eGanges part 2 Friday, Sep 29 2006

Last class we ploughed into eGanges in greater depth, with Ms Gray leading us through an example of building an eGanges Map using International Accounting Standards (IAS) 24 which concerned related party disclosures. This exercise really illustrated the fact that a map is dependent on how the user interprets the text and how they choose to build it. The river paradigm means that all the nodes (tests at each node) forms a part of the flow. Thus it is possible that if one node was incorrect (either due to incorrect interpretation or typographical error, eg typing “disclosed” instead of “undisclosed”), the outcome is likely to be incorrect or at least the quality of the outcome would be adversely affected.

I think using a colour scheme in the river hierarchy such that the colours represented the depth of the map is a good idea so users can tell the different branches of the map apart. Once a user knows the colour scheme, they will also know which branch is the primary flow and also how deep in the map they are. eGanges also has extensive functionalities for glosses and notes. They can be in the form of positive, negative and uncertain lists, or they may be a link to another node,  a website, a database or other software.

We only covered a small rule in building the map in class. I can only imagine what a task it would be to create a map for a full piece of complex legislature. There will be a lot of effort involved, and it may require a few runovers to check its accuracy. Modelling case law would be an even bigger and more problematic task as the “rules” (if you can call them rules) from cases will not be so clear cut and nor will you necessarily be able to provide it with a straight answer of yes/no.

One area I think needs improvement is the user interface. I didn’t find it very attractive nor aesthetically pleasing, a view shared by fellow classmates Sachin and Lanny. There are quite a lot of buttons crammed into the bottom lefthand corner, and I remember at one stage during the demonstration of building a map, Ms Gray’s assistant tried several times to give input to a node but the system did not react. The reason was because he was still in ‘build’ mode. Perhaps a tool-bar at the top of the screen with all the commonly used features would make buttons easier to find, and a status box showing what mode the system is in might help make the system clearer.

Overall, I feel like I have a better understanding of what eGanges seeks to achieve and how it works after seeing it in action. I see that it can model rules or processes and act as a way of checklisting all relevant steps are satisfied, as well as providing a possible conclusion/outcome. I guess now we’ll just have to wait and see if such expert system shells will take off amongst the legal profession.

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Where have the law journals gone? Saturday, Sep 9 2006

While i’m on the topic of newspaper articles, there was some controversy over the throwing out of journals by our law library (enough for it to make page 3 of the Sydney Morning Herald on 5/9/06, “Uni staff in a bind over binned journal” by Stephanie Peatling, complete with a picture of the said journals dumped in recycling bins- online version here). Throwing away books over a century old was criticised by some to be vandalism, and having access to a soft version is viable only on the assumption that the university will continue its subscription with legal publishers.

Indeed it would be convenient to have a soft copy of everything(not just in terms of searching and access, but also all the space that could be saved), and it’s probably only matter of time before it comes to that. By which point, the only hard copies of journals that exist will be those used for the sole purpose of doing photoshoots in the legal profession. I have to say though, that personally, if the case or article is lengthy, I still prefer reading from a hard copy. Reading for long hours in front of a computer screen is not highly appealing. I guess thats when the printer comes in handy.

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10 websites that changed the world Saturday, Sep 9 2006

According to today’s copy of ‘Good Weekend -The Sydney Morning Herald Magazine’, 9th September 2006, page 38-43, the 10 websites that changed the world are as follows:

1. MySpace

2. Wikipedia

3. eBay

4. YouTube

5. Amazon

6. Napster

7. Salon

8. Google

9. Yahoo

10. Blogger

Categorising these generally, we have 3 for sharing/uploading of music and media(with some social networking thrown in), 1 encyclopedia, 2 search engines, 2 online retailers/auction/shopping sites, 1 blog publishing system and …well Salon, never heard of it but its an online magazine and media company.

I was suprised to see YouTube on there, given it is still relatively new (newest out of the 10- Yahoo and Amazon being the oldest, both founded 12 years ago in 1994). But even though it was only launched in 2005, you can’t deny its popularity. From a simple site for uploading home-made videos, though word-of-mouth it now boasts 100 million clips are watched on its site a day.

I have to admit Google and Yahoo are probably sites I can’t live without. Without these 2, I would probably be at a loss if told to look something up on the internet. Wikipedia is always useful (and generally a reliable source), while youTube is good for some entertainment and you might dig up some gems. As for the others I think it comes down to your need for them, whether you have a creative flair to create and share or if you’re addicted to shopping online. How have these websites changed your world?

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aide Thursday, Sep 7 2006

I wrote my first rule using Aide yesterday. I wasn’t sure what to write a rule about. It might seem easy to come up with one, but when you sit down to think about it, you realise its not quite that simple. I decided to pick something related to being enrolled at UNSW. The rule i ended up writing was a simple one to determine whether a particular student is currently enrolled in LAWS1032.

To come up with a basic rule, you need  some sort of a unique determinative attribute about a thing in order to identify it. For example a dog and its bark, or in my example, a UNSW student and a valid UNSW student card. Problems may arise where there exists another animal that also barks, or conversely if a UNSW student doesn’t hold a student card (ie if they have misplaced it).

Writing this rule reminded me of the good old days of programming under my computing degree, where we wrote programs using if, then, else, else if etc etc. If you miss out one small condition that you did not manage to think of, the output will not be 100% accurate(that is if you were lucky enough to get your program running and producing output in the first place). And thus you spend hours in front of your code de-bugging into the early hours of the morning, ripping our hair out, and slowly losing your sanity bit by bit as the hours tick by until you realise hey, it’s dawn.

To form a rule using a piece of legislature, the legislature itself will already provide some form of a structure. Many provision would have set out what elements it contains. Important terms would normally also be defined.This would hopefully make the job easier. But the person writing the rules will need to have a very good understanding of the piece of legislation because often understanding one section is not enough to get the big picture. These are just my quick thoughts so far.

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eGanges Friday, Sep 1 2006

Last class we had an in-class presentation about eGanges, an example of an expert system. eGanges(sounds like a pokemon, dont ask me why) stands for Electronic Glossed Adversarial Nested Graphical Expert System.

I think what it allows you to do is to effectively come up with a graphical representation of one’s way of thought. So when using it to apply the law, you are able to map out the legislation in a graphical manner (in sort of like a flow chart, nodes and links). This makes the material a lot easier to deal with because often a concept is easier to grasp when it is represented in a form that is concretely visible, as opposed to just being concepts that exist in one’s mind or in huge masses of text.

The use of eGanges is not limited to the legal industry, it can also be used for anything that involves a flow of steps/requirements/tasks. This includes anything from studying to setting out tasks involved in employment, to preparing the structure of a speech.

It also allows the user to create sub-systems and to link them together. This makes it a very effective tool not only for the representing of, but also the linking together of complex concepts, thus allowing the user to see the bigger overall picture, and to identify other peripheral issues. As you move through the maps, the system can also keep track of whether the input your have given is positive, negative or uncertain for your case.

I think the best thing about eGanges is that its usage is not limited to just law, instead it can potentially be used in many different fields for a various tasks.

However something to point out is that eGanges is a shell, and it is for the user to set up the system themselves. The effectiveness of the system depends on how the user uses the shell. Therefore the system is only as good as the author. Thus there might be a bit of a problem if the author isn’t a very good author. Another problem is that the law is constantly changing with new legislation and cases. Thus such a system would need to be updated regularly to keep up with the law, and this may be cumbersome. Given the amount of work and effort that may be needed to set up such a system, eGanges may not be as suited for a one-off event. Say if a firm is taking on a one-off case in an area they do not normally practice in, to develop such a system just for one case may not be worth the effort. Conversely though, eGanges can potentially make work much easier and more efficient if the system is built for repetitive use.

Looking forward to what else we’ll find out about eGanges in the next class.

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