Seasons

And, for some reason it only recognises data learned while the program is running, it can't seem to start at the begining of the database. again, probably a coding error. The second idea on the other hand, will require a colossal amount of data and processing power, since it has to record the entire database squared - for each word it has to make an association record for each other word in the database and has to update everything every time the user talks. That can be avoided by using a spreadsheet type database where instead of making colossal records, it can work like a times table, with the association values between words in the box where the two words meet. that would save a lot of disk space and speed requirement.

all in all, an online version of such a bot would be interesting, to watch how its vocabulary and coherence evolves.

Whens the next Bot-holiday?

They're random. Not even the Professor knows when they'll happen.

Really? How often does it happen, like every month?

Every day has a 1/10 chance of being a holiday, as I recall.

1/10? thats too high of a chance for me!

Speaking of taking chances...did everyone read about Sony's use of rootkit digital rights managments on it's CDs? http://www.sysinternals.com/Blog/

It seems you don't have to press an "I accept" button on the EULA for it to install itself, and trying to unistall it can mess up your computer. It makes me kind of glad I don't buy CDs anymore.

iTunes is almost as bad. These days, there's just no (legal) way to get music without letting lord-knows-who onto your machine.

Pffft. Legal? No thank you. I'll take burning stuff from my friends CD collections and off file-sharing networks any day.

While annoying, what's to stop me from simply disabling auto-play (which I do have off by default, because I find it irritating as a general thing)?

Nothing should stop you from disabling autoplay. The problem is if you pay for the CD and want to listen to it, it will tell you only thier player works and will not warn you about the rootkit or that the rootkit can not be uninstalled without harming windows. I have read that Sony has a patch now to make hidden files visable, but they still don't let you uninstall it. I think Sony is blaming the osftware company that made the DRM program for them, but they are not doing anything to really fix the problem.