laugh machine

That depends on what are you thinking?

I personally don't care if the audience is fake or not. If the show is good then I can live with a laugh machine, and if it's crappy then even an audience laughing at everything won't save it.

That might be true. Lack of real/fake audience seems to hurts some shows that aren't just funny enough on their own. Happy Endings might be a good example here... it could really use a laugh track like HIMYM.

I can't remember which show it was i use to watch where the laught track was SOOOOO
obvious that it use to spoil the show for me.
I've never ever noticed the laugh track in tbbt so for that reason i'm out...
i mean for that reason i don't care if it's a laugh track but i would be very surprised if it was.

edit:
as for the picture it's 2 different audiences, the middle and left are the same audience  just ovelapping. maybe the right hand one is a different night 

I remember a while back i watched the un-aired pilot of TBBT (the one without Penny) and it didn't have any laughter (real or fake tracks) and I remember thinking this is so weird, I found myself preferring the laughter. I dunno if it was b/c I was so used it but it was eerie to hear the dead silence after a funny moment.

u r right i hadn't looked close enough, now i realized.

I was once at a late night show and once at Oprah Winfrey's

They have directors for the audience and actually people with signs for when to applause and when not. They even animate you to clap harder or slower - like an orchestra. It sort of kills the fun for the audience, but it's a unique experience.
They even do multiple takes if something was too wrong or a technical issue occured. Then you have to start like an extremely funny moment just happened. The same is for commercial breaks. There is of course just a small break but no funny moment, but when the show returns from the commercials you always have major applause, but nothing happened really - it's all an act

Actually, I don't really understand what Chuck Lorre's point is here.  The picture looks ridiculously fake.  It's looks like it's been thrown together by hashing together three odd looking photos.  So is he saying "yes, it's all as fake as this photo", or "this is our studio audience we record in front of, but I've made the photo look odd to be ironic" or what?

<Snip>

Yep.  I could of done something similar if I had the time or inclination!  Bit of an odd thing for a Lorre to have done, unless of course that was kind of his point.  If it was, it was entirely wasted on me.

There's got to be background laughter, it makes you start thinking about what they said. Like "oh.. hey thats funny", else I'd have to pay so much attention to what they are saying all the time, like someone telling a story.