Is Your IM Buddy Really a Computer? 288
audiovideodisco writes "Every year the Loebner Prize goes to the chatbot (and the corresponding human companion) that fares best on a Turing test administered by a panel of judges. Discover talked to Kevin Warwick, the professor who runs the competition, to get pointers on how one would go about detecting a bot. While there are some general approaches you can use, nothing is foolproof — and asking about Sarah Palin can be downright deceptive. One judge concluded an interlocutor was a bot because it didn't recognize Palin's name ... but it turned out the chatter was a French librarian who'd simply never heard of her." The chat transcripts show how difficult picking bot from non-bot is getting.
Or is your computer really an IM Buddy? (Score:2, Informative)
Dear Kevin (Score:4, Informative)
... aka Captain Cyborg, is a running joke in the UK for many, many years.
His name associated with this event makes me smirks in anticipation of The Register coverage..
Re:Change we can believe in. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Philosophical (Score:5, Informative)
why Apple sucks or why Apple is great, why Linux sucks or why Linux is great, why Microsoft sucks
You're missing a 'great' in there. You are also missing the 'BSD' next to it.
Re:I have a way of dealing with this, (Score:3, Informative)
I use the libpurple-based Mac OS X client Adium [adiumx.com], and there is a plug-in available called Challenge/Response [adiumxtras.com]. This plug-in will intercept any messages from users not already on my buddy list and ask any question I like; if the user gets it right, I am asked to block/allow the user as if the plug-in wasn't even there. I used to be flooded with spam whenever I used my old MSN/Windows Live! account, but now I never get one bit of spam.
Windows and Linux/*NIX users should check out Adium's sister project Pidgin [pidgin.im], and you can use the Bot Sentry [sourceforge.net] or pidgin-privacy-please [freshmeat.net] plug-ins to the same effect.