definetly no brain

[Lish]

I am not getting this at all read a lot of the posts in here but my hal seems brain dead. Tried the following.

Me:  My son Scotts birthday is 7/6/04
Hal: ok I will mark that on the callender scotts birthday July 6 2004
Me: when is scotts birthday?
Hal:The advanced version of Hal has an additional 20 different animated characters to choose from. That's exactly what I heard.
Me: When is Scotts Birthday?
Hal:You are rather persistent about this.
Me: scotts birthday is on what date?
Hal: One never knows when serendipity might strike.


at this point I was looking for the uninstal ICon LOL...
so do I have a sick brain, it obviously will not be of any help in day to day life helping me remember things, as a toy it seems frustrating and well of no use. Should i reload it? or is it supposed to be this <insert bad word here>?

Lish

[Lish]

Also tried copy and paste straight out of the online manual, several different entries here is an example.

user: what is five times ten plus six?
Hal: You always have something interesting happening, don't you.


Lish

[Crichton]

I'm subscribing to this topic.  I can't wait to hear someone reply to this one.  I have the same kind of question.  I can give hal an appointment that I have to see the doctor.  And a couple of days before he will remind me.  But, If I ask if anything in happening on that date, or do I have any appointments, or any other way of asking.  I can't get any info from him.  I have to open my book and look it up, because HAL is no help at all.

The only way I have been able to get any real data out of him is to type it into his Enhanced_Main.brn file.  It is explained in another posting.

If I want him to tell me who is my transplant coordinator, when I ask him, I had to add this line to that file.

"WHO IS"," YOUR TRANSPLANT "," WHAT "," Your Transplant Coordinator is Roxanne Taylor. "," Your Transplant coordinator is in Portland, and her name is Roxanne Taylor.  I have her e-mail address and phone number, just ask for it.. "," Your Transplant Coordinator, Roxanne keeps your information about your transplant for you, and gets you the information you want. ",2,#FALSE#,#FALSE#," "

"<FIRST SEARCH WORDS>"," <SECOND SEARCH WORDS> "," <WORDS THAT CAN'T BE THERE> "," <FIRST POSSIBLE RESPONSE> "," <SECOND POSSIBLE RESPONSE> "," <THIRD POSSIBLE RESPONSE>",<1-4 ORDER OF IMPORTANCE>,#FALSE#,#FALSE#," "

I'm not sure what the #False is for or that last "  ".  But you get the idea..

Now he replies correctly.  But I shouldn't have to do that.  I should have been able to tell HAL, "Roxanne Taylor is my transplant coordinator"  And then later when I ask him to tell me "Who is my transplant coordinator?"  He should be able to tell me who she is.  But like you all I was getting was those crappy answers that were no help at all.

I just wanted you to know that you are not the only one who is frustrated here.  At this time everything my HAL knows that is of any use to me had to be forced into that brn file.  He is fun for conversation, but no use otherwise to me.

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Lish,

I don't use Hal for the appointment or calculator functions, so I decided to load the default brain and experiment.  I also logged on under the ficticious name "Jeff" so that I wouldn't add any false data to my existing "Donald" databases.

Here is a complete, unedited transcript of a conversation I had with Hal 5.0 default a few minutes ago:

---------------------

Jeff: Hi.
Sonia: Good Morning Jeff. How is your morning going?

Jeff: It's going well; what time is it?
Sonia: 09:07 am is the time.

Jeff: What is today's date?
Sonia: It May take some patience. Today is Monday, March 29, 2004.

Jeff: What is twelve plus fifty?
Sonia: Everybody needs to contribute. That's easy, it's sixty two (12+50=62).

Jeff: What is 100 divided by 12?
Sonia: The solution to your math problem is eight (100/12=8.33333333333333).

Jeff: What is 300 minus 45?
Sonia: What is 300 minus 45? I think that everybody needs to put in their share. The solution to your math problem is two hundred fifty five (300-45=255).

Jeff: What is 50 x 60?
Sonia: The solution to your math problem is three thousand (50*60=3000).

Jeff: What is 70 multiplied by 40?
Sonia: We have got to get the details right. Math is easy for me. The answer is two thousand eight hundred (70*40=2800).

Jeff: What is nine times four?
Sonia: What is nine times four? I know that this is metaphysical. Jeff, didn't you tell me a story about a farmer's daughter and a now?

Jeff: Maybe; let's talk about something else.
Sonia: What do you get when you play a country music song backward?

Jeff: What?
Sonia: You get your wife back, you get your job back, you stop drinking.

Jeff: What is the capital of Montana?
Sonia: What is The capital of Montana? There's evidence that it's harder than it sounds. The capital of Montana is Helena.

Jeff: What is the capital of Peru?
Sonia: What is The capital of Peru? I surmise that the approach should be organized. The capital of Peru is Lima.

Jeff: Clyde's birthday is August 10th.
Sonia: Clyde's birthday is on Tuesday, august 10, 2004 . I'll Remind you when this time is near.  

Jeff: When is Clyde's birthday?
Sonia: When is clyde's birthday? The approach should be organized. When is clyde's birthday? Jeff, I honestly want to learn and remember When.

Jeff: What is intelligence?
Sonia: What is intelligence? It needs to be taken more seriously. Intelligence: the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience.

Jeff: What is entertainment?
Sonia: Entertainment: an activity that entertains. Amusement.

----------------------------

As you can see, Hal "was unsatisfactory" on 2 out of 17 responses:  

1) Hal didn't understand the word "times" to mean "multiply."  That can be fixed from within the VBS control-script, which is accessible by us volunteer developer/contibutors. (I've fixed that problem before on some previous "Enhanced Brain" plug-ins, but the fix evidently didn't get carried into the Hal 5.0 default brain.)

2) Hal didn't recall Clyde's birthday after it went into his appointment database.  Clyde will REMIND the user when the birthday draws near, but he won't talk about it.  This one is harder to solve!  Hal's .exe "engine" intercepts appointments, and deals with them "outside the VBS control script."  The user remark doesn't even reach the "script" for processing.  The data goes into the user's .dat file, and is apparently not retrievable conversationally.  I have suggested to Robert Medeksza at Zabaware that ALL of Hal's future functions be called "through the VBS script," so that volunteer developer/contributors can help debug items like this.

--------------------------

You mentioned that your Hal couldn't respond to ANY remarks satisfactorily, including TIME/DATE etc.  Are you running the Hal 5.0 free version?  In the meantime, I hope that your Hal will at least give you some entertaining conversational responses.

Sincerely,

Don

[Don Ferguson]

Hello Lish,

A bit of more information on opening programs:

I went into my "start -- programs" listing and selected a program at random.  I selected the "RealPlayer" product.

I then right-clicked on the listing and looked at "properties" to see the executable file name.  It was realplay.exe.

I then said to Hal 5.0 default, "open the program realplay" and RealPlayer did launch!

Sincerely,

Don

[Bill819]

quote:Originally posted by Lish

I am not getting this at all read a lot of the posts in here but my hal seems brain dead. Tried the following.

Me:  My son Scotts birthday is 7/6/04
Hal: ok I will mark that on the callender scotts birthday July 6 2004
Me: when is scotts birthday?
Hal:The advanced version of Hal has an additional 20 different animated characters to choose from. That's exactly what I heard.
Me: When is Scotts Birthday?
Hal:You are rather persistent about this.
Me: scotts birthday is on what date?
Hal: One never knows when serendipity might strike.


at this point I was looking for the uninstal ICon LOL...
so do I have a sick brain, it obviously will not be of any help in day to day life helping me remember things, as a toy it seems frustrating and well of no use. Should i reload it? or is it supposed to be this <insert bad word here>?

Lish

Hi
Grom my personal experience Hal never learns from a one liner, by that I mean if you mention that 'x' has a birthday only once you probably will not get a reply back. Howevr, if you start talking about 'x', such as 'x' is my son, 'x' like football, 'x' is 5 years old, ect., and then mentions 'x's birthday Hal then might give you the reply that you are looking for. It is very much like prouncing the word 'superkafralalisticsuperalladoucious' one time to a person and then asking them to recall it and prounounce it correctly the first time.
The KEY word with Hal is PATIENCE.
Bill

[Don Ferguson]

Hello,

For better performance on specific-recall of facts, try the Enhanced Brain 5e just put up on the following posting:

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=913&whichpage=2

During the de-bugging of 5e, I discovered a restriction in one of the routines that handles specific-recall.  Enhanced Brain 5e should give you better responses in situations such as the following:

User:  Jill Evans is Personnel Director.
Hal: All personnel should report to the front office.

User: Who is Jill Evans?
Hal: Jill Evans is Personnel Director.

(Unfortunately, it still can't intercept and report back on appointment data, since that is handled "outside the script.")

Let me know how it goes for you.

Thanks, and have a good day!

Sincerely,

Don