Is IMM an implementation of Eliza?

I seem to remember this has been discussed before. If it's true, then whoever did it did a superb job.

A half-wit who has 15 computers in house said the above. Make your mind up time.. he should be reported to the council and forced to have therapy. A bet he is a Treckie.

I made this suggestion some time ago.

I think he came out of the same factory as the Bliar mark III model, but is altgother cheaper and more amusing due to the naive simplicity of his firmware.

But I still prefer our puppy.

You see that is a fairly smart piece of coding. The sofwtare has identfied a statemnet containing the words 'IMM' and 'program'; and is programmed to make a snide remark about computers....viz

But then it all falls apart weakly, as the software reverts to a pre stored element from its 'techie sneer' database.

In particular its inability to respond to a post cntaining more than 12 lines or 200 words with anything except

Is a clear sign of programming done on the cheap. AND in a hurry. I means they must have run out of ROM after the sneer data was burned in, because random selection from e.g.

would have been infintely more convincing.

Probably with only an estimated 16K of ROM to run the thing - which suggests its a discless portable - there was only room to program in the sneer database, a few frgamented statements about combi boilers, and land reform culled from some pamphlet or other.

In fact I am not even sure the combi boiler stuff is IN ROM, I think its really a small gadget with a few URLS in it pointing to manufactureres web sites, and some fairly naff software that rearranges what's there in almost-english in order to give it the superficial apperance of pseudo-originality.

Me glad me not speakum.

... and of course it also explains why the recommended heating solution changes month by month - a simple timer does that, hooked up to a cut and paste engine with web access....

I do believe that there is a stack pointer problem though, because every so often the LVT subroutine is run, and keeps going until the watchdog timer catches it and reboots.

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Well true. At least we know where we are. The predictability is comforting..

.andy

To email, substitute .nospam with .gl

Sorry about that...it was an independent thought triggered by one of his latest utterances! I remember playing with Eliza over 30 years ago...!

So you are a Treckie too!!! My oh my, they are everywhere. Do you have a beam me up Scottie audio tape you keep playing.

Erm, what's wrong with being a Treckie? I love ST, and am quite proud of that fact.

You don't know?

Do you have the uniform too? It is great for the many fatties here, as they do not need to put a cushion up their sweater to have a Cpn Kirk pot belly.

QED?

But how do you explain the two combis 'solution' to near every question? Some form of virus?

I said it was badly implemented.

I think there is some primitive logic in there as well. Probably that bit was coded by a junior programmer who patched in a mod

IF (total heat required > 1 combi) THEN use INT(Total heat required/LARGEST COMBI)+1.

Whreas a more experineced programmer would have realiseed that something like

IF (total heat required > 1 combi) THEN GOSUB Search_for_alternative_approach();

would be a far more elegant apprcah, but of course the subroutine itself would have involved more computing power and memory than IMM patently has available. And would need to incorporate more random web searches and parse engines.

And be somewhat beyond the design brief, which was patently NOT to offer useful advice, but merely to give the specious illusion of so doing.

Turing test etc. If the program were actually able to fully emulate a human intelligence, then it might as well be one for all we know. The fact that it patently falls down and retreats into when its ability to respond coherently is exceeded, is, I would postulate strong evidence of its true nature.

It has not been using that rejoinder much of late. Possibly it has sensed an internal inconsistency with criticising others for having too many computers?

I think it's done on a surplus z80 with about 16K ROM and very little memory. Probably coded in Basic too.

I think it got coinfused with its reposnse to political '2 jags Prescott' gybes for a while, but the watchdog timer kicked in and rebooted it.

For those with a powerful interpreter rather than GWbasic....

IF (total heat required > 1 combi) THEN PROCsearch END

DEFPROCsearch

etc

ENDPROC

:-)