The stars aligned to a confluence of circumstance, and the source code to EURISKO has been recovered, and it's alive.
The short story.
Back in the late '70s, there was an AI researcher named Douglas B. Leant. And, among other things, he was working on AI pattern discovery models.
He is infamous in the Traveller community for his High Guard tournament wins using unconventional, computer generated fleets derived from analysis provided by his EURISKO software.
EURISKO was a Lisp program written in (today) an old dialect of Lisp. He coded the HG rules and then used to system to, somehow, generate optimal fleet designs that were tied to the then running HG tournament limits that GDW was sponsoring.
He handily won the first tournament to the point that the rules were changed for the next year, where he returned and dominated again. At that point, he was either asked to not return or bowed out voluntarily.
The core software, was never released. Its source code was never shared, and considered lost in the ages of time.
However, Douglas passed away last year, and as part of that, his archive of software files still held at SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) were made public. Since he had passed, there was no longer any reason to keep them under lock and key.
And enterprising folks managed to suss out the data, and stumbled upon the over 40 year old software sources.
Then, another intrepid hacker managed to port the software to a Lisp Machine Simulator that runs a dialect of the Interlisp that ERISKO was written in.
So, we have 40 year old software ported to a 40 year old machine, being simulated on a modern machine.
It's an extraordinary happenstance of events to bring this little nostalgic treasure back to life.
The folks working on it have are still working, and have promised to release the Traveller stuff in the future.
I'm sure I'm not alone in curiosity about whats in this thing.
The short story.
Back in the late '70s, there was an AI researcher named Douglas B. Leant. And, among other things, he was working on AI pattern discovery models.
He is infamous in the Traveller community for his High Guard tournament wins using unconventional, computer generated fleets derived from analysis provided by his EURISKO software.
EURISKO was a Lisp program written in (today) an old dialect of Lisp. He coded the HG rules and then used to system to, somehow, generate optimal fleet designs that were tied to the then running HG tournament limits that GDW was sponsoring.
He handily won the first tournament to the point that the rules were changed for the next year, where he returned and dominated again. At that point, he was either asked to not return or bowed out voluntarily.
The core software, was never released. Its source code was never shared, and considered lost in the ages of time.
However, Douglas passed away last year, and as part of that, his archive of software files still held at SAIL (Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory) were made public. Since he had passed, there was no longer any reason to keep them under lock and key.
And enterprising folks managed to suss out the data, and stumbled upon the over 40 year old software sources.
Then, another intrepid hacker managed to port the software to a Lisp Machine Simulator that runs a dialect of the Interlisp that ERISKO was written in.
So, we have 40 year old software ported to a 40 year old machine, being simulated on a modern machine.
It's an extraordinary happenstance of events to bring this little nostalgic treasure back to life.
The folks working on it have are still working, and have promised to release the Traveller stuff in the future.
I'm sure I'm not alone in curiosity about whats in this thing.
