[HN Gopher] Bonzi Buddy
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Bonzi Buddy
Author : legerdemain
Score : 49 points
Date : 2021-06-04 21:04 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bonzi.link)
(TXT) w3m dump (bonzi.link)
| smoldesu wrote:
| Props to the devs for keeping this site up for so long.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| They didn't. This is a mirror.
| mdtusz wrote:
| 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.
| RosanaAnaDana wrote:
| Wait this wasn't malware?
| rusk wrote:
| Nowadays would be but these were far simpler times
| smegger001 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| smegger001 wrote:
| yup that's him/it
| x14km2d wrote:
| Peedy https://msagent.fandom.com/wiki/Peedy
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| > 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"
| p00tsk00t wrote:
| 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.
| hughrr wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Some frontend code monkey should make this a chrome extension
| that appears on every page.
| mfkp wrote:
| a monkey coding a monkey
| bozzcl wrote:
| It's monkeys all the way down.
| [deleted]
| tombert wrote:
| 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.
| Fwirt wrote:
| 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.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Hey, you could almost double that hard drive space with
| DRVSPACE.EXE!
| legobridge wrote:
| 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.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| What a blast from the past!!
| shireboy wrote:
| 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_.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Same. I had Bonzi buddy as a kid, but try to avoid pretty much
| all apps now.
| poisonborz wrote:
| What does Rainmeter has to do with any of the other examples?
| It is still a very popular framework, and the only good
| solution on displaying external data on windows desktop (which,
| I think still a better place for home user dashboarding than
| some browser tab)
| sethhochberg wrote:
| 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.
| spoonjim wrote:
| 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.
| supernintendo wrote:
| 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.
| elliekelly wrote:
| Do you remember Alice? The chat bot?
| supernintendo wrote:
| 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.
| cryptoz wrote:
| 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.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Edit: Wow this got 2 downvotes in its first 2 minutes. Do you
| all think I'm wrong or something? The internet seems to have
| some references to exactly what I'm talking about. I'm quite
| certain I'm not wrong. Do you need proof?
|
| Besides the general advice not to complain about downvotes, I
| think it's reasonable to say that you are "Do you need proof?"
| sounds aggrieved, even though asking for some more evidence
| than "I remember" and "The internet seems to have some
| references" is a perfectly reasonable response. At least for
| the current version (tested by downloading it just now),
| running `strings` on it produces nothing obviously nefarious at
| a glance (for example, no occurrences of the word "credit", or
| even "parent").
| cryptoz wrote:
| 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
| to be corrected. But nevermind.
|
| I know what I saw.
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| It's possible there were several versions of this. Maybe
| some sources injected malware and not others.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| This is the correct answer. The original was not malware.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBuddy has a good
| summary
| ipaddr wrote:
| It was adware not creepware. I haven't used thr term adware in
| years. Those were the days. Now we install chrome instead and
| mobile apps to track location, call logs, contacts and personal
| photos.
| mfkp wrote:
| 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.
| hlandau wrote:
| Even this is still better than modern web design.
| globular-toast wrote:
| This brings back memories. Does it still work?
| ackbar03 wrote:
| Install it and see for yourself?
| ffffwe3rq352y3 wrote:
| I assume they either don't use Windows or don't have the time
| to.
| elsewhen wrote:
| And report back here!
| ljm wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2021-06-04 23:02 UTC)