The return of Clippy! Microsoft says more about their digital assistant Cortana

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TaoPhoenix:
Isn't FlightSim not only a technical achievement... but an investment? Which is why it boggles me that they abandon the investment already made... not just from a technical perspective, but the sheer amount of data processed for the detail of the landscapes and such.
-wraith808 (February 12, 2015, 02:34 PM)
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Something went down, that's for sure! I never once heard an explanation from anybody (including the "mothership" herself) why they axed that gem. And not just axed it either. They completely buried it as well. Inventory completely pulled from retail channels. No legacy copy for "download sale only." No tombstone freebie release to the public like they did with Money. Dunno...it just makes no sense based on anything they officially told us. And the rumors about "what really happened" haven't made much sense either.

And that's too bad. FlightSim would have been all they needed to keep me (and a lot of other people) customers of Microsoft forever.
-40hz (February 12, 2015, 02:47 PM)
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Sometimes, with all of the cop shows going on, you'd want somehow for questions you always wanted answered to be crucial to some kind of terrorist sting bust. "We TRIED To keep the secret, but then it was found out that evil guys used it!"

MS does some strange things sometimes. Or a lot of times, in the music businesses.

Clippy was annoying, but to my knowledge it at least was "innocently annoying". Now everything that companies do has an ominous tone of collecting and doing things with info.

>:(

app103:
Translated into English, that means that the primary function of Cortana (as with Siri and Google Now) is to collect personal information about you to sell your profile to marketers.
-xtabber (February 12, 2015, 12:22 PM)
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Once upon a time there was a notorious purple monkey that you could talk to. And because he did that, they called him spyware. His existence was just one of many cases that lead to the the creation and need for anti-spyware applications.

Now we have a new breed of spyware, that for some twisted corporate political reason, it is considered acceptable when they do the same as the old spyware, and the anti-spyware applications do not and will not detect and offer to remove them.

Personally, I do not see the difference between the Cortana, Siri, and the purple monkey, except that the latter was a bit less advanced in its capabilities in both what it could do for the user, and in how much data it could collect about them.

So, what does that mean? It's ok when a large corporation creates software that spies on you and collects data for marketing purposes, but not ok when smaller companies create less advanced software, capable of collecting less info, for the same purpose?

app103:
So, what does that mean? It's ok when a large corporation creates software that spies on you and collects data for marketing purposes, but not ok when smaller companies create less advanced software, capable of collecting less info, for the same purpose?
-app103 (February 12, 2015, 04:15 PM)
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*cough* Java *cough*

It has been annoying me for a while that it can bundle the ask toolbar with it by default selected, and no one calls them on it...
-wraith808 (February 12, 2015, 04:45 PM)
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I am talking more about things like the Ask toolbar, itself. Why is that considered unacceptable malware/spyware/adware and things like Cortana, Siri, and Google Now are not? There was quite a few applications in the first generation of this type of software that were quite useful and users went out of their way to install, that collected data on it's users for marketing purposes (Go!Zilla, Flashget, Copernic Shopper, Gator, ZipUpTheWeb, WeatherBug, etc). Why is the new generation of big corporate spyware considered acceptable and not held up to the same standards as the old stuff was subjected to, and that stuff from smaller companies is still subjected to?

wraith808:
So, what does that mean? It's ok when a large corporation creates software that spies on you and collects data for marketing purposes, but not ok when smaller companies create less advanced software, capable of collecting less info, for the same purpose?
-app103 (February 12, 2015, 04:15 PM)
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*cough* Java *cough*

It has been annoying me for a while that it can bundle the ask toolbar with it by default selected, and no one calls them on it...
-wraith808 (February 12, 2015, 04:45 PM)
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I am talking more about things like the Ask toolbar, itself. Why is that considered unacceptable malware/spyware/adware and things like Cortana, Siri, and Google Now are not? There was quite a few applications in the first generation of this type of software that were quite useful and users went out of their way to install, that collected data on it's users for marketing purposes (Go!Zilla, Flashget, Copernic Shopper, Gator, ZipUpTheWeb, WeatherBug, etc). Why is the new generation of big corporate spyware considered acceptable and not held up to the same standards as the old stuff was subjected to, and that stuff from smaller companies is still subjected to?
-app103 (February 12, 2015, 06:16 PM)
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Well, yes, the ask toolbar is bad. But it is even worse in that it's being bundled with Java. Like all of these companies are in bed with each other to erode the consciousness of the average consumer to the point where this kind of thing is commonplace and accepted.

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