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To the shock of no one, Windows 10 users who upgrade to the Anniversary Update (scheduled for release next week), will not be able to disable Cortana using the settings.
If you compare the start menu settings of Cortana of the current version of Windows (version 1511) with those of the Anniversary Update (version 1607) you will notice that Cortana's off switch is no longer available (thanks Ian Paul @PC World for spotting that)
Cortana, the digital assistant that Microsoft touts as one of the major features of Windows 10 supports interaction via touch, typing, ink and voice.
Microsoft integrated Cortana deeply with the native search functionality of Windows 10. While linked to search, Windows 10 users may turn off Cortana currently to use search without it. While you might have to turn off web searches on Windows 10 as well, doing so ensured that you got search functionality that matched those of previous versions of Windows.
Windows users who turned off Cortana had two main reasons for it: either they did not need Cortana functionality, or they did not want it because of privacy implications.
[...] It is still possible to turn off Cortana, but not by using the preferences. The policy to disable Cortana is still available and you may use it to turn off Cortana on the device.
Please note that the Group Policy Editor is only available in professional versions of Windows 10. Most notably, it is not available in Windows 10 Home.
The linked article goes into detail on how to disable Cortana using the Registry in Windows 10 Home, and Group Policy Editor in Windows 10 Pro. However, Microsoft no longer makes disabling Cortana anywhere near as easy as it was.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:14AM
Ok, so I want to understand: what actual use is Cortana, compared to the ordinary search functionality? If I go to Microsoft's explanation: what is Cortana [microsoft.com], I see that I can enter queries like "How old are you" or "Tell me a joke". Gee, golly, wow.
For more useful things like "change my 3PM event to 4PM": (a) I'm not going to trust Cortana to get it right, so I'm going to open my calendar anyway. And (b) it's not that simple, as events almost always involve other people.
Finally, as a general thing, how many people really want to converse with their computers? Especially vocally (horror - imagine the chatter in an office), but even with a keyboard? It's not efficient, and it's not even really useful.
Does anyone actually use Cortana, or Siri, or any of these anthropomorphic assistants?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:22AM
As seen on Mr. Robot, apparently some women like to talk with Alexa while they masturbate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:27AM
I'm still debating if she's a transgirl (or superhacker), and I'm still not sure where she fits in other than 'single lonely masturbating FBI agent who is GOING TO BRING THEM ALL DOWN... if she doesn't defect first.' Was she in the first season somewhere and I just forgot about it?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @07:54AM
Dom is new in the second season.
F-Society's secret identity is unraveling because of one lonely FBI agent with too much time on her rosie palms. Of course the group met in an abandoned building with a huge F-- SOCIETY sign out front, but nobody noticed the blatantly obvious until now.
Other than product placement, I'd guess Dom chose Alexa because the Amazon Echo is phallic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:47AM
My final comment on this is: After that scene earlier where the sister took over that E-Corp lady's smarthouse... Why the fuck is this Dom chick running an integrated audio surveillance device in her house, along with all those other smarthouse features? Seems like she is just begging to be pwn3d.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @09:53AM
Maybe she will get pwned. Maybe her stuff will get (the other overused word) bricked. On the one hand, Dominique seems savvy enough, but on the other hand, her judgement seems clouded by her social isolation. Likely she's supposed to know talking to Alexa is risky but she doesn't have anyone else.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Wednesday July 27 2016, @11:54AM
OK ACs nice discussion. And I've seen this floating around amazon prime video and have considered watching. But my time is extremely limited and expensive so I haven't made the plunge. Other higher priority things to do, etc.
I've heard its basically a modernized remake of "welcome to the scene" from a decade ago, but with newer technology and American-style Adult (being an american adult means being a 5 year old that drinks, has sex, and swears a lot, which is a philosophical outlook which is intensely pushed but something I'm uninterested in). But basically the same story, the saga of a small time wanna be white collar criminal using modern (for the time) technology as a crutch.
The style was never influential; it relied on the viewer being literate which is a bad bet, and everything but the instant message prose was just ambient scene setting (oh the pun). The music was pretty good.
So I'd welcome a comment from anyone who's watched the robot and welcome to the scene. I only watched the first season. I heard the second season sucked. The parody "Teh scene" is funny although I didn't watch the whole thing.
If you have no idea what the scene series was, its all on archive.org now and also on less reliable more advertisement and driveby download covered sites. Amusingly I'm not sure its still available by torrent although that was the distro method in '05.
(Score: 2) by curunir_wolf on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:33PM
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2016, @12:55AM
In the same scene, she was having text-based cyber sex with some dude, masturbating frantically, and asking Alexa when the end of the world would finally save her from sexual frustration.
(Score: 2) by Sir Finkus on Wednesday July 27 2016, @08:05AM
I've tried siri a few times. Usually it's just faster to do whatever you're trying to do the old fashioned way. It's mildly useful for things like reminders and other simple things.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:15PM
Does anyone actually use Cortana, or Siri, or any of these anthropomorphic assistants?
The 20 year old intern did at work a couple weeks ago. He had a nice minute or so long conversation with siri about moving one specific appointment from 3pm to 4pm or something. Personally I'd have done it using keyboard and mouse on my desktop in maybe 5 seconds, or using my phone to make it fair it might have taken 10 seconds, but he had a nice long talk.
All the other employees kinda looked at him, shook their heads, looked at each other... its socially unacceptable to talk to phones with the crowd I work with and hang out with and live with. Maybe the kid is a new generation and everyone under 20 talks to their phones all the time, or maybe he's just antisocial, hard to say. My tween-teen-ish kids only talk to their devices in one situation, my daughter uses her music app and yells out song titles or band names rather then typing them in or otherwise searching, its a thing among the girls to sit in a group and they take turns yelling out song titles, it seems to mostly be a girl thing, probably due to formulaic top40 music mostly being a teen girl thing.
Among adults, at least where I live, talking to your phone is about as much of a social mistake as whipping out the e-cig at your desk, or microwaving kimchi, or discussing medical test results with your doctor in public on the phone. Its not as bad as taking a dump on the sidewalk like the homeless do, or talking to an imaginary friend, but its getting there. Kind of like the only thing more insulting than ignoring other people to talk to distant people on the phone is ignoring other people to swipe and type on a phone and the only thing worse than that is ignoring other people to talk to an imaginary person on a phone.
Also BTW "anthropomorphic assistants" are not very anthropomorphic. Tend to be pretty vanilla ethnic and androgynous and souless. I might be convinced to talk to "Rommie" especially with a high def video interface, but siri voice isn't going to do it for me. AFAIK all the assistant companies are aiming for an uncanny valley level of humanity thats precisely calibrated to maximize repellancy and minimize attractiveness.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:19PM
Among adults, at least where I live, talking to your phone is about as much of a social mistake as whipping out the e-cig at your desk, or microwaving kimchi, or discussing medical test results with your doctor in public on the phone. Its not as bad as taking a dump on the sidewalk like the homeless do, or talking to an imaginary friend, but its getting there. Kind of like the only thing more insulting than ignoring other people to talk to distant people on the phone is ignoring other people to swipe and type on a phone and the only thing worse than that is ignoring other people to talk to an imaginary person on a phone.
Another thing I don't get is the people I keep running into in public who put their phones on speakerphone and hold them in front of their face to do a call. Or do people use their phones to do video calls? I don't understand why video calls either.
I might be convinced to talk to "Rommie" especially with a high def video interface
Hell yeah Lexa Doig :)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:33PM
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 27 2016, @02:46PM
Honestly I think it was some kind of intentional punishment. I really don't know how to top that one. He wins. Maybe if I turned a stinky cheese into a cheese soup and then boiled it for awhile while microwaving it. It would take extraordinary effort. I wonder what skunk spray tastes like as a condiment? They add mercaptans to the natgas supply to detect leaks, surely I could buy it in bulk somewhere and it to a chili for a spicy kick.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:49PM
Two words: Stinking Tofu.
When walking down the street in Taiwan, steamed or BBQed stinking tofu will cause most foreigners to feel like vomiting, with an effective downwind area of effect of 50 m or more.
I've eaten some, when I had a bad cold. If you have a good nose, it's more efficient than anything I've heard described in the CIA/Gitmo reports.
You can find it in the US (not quite as good, obviously). A minute in the microwave would clear any non-Chinese out of the building.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Friday July 29 2016, @10:01PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @03:31PM
If you'd been reading the news you'd be aware that Microsoft are already world-leading in adding Genuine People Personalities (GPP) to their new brand of AI's. Tay, for example, was their new "Trump Supporter" GPP.
(Score: 1) by driven on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:20PM
Where does Google Glass fit in your continuum of social mistakes? :)
Computer "AI" is nowhere near artificially intelligent. It's all just "big data" which doesn't _understand_ what you want, it just tried to interpret what you want in an extremely objective way and without any real understanding of context or intention. Until I can mutter something once to a computer and it understands exactly what I want like a normal human being would and can act on it, it'll be faster to do things on my own without the "help" of something like Siri or Cortana.
(Score: 1) by TheLink on Thursday July 28 2016, @08:01AM
I don't talk to my left hand to ask it to help me drink from a glass of water, I use it. I don't talk to my feet to walk, I just walk and I don't have to think too much about it.
Sure I don't mind some AI stuff - maybe even self driving cars. But if I'm going to have an Iron Man suit with a built-in AI, I would want to have a fair bit of control over the suit.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by cmn32480 on Wednesday July 27 2016, @12:23PM
I use the voice commands on my android phone all the time while driving.
Particularly if I want to call someone or send a text message, I can do it by voice and still watch the road.
The flip side is that it is only effective to a certain point. Simple tasks work ok, but I would not want to try to send an email, the voice recognition is just not that good yet.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @01:25PM
I'd convers with an AI. We ain't quite their yet, though.
Just wondering, if someone will treat this bot as a "daughter" will SWAT comes immediately or there'll be a bit of free time for a supper?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2016, @06:33PM
here's an example of siri usage: http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36471180; [bbc.com] in brief, a woman was performing CPR on her infant daughter, and told siri to call an ambulance at the same time, and then she was able to use speakerphone with the emergency people --- phone had been dropped somewhere in the room in the initial confusion. everyone was ok in the end, to spare you the suspense.
extreme, I know, but I can honestly say that a phone that would call the ambulance just with voice commands is something useful in the big scheme of things.
otherwise, I'm not sure. I personally have only seen people do it once or twice on the street when I was living in the US (a couple of years ago), they were asking for directions. i'm not sure whether it was just because of the novelty, or whether they actually did feel spoken instructions are easier to follow than looking at a map and reading (which i would personally find easier).