Exciting Kinect Stuff Already Coming Out 200
Just last week we learned that the Kinect had been hacked wide open and already we're seeing a flood of innovative stuff coming out. Jamie found a page with a lot of pictures and screenshots, and Engadget has more.
thx for helping us, Love M$ (Score:2, Insightful)
this is cool and what's going to happen is M$ is going to take the code and use it to add new features to Kinect in future releases. just like apple does with iphone jailbreak code and JB'd features
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Wide Graphics Array?
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Work Gone Away
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Re:thx for helping us, Love M$ (Score:5, Insightful)
what's going to happen is M$ is going to take the code and use it to add new features to Kinect in future releases
No they won't. Microsoft is notoriously unable to reuse free (as in libre) software that can't be repackaged into a binary that they can sell for $$$ without releasing the source code for. It's just impossible for them because of their very nature as a closed-source software vendor. Any GPL code out there will not be touched by Microsoft with a 10 foot pole.
Also, if Microsoft wants to create high-tech apps for the Kinect, they have all the available R&D resources to do it on their own. There are a lot of very very smart people working for Microsoft, and if a bunch of unpaid hackers can turn the Kinect into something useful in a matter of hours, so can the Microsoft PhDs and code monkeys.
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only if you use the same code
once iOS 4.2 comes out it's going to have brightness control outside the settings app, similar to SBS Settings. Doubt apple will release the code since they made a lot of changes. all you have to do is take the code, change enough of it to make it look like your own and release it
Re:thx for helping us, Love M$ (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, you know, just write it yourself. You think a brightness control is so hard to write that you absolutely have to steal it?
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Well many "programmers" and companies have patented far simpler things because they are so unskilled they though it was hard.
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Companies don't patent things because they're hard, they patent things so that they can control their use.
Which boils down to "they patent things so that they can generate revenue from them". Follow the money.
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The hackers aren't encumbered by a bloated management structure.
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Microsoft can, and has, incorporate open sourced code into their products, and sometimes they've even done it legally.
A good portion of the original TCP/IP stack, and it's attendant utilities were based on BSD licensed code simply ported over. And while they later replaced the stack with their own code, the utilities for a long time were (and probably still are) essentially open source ports.
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>> Microsoft is notoriously unable to reuse free (as in libre) software that can't be repackaged into a binary that they can sell for $$$ without releasing the source code for.
Yeah, that'll *never* happen: http://port25.technet.com/archive/2009/11/13/update-on-the-windows-7-download-tool-or-microsoft-to-open-source-the-windows-7-download-tool.aspx [technet.com]
Re:thx for helping us, Love M$ (Score:5, Insightful)
Then how come they have never been able to write a better OS than, say, Linux?
Look, I use Linux and I like it as much as the next guy, and I hate to break it to you, but Windows hasn't sucked since XP came out. It's actually a very decent and stable platform nowadays, and has been for a very long time.
The other thing is, most people think it's just natural that they can run Windows 7 on an 64-bit machine and run any old software made for XP-x86 or Vista, perhaps even Win 95 (I haven't tried) without problem. The level of backward-compatibility almost every release of Windows since 3.11 has managed to achieve is nothing short of amazing. Just ask a Mac guy who had to ditch his software collection every time Apple released a new MacOS... People don't give Microsoft enough credit for *that* marvel of engineering, because believe it or not, it works so well that people take it for granted. Me, it never ceases to amaze me...
This said, I prefer to run Linux for other reasons (chiefly that I can tinker, tweak it better than Windows and code for it without paying through the nose), but if I have work to do and Windows is the platform of choice, I use it because it works. I suggest you drop the Linux fanboi attitude if you want to be taken seriously when you talk about Microsoft.
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I'm still waiting for proper virtual desktops, focus follows mouse, a single interface for installing and upgrading apps and not having to copy my entire profile from the network when I log on to name a few.
Also, credit for binary backwards compatibility is not often given because it is simply not a problem in the open world. I don't care if the office version I bought 10 years ago still works; I simply install the latest version with two clicks. Not that I ever have to since I already get the latest versio
Re:thx for helping us, Love M$ (Score:4, Informative)
I'm still waiting for ...focus follows mouse...
A second of googling turned up this:
"Believe it or not, Windows does support focus-follows-mouse, though there is no GUI configuration exposing it. Instead you must edit a registry key and then log out and back in for the change to become effective. You can use regedit to edit the key. On Windows NT, set the following registry key to have a value of 1: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Mouse\Active Windows Tracking On NT it has some bugs: some apps auto-raise on focus, and alt-tab doesn't move the mouse. On Windows 2000, XP, or 2003, you need to change a binary-valued registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\UserPreferencesMask This is a little-endian bitmask. For focus-follows-mouse, add the flag 0x1. For example, my XP SP2 laptop originally had a value of 9E 3E 05 80, which is 0x80053E9E. To activate focus-follows-mouse I changed to 0x80053E9F, or 9F 3E 05 80 in regedit. According to http://www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/18/ [winguides.com] you can also achieve raise-on-focus by adding the flag 0x40. I haven't tested that as I don't like raise-on-focus."
As for virtual desktops, I'm using a decent open-source third-party add-on called Z-Systems Vista/XP Virtual Desktop Manager...
yes that file editing thing (Score:3, Insightful)
That is why linux is not going to get into mainstream desktop as every thing you want to change you have to ..
edit some mysterious files...oh wait
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People who don't understand what registry (or config file) is usually don't want focus-follows-mouse, either.
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Look, I use Linux and I like it as much as the next guy, and I hate to break it to you, but Windows hasn't sucked since XP came out. It's actually a very decent and stable platform nowadays, and has been for a very long time.
I'd even say it hasn't sucked since 2000 came out - 2000 was really very stable and usable.
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Did you miss Vista? I apologise if you are one of Joseph Fritzel's children or Natascha Kampusch. That would be an almost reasonable excuse for believing that Microsoft have had a clean streak. Almost, but not quite.
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The level of backward-compatibility almost every release of Windows since 3.11 has managed to achieve is nothing short of amazing.
In the DOS days the backwards compatibility was excellent, but since Windows came out every time I upgraded, half of my apps (back then it was mostly games) wouldn't run at all, had no sound, or other problems. I had to make a special DOS boot disk to run Screamer 2 and quite a few other DOS games, as they required DOS. The disk burning software that came with the CD burner I bou
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Look, I use Linux and I like it as much as the next guy, and I hate to break it to you, but Windows hasn't sucked since XP came out. It's actually a very decent and stable platform nowadays, and has been for a very long time.
That's why Vista was such a massive success, right?
...The level of backward-compatibility almost every release of Windows since 3.11 has managed to achieve is nothing short of amazing. ...
This may be a design choice by MS, but IMHO I think it's a mistake on their part. Keeping such levels of backwards compatibility let's programs, and by extension libraries, get stuck in a mid 90s architecture. Every once in a while they should've made a clean cut and made emulators for older versions of the OS.
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You are aware that most contributions to Linux are actually from paid employees, right?
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this is cool and what's going to happen is M$ is going to take the code and use it to add new features to Kinect in future releases. just like apple does with iphone jailbreak code and JB'd features
What makes you think that MS is going to do this in this case? Apple might add in these features to prevent people from jailbreaking phones; it won't stop people from using the Kinect on other platforms even if MS added in features. Also Apple makes a decent profit on every iPhone sold. MS might make a small profit on every Kinect but their larger strategy was dependent on the licensing revenue that exclusive Xbox games would provide.
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apple's iOS is usually jailbroken before release, Apple doesn't care. they take the ideas and code that jailbreakers come up with and add them to their products. like the upcoming iOS 4.2 and changing the brightness without going to settings. it's a rip off from SBS Settings on jailbroken iphones
And then theres also this telescreen thing (Score:5, Interesting)
The amusing and quite cleverly done telescreen kinect as an advertising tool jokes I read here on slashdot were quite fun to see!
But.....I was very bemused to see this today, reported elsewhere:
"Microsoft's Dennis Durkin voiced an interesting idea at an investment summit last week -- the idea that the company's Kinect camera might pass data to advertisers about the way you look, play and speak. "We can cater what content gets presented to you based on who you are," he told investors, suggesting that the Kinect offered business opportunities that weren't possible "in a controller-based world."
And over time that will help us be more targeted about what content choices we present, what advertising we present, how we get better feedback. And data about how many people are in a room when an advertisement is shown, how many people are in a room when a game is being played, how are those people engaged with the game? How are they engaged with a sporting event? Are they standing up? Are they excited? Are they wearing Seahawks jerseys?
http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/15/microsoft-exec-caught-in-privacy-snafu-says-kinect-might-tailor/ [engadget.com]
yay?
I know how we can make this announcement look bad (Score:5, Funny)
"Microsoft's Dennis Durkin voiced an interesting idea at an investment summit last week -- the idea that the company's Kinect camera might pass data to advertisers about the way you look, play and speak. "We can cater what content gets presented to you based on who you are," he told investors,
Microsoft adds support for racial profiling!
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Why just data about the people.. it's got cameras, it can look at the whole room. What sort of cereal do they like? What paintings/posters of celebs/movies are on the walls, what magazine is on the coffee table, what brand is the condom wrapper the guy just pulled out as he's about to get it on with the girl on that sofa? And a few minutes after the condom was spotted the device might well conclude, he could use some "performance"-"enhancing" drugs!
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Am I the only one who thinks this is BAD? It better be opt in... because I really don't want an MS eyeball in my living room sending data back to whoever. Kinect data better stay in my local machine unless I give them permission...
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Microsoft would be skinned alive if they did that. It's disconcerting enough when a Kinect / PSEye game takes a picture of you. Now imagine it sends that picture off to a remote server for analysis with or without the person's consent. For all MS know, people are standing there naked, or having sex, or their
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I guess that means I should turn it off when we start Orgy Fridays back up.
Immersive Sports Games (Score:2)
Baseball would probably be the easiest to start with.
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And? (Score:2)
So we have depth data, and webcam imagery of the same place. Where to go now? That's the problem - the field of image processing isn't actually that well developed that we can do things really useful with it. Sure, the hand-waving paint demonstration is cool but you could do that with a webcam ten years ago if you had the right algorithms. The Kinect only adds the depth-map through some (admittedly clever) physics but that just adds a third dimension that needs to be analysed, filtered, recognised and i
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I wanna see a bench of 4 drivers playing supertuxkart with cardboard cut-out steering wheels.
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we can't push image processing hundreds of years into the future
exaggerate much? really, you think it'll take hundreds of years to solve the vision problem?
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47 times a day.
And I think computer vision is something too simplistic at the moment - it's image filters, edge detection and tweaking of tolerances. Useful for counting sperm to the nearest half-million, but not something that'll approach human-levels of interpretation of the image until, well, the computer is convincingly human. If the Turing Test were to comprise of questions about "what's in this image", it'll be solved in the same time that the plain-line-of-text Turing Test will fool most people int
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we can't push image processing hundreds of years into the future
exaggerate much? really, you think it'll take hundreds of years to solve the vision problem?
We will always be able to move the endpoints.
Can your new camera interpret a scene like an artist or a professional photographer so as to give correct advise? Not just bring the camera lens into focus but now provide framing, make up, clothing, and posing advise?
Oh you did that in 2030, well, I've decided its freaking useless unless you can select a specific artist or pro photographer, perhaps Salvador Dali or Ansel Adams.
Oh, you did that in 2040, well, I've decided its freaking useless unless it has virtu
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I've decided its freaking useless unless you can select a specific artist or pro photographer, perhaps Salvador Dali or Ansel Adams.
Software to turn a photograph into the style of a specific artist already exists. See: GIMPressionist. I also seem to remember a web site to which one can upload a face shot and it'll turn a white man black, turn a young girl older, turn a photo into manga style, etc., but Google is failing me as to its name.
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Actually the table I was talking about was much more simplistic and seemed to just detect a "tap" motion by a quick change in size of the hand (camera was mounted above). Thus a quickly-shrinking hand blob was seen as a "click". It has problems with some small children's hands who hadn't got the hang of holding their palm flat under the image at that moment (so the camera sees an entirely-too-brief sideways images of a hand become a flat hand and doesn't know to interpret it as a "click").
Putting your han
No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, how about the fact that Microsoft came out with the Kinect in the first place? Isn't that pretty innovative? We wouldn't have a headline that reads "Exciting Kinect Stuff Already Coming Out" if not for a previous headline that read "Microsoft Releases Exciting New Input Device That They Spent R&D Money On For The Last Couple Years".
Sorry, but just because MS didn't fully develop and support everything someone in a dorm room can think of at the launch of their brand new hardware product doesn't mean they lack vision or innovation or whatever. Anything they release has to be supported in SDKs, APIs, be tested, etc., and that costs money and time. It's great that people are hacking it and coming up with new things to do with it, and I don't know why they tried to lock it down, but it's not locked down anymore, so who gives a crap?
Re:No. (Score:4, Interesting)
One word: EyeToy.
No innovation. This is just MS taking existing technology and hyping it up beyond belief again, and the technology isn't even that impressive to begin with.
I own an EyeToy and I'm here to tell you you're vastly overestimating what it can do. Saying that it and the Kinect are the same thing is either intellectually dishonest or vastly uninformed. It is, at a minimum, an EyeToy that can do depth and body tracking. These alone are significant enough to put it in a new class of device.
It's laggy, imprecise and horrible for any real application, just like the EyeToy, the Wiimote, and Sony's wand-thing.
On the first point, control with your body actually will always be more difficult than control with your thumbs. So 'horrible for any real application' is a completely false standard. Imagine a lag free, completely precise Street Fighter clone. You'll be whining that you can't actually kick as fast and high as Chun Lee, and it would therefore be a 'horrible application'. Therefore all you really NEEDED to do was say 'I prefer buttons'. Because that's all there really seems to be in here once you strip away the crap.
As to the list, Kinect has depth, with the others don't have, and Wii/Move require handheld devices which require power and wireless setup.
But you're absolutely right, none of these have buttons as a primary mode of play, so in that manner they're 'all the same'...
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Oh, and I forgot the most important part: FEET!
Wii and PS3 lack those appendages, for the most part.
Targeted Ads (Score:5, Interesting)
For many who loath the idea of targeted ads I would assume many, if not most of those people are single. As a married old fart I can attest that A little intelligent ad targeting is nice. I for one get tired of feminine product advertisements because the wife uses my computer occasionally for shopping. Please, feel free to use the Kinect to determine if I am in fact: Male, Fat or Skinny, cheerful or pissed off. Because:
A: If I am male, I don't need tampon ads
B: If I am fat, don't advertise Big Macs, advertise weight loss because last I checked, fatties know where BK and McDs are. And no it's not your genetics, it's because you are irresponsible with your health. A predisposition just means you have to work harder. Thermodynamics proves this; your lack of responsibility, low self esteem, and discipline does not change the laws of physics.
C: If I am in a good mood try selling me a Beach Boy's collection. If I am pissed off Rammstien might be a better choice.
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You're crosswatching too much. Crosswatching is not some psuedo-christian thing, its the TV watching equivalent of cross dressing.
They already target advertising extremely aggressively. We have DVRs so I only see flashes of commercials, but it seems my wifes soap operas don't advertise many video games and I don't see many feminine products advertised on the embarrassingly named syfy channel.
There are entire genres of TV shows I don't see ads for, don't know that exist (at least from my TV viewing), such
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What do TV watching habits have to do with anything?
Its an obvious example of how targeted ads are an inevitable result of consuming targeted media.
Doesn't matter if its watching oprah or going to oprah.com in FF, you're going to see chick products in the ads. I think people pretty much understand thats how it works on TV, but the original poster seems surprised thats how it works on a website.
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So then why the hell does Spike have ads like that during Die Hard?
Its not all targeted, sometimes its just to fill the slots.
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Wouw, you should spent some time reading up on subjects, and perhaps think about your posts before putting your head so far up your arse.
If B applies then why does A apply? In A you say cater to those who needs it, in B you say don't? Also, have that tiny little brain of yours ever wondered why the ladies in tampon commercials are so pretty? Those commercials aren't targeted at your wife, they are for the men, we have no idea what to buy, so when the shoppinglists says tampon, your brain will serve up prett
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B: If I am fat, don't advertise Big Macs, advertise weight loss because last I checked, fatties know where BK and McDs are. And no it's not your genetics, it's because you are irresponsible with your health. A predisposition just means you have to work harder. Thermodynamics proves this; your lack of responsibility, low self esteem, and discipline does not change the laws of physics.
C: If I am in a good mood try selling me a Beach Boy's collection. If I am pissed
I wonder (Score:4, Interesting)
_ _
Re:I wonder (Score:4, Insightful)
Thats too much of an upgrade to keep calling it a Television. How about... a "telescreen" ? There is some prior art, err, literature...
Re:I wonder (Score:5, Insightful)
How long it will be till TVs come with Kinects built in, and can't be turned off.
I dunno, how long until they outlaw electrical tape?
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Better yet point the thing at a picture of goatse ;)
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How long until they start making your TV non-functional if the camera doesm't detect you?
lol
Honestly I had that thought, and I'll even go so far as to doom us all by suggesting it here...
What if they ditched the remote control and replaced it with a Kinect-style gesture system? Then they would only be able to peer into your livingroom if and when you wanted to change the channel, adjust the volume, etc. They'd sell it as 'better' because you'll never be able to lose the remote. Further they can integrate identity by allowing you to restrict your childrens' gestures, and indirectly accusing y
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How long it will be till TVs come with Kinects built in, and can't be turned off. It would be an advertiser's wetdream, and then the DHS could use it to monitor those who might be a "threat to national Security" (everyone).
One word: Tape.
Patenting the flood of innovative stuff (Score:2)
Minority Report (Score:2)
I can't be the only one who sees that this device could bring us Minority Report like interface interaction?
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The early "concept videos" for Kinect (then still Natal) demonstrated precisely that idea. But it needs to become more precise to be actually usable for that.
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Is the hardware really that much? Considering what current CPUs can do, with or without GPGPU, I wonder if the same effect couldn't be done with a couple of cheap webcams.
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And an IR emitter. And the software to make them work together.
The Kinect provides more than just a couple webcams.
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Looks like Kinect is basically a Wii but "backwards." On the Wii, the Wiimote is an IR receiver and the wiibar is the IR LEDs emitter. Like some have pointed out, what's interesting is the body recognition algorithm.
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What, exactly, is backwards? If the Kinect sensor is analogous to the Wii sensor bar, then what is analogous to the Wii remote? It would have to *also* be the Kinect sensor. Since there's only one device, there's nothing to reverse. And furthermore, it's kind of strange to compare the two when they're almost nothing at all alike. The Wii remote detects the relative orientation and distance of two dots. It's ingenious in its simplicity, no doubt, but it's a stone axe next to IR painting and reading an
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Isn't that pretty much what kinect is?
Re:Too Cool (Score:4, Insightful)
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I think the magic of the hardware is in the infra-red grid scattering as seen in the night-shot video in the link and (I believe, but correct me if I'm wrong) hardware level processing of that returned data from the camera...
Yes, it looks like all Kinect does is measure the size of each dot, as reflected back into a IR-sensitive camera (big dot = near, small dot = far). That means you can actually see the 2D grid resolution of the device in the night shot.
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And then people wonder why we spend so much money on healthcare.
"I'm sorry sir, but you're affordable medical device simply won't do. Come back after you've spent another $100M, and we'll talk."
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I really hope I'm mistaken, because the Kinect has a ton of potential
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The hardware is quite a bit more than a glorified webcam. Check out this article for more information:
http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/11/features/the-game-changer?page=all&p=2
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Quake was so fucking awesome on a 33MHz 486SX with no floating point unit.
No it wasn't. I had such a system. Doom was fairly awesome on it, but Quake (and even Hexen) ran like crap -- Not an awesome experience by any measure (unless you think studdering sound clips and a nifty 3D slide show make for an "awesome" game).
However, Quake was awesome on my Pentium 133mhz with 16MB of RAM...
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Actually, yeah, it was hacked. It was supposed to be protected from use like this, but someone figured out the protocol/handshake needed to start it up. They hacked it.
Re:Not really been hacked, (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Microsoft didn't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
They are a business. Their goal is to make money, not release cool things for hackers. What makes you think they don't have ideas for the kinect technology?
Re:Microsoft didn't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I'm starting to dislike this narrative that has developed here, namely that MS doesn't know what it has and that they're going out of their way to stop people from hacking it.
1. I'm sure the researchers at MS know exactly what they have and that a lot of what you're seeing now has been in their labs for ages. Its just that MS isn't in the 3D video space and aren't trying to sell 3D video software for movie production or whatever.
2. From what I've read from the guy who built the first drivers, there isn't any crypto or other tricks to stop PCs from communicating with the Kinect. Its just a plain jane USB device.
3. At the end of the day the interesting parts of the Kinect are its software. If you wanted a stereo camera or something that could do 3D depth, there are items like this in the 3D space that do a hell of a lot more than VGA resolution.
4. MS is monetizing this technology again in Win8. Gestures are built into the OS, etc. Its not like Kinect doesn't have a future on the PC platform as a commercial device.
Oh well, back to your regularly scheduled "ZOMG MS IS EVIL!!" 2 minutes hate.
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Exactly. I'm starting to dislike this narrative that has developed here, namely that MS doesn't know what it has and that they're going out of their way to stop people from hacking it.
But that certainly does appear to be the case, even though the Kinnect is sold with a healthy margin -- I recall seeing a hardware breakdown that suggested a build cost of around $55 to $60.
1. [...] Its just that MS isn't in the 3D video space and aren't trying to sell 3D video software for movie production or whatever.
A bit odd, considering Apple has been so successful at it. Microsoft's MO has always been to copy others' successes, particularly Apple's. Maybe they've just failed at this more spectacularly than they've failed at their other attempts to copy. (Hows that 'Plays For Sure' thing working out?)
Which is to say that despite y
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"Remember how Longhorn was going to, like, totally change everything? Remember how WinFS was going to be revolutionary? Heck, remember how in the early '90s we were all going to be controlling our computers with voice commands?"
I think it's amazing how you completely failed to mention that iPod-killer, the Microsoft Zune...
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I tried to allude to the Zune with the 'Plays for Sure' comment -- I think it's important not just to point out MS' failures, but also what happens to people who get in bed with Microsoft.
And the potential list of world-changing developments that completely failed to change anything would just be too long.
E.g. The ribbon, tablets, WinCE, WebTV, MSN, Windows ME, Vista, the list goes on and on and on.
Anybody remember their Smart Watch [msn.com]?
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A few years ago, work did an AD conversion companywide. They hired a MS guy to go to each site, work with IT on scripts, etc to tie each machine in.
I remember talking to him about iPod vs Zune and iPhone vs Zune Phone. He assured me that the next version of each was going to practically put Apple out of business. I tried not to snicker too loudly.
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Because they would have made MORE money.
This is the problem, they are running with blinders on.
Sell product X to Y users that have our Product Y... or sell product X to EVERYONE on the planet.
Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down. Only mentally retarded Low IQ Business degree holders and IP lawyers think the first is the most profitable.
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Selling to everyone is ALWAYS more profitable than locking it down. Only mentally retarded Low IQ Business degree holders and IP lawyers think the first is the most profitable.
Accountant: We're losing money on every unit we sell.
PHB: That's okay, we'll make up for it in volume.
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This could have really gone crazy if they'd just released a little driver and maybe an SDK and let PC developers go crazy with it. They could even have charged more for the 'PC version' of it, just like they did with the XBox 360 controller, even though the only different was the CD that came with it.
MS could have done that but they have a vested interest in tying the Kinect to the Xbox like exclusive titles. Keeping the Kinect on Xbox only would guarantee that a large number of games would only be for the Xbox. For example, the game Dance Central can now be ported to PS3, Wii, PC, OS X, etc. If the Kinect was tied to Xbox, anyone wanting to play would have to own or buy an Xbox. They would have to buy the Xbox only title. Remember MS makes a little profit on each Kinect. They would make a lot mor
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If I recall correctly, Microsoft has mentioned in the past about releasing Kinect for the PC.
Still, by its very nature, Kinect is designed to be used in a Living room, in front of a Large TV for best results. Now, I know that most of us don't have 42" monitors and a 6x6m space in our offices, so perhaps that's the real reason why Microsoft is focusing on the causal gaming market. They've put a lot of research into this, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see the technology applied elsewhere eventually.
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I know they have talked about making it tampering resistant, but downright threatened to sue? When did that happen?
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You control your TV with a wiiMote?
do you shake it up and down to change channels?
wave side to side to raise volume?
I think the IR remote that came with the tv is far better than looking like a fool waving your arms around.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
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Take that shitty IR remote!
I was never able to solve the problem of "turn the TV on and off" "adjust the surround sound amplifier" etc so I'm stuck with the programmable shitty IR remotes on my mythtv boxes... Is there any wiimote solution to that general class of problem? (beyond the obvious, epoxy the wiimote to the back of a IR control, etc)
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Those solutions are found with buying non crappy hardware designed by monkeys banging on keyboards.
TV with RS232 control or Discreet IR on and off commands. and a Surround sound AMP that has rs232 control.
Even my DVD player has RS232.
Problem is, device makers like to hide the fact their IR control or RS232 control is junk or useless. Sony products are a crap shoot, LG were good up until the last release, now they are crap. Panasonic and Kenwood still have real control, but you never know when they dec
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OK interesting that could work.
There are some obvious race conditions. To switch back from wii input to mythtv input on the TV I'd need to select the mythtv input on the mythtv... well I suppose if anything is seen from the wiimote, I could send an IR blast to switch the TV's input. Except adjusting volume on the amplifier. Plenty of if then to program in...