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Office Guardian Angel Worse Than Clippy

Posted by samzenpus on from the you-never-knew-how-good-you-had-it dept.

ZWilder writes "Remember 'Clippy', the annoying anthropomorphic paper clip foisted upon unsuspecting users of Office? Well Microsoft has taken the concept behind Clippy and 'turned the dial up to 11' with its new, even more intrusive animated life-coach, known as 'Guardian Angel.' Patented in 2006, Guardian Angel is 'an intelligent personalized agent' that 'monitors and evaluates a user's environment to assist in decision-making processes on behalf of the user.' Like a manlier Fairy Godmother. Or a similarly omniscient HAL from '2001: A Space Oddysey.'"

5 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot! by Gudeldar · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Slashdot: The only place where 4 year old patents are news!

  2. Overblown much? by pushing-robot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This isn't "Clippy 2.0". This is applied AI research that's more than ten years from making it into any real product, and it's a field a lot of companies are researching. From what I've read so far it's really far too vague and generic for anyone to deserve a patent on it, but the patent will probably expire before Microsoft has the opportunity to sue anyone over it.

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    1. Re:Overblown much? by jollyreaper · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This isn't "Clippy 2.0".

      No, it's worse. Clippy's been weaponized.

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  3. Re:Obviously this is... by deniable · · Score: 3, Insightful

    by Xpendable (1605485) on Thursday April 01, @08:29AM

    I wouldn't call it early.

  4. ATTN: MICROSOFT by lq_x_pl · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We tend to find animated "helpers" annoying. Please stop.
    Yours,
    People

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