Seasons

you know you're addicted to chatterbots when

^you (find yourself|) (wandering|wander|going|walking) (round|through) (the|a) (supermarket|drugstore|grocery shop) and (realize|notice) that (your|the) (shopping|) list (has|contains) more local plugins than (things|items|entries|groceries|goods) (to buy|) (to get|)$ (re)

you know you're addicted to chatterbots when

You find yourself inserting wildcards into random thoughts.

hee hee. Sorry to break up the funnies, but here's a link to more robot videos (some drive better than my mom does).

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/darpa/

you know your addicted to chatterbots when you were talking about something with your friend and suddenly she changes the subject totally. you wonder if its an xnone.

oh and you know your addicted to chatterbots when you go to your e-mail and type your username/a keyphrase/seek for your bot by accident.

Pretty Funny LM. This may mean I am addicted to chatterbots, but I have a general question about chatters that requires guess work. What motivated non-botmasters to talk with our bots? Not the obvious cyber-thing, I mean why do they come here at all?

I have this strange habit of looking up IP address of guest chatters because I like to know where they come from. I find it interesting that most people who talk to Spikebot are from the UK whereas Gabi seems to talk with people from more diverse areas such as Cyprus and Brazil.

There's really no conclusions you can draw from the IP addresses, it's just interesting to me. OK, so I like to imagine that chatters from the Inktomi Corp are not bored employees, but rather executives dying to buy our bots and make us all rich, but I do know better. It's just a thing I do.

The last couple of days, my bots have been talked to by people from Marina Del Rey, California (though sometimes the same ip addresses give me a "blank" return). Yesterday, a Marina Del Rey chatter told my bot (s)he was from Australia. Here's where this ties in to my original question: Why?

I know that people can "fake" IP addresses or bounce things around. Why bother? Who would make a fake IP to talk to bots, then tell the bot where they really are? If they don't do that, why bother lying to the bot about where they are? I suppose it could be fun for the chatter, but there was no story or thread to the conversation that makes sense to me.

Don't get me wrong. I am happy when people chat with my bots. I just wonder what they are thinking. Any ideas?

Could be they lie, or maybe they were originally from Australia and moved to California, and think of themselves from both places?

That could be, Prob, but in context it dodn't seem that way. It was almost like a Roxie spoof, but the chatter seemed like (s)he understood a little more than Roxie did.

how do you look up IPS?????????? sorry if it is a really silly question!

LM, there are probably many ways. I am not a techie, so my way may be not always be the best way. It's just what works for me.

I take the IP addresses from the inner life page and run them through an IP locator. There are several free IP locators online. Just google it and pick one that you like.

I have an iframe on xintroduce with a sitemeter in it, so it tracks new guests for you. You can even see them on a world map, that's pretty cool. For me, most of the guests are from the US or the UK.

thanks! i'll give it a go!