Yup, I challenged you to name MSFT products that use AI. You didn't. You gave me more examples of stuff MSFT has co-opted from other areas, which has then been labled as 'new' and 'groundbreaking'.
Which reminds me, I remember reading how the Office 97 "office assistant" aka Bob (is that a slur? What's the paper clip guy's name?) was supposed to be AI, because you could type your question in and it'd find an answer. Turns out, near as I can tell, it's just a keyword search. I kept typing in these rude things about Bill, and Bob kept saying, "Huh?". But, if I typed in "double space", it'd find something resonable. I mean, it was pretty good and everything, but AI? "Open the drive bay door, Bob.".
My other amusing anecdote: I actually installed IE4 today, Active Desktop and all. For once, Microsoft is guilty of understatement. It's not Active Desktop, it's Hyperactive Desktop! That baby needs some Ritalin for sure. Sheesh. I started wildly searching for something to turn it off, but I stumbled on the uninstall thing first, so IE4 didn't stay around for long. Maybe it was Prodigy's fault, it was their cd.
Of course, paranoid as I am I did this on my other computer that's not hooked up to the internet. I notice that my directory windows have been upgraded with some scrolling thingy in the task bar, I don't know what other upgrades have been bestowed on me. But, I've decided that I've been way too lax about the approved Windows Maintainace schedule anyway, reformat, reinstall is almost second nature now. As I got lots of drive space now with most of my old junk still on tape, I may do some experiments to see who puts what on c:\windows. Does anybody have a handy, non-reverential ref to what the twisty maze of dll's means?
Cheers, Dan, amused as always. |
