9 Sep
2012
9 Sep
'12
4:34 p.m.
I'm trying to remember and locate a chatterbot program from the heyday of
DOS. I think it was called "jabber". What made it particularly
interesting is that you could feed three text files of stuff (like novels,
scientific papers, etc) and then control the proportions of how much of
each input file made it to the output. When all were set to zero, it
would just emit "jabber" over and over.
Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false hits
on the Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
9 Sep
9 Sep
6:22 p.m.
I'm trying to remember and locate a chatterbot
program from the heyday of
DOS. I think it was called "jabber". What made it particularly
interesting is that you could feed three text files of stuff (like novels,
scientific papers, etc) and then control the proportions of how much of
each input file made it to the output. When all were set to zero, it
would just emit "jabber" over and over.
Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false hits
on the Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
There was something called travesty that did something similar.
--
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-- I'm in Pittsburgh. Why am I here? -- Harold Urey, Nobel laureate -----------
10 Sep
10 Sep
6:12 a.m.
On Sun, 9 Sep 2012, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
Rent a teenager with a cell phone.
g.
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I'm trying
to remember and locate a chatterbot program from the heyday of
DOS. I think it was called "jabber". What made it particularly
interesting is that you could feed three text files of stuff (like novels,
scientific papers, etc) and then control the proportions of how much of
each input file made it to the output. When all were set to zero, it
would just emit "jabber" over and over.
Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false hits
on the Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
There was something called travesty that did something similar. 
10:36 a.m.
I'm not sure about the one you're referring to specifically but there was one
called jabberwock. Chatterbotcollection.com has a large list of historical bots but
I've rarely found the links to be current or alive unfortunately. It does have a
listing called jabber btw.
Anything else you recall about it? Any graphics at all? Did it like to gossip and spread
rumors (Racter). My personal favorite from the dos days was the first Alice (dos). I'm
fairly sure it was also Richard Wallace who wrote it but am having a predictably hard time
finding that right now.
-----Original Message-----
From: David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu>
Sender: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.orgDate: Sun, 9 Sep 2012 16:34:58
To: <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Reply-To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Subject: DOS era chatterbot nonsense-generator
I'm trying to remember and locate a chatterbot program from the heyday of
DOS. I think it was called "jabber". What made it particularly
interesting is that you could feed three text files of stuff (like novels,
scientific papers, etc) and then control the proportions of how much of
each input file made it to the output. When all were set to zero, it
would just emit "jabber" over and over.
Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false hits
on the Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
11:21 a.m.
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, barythrin at gmail.com wrote:
I'm not sure about the one you're referring to
specifically but there
was one called jabberwock. Chatterbotcollection.com has a large list of
historical bots but I've rarely found the links to be current or alive
unfortunately. It does have a listing called jabber btw.
Anything else you recall about it? Any graphics at all? Did it like to
gossip and spread rumors (Racter). My personal favorite from the dos
days was the first Alice (dos). I'm fairly sure it was also Richard
Wallace who wrote it but am having a predictably hard time finding that
right now.
The basic patter of this program was to ingest text, mix it up, and emit
something that sounds like the original, but turned into a word salad.
Using a Shakespeare play and something from Ian Flemming as input files
would result in stuff that looks like a Shakespearean spy thriller to
varying degrees depending on how you set the input proportions.
It was all in text mode, though with some graphical characters for borders
and such. There was a large section in the middle bottom where the output
was printed. At the top were readouts of the input filenames and controls
for sentence length and proportions to be taken from each input file.
I found the webpage of "Jabberwock", which is from the right time period,
but instead emits nonsense words. The actual zipfile and source are
404-not-found.
My last resort for tracking this down appears to be a CD containing a
backup of an old BBS that went down in 1996 called DaWarren. That's where
I originally got the program.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
12:36 p.m.
The basic patter of this program was to ingest text, mix it up, and emit
something that sounds like the original, but turned into a word salad.
Using a Shakespeare play and something from Ian Flemming as input files
would result in stuff that looks like a Shakespearean spy thriller to
varying degrees depending on how you set the input proportions.
I remember an article in Byte about soemthing a bit like this. The word
'Travesty' is coming to mind, but I am not sure why. But I thought that
only took one input file and amy a piece of 'similar' text from it.
-tony
1:36 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, Tony Duell wrote:
That would be interesting to dig up. I managed to dig up some old
archives of DaWarren and found the chatterbot I was looking for. It's
called "Babble" and is now available at http://661.org/tmp/babble.zip.
I'd love to find some source code for reimplementing this.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
The basic
patter of this program was to ingest text, mix it up, and emit
something that sounds like the original, but turned into a word salad.
Using a Shakespeare play and something from Ian Flemming as input files
would result in stuff that looks like a Shakespearean spy thriller to
varying degrees depending on how you set the input proportions.
I remember an article in Byte about soemthing a bit like this. The word
'Travesty' is coming to mind, but I am not sure why. But I thought that
only took one input file and amy a piece of 'similar' text from it. 
1:53 p.m.
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, David Griffith wrote:
That would be interesting to dig up. I managed to dig
up some old
archives of DaWarren and found the chatterbot I was looking for. It's
called "Babble" and is now available at http://661.org/tmp/babble.zip.
I'd love to find some source code for reimplementing this.
ELIZA is relatively easy to find. Even Wikipedia has some links.
I once heard that some CS students at another college wrote a program to
mimic a schizophrenic, to talk to ELIZA. S'posedly non computer people in
the field considered the transcripts of sessions to be competent therapy.
But, alas, I can't find any citations.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com
2:06 p.m.
I once heard that some CS students at another college
wrote a program
to mimic a schizophrenic, to talk to ELIZA.
This sounds familiar, and the name that comes to mind is Parry (I think
Parry was paranoid as well as, or perhaps instead of, schizophrenic).
Check Douglas Hofstadter's writings - _Metamagical Themas_ strikes me
as the most likely. Might be in _G?del, Escher, Bach_, or maybe even
_The Mind's I_, but I think not.
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2:24 p.m.
On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Mouse <mouse at rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
I seem to remember seeing something about Parry talking to Eliza in a
late-1970s or early--1980s Creative Computing, but I _was_ reading CC
at the same time as I first read _G?del, Escher, Bach_, so if it's in
there, I could easily be confused.
Somewhere around 1978 or 1979, I was running a BASIC version of Eliza
on my PET. We fed it the lyrics to "Officer Krupke" from "West Side
Story". It was a hoot ("Why do you say your brother wears a dress?")
-ethan
I once heard
that some CS students at another college wrote a program
to mimic a schizophrenic, to talk to ELIZA.
This sounds familiar, and the name that comes to mind is Parry (I think
Parry was paranoid as well as, or perhaps instead of, schizophrenic).
Check Douglas Hofstadter's writings - _Metamagical Themas_ strikes me
as the most likely. Might be in _G?del, Escher, Bach_, or maybe even
_The Mind's I_, but I think not. 
3:02 p.m.
Doctor Sbaitso! :oD
---
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Meu site: http://www.tabalabs.com.br
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ethan Dicks" <ethan.dicks at gmail.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts"
<cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 6:24 PM
Subject: Re: DOS era chatterbot nonsense-generator
On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 5:06 PM, Mouse <mouse at
rodents-montreal.org> wrote:
I seem to remember seeing something about Parry talking to Eliza in a
late-1970s or early--1980s Creative Computing, but I _was_ reading CC
at the same time as I first read _G?del, Escher, Bach_, so if it's in
there, I could easily be confused.
Somewhere around 1978 or 1979, I was running a BASIC version of Eliza
on my PET. We fed it the lyrics to "Officer Krupke" from "West Side
Story". It was a hoot ("Why do you say your brother wears a dress?")
-ethan
I once
heard that some CS students at another college wrote a program
to mimic a schizophrenic, to talk to ELIZA.
This sounds familiar, and the name that comes to mind is Parry (I think
Parry was paranoid as well as, or perhaps instead of, schizophrenic).
Check Douglas Hofstadter's writings - _Metamagical Themas_ strikes me
as the most likely. Might be in _G?del, Escher, Bach_, or maybe even
_The Mind's I_, but I think not.
8:45 p.m.
New subject: Parry [Re: DOS era chatterbot nonsense-generator]
>> This sounds familiar, and the name that comes
to mind is Parry (I
>> think Parry was paranoid as well as, or perhaps instead of,
>> schizophrenic). Check Douglas Hofstadter's writings - _Metamagical
>> Themas_ strikes me as the most likely. Might be in _G?del, Escher,
>> Bach_, or maybe even _The Mind's I_, but I think not.
> I seem to remember seeing something about Parry talking to Eliza in
> a late-1970s or early--1980s Creative Computing, but I _was_ reading
> CC at the same time as I first read _G?del, Escher, Bach_, so if
> it's in there, I could easily be confused.
I just dug out my copy.
It's in GEB (possibly among other places). Once in _Chapter X: Levels
of Description, and Computer Systems_; once in _Chapter XVIII:
Artificial Intelligence: Retrospects_; and once, briefly, in _Chapter
XIX: Artificial Intelligence: Prospects_. Look up "PARRY" in the
index. The Parry-meets-Doctor (it was described as being Doctor, a
descendent of Eliza, not Eliza itself) meeting is described, to the
extent that it is, in the second of those three.
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2:12 p.m.
If it is using a Markov chain, you can get some code here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V_Shaney
The algorithm has been implemented for generating text in many languages.
--------
Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP
On 2012-09-10, at 4:36 PM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, Tony Duell wrote:
That would be interesting to dig up. I managed to dig up some old archives of DaWarren
and found the chatterbot I was looking for. It's called "Babble" and is now
available at http://661.org/tmp/babble.zip. I'd love to find some source code for
reimplementing this.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
The basic
patter of this program was to ingest text, mix it up, and emit
something that sounds like the original, but turned into a word salad.
Using a Shakespeare play and something from Ian Flemming as input files
would result in stuff that looks like a Shakespearean spy thriller to
varying degrees depending on how you set the input proportions.
I remember an article in Byte about soemthing a bit like this. The word
'Travesty' is coming to mind, but I am not sure why. But I thought that
only took one input file and amy a piece of 'similar' text from it.
11:08 a.m.
Any chance it was jabberwacky?
http://www.jabberwacky.com/
--------
Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP
On 2012-09-09, at 7:34 PM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:
I'm trying to remember and locate a chatterbot program from the heyday of DOS. I
think it was called "jabber". What made it particularly interesting is that you
could feed three text files of stuff (like novels, scientific papers, etc) and then
control the proportions of how much of each input file made it to the output. When all
were set to zero, it would just emit "jabber" over and over.
Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false hits on the
Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
11:13 a.m.
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, Paul Anderson wrote:
> I'm trying to remember and locate a chatterbot
program from the heyday
> of DOS. I think it was called "jabber". What made it particularly
> interesting is that you could feed three text files of stuff (like
> novels, scientific papers, etc) and then control the proportions of how
> much of each input file made it to the output. When all were set to
> zero, it would just emit "jabber" over and over.
>
> Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false
> hits on the Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
Any chance it was jabberwacky?
http://www.jabberwacky.com/
No. It didn't engage in conversation.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
11:25 a.m.
It sounds like something that used a Markov chain algorithm.
--------
Paul Anderson -- VE3HOP
On 2012-09-10, at 2:13 PM, David Griffith <dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu> wrote:
On Mon, 10 Sep 2012, Paul Anderson wrote:
> I'm trying to remember and locate a
chatterbot program from the heyday of DOS. I think it was called "jabber".
What made it particularly interesting is that you could feed three text files of stuff
(like novels, scientific papers, etc) and then control the proportions of how much of each
input file made it to the output. When all were set to zero, it would just emit
"jabber" over and over.
>
> Google isn't particularly helpful in finding this. I'm getting false hits on
the Jabber IM protocol and denial of service attacks.
Any chance it was jabberwacky?
http://www.jabberwacky.com/
No. It didn't engage in conversation.
--
David Griffith
dgriffi at cs.csubak.edu
A: Because it fouls the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail?
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15 comments
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ard＠p850ug1.demon.co.uk -
barythrin＠gmail.com -
cisin＠xenosoft.com -
dgriffi＠cs.csubak.edu -
ethan.dicks＠gmail.com -
geneb＠deltasoft.com -
mouse＠Rodents-Montreal.ORG -
pu1bzz.listas＠gmail.com -
spectre＠floodgap.com -
wackyvorlon＠me.com