Strong Contender Already For Adafruit's Kinect Challenge

sammyF70 writes "Adafruit's bounty on open source drivers for Microsoft's Kinect may have been already won. Someone called 'KinectMan2' has posted videos of Kinect's output as seen on Windows 7 to YouTube. That was fast. Hopefully Linux drivers are coming soon." A few more details are available on a forum post the man made. Adafruit said the bounty could be his if he posts the source code, and they also upped the reward to $3,000 in response to another silly statement from Microsoft.

Comments

Re:hey, Adafruit!

[BJ_Covert_Action]

Stop being an attention whoring second rate electronics kit seller for third rate geeks and build your own damn hardware.

I don't know if you got ripped off by AdaFruit some time in the past or what, but this statement is pretty unfair. AdaFruit has some good prices on various electronic bits that can be a pain in the ass to find elsewhere. What's more, they've made a name for themselves as a trustworthy vendor, so when folks buy bits and pieces from AdaFruit, they know they will get quick, quality hardware, unlike some other online vendors that seem to have trouble tracking their orders and getting sales to their customers doors in a respectable timeframe.

As for the jab about third rate geeks, well that's just some foul elitism on your part. AdaFruit and LadyAda.net offer some straightforward, accessible, free electronics tutorials complete with source code and pictures. For folks who just want to dabble and hobby around in electronics, this is a great resource that doesn't require the rigorous study of electrical engineering in order to learn how to make a cool, flashy LED toy that they can show off to their friends. Furthermore, said guides are simple enough that they can be used in young classrooms (as in elementary to middle school) and can provide up and coming geeks inspiration for continuing in the technical fields. This is a priceless quality in some societies where academic and scientific competency are mocked and scorned.

So all in all, I have to say that AdaFruit, their customers, and their business partners are all entities that I support quite strongly. They offer valuable services and products to those that need them. If such products and services are, "below," an uber-geek like yourself (I have to assume you are one, to write such scornful and condescending words), well then don't use them. However, scorning any tech company for helping to lower the bar of entry into the engineering and technical fields is just putrid elitism at its worst. It only gets lonely at the top is when you intentionally block others from the path to the summit.

So keep your condescending misinformed crap to yourself. Some of us truly value the idea of living in a world where peers with common technical interests are not few and far between.