Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Microsoft Says Kinect Left Open By Design

Posted by timothy on from the always-at-war-with-eurasia dept.

kai_hiwatari writes "Around two week ago when Adafruit announced a bounty for developing an open-source driver for the Kinect, Microsoft made it clear that they didn't condone it. Now Microsoft seems to have realized the potential of their device and has made a U-turn. Alex Kipman, Xbox Director of Incubation, now says that they left the Kinect open by design. Kipman said, 'What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn't protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.'"

1 of 215 comments (clear)

  1. Their side of story by asvravi · · Score: 5, Informative

    The first thing to talk about is, Kinect was not actually hacked. Hacking would mean that someone got to our algorithms that sit inside of the Xbox and was able to actually use them, which hasn’t happened. Or, it means that you put a device between the sensor and the Xbox for means of cheating, which also has not happened. That’s what we call hacking, and that’s what we have put a ton of work and effort to make sure doesn’t actually occur.

            What has happened is someone wrote an open-source driver for PCs that essentially opens the USB connection, which we didn’t protect, by design, and reads the inputs from the sensor.