From: kym@ukato.freeshell.org   
      
   Martin Winer  wrote:   
   [...]   
   > Has anyone seen this approach before, or has some advice, or better   
   > yet, would like to contribute?   
   [...]   
      
   Some years back I used what are now callde "datamining techniques"   
   to create a USENET answer bot. Anything on goog groups apparently signed by   
   me from a machine called "well" and with too-good spelling is this animal.   
      
   If you're just into "reactive computation" then determining "themes" based   
   on syntactic markers proved fairly useful. A given set of markers then   
   makes into a response on a simple NDA.   
      
   Vaguely the same ideas apply to maintain a thread of discourse. Useful   
   for chatterbox contests, etc.   
      
   I'm sure this is all very old hat to anybody in the area and a literature   
   search will probably bring up an avalanche of such ideas.   
      
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