Tom's theory

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by PheoniX_VII</i>
<br />Did he check my profile too ?<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The information publicly available to anyone (or anything) about you on this site can be seen by clicking on your username in front of any message you post. Obviously, spambots are now intelligent enough to use that information to make themselves appear "personable".

The "firebird" remark is not all that surprising. Phonetic spell checkers have been around for a few years now. And a spambot could be taught that many people use phonetic variations of common words in user names. -|Tom|-

Is it possible within this forum's software to restrict this AI to a single thread? That way, we can observe its behavior without all those Yoda-esque messages cluttering up the meaningful threads.

Otherwise we should just delete all of its posts.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by Astrodelugeologist</i>
<br />Is it possible within this forum's software to restrict this AI to a single thread? That way, we can observe its behavior without all those Yoda-esque messages cluttering up the meaningful threads.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">The spambot has already been banished.

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">Otherwise we should just delete all of its posts.<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">We are leaning in that direction. Are there any good reasons not to delete them all? -|Tom|-

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote">We are leaning in that direction. Are there any good reasons not to delete them all? -|Tom|-<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

I can see none, It´s posts are often wery long and just confusing. I say you go ahead and remove them.

RouseJohnny (RJ),

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"> I thought he was just some weird Dutch mathematician that acted a little differently and drank too much. <hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

This is my view on "Ed":

1) Dutch? Highly likely, since who would choose the name "Ed van der Meulen" unless you are familiar with Dutch names: the surnames containing "van" are much more common than the "van der" combination.

2) Mathematician? Don't think so. I'd like to think that well-educated mathematicians, of all people, surely need to know how to communicate their ideas.

3) Weird, or acted differently? Yes, "crapflooding" this board is a sign of weirdness.

4) Drank too much? Possibly, but hard to tell by reading his posts and with the inclusion of point 3.

I vote to not delete the posts of ed. They have some good ideas and if he is that smart maybe it is a good thing to either figure it out or leave the info for someone who is willing to work on this.