Bot Contest

Oh I tried that too, then I turned the assistant off. It's not the character choice that bothers most people. It's the pop ups that usually guess wrong and never tell me things I don't know or can't see for myself. I had to look around to turn off the annoying sidebar too. It took forever to fix that mouse thing with the typing jumping to the pointer where ever I left the mouse alone and I still have issues with that jumping around thing in certain applications. If I wanted to move where I am typing, I would click the mouse. If I am typing, I don't want to have to worry about the mouse and the pointer. Who thought that feature up?

In short, whenever they try anticipate my needs, they are clueless and make it worse. I want them to stop. It doesn't help. (Oh and UI means GUI in the other post).

Now I am done ranting.

can i partition my HD and add a linux partition, or something?    

Get a copy of any of the popular Linux magazines, (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Linux_magazines) and you'll often find there's a distro on the cover disc that will run straight from the CD/DVD, with no need to install. That would give you a taste of it without having to go to all the hassle of partitioning and installing etc.

I can particularly recommend Linux Format, but it may only be available in the UK.

Bev: I ignore the popup boxes. I just like having a cartoon cat wandering around my screen. And, yes, that "leave the mouse, move the cursor" thing is annoying in the extreme.

I think people smart enough to crack Vista won't be running it.<0>

Well said. On a tangent, there was also a discussion on slashdot about this, and I liked how someone said "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". That about sums it up for Vista, with the bloat and all. It's even been shown to run slower at some tasks than XP. A lot of people who buy a new computer with Vista on it, who don't know a lot about computers will say that it runs fine. All they want to do is check their email and play solitaire, anyway. However, if you plan to do anything technical on Vista, it looks like it'll be a bit harder to do than XP. I'm talking about those little dialog boxes...
"are you SURE you want to install this non-MS program?"
*click*
"Really, are you sure?"
*click*
"No, really, I'm being serious. You could really mess the system up."
*click*
"Ok, if you really want to press NO"
*thinks* *clicks*
"I was just kidding you, you can't install that!"

Of course, I'm exaggerating, but maybe that's the next operating system.

Ulrike-Thank you for indulging my late night rant. I'll admit I thought the Office cat and the Einstein characters were cute until I needed to get a lot work work done. Also I tend to have a few different windows open so I can multi task and I want to choose my distractions. Back when I used my Performa for email and a a few papers for school, I had a program called Underware that added dragons and pixies to my desktop and I thought it was very cool.

Alc003 there was also a discussion on slashdot about this.

Yes. a few. Most of my opinions on Vista are based on what I read on sites like Slashdot, Digg, CDnet, Wired and the like. I'm sure I saw a sort of demo video or two, but I don't remember where I saw it. I have read what MS says though. (I told you I am on my PC all day).

I have to admit some bias in that whenever I see a pro Vista post I tend to think "That sounds like something a MS employee would write. I wonder if they have clerks in marketing do that or if it's a higher being paid to surf the net and post?" Just as when I saw the original question here about the MS chattterbot contest, part of me wondered if that was some MS employee or interested party who googled "chaterbot" and hit all the chatterbot sites to post something that wasn't "spam" but still notified bot builders about the contest. I think when I checked, the person who posted had created an account the same day, had no bot here, and didn't come back as far as I could tell.

Well, i downloaded the ubuntu 6.10 i386 CD launcher. One worry though - if the OS is running on CD, does that mean i cannot save system settings, or install programs on the computer and have them lose regitration with the operating system when i shut down? Also from a development standpoint is HD partition-and-install a better option? I have been considering switching to do my AI development in C++ with linux, while doing whatever business dev for work on winXP with .net.
The reason being is .net is good for productivity and production speed, and i hear linux is a lot less bureaucratic in its execution of program commands.

Hmm, you'd probably need to make a little disk space for that. I think you can mount a windows formatted disk to store settings and files without partitioning though (but don't quote me on that - I am not even remotely an expert!) Applications would probably have to be on the CD though, unless you partitioned.

Just a reminder that the deadline to enter the 2007 CBC is 3/15/07.

Well, I entered Nick into the CBC.

Good luck to all this year

Yes, good luck!

Nick is great anyone who hasn't downloaded him should!

I have found another bot out there that's similar to nick, though seemingly with a lot more flexibility when it comes to cofiguration. It's called Aaron, (its the first on the CBC bot list), and takes video camera input, speech recog. and voice synthesis. it also has a sort of animated face, though not a fully functional microsoft agent. It learns with what its creator calls a "artificial reasoning network" that is made up of neurons.