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How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

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Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#371

Post by pjmlp »

GeekyBear wrote: post #350
pjmlp wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually no, that is what many without Windows background think. WSL 1.0 was based on Drawbridge research project of library OSes, also used to port SQL Server into Linux. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46110904

Microsoft had to warn users that they would corrupt the original WSL subsystem if they touched Linux files using Windows tools: > DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, access, create, and/or modify Linux files inside of your `%LOCALAPPDATA%` folder using Windows apps, tools, scripts, consoles, etc. They did overcome that problem eventually, but by then everyone had moved on to WSL2.

That is no different from having file systems problems across OSes, as old as there are multiple OSes.

Even Linux best practices for SMB access have been as read only.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#372

Post by qnleigh »

idle_zealot wrote: post #311
simonw wrote: post #249

The thing that really confuses me about this is that it has very real negative consequences. I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. And if I ask them (which I always do) they still have trouble describ…

> I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! > If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. I think this is basically a rephrasing of the reason for the shared name. This appears to be an attempt at brand unification. Microsoft wants user's experienc…

Among many other issues, the experience doesn't come anywhere close to seamless, right? Because each of these things is distinct and can't interface with the others? They could have tried to build a unified assistant, but they prioritized the rush job instead.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#373

Post by somat »

cenamus wrote: post #336
netbsdusers wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plan 9 implements some sort of "everything has a directory entry" concept. Sockets are files already in Unix. "Everything is a file" in Unix means they have a uniform treatment as file descriptors. Its perfection is probably in Capsicum where when you create a new process, you get a process file descriptor referring to it instead of a PID.

Sockets really aren't files im Unix though, you don't create them with (f)open, and you don't read/write with (f)read/(f)write

As much as I like bsd I think the socket interface is their biggest failure, don't get me wrong, the socket interface is not bad, it is an amazing accomplishment that most of the internet is based on. The reason I regard it as a failure is because it is so close but not quite touching. A core unix idea is to have a single namespace registry and a simple universal api(open, seek, read, write, close) to access resources on this registry. and you can tell the bsd socket team was trying(like I said it's close) but they failed to close the loop and shipped an api that did not match the core unix api.

And for free, a rant, I think this is why Microsoft's registry is so bad. On paper it sounds great "a single place to put all your config" I could totally sell it. But in practice it is miserable to use. When proposed nobody said "we already have a hierarchical namespace where all our config can go and it already has pretty great tooling, lets just make it better" so they invented a custom one that required custom special access patterns and custom special tooling and custom special api's, and... it sort of sucks to use. I guess in their defense they were not fully onboard the idea that you could have one tree(they liked their many trees A: B: C:)

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#374

Post by velik_m »

Barbing wrote: post #364
Lihh27 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a feature, not a bug. If nobody can pinpoint which instance is crashing, you can't confidently figure out if you need to cancel the $19/mo, the $30/mo, or the $39/mo SKU. Obfuscation as a service.

Quick cry for help, please someone help me cancel a stupid Office 365 subscription on an old credit card where the number changed and no longer have access to the email - their website possibly intentionally sucks considering the hours I’ve spent on this

It's called Microsoft 365 Copilot now. Maybe that will help.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#375

Post by sedawk »

saltwatercowboy wrote: post #367
Barbing wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Satya predicted someone would map their frustration with his company['s naming] out like this, is there anything he could have done to prevent the embarrassment? I see how excited the executives would get about one single interface for computing all locked behind the subscription. The article makes Microsoft look stupid. It's tough to believe they're doing it the best way. Was this really a necessary intermediate…

Stupidity and avarice, despite being unsatisfying answers, are sometimes the correct ones.

This! The most cogent and concise explanation I've heard for something this!!

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#376

Post by nolok »

idle_zealot wrote: post #311
simonw wrote: post #249

The thing that really confuses me about this is that it has very real negative consequences. I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. And if I ask them (which I always do) they still have trouble describ…

> I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! > If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. I think this is basically a rephrasing of the reason for the shared name. This appears to be an attempt at brand unification. Microsoft wants user's experienc…

I'm sure it happened in a meeting where the word SYNERGY was said a lot but it clearly doesn't work and it's not the first time Microsoft makes this blunder everything was .net then everything was live then everything was xbox then everything was 365 now everything is copilot and if someone tell me they use copilot 365 I still have no idea if they use web apps or desktop apps or anything because they confuse a brand with an actual product.

This is insane.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#377

Post by GeekyBear »

pjmlp wrote: post #371
GeekyBear wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft had to warn users that they would corrupt the original WSL subsystem if they touched Linux files using Windows tools: > DO NOT, under ANY circumstances, access, create, and/or modify Linux files inside of your `%LOCALAPPDATA%` folder using Windows apps, tools, scripts, consoles, etc. They did overcome that problem eventually, but by then everyone had moved on to WSL2.

That is no different from having file systems problems across OSes, as old as there are multiple OSes. Even Linux best practices for SMB access have been as read only.

Sorry, but WSL1 was unstable by Microsoft's own admission.

That's why Microsoft abandoned it in favor of WSL2 running real Linux in a VM.

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#378

Post by dsteel »

The naming confusion points to a deeper problem. Everyone is building the "AI does a thing" layer (coding, writing, searching). It looks like no one is building the "AI things work together" layer.

We run 14 AI agents. CrewAI, LangGraph, Google's 8 patterns... all solve how agents pass data to each other. None of them answer: which agent has authority over which domain? What happens when two agents disagree? Who owns the escalation path?

Those are organizational problems, not technical ones. And organizational problems don't get solved by naming a product "Copilot."

Re: How many products does Microsoft have named 'Copilot'?

#379

Post by xp84 »

nolok wrote: post #376
idle_zealot wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I cannot have a conversation about Copilot! > If someone says "I used Copilot to..." or "Copilot is great for..." or "Copilot sucks because..." they haven't communicated any useful information to me, because I have no idea what product they are talking about. I think this is basically a rephrasing of the reason for the shared name. This appears to be an attempt at brand unification. Microsoft wants user's experienc…

I'm sure it happened in a meeting where the word SYNERGY was said a lot but it clearly doesn't work and it's not the first time Microsoft makes this blunder everything was .net then everything was live then everything was xbox then everything was 365 now everything is copilot and if someone tell me they use copilot 365 I still have no idea if they use web apps or desktop apps or anything because they confuse a brand…

Thanks for the whistle stop tour of Microsoft branding! I remember when Microsoft Passport was first rebranded to be a “.net Passport”! And all the later ones.
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