How To Enable Cortana On the Xbox One Experience Preview (hothardware.com)

MojoKid writes: Part of Microsoft's strategy to unite different devices to a single ecosystem means offering the same services and features across the board. One of those features is Cortana, Microsoft's digital assistant, which is available on Windows 10. It will also be available for the Xbox One, though not until sometime next year, at least officially. Don't feel like waiting? You might not have to. Here's a quick and dirty guide on how to unlock Cortana on the Xbox One, provided you're running the latest Xbox One Experience Preview.

Comments

Am I missing something?

[Bozzio]

There are four comments so far claiming Cortana is spyware but none of them offer any evidence of this. Is this just typical Slashdot irrational MS hatred, or am I missing something?

Re:Am I missing something?

[bloodhawk]

It is actually getting pretty bad here now. Slashdot has always been fairly anti MS, but usually with good reason and people that had some basic skills in explaining why. the amount of crap posts you see nowadays is really a little unfathomable. I personally associate it with the next generation of users that don't seem to have any social skills to argue their case beyond spewing hate.

Re:Am I missing something?

[MacTO]

I suspect that it is because Cortana allegedly sends data back to Microsoft's servers for processing. For people who don't trust Microsoft, it is easy to equate this to spying even if there is no evidence of Microsoft using the transmitted data for anything other than fulfilling user requests and to improve the functionality as well as reliability of their products.

That being said, those Microsoft haters are useful. While their information may be unreliable, they are helping to inform people of Microsoft's data gather practices. Once people know about those practices, they can search for more reliable sources of information to determine how Microsoft's data gathering affects them.

Re:Am I missing something?

[FlyHelicopters]

I suspect that it is because Cortana allegedly sends data back to Microsoft's servers for processing.

Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa both do the same thing...

News flash, both services are popular...

Re:Am I missing something?

[jandersen]

There are four comments so far claiming Cortana is spyware but none of them offer any evidence of this. Is this just typical Slashdot irrational MS hatred, or am I missing something?

I don't think it is 'irrational MS hatred', and you do youself as disservice to describe those whp have a view different from yours when you use this sort of language.

Looking back over history, I think it is very understandable that there are many who distruct Microsoft. Back in the early days, Microsoft was actually seen as cool and on the forefront, but we then seen to betray the ideals of their admirers, when they seemed to become increasingly greedy, anti-competitive etc. For a very long time they resisted implementing even basic security, they kept making claims that were obviously wrong (like 'the mainframe is dead' etc), thereby appearing to be either incompetent or dishonest - or possibly both. They have improved many things in recent years, that's true, but often at gun-point and often their improvements seem to include unwanted extras, like the forced upgrades that you apparently need to be a Windows expert to stop (Yes, I know there is an 'easy' option somewhere, but I doubt the average user would even know enough to look for it).

So, as for Cortana: if you have had any experience with speech recognition (like the automatic telephone systems that you speak to) and understanding natural language (try Google Translate), then you know just how hard a time they have understanding spoken words, especially if you are dialect speaker, and you'll know that computers have difficulty understanding the meaning of ambiguous statements that real people would pick up without difficulty. The obvious solution to these problems is to put a staff of real people in a call center and let them understand and answer, when the computers have to give up.

And of course, the computing power needed to implement even basic speech recognition and natural speech analysis means that it wouldn't fit into the average laptop, let alone a Windows mobile. All of which leads to the obvious conclusion, that Cortana, Siri and the like must communicate with one or more call centers, and it would be surprising if that traffic was not collected and used 'to improve services' - ie, target users with adverts. I'm sure, if somebody were to read the small print, it would be implied that you give them your permission to do so, simply by brething in the vicinity of a Windows or OSX system.

Re:Excuse me....??

[bloodhawk]

most of the world don't give a shit about the MS telemetry (wrongly or rightly), they care about functionality. What you are missing is you can't see past your own concerns to look at what consumers actually care about.

Get on board

[fyngyrz]

It's more like "give me convenience or your competitor will"

Siri. Cortana. Echo. S-voice. Google voice. etc.

Pretty sure that at this point, it's either get with it, or be left behind. And yes, "behind" is the right word. Services will begin to be delivered by default this way, count on it — if you don't have access, you won't have the services, either.

Re:Excuse me....??

[PopeRatzo]

Why would someone *want* to knowingly enable this?

Cortana is spy-ware, and it takes considerable effort to *disable* it???

What am I missing???

What better way to get otherwise tech-savvy people to run spyware on their systems than by making them feel that by using this "leaked" method to enable Cortana on their systems they are cool doing something that's not exactly sanctioned by MS?

"Hey look, I've enabled Cortana on my XBone Experience Live system without Microsoft's persmission!"

Microsoft: * laughter *