WEBVTT

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have you ever had a visit from the good idea ferry that you later regretted

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maybe something like i'll just duct tape my bumper back onto my car what could go

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wrong well microsoft had a moment like this back in 1997 when they introduced a

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lovely feature called the office assistant as part of the office 97

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productivity suite little animated characters were introduced to help the

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user with common tasks although there were quite a few to

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choose from everyone mostly remembers clipit better known as clippy that

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painfully annoying paper clip that came to haunt the nightmares of cubicle

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workers everywhere so why in the world did they think this was a good idea to

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begin with well microsoft was moving away from the command line interface of

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ms-dos in the mid-1990s and toward graphical user interfaces the company

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wanted a way to make pcs as easy as possible to use for a wider customer

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base after looking at a study from stanford that indicated that people feel

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similar emotions towards computers as they do to actual people microsoft

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decided to humanize their software as much as possible leading to the

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development of microsoft bob a cartoonish interface that presented the

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system as a house the user was guided around by an animal assistant such as a

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dog for example clicking on a desk with a piece of paper on it would open up a

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word processing program the general consensus though was that although

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well-meaning bob was a terrible program

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because it went too far the other way from the traditional command line it was

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sickeningly cute and insulted the intelligence of the average computer

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user and although microsoft quickly ditched bob after Windows 95 came out

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its concept of cute cartoonish characters holding your hand to an

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unnecessary degree did make it into office 97 with the idea again being to

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make it easier to use even though the focus groups didn't like the office

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assistant concept with many of the female participants saying that the

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characters looked like they were leering at them through the screen microsoft

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shoved clippy down our throats anyway but even within microsoft clippy was

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still pretty unpopular his internal code name during development was tfc with the

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c standing for clown but i'm gonna let y'all figure out what

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the first two letters are for however partly due to the fact that microsoft's

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bob was pushed by melinda french who later became bill gates wife

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no one was too keen on dumping clippy completely meaning he became a fixture

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in microsoft office for several years but why exactly was he so hated

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well a huge part of the issue was not only that his offers to help seemed kind

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of silly i mean who needs help writing a letter but also that he was designed to

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help users become oriented with office once the user mastered the basics clippy

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became mostly useless but he just kept on popping up with the

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same suggestions no matter how long a person had been using the program for it

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didn't take long for microsoft to no longer be able to ignore the tide of

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voices asking for the feature to be turned off so the company finally did by

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default in office xp which was released in 2001 and removed clippy and all other

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office assistants completely in office 2007. however clippy has popped up

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several times since he was fired microsoft itself commissioned a cartoon

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based around the character's ouster to promote office xp as soon as i finished

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this proposal i it looks like you're writing a letter ah would you like help

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you you little metallic um try

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rephrasing your query clippy appeared in a tutorial game called ribbon hero 2 in

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2011. microsoft used it as an april fool's joke sticking him into office

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online in 2014 and there are even clippy

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related easter eggs integrated into cortana

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so it's uh it's cool that microsoft can laugh at themselves a bit i guess but just

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between you and me i keep a paper clip with googly eyes on my desk because i

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actually i miss the good old days i love that little guy hello

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with suggestions that you have for future videos

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it looks like you're writing a letter would you like beat it