This seems a variation on the tactic of making a new, unpopular thing an integral part of an older popular thing in order to ramp up usage.

What it may do instead is drive people to Libre Office.

I have an actual license for Office 2000, and used it for at least a decade across several computers. Microsoft gets (rare) kudos for keeping Office 2000 up to date with plugins for new file types. But at some point I had to leave it behind, and Libre was a better solution for me than Office 365.

So I suspect after they see Office lose traction for a year or so, they'll rebrand it back to what it was and just not mention Copilot anymore.

Or renew efforts to make Copilot baked into the OS. My understanding is that you can still uninstall it with Windows 11.

Have we decided yet whether Copilot is the new Clippy, or the new Bob?

I guess it's inevitable that data confirms it.

"Microsoft's Risky Bet That Windows Can Become The Platform for" ....well anything.

Personal music devices, several tries at phones, tablets, wearables, search engines, productivity assistants, music streaming, pretty much The Internet, voice controlled devices, probably others I've forgotten. Oh, Windows RT. And Gadgets.

In almost every case, they got into the market late and tried to dominate using strongarm marketing techniques that really don't work anymore. The computing public has for the most part wised up.

Following their record on trying to capture the market by providing hooks that only work with Windows, I suspect it'll go the way it went in the past -- everyone will hate it and will clamor for its removal. In the meantime, the systems that actually work will dominate. Microsoft will try the three E's, that won't work, and they'll grudgingly adopt the same methods and standards that everyone else is using.

Happy new year, by the way.

Well said. And I'd add that the fact it doesn't play well on Wall Street is a good thing.

I seem to recall that the reason "targeted layoffs" and "restructuring" raised stock prices was due to the expectation that the company would be more profitable on the short term. But many times it's an indication of suits pursuing quarterly profits at the expense of the company's future. Or more specifically, make the company more attractive for purchase.

An example might be laying off the entire engineering department and concentrating on marketing the heck out of current products. This works (sometimes) but only long enough for the execs to jump ship before people discover it's been hulled below the water line.

I'm all for NOT rewarding this kind of behavior, frankly. It just leaves behind a collection of violated, failing companies.

I think Goldman is basically coming to the same conclusion. In fancier words.

As to companies replacing personnel with AI, to execs who don't know any better, this may seem like a gold mine. Expect moving forward companies selling products containing code nobody understands. And probably, marketing materials containing six fingered hands.

I'm by no means an expert, but I doubt the ability of modern universities to teach community in any meaningful, successful way. This seems like a course correction that's way too late, enacted by the same people responsible for the original problem.

They already tried that -- our ultra-woke (or whatever they're calling it these days) hard left sociology largely came from universities. They've already created a social community. One that did not work. How are the same people going to now teach a society that DOES work?

It feels like universities are a dead concept, they just don't know it yet. The required changes to renew relevance have become too large to be practical.

Obviously added by a programmer who'd been around for a while.

Daughter is a big fan of physical media, both CDs and DVDs. She doesn't buy blu-rays because her TV wouldn't really benefit and her current DVD player, which "works fine" doesn't support them. I have to remember that when I buy movies for her for birthday or Christmas, they have to be on plain DVDs.

I'm a photographer, and at one time daughter wanted to follow suit. I got her a "prosumer" digital camera which she used for a while but didn't really get into it. What she really wanted was my old film camera. This led to lomography, a series of vintage medium format cameras, and a lot of prints. All physical media.

A few years ago she won a bid on a Nintendo 64 with one controller. She found another controller somewhere, and started investing in old game cartridges. I pointed out that those games are available now on modern hardware via emulation, but she says there's something satisfying with having physical cartridges of single games.

I understand her views partially. I shoot Nikon, currently Z series (mirrorless) but earlier this year I invested in a Nikon F4 film camera because I wanted to re-experience film. I love the feel of the thing and the completely different workflow of film vs digital. I still get paid to take digital photos, but I play with film.

Similarly, I still buy CDs instead of streaming music. Older CDs are dirt cheap right now, so in the last couple years I've picked up a lot of music that I used to have on vinyl years ago. I will still dump the CD into itunes and put the mp3s on a thumb drive for the truck, but there's something satisfying in having a physical copy.

Instead of "reusable", the engineers thought they meant "self-recycling".

Reruns of Home and Away. Check.

So there's an actual law in California that you can't have an unlicensed school? That raises all kinds of questions, like, what constitutes a school?

I don't live in California, but after the local school system failed my child (diagnosed by several doctors as severely dyslexic, a diagnosis that was not recognized by the school despite a mountain of paperwork, diagnosed BY THE SCHOOL as ADHD in third grade and "retarded" (the teacher actually used that word) in fourth grade) I pulled her out of the system and started looking for alternates.

We applied to a private art school but they were full at the time. Then I learned of a homeschool consortium close by, a collection of high tech families banded together to teach their children, with each parent teaching the subject they knew best. For instance, daughter's math teacher was formerly a nuclear engineer.

Many of the children were outcasts from the school system for various reasons. Daughter thrived there for three years, then transferred to the art school when they had an opening, and thrived there. I would read the assignments to her in the evenings and she would dictate responses to me. Her papers were good enough to prompt an investigation for cheating, but alone in front of the board she could recite from memory and draw conclusions on the subject. (Having a good memory was a way to compensate for a fifth grade reading level.) Her hour long capstone presentation was made without notes. The principal attended.

Sorry, I drifted from the point. Which was, without those three years at the consortium, she would not be the person she is now, and considering how terrible the local school system was (in fairness, I don't know what Palo Alto is like), I just can't imagine a law that requires children to attend broken schools.

I'd argue that Apple has been making low-cost laptops for some time. They've just been charging a lot for them.

That's a really good point. If you create the content yourself, it might be slower and headache inducing, but you will at least know the material.

Seriously, it's hardly a surprise. Doing research and putting words together takes cogitation which stimulates the brain. A stimulated brain is a sharp brain. We've known this for decades, perhaps centuries.

The people in my workgroup lean heavily on ChatGPT and Copilot and the like because it's faster and easier, but I wonder if it's more effective. Is it faster only initially? After we've used these tools for a while, and our brains have atrophied, maybe we slow to the point where the time saved is a wash.

Where does this lead? Are we condemned to become Eloi?

They were going down on their own.