Cortana. Whatever happened to world domination? Somewhat harshly, Microsoft's Cortana was pronounced dead this week. Torn between wholesaling and retailing Cortana, Microsoft ended up doing a bit of both, and failed badly. It's also torn between what the brand actually means – an Alexa voice assistant, or an IBM Watson-like brand for analytics, covering a multitude of …
It would be negligent not to point out what a great thing Microsoft has squandered.
Microsoft has a habit of squandering good things, and pushing mediocre (and sometimes bad) ones quite hard. This isn't a new thing, either, it's been like this for ages. In fact, I can't even remember when it started...
My first introduction to Cortana was when I tried asking it a question... and it promptly locked up the entire user interface and the only way to get out was to ctrl-alt-delete and log out of the machine (or reboot). I tried it several more times with consistent results.
So I disabled it and never used it again.
Speaking anecdotally, the problem with the Kinect was: it isn't fun. Every title I played pretty much controlled itself while I attempted vainly to impart some sort of input. I'm not a fan of the franchise so perhaps that colours my judgement, but the Star Wars XBox 360 pack-in was the worst that I tried. It had a racing segment in which I discovered that as long as I held my arms in front of me, the vehicle would successfully complete a lap. Turning them sometimes made a difference, sometimes didn't.
So it was very similar to the Youtube experience of watching somebody else play a game, except that I wasn't allowed to sit down.
Too true. Take the Kinect, If they had just opened the thing to everyone instead of locking it down, they would be riding high on a new revenue stream. They are more interested in absolute control rather than making things that everyone wants to use because they are good. As it is everything they make is shit and must be avoided at all costs. Spying is the new reason to make anything these days. Ramming stuff down people's throats only works for so long.
Except the advert apps, you can't just uninstall those because it'll just redownload them. You have to block the URLs in your HOSTS file first. Even that will only block a few of them since some of the URLs mask more than one IP address.
0.0.0.0 localhost
0.0.0.0 spclient.wg.spotify.com
0.0.0.0 candycrushsoda.king.com
0.0.0.0 bubblewitch3mobile.king.com
0.0.0.0 a122.dscg3.akamai.net
0.0.0.0 c-0001.c-msedge.net
0.0.0.0 db5-dspcdn.tlu.dl.delivery.mp.microsoft.com
Alexa sits in a small $40 hockey puck shaped device on my kitchen counter. If I were to use Cortana, where would I use it? Turn on the desktop in my office? Keep a laptop running on my counter? Now that the Windows phone is gone, I can't use that.
The genius in Alexa is the small, inexpensive device. Amazon got there with the goods first, so it's too late for others to catch up.
"Alexa order me a six pound hammer"
"I'm sorry Dave. I think you are buying that to do damage to me."
"No Alexa, I'm ordering it to kill myself."
"Order accepted. Delivery will be in 60 minutes by drone. Please stand outside in order to recieve the package."
Doh!
Seriously, how do you know that your Alexa device is not spying on your every move including that little trip to the fridge at 02:48 this morning.... :) :)
"Seriously, how do you know that your Alexa device is not spying on your every move including that little trip to the fridge at 02:48 this morning.... :) :)"
I've run checks on my local network to ensure that no extraneous data is being sent to Amazon, and there's no spikes at times where I don't call it by name to indicate anything is sent except for that which I expect. I also subscribe to a number of security focused groups who would immediately tell me if any of the paranoia was justified with me noticing.
Sorry if that's not the answer you wanted for but for me personally, I'd be more worried about what that bloated, virus-ridden mess of a Windows computer you're using is doing with or without Cortana than I am about the Echo device.
"I've run checks on my local network to ensure that no extraneous data is being sent to Amazon, and there's no spikes at times where I don't call it by name to indicate anything is sent except for that which I expect.
This sounds like a blog article needing to be written. I've refused to get one for similar paranoid reasons as others have mentioned, but if demonstrated to behave in a reasonable manner, then maybe it's worth greater consideration.
Cortana was most useful on a mobile device. Microsoft is dead in mobile.
A significant use case for mobile assistants is recognising or playing music. Since Microsoft axed Groove streaming, Cortana has lost its ability to recognise music.
They ought to rename Microsoft HAL. The slow death of this company is heart-breaking / hilarious take your pick.
Reckon there'll be a few more Microsoft shut-downs. Moving out of the OS market one day? After all, they're the third ecosystem after Android and Apple .
To be fair, Cortana incorporates some great technologies. But without a market to want it, it is dead in the water. Microsoft never found that market, because Apple and Google beat it to Mobile space (as noted), Amazon beat it to home appliance space, Microsoft couldn't think of a killer app in desktop space and of course who needs it in server space. IMHO it is desperately needed for automated supermarket checkout, but where's the glamour in that?
How is KDE not good enough?
It has umpteen more features and a gazillion times more configurable options than gnome has....
Maybe if you tried it duing it's transition phase to KDE4 7 or 8 years ago then that could explain it.
Try the latest kdubuntu or KDE neon...it's known as Plasma Desktop now anyway
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