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nafziger
28-07-2011, 22:47
Hello there people. I'm extremely cheerful being part of this great forum.

All the best !

lemiant
28-07-2011, 23:01
Hello there people. I'm extremely cheerful being part of this great forum.

All the best !
Are you a real person?

Andrew Schreiber
28-07-2011, 23:13
Are you a real person?

Are you?

lemiant
28-07-2011, 23:26
Are you?
No, but I am an exceptionally good AI, does that count?

Andrew Schreiber
28-07-2011, 23:29
No, but I am an exceptionally good AI, does that count?

Oh, is that what Canadians are called these days ;)

Garrett.d.w
28-07-2011, 23:30
maybe, maybe not.

msimon785
29-07-2011, 01:21
I have to say, the nonexistent association with any team, the ambiguity of the post and the grammar only a foreigner from a non-english speaking country could speak all lead me to believe that this gentleman may not have anything to do with FIRST.
That being said, if you are real, Welcome!

Andrew Lawrence
29-07-2011, 01:23
That being said, if you are real, Welcome!

And if you're not, the STILL WELCOME!

Basel A
29-07-2011, 01:24
Pretty sure he (it?) is real. I don't think bots can be cheerful.

Duke461
29-07-2011, 01:53
Pretty sure he (it?) is real. I don't think bots can be cheerful.

I don't know...... (http://www.cleverbot.com/)

I just had this four-line conversation with it:
Me:Are you cheerful?
Cleverbot: No.. Are you?
Me:Can you be cheerful?
Cleverbot: Yes.

PayneTrain
29-07-2011, 17:53
S/he cared to fill out the location of residence as a real place...

Karibou
29-07-2011, 18:13
S/he cared to fill out the location of residence as a real place...

And a Google search of the text reveals that it's not a spambot (the only other hit for the text is on a site that just references the post made here on CD).


Edit to avoid double-posting:
RE: Mark's find...my mind is exploding. Are bots really getting that smart, rotating phrases (and punctuation marks!) between posts to evade death by simple Google-search?

Mark McLeod
29-07-2011, 18:41
Found this match from another forum (chef.com in Taiwan) posted today. Odd post in an all Chinese language forum...

Hello there everybody. I'm extremely cheerful being a part of this wonderful community.

Kind regards .

PayneTrain
29-07-2011, 20:06
This thread is quickly turning into how programmers are tearing our world apart, destroying internet havens close to us.

(something to remember during build season for the typical hardware/software skirmish that develops)

Andrew Schreiber
29-07-2011, 20:15
This thread is quickly turning into how programmers are tearing our world apart, destroying internet havens close to us.

(something to remember during build season for the typical hardware/software skirmish that develops)

What? Maybe I'm just tired but I don't know where you got that.

PayneTrain
29-07-2011, 20:40
What? Maybe I'm just tired but I don't know where you got that.

I got it from here.


RE: Mark's find...my mind is exploding. Are bots really getting that smart, rotating phrases (and punctuation marks!) between posts to evade death by simple Google-search?

It was loosely based, and I'm usually too lazy to direct quote.

MrForbes
29-07-2011, 21:43
How many Alan Turings does it take to spot a spambot?

RoboDesigners
29-07-2011, 22:17
How many Alan Turings does it take to spot a spambot?
Too many... :)

I think it would be interesting to see how this spambot continues its posts... Will it always be benign, just filling server space, or will it turn evil and start advertising?

windtakers
29-07-2011, 22:25
why would anyone make a bot on this site it seems pointless

Andrew Schreiber
29-07-2011, 22:28
why would anyone make a bot on this site it seems pointless

Sadly this bot uses better punctuation and capitalization than many on this site.

DonRotolo
29-07-2011, 22:48
How many Alan Turings does it take to spot a spambot?All of them :p

It may be a human masquerading as a bot. Perhaps the purpose is to find easily-posted-to fora, as targets for some future spam?

Molten
30-07-2011, 00:31
I've actually found it interesting to read the spam posted on this site as it evolves. There have been multiple times a bot has made me think about the thread in a way I hadn't before. Once I saw a bot make a reference to recording music in a thread about winning a record. It was completely unrelated, but it actually made sense in an analogy sort of way. Perhaps in the future we should read posts made by bots and think about what they say before immediately reporting it. Yes, we should report it too. But in the meantime it can make us think.

Jason

Joe G.
30-07-2011, 00:40
I've actually found it interesting to read the spam posted on this site as it evolves. There have been multiple times a bot has made me think about the thread in a way I hadn't before. Once I saw a bot make a reference to recording music in a thread about winning a record. It was completely unrelated, but it actually made sense in an analogy sort of way. Perhaps in the future we should read posts made by bots and think about what they say before immediately reporting it. Yes, we should report it too. But in the meantime it can make us think.

Jason

My favorite one was a spambot that copied an intelligently worded, deeply technical question posted years ago. Despite the links in its signature, I was quite impressed with the spambot's knowledge of the IFI control system. It was even in the right forum!

Some related spambot humor (http://xkcd.com/810/)

Duke461
30-07-2011, 03:55
Its definitely a bot. found the exact same wording and username:
http://greenstems.org/2011/07/hello-everybody/

By the way, has anyone reported this yet?

Akash Rastogi
30-07-2011, 04:34
I've actually found it interesting to read the spam posted on this site as it evolves. There have been multiple times a bot has made me think about the thread in a way I hadn't before. Once I saw a bot make a reference to recording music in a thread about winning a record. It was completely unrelated, but it actually made sense in an analogy sort of way. Perhaps in the future we should read posts made by bots and think about what they say before immediately reporting it. Yes, we should report it too. But in the meantime it can make us think.

Jason

They've become self-aware.

Darn you Skynet...

Molten
30-07-2011, 04:35
Its definitely a bot. found the exact same wording and username:
http://greenstems.org/2011/07/hello-everybody/

By the way, has anyone reported this yet?

At this point, is it spam or a conversation starter? Is it possible to be both? If it is both, is it really proper to delete the spam? Just alot of questions involved with this sort of situation. I'll be interested to see how this situation is dealt with.

Jason

Duke461
30-07-2011, 04:54
They've become self-aware.

Darn you Skynet...
At this point, is it spam or a conversation starter? Is it possible to be both? If it is both, is it really proper to delete the spam? Just alot of questions involved with this sort of situation. I'll be interested to see how this situation is dealt with.

Jason
And now they're questioning their own messages! :O

Mark McLeod
30-07-2011, 08:17
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/suspicion.png


p.s.
Its definitely a bot. found the exact same wording and username:
http://greenstems.org/2011/07/hello-everybody/

Circular logic. Your link is actually this OP post, not a different spambot post. Kara earlier dismissed the post you found. Look at it more closely...

By the way, has anyone reported this yet?It's now responsible for a respectable thread.

Andrew Lawrence
30-07-2011, 10:35
To the people who are saying report this, it's technically not doing anything bad. It posted one harmless, and somewhat nice post, and since then we've been talking for 2 whole pages over one comment. Unless it posts again (which I want it too), and that post is obviously spam, then we should let it be.

Madison
30-07-2011, 12:14
The site has measures in place to question/verify whether an account is spam or real. By ignoring this message, it undermines some of those measures and could lead to a flood of spam later.

The account has been banned. Y'all might enjoy spending your free time deleting spam, but I have other hobbies :p

RoboDesigners
30-07-2011, 12:20
The account has been banned. Y'all might enjoy spending your free time deleting spam, but I have other hobbies :p
Doesn't a banned account's status/user title change to "banned?" If so, it doesn't look like the bot's account is really banned.

XaulZan11
30-07-2011, 12:21
You know it's the offseason when a thread like this is one of the most popular ones on CD...

Madison
30-07-2011, 12:23
Doesn't a banned account's status/user title change to "banned?" If so, it doesn't look like the bot's account is really banned.

The mechanism that moderators use to ban accounts is different from the default provided in vBulletin. Their title does not change.

Marc P.
30-07-2011, 12:28
I've seen this sort of spam here before. It starts with an innocent enough post. A few weeks go by, the post falls off the most recent posts list, gets buried in the forum somewhere. Whoever/whatever created the account logs back in and puts their spam links/whatever in their signature. Changing a signature doesn't bump a post back up, so their spam ends up buried deep in a pile of posts where unsuspecting people will find it when looking through old posts for specific information. Spam like that is harder to find because not many people look through older posts, and would be less likely to report it/more likely to click the links, thinking they were safe if they've been there for that long.

Duke461
30-07-2011, 14:49
http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/suspicion.png


p.s.

Circular logic. Your link is actually to this OP post, not a different spambot post. Kara referred to the post you found earlier. Look at it more closely...

It's now responsible for a respectable thread.

But the fact that "it" posted the exact same thing on multiple threads is good evidence for a strange person, or a bot.

P.S. i wonder what happens if you PM it......

Andrew Lawrence
30-07-2011, 15:01
P.S. i wonder what happens if you PM it......

Let's find out! ;)

Mark McLeod
30-07-2011, 15:17
But the fact that "it" posted the exact same thing on multiple threads is good evidence for a strange person, or a bot.

Do you understand that the spambot did not make that post you linked to, therefore it cannot be used as evidence one way or another?

Techhexium
30-07-2011, 15:58
You're right Mark. This doesn't seem obvious at first, but when you click on the author's link in that website, you get this:

Posted in External Content, Robotics | Leave a comment | Retrieved from Chief Delphi. You might want to view the original article for more information, to leave a comment, or to contact the author.

Therefore, the username only posted in CD, the STEMroots website just archived it for some reason, it even provided a link to this topic.

Duke461
30-07-2011, 16:58
You're right Mark. This doesn't seem obvious at first, but when you click on the author's link in that website, you get this:



Therefore, the username only posted in CD, the STEMroots website just archived it for some reason, it even provided a link to this topic.

ohhhhhh. my bad :o
obviously i did not read the website page well enough lol

Molten
30-07-2011, 22:13
The account has been banned. Y'all might enjoy spending your free time deleting spam, but I have other hobbies :p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg7Sj0La_yg&feature=channel_video_title

It was a good bot, a kind bot. All it did was say hello, and it got banned from this forum. I can't say I have many memories of it, but it certainly made us think about bots in different ways. Thanks for that.

Bye nafziger,
Jason

Duke461
30-07-2011, 23:30
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg7Sj0La_yg&feature=channel_video_title

No.

Karibou
30-07-2011, 23:55
All of them :p

It may be a human masquerading as a bot. Perhaps the purpose is to find easily-posted-to fora, as targets for some future spam?

I would believe that theory, if there wasn't a giant space before the "!" at the end (and the period in the post that Mark found). I'm sure that the kind of "bot" you described exists.

I remember a bit of spam a few years ago that was actually related to building robots. I can't remember the topic, but I do remember that it was very convincing, because I didn't do a Google search and responded to it...

PAR_WIG1350
03-08-2011, 17:10
This thread is quickly turning into how programmers are tearing our world apart, destroying internet havens close to us.

(something to remember during build season for the typical hardware/software skirmish that develops)

Not all programmers, only the programmers who have no sense of decency.

plnyyanks
04-08-2011, 10:50
Not all programmers, only the programmers who have no sense of decency.

and keep in mind that some programmers do have (at least a little) sense of decency and are not trying to destroy the world in some way

Karibou
04-08-2011, 20:01
and keep in mind that some programmers do have (at least a little) sense of decency and are not trying to destroy the world in some way
One of our programmers managed to fry 4 victors and set a (old) bot on fire twice. When they aren't dealing directly with a computer screen of code, some of them can be pretty malicious...

Andrew Schreiber
05-08-2011, 22:19
and keep in mind that some programmers do have (at least a little) sense of decency and are not trying to destroy the world in some way

One of our programmers managed to fry 4 victors and set a (old) bot on fire twice. When they aren't dealing directly with a computer screen of code, some of them can be pretty malicious...

So nice to see people saying such nice things about me. :)