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Bonzi Buddy

bonzi.link

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Re: Bonzi Buddy

#31

Post by sethhochberg »

shireboy wrote: post #20

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_.

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.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#32

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

throwaway1777 wrote: post #26
cryptoz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I certainly didn't mean to be complaining. I'm more just confused and trying to improve. I thought little stories of using linux/unix tools to peek inside early internet spyware was a guaranteed point of interest on HN, especially when other users are sharing similar stories. I was concerned that maybe I was wrong and my memory is wrong, but it's difficult to prove. If I'm sharing false information it would be nice t…

It’s possible there were several versions of this. Maybe some sources injected malware and not others.

This is the correct answer. The original was not malware.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy has a good summary

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#33

Post by p00tsk00t »

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.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#34

Post by tombert »

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.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#36

Post by legobridge »

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.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#37

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

x14km2d wrote: post #10
paulgb wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it the parrot in this screenshot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Agent I think Bonzi Buddy was built on Microsoft Agent, so it would make sense.

Peedy https://msagent.fandom.com/wiki/Peedy

> Microsoft Agent Wiki

I propose that the saying "there's an app for that" becomes deprecated in favour of the more comprehensive "there's a wiki for that"

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#39

Post by _qbjt »

elliekelly wrote: post #25
_qbjt wrote: post #24

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…

Do you remember Alice? The chat bot?

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.

Re: Bonzi Buddy

#40

Post by 7thaccount »

shireboy wrote: post #20

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_.

Same. I had Bonzi buddy as a kid, but try to avoid pretty much all apps now.
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