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The End Of The Paperclip
A number of people have noted the demise of the paperclip assistance in Microsoft Office has been confirmed - so please stop submitting the story. The C|Net story talks about how it's going to be part of the new advertising campaign and gives the web address. The idea behind the paper clip was good - The Economist had an interview recently with the guy who wrote the original using Bayesian algorithims. It was canned because it "didn't come up often enough" MS felt. We'll see how the new help system works, I suppose.
Bayesian Netowrks
Congratulations, YHBT by Microsoft.
obligitory lame slashdot ms joke -- bluescreen paperclip bob 640k RAM hahahahaha
im so witty
couldnt you find a post with something to SAY instead of just another stupid ms basher telling bad jokes.
i mean cmon guys, they arent even that funny!
has it ever occurred to any of you folks that lots of people have gotten good help from the paperclip. he actually CAN answer questions! try it sometimes.
i never could have gotten my job done without him, every time one of the office idiots calls me with questions about office, i just tell em to ask the paperclip and i can get back to work.
one thing youll never see on slashdot, intelligent comments on a ms story. you guys are so blinded in fear/rage at ms you dont even know what your talking about half the time.
if you guys want to campaign against a big evil company you can do a lot better than microsoft. how about NIKE, the company that made your shoes, did you know those shoes were made by a 12 year old working 100hrs a week in a sweatshop?
how about AOL/TW, these assholes have taken ms's acquisition strategies to the next level.
howbout the way doubleclick has turned all their banner ads into persistant popup ads.
microsoft may be nasty, but they arent the only ones, and they certainly arent the worst of the lot.
NO, this is NOT Flamebait.
Nor am I a 7 year old special education student. I'm a software developer and use IRIX as my primary platform.
The problem with clippie is not functionality, but presentation. The natural language processing is good for locating features that should be obvious, but are buried 7-8 menu levels deep--so the ability to to say "how do I turn off hanging indents" has value.
What makes you want to commit violence against clippie (besides the stupid animations) is the fact that it disrupts your regular workflow. The average computer user (whether experienced or novice) usually does not _read_ what the computer tells him. Clippie merely confuses the "luser" crowd annoys the rest. Reduce clippie to an unobtrusive textbox, keep the lightbulb, and people would use it...
You mean the new version of Office is made from corn syrup instead of sugar and hopefully nobody will notice? :D
http://www.vaxer.net/~jeeves/assistant.gif
--
A buddhist walks up to a hot dog stand and says ``Make me one with everything.''
Nice to see someone at MS has a sense of homour. It's actually a pretty funny web site overall, and the Clippy quotes and quips are and fairly amusing.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
Makes you wonder who exactly was supporting and pushing clippy. There is obvious and wide-spread dislike of this 'feature', with many people not using it and turning it off outright. Someone high up over there wanted clippy in, and that someone is either gone now, or has come up with this 'xp is so easy it doesn't need clippy' marketing scheme, and is probably seen as a genius about now.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
It's just whois data. It's MS marketing through and through, it's hosted on a superfast connection, hasn't been shut down yet... just look at the graphics, the copy, it's all perfect down to the pixel. If you think otherwise you're just being taken for a ride. And to quote the news.com article 'The campaign and a companion Web site...' where 'Web site' is linked to officeclippy.com. The site is profesionally designed, and is reminiscent of the varous movie 'grassroots fan' sites you see every so often.
"Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
This quote, in particular sounds like prime Onion material:
And, then the article goes to sum it up stating in effect that this is just a $30million marketing campaign about a changed default:
Oceana is at war with Eastasia. Oceana has always been at war with Eastasia.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!
Linux companies couldn't afford to hire him. Heh.
"We think Office has so many new features for making it easier to use that Clippy is no longer useful."
Since when have new Microsoft features made anything easier to use? Didn't I just read a review of XP which said that it wasn't intuitive to people used to previous Windows variants?
Actually when Office 97 was first released, this paperclip thing did seem like a good idea.
Microsoft does extensive in-house usability testing. They may have found that people unfamiliar with the product liked it, but beta testers did not. And unfortunately ignored beta testers.
In Office 2000 you could click it off permanently. With Office97 you had to delete a file from the harddrive.
"I only use ms products at work. i never learn how to play with them"
It really bugs me when people pretend to know how to support a product in a work environment, but yet can't be bothered to learn how to actually support it well. This isn't the type of employee I want working at my company.
There are many ways of automating the installation of Microsoft products, included scripted installs or imaging tools such as Ghost. Since this setting is probably a registry entry you could probably have a one time event run in a logon script, as well, etc.
Delete or rename the 'Actors' directory will prevent the paperclip or any of his buddies to come up.
I find it funny that in the middle of www.officeclippy.com's movie, IE 5.5 crashed. Is this a sign of things to come? :)
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
"Electric Relaxation" - ATCQ
- Bwana
Just a few months ago, one of the Microsoft GUI guy (the Clippy's creator no less!) came to my universify and gave a talk about how important the office assistant is to newbies. And now they are killing it? Hmmm.... I guess, just like MS Bob, the Clippy is "ahead of its time".
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Yousa seeming to writes a busy-ness wetter. Yousa needing me to:
- tripping and falling all overyer screen?
- wantings to auto-spellcheck?
Oh, I'm so going to hell now.
So, if it learns as it goes, if I tell it to go fuck itself enough times, it will? Or will it get pissed and start lying and giving false info? =)
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Hey, maybe we can spin that into a new slogan for getting people to switch to Linux:
"LINUX: We don't even have unified copy and paste, let alone a stinkin' anthropomorphized paperclip"
Having now watched the movies, I'm starting to feel sorry for clippy. He's so eager and full of life, and yet based on that fact, he has to deal with all sorts of discrimination and even physical abuse.
Kind of like the Trix rabbit. There is absolutely *no reason* why those kids won't let him have Trix. "Trix are for kids?" What kind of excuse is that? It's blatant age and species-based discrimination. Does anyone remember the time they let kids vote if the Trix rabbit would get Trix, and kids sent in their votes, and the majority of the votes were in his favor? When he scooped up his first spoonful of Trix, the look of delight on his face; I thought it was a turning point, a veritable 19th amendment for rabbitkind. But then, a few months later, the Trix rabbit was back to being denied access to the Trix that he deserves as equally as you or I. I guess the commercial producers thought that keeping the little guy down was more important than the will of the people.
Well, I let it slide then, but I won't stand for it now. I demand Clippy's reinstatement in the Office suite.
TRIX ARE FOR EVERYONE! VIVA LA REVOLUTION!
Dude, just don't upgrade. It's not like the next version of office -- or any of the last 4 or 5 versions for that matter -- have really been necessary, or included any important features.
The enemies of Democracy are
I guess this t-shirt says it all.
http://theotherside.com/t-shirts/dtclippy.pl
It';s not being removed from the product. It's just going to be shut off by default. Hell, I like it. I think te problem with Office Assistant is that nobody knew what it was for. When I show regular end-users how you can "ask" it plain-English help questions and get a correct response most of the time, they usually decide they like Clippy after all.
Maybe a lot of pople still run MS office on 640x480 displays.
It's too bad that Microsoft is just letting this valuable technology go to waste. Maybe they could open clippy's source instead of just taking it off the market.
I went to a talk by a guy doing human--computer interfaces and he mentioned the paperclip and the other type of automatic help agents they used to supply.
He said one thing that really shows what the situation is with this: "Every time Microsoft Office is released, it is with a new help agent. This shows that not a single implementation they had actually made sense."
Now they kill the paperclip and for the next Office version they will kill the new one. Be sure of it.
Announcing, the replacement
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Yes, that goddamn paperclip is annoying on slow systems (anything short of 400MHz and 128MB of RAM).
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
This isn't a bad cricitism of the goddamn paperclip. Another problem is that the goddamn paperclip by default starts up whenever you do something to a document/spreadsheet/email, and is set up by default to start when you first open Outlook/Word/Excel/Access/etc.
Microsoft would have saved a lot of people a lot of frustration (and themselves a lot of flack for poor design) if they had put a button on the paperclip saying "GO AWAY" and another button that says "GO AWAY UNTIL I TELL YOU TO COME BACK."
Microsoft's problem isn't that they cater to the lowest common denominator, but that they're not willing to also accomodate people who want something more than the lowest common denominator.
Fortunately for us, there's GNU/Linux.
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
It takes about 30 seconds in Office 2000:
Now it's gone indefinitely.
To bring the paperclip back, click on Help->Show Office Assistant
Hope this helps
ObJectBridge (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.
Finding God in a Dog
Are people really so stupid that they don't know the left-mouse-button-copies / middle-mouse-button-pastes routine? How much more unified do they want? Why can't Microsoft get with the standard...
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
The site is run by MS's ad agency.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
- "At least I'm not a sock puppet."
- "It looks like you're writing a letter. Is it a love letter? Can I see?"
At least they've got a sense of humor about it."Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
"Do you expect me to talk?" "No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die!"
but doesn't allow OLD IE users to connect (NT 4.0 starts with IE 2.0). You have to download SP-3 by FTP so you can install IE-5 (downloaded by FTP) so you can get SP-6.
Yeah, and the video (which I realize wasn't part of the original thing) has a distinct anti-MS message. So Microsoft is catching onto the whole 90s irony thing. Which was old and lame even before Microsoft got into it. Remember those Sprite ads with celebrities saying how it didn't matter which celebrities endorsed a soda? You think if they believed that they would have run the ads? Madison Ave.'s taking over of the entire range of human expression is starting to get a bit depressing. Now you can't say anything if it's not ironic.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Unfortunately, it is still there:
"if people miss Clippy, they can turn him back on by clicking the "help" tag on the Office XP task bar."
I seem to remember there is a easter egg in Excel along the lines of a first person maze.
This reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon I read today. Dilbert tells this guy the new computer product needs 400 new features and that no one could possibly use software of that complexity. So the guy adds "friendly user interface" to the list. I giggled for about 20 minutes. So anyways. Clippy was a cool idea back when Office 97 came out. If you had problems because Office 97 was a shitty product to use if you didn't have a MOUS you could try to get Clippy to help you. Sometimes he worked but most of the time he told you how to save files. Microsoft needs to make two interfaces, one for novice users and one for MOUS certificate holders. Look at what Adobe has done with Photoshop. They released an LE version that has most of the features and capabilities of the professional version (and most importantly can open and edit proprietary Photoshop files) that is fucking easy to use. Dear Microsoft, take a hint from Adobe and hire a couple guys to write an easy to use face to stick on top of Office apps. Shit it ought to be alot easier now since Office is now going to be completely modularized. Let users choose from an EasyInterface or a MOUSCertifiedInterface. Nuff' said.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Whenever the clip appears, I quickly turn him off because his noises irritate me. However, the people in my family leave him on and get great help and advice from him. I just think that it reminds me too much of the cutesy, condescending Microsoft software of the near past (can you say Microsoft Bob?).
The clip is still less annoying than Jar-Jar...
Jethro
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
It does try to appear to be, with all the links into MS,
No, this site is part of the marketing campaign for Windows XP. Unbelieveably enough, most MS employees are nice people with senses of humor, and they hate MS Bob and Clippy as much (or more) than your typical user...
---------------------------------------------
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
anyone else wondering how they found out it DID NOT COME UP enough ?
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
MS Paid for it... it is theirs.
They're intelligence tests. Enjoying Dogma and detesting Clippy are prerequisites for intimate relations.
Do you really have so many potential dates that you felt the need to create an elaborate filtering system?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
And did you also notice how you can turn it back on if you miss it? Did anyone think for a second that when they said "take it out" they meant that the software would go down in size?
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
I want to know how they knew how much people were using Clippy. Was Clippy talking too much at the office Christmas party?
Lisa Gurry, a Microsoft Office product manager, said Clippy has lived a useful life but is no longer needed. "We think Office has so many new features for making it easier to use that Clippy is no longer useful. This is definitely in response to user feedback. We asked ourselves what we could do to help users find features" with the least amount of confusion.
OH my GHOD.... its the SON OF CLIPPY!!!
Is anyone besides me shuddering at what these "New Useful Features(tm)" might be? Didn't they say the same thing about Clippy originally?
And in case we thought he was really gone...
Gurry said if people miss Clippy, they can turn him back on by clicking the "help" tag on the Office XP task bar.
So all they've really done is change the default ('bout time).
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
I dunno, I kind of liked the assistant that came with the Macintosh version of Office. Never found anything to like about the other assistants, but the Banana PC Jr. 9000 was darned cute...
Naked.
I liked the screenshot version, part of the Things You Wish Your Computer Had series that circled a while back.
:).
Fittingly, I got it as a MS Word doc, and saved it onto http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~reneky/hmmm/hmm.htm. If you haven't seen it go ahead - it's good
Gone now? Damn, I just changed the hidden setting "Annoy me with that sodding paper clip" from "Contstanly" to "When I least expect it". You're saying I can't use it? That's the last drop, I'm dropping MS Office!
For any of you that were wondering, Clippy is Bob. For proof, just call up the paperclip in word by clicking on the little help ballon ion on the toolbar, then search for "Bob" - the hits are all about the Office Assistant. (Well, all in Excel97, nearly all in Word97.)
BTW - I never expected them to get rid of this for one very good reason: I've been told by several Microsoft employees that the product manager for Bob was none other than the woman we now know as Melinda Gates. Bob has friends in high places indeed...
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
- Open Word and tell Clippy to hide
- Turn off Menu Hiding (necessary to proceed to step 3)
- Turn off Autoformat
- Deselect "When selecting, automatically select entire word" (all I want to do is change arsenic to arsenide, not replace the whole word)
- Turn off "Checking spelling and grammar as you type" (I already know that gallium arsenide is not in the dictionary)
- Open Powerpoint and say "no, I don't need help creating a new presentation; please just load an existing one"
Repeat twice a day and you'll see why I hate Clippy.Considering how easy it was to turn off / not install, not sure what the problem was for us techies... I sure know that my non-techie sister and mother loved it a lot - amazingly, they felt they needed it when doing things like writing formal letters and such when they couldn't remember silly things like where to place the addresses (right aligned or left aligned, yours or theirs on top, etc.). As already said, it was a good idea, just wasn't used to the best of its potential (and no, popping up more often would not have been the ideal solution - may having more knowledge on official document layouts and such would have been good for people doing resumes and such (but don't know about the pre-made document styles available to them).
Once you change the URL as appropriate, you'll find gems like this:
(emphasis mine)
AAAARRGH. The stupid assistants are bad enough — I can just elect not to install those! Now what the heck am I supposed to do when this gets into the hands of the ooh-you've-got-to-see-this-cool-joke-that-I'm-sure -hasn't-been-forwarded-to-you-a-billion-times-alre ady crowd?
This is pretty funny: Clippy's web site, located on MS's Office XP site. They've even got Clippy's resume up :) Interesting marketing strategy: promote new version by making fun of previous feature.
Hmm that must be why the site is linked to from Microsoft's official Office page.
So that's one person that will miss the assistant, albeit not the paperclip ("he scares me", she says). I'll also kinda miss him, because I actually started getting into what made it tick. It seemed to be fairly responsive to her needs (though not mine) and it seemed to have a bit of fuzzy logic going on, remembering what it had taught you in the past. I also liked the fact that the longer you left it on, the more animations it unlocked -- and the more frequently the rare animations happened. It helped keep his prowling about from getting completely old.
I'm going to hate telling her that the next office won't include her little friend.
-------------------------------------------------
Alas Poor Clippy
Gone are his words of wisdom
Turn on the Yankees
--
"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
No, you won't see how the new help system works, because you use Linux and StarOffice.
Unless, that is, you switch over to the DARK SIDE.
:(
"I will return, only larger and more annoying!"
Muahahaaaahaa....
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
So does this set a precedent, perhaps they are planning for instance, a future release of windows without IE?
Cheers
Mark
...did anyone else notice that? I wonder where the book goes if you buy him one. I'm tempted to waste the money just to find out.
Clippy on Amazon
. I suspect MS lawyers are even now scrambling to send out cease and desist letters.
I'd seriously doubt it - this is almost certainly being done with Microsoft's blessing, if not by their decree. Do you think someone would go to the trouble of hiring Gilbre Gotfried to do the Flash voiceovers just to get sued by M$?
Not only has MS ignored user behavior for years -- for god's sake, a focus group is NOT a usability test, and just because someone thinks the paper clip is cute doesn't mean that it's going to make them more efficient -- but their usability engineers are clearly retarded for not realizing how grossly the thing violates some very simple interaction design heuristics.
for example, attention and fitts' law. let's think of context. someone is using MS Word. let's assume it's not their first time. they have been typing away and move their mouse towards the toolbar. they start to hover the mouse, trying to figure out which of the toolbar buttons they need to click. suddenly -- WIGGLE WIGGLE WIGGLE! little mr. clippy grabs their attention to the lower righthand corner of the screen. their focus is lost, they spend a couple of seconds getting clippy out of their face, and now they have to move their mouse all the way to the other corner of the screen and figure out all over again which button they want to click.
it's like all the Media Lab research that says "computers should recognize when people are frustrated and then apologize! it'll make users feel better!" guess what -- if someone had spent half the time usability engineering the computer that MIT spends enabling the computer to understand my emotions, MAYBE I WOULDN'T BE SO FRUSTRATED TO BEGIN WITH! (disclaimer: obviously the emo-detection has other applications; but turning it into pseudo-usability is off base)
had microsoft spent any bit of time making their styles usable, for example, it would have saved me about a day of work while i was writing my thesis. fuck the office assistant -- how about some well-designed software instead?
No, I don't have to pity him. I scorn him and their "[un]usability engineers" for not listening to feedback until years after Clippy was released. For looking at the beta testers who swore and smacked the monitor every time the little fscker popped up, and writing off those testers as somehow ignorable.
For providing a service that when used once in any any application, becomes on by default in every application (even when you've manually disabled it), those morons deserve all the laughter and ridicule they can get.
I'm not trying to sound bitter and spiteful about the issue, it's just that I am bitter and spiteful, so that's just how I come out sounding.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I vote for rectal thermometer. Every time I see that goddamn paperclip, I know what I wanna do with it. Something involving Bill Gates.
Slashdot Editors, please, give us a poll topic. I wasn't at all pleased with the options available on officeclippy.com.
So, now that we know what the XP stands for in Office XP, I wonder when MS will let on for what the XP in Windows XP really means?
The poll is missing a few options for what role we think Clippy is well suited for:
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
What I wonder is, did he ever write any little quirks into the thing, like say, if you asked it how to create a table in MS Word and it popped up and said, "Fuck off, asshole! Can't you see I'm busy? God damnit, I get NO respect around her!" and then minimized itself in a huff (I wonder how something would look minimizing itself in a "huff"). Now, that would be a great Word plugin...
--
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
You've gotta like it when a sompany such as Microsoft looks around and says, "yeah, this thing does suck. Let's get rid of it.
We should hope for more such moves; given a sufficient number and quality of such changes, we may find that Microsoft sucks less.
A plugin that allows you to do this in Word would be very cathartic, but I'd be willing to settle for a Flash animation that shows the same effect.
Too bad I've never gotten around to learning to use Flash. Hmm.....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
Gee, what did the paper clip fail? Maybe because users feel humiliated by the notion that they are so stupid they have to ask a paperclip for help!!
Hemos: Taco, people keep submitting these stupid stories, what should we do?
Taco: Well, Hemos, we should just post really low quality crap, so that these people stop submitting the stories.
Hemos: Won't that lower the quality of our site?
Taco: No, we'll just get Katz to post something stupider.
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
Detained Americans to Leave China Tonight
Borders Ceded Online Sales
Motorola Reports First Loss in 15 Years
from the uncrappy story department
--
microsoft, it's what's for dinner
bq--3b7y4vyll6xi5x2rnrj7q.com
it's a sig, wtf?
I see a lot of joy about the death of clippy. What is getting ignored here is that software is still too hard to use.
The vast majority of users use are still somewhat intimidated by computers and do not even begin to make use of their full power. Don't believe me? Try watching a "normal" user work with their computer. How about sitting in on customer support calls? It is a deeply humbling experience. Software is still not good enough.
So what is the solution?
How about for starters rethinking the entire GUI paradigm. I mean Xerox Parc was way ahead of the curve back in the late 70's, but maybe it is time that we try and rethink things a bit.
For starters, what's so sacred about the menu bar? It is just this inert thing that shows me a list of commands where most are inappropriate for the work at hand. It is also quite cryptic. I agree that the clip guy was not implemented that well, but as a replacement for the menu bar it has potential.
Another thing to think about is that we are social creatures. And suprisingly, tests have shown that we unconsciously work with computer in a social manner. The clip guy is a start towards making that social interaction explicit. That may not sound like much, but consider that the whole point of GUI is to tap into an intuition about how our brains work.
I think people should be able to choose their UI. Ultimately I think software should be able to morph between serving people who only use a product several times a month and people who use that same product day in and day out. People who don't use the product that often would probably prefer more agent interactions (such as an improved Bob like interface), and people who use the product everyday would prefer a more bare to the metal interface. With computers as powerful as they are today there should be no serious problem providing both UI's for a program.
check out the movies on that page. Just to be sure that the three people who *didn't* think that the paper clip wasn't annoying, they used Gilbert Gottfried's voice to seal the deal. It is just how I always imagined it - *shudder*.
--------
"Counting in octal is just like counting in decimal--if you don't use your thumbs."
Please give your mod points to others, Im at the cap. They will appreciate it more
His resume contains an AWESOME inside joke about Network Associates .. or did they say Software Associates...
1995-1996
Software Associates
Trenton, NJ
Chief Technology Officer
Assisted in removing disks from damaged disk drives.
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
The 3D maze was in Excel 95. The flight sim is in Excel 97.
/. at http://slashdot.org/articles/99/12/01/1424204.shtm l
:)
:) (Hey, Peter Molyneux said no one found it, at last years GDC talk or at Blue's new's link)
They can be found in the archived
and in the Easter Egg Archive.
Heheh. Everyone time Easter Eggs comes up, I remember the ones back in Need For Speed (PSX).
Mine was this one: Players can only enter names with that a maximum 8 chars. I was a little annoyed that my name wouldn't fit, so I had the name entry screen automatically append the "I" when you entered in my last name.
And I remember the day Dave (fiziks guy) put in the machine gun cheat. Lost productivity that day
Now only if we could find that nude cheat in Dungeon Keeper.
Image here.
This post expresses my opinion, not that of my employer. And yes, IAAL.
I am TOTALLY down with them getting rid of that paper-clip. It comes up at all of the most "convenient" times of course. But my question is that since Clippy pisses most of us off why in gods name are they going have Gilbert Godfried do the voice for Clippy?!?!?! I mean come on... if I had two bullets I'd shoot 'em both... and annoying 'icon' with an equally annoying voice... jesus krimeny...
Quoting the linked-to article:
"Office XP works so easily that it's made Office Assistants like me useless. Obsolete. And, I'm told, hideously unattractive."
The bloody office assistants were ugly enough to begin with. Office XP will be a fair bit more popular with people know that they know the annoying office assistants can't bollocks up their work.
I can't think of a more annoying (fitting) voice personally.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
You'll notice on the Office XP advertising site www.officeclippy.com that the rollovers in the left nav are dynamic. One of the sayings that clippy pops up is "All Your Base Are Belong To Us."
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
1. Clippy
2. "...the voice of Gilbert Gottfried"
3. JonKatz
All your clippy are belong to us.
Sorry, had to get that out of my system.
Bayesian networks are also patented last I heard.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Does anyone else care? All they did was change a single default setting. They didn't get rid of the paperclip, they just defaulted it to 'off'.
I always hated that goddamned paperclip.
Then again, I use StarOffice for everything except email, so I guess I don't matter.
Well, maybe Sun could hire him to work into StarOffice !
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Is that going to www.officeclipy.com (demise of office assistant page) and moving your mouse over the left hand options(info,voting etc etc) makes clippy say little things in a dialog box... including "ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US"... kinda scary...
I thought everyone liked things moving constantly in their peripheral vision when they were working.
...no stupid anthropomorphic office equipment here!
/me shoots apaperclip across the room with a rubber band in a symbolic gesture
Wait...what am I so excited about? If it's too complicated for Jed , I throw it into StarOffice
"These people look deep within my soul and assign me a number based on the order in which I joined" --Homer re:
- The dog could pee on him and rust him.
- Einstein could use him to conduct electrisity
- The cat could choke on him and die(I'm allergic).
It would be fun for all ages!!!!"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
I've got Office XP RC1 running right now and the bastard is still there.
having said that, I was at the european journo briefing in Seattle last week, and you have to pity the poor VP when the *only* reaction he got from the crowd was a massive cheer when he said that clippit was off by default. The special pauses they all had in their powerpoint presentations for applause were just awkward silences, but the clippet thing stopped the show.
MS also have a kill the clippit shockwave game somewhere on their site, allegedly.
I changed Clippy to Einstein right away. I almost never used him when he popped up, but I actually thought it kind of neat when he'd walk onto my screen. Clippy, on the other hand, was just annoyingly animated.
I showed my wife that she could change the assistant and she was thrilled. She hardly ever uses the assistant, either, but agrees there's just something annoying about that frigging paper clip.
I have zero tolerance for zero-tolerance policies.
Constitutionally Correct
son of paperclip
in praise of Bayes
Dogma was funny, but I didn't enjoy the jokes all that much. They were as old as atheism, really. Yes, I "got" them, but their source is from fear and confusion. You don't have to be religious to be broad-minded you know.. To ridicule what you don't understand, shows very little maturity and know-how of the stuff (duh). Anyhow, it's healthy to laugh, so go ahead. Doesn't bother me ;-)
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Reading Clippy's poll (about a new line of work) I found it hilarious that he was considering a job as a lockpick...
...considering the fact that he moonlighted as a lockpick over on UserFriendly when Pitr et al. got locked out of the server room !
He didn't seem too happy about being bent out of shape, if I recall. Desperate times call for desperate measures, I guess...
now if only the rest of Microsoft would lighten up...
coding is life
"I've taken over this space to share my pathetic story and show off my skills as a Web designer. Not bad, huh? Know anyone who's hiring? Office XP works so easily that it's made Office Assistants like me useless. Obsolete. And, I'm told, hideously unattractive,"
.. right guys ..
dont' worry dude.. i bet we could use you over here in linux
anybody wanna offer him a job ??
Better in it's original format.
When I work I don't have the time to look after anything.
The Clippy site will include e-mail and a variety of "viral" marketing tools that Microsoft hopes users will use to e-mail portions of the ad material -- like songs and presentations animated with Macromedia Flash -- to one another.
Hmmm, like "I love you" or "Millisa" or just a mail flood? MS does know virus and DoS. Yes, that stupid animation was a DoS, my computer churning to do things I didn't ask it to instead of what I want it to. I can only imagine what kinds of trojans are going to end up in all those cute clippy films they expect people will mail to EVERYONE they know. How I hate that. I'm sure to get five of these things a day in my junk mail accounts. Grrrr!
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
How about a Slashdot interview with the Paperclip?
Dave
So what you're saying is that the paperclip should only pop up if you're doing something completely random (i.e. something it doesn't recognize as a pattern), or if you're doing something it recognizes as a certain pattern? Hmmm. Always, then. Yep, that would just about cover all the times the thing popped up.
Seriously, though, has anyone else heard the legend that Clippy is so unpopular, that contractors working in the MS Office division are required to sign an NDA stating that they will not divulge the true identity of his creator?
--
--
I like to watch.
is a little Viagra, then ther problem would be getting him to stay down.
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
They killed Clippy!
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
The goatse.cx guy pops up and talks to you via his butthole.
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Of COURSE beta testers didn't like it. How many beta testers (which are primarily geeks) don't know how to use a word processor?
They were aiming for the crowd that doesn't know a thing about what they're doing. All the computer illiterates out there.
Just because you don't like things doesn't mean they're useless.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
"It looks like you're trying to fire me. Would you like to take a bullet
- Through the head
- Through the torso
Please see the Clippy Help System (AKA MY FUCKING ASS!) for more information"The article is a big, steaming pile of marketing:
if people miss Clippy, they can turn him back on by clicking the 'help' tag on the Office XP task bar.
How, then, is the blasted thing being removed? It doesn't pop up as often. Great. Wow. Personally, I uninstall the component whenever I can.
On the bright side, Clippy helps me identify people I don't want to date?
I have a few tests. Test 1. Can they watch Dogma for the first time and listen to the dialog instead of complaining about how little action there is.
Test 2: Do they like the #$@& Paper Clip.
They're intelligence tests. Enjoying Dogma and detesting Clippy are prerequisites for intimate relations.
I never get First Post because I actually READ the articles and think about them before posting.
www.matthewmiller.net
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
This is just flipping a single bit. They just made the "clip default" to off instead of on. The code is still there taking up resources on your machine, you just don't see it unless you force it to show up. Isn't there real news happening in the world today?
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
First, read this line:
Lisa Gurry, a Microsoft Office product manager, said Clippy has lived a useful life but is no longer needed. "We think Office has so many new features for making it easier to use that Clippy is no longer useful. This is definitely in response to user feedback. We asked ourselves what we could do to help users find features," with the least amount of confusion.
Clippy didn't help people find anything. What a revelation (like everyone else in this thread has said...) But then, read the next line:
Gurry said if people miss Clippy, they can turn him back on by clicking on the "help" tag on the Office XP task bar.
So Clippy's not ACTUALLY dead. They just changed the default value to not have Clippy pop up! He's STILL THERE!
So all of this is just PR whoring, promoting MS's message that XP is so easy to use...
Does anyone actually believe that XP is "easier" to use? Or did MS just finally get the cluestick-to-the-head and change the default on Clippy, and some Marketing hoser figured out that it makes good press (note all those submissions to /.) to change something annoying in the software?
What a farce.
==
I seen a 'CAD' drawing of a guys dream house once. He did it in Excel by filling in cells with different colors. I couldn't beleive it when I saw it. So much time and effort to do that. Then he informed me he worked for the county managers office...exactly why he had sooo much extra time.
Prospecting Stinks. Stop Wasting Time on Cold Calling.
It's in Word, stupid!
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
It's an easter egg, you just have to type "I'd like to see Bill Gates dead" in bold and it comes up as a full 3d shooter that would make John Carmack jaleous. Ever wondered why the default install was so big?
--
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Intensive testing in a controlled environment found that only 26.3% of test subjects attempted suicide.
I remember seeing a well circulated jpeg of clippy that someone had tweaked. It summed my feelings up about the monstrosity entirely.
(Apologies for language)
Clippy says, "I see you're writing a letter"
Responses:
- Get help with writing it.
- Just fuck off and leave me alone.
I'd always plump for option number 2..... This is not a sad loss.. and I can't say I use Micro$oft stuff much these days anyway....
M.
The URL for the Economist article is http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID =539674
In my version of MSWord 97, he's called "Clippit", not "Clippy".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
VINDICATION!!! HA HA! The bane of my existance is dead! There is nothing more evil on this planet than the Microsoft paperclip. Except, of course, Microsoft.
Ok, I think The Register has already pointed it out with respect to ads touting no more BSODs, but it bears repeating here...Microsoft has apparently been reduced to a marketing pitch that boils down to this:
What's next, Ford featuring Explorers flying into ditches to tout the safety of their new MegaVehicle du jour?
-- "" - Harpo Marx
All you people whining about how you can't disable the paperclip: just don't install it. At least in Office 2000, you can deselect the "Office Assistant" option and it won't copy the files for it.
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
Okay I don't know what world MS is in when they say that the paperclip doesn't come up often enough. I recently wanted to have every computer at my company save files as text only on Word to help with publication. In Mac Word 2001, however, there is _NO WAY_ to stop a warning from popping up complaining about saving in text only, which naturally confused the crap out of people at work.
Oh my God, they killed Clippy!
One of the other interesting things he says is "Who moved my cheese? I could have sworn I left it right here on the desktop." In reference to the don't ask questions, don't think for yourself book called "who moved my cheese" Pretty funny.
That move wasn't that great...
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
I had a hard enough time trying to get that bubbly eyed piece of wrinkly metal out of my face! Heck, the thing scared my mom the first time she saw it! Klowner
Greetings, ;-) The exploding trashcan was my favorite animation.
I always switched mine to the mini-Einstein. I liked whole 'little helper' interface to the help system, but the real attraction was the multiple animations. I discovered the Einstein while writing up my Masters thesis. I probably could've handed it in a week earlier if I hadn't
P. Mover
No, it's the other way around. The original algorithm made the paper clip come up less often.
The Economist's article is here
--
Have fun: Join D.N.A. (National Dyslexics Association)
Hunh? More features != Less complex in anything I've ever seen, but apparently Redmond logic is a little bass-ackwards...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
How about turning off the auto-capitalise thing in the AutoCorrect options?
I can see it now - "Hemos, it looks as if you are about to post a story without spell checking again. Are you sure you want to do that?"
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
I suspect the only reason the paperclip survived so long was that Melinda Gates was one of the people who wrote the code to lay the groundwork for this atrocity.
----
http://www.msgeek.org/
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
At the 'clippy' website, the onmouseover for the menus reveal different humorous things that the paperclip says...one of them being, "All Your Base Are Belong To Us"...this can also be found directly at http://www.officeclippy.com/images/rollover_4.gif
I'd like to personally thank whoever was responsible for that. There *is* life within microsoft! The corporate behemouth hasn't squashed all personality yet... Too bad what looks like a kill clippy game isn't done yet.
I just found a new sig.
In the mouseovers on the buttons at the left of clippy's site eventually clippy says, "All your base are belong to us!" Couldn't believe it! Enjoy!
I was just wondering if this was due to the esentially unlimited access crackers got by writing macro viruses via 'clippy'. Full system access, visual basic scripting, etc. Maybe this is a response to some of the nastier 'virii'. (The popular ones like Melissa, are nothing compared to what some of these do.)
Or perhaps M$ just realized everyone hates it...
Document Recovery gives you the option to automatically save your current document, spreadsheet, or presentation at the time an application stops responding, so you don't lose a moment's work.
So wait... they know when the application is going to stop responding, so they can save the document just before. That's cool.
But shouldn't they just fix the fucking problem that's going to make the app stop responding?
But think about this a minute. They're using the removal of this "Feature" as a selling point for Office XP. Buy XP or be stuck with that stupid thing for the rest of your life. How do we know there's not another more annoying character buried deep inside Office XP, waiting to show up when they want you to upgrade to Office Plaid, or whatever their next version is. What if you upgrade, and two years from now Clippy Jr. shows up with his whole annoying family?
How much will you pay to get rid of that!
Everything's been downhill since the TRS-80
but Vigor will be with us always.
Oh gawd I'm evil. Trust me do not install Vigor. But if you really want to there are debs. Just follow the link. It is bad trust me.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Perhaps the authors will update it to insult^H^H^H^H^H^H er... emulate whatever new help system microsoft has come up with.
I can't wait for the 'bring back Clippy' campaign to start, swamping the media and further brainwashing all the toads.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Makes you wonder who exactly was supporting and pushing clippy
Gee, I always thought that the fsking paperclip was included because MS was too damn cheap to print (and ship) paper manuals...
Ya gotta wonder who thought that one up
User:My app's broken.
Tech Support:Just click on "Help" and do what the wizard says.
User:But I CAN'T click on help... The app's broken!
Tech Support:Sorry sir, you'll have to reformat and reinstall. That'll be $95.00
MAB
I must be in the minority but clippy helped me out a lot. If i was writing a paper for school and started to have brain drain, i could just right click on clippy and animate him. That would amuse me for about 30 seconds until he got boring repeating the same things then i was bored with him and could become more interested in the paper. It works well try it sometime. Rather than taking a "quick" break to read slashdot, and then reply to a post that you just have to and end up spending a half hour reading slashdot, you can insted become amused and then sick of clippy in around 30 seconds.
The Flash animations are hysterical though. "Oh you mean that fucking paper clip?" "That was the most annoying thing since Microsoft Bob". hehe
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
"You mean the f**king paper clip? That was the most annoying thing since Microsoft Bob!"
It's nice to see that they have a little tongue in cheek (also, the reference to "developing his dot-net strategy" was clever).
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
They must be out of their heads! My coworkers and I have to disable that dumb thing every time we open any Office application because the settings don't get saved. Every other word you type in MS Word, that stupid paper clip pops up! One coworker was fighting with the thing for half an hour this morning because it kept doing dumb tricks right in the middle of the screen and wouldn't move. I helped him disable it, and don't you know it took two entire minutes for the thing to finish running around before quitting?!? Good riddance to bad rubbish!!!
I always just turned the worthless little bastard off, and he still is installed in Office XP, and as "functional" as before.
I hate to say it, but since I have started using Office at work, I've found it to be pretty usable - apart from Clippy!
I mean, I *know* how to structure a letter, I *know* how to spell, I *know* how to lay out tables, and I don't want some damned animation telling me otherwise.
The auto-capitalisation is a pain in the arse as well. But what annoys me most of all is the blind insistance on an American dictionary, even when you specify UK English. Mostly it gets "colour" rather than "color" (but not always) but every Microsoft product I've used since Windows 95 (3.11 had it right) has "Favorites" instead of "Favourites".
Microsoft Bob disappeared only to eventually replaced with the handholding we're going to get in Windows XP. The paperclip will be back, especially with the Tim Berners-Lee article (posted a few Slashdot articles before this) that discusses user agents. We'll see that paperclip talking to us on our flexible plasma screen pants...
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
"It looks like you're posting to Slashdot..."
No comment on how clippy would offer to help out with that...
I just knew they'd have ONE reason to make me want to upgrade.
Yeah... just keep mousing over the the links on the lefthand side... the quotes that come up in the picture below appear to be random. Eventually, this one will come up.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Go here and see this.
____________________________
2*b || !(2*b) is a tautology
Just when I thought I'd never use another Microsoft product at home again...they went and did something that might make me actually boot their OS voluntarily! Hehe. Well, maybe.
You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.
is here.
sulli
RTFJ.
Good point. Perhaps the "Bye-bye Clippy" bit is FUD to distract the public from the reg server?!
sulli
RTFJ.
. . .
Great sig dude.
Clippy is basically the office version of Microsoft Bob, the family oriented inferface to Windows 3.1 (remember that?). With that, I don't think Clippy was all that bad, even though the majority of voices on /. tend to differ. Please keep in mind that the majority of /. members consists of many experienced computer-users. I think, for the family-oriented novice to a computer, Clippy (or any of the other Microsoft Agents) was a good thing. It was meant to make Office a user-friendly application. You have to admit, learning all of the shortcuts and buttons and functions and menus takes a long time for someone who doesn't even know what a URL is. If the user didn't know what to do, he would simply ask Clippy, in English, what or how to do something. Clippy would then *try* to answer the user's question. I obviously don't know anything about the specs behind Clippy but I'm sure that requires some amount of artificial intelligence (or just grepping the help file). And, I guess Clippy was good because it gave life to Microsoft's Agent project. You know, Agent. Those little animated characters that annoy you. But think. For someone who isn't good with a computer and may get nervous as a result, it's relaxing to see a funny animated character help you use a complex piece of equipment.
phew...
Microsoft employees are nice people?!?!?! They've created the most evil OS in the world that is perpetually wreaking havoc with my poor computer. That's just the epitome of not nice... Someday they will cease to be sadistic and create a semi-decent operating system that does not crash every few minutes. I think they find pleasure in that.
--
Blessed are the geeks for they shall Internet the Earth.
Software so easy, you won't need the office assistant, or it's new help system is -)Better!(-
Excuse me, I have a work of fiction I'm still reading, it's called "The Paperless Office."
Largest grunt of dismay with M$ Office is all that automatic stuff shipping enabled. Takes a few hours to find it all and disable it. Nominee for best improvement to their software, ship with all that disabled and a brief section on what they are, how they work and how to turn them on if you want them.
--
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
With a capital "B"
Well I must admit I like the dog. Then again, I like alot of pointless things that unnecessarily devour system resources.
--
Daniel J. Kelly
I thought they canned it because so many people were annoyed by it. My mother likes the paper-scraps cat in Office 2000, and I'd like to see Ranger from Quake as an Office character.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Finally it's dead! Woooo Hoooo! The damn thing always scared me to dead...the look of it...everytime it came up you new "oh my god..I did something wrong again..man..please go away.._please_...PLEASE!" *runs out of the office - crying*. Oh man..I'm so glad it's gone ;)
Burn Hollywood Burn
Something is odd over at the clippy site, when you mouseover the XP demo, ole clippy is makes an AYB reference.......
Burn Hollywood Burn
[localhost:~] user% bill gates
OK? kill gates? yes
kill: Arguments should be jobs or process id's.
[localhost:~] user%
Somewhere in the heavens... they are waiting.
see the paperclip say all your base are belong to us http://www.traicovn.com/base.gif
Apparently the paperclip changes what it's little message is. Also, their server kept having trouble displaying part of the site for me... Quality MS ware :)
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
http://www.traicovn.com/base.gif
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
The Dolphin was available in a previous version of Office. I tried to install it once in Microsoft Office 2000, but it won't work. I think it's for Office 97 or 98 or sometihng... Anyway..
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
What are they going to replace Clippy with? Do they really think they can scapegoat their help strategy problems onto an animated graphic?
This is the same company that took a (relatively) decent help system for VBA in Office 97 and replaced it with one that only highlights half the subjects and is constantly telling you "To locate information on this keyword, please select one of the subentries in the list" even though all those subentries are grayed out.
This is the same company that, when Hotmail goes down over server issues, offers you a page entitled "Having login problems?" that basically asks several questions that suggest in a polite way that the surfer is a retard who doesn't know anything about internet connections, even though it's THEIR FAULT.
Yes, Clippy sucked, but I'm not entirely confident that they're going to replace it with anything better.
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Perhaps Microsoft feels that many people would pay $$$ to have the removed?
That's a pretty sneaky way to get people to buy an upgrade every two years.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
The main message of that site (besides dissing Clippy) seemed to be how great Office XP is going to be. (No Clippy for starters.)
:^)
Losing Clippy is good, but gaining the registration system is bad.
It turns software I buy into "Degradeware". What happens 5-10 years down the road when I try to reinstall, and the registration site is gone? Or Microsoft
Something like this has already happened to me. I reinstalled StarCraft and tried to network connect to get the patches for the latest version. No luck. Degradeware will only last as long as the company, or until they stop supporting it. I expect the software I buy to last until the CDROM wears out!
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
This reminds me of that they did to Coke/New Coke.
Oh, come on? Kill Clippy? Bill, you mean to tell me in this era of dubious business practices, the Cue Cat, and the DMCA, you can't think of a single *useful* job for Clippy? Sigh. Why don't you fire some of those idiot marketing yoyos of yours, and listen to your old pal Melantha? After all, who's better at sucking (blood or money), that a 2500 year old vampire?
;)
.Net, and you will rule (and own) the world.
Here's some (evil) ways to put Clippy to work for you (instead of being a wimpy help for the clueless user):
1) Advertising. Go find yourself some partner companies, and use Clippy to deliver advertising customized to the user's current needs. If the user is writing a letter to a company about their products, have Clippy tell them about your partner's much better products. Microsoft gets the advertising dollars, your partners get a customer, and the user saves the trouble of writing the letter.
2) Gather Demographics. Come on, Clippy is privy to all sorts of addresses and keywords scattered throughout documents all over the planet. Tell him to start reading and phone home occasionally. You can sell all the info he collects for big bucks. The user need never know or even care.
3) Outright Spying. Take the plunge, and have Clippy take over any microphones and web cams attached to computers running Office. Who knows what juicy tidbits you might get. I'd clear this one with your lawyers first though. Congress is pretty clueless, but there might be some pesky law standing in the way of this. You might be able to do some deal with the FBI though.
4) Copy protection. Hey, IP protection is the in thing, might as well jump on the bandwagon. Besides, MS has been the industry leader on the anti-piracy front. Clippy can monitor email attachments, and when the user is trying to email their friends an illegal copy of the latest mp3 or Microsoft product, Clippy can notify the police and offer to show the user their rights while they wait for the cops to show up.
5) Parental control. If the kids try to use dirty words in their email or other correspondence, Clippy can notify their parents.
6) Distributed processing. If the computer is not in use for a certain amount of time, Clippy can turn control of the computer over to Microsoft. You can sell the time to pharmaceutical companies for big bucks.
See, Bill, there is lots of money to be made here. Combine these ideas with
Your friend,
Melantha Bacchae
Disclaimers: I don't really know Bill, and I'm not really a vampire, evil or otherwise (I just play one on the internet). I hate Microsoft and their products (but that's just my opinion). This is a parody; no actual violation of a user's privacy or other rights is intended. Anyone taking this "letter" seriously needs to get a life.
The virtue of Bayesian algorithms is that they are based on probabilities learned as the system is used. They would only come up when the probabilities reach a point where they show a person is having problems. So, if a person obviously knows how to use MS Office, then the paper clip guy would stay hidden as the evidence nodes of the Bayesian network wouldn't be set by proper use. Therefore the only times the Paperclip agent would show is if you are clicking around aimlessly or if you started writing in a form close to one of their templated forms (i.e. letters).
Bayesian networks are super cool...I took a grad level course in them as an undergrad my last semester of school.
Tired of sitting at that karma cap? Start a flame war today! See just how low you can go!
Does anybody know where I could find an x-rated office assistant?
How do I trigger this, and what version of Word do I need?
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Now we know why they invented the paperclip at the first time : to sell office XP as not having it.
MS office 4.3 and 95 didn't add any new features. They were basically new compiles of the same s***. No one would have bought office 97 if it hadn't been for that stupid new feature. No one will ever buy XP except if they have a feature added, and THIS is a real cool one.
I might install office 95 instead (no paperclip). No, wait, I will write my thesis with lyx under Mandrake 8.0 RC1. What a wonderful distro.
that's www.officeclippy.com
:-). here I am all ready to watch a video and it turns out that episode1 is a '.exe' file type.
amusing note:
they make me use win95 on my work computer, I went to the site to see the video, it was a zip file that I don't have an 'unzipper' for and I'm not permitted to install one on my work PC. so... I rolled on over to my Linux PC and downloaded the zip. Mandrake Linux knew what to do when I double clicked the file
what a bunch of assholes.
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Gilbert is extremely loud and annoying. He is the parrot in Alladin among other things.
"I like to wear big boy pants."
I hate that thing! It's integration into office 2k when it comes to any basic file opening/saving.... that thing realy really needed to go quick. I shouldn't have to spend 15 minutes configuring an application that is supposed to be good as soon as it's installed.
Will Micro$oft discount XP by the price of three mice for me? Oh yeah... I don't use Office at home, thank God for Linux.
MadCow.
-----------------------------------------
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
I guess some (soon-to-be-ex) Micro$oft employee actually has a sense of humor!
MadCow.
-----------------------------------------
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Does anybody else out there find it a little...um, sinister that a Microsoft puppet/icon/whatever would be saying, "All your base are belong to us?"
Yeah, I laughed. Yeah, it was funny. But then I said, "Heeey...Wait a minute..."
Also, I just have to say I can't believe I was right about that damned paperclip all these years! For years I've been calling that stupid thing "The Lecherous Paperclip" because of the way it winks and wiggles. Then, I go onto this site and see the damned thing "saying," "It looks like you're writing a love letter. Can I see?" I knew that thing was just a rotten voyeur!
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
At last the most enoying bug is gone. Thank you MS.--
Babes for the geek: babes.foobla.com
The web site they set up is actually fairly humorous, even if the animations are full of Office XP plugs (http://www.officeclippy.com/). The mouseovers on the left are worth checking out, too - you know something is big when Microsoft web pages say "All your base are belong to us"! And plenty of bleeped-out swearing in the shockwave animations... But why does Gilbert Gottfried still get work?
The morals of the story:
I really hate signatures, but go to my website.
what they didn't tell you, was that it was being replaced by a glue stick...
Simple. You give him the voice of Gilbert Gottfried. Microsoft actually has 2 Flash movies on the OfficeClippy.com website, featuring Clippy with the World's most annoying voice ever. Who the Hell thought this was a good idea?
This is not a Fugazi
Working as a tech requires me to set up customers systems FAR more often than I'd like!! I have never in my 40-50-odd installs of M$ Office have *not* been asked to turn off the damned paperclip!! No one yet *hasn't* been immediately annoyed with the lil guy, and NO ONE has asked for such a feature in ... say ... openoffice! Good riddance, and I do believe this will be known as the smartest thing M$ has done this year!!
kleedrac
Sure we wang, can.
The current implementation in O2K is acceptable with just one checkbox to turn the whole damn thing off
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
I think that I'd rather have Clippy and lose the registration server they will be using with Office XP...
Just when it seems that they're on the right track taking away an annoying "feature", they introduce the registration server. This way, if you ever have to install Office more than 10 times, you're SOL...
I am still having difficulty that MS will really, truly be "poking fun" at themselves over this, though. I guess I'll just have to wait for the new ad campaign to start up.
eat shit and die, Bambi!
They need things that know much more about writing, such as pencils, pens, a stack of paper, or even a typewriter (some of you may remember those).
Also, I think in the long run people will actually miss him. He was something that most people "loved to hate". Just because people complain about something doesn't always mean they don't want it around anymore...
You know MS, they'll leave the Clippy code in Office XP so they can revive him at any time and bloat the software even more.
Do you like German cars?
Insted of spending $30,000,000 on advertising why not cut the price of Office XP. If it was cheaper more people would probably buy it and not get hacked/cracked/pirated copies of it.
What did they want?
"It looks like you're trying to push the enter key!
To enable AutoEnter at the end of paragraphs, please click through this ten minute wizard."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Trying to convince people that there is a scientific decision being made every time a moronic character pops up to offer unwanted help is a LAME LAME LAME LAME LAME load of self-serving horse shit. What's next, a statement to the effect that the clunky oversized control bars that consume half the usable window space are based on a well-thought out Kantian world-view? Get real! Son-of-Bob must die!!!!!!!!!!
Die Paperclip Die
Here's how to get rid of it on current machines
Die Paper clip link
No one ever liked you
-----
You stupid bastard, you don't have no arms left. It's just a flesh wound.
Oh well, at least they gave a hideously unproductive, and unhelpful 'helper' a cute death with the whole resume thing. Maybe he could go work for Tux and magically appear when you least expect him, and then throw a pie in your face. It'd be great revenge against all the Linux users for the pie in the face that Bill got a couple years back.
The site is ... interesting. Would be much better without so many ads for OfficeXP, which are probably limiting the effectiveness of "email to
friend" viral marketing ploy. Maybe you ought to have a link to the definitive "Clippy" animation?:
http://cexx.org/snicker/clippy.htm
Rgds,
Bill
--
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
If you want to gag (choke, be sick) check out Mircosofts ode to Clippy (their very creative name for the paper clip that every hates)..
www.officeclippy.com
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
I can finally let just MS Word fuck up my documents instead of relying on that little paper clip to fuck it up for me...
--- My Karma is bigger than your...
------ This sentence no verb
For some reason, I just can't hate that little piece of wire ! Actually, its about the only thing I actually do like about microsoft products, it makes great boredom relief. *right click* *animate* *right click* *animate* and so on .... :)
Girls are no substitute for a PlayStation.
Apparently, something is up with Microsoft's marketing department - just take a look at this image: http://kainga.quasarnet.org/~trisk/images/hm-1.png
--
He showed up once
That was often enough
Noooo..........
Why god....Why!!!!!?
-sniff- -sniff-
He was so young...what a tragedy
-shut up
Did anyone else notice that when you roll over the side menu - Clippy actually says "All you base are belong to us". I'm not joking.....
As below, so above and beyond, I imagine drawn beyond the lines of reason. Push the envelope. Watch it bend.
Does anyone have any links, etc., specifically on how Bayesian networks apply to the paperclip app?
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
Consultant for Open Office, advises on how to put the best of Word into what they have now.
Therapist for Mozilla. Mozilla has been working it's butt off lately and just needs "someone to talk to".
Poster Boy for the new IT recession.
Writes tell all book, "Clippy Art : Billg and Me"
m.kelley
www.mkelley.net
m.kelley
life is like a freeway, if you don't look you could miss it.
One good thing about Clippy... its (his?) construction allowed for the basis for the Agent SDK. This is a pretty cool piece of work. Check out the Agent homepage. I used it to add voice recognition capabilities to an intranet application. Otherwise, Clippy does suck.
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
Clippy, Do NOT go anywhere near StarOffice. If you do, I'll bend you into a tool for pushing the emergency eject button on my CD-ROM drive.
"the fax machine is nothing but a waffle iron with a phone attached to it." - Grandpa Simpson
Now I will grant you that no one hates the accursed paper clip from hell more than I do. Of course, the help thigns that pop up in Star Office are just as annoying. But I wonder, doesnt this kill one of the easiest arguments to make against M$ crap? Isnt our job that much harder now? Anyway, now we get to see how hated the clip really is. Im betting there will be plenty og (l)users who will be wanting the clip back, since they are used to it. These are people like my mother who still uses quicken for dos cause she doesnt want to learnt he new versions,a nd desptie the shinanigans she had to go through to account for y2k on it.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
I always pictured Clippy with the voice of Fran Dreshner (sp?), you know, from the nanny. Loud. annoying and wont let you get anything done cuase the voice rattles arroudn in your head and wont leave you alone.
In Soviet Russia you dant have to put up with these crappy jokes
A really, really nasty virus payload: code that keeps turning Clippy back on.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
User typing: "Dear Loved ones, I just can't take it anymore..."
Paper Clip Pops Up!: It looks like you are about to take your life, would you like to use?
(Pills) (Rope) (Knife) (Gun)
~www.devnull.co.uk
"Hi! It looks like you're writing a resume. Need some help?"
dog food, milk, gum,
"Hi! It looks like you're writing a letter. Can I be of assistance."
--
now they'll get rid of the other things that get in the way...
Like SYSTEM.DAT, USER.DAT, and NTOSKRNL.EXE.
------ 1001001
Good riddance. The entire concept ended up being FAR more annoying than helpful. Think about it for a moment. Microsoft took a stab at "humanizing" their apps with a "helpful" assistant, but how much help did Clippy really offer? I'd wager not much, since the helper was designed to assist those who unacquanted with the apps in the first place. The entire assistant model was actually more complex than the core functions of the software itself. Just my 3.14 cents.
High-quality Linux web hosting for geeks and coders.
"Not one person in my office, from the receptionist to the sales people to the engineers to the CEO use the blasted paper clip. Not even my wife, who is an elementary school teacher, uses it,"
Have you ever heard the saying, if you're not part of the solution, then you are likely a part of the problem? Of course school teaches and receptionists don't use it, their jobs are as dull as dirt, they don't need complicated solutions like management does. Engineers will whine about it because it's their job to whine, it seems like.
Paper Clip was a leap forward in A.I. technology. There's no need to "dis" it. Something new is bound to replace it.
"If the Lord had meant for us to fly, He'd have given us wings with which to soar...." William, 14:35
what do you think the chances are they'll open source him?
but just imagine...
the little animated office assistant was a good idea, however... it was annoying as hell... never really helped you and if anything was just something that distracted you from work (either by trying to get the little bastard to give you info or by just playing with it). I've done alot of reading on AI and it seems as if the next generation of help could and should be alittle smarter (ie: makes sure you don't make the same mistake alot, watches your tendencies, etc... basically it should have learning capabilities). The last generation was alright, but i hope the next will be better (then again this is microsoft :-) - how about a little miniature Bill Gates that comes out and does your tech support and then blames Blue Screens on you)
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
We need a slashdot poll for the fate of this stupid little paperclip... any ideas?
Microsoft is taking a poll to find a new job for "Clippy". I propose that Clippy be hired as an apologist for the BSOD for both Windoze crashes (e.g., "I'm sorry about the bloated and sloppily implemented (but feature enhanced) code that caused your Windows to crash again) and for the subsequent Scandisk screen (e.g., "Windows was not shut down properly. If you don't want to see this message again, I suggest moving to a different operating system"). It won't improve the OS, but it might make me feel better.
http://www.officeclippy.com/ It kind of makes me wanna vomit up green stuff all over an old priest.
This image shows that paperclip had it's moments and helped no matter what the situation.
(I knew this pic would be useful someday)
Man, I wanted to punch that thing a thousand times more than Urkle.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Here's another one for his .sig, too.
This sentence not funny.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.