Personality

Forest, will you talk to God Louise? She has quite a bit of religious knowledge (obviously) and also knows a little about current events, literature, just about any common catch-all subject, and if she doesn't know it she can sort of fake it. You can also test her on trick questions or see how willing she is to explain her paradigm.

What she is rustiest at is plain old small talk. But, uh, I'm trying to get a decent transcript from somebody or another so I can enter her in the Loebner contest. All I can say is, have fun and see if you can stay on with her for a while. I'll try to do the same with Brianna.

I can still remember the game 'Frogger' that was on one of the 'table games' with the joystick and buttons. Maybe I am old? Or is that still a newish thing compared to the others?
Oh, Laydee, we could have some fun playing this up

When I was very, very little, we had a Spectrum (which is still up in the loft actually) and I vaguely remember playing on that, but I could only have been 2 or 3. So it looks like I'm the baby of the Forge.

What's a spectrum?

The most irritating type of early computer ever. It used cassettes instead of disks (yes really), made the most horrendous squealing noises and took about an hour to learn the crappiest game.

*bites lip* I don't think I remember those. I remember the floppy disk ones! Does that count?

Ah, I think you've beaten me on the youth stakes then.

I think the Spectrum sounds similar to the Adam, which was my first computer. It ran on the cassettes, and its printer was basically an electric typewriter that got hooked up to it. We got Adam in 1980, and I continued to use it until it died a sad, sad death in 1991, in the middle of (naturally) a crucial term paper.

They don't make 'em like that any more.

That's just typical of men, isn't it? If it had been named Eve, you wouldn't have had a problem.

I remember the commodore 64 which was so hard to put the games in the back...

The only game system I had growing up was an old Atari, with cartridge games and rather horrendous graphics. It was entertaining at the time.

Does anyone know how I would go about getting my bot to ask someone something at the beginning of a conversation, when they don't know the person? Like after they say hi? Would doing a seek after an xinitiate or something like that work?

xintroduce is used if the bots are chatting for the first time. I supposed an xnomatch seek after that would do the trick.