Kinect is not required to be plugged into the xbox one

[joker454]

Are $400 PCs going to be as good as these consoles in playing games?

Especially given that the consoles will get games PCs won't and the fact that games will be optimized for them?

We don't need to rehash the PC vs. console arguments again but this claim that dropping a glorified gimmick makes these products a weak PC is specious.

Actually a $0 pc will be as good as the consoles, for me anyways. While everyone else is spending $400+ upgrading their consoles and dropping bc in the process, I'll keep using my same old pc to keep on playing old, current and new games. Cost of next gen for me, $0.

Aside from that, can someone maybe enlighten me why people are so scared of Kinect, yet phones with front facing camera's that are always looking at them is ok, or Android phones that can be remotely turned on and made to record without the users knowledge yet no one cares, or their webcam on their laptop is always looking at them but that's fine, or their cam on their tablet watches them while they are web surfing on the toilet and that's no problem, etc, etc, etc. It's a serious question that I just can't find the answer to, why is every other device with a video camera or mic on it perfectly fine and accepted but Kinect is considered the end of privacy as we know it? I just don't understand the difference especially when tablets, phones, etc with their cameras and mic's tend to follow people in more private moments of their lives like in their bedrooms, the bathroom, etc...

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Actually a $0 pc will be as good as the consoles, for me anyways. While everyone else is spending $400+ upgrading their consoles and dropping bc in the process, I'll keep using my same old pc to keep on playing old, current and new games. Cost of next gen for me, $0.

Aside from that, can someone maybe enlighten me why people are so scared of Kinect, yet phones with front facing camera's that are always looking at them is ok, or Android phones that can be remotely turned on and made to record without the users knowledge yet no one cares, or their webcam on their laptop is always looking at them but that's fine, or their cam on their tablet watches them while they are web surfing on the toilet and that's no problem, etc, etc, etc. It's a serious question that I just can't find the answer to, why is every other device with a video camera or mic on it perfectly fine and accepted but Kinect is considered the end of privacy as we know it? I just don't understand the difference especially when tablets, phones, etc with their cameras and mic's tend to follow people in more private moments of their lives like in their bedrooms, the bathroom, etc...

Hell, in addition to that with a lot of smartphones, if you don't turn off GPS tagging for photos that you take, anyone can easily figure out where you live, where your kids go to school, where your relatives live, where your friends live, etc. if you take photos and post them on the internet.

I find that far more scary and a real concern versus some nebulous potential for spying through the Kinect camera.

The photos is a real thing that criminals take advantage of. Kinect? Seriously? I still can't fathom why GPS tagging is opt-out on many smartphones rather than opt-in. And even with opt-in, people still blindly put GPS tagged photo's on the web for any criminal or stalker to use if they wished.

I've started to see more coverage of the potential for GPS tagged photos to cause a user actual harm, but it seems to be far less than the forum uproar over the Kinect camera by a very vocal minority.

Regards,
SB

 

[zed]

um joker you might wanna recheck tech sites over the years
Kinect is not the exception but the rule
ppl have always been very concerned about whatever hardware be they laptops etc being able to spy/monitor them.

 

[eastmen]

Its obvious that bias is why the kinect is targeted and noy these other companysm by many ms is the big bad evil

 

[zed]

Its obvious that bias is why the kinect is targeted and noy these other companysm by many ms is the big bad evil

just like sony and ps3 at the start of the last generation I tell you

 

[wco81]

Mobile devices with GPS provides a lot of benefits from location-aware APIs used by apps. developers.

Yeah your whereabouts are tracked in the aggregate but it's a tradeoff that people make implicitly.

For people wanting to play console games, why should they be subject to a gimmick that only raises the price of the product without enhancing the gaming experience?

Everyone talks about the potential and how developers would come up with new ideas. Well show them then. How long has motion gaming been out? OK, Kinect 2 offers more precision and not as sucky latency. Do people really believe that marginal improvements over previous motion control schemes are going to bring about revolutionary experiences that games developers haven't been able to come up with in previous schemes?

That's a lot of faith there.

 

[eastmen]

just like sony and ps3 at the start of the last generation I tell you

really ? When people were calling the xbox 360 the xbox 1.5 and telling everyone to wait cause the ps3 would be so much better? we must be remembering different generations.

But that's talk for another thread I think

 

[Rangers]

um joker you might wanna recheck tech sites over the years
Kinect is not the exception but the rule
ppl have always been very concerned about whatever hardware be they laptops etc being able to spy/monitor them.

Well in that case people should be more worried about the multitude of laptop/smartphone/tablet cams cause those are now ubiquitous.

Interestingly todays watch dogs trailer shows just that, hacking laptop cams etc to spy on others. I'm sure some wish it was only Kinect they showed

 

[Scott_Arm]

um joker you might wanna recheck tech sites over the years
Kinect is not the exception but the rule
ppl have always been very concerned about whatever hardware be they laptops etc being able to spy/monitor them.

Really? That's why there are over 1 billion smartphones in the world, not to mention tablets and laptops? Because people are scared about their privacy from having GPS, user-facing cameras etc?

 

[wco81]

You can turn off the camera and GPS.

You can disable the mobile radio and Wifi.

Until today, we didn't know the X1 could be operated without Kinect on.

 

[Rangers]

You can turn off the camera and GPS.

You can disable the mobile radio and Wifi.

Until today, we didn't know the X1 could be operated without Kinect on.

but they had said you could turn it completely off before.

which is no different than accepting your smartphones word that the camera or wi-fi is turned off, or whatever.

In the smartphone case you cant "unplug" the cam.

Also I got to thinking what makes "unplugging" Kinect safe? Well, I guess that it has no power source. But again, your smartphone is in a different state, it has a battery (which you could remove I suppose, but what if the FBI/NSA/etc has a secret watch style battery in there???)

It struck me if long range wireless power could be perfected, unplugging a device wouldn't make it "safe" You could never know when the spys could beam power to your device and reanimate it...

Mind you I'm just playing conspiracy theorist here. I dont actually subscribe to these ideas.

 

[BRiT]

You can turn off the camera and GPS.

You can disable the mobile radio and Wifi.

Until today, we didn't know the X1 could be operated without Kinect on.

That's blatantly false. We knew for months now that Kinect could be turned off.

 

[Scott_Arm]

You can turn off the camera and GPS.

You can disable the mobile radio and Wifi.

Until today, we didn't know the X1 could be operated without Kinect on.

Ah yes, all of those smartphone owners are walking around with their mobile and wifi turned off. I should have known. I suppose they go to a secure location once an hour to turn on their smartphone and quickly check for missed notifications and then prompty shut it back off before reentering the world. And their cameras turned off ... however that is done.

They said a while ago that they'd have privacy settings to allow different aspects of Kinect to be turned off, or to be turned off entirely.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Mobile devices with GPS provides a lot of benefits from location-aware APIs used by apps. developers.

Yeah your whereabouts are tracked in the aggregate but it's a tradeoff that people make implicitly.

No, I'm not talking about tracking in the aggregate. Many people take a photo with their camera. Post it to Twitter/Facebook, wherever.

If that photo is taken in their home, I know exactly where they live. Combine that with people posting on Twitter/Facebook/etc. that they are on vacation now I know exactly where they live and that that they are not home.

If they take a photo of their child at a school play and then post that online with GPS tagging then I know exactly where their child goes to school. Useful information if you are a pedophile.

A co-worker takes your group picture with you in it at the company you are working at, and it gets posted online with GPS tagging on, and now an anonymouse stalker can know where you work even if you know about GPS tagging and turn it off on your devices. Same goes for your home, church, where ever.

And no, most people don't know that it's a tradeoff. Especially if they do not know that their phone defaults to GPS tagging as on which some do. And even if they do know about the danger, they can't explicitly prevent someone from taking a photo with them in it with GPS tagging turned on and then posting it online.

How widespread is it? You can even find GPS tagged photo's on news sites and corporate blogs, because even when they know about it, sometimes they forget.

That is a known and easily exploited "feature" of smartphones with cameras or any camera that has GPS tagging. And a significantly more dangerous and exploitable one than any fear of what could be done with the Kinect camera. And that's not even going into the fact that as people have pointed out Camera's can be more easily hacked to allow outside control of the camera. IOS 7 has a vulnerability that allows a malicious hacker to initiate a hack through a compromised power charger or heck anything else that can connect through that connection.. It will eventually be updated such that a user will have to explicitly allow any connections to the device, but just like web browsers a lot of people just automatically say, OK.

Kinect is far less of a danger than just about any common smartphone, tablet, laptop, or computer with a camera or web cam.

Regards,
SB

 

[eastmen]

You can turn off the camera and GPS.

You can disable the mobile radio and Wifi.

Until today, we didn't know the X1 could be operated without Kinect on.

you can think your turning those things off. But trust me your not always doing so.

For instance you can turn off your camera and gps but if your a sprint customer the main account holder can turn those back on and watch what your doing.

Of course you might say well that's the account holder. But in truth there is nothing stoping anyone else from using that feature. You might think that free game is cool but it can do whatever it wants with your phone.

People don't have a fear of it for some reason. I'm much more worried about a camera on my phone and mic than a Kinect that sits in the same room all the time , a room I mostly use to play games and watch movies. sometimes nap.

 

[Nisaaru]

That's blatantly false. We knew for months now that Kinect could be turned off.

You regard pixels telling you in some menu that the function is permanently "disabled" as absolute fact?

 

[wco81]

OK, MS claimed you can turn K2 off before but the mike is always active, waiting for Xbox On and other commands.

So now, they are saying you can completely unplug.

With smart phones, yeah the mobile platform vendors (and probably the NSA) are tracking you but they're not tracking specific individuals. Or if you are that paranoid, you will never be at ease in the modern world.

You can turn off location services so photos aren't geotagged. You can look at the resulting photo in an EXIF viewer and confirm if there are GPS coordinates or not. If there are, you can strip them.

If the best defense of Kinect is that other digital products do the same (which is not true) then you're grasping.

Anyways, the problem with the Kinect isn't only about privacy. It's also about forcing you to take on a component that raises the price of the product and not giving you the choice to buy the product without a feature you don't think you want.

 

[Scott_Arm]

...
Anyways, the problem with the Kinect isn't only about privacy. It's also about forcing you to take on a component that raises the price of the product and not giving you the choice to buy the product without a feature you don't think you want.

So any company that makes electronics that includes hardware features that not all users will take advantage of are "forcing" people to pay for features they don't want?

 

[Scott_Arm]

I'm not sure why gamers are particularly averse to new input methods anyway. The most common complaint I hear about games is "sequelitis" or "just another ..." You can't add more buttons to gamepads or increase their complexity in any way. We're not getting the split Move-style controller I was expecting on other console. So what exactly is supposed to enable games to play differently? Without a way to input more commands to the system, you're going to be reduced to doing things like "context-sensitive" inputs, which is more and more like watching games play themselves. Is it really hard to believe that with something like PS Eye or Kinect bundled as a standard attachment, guaranteed to be connected at all times, that someone wouldn't have found a new innovative use for it some time during the 5-10 year lifecycle?

 

[eastmen]

So any company that makes electronics that includes hardware features that not all users will take advantage of are "forcing" people to pay for features they don't want?

Yes , where was the backlash with bluray in the ps3 that delayed the console a year. Or physical media on the vita that 60% + barely use at this point.

Its just hate for hates sake against the Kinect. Its not even out yet and people don't even know how it will work compared to previous gen.