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Comment by pilif | Hacker News Reader

What really pains me is that Microsofts response to all this innovation and geek love is to threaten people working on the drivers to make this possible with jail.

I understand that they want to protect their investment. Especially if the are selling the hardware at a loss (I don't know whether they are), but a bit more open mindedness could be so helpful in getting geeks excited (and maybe selling more consoles in the long run)

Look at the Wiimote. Did nintendo lose anything as the community began doing crazy stuff with it? I know of at least one case where the Wiimotes hacker-friendliness sold a console.

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Isn't the obvious solution for Microsoft in the case of the Kinect to just up the price so they aren't selling it at a loss (assuming they are)? Hobbyists will still buy them and do innovative things with the device, especially if there appears to be less risk of C&Ds down the line.

They may also have had plans to do some of these things themselves and the projects people are publishing could count as prior art, preventing them from patenting various things.

This is pure speculation and I have no information to support it, though. It's kind of sad that they appear to be hostile to the notion of people hacking this nifty device into something even greater.

I don't think they're selling it at a loss, but who knows? Apparently, they've been shoveling profits around to hide weakness in the Windows division, or at least InformationWeek thinks so.

Source: http://www.informationweek.com/news/storage/reviews/showArti...

According to the teardown I read today the parts cost of a kinect is $56, so it is safe ta assume they're not losing money on it.

Can you provide examples that mention jail?

Not the word jail but the threat is in plain sight

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-20021836-52.html

"Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products," a company spokesperson told CNET. "With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant."

In part Microsoft HAS to release a statement saying don't do. So that later it can claim it is not responsible for something and it did everything in it's power to stop these activities.

You can imagine someone somehow coming to harm and Microsoft getting sued because it a massive cash cow.

Of course this is being generous to MS and given past form I'm sure they will not hesitate to protect themselves from positive publicity and the possibility that people may consider the company to be cool and innovative ;)

AFAIK you can't weasel your way out of product liability like that.

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