Sorry, I really should of posted this earlier, but I'm drunk again.

I managed to get quite a lot of Mortimer's bot to compile and run by commenting parts out and planting links in various places. It's very Usenet-specific, and some of it expects to be run on an NNTP server: do such things even exist nowadays?

Anyways, to precis a long and tbh exhausting session (pasted from another window):

Script started on Fri Oct  3 23:20:55 2014
daisy% gdmc^Gore
[X ^ P: starting gdmcore 6.4]

checking environment... passed.
checking databases... not found.

Database open failed.
daisy% gdmcore blah
unrecognised operation, -h for help

So, help is available. What it doesn't mention is that when it says "checking environment", it's actually adding stuff to your .bash_profile, which doesn't work and logs you out instead.

daisy% gdmcore ESC[K-h
usage: gdmcore -h | [-vnixec] [bot botargs]
               -v = verbose
               -n = dry run
               -i = interactive
               -x = don't open databases
               -e = extended processing (use with care)
               -c = single shot command
               -h = this helpful message

This is gdmcore V6.4, another fine product from XenoPsyche, Inc.

Pretty obvious what I tried next.

daisy% gdmcore -x
[X ^ P: starting gdmcore 6.4]

checking environment... passed.
database checking disabled.
checking authorisation... not authorised!

enter service key: ^C
daisy% exit

Script done on Fri Oct  3 23:21:18 2014
daisy%

I suppose I have no idea what to do with this. Any suggestions welcome.