Haloscan problems appear to have resolved. I wasn't banning anyone who shouldn't already have been banned. I'm really busy in thesis land, so I may disappear for awhile.

Because we all could use a cute cat video right about now.

Do Android Trolls Dream of Electric Bridges?

Guys, I think everyone's favorite troll is a bot. Jeff, do you have that bit of robot, webcrawler, and bot blocking text in your header? I put it in, and he doesn't seem to come around. (That and I've got him banned from commenting in haloscan.) How many of you have it in your header? I was getting hits from him, but haven't, once I fixed a problem with the header. (I mis-typed something.)

He acts a lot like one of those AIM sex bots. I mean, think about it. once you get to a certain point in the conversation, if you keep responding, he'll respond with something completely off topic, but a previous topic of conversation. It doesn't matter what you respond with, so long as certain phrases are there, he'll respond with a set (pre-programmed?) response. But if you get to something that breaks the query/response loop, you'll get gibberish, like it's some sort of parse error.

For instance, Eliza. Here's another interesting article from Salon. (Would seem to contradict my theory, since humans don't always pass the Turing test.)

University of Tulsa does have some people doing AI at it. I could see some grad student getting ahold of the book our favorite troll supposedly wrote for a couple of bucks and using that to set up certain facts about the bot's "life." Eliza's decades old, and I know advances have been made in the field.

Then again it would be more likely (and more ethical) to have a bot you wouldn't notice. It responds appropriately to threads, and goes on its merry way without leaving a shitstorm in its wake. Unless it is learning from analysis of threads. The internet's a nasty place, so I could see any AI loose on it going psycho.

Clerical geeks

Okay, so Maria and I got talking on someone else's LJ about clergy who game. I know some people lurk on my blog, and I'm wondering how well the Catholic Church is represented in Azeroth. So come on, priests and religious who lurk here. Time to fess up. Alliance or Horde? I can completely understand not mentioning servers.

Other gaming is fair game (pardon the pun), as well. I think I remember hearing on a podcast that Fr. Roderick of the Daily Breakfast podcasts played Lord of the Rings Online.

Facebook

PSA time. For those of you using IE, consider using Safari (available for windows) or Firefox. 25% of you are still using IE6. Please upgrade, if you have to use IE. I'd heartily recommend Firefox with NoScript, a plugin that blocks javascript. Considering some of the really nasty security breaches with Safari, I'd consider using Firefox on OS X, as well.

Here's another PSA that follows up on my main post. If you don't know about Facebook's beacon, you might want to read up on it and opt out, if you care about privacy. Also consider downloading the add-on BlockSite and putting this entry in your blocked sites: http://*facebook.com/beacon/ Of course, this works, if you're using Firefox. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog posting.

I'm feeling caught between worlds again.

As a lot of my "regulars" know, I'm on Facebook. On the one hand, it's a nice portal to the outside world. I can fire off something quick there that I can't really do here. It's also a good way to keep in touch with some people. Since I switched to my real name, a lot of people from elementary through high school have found me. Some of them I don't particularly mind, and it's been good to catch up. Others? I have to wonder if they really think I'm going to friend them back, after they were awful to me.

That, aside, I'm not in the same place as I was back then. Jokingly, I've started a FAQ. But there's something deeper about it all. I feel as if I'm forced back into the place I was back then, and it's not a comfortable place to be. I've moved on. Maybe the facebook people have moved on, as well.