
Microsoft Bob Taking Up Space (2008) - daledavies
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx
======
frik
The Microsoft Bob code lived also on in Office 97, 2002, 2002(XP) in the
_annoying_ Office Agent and Windows XP (in Windows desktop search, and WinXP
setup second stage welcome screen).

Bill Gates wife Melinda was responsible for the Microsoft Bob (marketing,
management level):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob)

Related products (predecessors) were Microsoft Creative Writer and Microsoft
Fine Artist (both for kids):

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Artist](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine_Artist)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Writer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Writer)

Search on Google/Youtube for better picture/videos - both sister programs are
very similar to Microsoft Bob, the have navigation screens and cartoon
characters that help you.

~~~
DanBC
> in the annoying Office Agent

Clippy is interesting because original plans would have made clippy useful,
but some decisions ended up hobbling it.

[http://robotzeitgeist.com/tag/bayesian-inference-
engine](http://robotzeitgeist.com/tag/bayesian-inference-engine)

> No persistent user profiles.

> No reasoning about user competence, i.e., novice versus experienced user

> Small event queue with emphasis only on the most recent interactions of the
> user with the software interface (this means the engine was trying to guess
> the values of many variables using very little data.)

> Separation between user interface events and word-based queries; for word-
> based queries the engine ignored any context and user actions.

> Last and possibly most important and I quote from the paper, “The automated
> facility of providing assistance based on the likelihood that a user may
> need assistance or on the expected utility of such autonomous action was not
> employed.” Instead, “The Office team has employed a relatively simple rule-
> based system on top of the Bayesian query analysis system to bring the agent
> to the foreground with a variety of tips.” This is why Clippy kept popping
> up all the time. It was not using the mathematically correct engine that the
> researchers had designed. It was driven by some rule-based system that one
> or more of the developers from the product team thought was a reasonable
> substitute.

~~~
Narkov
What it "should have been" sounds awfully like what Siri/Google Now/Cortana is
today.

Microsoft has a real ability to be ahead of the game but still end up chasing
:)

------
userbinator
_Windows XP CD, there was still about 30 megabytes of storage capacity
remaining._

 _Somebody decided to fill that extra capacity on the CD with dummy data and
to have the Windows Setup program verify that the dummy data was still there._

Really? This feels like a Microsoft urban legend. I'm not convinced because I
have an original ISO image of the first release of Windows XP Pro and it is
(~500MB) much smaller than the size of even the smallest regular CD. It works,
I've used it for many installs.

Edit: in fact only the i386 folder on the CD, which is < 500MB, is needed to
install XP so if there was a hidden copy of Bob in there, it certainly doesn't
fit the "30MB remaining" nor are there any files in there which are of that
size with the exception of the ~75MB driver.cab; the latter contains only
device drivers and the biggest one, te_protu.qm, appears to be ISDN modem
firmware.

~~~
pyre
Also, Windows XP was released on October 25, 2001. Broadband wasn't pervasive
at that point, but it was definitely available to many people, and and extra
30 MB wouldn't have slowed many people down.

------
jasonjei
I love Raymond--he's got an erudite knowledge of Windows lore. The fellow
delivers such good Microsoft standup that you can almost imagine the deadpans
as he does them. Despite the constant head shaking directed at Microsoft, you
can't help but laugh at how things are. Nonetheless, Raymond has rescued me
many times when looking for the Windows equivalent of doing something.

Here's one of Raymond's Win32 API write ups/hacks for enumerating threads in a
process:

"The tool helper library is sort of the black sheep of Win32. It grew out of
the 16-bit TOOLHELP library, which provided services for system debugging
tools to do things like take stack traces and enumerate all the memory in the
system. The original incarnation of Win32 didn't incorporate it; it wasn't
until Windows 95 that a 32-bit version of the tool helper library sort of got
bolted onto the side of Win32."

"That's what happens when you're the black sheep of the Win32 API."

[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/23/53785...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnewthing/archive/2006/02/23/537856.aspx)

------
godzillabrennus
You haven't really lived till you've installed and used Bob on a computer.

------
valarauca1
Ultimately Microsoft Bob gave us Comic Sans. That Dank Meme we can all be
thankful for.

~~~
ricksplat
Hey I thought it was Comic Chat that gave us Comic Sans … now that _was_ fun.

[http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/20/20-years-ago-i-created-
the...](http://venturebeat.com/2015/10/20/20-years-ago-i-created-the-best-
font-in-the-world/)

> As things transpired, Comic Sans didn’t actually make it into Microsoft Bob
> — but it did make it into 3D Movie Maker, which was similar to Microsoft Bob
> insofar as you had cartoon characters you could move around and do things
> with. The font then made it into Microsoft Comic Chat, which was similar to
> AOL chat, in that you could type messages to others on the Internet.

~~~
DanBC
A bunch of people make different interfaces to HN. A Comic Chat interface
would be fun, although not practical.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Comic_Chat)

------
facepalm
So what is closer to Bob: that encrypted file or an empty file? On the one
hand, the encrypted file is only a couple of keystrokes away from creating
Bob. But there is no known process to find the right keystrokes. The empty
file needs a lot more keystrokes to create Bob (rewriting it from scratch),
but there is a known process for doing it.

Edit: Kids, I'll just assume whoever downvotes me doesn't like Computer
Science very much. That's OK, but what is with the intolerance?

~~~
DanBC
(I didn't downvote you)

Assuming the OP is telling the truth and the password was just someone mashing
the keys: it'd make a nice project for someone to try to see if it's
vulnerable to cryptanalysis.

Windows XP was released around 2001. MS have had a few cryptographic errors.

~~~
facepalm
That adds another twist :-) I just thought it would be amusing to think about
different metrics and human perception. In the metric of keystrokes needed the
encrypted file is closer to Bob, whereas in the metric of time needed the
empty file might be closer. Human perception intuitively thinks the encrypted
file is closer, but it might be wrong.

------
sunahe
Microsoft Blob

------
TheLarch
Does anyone want a shrinkwrapped, but slightly mushed copy of Bob? All it will
cost you is a SASE...

~~~
luma
If you're serious, I'll take you up on that! Hit me up at luma at svideo dot
org

~~~
TheLarch
I hope this item met your expectations :-)

------
lucio
Isn't Dockercraft the same idea under MS Bob?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10584956)

------
ubercow13
Why do I need to sign in to my Microsoft account to view this page?

~~~
MileyCyrax
That's interesting. I didn't.

Well, maybe this will be useful to someone
[https://archive.is/ZKgP](https://archive.is/ZKgP)

~~~
spikej
Or this:
[http://www.readability.com/m?url=https://technet.microsoft.c...](http://www.readability.com/m?url=https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/magazine/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx)

(minus all the ads)

