From this 2001 article:
Eric Horvitz... feels bad about [Microsoft Office's Clippy]... many people regard the paperclip as annoyingly over-enthusiastic, since it appears without warning and gets in the way.
To be fair, that is not Dr Horvitz's fault. Originally, he programmed the paperclip to use Bayesian decision-making techniques both to determine when to pop up, and to decide what advice to offer...
The paperclip's problem is that the algorithm... that determined when it should appear was deemed too cautious. To make the feature more prominent, a cruder non-Bayesian algorithm was substituted in the final product, so the paperclip would pop up more often.
Ever since, Dr Horvitz has wondered whether he should have fought harder to keep the original algorithm.
I, at least, found this amusing.
Why shouldn't it be highly voted? When you're talking to a random outsider, and want to demonstrate the usefulness of bayesian techniques, using the example of clippy is a funny, and interesting, way to make your point.
As such, this is a valuable contribution for anyone who might, at some point, want to convert someone to bayesian techniques.
Given that it takes very little time to read, this means that it's value:time ratio is very good. As it is a discussion post, rather than a main post, this is sufficient justification to upvote it.*
*(with a main post I'd also expect a significant amount of content)