Microsoft claims Kinect left open by design (with bonus hacked vids)

The Kinect's open-source PC drivers allow coders to have their way with the hardware, and we've already begun to see interesting things coming from the community. On NPR last Friday, a company spokesman said that wasn't an accident: Microsoft left the USB connection open by design.

That could be a retcon—or it could be the truth—but it's nice to hear
Microsoft be so welcoming of third-party drivers on the hardware, especially since the announcement was made in such a public forum. And we already have a real-time lightsaber demo... and that's pretty much wicked.

Also, the hardware has not been hacked

Microsoft is adamant that, until the proprietary software has been compromised or the hardware itself has changed, the Kinect has not been hacked. "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," Alex Kipman, director of incubation at Microsoft, said on NPR. "The sensor, again, as I talked earlier, has eyes and ears and that's a whole bunch of, you know, noise that someone needs to take and turn into signal."

Just to make the point clear, host Ira Flatow asked specifically if the USB connection was left open on purpose. Kipman repeated that yes, that was a conscious decision.

He also made it clear that no one was going to get in trouble for writing their own programs for the Kinect. "We will, sooner rather than later—and we're already doing a lot of this—continue to partner with academic places to make sure that this innovation does make it into academic circles, right? So we started this already with places like USC and other universities some time ago."

Microsoft claims Kinect left open by design (with bonus hacked vids)

Posted By: JMH
23 Nov 2010