rob@arcsun.UUCP (Rob Aitken) (03/17/87)
The following is a review of Machine Intelligence Corporation's MICE Expert
System, which allegedly runs on IBM PC's with MS-DOS 3.1 or greater.
Upon receiving the software, I looked at the directory of disk #1 to see if
there were any installation instructions. There were none, so I opted for
the manual. Under "Getting Started with MICE" there is a discussion of
power failures, with such notable statements as "One can reset a tripped
circuit breaker to recover the power", but nothing about installation. Four
pages later the installation section begins.
In fact, as I was to discover later, there are at least three (mutually
inconsistent) sections about installation in the manual. Each informs me
that I must create a top-level directory called \MICE and copy "all three"
diskettes onto the hard drive. Five diskettes came with the package. I was
unsure which three, so I copied all five. The Tutorial session, which lists
all program variables, including such dandies as "how,9,p10->p10h"
indicated that I must run a program called DEFOPT and provide answers to
six verbose questions (containing, for example, "The memron description of
atomic facts can be used to store customized prompts for the expert advice
consultation"). Naturally, DEFOPT asked seven questions. I guessed that I
did not want the "Initial Data Feature".
A third section of the manual which covers installation states "If you have
followed the procedure up to this point" there should be a directory called
\POWER containing files MEMRON1 through MEMRON5. None of the other
installation sections mentioned this. It turns out, though, that each
knowledge base must be in its own directory and all must contain the
elusive MEMRON* files.
I crashed the system in a variety of amusing ways for half an hour until
finally I discovered, buried deep in an appendix, the statement "MICE
cannot coexist with any RAM based software". MS-DOS is RAM-based, but I
assume that it qualifies as an exception. Nothing else does, however, and
so my network software had to go. With everything else gone, MICE began
running. I think I liked the crashes better.
After using the program for a while I determined that MICE is not an expert
system after all, but rather an adventure game. The goal is to navigate
through the rules. Easy steps are, for example, "Please indicate whether
LIGHTS CAN BE TURNED ON is relevant to the current situation. Respond 'y'
for varying degree of certainties and 'n' if LIGHTS CAN BE TURNED ON is
irrelvant to our discussion". This turns out to mean "Can the lights be turned
on?". A more complex part of the game is guessing the secret key for "Please
respond to .CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIPPED". The answer turns out to be "on" or "off".
If you become expert at the beginner level of the game, expansions can be
purchased all the way up to a 1 Megabyte version.
As you may have guessed, the demo system diagnoses power failures. I wonder
though, in the event of a real power failure, what good is an electronic
expert system? Just asking.
The clever people at MIC continue by informing us that MICE is implemented
in C because its designers believe that LISP and PROLOG are "not adequate
for practical applications" (I suspect this is synonymous with "do not
provide nearly enough scope for sleazy programming") and because of the
"efficiency of the UNIX operating system". PC's run MS-DOS, not Unix, so I
am unsure of the relevance, let alone the veracity, of the preceding
statement.
In conclusion, MICE is a pathetic expert system. Any self-respecting
organization would be embarrassed to be associated with it. There are plenty
of cheaper ways to get a good laugh.
Rob Aitken
{...alberta,...ubc-vision}!calgary!arcsun!rob
P.S. Since writing this, MICE has ceased to function altogether, producing
messages like "Attempting to close file that failed to open" and
writing greek letters all over the screen.
Disclaimer: The Alberta Research Council neither affirms nor refutes the
above review.ravi@duke.UUCP (Ravi Subrahmanyan) (03/20/87)
I agree. $20 for MICE is a ripoff. Things they don't tell you in the ad: 1) You need a mouse 2) You need to print out the docs to use it (I became sufficiently discouraged that I didn't waste the paper) It would be nice to have a good system based on semantic nets, but this is not it. The list of features was too good to be true anyway. Michael Lee Gleicher (-: If it looks like I'm wandering Duke University (-: around like I'm lost . . . Now appearing at : duke!ravi (-: Or P.O.B. 5899 D.S., Durham, NC 27706 (-: It's because I am!