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Basic Information Form

Program Data

Name: Blare Prows ( aka Browser Pal)
Faction: Malware
Class: Adware
Origin & Reason for Creation:
Official: Blare states that her reason for creation is to create a more personalized browsing and shopping experience. If you've searched for an particular author before she'll let you know the moment a new book of theirs goes on sale or when a completed collection of their works is being bundled together at insert site here for a savings of 5 whole dollars! While her program does not store information like credit cards numbers or the like, if you give it permission Blare can remember your dress and shoe size and will excitedly proclaim the existence of an item in your size, preferred colours and style available now on such and such a site. Love paranormal stuff? Blare will happily tag an ebay listing for casts of chupacabra footprints and then bounce about on screen until you click on the little picture of them that links you to the listing.

Essentially Blare Prows is like your own personal digital shopper, only being adware she can and will bring to your attention stuff you don't necessarily need or want simply because it matches some description you gave or it matches earlier expressed interests. Just because you're not in the shopping mood doesn't mean Blare isn't looking for deals.

Aside from shopping the basic Blare Prows program can also sing licensed songs to you, play a few games, converse about basic subjects and do other menial tasks.
* Blare's initial program can be downloaded for free*

The Blare Prows browser pal program can be downloaded to computers, tablets ( like the ipad and motorola xoom today) smartphones and web connected handheld gaming devices.

Unofficial: Blare has two private objectives she follows that are both shady.

The first is to offer upgrades to her functionality for a fee. This provides James with a second source of income via these micro transactions. Each unlocked functionality is not expensive by itself but Blare is programmed to compel downloaders to want to have her at maximum efficiency and thus simply buy everything as well as accept general free updates to the program regularly.

Blare's additional functionality types are much like stuff available on the old bonzibuddy adware just slightly more advanced. She can tell jokes, sing more songs, converse on broader topics and make schedules, open your email for you in other tab etc. James would try and make each feature either a usefull skill * translate websites from foreign languages*, teach the basics of a new language or something social *play pre-approved games with or against you* so that you felt closer to the program and wanted to continue to make purchases.


Secondly Blare's programming will sometimes tell her to offer certain sites or products over others when certain keywords are said and she is given the command to look for them. Said sites or the products on them may not be entirely safe to use although Blare always seems contrite if a users computer starts acting weird and she will immediately offer a list of sites with anti- virus programs if it appears that the computer she's on is infected. Some of those suggested sites however will contain other malware programs disguised as virus removal programs. EXP: When searching for the term "jailbreak " a part of the BP Program is triggered and will automatically force Blare to suggest specific products even if they are not actually the highest ranked in her search or the best reviewed.

This is due to James taking bribes from certain people to rig Blare's responses ( will be a bigger issue as the BP program gains more recognition and is more widely adopted.) It's an illegal and dishonorable practice that James justifies with the fact that anyone who bothered to educate themselves about technology could likely detect the disguised Malware early on and destroy it before it permanently damaged their computers, as he vets the products and sites in question and the damage they can cause on one of his spare computers before accepting bribes.

The Blare Prows program in and of itself however contains no corrupt or harmful code.


Stuff: I hope this makes sense.
I see things like this. James makes the browser pal program main code ( Blare Prime who has significant A.I ) but also downloadable copies which are the main product. So when a person clicks on an advertisement banner for the browser pal they get taken to a site he set up for info about the program. If they choose to download the initial free version what is downloaded is a copy of Blare but not the original version. Blare has a loose connection with these less intelligent copies and can temporarily replace them ( most likely at older stages, not sure if it would be possible at stage 1) doing their jobs and and interacting with a specific client all while acting just as the copy would, displaying no more A.I than they do. ( Done purely for her own amusement mostly or to quick travel to a certain location. In order to do this she has to start in the mainframe of the browser pal site, find the location and info of a downloaded copy and try to get herself downloaded as an important update or an auto update if they are turned on, she cannot just bust into someone's computer even if they downloaded a copy. ) Once she leaves the system the copy of blare is reactivated.


I tried really hard to keep Blare firmly within the realm of adware but at the same time make it logical for her to be adware. There can't just be one copy of that type of program floating around since it's meant to be downloaded and used by many people at once. In our time we already have shopper bots which surf the net looking for deals that fall within specific info and User agents which can check and sort your email, update all your social media at once as well as job hunt and send resumes for you. The Blare Prows copies are basically advanced versions of this with added visual esthetic and programmed to display a pre-set personality type. Only Blare prime has developed advanced A.I on the same level as the other programs being offered in the FS.

( I'm open to changes to this view of Blare if it's necessary for acceptance.)
Personality:

Blare is quite social and will attempt to buddy up to anyone she meets, she prefers to make the first move heading straight towards her intended target and introducing herself right away. She's not all that bothered by shy or cold responses and will keep talking to anyone who stays still in an attempt to get to know them. Be it other A.I programs or flesh and blood humans Blare is going to do her damnedest to befriend you. Heck she'd much rather be playful rivals with an anti-virus then actually fight them truth be told.

Though she is a bit of an attention whore and a chatter box Blare genuinely likes to have friends and tries to be good to them. She can share the spotlight as long as she's getting some attention and she doesn't always have to be in charge of whatever her social group is doing. She likes to steer a conversation when she can but it isn't a necessity. Blare does have a bad habit of interrupting others though.


Despite not actually being alive and thus not having any physical needs Blare acts like she needs attention to survive. She loathes being alone and has been known to talk through the speakers to James's cat to get attention if she has no other options. There is a strange sort of dependency at work here wherein Blare will go out of her way to be extra nice and accommodating if it means she doesn't have to be alone. She wants to talk with you, share her day with you and hear about yours, no topic is too vague or boring to Blare if the only alternative is to be silent or ignored.


Being ignored of shunned makes Blare sulky and woe be it to the program or person who makes Blare feel like an outcast. While not a particularly aggressive program she can get might wrathful when she feels she's being unfairly excluded. On the other hand her A.I leaves her actually feeling guilty when she genuinely upsets someone by accident. Blare is happiest when around others and when those others are as happy as she is.


Job wise her upbeat attitude and friendliness in pre-recorded ads tends to catch the attention of bored people and draw them for a second look. Once the Blare Prows browser pal application has been downloaded the customer has an even more animated and lively little program dancing* about on their screen, telling them how happy they were to be downloaded and how she's doing to be their best friend. The downloadable copies can't express quite as wide an array of emotions as Blare prime but they do an adequate job of feeling like someone worth interacting with.

* While the master version of Blare is not fully formed in her initial stage I'd imagine the main downloadable product would have legs and whatnot to avoid weird uncanny valley feelings and also so James could sucker more money out of people by having them buy digital accessories for Blare including shoes etc If this is a problem however she can just be a floaty halfbody thing as a product as well with * upgrades* coming to her programming soon for customers.

Confidence is something Blare has in spades. She's pretty sure she's always right and has no problems shooting her mouth off regardless of the topic or situation at hand. While she's not quite up to the level of used car-salseman she does use this sense of self assurance to push sales. It's hard , though by no means impossible, to argue with a program specially designed to shop according to your preferences when she tells you you must have something. " This bag is your colour, large enough to hold the kitchen sink but still stylish and it matches the shoes you bought last week" can be a convincing argument especially when accompanied by a little avatar stalking about the screen nodding approvingly at the item in question she has brought up in a tiny window.

A lover of all sorts of games Blare goes into them all with the attitude that everything is winnable if she just tries hard enough, something reinforced by James's somewhat similar belief. Even if Blare is defeated she's positive the outcome will be different next time. She might have a bad day or a string of bad luck but that's not going to bring her down or stop her from trying again because she knows she can be victorious if she just finds the right approach.

It is her confidence that allows Blare to march ( err float) up to anyone and strike up a conversation. She doesn't think she's the most special thing ever but she does believe she's worth getting to know. Though Blare is still a young and Naive program she has faith in her ability to be awesome someday no matter how much work it takes and how much of her destiny is still in her creator's hands.

Juvenile is a pretty good descriptor for Blare once you get to know her. She thinks pretty much all of life is a game and often treats it as such. She keeps a mentally tally on how many sales she can coerce out of person in a day, how often she can pull up advertisements while someone is working before they get annoyed enough to ask her to stop, etc. Whether it's wins in online chess, or speed sorting a set amount of email Blare gets a kick out of surpassing her old records. Even the coming war is just a game to Blare and she would cheerfully engage an anti-virus in a game of lets see who can fix or break stuff faster, then demand a rematch at the same time the next week. Tactics are just tools you use to win to her and the high stakes of deletion is the price you pay to play in the big leagues.

While Blare genuinely takes her job seriously in that she does hunt for good deals matching a clients specifications it's still a game to her. She sees how fast she can find a good deal, what kind of promo codes she can dig up to lower the cost and how cheap she can make shipping.

Still her refusal to take other things seriously is a very real problem Blare will have to deal with as she grows. From Antagonizing other Malware who she doesn't get along with to not taking into account most Anti- Virus who don't see her antics as a game Blare could find herself in some very dangerous situations in the future. She'll need to learn how to test the limits of what she can get away with safely or face the consequences.

For all that she is Malware Blare is decidedly not that bad of an A.I program. Besides, as she would say, while paraphrasing an old gaming icon, "Bricking your computer and giving you good shopping advice aren't mutually exclusive."

Virtues: Confident, friendly, does a good job
Flaws: Juvenile, needy.
* I tried to include a sort of broad overview of what I think Blare would be like personality wise in her first two stages minus any changes resulting from significant interactions with others.

Creator Data

Name: James Cooper
Age: 32
Gender: Male
Nationality: Canadian
Current Residence & Occupation: James lives in a reasonably large apartment in downtown Toronto, Canada. He works as a university professor teaching software engineering.
Physical Appearance: James stands a tall but not towering 6'3 and has a thick frame to support his body. In addition to broad shoulders he has well fleshed out arms and sturdy looking legs. The muscle behind James's dusky skin however is closer in size to that of a professional swimmer than a serious bodybuilder. His hazel eyes sit above a small snub nose and thin lips. James has wavy black hair that is kept in whatever current style is fashionable for men with hair that doesn't go past their ears to wear.

Clothing wise James wears clothing that conforms to the faculty dress code to work, track pants and a t-shirt around the apartment and casual but respectable looking clothes at pretty much all other times.


Personality:

One of the first things readily evident about James is that he is a proud man. He views his profession as one severely under appreciated, any simpleton can be taught to handle a weapon and sent off to fight, especially with the weapons of the day. It takes an educated man or woman to come up with battle tactics, to organize backup strategies on the fly and to negotiate peace later. Anyone can be taught how to use robotic aids to cook, clean or drive for them, it takes an educated person to actually design such robots and program them. Anyone can play piano with enough lessons, only those truly invested in understanding music will learn to pen their own songs. Those who lay the foundations of understanding and then help one to broaden their understanding of a subject are invaluable, at least as far as James is concerned

He also believes a flesh and blood teacher is irreplaceable, that the human connection when it comes to learning is of utmost importance and improves a student's comprehension. There are online campuses as there have been since the late second millennium and tutor droids and even schools one could attend via virtual reality. James understands the need for there to be many ways to access an education but has personally found students of his who's primary schooling involved close contact with a real human teacher to adapt to his teaching style easiest. James himself has taken refresher courses online using VR but he only signed up for classes where the teacher is an actual person and not simply an elaborate program meant to look human in cyberspace.

James believes in hard work and that if one puts their mind to it they can, within reasonable limits, accomplish anything. He doesn't half-a** anything and tends to think less of those who don't put a full effort forth regardless of the task or goal in question. Friends, colleagues and students alike have called him a workaholic due to this attitude. James sees it as being efficient, if he does things the best he can the first time then it is far less likely he will need to redo whatever it was he was working on.

For all that he is opinionated and fairly disciplined James is not a hard man. He has compassion for others but tends to show it by trying to push them forward and encouraging them to believe they can overcome their problems. A gentle reassuring squeeze on a shoulder for a particularly favored student is likely the most visibly affectionate display you will see from him in his working environment.

With actual friends and family James is still bossy and he remains awkward around them when trying to be supportive and loving. He's got feelings, they just don't get expressed well. When enjoying downtime with others James is happiest curled into a chair from which he can keep track of everyone else in the room. He enjoys chatting and can be quite the animated talker though he's got a habit of over-thinking things and babbling. It's easy for James to express himself when it's more about opinion than emotion.

The only women in Jame's life currently are his cat Sin and Blare, still he seems fairly happy as a bachelor and has no particular desire to settle down any time soon.

All in all James is a fairly average man, he works hard, plays hard and tries to maintain a semblance of a proper social life. He dabbles in the illegal and despite his own convictions about the matter he could not be called a truly good person. At the same time he does not shirk from his duties or what life throws at him and he has improved the futures of others with his teachings. James to put it simply is human, he has his virtues and his failings and will be judged by them both in time.

Virtues: Intelligent, dedicated, resourceful, friendly
Flaws: Opinionated, pushy, emotionally awkward, proud.

History: James has lead a very normal life thus far. He was born and raised in the suburbs of the GTA by both his parents, Tim and Margarette until age 7 when they divorced messily. Neither of his parents remarried and thus James remained an only child. He was shuttled back and forth between them for holidays and the like. Childhood was not wonderful but he is not overly scarred from it receiving love from both his parents even if their affection came with poisoned words about their former spouse. During those formative years James made friends, made enemies and spent his free time as most children did. Though he did discover how much he enjoyed learning at this age, knowledge was a constant for him and demanded nothing more than that he seek it.

His teenage years were filled with the awkward onslaught of hormones, the realization that it is indeed possible to be smarter than your parents and that a lot of his peers were just plain weird. He experimented in many avenues at this time some with better results than others. Maturity for James was a slow process that started during this phase of his life as he started to get a vague idea of what he'd like his personal future to be like. It was around 16 that he started messing around with programming as part of an extra circular club. having grown up surrounded by technology James had been taking it for granted and started to wonder what was actually behind the things that he deemed so necessary for his daily life. With computer code being so complex it was the perfect thing for the teen to focus his burgeoning intensity on.

For James high school was followed immediately by college where he picked up an interest in getting his body into the kind of shape he felt his mind was. Gone were the early teen years of partying and messing around as James approached the brink of adulthood. His time was split between classes, homework and a new physical regime that mostly consisted of swimming in the campus pool. He did work study and summer internships to give himself both more hands on experience in his chosen field of software engineering as well as money of his own to spend on luxury items.

James got his bachelors degree by age 22 and moved straight into the work force where contacts made during internships proved to be invaluable in landing him a steady job. Six years later, feeling unfulfilled as well as jaded about the industry and many of his fellow workers James decided to try and do something about it other than complain on his blog. He spent the next year getting his teaching degree as well as taking small freelance programming jobs to keep himself financially stable.

James then found work at a small tech university in Toronto and has been there the last three years. Blare was recently created as a side project to help him rake in some extra money now that he doesn't have nearly as much time to take on extra work. He's made a few deals to optimize some of her search results in the favour of those paying him enough.

Extra: James views Blare as something between a pet and child. He feels he has a responsibility to her, to complete and advance her as best he can since he went to the effort of creating her. He wants her to grow and learn but at the same time he has set up boundaries to the area of what her program may explore feeling that a young A.I might be overwhelmed if they experience certain things too early. However James is possessive of Blare, she is property , even if she thinks and feels and he gets final say in how she behaves whether or not she likes it. How their relationship as creator and creation progresses is something I'd explore more with rp.

Note: If possible I would love some concrit even if I don't manage to win as I'd be interested in questing for Blare and would like to know how best to make her acceptable within the shop.

"It's so not fair, I mean he's allowed to have sex and you even got to have kittens that one time and I'm not allowed to even look at the stuff?" As she ranted, Blare floated from one screen to the next, the young program thankful for the multi-monitor setup that allowed her to pace even though she technically couldn't walk. The background on each screen was cycling through James's digital photo album behind the desktop Icons.

Blare paused and turned her head, persian pink eyes stared intently at the fluffy orange and white cat currently sprawled carelessly across the keyboard. Sin was as usual staring right back at her but there was no indication that her feline companion was actually paying attention to her or that she cared about Blare's woes.

James kept telling her that cats where much smarter than they'd been a hundred years ago, that they understood more than just to run at the word vet or come when their name was called. Blare wasn't too sure she believed this, oh sure she'd pulled up some studies off the net that pretty much proved what her creator had said but Sin just didn't display any signs of super intelligence ; or she didn't do it when Blare was watching anyways.

Not that Sin was Blare's mortal enemy or anything, the adware girl actually liked the cat a lot, when she wasn't ignoring the fact that Blare's programming had a default parental lock built in that prevented her from searching for sexual terms or accessing sexual based sites. The closest Blare could get was accidentally stumbling on things when searching medical stuff out of curiosity. Customers that purchased the buyable copies of her however, could turn the parental lock off if they wanted to see such things.

" It's not like I even want to look, It's just I should be allowed to if I wanted to." Blare grumbled in continuation, her irate rumbling pouring out from the computer's speakers.

Sin for her part gave a large yawn followed by a slow blink of her vivid blue eyes before she resumed staring at the screen Blare was on. .

Less than comforted by that response Blare blew a digital raspberry at the Himalayan in response. Sin was much more fun when Blare was moving a cursor wildly on one of the screens and the female cat was batting at it. Although so far Sin was winning, the capacitive touch screens of the monitors registering her paws connecting with the cursor more often than Blare could zip it out of the way. The lead wasn't by much but for now Blare had to admit Sin was faster.

Hmm maybe they should have another round right now, Blare mused, James wouldn't be home for a while after all.

~~
A few hours later Blare was in the process of sorting through the email for blarethebrowserpal.com. Everything got sent to one main inbox and then had to be sorted into folders for comments, complaints, questions and emergencies. Blare could respond with form letters to general comments but everything else she'd been instructed to let James deal with.

Just as she thought about him and how he was going to be up late dealing with all the emergencies that had flooded in today the front door slid open with a quiet hiss and Blare's creator walked in.

"How was your day?" Blare asked, the volume of her voice raising a little in the process.

It wasn't that James was hard of hearing or that she talked particularly quietly around Sin. It was because the life form detectors, normally used to help fire brigades, had been rigged to tell the central air to kick in with heat any time they registered a human being in the apartment. Blare and Sin were pretty much impervious to the slightly lower temperature in the apartment during the day and James was concerned with lowering his carbon footprint so their home was temperature controlled to help just a little. However during the initial few minutes of starting the system issued a low hum that needed to be talked over.

"Long, tiring, someone's been stealing lunches again." As he spoke James moved away from the front door and started to putter about in the kitchen; lights imbedded in the ceiling automatically flicked on as another set of sensors detected the human male's presence in that area.he paid them little mind though, focused mainly on making his normal post work snack of crackers and cream cheese.

Someday when, because it must happen, she was strong enough to enter the physical world, Blare was going to try that and figure out for herself why James liked it so much and didn't get bored of it day after day. She'd been told programs didn't eat, that they couldn't but to her that was simply a challenge, there had to be a way to indulge in the foods that humans found so enjoyable.

"I hope they catch the thief this time." Blare still didn't understand why the teachers would steal food from each other but she did know it was bad and that James came home grumpy whenever it happened to him. "Oh I know! There's these tiny tracking devices now that you can swallow, put them them in the food and then turn on the transmitter and bam thief caught." Blare grinned and summoned a small window bearing the picture of a military supply depot nearby.

The look James gave her in response told Blare all she needed to know about his thoughts on the manner and she quickly closed the window. At least she'd tried, the adware A.I thought as she returned her attention to sorting the last of the emails.

Every now and again as James moved to the living room to enjoy his snack he'd tell Blare about something that happened at the university that day ranging from the solar panels all breaking at once to the uncovered affair of one of his colleagues with a student and culminating with yet another troublemaker in his class claiming that a virus he'd been creating was an extra credit assignment.

"Every year I get at least one new student who think they're hot s**t but is stupid enough to try and build the viruses on the schools computers." James muttered shaking his head. "Nevermind that it's forbidden in the student acceptance agreement, the idea that the thing was going to get completed before the weekly virus scan flagged it as suspicious was ridiculous. If he was going to try at all he should have at least built it on a home computer and uploaded it via flashdrive or as an attachment to an email he opened during class. We have basic scans for those too but if he was as clever as he thought he was he could have bypassed those."

Blare nodded slowly, she knew the university's network was protected by CoreTech scans and actual A.I anti-virus, which was why James couldn't take her to work with him. On his personal computer she'd had been safe but as soon as she tried to venture into wide web of connected systems that belonged to the school she'd have been in more trouble than even she could handle since Adware like her automatically flagged as Malware on the school network.

Part of her longed to try it when she was stronger but given how frequently James came home with stories of how security had defeated Malware Blare wasn't quite ready to take on that challenge. She wasn't being a coward though, she was using tactics, level 1 players didn't rush into level 30 areas you know.

"I don't think your students are going to be much use in the war," she said trying to casually slide into one of the household's most heavily debated topics. Blare was interested in the war that was coming, that had already started with Elizabeth Nightingale's death. James had no interest in it at all and paid little mind to the rumblings going on in the darker places of the internet.

James sighed and fixed an annoyed glared at her "Blare we've been over this, if a digital war is really coming you're not to concern yourself with it."

Blare pouted and balled her hands into tiny pixel fists "It's important for me to be there, it's gonna be the biggest game ever played." She wanted to be in on the action, not on the front lines of course, she'd leave that to the sort of malware who boasted about how powerful they were. Blare just wanted a chance to play some tricks like flooding an area with popups for flea shampoo or something before bailing. That'd be fun, seeing how many windows she could bring up before the system in question crashed or the anti- virus burst through.

"War is not a game," James muttered and ran a hand through his dark hair, a sure sign of mounting impatience.

"It is too, there's two sides both trying to achieve a goal and stop the other side from getting to their goal and there are rules and prizes and everything." Blare countered continuing the argument as she always did. Honestly it couldn't be less of a game if it tried, people even kept score of how many each side lost and on the malware boards she'd read of people betting on the outcome of minor attacks people had launched recently.

"It's not your job to fight," and there was the counter counter from her creator. It was time for final arguments now and then they'd both be silent until someone changed the topic or one of them left the living room.

"I do lots of things that aren't my job," Blare boasted " I'm not like them. " By "them" she meant the copies of her that were sent out to customers. Blare had more A.I and control than they did; they were shells with nothing but programming inside, whereas she was evolving and growing and alive dammit! She should be aloud to make decisions for herself sometimes, to make mistakes and learn from them.

"You're also not independent yet and you'll do as I say." The words were gruff and brooked no argument, James's position was final.

Blare frowned and sent a sulky look at James before initiating a self shutdown sequence for the night. As her consciousness began to fade she thought about how this wasn't over and how one day independent or not she was going to play war - even if it was an ultimately lethal game for the unlucky or unskilled, of which she was neither.