006-11-29T01:26:44-05:00 I don't mean to get off on a rant here... http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2006/11/i_dont_mean_to_1.html but I am really really fed up with the discussion about the Web's version numbers. All this energy is spent on a completely useless, stupid debate about something that first of all does not matter, and second, we are not talking about a single piece of software or a specification, so what's with the version numbers anyway. Is there going to be Web 2.1, followed by Web 2.2 (or perhaps 2.2 alpha)? Don't you people have better things to do?

I am assuming that all this really started when the term "Web 2.0" was coined. It is a marketing term for something that does not exist and has not even been defined all that clearly. It is hype. It has little, if anything to do with technology. It represents misguided thinking. The Web evolves, yet using some numbering would suggest that we are talking about a major new version. Good for marketing, I guess. Makes people who don't have a clue go "oh, I have to get me some of that new Web 2.0".

Perhaps that's why this is so frustrating to me: I am more interested in technology. I would like to think that the technologies I am working on will make - some day - people's lives easier and - forgive me if this sounds melodramatic - will make the World a Better Place (I heard Raj Reddy say something like this in his opening talk to the AAAI-1988 conference and it had quite an influence on me and my choice of a career). Given a goal such as that, let's just all try to work towards it, without letting others distract us with version numbers and other silly hype.

Don't even get me going on "3.0" anymore...

Of course, all this is just my opinion.

]]> Semantic Web ora 2006-11-25T08:11:59-05:00 Microformats, Web 3.0, etc. http://www.lassila.org/blog/archive/2006/11/microformats_we.html I came across this blog entry and as much as I don't want to take part in the "Web 3.0" debate I want to clarify the following:

  1. The so-called "lowercase semantic web" represents a misunderstanding of what's important about the Semantic Web, namely the requirements for a uniform metamodel for data that allows schemata to be extended, and accessible, declarative semantics. Microformats fail in both respects. In some sense, I would compare microformats to the old biblical tale of the "Tower of Babble" (Genesis 11:1-9): each microformat is its own little vocabulary, and the more we have those, the more code we have to write (the same comparison, btw, also applies to Web Services... 1). In fact, we have to write more "interpretive" code for every new microformat introduced, and given that there is no extensibility we have to introduce a new microformat every time we want new features. Hence I would not call the lowercase variant a "Semantic Web" at all.

  2. Reading the aforementioned blog entry, I feel it misunderstands the Semantic Web wrt. the term "Strong AI" (or perhaps misunderstands what Strong AI actually is). This misunderstanding may come from the first sentence of the definition of the term "Strong AI" in Wikipedia which claims that Strong AI is the belief that "some forms of AI can truly reason and solve problems". This is wrong: almost all AI is about reasoning and solving problems; what Strong AI is is the philosophical belief that ultimately AI can match and surpass human intelligence ("Weak AI", on the other hand, treats AI as a field of computer science, with AI techniques as useful additions to the computer scientists arsenal of techniques that can be used when building software). If the Semantic Web is about AI (and some of it definitely is), it is about Weak AI - even the original SciAm article does not make claims about Strong AI.

1 Ora Lassila: Serendipitous Interoperability. In Eero Hyvönen, editor, The Semantic Web Kick-off in Finland – Vision, Technologies, Research, and Applications, HIIT Publications 2002-001. University of Helsinki, 2002.

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