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Does anyone remember Forum 2000 (link does not actually work)? It's got some neat technology behind it. And the conversations between surfers and the SOMADs was hilarious. When I first saw the site, I thought it was actual people imitating the different characters. Does anyone know what happened to the site and why it no longer functions? I miss it.

On the group's page they don't offer any code, but there's a screen shot, some research papers and links to other articles, and a link to Andrej Bauer's (of Forum 2000 fame) Gallery of Random Art.

When I graduated over ten years ago, the country was in a recession (as it is now). . .

The answers of The Forum are ephemeral, but the wisdom is timeless: Would you even know the country was in a recession if your TV didn't tell you so?

The "dot.com bubble" burst, as predicted, and rightly so. Lots of layoffs in a limited subset of industries and careers. So what? I live in Silicon Valley, where new building construction has been on the rise for the past ten years - and shows every sign of accelerating. Guess the guys in hardhats don't feel like they're in a recession. Guess they feel like the times are better than ever before.

This "recession" is just a jedi mind-trick to get you to accelerate your annual spending increase.

That's right - businesses are concerned because your spending went up since last year - but it didn't go up as much as it did the year before. Learn from Jabba the Hutt. Don't fall for their little handwaving tricks.

As a teen myself, It seems the MPAA has increased strength of ratings. For instance - 3 "fucks" in a movie can give it an instant R. I mean, sure, South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut was a BIT RAW, but it hasn't made me less of a person. With cable, parent leaves house, switch to the porn, or whatever. With this nice little filter software my school has (My mother trusts me enough as that the computer is MINE, in MY room.), I can't even visit a site that HAS the word "bitch" in it, Trying to read Forum2000. Fact is, it's NOT going to hurt your kid. I grew up, pretty much setting my own limits. "Go your own way, be responsible," my mom said. My dad did exactly the opposite, controlling everything I do. Please, for the love of God, don't oppress your kids. What are they going to do when they're adults and don't know the first thing about the real world?

I used to read the threads on Forum2000 frequently and noticed numerous spelling mistakes. One I found today can be found here.
It is in a comment the Einstein persona makes:

"My point is that you do not fully understand the notion of time, and it is no wonder that your mind, set to analyze everything into indivisible untis, cannot conceive of time as a geometric notion, just another dimension of the space-time manifold.

The 'Einstein SOMAD' incorrectly spells the words 'units' as 'untis'. There are more spelling errors if you care to take the time to look for them.

This leads me to question the fact that the Forum2000 is really a front end to an artificial intelligence computer. I have this creeping suspicion that human beings really type the answers to people's questions. The only real 'artificial intelligence' is the Cube. Have you noticed how when you ask a question, the Cube has a meaningless answer right away, whereas the other personas take hours or days to reply? It may be true that the Matrix needs that much time to come up with replies, but if it makes spelling mistakes (which a computer program at the level that the Forum2000 is purported to be should not make) AND takes forever to generate replies, in my mind can only mean that human beings come up with the answers.

Possibly the reason the Forum2000 got shut down is because everyone started running out of ideas for funny conversations between the SOMADs, or that the people running it are graduating from university and will not have time to keep it up? The oldest questions in the Hall of Fame are around 1200 days old, which is roughly four years, the time needed to complete university.

There are other issues, such as the fact that the SOMADs can change the font attributes of the text of their replies, and on rare occasions generate images to prove their points. But maybe they know HTML.

Of course, you could argue that the spelling mistakes are intentionally programmed into the Forum2000.

What do you think?

--Markus



BlackholeTV - TV that Swallows

I used to read the threads on Forum2000 frequently and noticed numerous spelling mistakes. One I found today can be found here.
It is in a comment the Einstein persona makes:

"My point is that you do not fully understand the notion of time, and it is no wonder that your mind, set to analyze everything into indivisible untis, cannot conceive of time as a geometric notion, just another dimension of the space-time manifold.

The 'Einstein SOMAD' incorrectly spells the words 'units' as 'untis'. There are more spelling errors if you care to take the time to look for them.

This leads me to question the fact that the Forum2000 is really a front end to an artificial intelligence computer. I have this creeping suspicion that human beings really type the answers to people's questions. The only real 'artificial intelligence' is the Cube. Have you noticed how when you ask a question, the Cube has a meaningless answer right away, whereas the other personas take hours or days to reply? It may be true that the Matrix needs that much time to come up with replies, but if it makes spelling mistakes (which a computer program at the level that the Forum2000 is purported to be should not make) AND takes forever to generate replies, in my mind can only mean that human beings come up with the answers.

Possibly the reason the Forum2000 got shut down is because everyone started running out of ideas for funny conversations between the SOMADs, or that the people running it are graduating from university and will not have time to keep it up? The oldest questions in the Hall of Fame are around 1200 days old, which is roughly four years, the time needed to complete university.

There are other issues, such as the fact that the SOMADs can change the font attributes of the text of their replies, and on rare occasions generate images to prove their points. But maybe they know HTML.

Of course, you could argue that the spelling mistakes are intentionally programmed into the Forum2000.

What do you think?

--Markus



BlackholeTV - TV that Swallows

Then I look at the forum list why do I see time incrementing on the forums, = "To how many digits do you know Pi? [##########] 40 mins old" went from 39 to 40 min. When did the _shutdown_ occure?

The question about my fair lady actually made the wall of fame here. I kept a copy at http://trisomy21.dhs.org/f2k.html in case the one on their server disappears. Anyways, have fun all, /me is going on vacation for a week, bleh.

Sure, we won't get those quaint cracks from Ayn Rand anymore. And we will be truly lost without the timeless wisdom of the Cube. But still, Kosh is my favorite.

And do read the Hall of Fame before it goes away.

Forum 2000 Hall of Fame is cool too. Go there. Amuse yourself. In the words of SOMAD Tux: "Good luck and remember- Windows sucks. Use Linux!"

So far, the best review I've seen of X-Men is the review done by Forum 2000. In it, Zorak and Sigmund Freud reveal that Patrick Stewart was chosen for the role only because his baldness filled a deep need in so many of us soon-to-be-bald geeks. Ouch!

--

check out the recent questions.
Here's the link:
http ://www.forum2000.org/matrix/forum_std_answers?cook ie=numbered&lm=962917762.
it's a true story, too. I have some wierd friends.

"Alice" is not even an attempt at intelligence. It simply analyses speech patterns without any regard to content or context or previous sequence of conversation and regurgitates replies that were hard-coded in beforehand and designed entirely and simply to "sound realistic" and not at all to mean anything.

if you are looking for a web-based Artificial Intelligence which actually solves problems and attempts to in some way synthesize the information given to it based on context, i suggest you look at

http://www.forum2000.org/

I assure you, you will be impressed.

Well, CMU does have Forum2000, which uses at least 32 terabytes.

Hee hee. Reminds me of this.

Heh heh. Reminds me of this.

Ayn Rand was a git. Read Forum 2000.

Forum 2000 and Bill have destroyed Linux, apparently: http://www.forum2000.org/matrix/forum_reply?cookie =people&lm=940641941
Amusing.

This one is really great!

Zorak

We are pleased to report, however, that our recently acquired redundant parallel storage system has gone a long way to help buffer this crisis.

We do have a special request for Slashdot readers: we would greatly appreciate it if you would restrict your postings to original questions, rather than material cut&pasted from our home page or from other sources. Repetitive, unoriginal input text tends to cause numerical instability in our NLP algorithms (performance of the FPUs in our Kryotech Athlon 900s seems to be particularly sensitive to divides by near-zero numbers)

Thank you!

What I'd really like to see is some serious black fiction, Agent Mulder is killed by skully accidentally (she shot him before after all). So having accidentally killed her partner, she is put on some sort of short term Lan Hariuci-esque FBI Administrative leave where she "God forbid" shows some real human characteristics other than the robotic pantomime she's displayed since joining the show.

Chapter 2

(replacement mulder) is assigned to work with the distraught skully. They do not get along, it is the anti-thesis of the cosy plutonic relationship of mulder and skully. The sexual tension is much much higher, (of course this makes Lance Henrikson unsuitable for the role as he is too old to be a credible sexual partner with skully) and there are many more close moments between the two characters. Trite as this may sound, it will help prop up the ailing plot/story line of this show. Speaking of which, why not shift the primary protagonist from CSM to the evil enemy only the Cube could dream up. Yeah, like some non-yak evil peoples!

Hagbard Celine

Slashdot, with forum2000 applied to it: http://www.forum2000.o rg/Gateway/www.slashdot.org/index.html

This one is even better... it features Bill Gates commenting on Slashdot :-)

Oh my god, check this out.

I LOVE this!

I've never seen something more funny in my life than this. I literally fell out of my chair.

you want an example of useful AI? slashdot should come up w/ an appropriately witty remark that we lazy posters can simply choose. this remark should be based on our posting behaviors. all this typing sucks.

(i'd rather have indulgent behavior than emergent... :-)