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Furby Bounty Paid

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-can-I-just-make-him-shut-up dept.

donpardo writes "The Furby has been successfully hacked and the money has been paid. (Here is the original /. story.) By Xmas a modified Furby should be on the way to the autistic child who inspired this. Kits are on the way."

7 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. You'd think people would realize by Rupert · · Score: 4

    that if you make it hard to hack, the hackers will try harder. Then when they succeed they will exact revenge in the worst possible way.

    I'm reasonably confident that the "potty mouth Furby" the original designer envisioned would have been created straight away without the hackproofing, but would not have received the wide coverage that this contest is sure to garner.

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    E_NOSIG
  2. What Autistic Boy? by John+Murdoch · · Score: 4

    Help!

    I can't find any reference to the story mentioned by CmdrTaco about the Furby challenge being inspired by the mother of an autistic boy. I would dearly love to learn more about this--I work with a couple of children with autism in an Easter Seals program, and the son of some friends has autism. All three sets of parents have the same limitation: zero programming skills.

    Can anyone provide a link (or just point in the right direction) to more information about the boy with autism?

    Thanks!

    1. Re:What Autistic Boy? by BilldaCat · · Score: 4

      No need to worry, knowing Slashdot, the story will probably be re-posted in the next week. Just be patient. :)

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      BilldaCat
  3. Mirror Here by philj · · Score: 4

    Mirror Here - The main site's slashdotted.

  4. Now they need to... by Mr_Icon · · Score: 5

    Now they need to hack "Barney the singing Dinosaur" from Microsoft and make it sing "time for kink and sodomy", at the end of which he would mutilate itself.

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    If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
  5. Furborg? by compwiz3688 · · Score: 4

    That pic looks like a Furborg to me... I wonder if it does assimulation?
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  6. I dunno about this by Breace · · Score: 5

    Is this really a hack? He's basically replaced the core electronics (the microcontroller).

    I would have thought that a hack would involve running custom code on the original controller.

    Not to play down the effort or anything, but I don't see what this has to do with a Furby. It's not like you can run to the store, buy a Furby, hook it to your serial port, reprogram it and let it yell 'fart', or something.

    Anyways, if anything it shows that the makers of the Furby have done an excellent job in making something that is _really_ hard to reverse-engineer.

    Breace