Lonnie Knows Everything

You know, I’m in some way a god father of these chat bots you find now days because I was one of the originators of the chatter bot/artificial intelligent things you find out there.

I started my ICQ bot in the 90s, it worked on AIM and was later crudely adapted to Yahoo and then later, many more protocols… but in my time that I was actively involved I was legally threatened by AOL who was for some reason really butt heart by what i was doing, fucking panzies if you ask me…  At any rate, I had my day in the spot light .. I was interviewed by people around the globe andwas in print in some publication out in Russia.. I wish I could get my hand on a copy! ( think of me folks! ) … I was also mentioned, inaccurately .. in botspot .. Perhaps it was all this attention I had gathered that got the AOL lawers on my ass… I fought them for two years and eventually lost, mostly out of fear… but I’d love to take them on again :) … I doubt they’d challenge me these days given the landscape shifts..

ANYWAY … my former site was icqbot.net which googling can land you some fun responses, but yes … now days AOL owns that name and they had to pay me a pretty penny for it ..  a pretty $50 ( lame )

During that time a fledgling project called GAIM was starting up and AOL aimed their guns at the author, he wrote me for advice and I gave him some suggestions on how to legally position himself based on my experience, I had of course failed.. but I learned a lot in my time.. in the end the GAIM project became the Pidgin project ..

I let my AI project die, in the public eye .. but I’ve kept the home fires burning.. I’ve been working on maintaining the engine ove the last several years… The “botspot”article claimed i was using the eliza engine at a time I was not using that engine… it began that way briefly, but evolved into it’s own project that was adaptive.. I also had a version briefly that used the megahal version before AOL’s lawers hit..

Why do I write now? because I have never really talked about all this before.. and there’s so many projects out there now based on my work that it’s insane.. there are adbots and various other things that .. sadly, originated with me …I’m not proud of it, I’m not asking for money.. but if you want to know the history.. it begins here..:)

AND BY THE WAY – If you’re the author of Gaim.. now pidgin… you wrote me before asking for advice! write again, I have some ideas… and when I tried contacting via the pidgin page, the had no clue….. ciao people.