Similarity is an important and widely used concept. Previous definitions of similarity are tied to a particular application or a form of knowledge representation. We present an informationtheoretic definition of similarity that is applicable as long as there is a probabilistic model. We demonstrate

We describe schemes that enable a user to access k replicated copies of a database ( k * 2) and privately retrieve informationstored in the database. This means that each individual database gets no information on the identity of the item retrieved by the user. For a single database, achieving

The Internet presents numerous sources of useful information---telephone directories, product catalogs, stock quotes, weather forecasts, etc. Recently, many systems have been built that automatically gather and manipulate such information on a user's behalf. However, these resources

Information retrieval (IR) has changed considerably in the last years with the expansion of the Web (World Wide Web) and the advent of modern and inexpensive graphical user interfaces and mass storage devices. As a result, traditional IR textbooks have become quite out-of-date which has led

software we will gain access to more data, but not improve access to the type and quality of information needed for decision making. To develop the concepts needed for future information systems we model information processing as an interaction of data and knowledge. This model provides criteria for a high

Miller [12] for a general discussion and bibliography). Events ordered in time are particularly amenable to informational analysis; thus language sequences are being extensively studied, and other sequences, such as those of music, plainly invite research. In this paper I shall indicate some of the ways

-featured database systems and can answer only a small set of queries over their data (for example, forms on the WWW restrict the set of queries one can ask). (3) Since the number of sources is very large, effective techniques are needed to prune the set of information sources accessed to answer a query. (4

This paper describes a technique for making personalized recommendations from any type of database to a user based on similarities between the interest profile of that user and those of other users. In particular, we discuss the implementation of a networked system called Ringo, which makes

focus on corporate financial management. There is no need in this meeting of the guild to recount the subsequent evolution from this conceptual potpourri to a rigorous economic

of context-aware applications, we need to more fully understand what constitutes a contextaware application and what context is. Towards this goal, we have surveyed existing work in context-aware computing. In this paper, we provide an overview of the results of this survey and, in particular, definitions