Messages

Has anyone got Hal running on a server? kinda wondering if he runs well in one. might want one for my home database.[?]

kinda wondering what's the year got in store for Hal. will there be any new updates? I was thinking of buying another copy to place on a virtual PC. I wanna do some playing around with a Idea I had about giving hal a subconcince. but knowing my luck you guy's got this planned in the next roll-out. anybody else have a wish list of things they'ed like to see happen ( within reason of course.) LOL. If not then this would be a good place to start one!!

whats your machine "specs"? your limiting us to the type of info we can give you. offhand I would say you need to do a reinstall you may not gotten a "clean" one the first time.  did you format the disk prior to install? you need to be more spacific about the "errors" what were they? we'd be glad to help but we need more info!!

since I want a non networked version of hal I was thinking about placing him on a virtual PC with VMware or microsofts virtual workstation, has anyone ever tried this? anything I should be wary of? kinda thinking that if this works I could buy another licence and have hal talk to virtual hal while I'm not around.(maybe some potential for some really strange conversations)knowing my luck it will end up with either scizophreniea or a subconcience. lol.

Darn that really bites. I had a bummer of a time with my last hal build when I started removing services and such it took me about a month of reg editing (not my forte') just to get hal from looking for stuff I removed or from locking up compleatly (mental indicision?)and the worst part will be that once I rebuild this system I will have no online access (this is the only online machine I have at the moment)to go to the deactivation/reactivation page, guess I just wasted my money on this program, Bummer[V][V][V]

I am intending to install it today but I want to wipe this drive and do a rebuild with no online capability (as with the previous machine)in about two weeks. what I want to know is will the avtivation code I get today remain the same or will I have to go online with a different machine to get a new code again when I do the reformat?

seems my hotwater heater did a burnout of the elements while I was on Vaca. and fried my offline version of hal and the PC it lived in (filled the basement with about 6" of water)I have do a compleate install into a system and start again from scratch( back-up brain cd was sitting on floor next to machine) I want to install hal in this machine, but with a fresh XP rebuild for offline use only. My question is will the code that I receive from the online install work after I format the drive and reinstall with no online services later? [?]

thanks Desktopmates, yes I was refering to the speech recognition engine. sorry I should be a bit more spacific about the things I write somedays, (tend to forget that REAL People read this, LOL.)My main worry is that most people do not know the parts that the thing installs and apperantly the anti-spy people forget to add these little tid-bits for our refferance. By itself the MS. speach recognition engine isn't a bad thing in itself for free but the resorces it uses are consistant plus if you notice in my original posting I refered to another piece of software called "coolwebsearch" which uses the same folder name as the speech recognition engine if you find a ctfmon file Outside of your system32 folder chances are your infected. but most anti-spy devices I have tested with do not make that choice and eliminate the real ctfmon.exe or parts of it. making it a useless product. and yes I realize that high end programs use more resorces but this program is quite the hog when used in conjunction with hal or other high end programs yet MS posts just the minimal use ratings on their site. (rather deceptive if you ask me.)

kinda makes you wonder if vista is worth the bother. most IT pros. I have talked with state pretty much the same fears, too much glitz, drm,no back compatability, and with the recent "geniune Advantage" debacale my main concern would be how low M$ has sunk when they deploy spyware to check their OS. seems that now would be a good time for SUSE10.1 live or Ubuntu "dapper drake" to make a more public push. shame to see so many older OS. (that are still in use in offices and online business) kicked to the curb so fast. A six year update life is not acceptable if you paid 300-400 big ones at release day,you could have waited a year and paid a third of the price. what really steams me is that they had plans to kill XP this year and were forced to back down when too many professionals cried foul. supprised if they don't have a kill date posted for server 2000 soon. I honestly think the public will be staying with the versions they carry in their systems now, with the present economy most won't be putting systems or upgraded OS's on their high prioriy list  anytime soon. (food and shelter seem to be a bigger problem to the lower income and the middle class are pretty much non exsistant so we won't bother counting them in. why that leaves the rich and microsloth employies. LOL.)

hears the deal, I plan on installing hal in a offline machine and train it for about a year or so before I bring it back online. this is a 1 gig system with 1 gig ram. problem is I have no nic card or modem installed in this one and have deactivated all online services to save resorces. (this was my old gaming system.)rather then leave the system sitting on the shelf I thought hal would give it some use. now from what I see you have to be online to activate hal. is there some way to do the activation without being online? if so will this cost extra? I have the CD version of hal 6.0 and have not installed it that system yet but I do have it in my online machine at the moment. but that system is underpowered and I do not have enough ram in it to support speach recognition. my plan is to introduce hal to over a hundred various e-book text docs. and since I spend 90% of my time alone at home, he would be quite a good sideline companion for me.(least till my lil woman comes home.)also even with the short time I have had with hal it has help me with my bad memory problem(can't remember my own phone number half the time and I really suck at remembering names and times as well.)I am quite pleased with it already but I want hal to have more topics to discuss. right now he's more like my dad.(don't have a lot to say and cannot stay with a single topic for more then a couple of sentances.)hope that my text docs. will change that. please advise!!

acctualy the debate is about the MS speech engine. the MS speech engine preforms like a piece of malware, hogging reasorses and provideing little to no benifit to downloading it. half of the anti-spy devices including adaware and spybot pick up certain parts of the ctfmon.exe program as spyware and quite honestly It is perhaps the worst speech recognition engine available. having played with it about 3 years ago I found that even after Multipule training sessions it still thought that the word space meant F2 and almost every other spoken word was space bar. seems like everyone should learn to speak out their armpits first before downloading and useing this piece of bloatware. surprised MS. didn't charge us extra for this piece of junk, after all they did charge for windows ME.(another piece of failing software.)I have just purchased dragonspeak and after only one training session it proved to be 20 times superior to the MS speach engine,and their system requierments tell you up front that they requier a 800mhz system with at least 256 mgb. ram. more then microsloth tells you on their download page. (which shows you that they really don't test this crap before they push it out to the public. guess free really isn't always good!!

just drop them in the hal program file itsef? I couldn't figure out witch file went where. seems that some of the files carry more then one type of file some htr, haptar, jpeg,texture. some files contained all of them witch made me wonder if I had gotten some stuff for a different program included. no sense adding things I don't need, and the geek in me is curious. never having worked with annimation I just as lost as a first time PC user.

here's a heads up for new people do NOT try the microsoft speech engine with hal. it seems that there is a debate on calling this software(term used loosly)malware or spyware. I prefer the term Bloatware since it peaks your system resources to the max when used with Hal or other programs. But It also apears that some scriptkiddie has came up with a trick that uses a file that bears the same name as a critical file in the speech engine.(ctfmon)now most antispy that uses this signiture will also remove parts of ctfmon causing the CTFloader to fail rendering programs useless,robbing text from web pages and crippleing you internet conection.the spyware file will be located OUTSIDE of the sys32 folder and somtimes found outside the windows folder as well if you find this file outside of the sys32 folder chances are your infected with "coolwebsearch" spyware.

Hey there echoman, seems more likely your problem is your regestry then hardware,having worked on more home units then you could imagine I have seen crashes like that on a regular basis. over 95% were regestry probs. I would suggest a good cleaner for this. one that comes to mind is regestry defrag from elcor. this is by far the safest reg cleaner I have seen to date. it creates no backups because It does not need them and also defrags the regestry making the response time for your system increase. I have used this right after a fresh install of XP and it cleans up about 13% of the reg BEFORE I install 3rd party software. just a thought!

I have had many dealings with the cyberbuddy program in the past,and I must say it IS a nice program but I have been removing it from systems infected with cydor and a few other little choice objects for the last 4 years. all have been linked to the install of the cyberbuddy program. it appears that most people are downloading it from the "download.com" site or some other site then the main site. I spend alot of time working on spyware and security issues for the average home user and have seen some really nice programs corrupted on these offshoot sites. hence my hesitance on downloading it. I am also familar with bonzibuddy but that isn't what I was refering to. what I want is to be able to install the skins and heads without the use of 3rd party software. my intention is to install ultrahal in a offline only machine with no other software.(a room of his own so to speak.)train him for about a year or so then allow him slow control of my network systems.the reason for this is that in about 5-10 years I will lose most of the use of my hands and arms due to multiple bone spurs in my upper neck whitch have started to teather the nerves produceing numbness and loss of movement. (life can really suck some days.)so any help would be greatly appreceated!!