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Microsoft Exec Says Xbox One Kinect Is Not Built For Advertising
MojoKid writes "Among the various SNAFUs and PR misfires related to the Xbox One release earlier this year, one item that had people upset was that Kinect would be used for advertising--or worse, that the Xbox One Kinect was actually designed with advertising in mind. The source was a UI designer who was expounding the capabilities of the Kinect and how it could be used to deliver interactive ads and used for native advertising. However, Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello threw cold water on much of it. 'First--nobody is working on that,' he said. 'We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards.' He also stated that if Microsoft were to engage in something along those lines, users would definitely have control over it, meaning that Kinect would not be spying on you; you would have to engage with Kinect for anything to happen."
They would never lie to us.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
It sees you when you're sleeping.
It knows when you're awake.
It knows if you've been bad or good.
Microsoft Exec Says Xbox One Kinect Is Not Built For Advertising
Three letters. NSA.
Sony haven't put their foot up their bum-hole yet, whereas Microsoft have tried inserting the entire MLS roster up their poopy. Many Xbox fans are jumping ship with pre-orders. Nintendo massively underestimated gamers with the dreadful Wii U. Unless the steam-boxen are dirt cheap, Sony have going to wipe the floor this time simply because everyone has lost the plot.
http://www.google.com/patents/US20130125161
A "reward system" which makes use of "all linear video content viewing behaviors of the user." Sure gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling inside, especially with Microsoft PR goons coming out with press releases like this.
"We're totally not doing that. Even if we were doing that, and we're totally not, the user (because we don't think of you as people any more) will have control. They can either play their XBone or they can turn it off and avoid being an eyepiece for a fascist government, now that's privacy control!"
This is exactly what he would say if he received a National Security Letter or other FISA nastiness.
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=84471421&postcount=1590
Albert Penello, MS Director of Product Planning wrote:
Albert, I'd definitely like to hear more about NUad as well.
Well I think there's two things you're asking. NuAds by definition is simply interactive advertising done on the platform. Using the functions of the console and Kinect to interact vs. just watching a spot. There's nothing particularly interesting happening here unless you're in the advertising business, and we've done a few on Xbox 360 today.
What I think you're asking about is an interview done earlier in the year where someone was talking about how some of the new Xbox One Kinect features *could* be used in advertising - since we can see expressions, engagement, etc. and how that might be used to target advertising. This is the point that seems to draw some controversy.
First - nobody is working on that. We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards. It was an interview done speculatively, and I'm not aware of any active work in this space.
Second - if something like that ever happened, you can be sure it wouldn't happen without the user having control over it. Period.
Two examples of how we deal with similar things today:
First, Kinect can recognize your face and log you in automatically. There could be some cool features we could enable if we stored that data in the cloud, like being able to be auto-recognized at a friend's. I get asked for that feature a lot. But, for privacy reasons, your facial data doesn't leave the console.
Second: You'll see us do some things around Skype that freezes the video when Skype is not in focus (meaning, it's not the primary app). If you go back to the home screen, or launch another app, we actually stop the video stream. We do this so the user can't even ACCIDENTALLY have the video stream going on in the background.
I'll say this - we take a lot of heat around stuff we've done and I can roll with it. Some of it is deserved. But preventing Kinect from being used inappropriately is something the team takes very seriously.
Hope that helps.
that was his emphasis, not mine.
so basically, everything he's saying could be wrong.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"... you would have to engage with Kinect for anything to happen"
So it wouldn't be another condition buried in the hundreds of pages of EULA that the average person has no chance of understanding?
If a product is subsidized, like a free paper, or radio/television, ok.
If I'm paying £££ ($$$ if you're in the states!) then I'm not interested in a single line of text hawking some cheesy shit I'm never going to buy.
The latest videos of Kinect 2 in action or truly terrifying, and Microsoft makes no attempt to hide the intention to bring NSA spying into the very home of every American.
Kinect 2 boasts a military-class 'time of flight' depth camera, and Human motion tracking facilities beyond belief. Microsoft actually states that the intention is PERSON RECOGNITION with the entire image quality pipeline built to enable perfect facial recognition (achieved using remote NSA cloud processing after Microsoft streams daily records of facial photographs from each console to the NSA servers).
EVERY Xbox One, and I mean EVERY console, records the times each person enters and leaves the room, and shoots high-resolution photographs of each person's face. These details are uploaded AT LEAST once a day if the console is connected to the Internet (and market research shows at least 95%+ will be). Not even AAA gaming maxing out the console can inhibit the NSA spy functions. Microsoft has built unique video capture, compression and encryption hardware for the Kinect that is independent from the hardware available for games.
Every online console can IMMEDIATELY stream Kinect video to the NSA if requested - the NSA has a list of every console currently online. The Xbox One microphone array can even hear conversations in adjoining rooms in many homes.
More sophisticated NSA spying programs can be uploaded to ANY online console at any time. Obviously such activity would usually target individuals, or groups of individuals (like every assumed Muslim owner of the console, or perhaps members of some political group). The NSA has the home address of each console (obviously) and a list of people that live in or visit that home/location. It is a single command to tell the servers to contact every online console owned by members of a particular group, and have those consoles begin running custom NSA code controlling the Kinect sensor system.
EVERY online Xbox One is constantly uploading encrypted data to the cloud, denying the ability for people to know exactly what forms of information are being gathered or relayed. The constant uploading is described by Microsoft as "harmless quality control" information of unspecified form. It is simply the 'plausible deniability' cover story to allow their shills to proclaim the Xbone "safe".
If you never use the Xbone with a connected Kinect, or NEVER go online, then the Xbone is simply a vastly inferior PS4 like console. However, if you buy the Xbox One, Gates is FAR, FAR smarter than you, and KNOWS you will use Kinect, and you WILL go online. Maybe not in the first week or so, but very soon.
Buying the Xbox One is an action affirming that Bill Gates is correct, and that you are a moronic entity of no more importance than any other piece of livestock. Gates travels the world telling those Humans he deems to be 'valuable' that masters must not only be rich and powerful, but must actively prove their superiority by seeking to have maximum influence and control over the sheeple. Bill Gates contributes to the same Eugenics Foundations that gave Hitler and the Nazis their racist policies in the 1920s and 1930s. Learn a little about your own American History, for god's sake. Gates doesn't hide what he is. American Eugenicists hold the same beliefs today as when they were demanding the mass sterilization of 'undesirables' 100+ years ago.
The sickos that work at the NSA have been repeatedly reported for using NSA spy networks to engage in massive acts of voyeurism- against strangers, their own families/partners, and oversee US military personnel of all ranks when they make contact with loved ones at home. Bill Gates puts NSA cameras into your children's bedrooms- he ensures the Xbox Console can easily identify when sexual activity (or nudity) is happening in the same room, and light up an alert on a cloud server.
The 'upside' (hahahahahahaha) that Bill Gates gambles will defeat the good sense of the nerdy sheeple is that the Kinect 2 is worth more than TEN TIMES what you
That's what he's paid to do, so that's what he does.
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Let's get in on the act:
Apple: It just works.
Google does not give data to the NSA.
Linux device drivers are easy for normal end users to find, compile and install.
Ha! This is fun.
Just read the headline of the summery, was enough, I've come to know BS when and it's presentation.
As the marketing info for the next-gen consoles starts to hit, I am very pleased with my decision never to have bought any console.
While there are some console games that I regret having missed, being a PC gamer, they can easily be counted on one hand.
I'm currently hoping that Steam announces Half-Life 3 as a SteamOS exclusive, even if just for 6 months, which will finally take Microsoft out of PC gaming.
I think that it would continue the current PC gaming renaissance for a good long time.
You are welcome on my lawn.
He worded himself very carefully there; "...you would have to engage with Kinect for anything to happen."
That could mean anything that the Kinect can register as movement or "activity", in other words: if you walk in front of the device, or move while on the couch watching TV...
It could easily register sounds and subtle movements as "engaging", then record what you watch to show you ads...
No worries, the Kinect only needs to be connected and powered on for the system to function, you can "turn it off" (in software), and it won't do "anything" [that you can see]. Moreover, the XBone doesn't need an always-on internet connection, so even if it were watching your every move and listening to you 24/7, it wouldn't be uploading that information until the next time you connected. And even if it were secretly doing that, Microsoft wouldn't be sharing that data with the government unless legally required to. And even if we were sharing the data voluntarily through a well-documented Prism access tunnel, you have nothing to worry about unless you are a terrorist. And you're not a terrorist, are you?
Not
Strictly
Accurate
It was built for the NSA.
We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards.
Sure, for now. Wasn't there also a time when X-Box Live didn't have adverts, or at the very least redesigns of the interface added more?
We'll see, give them a couple of years.
Consoles and games in general were not made to advertise. The fact that they have to point it out sounds like they're doing something terribly malicious with the console, which is not surprising to say the least.
Hear hear!
"Can be used for" is a MUCH larger set than "Was built for".
But TFA gets sillier:
'..nobody is working on that,' he said. 'We have a lot more interesting and pressing things to dedicate time towards.'
NOBODY at Microsoft has time to work on building a platform that would suck in hundreds of millions, when they already have the underlying technology working?
if Microsoft were to engage in something along those lines, users would definitely have control over it,
Like they have control over ANYTHING ELSE Microsoft builds? Now "This guy might just be naive." has been shouldered out by "He's lying through his teeth.", "Does he REALLY think we'll believe THAT - or anything ELSE he says now that he's said that?" and ROFL.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
" 'First--nobody is working on that,'"
Well nobody other than Microsoft:
http://www.google.com/patents/US20130125161
He can deny it, but saying nobody is working on it, even as they're patenting that feature is a bit ludicrous.
Why would you allow a Kinect spybox into your house from a company cooperating with the NSA on Skype spyware? It's a remote camera, no different than the OnStar spy in your car that the FBI turns on when it wants to, or the CarrierIQ spy in your phone, that I have no doubt the NSA turns on when it wants data.
It was an interview done speculatively, and I'm not aware of any active work in this space.
So I wouldn't exactly take his limited view as a yardstick by which to measure how much data they are collecting and for what purposes.
Twinstiq, game news
The first time I saw a screen-shot of Windows 8, I couldn't help but feel like the tile-oriented format was designed to shoehorn advertisements into the user interface. For a long time Microsoft relied on large-scale OEM business contracts to make money, and now that more price-efficient alternatives are available for office software and operating systems, they're approaching the opposite extreme of monthly subscriptions and integrated advertisement. They built these elements into XBox Live first, correctly assuming that gamers would be willing to put up with it so long as decent titles appeared on MS consoles. Remember when they first announced the original XBox? All of the concerns and criticisms that I had then(too proprietary, not enough 3rd party support, deference to the loyal customer base) have emerged again, but they lack the air-tight PC-gaming community dominance that they possessed circa 2001. For a long time, they had an array of products that was good enough to keep users from leaving; recently, they've made a series of products (Zune, XBox 1, Surface 1/2, Windows 8, Windows Smartphones) that are far enough from what consumers, and more importantly, loyal customers want, that they are approaching a catastrophic lack of interest. As much I would love to relish the downfall of the M$ of yore, I wish they would behave more like a competitor to Apple and start putting out products that just work again; they really had home-runs when it came to Windows XP and Windows 7, and I don't understand why they abandoned what was working so well for them.
If they aren't even looking into it and doing research on a potentially powerful form of revenue then they are idiots. I know no one wants it but as a business they need to examine profitability and user reception as a factor to be tested.
...The marketing division is working hard to fix this bug.
Mastering the English language is fucking easy: all you have to do is to put an f* word in every fucking sentence.
The graphics chip could not support the video in those ads.
...Gun maker says guns are not for murder.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
If it was just built for advertising I'm sure Microsoft could make it evil enough in it's own right to make people feel uncomfortable. But if we consider the bigger picture and throw in some NSA interests, then it becomes scary.
So we have a device in the living room that is always on, always connected and can recognize who is in the room. This means you have to assume there will be a record in some NSA database not only of your playing habits, but also of all people who ever sat there in the couch with you.
Add to this the possibility to join data from several sources. Like some friend visiting, no problem, just match his face against what people tagged on Facebook, match against people you emailed or skyped with. Verify with location data from your smartphones and why not run an automated fingerprint check while they are at it and your phone anyway has a fingerprint sensor. Or add in some voice recognition..
Automatically identifying people with high accuracy and keeping a permanent database of who associated with who at what periods of their lives seemed like science fiction just a couple of years ago. So do we live in the future now? Yes we do, unfortunately it's the one described in 1984.
There is an entire section (in a patent for kinect technology) on the use of the sensors and cameras to gather information for use in targeting advertising.