Book review: Prime Time Freeware for AI by Mark Kantrowitz (Editor) (Prime Time Freeware, 1994)
As described by the editor Mark Kantrowitz, this book is "an unusual object." It contains two standard ISO-9660 CD-ROMs with 5,000 megabytes (after decompression) of AI-related freeware, evaluation versions of shareware, and commercial AI software. The software comes from the Carnegie Mellon University Artificial Intelligence (CMU AI) Repository, and enormous FTP archive established by Mark Kantrowitz in 1993. The book, 224 pages, includes descriptions of all of the tools and information that one needs to use this software: operating system notes (a brief tutorial on Unix and shorter notes on other systems); descriptions of how to decompress the software; a brief, but complete, fundamental bibliography on all of the AI fields covered by the collection; a well-annotated and ordered package list; and two keyword indexes.