6 ms·

This is all because they want o put Kinect into Windows and mobile as a competitive advantage agains other desktop and phone platforms. Xbox is to make consumer

This is all because they want o put Kinect into Windows and mobile as a competitive advantage agains other desktop and phone platforms. Xbox is to make consumers familiar with it

tptacek 16y ago
Sounds like a reasonable business move to me. Businesses should be able to develop competitive advantages.
- CamperBob 16y ago
  But the integrity of their business model is not my problem.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    If "might is right" is the ethical/legal regime we're all going to be working under, you realize Microsoft has access to talent of the same caliber as Bunnie Huang, and in significantly larger quantities? These arguments make sense if you believe that "DRM" (software protection) has lost the technological war. But it hasn't! You just don't see the high-end stuff deployed in places where hackers care about it --- with the possible exception of the hypervisor-secured game consoles.
    - CamperBob 16y ago
      If "might is right" is the ethical/legal regime we're all going to be working under, you realize Microsoft has access to talent of the same caliber as Bunnie Huang, and in significantly larger quantities? They have access to talent of that caliber, but apparently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems ) they aren't willing to pay for it.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      This assumes that "talent" is a magical dust that makes everything better when you sprinkle it on. I have a few counterarguments: 1. No doubt there are incredibly intelligent, motivated people working for Microsoft, but talent requires an appropriate environment to reach its potential. 2. The mistake is often made of assuming that the "good guys" are the only ones with smart people on their side. This mistake is most frequently seen in discussions of national security and nuclear technology. 3. All it takes to defeat a non-service-based DRM scheme is one vulnerability. If the Kinect has to continually stream motion data to Microsoft servers for processing (kind of like Android speech recognition), then Microsoft can keep changing the protocol and encryption. If Microsoft's 100 talented engineers leave just one gap, and one talented hacker finds it, then hackers "win." 4. "Might makes right" should absolutely apply to what talented hackers do with products they own. I value individual property rights above corporate business model preservation. It is the duty of the giant and powerful corporations to ensure their business models aren't vulnerable to the whims of talented hackers, and using the law to make it so is unethical.
      - nitrogen 16y ago
        Apologies for the poor formatting. I forgot that I have to use \n\n instead of just \n to get new paragraphs, and ran into maxvisit so I couldn't change it before the editing window closed.
        tptacek 16y ago
        Microsoft doesn't have to and won't rely on its own internal engineers if it decides to care enough about Kinect to stop this kind of thing.
        nitrogen 16y ago
        That's why I added the final clause of item 4, "and using the law to make it so is unethical." I don't blame you if you didn't make it that far with the botched formatting. It's also worth noting that I'm commenting on how I believe things should be, not how they are. "Might makes right" currently has hackers ~= Microsoft, but Microsoft+lawyers+lobbyists >> hackers.
    - Natsu 16y ago
      > These arguments make sense if you believe that "DRM" (software protection) has lost the technological war. But it hasn't! You just don't see the high-end stuff deployed in places where hackers care about it --- with the possible exception of the hypervisor-secured game consoles. Where is it, then? And if it's where I think it is, don't most such places keep tight control of their hardware? (As opposed to letting random consumers buy and own it.)
      - tptacek 16y ago
        How about DTV cards, or BD+ Blu-Ray disks?
        Natsu 16y ago
        Fair enough, but I wouldn't consider any of those to be "won" as if nobody's ever going to hack them. BD+ in particular, I thought some commercial program was already able to emulate. And I haven't heard of any movies where there are no pirated versions available, but I don't watch them at all, so I might be out of the loop. And mere Blu-Ray (for those disks without BD+), is pretty well cracked at this point if one is to believe the hexadecimal numbers going around the internet.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  What I don't get is why they care. It's not gonna be popular on other platforms unless the other platforms build in interface support for the Kinect capacities. Having drivers is interesting for hackers and researchers, but sales to those guys are never going to be a drop in the bucket of normal sales.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
caf 16y ago
So it's a "Reverse Apple". Apple sold much hardware on the basis of their software's appeal (going to lengths to prevent people running OS X on generic hardware); Microsoft wants to sell software on the basis of their hardware's appeal (so they need to prevent people using their hardware with other software).

This is all because they want o put Kinect into Windows and mobile as a competitive advantage agains other desktop and phone platforms. Xbox is to make consumers familiar with it

tptacek 16y ago

Sounds like a reasonable business move to me. Businesses should be able to develop competitive advantages.

CamperBob 16y ago
But the integrity of their business model is not my problem.
- tptacek 16y ago
  If "might is right" is the ethical/legal regime we're all going to be working under, you realize Microsoft has access to talent of the same caliber as Bunnie Huang, and in significantly larger quantities? These arguments make sense if you believe that "DRM" (software protection) has lost the technological war. But it hasn't! You just don't see the high-end stuff deployed in places where hackers care about it --- with the possible exception of the hypervisor-secured game consoles.
  - CamperBob 16y ago
    If "might is right" is the ethical/legal regime we're all going to be working under, you realize Microsoft has access to talent of the same caliber as Bunnie Huang, and in significantly larger quantities? They have access to talent of that caliber, but apparently ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_technical_problems ) they aren't willing to pay for it.
  - nitrogen 16y ago
    This assumes that "talent" is a magical dust that makes everything better when you sprinkle it on. I have a few counterarguments: 1. No doubt there are incredibly intelligent, motivated people working for Microsoft, but talent requires an appropriate environment to reach its potential. 2. The mistake is often made of assuming that the "good guys" are the only ones with smart people on their side. This mistake is most frequently seen in discussions of national security and nuclear technology. 3. All it takes to defeat a non-service-based DRM scheme is one vulnerability. If the Kinect has to continually stream motion data to Microsoft servers for processing (kind of like Android speech recognition), then Microsoft can keep changing the protocol and encryption. If Microsoft's 100 talented engineers leave just one gap, and one talented hacker finds it, then hackers "win." 4. "Might makes right" should absolutely apply to what talented hackers do with products they own. I value individual property rights above corporate business model preservation. It is the duty of the giant and powerful corporations to ensure their business models aren't vulnerable to the whims of talented hackers, and using the law to make it so is unethical.
    - nitrogen 16y ago
      Apologies for the poor formatting. I forgot that I have to use \n\n instead of just \n to get new paragraphs, and ran into maxvisit so I couldn't change it before the editing window closed.
      - tptacek 16y ago
        Microsoft doesn't have to and won't rely on its own internal engineers if it decides to care enough about Kinect to stop this kind of thing.
        nitrogen 16y ago
        That's why I added the final clause of item 4, "and using the law to make it so is unethical." I don't blame you if you didn't make it that far with the botched formatting. It's also worth noting that I'm commenting on how I believe things should be, not how they are. "Might makes right" currently has hackers ~= Microsoft, but Microsoft+lawyers+lobbyists >> hackers.
  - Natsu 16y ago
    > These arguments make sense if you believe that "DRM" (software protection) has lost the technological war. But it hasn't! You just don't see the high-end stuff deployed in places where hackers care about it --- with the possible exception of the hypervisor-secured game consoles. Where is it, then? And if it's where I think it is, don't most such places keep tight control of their hardware? (As opposed to letting random consumers buy and own it.)
    - tptacek 16y ago
      How about DTV cards, or BD+ Blu-Ray disks?
      - Natsu 16y ago
        Fair enough, but I wouldn't consider any of those to be "won" as if nobody's ever going to hack them. BD+ in particular, I thought some commercial program was already able to emulate. And I haven't heard of any movies where there are no pirated versions available, but I don't watch them at all, so I might be out of the loop. And mere Blu-Ray (for those disks without BD+), is pretty well cracked at this point if one is to believe the hexadecimal numbers going around the internet.
DannoHung 16y ago
What I don't get is why they care. It's not gonna be popular on other platforms unless the other platforms build in interface support for the Kinect capacities. Having drivers is interesting for hackers and researchers, but sales to those guys are never going to be a drop in the bucket of normal sales.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

caf 16y ago

So it's a "Reverse Apple". Apple sold much hardware on the basis of their software's appeal (going to lengths to prevent people running OS X on generic hardware); Microsoft wants to sell software on the basis of their hardware's appeal (so they need to prevent people using their hardware with other software).