The charm offensive seems a touch light on the charm component.
Cortana to form circle of life in Windows 10
Microsoft has revealed more details of just how its personal assistant Cortana will work in Windows 10. The assistant's been given a visual representation based on circles, with the variations at the top of the story representing Cortana in different moods and when performing different tasks. The circles will appear as …
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 10:22 GMT Dave 126
Re: Yes But...
To turn Cortana off, open Cortana's NotebookCortana's Notebook icon > Settings, turn Cortana off Toggle off icon, then restart your phone.
Compared to some settings I've seen in the past, that seems pretty straightforward. No floating around in a red-lit micro-gravity environment required!
Sidenote: Both Kubrick and Clarke thought that HAL's 'brain' would be no larger than a shoe-box, but Kubrick decided to represent it as room-sized purely for cinematic reasons.
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 10:46 GMT Squander Two
Re: Yes But...
Cortana on WP 8.1 seems to be fairly clever but does nothing whatsoever if location services are turned off. Fuck knows why it needs your GPS coordinates to find a music file on your phone or set an alarm. Anyway, it does make it extremely easy to switch off: just turn off GPS. Since I keep my GPS off all the time anyway unless I'm using a map and actually want to know which bit of the planet I'm standing on (surely the only reason one would ever need it), I've only played with Cortana for a few minutes.
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 16:13 GMT fung0
Re: Yes But...
To turn Cortana off, open Cortana's NotebookCortana's Notebook icon > Settings, turn Cortana off Toggle off icon, then restart your phone.
Isn't it just a bit disturbing that Cortana can't flush herself out of your system without a reboot? Typical MS design: monolithic instead of modular, intrusive instead of respectful.
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 16:17 GMT dogged
Re: Yes But...
> Isn't it just a bit disturbing that Cortana can't flush herself out of your system without a reboot?
It's understandable when you bear in mind that when the Cortana app is installed in Windows Phone it comes via update (hence reboot) and attaches itself to the hardware "Search" key. When you switch Cortana off, the reboot sets the "Search" key back to Bing.
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 10:49 GMT dogged
Re: Yes But...
> Or will MS make it respond..."I'm sorry Dave, I can't allow that."
That's actually "her" response to "Cortana, open the pod bay doors".
I don't find Cortana to be all that much use (except for reading out my text messages to me over bluetooth when I'm in the car) but I am fully prepared to admit that it's my own fault. The "notebook" allows you to select what the service "knows" about you and I really don't allow it to know very much at all.
So, excellent for granular control but self-defeating if you want the full "intelligent assistant" thing. But I've never had the intelligent assistant so I don't miss it.
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 17:54 GMT Daedalus801
Re: Yes But...
"Ok, hands up all those here that will turn this off right after installation?"
I hope that we have the option to turn this off BEFORE installation !!
default = all the BLOAT microsoft can throw at you
Custom = allowing you to install a small fast OS base with minimal rubbish on top.
NO Cortana
NO Xbox integration.
NO linked Microsoft Account When logging on locally.
NO defaulting to share everything and save to the Cloud by DEFAULT.
Just a basic good stable machine like i currently use on Windows 7 (after a bit of Litening) like i would allow users to run in the Office, just @ home.
LETTING THE CUSTOMER CHOOSE i know its such an outdated concept but GUESS what IT WORKS !!!!!!!!!!
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 10:16 GMT Dave 126
Re: It's so soothing
This is an area in which Microsoft are hoping they can distinguish themselves from Google - 'filling a gap in the market', so to speak. Certainly the user seems to have more granular control over what information (location, browsing history, emails, FaceBook etc) Cortana uses.
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-gb/how-to/wp8/cortana/cortana-and-my-privacy-faq
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 16:16 GMT fung0
Re: What is the Swahili for
Earlier this week, I might have said "Samsung."
Why is everyone bent out of shape about a TV that listens to your conversation, but perfectly cool with mobile devices that literally brag about analyzing your every thought and action, and sending that information back to Apple or Microsoft?
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 10:06 GMT Paul Shirley
wow, Android support...
...so I can start the day talking to the android phone next to my bed in the morning?
I fear ms will be disappointed when I don't rush out and replace my phones and tablet with win10 devices, even if it works much better than the utterly incompetent google now ;)
Or allow Cortana to infest my PCs. Given their history deeply embedding unwanted and insecure apps in the core os that might become a problem :(
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 11:22 GMT Dave 126
Re: Good fucking gawd/ess.
jake, there is no mention anywhere in the article about Microsoft making any reference to the Lion King - those are references made by The Register. Read it again.
(The Lion King is a Disney property - the largest shareholder in Disney was CEO of a big mobile device and compute company, but that company wasn't Microsoft).
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 11:28 GMT Dave 126
Re: "Sensitive" and "Abashed"
>The whole point of having a piece of equipment is that it does its job and you don't need to care about how it's "feeling".
Ideally not. However, many of us here will be attuned to the noises our computers make - whirring fan noise or high hard-disk activity, for example, might alert us to an out of control process.
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Wednesday 11th February 2015 21:15 GMT Anonymous Coward
Finally there is a good news for the keen users of the windows operating system. Microsoft has now started providing free updations to windows 7 or 8 or 8.1 to users to windows 10 but this update is free only for one year. Eventually after that you will have to pay for it. Indeed this is a good trick of Microsoft to make money and let more and more users and organisations to use latest versions and facility provided by the hard working software geeks. On one hand some interesting features like new web browser “Spartan” has been introduced whereas on the other hand many new updates to apps has been released free of cost. So windows users might be very happy. Let’s see what else Microsoft brings for us in future.
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Thursday 12th February 2015 13:03 GMT Rob G.
We should stop getting up in arms when Microsoft copies something new to their OS.
As long as it does not record and send information to Microsoft when you're not expecting it to, I don't see why people would get all up in arms about it. It seems like its laggy now but, it's still in beta and that's to be expected, and what I was expecting when I joined the insider program. I would however like to see Cortana become voice control for my PC, because it would be neat to do quick things via voice while doing more intensive tasks with the keyboard and mouse.
If Microsoft can accomplish this without snooping too much, I say Cortana is a step in the right direction. With touch screens becoming ubiquitous, it seems logical that voice control does too.