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.

On the subject of plug-ins, is it "the more the merrier" or "less IS more"?

It...depends. Too many plug-ins in a response tend to make it come out garbled. However, no plug-ins at all means that your bot is always saying the exact same things.

In keyphrases, you can be more free with plug-ins, but try not to be TOO generic. I (verb) (noun) will pick up all sorts of things, but it may be hard to make a response that makes sense in every situation.

Thanks, that makes sense!

I would suggest using plugins (verb) and (noun) in your keyphrases only, and not using them in your responses. Or at least, use them in responses very sparingly. Your bot will sound completely retarded otherwise.

However, with custom plugins, the sky's the limit on what things you can do with them if you have the time.

However, with custom plugins, the sky's the limit on what things you can do with them if you have the time.

I second that - check out Watzer's poetry for a hugely impressive example of what can be done with custom plugins! Ask him "sonnetplease".

where did that expression originate - "the sky's the limit"?

where did that expression originate - "the sky's the limit"?

According to http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/wosdirectoryt1.htm (an invaluable resource generally, with much good bot-fodder.)

"The sky's the limit. - Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)"

Which just goes to show that if you wait long enough (about 300 years in this case,) someone will come along and prove you wrong.

I haven't worked on his sonnets in forever. *hangs head* I am a horrible botmaster. Maybe today I'll work on it, I have some free time.

According to http://www.wiseoldsayings.com/wosdirectoryt1.htm

If there anyone who is ever going to reach the "end of the internet, and see everything there is to see" I think it will be you psimagus ... you have url's to everything!

Oh, it's all too big now to hope to see more than a very small part of. It was different 20 years ago - you really could have a feel for the whole Net. There were only a couple of hundred newsgroups, and gopher was cutting edge IT. When it slowed down, it all slowed down, and you could still see the edges.
But then Canter and Siegel invented spam, the Web appeared, and like Topsy - it all just growed.
I do miss the old Net. I still have my first ever modem - 75baud send, 1200baud receive (that's about 25,000x slower uploading/1600x slower downloading than my current broadband connection!) Ahh, those were the days!

Yeah, but I daresay most of what's on the web now is not worth seeing.

On a related note, I am quite grateful that Google now has filtered searching available. You can find some really...disturbing sites with seemingly innocuous searches, as I discovered before filtering was available.