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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.
Delete or rename the 'Actors' directory will prevent the paperclip or any of his buddies to come up.
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 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
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...
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Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
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!
Alas Poor Clippy
Gone are his words of wisdom
Turn on the Yankees
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"It's tough to be bilingual when you get hit in the head."
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)
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
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.
Better in it's original format.
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.
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.
"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"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?
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Je t'aime Stéphanie
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!
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.
Test 2: Do they like the #$@& Paper Clip.
They're intelligence tests. Enjoying Dogma and detesting Clippy are prerequisites for intimate relations.
I take it you don't date much...
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!
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
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
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
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."
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