Powered by Siri? Alexa? Ummm…. what’s the Google one called?
Apple has Siri, Amazon has Alexa and Google has “Okay Google”. No cute name as far as I know.
So you want to add one of these assistants behind the cardboard cutout of Richard and program it to responsor to “Hey Richard”? Sounds like a plan. Lol
It’s called Google Assistant.
Exactly, no cute name.
Is “Cortana” still alive? I recently read in a German computer magazine that “Alexa” and “Cortana” plan to join their databases.
Helloooooo, Skynet…
More like “Hello Microsoft trying to stay relevant.” They know they’re far behind, so they’re (presumably) joining forces with a company that actually HAS a database.
Yeah, if we can teach it to answer most flashlight-related questions, and be able to query mtnelectronics.com for stock levels and order status, and be able to actually handle the ordering system itself as well, then Richard can be more free to handle the back-end stuff, like actually producing and shipping stuff.
Ugh, all of Monkey$oft can go diaf. Later versions of Winsucks are by far the worst, most bug-ridden, antagonistic, actively hostile OSes I’ve ever come across.
If they want to stay relevant, well, I don’t think they even can. It’s only brainwashed businessdolts who insist on seeing “MS” on their office sw that seem to keep it alive.
If anything, they’ll just taint whatever they touch, and put a nasty stank on it that won’t come off.
I’m in complete agreement with everything you just said! 
:+1:
Me: Richard, Cortana, Siri, Skynet, Alexa - Order me 17, 20 and 22mm boost drivers as well as drivers which support secondary colored LEDs with MTN’d triple boards.
Richard Poster Assistant: OK, ordering now.
Me: THANKS!
I only recently got it to stop trying to “upgrade” 8 to 10, by creating a file called “windows10upgrade” or whatever directory name it kept trying to create, despite my best efforts to keep deleting it, and then turning off all permissions, etc., on that file.
I tried finding all the urls to M$ servers to blacklist them, but you can only block dotted-quads, not ‘*.microsoft.com’ or anything.
It “upgraded” once, completely on the sneak when I wasn’t looking, and completely killed my wifi. Laptop (which without wifi is essentially a brick) didn’t even think it had a wifi card installed! So I was able to back out to the previous version.
A day or two later, it does it again.
Rinse, repeat, several times. Turn on “metered connection”, nothing. Try turning off or even deleting the “upgrade” daemons, nothing. It was this flesh-eating bacteria that just couldn’t be eradicated.
Then I got sneaky and did the file trick above, which seemed to work.
Now, could you imagine the average technodolt who’d wake up one morning to a bricked laptop that no longer had innernet access, and you couldn’t even go hit the web to find out what broke?
THAT’S Microsoft…
And they think people would want it listening in on their conversations 24/7?
Come on, LB, don’t sugar coat it, tell us what you really think 
I completely agree. I’ve been a Linux nerd personally and professionally since 1994. I don’t miss using or coding for Winders.
The upgrade process breaks half the time. If you clean install windows properly it will work as expected.
To everyone else, maybe take a look at the title of the thread, “MTN Electronics” not “microsoft hate train”
Try to not derail a topic, that’s rude to the OP.
My point is, I shouldn’t have to. Once I click on “no thanks”, it should leave me alone. If I’m willing to not “upgrade” and deal with malware and other “threats”, let that be my decision. Ongoing “gentle reminders” is bad enough. Hijacking my machine, killing my bandwidth, slowing down the machine to a crawl, all while it goes and gets files on the sneak, then kills something I intentionally left running overnight so it could reboot the machine to install “upgrades” that I explicitly said not to, and then completely breaking wifi in the process, is NOT anything I want to deal with.
Especially not on a regular ongoing basis!!
What part of that can’t those idiots at MS understand??
Imagine someone from a car dealership coming to your house and essentially stealing your car overnight, or during the day when you’d need it, because they decide you need to “upgrade” parts to make your car “run better”. And then when you finally get it back, you find that the engine won’t start.
Would you tolerate that at all?
No, Microsoft deserves to be tied to the tracks and let the Microsoft Hate Train run them over repeatedly.
Does “Microsoft” need to be added to our “divisive subjects” list? :innocent:
Lightbringer, I agree with you. I use Ubuntu at home, but I’m stuck with MS at work.
So, how about that “Hey Richard” avatar/poster/cardboard-cutout thingy? Anybody know how to hack Alexa’s firmware? :smiling_imp:
I’ve written and published a few Alexa skills. Unfortunately, “Hey Richard” isn’t a wake-up option on Echo devices. But I could easily write one to respond to “Alexa, ask Richard…”
You mean this could be a reality? 
“I never knew I needed one, but now I gotta have one.” :person_facepalming:
You think thats bad,
I own a Ford F350 Platinum with MS Sync.
It updates at least once a week. On top of that, it goes into ‘scheduled maintenance’ maybe twice 2 times a week. When it is upgrading/maintaining/etc, the nav, camera, radio, heated/cooled seats, phone,bluetooth,etc, all are not accessible, screen is blank or has the blue ‘progress bar’ slowly progressing. Sometimes it takes 10 minutes for it to complete. The operator/owner has absolutely no control over when or if it updates or maintains.
And with all this upgrading/,maintaining you’d think it would work flawlessly, not even close. And the only thing I ever see changing or improving in the Microsoft sync system, is, nothing.
I’ve turned off every setting I could find to stop this, all to no avail. Even discontinued my truck phone service and its sirus/xm ms service. No change, still updating at least once a week. What a piece of crap this ms sync is…
So the cardboard cutout of Richard would work something like this?
Bobcustomer: “Hey Richardalexa, what is the status of my order?”
Richardalexa: “I will check on that for you now.”
Richardalexa then pages Richard: “Attention Richard, Bobcustomer needs an update on his order.”
Richard: “wuh… it’s 3:00 a.m. Lemme sleep.”
Richardalexa to Bobcustomer: “The status of your order is wuh, it’s 3:00 a.m. lemme sleep.”