Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Death of Clippy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the annoying-desktop-mascots dept.

AppScout interviews Office's Group Program Manager, Jensen Harris on the subject of Office 2007. Harris reveals that Clippy, the bane of all semi-sentient Office users everywhere, is officially dead. The decision apparently revolved not around the passionate hatred for the unfortunate sprite, but simply out of a desire for UI coherency.

2 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Goodnight sweet prince by TCM · · Score: 4, Informative

    Beware, though. He might just come back.

    --
    Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
  2. The original clippy was good by ericlondaits · · Score: 4, Informative

    When one of the developers/researchers working in MSN Search came to my university to give a one week course on probability based models for search applications he told us that originally Clippy was meant to run with a quite advanced AI (based on a probability model), but was changed before shipping for the much more simpler version we all knew. I'm not sure but I think it was to decrease CPU utilization.

    The mostly crappy AI made it extra annoying, the rest is history.

    --
    As a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of an analogy involving cars approaches one.