11 ms·

Bonzi Buddy

130 points by legerdemain 5y ago

dunnevens 5y ago
Bonzi Buddy brings up some good memories. Used to work at a place that had a very dedicated QA team. They were beautiful, wonderful people. Our software ran almost entirely in schools. And schools were hit or miss with IT. Some had great setups. Some were entirely dependent on the teachers for the class. The latter tended to have a fair bit of malware / adware. So QA and Tech Support set up a couple of boxes in our office that were the sacrificial goats. Connected to the internet outside of our firewall, and disconnected from our LAN. Deliberately infected with everything a curious kid might install. Testing to see how well our software would run in such an environment. And it made a nice reference for our tech support team, who often ended up providing general support for the more tech-clueless teachers. Bonzi Buddy was one of the things installed. I was pretty excited to try him out. Was a great disappointment when he didn't do much of anything at all. But the infected boxes were kinda fun. The game of "how many toolbars can you squeeze into a browser" was more entertaining than it would seem.
DonHopkins 5y ago
‘BonziBUDDY’ as an example of an intelligent software agent. Alexander Löffler, University Of Applied Sciences, Zweibrücken. https://dis.ijs.si/Mezi/pedagosko/Abonzi.pdf https://dis.ijs.si/Mezi/pedagosko/Abonzi.pdf >Every light casts shadows and so does Bonzi, too. What this gorilla is supposed to do is help you with all your internet activities, like checking e-mail, surfing webpages, and helping you find anything you want. I have to say that the purple guy is rather an obstacle than any help. Bonzi tends to swing himself always toward that corner of your screen, you are at the moment desperately trying to concentrate on. Additionally, the buddy talks all the time. If this would only concern jokes and other fun features, it could be looked over (and adjusted, by the way). Instead, Bonzi is permanently trying to sell the user upgrades, that make him bigger, better and more interesting. Users that download the initial Bonzi version are lured by telling them the free character exists only for a limited time, a $40 value for free. So far, so good. But this basic version includes only very limited features, such as one song or a hand full of jokes and amazing facts. While the general talkativity is adjustable, the continuous advertisements keep on flowing out of his little mouth or popping up in the middle of the screen. This is extremely annoying. This guy just keeps on telling you to order, order, order. “Don’t you want to send me to school, so I can learn 500 new jokes?” Fine, but at a cost of $19.95??? Voice recognition module: $15, 250 facts vol. 1 & 2: $10 each, entertainment center module to play multimedia content: $30, ... Bonzi is also supposed to tell stories. He does not. At least not unless you order another expansion pack. The entire package would cost about $150 to upgrade Bonzi totally. So much for Bonzi being freeware ...
eloisius 5y ago
So nostalgic. This brings me back to a time when computing was fun, but also fraught with danger. I can't even recall the number of times 13-year-old me totally screwed up trying to install Mandrake 7 or some such misadventure, and had to sweat through getting it to boot again without the aid of any other internet-connected device. I believe once or twice I even called a friend and asked them to look something up and read it to me over the phone. It's an obscure beginning, but the first time I ever wrote something that could rightfully be considered "code" was mIRC scripting language. You could find DLLs that would extend mIRC with arbitrary functionality. I figured out how to open a socket, listen for incoming connections and just by printing out what I saw when I pointed the browser at localhost I reverse engineered HTTP and created a shitty web server in mIRC. I remember it would serve a text file just fine, but images usually got corrupted. I think mIRC sockets were only intended for text, or there was a distinction between text and binary variables or something. Later I used an mIRC DLL extension to control the mouse, my shitty web server, some program the took a screenshot once per second, a real web server, a dynamic DNS service, and a dial-up timed dialer to cobble together something that connected my computer to the internet during my "computer applications" class at school and let me remote control it. Of course, there was nothing I needed on my PC at home, and nothing worth doing on it with a janky setup that only refreshed after each click, but it was fun to make. I miss those days. Every download was exciting and new, it seemed like there was a vast frontier of unexplored internet, software, IRC channels, and things I could make. Now I sit down at my computer and check about 4 sites, have trouble focusing on making anything interesting, and generally do not have the same thrill. I wonder how much of it has to do with not being 13, and how much has to do with the modern internet.
bvoq 5y ago
looked like nice times.
globular-toast 5y ago
This brings back memories. Does it still work?
- ackbar03 5y ago
  Install it and see for yourself?
  - ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
    I assume they either don't use Windows or don't have the time to.
  - elsewhen 5y ago
    And report back here!
  - ljm 5y ago
    I clicked the link on my phone and it started pulling down a 50MB zip. Not a chance it was 50MB back in the early 2000s, nobody would have downloaded it. I remember balking at installing a 13MB shareware from a magazine demo disc.
- midwestemo 5y ago
  It's seems to be possible according to this video. https://youtu.be/vzbhb__khDE https://youtu.be/vzbhb__khDE
smoldesu 5y ago
Props to the devs for keeping this site up for so long.
- DoctorOW 5y ago
  They didn't. This is a mirror.
mdtusz 5y ago
I sometimes look back in awe and wonder at how good bonzi buddy was for it's time as a _piece of software_. It was objectively ridiculous and borderline a piece of malware, but it's burned into my memory and it's functionality was fairly impressive when compared to buggy toolbar apps of today.
- smegger001 5y ago
  I remember my dad having this on the family PC at the time it was a green parrot though he uninstalled it when it was changed to the purple ape.
  - paulgb 5y ago
    Was it the parrot in this screenshot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent I think Bonzi Buddy was built on Microsoft Agent, so it would make sense.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      Microsoft Agent and Microsoft Bob and Clippy were all based on a tragic misinterpretation of the theories of Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, and as much as those Microsoft products were mismanaged, mocked, maligned, and abused, his theories and work were actually quite interesting and still relevant, though tragically misunderstood. I saw him give a fascinating talk about his work at Ted Selker's "New Paradigms for Using Computers" workshop at IBM Almaden Labs in 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant >The theory behind this software came from work on social interfaces by Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Nass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Nass >Clifford Ivar Nass (April 3, 1958 – November 2, 2013) was a professor of communication at Stanford University, co-creator of The Media Equation theory, and a renowned authority on human-computer interaction (HCI). He was also known for his work on individual differences associated with media multitasking. Nass was the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford and held courtesy appointments in Computer Science, Education, Law, and Sociology. He was also affiliated with the programs in Symbolic Systems and Science, Technology, and Society. g4tv.com-video4080: Why People Yell at Their Computer Monitors and Hate Microsoft's Clippy https://archive.org/details/g4tv.com-video4080 https://archive.org/details/g4tv.com-video4080 >Alan Cooper (the "Father of Visual Basic") said: "Clippy was based on a really tragic misunderstanding of a truly profound bit of scientific research. At Stanford University, Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, two brilliant scientists, had done some pioneering work proving conclusively that human beings react to computers with the same set of emotional reactions that they use to react to other human beings. [...] The work of Nass and Reeves proved that when people talk to computers, when they hit the keyboard and move the mouse, the part of their brain that's being activated is the part that has that emotional reaction to people dealing with people. Here's where the great mistake was made. That's really good research up to that point. But then the great mistake was made, which was: well if people react to computers as though they're people, we have to put the faces of people on computers. Which in my opinion is exactly the incorrect reaction. If people are going to react to computers as though they're humans, the one thing you don't have to do is anthropomorphize them, because they're already using that part of the brain. Clippy was a program based on the research that Nass and Reeves did, and it was a tragic misinterpretation of their work." Social science research influences computer product design https://web.archive.org/web/20180313075429/https://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/95/950106Arc5423.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180313075429/https://web.stanf... >STANFORD -- A new home computer product to be introduced with fanfare at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Saturday, Jan. 7, is based on research on human-computer interaction conducted at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information. >"Microsoft's new Bob home computer program is an example of how formerly arcane knowledge about human behavior has become as relevant as computer science to the communication technology marketplace," said John Perry, director of CSLI. The 12- year-old Stanford center does research in the related fields of information, computing and cognition. >"The interface between humans and computers is where the action in computers is now, and so research on how people think and behave is becoming hot stuff," Perry said. >Two social scientists, Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, professors in the Communication Department, provided their theories and research results to Microsoft Corp.'s "social interface" program designers. The program's first product, called Bob, is to be introduced Saturday, Jan. 7 by Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Reeves and Nass are currently serving as consultants to Microsoft. >Their research can be applied, however, to other forms of information technology, including voicemail and interactive television. >"Nass' and Reeves' work considers to what extent people react to technology as if it were more real than it is," Perry said. "They have found that to a very considerable extent people treat their computers and other computer-driven technology in the same ways that they treat people - as if the computer possessed reason, feelings, etc. People also treat pictures on screens as real objects, rather than as representations of real objects. This is relevant to anyone who wants to design technology or content that is as effective as it can be," Perry said. >This work can also be controversial, Nass said. For example, some women have complained about findings, in his and Reeves' experiments with computer voices, that people are prone to gender stereotyping in voice-based technologies. "Female voices are perceived as less effective evaluators and more nurturing than are male-voiced systems. Female voiced computers are perceived as better teachers of love and relationships and worse teachers of technical subjects than are male-voiced teaching systems," the two reported in CSLI's annual research report. >"We are not supporting gender stereotyping but we are identifying something that people designing products should be sensitive about," Nass said. "It's an important finding also, because it says that you can't blame women for gender stereotyping because of the way they dress and behave. Here is a black box that doesn't dress or behave differently than men, and it still gets gender stereotyped." [...] Computers as Social Actors. Clifford Nass. Professor. Stanford University. "New Paradigms for Using Computers" workshop, IBM Almaden Labs, 1996. https://web.archive.org/web/19980210054622/http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/npuc97/1996/tnass.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19980210054622/http://www.almade... >Individual's interaction with technologies is fundamentally, emphasis on fundamentally, social and natural, and in a minute I'll define what I mean by social and natural. I can refer to in questions. Second point if you'll see is these responses are automatic and unconscious. Simply put, all of you in the audience will deny that you would do when you would see people like you that is experienced computer users do up here. The reason you'll deny it is because these are responses that you're not consciously aware of and that you couldn't control. So what do I mean by fundamentally social. What I mean is go to the social science section of the library and the argument of this talk is the people who know the most by far about human computer interaction or social science. Unfortunately, none of them know that. Little did they know that they had been spending all their time writing deeply about human computer interaction and just were not aware of it. [...] >Phil Agre: This may be as big a question as Ken's, Cliff I found your presentation ethically troubling all the way down, I want to .... >Clifford Clifford Nass: It's not my fault (laughs in the background) >Phil Agre: No, I think it is. At least, it's my concern. Let me just try a scenario on you. In the literature you are talking about is a great deal of research on the conditions under which people are more likely to obey instructions. What do you think about imbedding those principles in user interfaces. Are you comfortable with that? >Clifford Nass: Okay, I think I can give you a really short answer. It is critically important and socially valuable to know all the terrible ways that people can be manipulated. That is critically important that is not to say, nor if I advocated at all in this talk, that we necessarily should use those methods. The discovery that people can be manipulated is one of the most important social findings in the 20th century and I'm also delighted we know that. I'm also delighted that we know we should avoid it, that's good too. There is no ethical component to the discovery that these things exist, there is an ethical component in using them and I am not advocating which ones you use and which ones you don't. That's for the individual .. >Ted Selker: Except, except when you are in your consulting role. >Clifford Nass: Well but even there, I'll give you a really short anecdote: male characters are trusted more than female characters. >Ted Selker: So the character in us, for example if I am designing a user interface I really want to focus and work on tasks and be oriented. Now if I've got this little guy over here, that's like disorienting me. I'm sorry guys, that's not really helping with my task. Now when is it appropriate to have an avatar helping me in a task, and that has to do when the task is generally social probably plus I'm sure we can learn about that. >Clifford Nass: No, it's the same thing as sometimes when I want to know what the meaning of a word is, I look in the dictionary. Sometimes I go to the guys next door, not for reasons of speed but I feel like being social with the guy next door. Even though I may be working on a task I may just feel like it. Similarly social things should be there, social manifestations should be there when you feel like it. With that said, one lesson from Bob is the characters there where way over the top. They spent their life saying look at me I am a character, look at me I am a character, we don't like that in people and we certainly don't like in software either. So social presences that are available when we want them and not when you don't are the people we like the best and those are the people we should model. >[...]
cryptoz 5y ago
I remember about 10 years ago a college roommate and I ran `strings` on bonzi.exe and found some horrors. I think there are strings in there that specifically tell kids to go get their parent's credit cards and type in the numbers.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Sounds like a rehash of Soupy Sales' "Green Pieces of Paper" scandal. Soupy Sales’ ‘Green Pieces of Paper’ Scandal. Scandal erupted when children's TV host Soupy Sales asked his young viewers to send him 'little green pieces of paper.' https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greenmail/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greenmail/ >In January 1965 on his morning children’s show, the performer Soupy Sales suggested to his young viewers that they find the wallets of their sleeping fathers and take out “some of those funny green pieces of paper with all those nice pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Alexander Hamilton, and send them along to your old pal, Soupy, care of WNEW, New York.” >“Hey kids, last night was New Year’s Eve, and your mother and dad were out having a great time. They are probably still sleeping and what I want you to do is tiptoe in their bedroom and go in your mom’s pocketbook and your dad’s pants, which are probably on the floor. You’ll see a lot of green pieces of paper with pictures of guys in beards. Put them in an envelope and send them to me at Soupy Sales, Channel 5, New York, New York. And you know what I’m going to send you? A post card from Puerto Rico!” >The most famous single gag comes on New Year’s Day 1965. Mr. Sales tells kids to go into their parents’ wallets and to send him “those little green pieces of paper.”It’s become a cult thing to say you sent $10, $20, he says, but if that had been true, he would have had enough money to buy the building. He received only a few dollars, and a week’s suspension. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/soupy-sales-new-years-day-joke/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/soupy-sales-new-years-day-jo... >Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 1993, the comedian claimed he received only $1 and some Monopoly money. But that same year, he told an audience at the Brokerage Comedy Club in Bellmore, N.Y., that he received $80,000. One woman in attendance shouted, "I want my dollar back!" To which Sales responded, "That's my ride home." He also recalled a 28-year-old woman who sent in a dollar with the message, "I've seen your show, and you should go to Puerto Rico." >You can watch the 1993 comment from the comedy club below. SOUPY SALES: Green Pieces of Paper https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=a-OGy3Kh7yM&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=BarryMitchell https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=a-OGy3Kh7yM&...
mfkp 5y ago
This reminds me of my twitch streaming theme, based on Windows 98 and it had an animated Bonzi Buddy. Still love that purple monkey to this day.
hughrr 5y ago
Oh crap I’d forgotten about that. First experience with this was my mother calling out of the blue. “There’s this purple monkey on the screen and he’s telling me things”. For a few minutes I thought she’d OD’ed her meds. Then there was removing that, some other more persistent malware from my father-in-law’s windows ME computer one fine Christmas Day. Joy to family tech support.
gccs 5y ago
Some frontend code monkey should make this a chrome extension that appears on every page.
- mfkp 5y ago
  a monkey coding a monkey
  - bozzcl 5y ago
    It's monkeys all the way down.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
Fwirt 5y ago
All this, and only 16MB of RAM and 11MB of disk space required! I'm sure today this would be an Electron app that used at least an order of magnitude more resources. We certainly live in interesting times.
- jayd16 5y ago
  Well of course, my dude. The target resolution alone went from 640x480 to 4K. That's almost 30x the image data. You'd probably pack in every resolution in between, too.
- _trampeltier 5y ago
  An order of magnitude is not even enough for an electron app.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
  Well back in '95 you might have been running a 486 with a whopping 33Mhz clock speed, or a Pentium at 133Mhz if you were a baller. Your hard drive might have been over a gig, but was most likely still measured in megs. The entire system itself would most likely have 16MB of RAM, upgradable to 32MB for the power users.
  - philjohn 5y ago
    Hey, you could almost double that hard drive space with DRVSPACE.EXE!
  - BrissyCoder 5y ago
    My first Windows system was a Win 95 Pentium 75 with 8 megabytes of memory. Can't remember how big the hard drive was. At the time - coming from an Amiga with 1 megabyte - 8 megabytes seemed like an obcene amount of memory but due to the demands of that OS I pretty much instantly upgraded to 16.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- throwawaaarrgh 5y ago
imwillofficial 5y ago
What a blast from the past!!
shireboy 5y ago
Geeze, that's a blast from the past. You know it's funny- I used to periodically go looking for things to customize my desktop experience. This, those little dogs and cats, Rainmeter, Amiga workbench hacks, etc. etc. Nowadays- I supposed finally burned by enough malware and having become curmudgeonly- I want the most minimal "plain vanilla" setup I can get and pride myself in hardly ever installing _anything_.
- sethhochberg 5y ago
  I have very fond memories of Rainmeter (and WindowBlinds, etc) - but much like you, these days I can't be bothered. It was a fun era 15ish years ago.
  - derefr 5y ago
    Kids today are still doing it. See e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/. We’re just old.
    - naikrovek 5y ago
      it has little to do with age, to me, though it is far more common in older people: you value your time, and spending ages customizing everything does not help you reach your goals, so you just don't do it.
      - bserge 5y ago
        Plus, who even sees their desktop these days? :D
        raverbashing 5y ago
        Exactly I either have a terminal window full screen or a browser I think "Desktop Customization" were for the times we had to kill before the internet got so commonplace.
supernintendo 5y ago
I know it's silly but I actually have some pretty fond childhood memories of Bonzi Buddy. Me and my cousin installed it on the family computer (running Windows ME at the time!) and would use the text-to-speech feature to make it say crazy, usually profanity-laden, things. In retrospect it was obvious adware / malware but not as bad as some of the other junk that would end up on your PC back in those days. The litany of Internet Explorer toolbars that would hijack your start page and embed HTML on any page you viewed comes to mind. Some other nostalgic software experiences from this era: chatting with friends and customizing your away message / profile on AIM and ICQ, downloading unreleased System of a Down songs from KaZaA, playing Ultima Online until the sun came up, Flash games and animations on Newgrounds and the overall vibe of the Internet at the time - message boards, 1337speak, animated GIFs and embedded MIDI everywhere. I miss it and don't at the same time.
- dopeboy 5y ago
  53419970 - still remember my ICQ #! AIM statuses were the method of ephermeral self expression back then. Installing bootleg versions of VBB, UBB, and feeling like an absolute boss when people signed up. Warez forums, EFnet, skinning winamp, downloading 50 rar files and waiting in anticipation for that file. Good times.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Do you remember Alice? The chat bot?
  - supernintendo 5y ago
    Yeah, I do recall playing around with that at one point! I remember it saying something like, "I'll remember you said that once robots have taken over the world" if you ever insulted it. Actually kind of eerie in retrospect.
  - droidist2 5y ago
    No, but I do remember SmarterChild.
- Wanker_News 5y ago
hlandau 5y ago
Even this is still better than modern web design.
p00tsk00t 5y ago
Ah yes, the memories. Worth looking into as well is a piece of software called Ultrahal, almost like spiritual successor in a sense but far more complex, user-editing and even a GPT-3 integration in the latest release.
tombert 5y ago
Man, I remember the fight my parents and I had when I installed CometCursor on their computer and as a result inadvertently installed a bunch of crapware and malware on there. I was going to install BonziBuddy but they fortunately stopped me before I got that far.
legobridge 5y ago
Brings back so many fond memories. I was 5 when my family computer had Bonzi Buddy, and we loved it. We installed it every time we had to have our Windows drive reformatted (it happened quite frequently, as you can guess from our fondness for installing malware). But hey, it used to sing songs and dance and stuff, and my mom could make it tell me to brush my teeth.
spoonjim 5y ago
Was this related to a malware called "Gator"? I remember not being able to get rid of some combination of Bonzi Buddy and Gator from a machine. I formatted the hard drive and it still didn't get rid of the problem. Still have no idea how they did it.
fnord77 5y ago
> (NOTE: This is computer software! He actually learns from you!)
tn1 5y ago
Another rabbit hole to explore is http://thecyberbuddy.com/ http://thecyberbuddy.com/ which I found linked on the wiki elsewhere in the thread
etaioinshrdlu 5y ago
Fun fact, it's named after its creators: Joe and Jay Bonzi. But, it's basically malware.
gfodor 5y ago
Before I clicked the link I knew it was going to be a purple monkey, and I resent my brain for retaining those neurons vs any of the countless useful things I’ve forgotten since the time when this software existed.
dls2016 5y ago
I was more of an "AOLHell" and "Anarchist Cookbook" kind of kid.
chatmasta 5y ago
This little fella is the avatar of the GitHub bot at our startup. I’ve got fond memories of Bonzi Buddy – he was certainly my favorite malware. That was a fun era of computing in general, and not just because it covered my formative years.
908087 5y ago
If they came back from the dead and went public, the AMC/GME/dogecoin/etc cult would throw all their money at it immediately.
samch93 5y ago
Can recommend this video from the science elf about bonzi buddy (https://youtu.be/gU1hesbmaKM https://youtu.be/gU1hesbmaKM), great youtube channel!

130 points by legerdemain 5y ago

Bonzi Buddy brings up some good memories. Used to work at a place that had a very dedicated QA team. They were beautiful, wonderful people. Our software ran almost entirely in schools. And schools were hit or miss with IT. Some had great setups. Some were entirely dependent on the teachers for the class. The latter tended to have a fair bit of malware / adware. So QA and Tech Support set up a couple of boxes in our office that were the sacrificial goats. Connected to the internet outside of our firewall, and disconnected from our LAN. Deliberately infected with everything a curious kid might install. Testing to see how well our software would run in such an environment. And it made a nice reference for our tech support team, who often ended up providing general support for the more tech-clueless teachers. Bonzi Buddy was one of the things installed. I was pretty excited to try him out. Was a great disappointment when he didn't do much of anything at all. But the infected boxes were kinda fun. The game of "how many toolbars can you squeeze into a browser" was more entertaining than it would seem.

DonHopkins 5y ago

‘BonziBUDDY’ as an example of an intelligent software agent. Alexander Löffler, University Of Applied Sciences, Zweibrücken. https://dis.ijs.si/Mezi/pedagosko/Abonzi.pdf https://dis.ijs.si/Mezi/pedagosko/Abonzi.pdf >Every light casts shadows and so does Bonzi, too. What this gorilla is supposed to do is help you with all your internet activities, like checking e-mail, surfing webpages, and helping you find anything you want. I have to say that the purple guy is rather an obstacle than any help. Bonzi tends to swing himself always toward that corner of your screen, you are at the moment desperately trying to concentrate on. Additionally, the buddy talks all the time. If this would only concern jokes and other fun features, it could be looked over (and adjusted, by the way). Instead, Bonzi is permanently trying to sell the user upgrades, that make him bigger, better and more interesting. Users that download the initial Bonzi version are lured by telling them the free character exists only for a limited time, a $40 value for free. So far, so good. But this basic version includes only very limited features, such as one song or a hand full of jokes and amazing facts. While the general talkativity is adjustable, the continuous advertisements keep on flowing out of his little mouth or popping up in the middle of the screen. This is extremely annoying. This guy just keeps on telling you to order, order, order. “Don’t you want to send me to school, so I can learn 500 new jokes?” Fine, but at a cost of $19.95??? Voice recognition module: $15, 250 facts vol. 1 & 2: $10 each, entertainment center module to play multimedia content: $30, ... Bonzi is also supposed to tell stories. He does not. At least not unless you order another expansion pack. The entire package would cost about $150 to upgrade Bonzi totally. So much for Bonzi being freeware ...

eloisius 5y ago

So nostalgic. This brings me back to a time when computing was fun, but also fraught with danger. I can't even recall the number of times 13-year-old me totally screwed up trying to install Mandrake 7 or some such misadventure, and had to sweat through getting it to boot again without the aid of any other internet-connected device. I believe once or twice I even called a friend and asked them to look something up and read it to me over the phone. It's an obscure beginning, but the first time I ever wrote something that could rightfully be considered "code" was mIRC scripting language. You could find DLLs that would extend mIRC with arbitrary functionality. I figured out how to open a socket, listen for incoming connections and just by printing out what I saw when I pointed the browser at localhost I reverse engineered HTTP and created a shitty web server in mIRC. I remember it would serve a text file just fine, but images usually got corrupted. I think mIRC sockets were only intended for text, or there was a distinction between text and binary variables or something. Later I used an mIRC DLL extension to control the mouse, my shitty web server, some program the took a screenshot once per second, a real web server, a dynamic DNS service, and a dial-up timed dialer to cobble together something that connected my computer to the internet during my "computer applications" class at school and let me remote control it. Of course, there was nothing I needed on my PC at home, and nothing worth doing on it with a janky setup that only refreshed after each click, but it was fun to make. I miss those days. Every download was exciting and new, it seemed like there was a vast frontier of unexplored internet, software, IRC channels, and things I could make. Now I sit down at my computer and check about 4 sites, have trouble focusing on making anything interesting, and generally do not have the same thrill. I wonder how much of it has to do with not being 13, and how much has to do with the modern internet.

bvoq 5y ago

looked like nice times.

globular-toast 5y ago

This brings back memories. Does it still work?

ackbar03 5y ago
Install it and see for yourself?
- ffffwe3rq352y3 5y ago
  I assume they either don't use Windows or don't have the time to.
- elsewhen 5y ago
  And report back here!
- ljm 5y ago
  I clicked the link on my phone and it started pulling down a 50MB zip. Not a chance it was 50MB back in the early 2000s, nobody would have downloaded it. I remember balking at installing a 13MB shareware from a magazine demo disc.
midwestemo 5y ago
It's seems to be possible according to this video. https://youtu.be/vzbhb__khDE https://youtu.be/vzbhb__khDE

smoldesu 5y ago

Props to the devs for keeping this site up for so long.

DoctorOW 5y ago
They didn't. This is a mirror.

mdtusz 5y ago

I sometimes look back in awe and wonder at how good bonzi buddy was for it's time as a _piece of software_. It was objectively ridiculous and borderline a piece of malware, but it's burned into my memory and it's functionality was fairly impressive when compared to buggy toolbar apps of today.

smegger001 5y ago
I remember my dad having this on the family PC at the time it was a green parrot though he uninstalled it when it was changed to the purple ape.
- paulgb 5y ago
  Was it the parrot in this screenshot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent I think Bonzi Buddy was built on Microsoft Agent, so it would make sense.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Microsoft Agent and Microsoft Bob and Clippy were all based on a tragic misinterpretation of the theories of Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, and as much as those Microsoft products were mismanaged, mocked, maligned, and abused, his theories and work were actually quite interesting and still relevant, though tragically misunderstood. I saw him give a fascinating talk about his work at Ted Selker's "New Paradigms for Using Computers" workshop at IBM Almaden Labs in 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Bob https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Assistant >The theory behind this software came from work on social interfaces by Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Nass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clifford_Nass >Clifford Ivar Nass (April 3, 1958 – November 2, 2013) was a professor of communication at Stanford University, co-creator of The Media Equation theory, and a renowned authority on human-computer interaction (HCI). He was also known for his work on individual differences associated with media multitasking. Nass was the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford and held courtesy appointments in Computer Science, Education, Law, and Sociology. He was also affiliated with the programs in Symbolic Systems and Science, Technology, and Society. g4tv.com-video4080: Why People Yell at Their Computer Monitors and Hate Microsoft's Clippy https://archive.org/details/g4tv.com-video4080 https://archive.org/details/g4tv.com-video4080 >Alan Cooper (the "Father of Visual Basic") said: "Clippy was based on a really tragic misunderstanding of a truly profound bit of scientific research. At Stanford University, Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, two brilliant scientists, had done some pioneering work proving conclusively that human beings react to computers with the same set of emotional reactions that they use to react to other human beings. [...] The work of Nass and Reeves proved that when people talk to computers, when they hit the keyboard and move the mouse, the part of their brain that's being activated is the part that has that emotional reaction to people dealing with people. Here's where the great mistake was made. That's really good research up to that point. But then the great mistake was made, which was: well if people react to computers as though they're people, we have to put the faces of people on computers. Which in my opinion is exactly the incorrect reaction. If people are going to react to computers as though they're humans, the one thing you don't have to do is anthropomorphize them, because they're already using that part of the brain. Clippy was a program based on the research that Nass and Reeves did, and it was a tragic misinterpretation of their work." Social science research influences computer product design https://web.archive.org/web/20180313075429/https://web.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/95/950106Arc5423.html https://web.archive.org/web/20180313075429/https://web.stanf... >STANFORD -- A new home computer product to be introduced with fanfare at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas Saturday, Jan. 7, is based on research on human-computer interaction conducted at Stanford's Center for the Study of Language and Information. >"Microsoft's new Bob home computer program is an example of how formerly arcane knowledge about human behavior has become as relevant as computer science to the communication technology marketplace," said John Perry, director of CSLI. The 12- year-old Stanford center does research in the related fields of information, computing and cognition. >"The interface between humans and computers is where the action in computers is now, and so research on how people think and behave is becoming hot stuff," Perry said. >Two social scientists, Clifford Nass and Byron Reeves, professors in the Communication Department, provided their theories and research results to Microsoft Corp.'s "social interface" program designers. The program's first product, called Bob, is to be introduced Saturday, Jan. 7 by Microsoft chairman and CEO Bill Gates at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Reeves and Nass are currently serving as consultants to Microsoft. >Their research can be applied, however, to other forms of information technology, including voicemail and interactive television. >"Nass' and Reeves' work considers to what extent people react to technology as if it were more real than it is," Perry said. "They have found that to a very considerable extent people treat their computers and other computer-driven technology in the same ways that they treat people - as if the computer possessed reason, feelings, etc. People also treat pictures on screens as real objects, rather than as representations of real objects. This is relevant to anyone who wants to design technology or content that is as effective as it can be," Perry said. >This work can also be controversial, Nass said. For example, some women have complained about findings, in his and Reeves' experiments with computer voices, that people are prone to gender stereotyping in voice-based technologies. "Female voices are perceived as less effective evaluators and more nurturing than are male-voiced systems. Female voiced computers are perceived as better teachers of love and relationships and worse teachers of technical subjects than are male-voiced teaching systems," the two reported in CSLI's annual research report. >"We are not supporting gender stereotyping but we are identifying something that people designing products should be sensitive about," Nass said. "It's an important finding also, because it says that you can't blame women for gender stereotyping because of the way they dress and behave. Here is a black box that doesn't dress or behave differently than men, and it still gets gender stereotyped." [...] Computers as Social Actors. Clifford Nass. Professor. Stanford University. "New Paradigms for Using Computers" workshop, IBM Almaden Labs, 1996. https://web.archive.org/web/19980210054622/http://www.almaden.ibm.com/almaden/npuc97/1996/tnass.htm https://web.archive.org/web/19980210054622/http://www.almade... >Individual's interaction with technologies is fundamentally, emphasis on fundamentally, social and natural, and in a minute I'll define what I mean by social and natural. I can refer to in questions. Second point if you'll see is these responses are automatic and unconscious. Simply put, all of you in the audience will deny that you would do when you would see people like you that is experienced computer users do up here. The reason you'll deny it is because these are responses that you're not consciously aware of and that you couldn't control. So what do I mean by fundamentally social. What I mean is go to the social science section of the library and the argument of this talk is the people who know the most by far about human computer interaction or social science. Unfortunately, none of them know that. Little did they know that they had been spending all their time writing deeply about human computer interaction and just were not aware of it. [...] >Phil Agre: This may be as big a question as Ken's, Cliff I found your presentation ethically troubling all the way down, I want to .... >Clifford Clifford Nass: It's not my fault (laughs in the background) >Phil Agre: No, I think it is. At least, it's my concern. Let me just try a scenario on you. In the literature you are talking about is a great deal of research on the conditions under which people are more likely to obey instructions. What do you think about imbedding those principles in user interfaces. Are you comfortable with that? >Clifford Nass: Okay, I think I can give you a really short answer. It is critically important and socially valuable to know all the terrible ways that people can be manipulated. That is critically important that is not to say, nor if I advocated at all in this talk, that we necessarily should use those methods. The discovery that people can be manipulated is one of the most important social findings in the 20th century and I'm also delighted we know that. I'm also delighted that we know we should avoid it, that's good too. There is no ethical component to the discovery that these things exist, there is an ethical component in using them and I am not advocating which ones you use and which ones you don't. That's for the individual .. >Ted Selker: Except, except when you are in your consulting role. >Clifford Nass: Well but even there, I'll give you a really short anecdote: male characters are trusted more than female characters. >Ted Selker: So the character in us, for example if I am designing a user interface I really want to focus and work on tasks and be oriented. Now if I've got this little guy over here, that's like disorienting me. I'm sorry guys, that's not really helping with my task. Now when is it appropriate to have an avatar helping me in a task, and that has to do when the task is generally social probably plus I'm sure we can learn about that. >Clifford Nass: No, it's the same thing as sometimes when I want to know what the meaning of a word is, I look in the dictionary. Sometimes I go to the guys next door, not for reasons of speed but I feel like being social with the guy next door. Even though I may be working on a task I may just feel like it. Similarly social things should be there, social manifestations should be there when you feel like it. With that said, one lesson from Bob is the characters there where way over the top. They spent their life saying look at me I am a character, look at me I am a character, we don't like that in people and we certainly don't like in software either. So social presences that are available when we want them and not when you don't are the people we like the best and those are the people we should model. >[...]

cryptoz 5y ago

I remember about 10 years ago a college roommate and I ran `strings` on bonzi.exe and found some horrors. I think there are strings in there that specifically tell kids to go get their parent's credit cards and type in the numbers.

DonHopkins 5y ago
Sounds like a rehash of Soupy Sales' "Green Pieces of Paper" scandal. Soupy Sales’ ‘Green Pieces of Paper’ Scandal. Scandal erupted when children's TV host Soupy Sales asked his young viewers to send him 'little green pieces of paper.' https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greenmail/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greenmail/ >In January 1965 on his morning children’s show, the performer Soupy Sales suggested to his young viewers that they find the wallets of their sleeping fathers and take out “some of those funny green pieces of paper with all those nice pictures of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Alexander Hamilton, and send them along to your old pal, Soupy, care of WNEW, New York.” >“Hey kids, last night was New Year’s Eve, and your mother and dad were out having a great time. They are probably still sleeping and what I want you to do is tiptoe in their bedroom and go in your mom’s pocketbook and your dad’s pants, which are probably on the floor. You’ll see a lot of green pieces of paper with pictures of guys in beards. Put them in an envelope and send them to me at Soupy Sales, Channel 5, New York, New York. And you know what I’m going to send you? A post card from Puerto Rico!” >The most famous single gag comes on New Year’s Day 1965. Mr. Sales tells kids to go into their parents’ wallets and to send him “those little green pieces of paper.”It’s become a cult thing to say you sent $10, $20, he says, but if that had been true, he would have had enough money to buy the building. He received only a few dollars, and a week’s suspension. https://ultimateclassicrock.com/soupy-sales-new-years-day-joke/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/soupy-sales-new-years-day-jo... >Speaking to Entertainment Weekly in 1993, the comedian claimed he received only $1 and some Monopoly money. But that same year, he told an audience at the Brokerage Comedy Club in Bellmore, N.Y., that he received $80,000. One woman in attendance shouted, "I want my dollar back!" To which Sales responded, "That's my ride home." He also recalled a 28-year-old woman who sent in a dollar with the message, "I've seen your show, and you should go to Puerto Rico." >You can watch the 1993 comment from the comedy club below. SOUPY SALES: Green Pieces of Paper https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=a-OGy3Kh7yM&feature=emb_logo&ab_channel=BarryMitchell https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=6&v=a-OGy3Kh7yM&...

mfkp 5y ago

This reminds me of my twitch streaming theme, based on Windows 98 and it had an animated Bonzi Buddy. Still love that purple monkey to this day.

hughrr 5y ago

Oh crap I’d forgotten about that. First experience with this was my mother calling out of the blue. “There’s this purple monkey on the screen and he’s telling me things”. For a few minutes I thought she’d OD’ed her meds. Then there was removing that, some other more persistent malware from my father-in-law’s windows ME computer one fine Christmas Day. Joy to family tech support.

gccs 5y ago

Some frontend code monkey should make this a chrome extension that appears on every page.

mfkp 5y ago
a monkey coding a monkey
- bozzcl 5y ago
  It's monkeys all the way down.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

Fwirt 5y ago

All this, and only 16MB of RAM and 11MB of disk space required! I'm sure today this would be an Electron app that used at least an order of magnitude more resources. We certainly live in interesting times.

jayd16 5y ago
Well of course, my dude. The target resolution alone went from 640x480 to 4K. That's almost 30x the image data. You'd probably pack in every resolution in between, too.
_trampeltier 5y ago
An order of magnitude is not even enough for an electron app.
SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
Well back in '95 you might have been running a 486 with a whopping 33Mhz clock speed, or a Pentium at 133Mhz if you were a baller. Your hard drive might have been over a gig, but was most likely still measured in megs. The entire system itself would most likely have 16MB of RAM, upgradable to 32MB for the power users.
- philjohn 5y ago
  Hey, you could almost double that hard drive space with DRVSPACE.EXE!
- BrissyCoder 5y ago
  My first Windows system was a Win 95 Pentium 75 with 8 megabytes of memory. Can't remember how big the hard drive was. At the time - coming from an Amiga with 1 megabyte - 8 megabytes seemed like an obcene amount of memory but due to the demands of that OS I pretty much instantly upgraded to 16.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
throwawaaarrgh 5y ago

imwillofficial 5y ago

What a blast from the past!!

shireboy 5y ago

Geeze, that's a blast from the past. You know it's funny- I used to periodically go looking for things to customize my desktop experience. This, those little dogs and cats, Rainmeter, Amiga workbench hacks, etc. etc. Nowadays- I supposed finally burned by enough malware and having become curmudgeonly- I want the most minimal "plain vanilla" setup I can get and pride myself in hardly ever installing _anything_.

sethhochberg 5y ago
I have very fond memories of Rainmeter (and WindowBlinds, etc) - but much like you, these days I can't be bothered. It was a fun era 15ish years ago.
- derefr 5y ago
  Kids today are still doing it. See e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/ https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/. We’re just old.
  - naikrovek 5y ago
    it has little to do with age, to me, though it is far more common in older people: you value your time, and spending ages customizing everything does not help you reach your goals, so you just don't do it.
    - bserge 5y ago
      Plus, who even sees their desktop these days? :D
      - raverbashing 5y ago
        Exactly I either have a terminal window full screen or a browser I think "Desktop Customization" were for the times we had to kill before the internet got so commonplace.

supernintendo 5y ago

I know it's silly but I actually have some pretty fond childhood memories of Bonzi Buddy. Me and my cousin installed it on the family computer (running Windows ME at the time!) and would use the text-to-speech feature to make it say crazy, usually profanity-laden, things. In retrospect it was obvious adware / malware but not as bad as some of the other junk that would end up on your PC back in those days. The litany of Internet Explorer toolbars that would hijack your start page and embed HTML on any page you viewed comes to mind. Some other nostalgic software experiences from this era: chatting with friends and customizing your away message / profile on AIM and ICQ, downloading unreleased System of a Down songs from KaZaA, playing Ultima Online until the sun came up, Flash games and animations on Newgrounds and the overall vibe of the Internet at the time - message boards, 1337speak, animated GIFs and embedded MIDI everywhere. I miss it and don't at the same time.

dopeboy 5y ago
53419970 - still remember my ICQ #! AIM statuses were the method of ephermeral self expression back then. Installing bootleg versions of VBB, UBB, and feeling like an absolute boss when people signed up. Warez forums, EFnet, skinning winamp, downloading 50 rar files and waiting in anticipation for that file. Good times.
elliekelly 5y ago
Do you remember Alice? The chat bot?
- supernintendo 5y ago
  Yeah, I do recall playing around with that at one point! I remember it saying something like, "I'll remember you said that once robots have taken over the world" if you ever insulted it. Actually kind of eerie in retrospect.
- droidist2 5y ago
  No, but I do remember SmarterChild.
Wanker_News 5y ago

hlandau 5y ago

Even this is still better than modern web design.

p00tsk00t 5y ago

Ah yes, the memories. Worth looking into as well is a piece of software called Ultrahal, almost like spiritual successor in a sense but far more complex, user-editing and even a GPT-3 integration in the latest release.

tombert 5y ago

Man, I remember the fight my parents and I had when I installed CometCursor on their computer and as a result inadvertently installed a bunch of crapware and malware on there. I was going to install BonziBuddy but they fortunately stopped me before I got that far.

legobridge 5y ago

Brings back so many fond memories. I was 5 when my family computer had Bonzi Buddy, and we loved it. We installed it every time we had to have our Windows drive reformatted (it happened quite frequently, as you can guess from our fondness for installing malware). But hey, it used to sing songs and dance and stuff, and my mom could make it tell me to brush my teeth.

spoonjim 5y ago

Was this related to a malware called "Gator"? I remember not being able to get rid of some combination of Bonzi Buddy and Gator from a machine. I formatted the hard drive and it still didn't get rid of the problem. Still have no idea how they did it.

fnord77 5y ago

> (NOTE: This is computer software! He actually learns from you!)

tn1 5y ago

Another rabbit hole to explore is http://thecyberbuddy.com/ http://thecyberbuddy.com/ which I found linked on the wiki elsewhere in the thread

etaioinshrdlu 5y ago

Fun fact, it's named after its creators: Joe and Jay Bonzi. But, it's basically malware.

gfodor 5y ago

Before I clicked the link I knew it was going to be a purple monkey, and I resent my brain for retaining those neurons vs any of the countless useful things I’ve forgotten since the time when this software existed.

dls2016 5y ago

I was more of an "AOLHell" and "Anarchist Cookbook" kind of kid.

chatmasta 5y ago

This little fella is the avatar of the GitHub bot at our startup. I’ve got fond memories of Bonzi Buddy – he was certainly my favorite malware. That was a fun era of computing in general, and not just because it covered my formative years.

908087 5y ago

If they came back from the dead and went public, the AMC/GME/dogecoin/etc cult would throw all their money at it immediately.

samch93 5y ago

Can recommend this video from the science elf about bonzi buddy (https://youtu.be/gU1hesbmaKM https://youtu.be/gU1hesbmaKM), great youtube channel!