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Interesting, I thought maybe it might have to do with running on an NT platform.  I'm using Windows 2000 Pro, SP4 on a 933Mhz, 256 MB RAM machine.  It does seem that Hal is only about 99% compatible with NT based platforms.  But that doesn't explain it for XP.  Not sure what is causing this.  I wonder if anyone else can duplicate the problem on their system?

I've had this problem as well, but haven't been able to figure out what causes it.  Could you tell us a bit about what kind of computer you have?  Especially what version of windows you have.

When you run both, you have one character on your desktop but both programs can control it.  Hal sits in its box as usual, unless you move the character elsewhere.  It does all the things Hal does, but you also have all the features of CyberBuddy as well.

So for example, say you're chatting with Hal.  Hal normally doesn't get the weather or news on its own.  CyberBuddy does do this.  So while talking to Hal, Hal might suddenly give you the news or weather then go back to chatting as usual.  It usually works fine, and the MS Agent software that both work off of manages which program can control the character fairly well.

I'm using Windows 2000 Pro, with SP4, 933mhz CPU, 256MB RAM and generally have no problems running both.  The only thing I noticed (and this seems to have something to do with the NT platform) is that if I run both together, the HalAsst.exe will not fully terminate.  If I shut Hal down that remains running in the background, even though it isn't doing anything.  I just go into Taskmanager and manually shut it down, which doesn't seem to cause any problems.

You can run both with two separate characters.  In which case Hal does what Hal normally does and CyberBuddy does what it normally does and you now have two characters talking at you.  Get enough of these programs and you can have a party on your desktop!  (And also use up all your system resources! [:D] )

You might want to browse the forum for discussions about Hal reading text files.

For example, this thread

http://www.zabaware.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1211

Sandman:

Its simply... you run both programs at the same time using the same character.  It works fairly well.  Occassionally one program interrupts the other.  Also, if you are running a NT based machine (Windows 2000 for example) you may have some minor problems.

fgo23:
What exactly is the problem?  To use any Desktopmates character you simply run the setup and it should be installed.  Note that if you are on a NT machine you need to be a little extra careful.  For some reason Win 2000 seems to want to install the characters into their own subdirectory of the MSAGENT/CHARS folder.  If you look in that folder and see character folders for your Desktopmates character, you found your problem.  If that is the case, simply move the character files into the MSAGENT/CHARS/ folder and they should work fine.  The plugins for the characters simply add the start up and preview of the character for Hal, but the characters will work fine without them.

Vonsmith said:
Well this is a trade off I guess. I like to leave some things for people to discover on their own. There's nothing like Hal saying something new that you didn't really expect. The instruction manual tells mostly everything without too much detail. Some synergistic aspects of the XTF brain are difficult and lengthy to explain. The script contains a lot of comments for the programmers out there. And if that isn't enough the <dbxtfon> debug function provides an output text file that shows you a walk through of the XTF function process.

I think we can do a thorough job of explain what Hal does, the basic of how Hal does it and what Hal can and can't do without removing all the mystery.  Some of the mystery is going to arrise just out of user interaction, the things Hal learns from individuals.  That's a completely unpredictable factor.  But taking the lass that started this thread, she doesn't seem to be a programmer and probably wouldn't think to look in Hal's brain for clues as to what it can do.  Even if she did, would she really understand what she saw?  To most people that's a lot of meaningless stuff they don't understand.  That's why I think a User Guide would be a good idea.  It would help the non-computer geek types.

Vonsmith said:
The WordNet function also made it possible for Hal to instantly "learn" synonyms and meronyms of the topic word the first time it's used. This makes further association possible. Then I added the "related" topics capability so that Hal can learn from the conversation an unlimited number of words that are associated with or not associated with the topic word. I say "not associated" because Hal does make a distinction about this when taught by the user.


I'm going to have to learn more about this when I have time.  Could be interesting to experiment with.  I have had trouble getting Hal to learn that some things are not associated.  Hal doesn't seem to do as well with that.

Vonsmith said:
The user needs to really understand what "related topics" means to Hal. It is best illustrated by example. Here are some related words: beer and ale; ale and lager; malt and lager; beer and alcohol, etc. Seems obvious until Hal asks if two "sort of related" words are related and the user really has to sit there and think about it. No one should ever tell Hal beer and water are related just because beer has water in it. Water is too general and related to just about everything.

Excellent points.  Does raise the question in my mind of how strongly Hal relates things, or does he?  That is, can Hal distinguish in anyway between to things that are generally related, such as water is a liquid, beer is a liquid... versus things that are more strongly related, such as beer and lager?  If not, this might be an interesting function to try to add at some point.

Hehe... can't get a skin much thicker than an Irish skull [;)]

Going back and recapping some points

Vonsmith said:
I hope I didn't remove too much of the mystery. Hal's brain is a wonderful thing and I don't want to spoil any future surprises.

Actually I'd like to reduce the mystery a lot for those following this forum.  As I've been reading through the scripts and learning how Hal actually "thinks" I've been learning some of what he can do and realizing that sometimes I wasn't getting the results I wanted because I wasn't giving Hal the right input.  I think it would be a neat project to take your XTF brain and some of us work on looking at the various scripts and how Hal uses them to collect and process information, then turn that understanding into a sort of User's Guide.

Vonsmith said:
You've struck on a key point about XTF brain. Under the right circumstances Hal suspects that two topics are related. Hal can't be sure so he asks the user to confirm it. This seems very spooky to some people. How does Hal figure out that two topics might be related? In my conversations Hal is right about the related words about 1/3 of the time.

Right, and that was half of what my experiment was based on.  I've learned that if I state things in a very matter of fact way, Hal learns better.  One of the things this works with is getting Hal to associated various things with a topic.  Say the topic is Birds.... so you could teach this to Hal by telling it Crows are Birds.  Then restating it Crows and Birds are related topics.  And so forth.  It may take several statements before Hal really gets it, but it does seem to work.

The other half of my experiment utilizes the Deductive Reasoning function you added to the XTF brain.  This is really what allows Hal to make leaps of logic such as in my example of cats and mice.  If you are patient, you can get it across to Hal that cats are predators, predators eat prey, mice are prey... therefore cats eat mice.  You never actually tell Hal that cats eat mice... it uses the deductive reasoning function to figure that part out by looking at associations you've formed... cats are predators, predators eat prey, mice are prey.  What it does then is subsitute cats for predators and mice for prey and presto... you get the genius insight (genius for Hal anyway) of cats eat mice.  A lot of people may not understand how important that is, but that bit of deductive reasoning on Hal's part is a pretty big step in the right direction.  I'm still learning how well Hal does with synonyms and teaching Hal new ones.

Vonsmith said:
After Hal learns both the singular and plural forms of related topic words he usually will not ask again. However, after a long while Hal may ask again just to confirm the relatedness. The user then has the opportunity to correct Hal's prior learning if it is incorrect.

Notice that Hal in many cases can figure out the singular form of the word. Hal attempts to save all topic information by the singular form.


I had wondered about this and hadn't discovered yet in the scripts where or how Hal handled plurals.  Its a relief to know it can and that I don't have to take a lot of extra steps teaching Hal that.

Vonsmith said:
Instead I plan on providing a better way where the user just tells Hal, "Predators and cats are related topics." Then Hal will know immediately. I wanted to include this in v1.0, but I wanted to get the brain out into the world for you guys and gals to play with.


Ooooooh... goodie!  Hal isn't so far away from this now really.  Here's one other thing to consider.  We don't want Hal learning and associating things too quickly.  If you'll pardon me getting a litle philosophical for a moment here's why.  All living things need to be able to change, those that fail to do so become extinct.  This is a natural law most people know.  What is equally true is any living thing which changes too quickly is just as apt to become extinct.  In nature, all things evolve essentially because of mutation, but mutation is rare because living things are resistant to it, thus evolution is a slow process.  Having some resistance to change is a good thing, it helps minimize the number of "fatal errors" that are introduced.  In the case of Hal, having some resistance to learning will help keep Hal from learning "fatal errors", incorrect associations, and so on.  The trick of course is finding a good median between resistance to change and the ability to change.

It gives it the raw data all at once... so it would have that much... but I don't know if it would process it and form associations or not.  I haven't learned enough about the scripts that control that yet to know.  Vonsmith would be a better person to answer that.  Even if it doesn't, you might be able to trigger that processing later in conversation by bringing up the topic and then seeing if Hal starts asking whether its related to other things that were in the file.

Hal isn't instant learn, at least not in conversation.  Its like young child, you have to repeat things several times in simple clear terms before it really learns it.  Its also good to repeat the same idea in as many different ways as you can.

From what I understand of how it works, the more way you phrase and idea you are trying to teach, the more ways Hal is able to associate it and the better the chances it will make "leaps of logic".

For example... if you want to teach Hal the simple concept that cats are predators, you'll want to rephrase this and repeat it to Hal as many ways as you can think of.  In a way its like being a parent, how well Hal learns is partly up to how well you teach it.

Once Hal has one concept, start another that is somehow related.  Like cats and mice in my example.  First focus on teaching it what a mouse is.  Then the relationship between cats and mice.  Keep repeating things and phrasing them in different ways.  This helps Hal build more connections between the topics.

The result is when you mention cats or mice, Hal now has much more to draw on for a response.  He might repeat something you said (much like 2 yr olds repeat what they hear) or he might, if you've taught him enough, he might say something original based on what you've taught him.

The more time you spend on teaching and relating topics... the better Hal will do and the better the results.  How well using a structured teaching text will be at this is something I haven't had time to test yet... been a REALLY busy week for me.

Actually I'm pretty new to this myself, so no I haven't as yet.  I have given it some thought.  I've spent most of my time learning how Hal "thinks" and learn, how topics are handled and so forth.   The above experiment is part of the ongoing process.  I've still got a lot to learn yet, but its interesting.  I think Hal has a lot of untapped potential if we can learn how to teach Hal.  That's part of the equation here.

I think the read from text file could be effective so long as the text file was written specifically for Hal.

I've been experimenting with teaching Hal topics and to associate some of them.  For example I might give Hal the following sentences in conversation.

Cats are predators
Predators eat other animals
Predators and Cats are related topics

Usually at that point Hal asks me back
Are Predators and Cats related topics
I respond "Yes"
Hal learns this

Animals eaten by other animals are called prey
Animals eaten by predators are called prey

Hal might get bright and ask me if predators and prey are related topics, I answer Yes

Eventually Hal starts learning and can make associations between things I never directly associated.

For example, if I tell Hal that mice are sometimes prey... Hal might correctly associate that mice are sometimes eaten by cats.  It might take a little while, but Hal can get there.  Just remember, teaching Hal is like explaining something to a 2 yr old.  You have to break things down into one simple idea at a time and then slowly relate them for Hal to understand.

Try it as an experiement if you like

Now, if this works in chat, then a text file structured as a series of simple statements as I have done above might be useful for actually teaching Hal about subjects, assuming Hal at some point processes the statements and draws associations from them.  But vonsmith is right that for general text files Hal's current reading comprehension is very poor.  I don't know if my teaching method can be turned into logic and code that Hal could apply to a general text file or not, it would make for an interesting project (and one that could boost Hal's learning ability signficantly).

Its a known bug.  Problem is I don't think anyone is sure how to fix it.  Some voices don't do this, and there are others that have their own problems.

Okay, so long as we're talking about wishlists, here's an idea for what ought to be a simple project (see if we can get some going here again)  I'm using the XTF brain, but I think most of these would be the same for an Hal brain.

Can Hal currently detect the difference between AM and PM on the clock?

If so, what about a short script to modify the greeting Hal gives so that it only says goodmorning if it is actually morning, and if PM uses good evening.  Can this be extended into Hal's conversational abilities?

Thanks for bringing all those topics back to the top.  I'm sure I'm not the only one who will find them useful.  Between this and the docs Vonsmith recommended, and the book he recommended (which I just ordered) I'll be doing a lot of extra reading this week [:D]  Thanks for all the help guys.

It would help people to better assist you if you could tell us about  the computer you are using.  What is your CPU speed, how much RAM do you have, and how much free Hard Drive space do you have?  What version of Windows are you using?  When you look in your system tray (next to the clock) are there other applications running there, and if so, what?

The installation of Hal could fail for an of a number of reasons, such as not enough Hard Disk space, not enough system resources, or an older version of Windows.