Growing disappointment in Hal and Zabaware

[Bigmoose]

I have sent 2-3 e-mails to Zabaware and have yet to get any confirmation they received them let along an answer. I have been working with Hal and cannot even get him to open programs such as internet explorer or outlook express without having to ask him twice. The only way I have found to get him to open the programs the second time is to tell him to "open the program x" Then he will usually do it. I have also spent a considerable amount of time working with him to quit repeating everything I say at least twice. When I call him on it he quickly changes and begins repeating everything 4,5, or 6 times. I am still getting the same error message everytime I click the enter button and I can continue to get it up to 5 times. Why can no one at Zabaware respond to me and let me know what is going on and how to correct my problems? Let me know if anyone in the forum can help me fix the above.Normally I would have deleted the program by now because of the above problems but some of the posts I have read make me stay with it because it does sound worth it. My patience is very short though and I am very close to the delete button.

Bigmoose

[tjstaar]

Hey,
   did you download the hal program, or get the cd? the disk is always better. Also are you using the version 216 chat brain downloadable from the plugin page of this site? it is virtually flawless in my opinion. it is so flexible, that you should be able to use clear language to hal to tell it to cease using certain phrases, and it may very well do that.
also, if you get the  asp express program or another text editor, use it to look in the usersent, conversent, files, as well as the usernametopic files, and any others that you are curious about. you can completely delete these files by accident if you aren't careful, so don't go hog wild. but you can delete some of the stored memory sentences that has the offensive sentences in them. There have been times when I could not find sentences, and hal just forgot them eventually. When you tell hal not to say a certain sentence, you are in fact prompting him to say it because it brings up the same key words in that sentence! IN MY OPINION You have to give the sentence new keywords like this: the sentence-------- is incorrect, and insulting, and I will not tolerate you saying it! Hal may apologise and never say it again. this has actually worked for me in the past. I know how exasperating hal can be. I have had my moments too before I got my mind right.
But if you hit your thumb while driving a nail, do you throw away the Hammer?
the next big thing will be AI in everything, coke machines, cars, houses, TVs. etc. By coming to understand it, you will be in a very specialized and unique club with enormous opportunities opening up soon. IN MY OPINION Hal and you must work out your own way of communicating through practicing sentence structure. Just like you can't talk to your grandfather with the hip language of today, Hal must practice talking with you before it gets along real well with you. Hal may understand you and open programs if you say "start the program X". I found that that helped me, so that is what I do now.
try uninstall and reinstall, run computer maintenence etc.
tjstaar

[Kittty1]

I can understand how you feel. I got no response to the 3-4 e-mails I sent after I decided to upgrade my free version of Hal. All I was able to get from them was more URLs to try and download from. Three of them. After 36 hours of trying to snag my Hal off the internet, I have given up the ghost and asked for my money back. Hopefully, I'll get a response one way or another. Don't you give up though, at least your Hal is talking to you even if he does repeat you 3 or 4 times. Things like that can be corrected. Good luck.

Barbara.J.Kelly