Yeah hackers do ruin the game,thats why i like the GP's much more then playing against random people i dont know.

Luckily that has never happened to me... Nintendo probally bans all those people, and they can make system updates to fix it.

I just called Nintendo's Customer Service and gave them links to the videos.....

It's a shame to report the homebrewers, but when it becomes piracy or online cheating I have zero tolerance...

Server-side patches should easily be able to catch this kind of hacking. Nice try, though.

Furthermore, Nintendo could probably also put a stop to modifications like these with a system update. Until the next hack, you say? Same goes for any patch.

^ if it's as easy as you make it sound, why doesn't nintendo do something about it?

I have not seen this online myself... however if it is true this is an obvious design flaw. The server should decide what items you end up getting, how long they are active for, etc, not the client.

Homebrew is good, you bought the hardware, you should be able to do whatever you want with it.

It's not a design flaw, it's a design decision.  Consoles are considered closed platforms.  This is why XBL permabans Xbox hacks and Nintendo WiFi should do the same.

You cannot mitigate the latency if the server monitors everything.  If someone lags a bit, suddenly they stop moving on the server (or drive off of the edge) even if you didn't do that on the client.  This wouldn't be well tolerated by the clients.  Plus, you'd have turning/moving latency. 

You can significantly mitigate the latency if the server trusts all clients.  Then, the only remnants of latency are players being mispredicted by the server.

And with WiFi, which has no business in gaming, you'll always end up with a lot of latency/loss.

I can't agree.  You can never trust the client.  Especially not for something as important as items are in mario kart.  The latency would not even be noticible in this situation seeing that when you pick up an item there is a long time while the items flip by and it finally chooses one and you can use it.  I do agree that the server can't monitor everything, but the items in mario kart seem like a no brainer.

But if latency really was a HUGE problem the server could always send a list of items available at postion 1 through 12 as soon as the game starts up, and make the client choose them in order, if something seems amiss (Ie, only 2 blue shells where assigned but 5 have been used) disconnect the user for cheating.. or even better team them up with all the other cheaters... it'd be intersting to see  match where 12 peple are all using bullet bill 100% of the time heheh.

It all boils down to old-fashioned human selfishness. A trait, incidentally, that's highly incompatible with online and social gaming. If you act like a royal douche in real life, it tends to get you smacked upside the head by your fellow participants (or worse, if you're being particularly nasty).

In online environments, however, the threat of retribution for being a cheater or asshat is more or less nonexistent, meaning that certain individuals will turn to it because hey, they can get away with it Scott-free. Which is a big part of why Nintendo's policies with online have been so hesitant and protective, of course.

You won't have those cheaters in a friend's code session...