Microsoft pitches lobotomized Cortana for iOS, Android handsets Not content to have Cortana controlling Windows Mobile, Microsoft has released a toned-down version of its personal assistant tool for iOS and Android handsets. Redmond said that Cortana will run in a diminished capacity on the Apple and Google smartphone OSs, but will still allow users to link up their handsets with Windows …
Glad you're here to keep us all safe by letting us know what SLURP and their sinister cronies are up to. You are one of the few who are still aware that SLURP is a thing and they must be so desperate by now that they will be hunting you down with helicopters and little tiny robots that can scuttle up walls and scan your brains with laser beams...best be safe and dump ALL your devices in the river...go DARK...NOW...before they find you...its not too late!
You obviously didn't see his handle 'A_Yank_lurker'. They are indeed from the USofA then it is no surprise that they are wary. Conspiracy Theories are rife.
I worked over there for a couple of years. My Boss (a Harvard Grad) said that the US Moon Landings never took place. It was all filmed in a USAF Base in the Nevada Desert. An otherwise intellegent man but...
Elvis is still Alive
JFK was murdered by the CIA
etc
etc
The place has more than the average number of nutjobs (IMHO). Just look at Trump.
So be kind on them eh?
If you are a Brit, as you appear to be from your post, then what on earth are you doing up at 6 in the morning? Everyone (in the USA) knows Europeans only work 3 hours a day and spend most of their time drinking and eating and avoiding good honest toil, and watching sex on your tiny TV's in your minuscule terraced houses. You dont fool me; You're an agent of SLURP!
Cortana, what is the average number of nukes? I mean, what represents n which divides the sum of ai? Is it country, state, nation, UN members? Can I simply walk around D.C. or London and add up the number of consulates or embassies and use that? I'm just wondering how to count places like Flanders and Taiwan.
You know what Cortana, nevermind all that, just give me a ratio of nukes per nutjob for the G20.
I worked over there for a couple of years. My Boss (a Harvard Grad) said that the US Moon Landings never took place. It was all filmed in a USAF Base in the Nevada Desert.
Such strangeness is not entirely national...
An ex-boss of mine - an otherwise rational and intelligent chap - was *insistent* that directional cable was a thing, and his stereo sounded so much better for making sure the arrows all pointed in the right direction...
Vic.
Stranger still when you look at the character: Cortana-the-character is an AI, though based partially upon patterns derived from a scanned human brain. Why does she have breasts? Because she deliberately designed her avatar model to look like that.
I'm sure the acquisition of Minecraft was also a desperate attempt by Microsoft to portray itself as hip, relevant and appealing. To immerse the company into the geek sub-culture.
By the way, Cortana is a spying, data mining wench on Windows 10. Do not use a Microsoft account and do not let her 'learn more about you'.
Nice try, Satya.
"I'm sure the acquisition of Minecraft was also a desperate attempt by Microsoft to portray itself as hip, relevant and appealing."
Surely it was so they could port it to .Net where it now runs loads faster to show how crappy Java really is...
Plus for HoloLens of course...
I find Google Now and Google voice search far better at understanding context and actions.
Can I ask cortina to "listen to the cortinas" whilst driving to work in my cortina? I think not. Yet I use Google voice actions most days on the drive to work to ask it to play music.
Annecdotal but...
...while trying to 'hurry up' a colleague who was taking too long on the lunchtime supermarket run, the driver tried to get his google now to call the straggler. Failed. Tried again. Failed. At this point I'd got my lumia out the pocket and hit the 'cortana' button. On his 3rd attempt google failed to understand him again, but my lumia understood and called the offending weekly-shopper.
If you ask for random things, you tend to get web results. Asking for things lwith simple answers ike currency conversions, weather, calender entries, commuting information usually returns a spoken result. The reminders part works quite well ("remind me to buy milk when im at tesco" "which tesco?" "any" "OK") as does the sending texts and calling via voice. I wonder are you using cortana or the previous windows voice search which looks similar but is just basic voice recognition.
Because she knows where all the Tesco are and she has a GPS system. No data needed.
I know because it is by far the second most used command I use after "Wake me at ..." which works almost every time, first time and selects one of a long list of alarms for the next morning if it is not a usual wake-up day.
Much quicker than tapping and stops me selecting a PM alarm becase she is thorough like that.
Night workers would have to say PM I imagine.
The Tesco reminders are really useful btw, I forget non-grocery stuff like toothpaste or rarer stuff like a bag of sugar all the time.
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"Most notably, said Microsoft, the voice search function of Cortana will not be available on the app, as both Apple and Android have their own voice-activated assistants already installed."
A recipe for a device with a split personality?
Re: virtual PA v. virtual assistant to aggregate my various sources of information. v. virtual companion.
This is actually an interesting point. The early work (I'm talking circa 2000) on "virtual assistants" focused on the PA ie. an assistant who looked after your diary etc. namely an assistant to help you get work done. t would seem that later work, which Siri, Cortana and "Ok Google"/"Google everywhere" represent is more focused on being a virtual companion, namely someone who is always there to answer queries and do stuff and to pass time with. Hence the effort being put into not just the persona but also the back story. The question that arises is when will we get to the point that people prefer to converse with these virtual companions rather than real humans...
Not yet - but once the technology matures, someone is eventually going to put together enough information to create an open-source version. It'll probably occupy a few terabytes for the knowledge base though - there's a reason these programs are just front ends to a remote server farm.
I'll answer my own post - it seems that CyanogenOS gets a much more integrated version.
So, now that makes sense - If only it was in the story here.
""Cortana was created to be a truly personal digital assistant – available on the go, no matter where or when you need help, and on whatever device you carry," wrote Cortana group program manager Marcus Ash."
"No matter where" my hairy arse, try using it with the English language whilst the location is set to any other country (Japan in my case) and it'll puke out excuses that Cortana is unavailable with your settings/location. Of course the location could always be set to match the language (British English/UK for example) but then nothing else bloody works (windows store, office360 etc).
Those aren't straps. Cortana just uses surface textures to slightly-disguise that she prefers her human representation in the nude.
The pointless fanservice is pretty blatant, but at least the writers made her a proper character. Sex appeal to the players is just her secondary function.
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