The launch of Microsoft's new video game accessory, Kinect, brought on an interesting challenge for hackers all around the world. The Kinect is Microsoft's newest video game accessory for the XBox. It is a total controller-free gaming and entertainment experience. It allows users to control and interact with the XBox without using controllers. Basically, it's a camera that records video and depth so whatever the viewer's does is interpreted on the screen.
With its launch, a company called Adafruit Industries offered a bounty of $2,000 to anyone who would successfully hack the software and create an open source driver of their own. A Spanish student claimed the prize by unlocking the code and successfully creating an open source driver.
As we might guess, Microsoft wasn't too pleased about the whole idea of people messing with their code to come up with different drivers. They said that they don't condone reverse engineering. They've also made it clear that they will take legal actions to prevent unauthorized third parties from using the Kinect camera for different purposes than what it was intended for.
It seems like it's always the same thing. Instead of Microsoft being happy that their new product is causing all this attention, what they're worried about is keeping their technology for themselves. They don't seem to realize that by having people work on open source drivers that some other more productive purpose could come for the Kinect camera. Maybe it could be used for radars or robotic purposes. I just think that having people work hard to come up with ideas to better a product is always a good idea. But like always, The Man tries to keep everything for themselves.
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